VK wrote:
News wrote: Also, when I print out the var "codename" in IE 6 it says Mozilla.
What is up with that?
In the beginning Tim Berners-Lee created the Web and HTTP
And I thought that in the beginning was the word.
And the word was text/plain.[1] :)
Then National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NSCA) created the
first GUI browser called NSCA Mosaic. And it was good ans so lasted
many years.
So far, so good.
Then Netscape, Inc. created a much more powerful version and called it
"Mozilla". What was a play around the word "Mosaic" => "Mosaic" +
"Godzilla", thus Mosaic but having obtained the power of Godzilla. They
even created a logo with a funny little dragon.
But browser production appreared to be a very profitable no-fun
business so the next version has been already called very seriously
"Netscape Navigator". At the same time "Mozilla" has been left in the
browser ID string (which finally become a property of the navigator
object).
Wrong as it is. The (internal) _codename_ of Netscape's Web browser,
Netscape Navigator (and later, the Netscape Communicator suite) was
Mozilla (for the reasons you mentioned) ever since.
<URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Navigator>
Hence the logo, navigator.userAgent and later the name of the (non-profit)
Mozilla Organization (an Open Source community with Netscape support) which
took over development of the Mozilla codebase when Netscape decided (due to
the no longer maintainable codebase produced to far) to make the Mozilla
code Open Source (resulting in releasing NN versions 6.x and 7.x as
Netscape Gecko-based, parallel to Mozilla Suite releases from mozilla.org).
Shortly after the merger with (or rather hostile takeover by) AOL/TW,
the Netscape browser division was shut down, and what was the Mozilla
Organization with many payed Netscape employees became the Mozilla
Foundation <URL:http://www.mozilla.org/> (still non-profit) led by the
hard core of ex-Netscapers. (Current Netscape browser versions [8+]
are developed by Mercurial Communications for AOL/TW and are based on
Mozilla Firefox.)
<URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape>
Recently, with the release of Firefox 1.5, the Mozilla Foundation
produced a (commercial) subsidiary named Mozilla Corporation
(<URL:http://www.mozilla.com/>) to "[oversee] the development and
distribution of Mozilla technologies and products, including the
popular and award-winning Firefox Web browser and Thunderbird email
client."
PointedEars
___________
[1] <URL:http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1.txt>