who/what does mozilla stand for

[Blelisa]

HI,
can you please tell me what Mozilla is?
Also I see the name scooter repeated quite often, does anyone know that?
Please forgive the simple question, I'm still a newbie

[Symbios]

Mozilla is an open-source web browser.

Scooter is Altavistas robot.

To find out more just do a search on google for 'mozilla' or 'what is the scooter robot'

[Dayo_UK]

Is mozilla also a type of Dinosaur? like Gonzilla :) - does it actually mean anything? - the logo on Mozilla's website seems to be a dinosaur? - I reckon it just a play on words.

[Symbios]

I believe Netscape owns Mozilla, also DMOZ (Directory Mozilla I suppose) is an open source project/directory set up by Mozilla, and the DMOZ Mozzie is also a dinosaur.

[webdevsf]

From [wikipedia.org...]

Origins and prophecies: the "Mozilla" name
The Mozilla project takes its name from the cartoon lizard Mozilla, who served as Netscape's mascot in the company's early days. The name is a portmanteau of "Mosaic" (the Netscape browser's predecessor) and "Godzilla" (a movie monster that terrorized Tokyo and other locales). One can surmise that the employees of Netscape hoped to unseat Mosaic as the web's most popular browser. They succeeded---albeit briefly, yielding the position to Internet Explorer soon after. For more on the Mozilla mascot, see the external link for "The Mozilla Museum" (below).

When given the URL about:mozilla, the various versions of the Netscape browser would display a message, in white text on a lurid red background, in the browser window. Version 4 displayed the following prophecy:

And the beast shall come forth surrounded by a roiling cloud of vengeance.
The house of the unbelievers shall be razed and they shall be scorched to the earth. Their tags shall blink until the end of days.
from The Book of Mozilla, 12:10
"Their tags shall blink" refers to the controversial <blink> HTML tag introduced in an earlier Netscape version. This proprietary HTML extension, which made text blink on and off, was widely derided as annoying, distracting, and ugly. Soon after its introduction, the blink tag joined hideously garish backgrounds and animated GIFs as metonymy for badly designed web pages.

Later Netscape browser versions (as well as the Mozilla browser itself), which were actually based on the Mozilla code, displayed the following:

And the beast shall be made legion. Its numbers shall be increased a thousand thousand fold. The din of a million keyboards like unto a great storm shall cover the earth, and the followers of Mammon shall tremble.
from The Book of Mozilla, 3:31
(Red Letter Edition)
This text probably referred to Netscape's hope that, by opening the Mozilla source, they could attract a "legion" of developers who would help improve the software. Some suggested that "Mammon" referred obliquely to Microsoft, which seemed plausible given that Microsoft's Internet Explorer was Mozilla's chief competition.

[Symbios]

Nice quote.

OK, not a dinosaur but a lizard, me thinks that the lizard got its backside well and truly kicked by 'Mammon'

[jatar_k]

mozilla's creation
wp.netscape.com/newsref/pr/newsrelease577.html

scooter
www.searchengineworld.com/spiders/altavista.htm

little old but you get the idea

<added>man, I'm slow.

I liked this from dictionary.com

zilla

\Zil"la\, n. (Bot.) A low, thorny, suffrutescent, crucifeous plant (Zilla myagroides) found in the deserts of Egypt. Its leaves are boiled in water, and eaten

so Mo-zilla would be somewhatakin to asking for seconds cause it's darn good. ;)

[kewlbeezer]

Hehe, I actually have a stuffed Mozilla at home :)

[volatilegx]

What I want to know is why do so many 'bots use "Mozilla" in the User-Agent string? Do they actually incorporate some Mozilla code into themselves?

[Blelisa]

Zolla, get out of my brain! That is exactly the question I was going to ask.

Every single one of my logs has a Mozilla on just about everysingle line.

it is confusing!

[drbrain]

Browser sniffing by UA (user agent) is rather tricky, as website operators wrote their applications to depend on features implemented on one browser and blocked users of other browsers, the browser implementors decided to fake their UA so most sites would work and their users would not be rejected.

Internet Explorer announces itself with a UA string something like:

"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE x.x; ...)"

Browsers using Gecko (Mozilla's rendering engine) look something like this:

"Mozilla/5.0 (...) Gecko/<build date> ..."

I believe Safari uses a UA string like this:

"Mozilla/5.0 (...) Gecko compatible ..."

IE wanted to look like NS4, because that's what was more common than it at the time. Safari wants to look like Gecko because thats the kinds of features it supports.

[lotas]

was mozilla not ment to be mozaic killer, or at least the netscape guys slaged about that! cant remember where i saw this.
Lotas

[edited by: Marcia at 2:50 am (utc) on July 27, 2003]