Spotlight
Current Mozilla Foundation Projects
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Last Update: 3/4/2006
Well, for those of you who are interested, here's my take on the Mozilla Foundation's current, major projects.
The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit and open-source organization that develops Mozilla and all of its related apps.
Firefox:
Firefox features the Gecko rendering engine and is very similar to Safari when comparing standard features. Out of the box, you'll notice tabs, pop-up blocking, and a search field. After digging deeper, you'll notice settings that are very similar to Safari's. Of particular notice, Firefox's ability to clear all privacy settings makes it the best browser for the work place, but don't tell your boss that I said that.
Pros: Firefox is easily expandable and has a large and fast-growing user base (mostly IE refugees). Firefox is a cross-platform browser for Mac, Windows, and Linux.
Cons: None significant.
Rating:
Camino:
Camino is a Mac-only browser from the Mozilla Foundation. Camino features the same Gecko rendering engine as Firefox and is built with Cocoa. It's fast and surprisingly stable. Camino's key features are tabs, pop-up blocking, an Aqua user interface, and a search field. Camino was originally the default browser for most of the Mac community until Safari's release. Ironically, Camino contributed to a few of the features that we see in Safari (specifically, tabs).
Pros: Camino features the power of the Gecko rendering engine and "looks and feels like a Mac OS X application should because it was designed exclusively for Mac OS X and the high standards set by its users."
Cons: None significant.
Rating:
Thunderbird:
Thunderbird is basically an off-shoot of Mozilla's original email core and it is beautiful in both look and feel. It runs smoothly and has a very familiar feel. In fact, it's amazingly similar to Outlook Express. Thunderbird has a spam detection system which is very similar to Mail.app and just as effective, an integrates RSS reader, and also supports GPG encryption. See Secure Your Email for details.
Pros: Thunderbird is easily expandable and has a large and fast-growing user base (mostly Outlook Express refugees). Thunderbird is a cross-platform email application for Mac, Windows, and Linux.
Cons: None significant.
Rating:
Mozilla Add-ons:
Mozilla Add-ons is the official Extension and Theme source for Firefox and Thunderbird.
MozDev:
MozDev is not part of the Mozilla Foundation and entirely independent, though you can consider it as the original developer community. MozDev is a community dedicated to expanding Mozilla and building applications that are based on similar code. I highly suggest that you stop by and take a look.
Nightly Builds:
All of the above apps have was the Mozilla community calls "Nightly Builds". These are new versions of the app released each night. The new versions contain bug fixes and the occasional new feature.
Well, I hope you enjoyed my little walk-through of the current state of the Mozilla Foundation's major projects. Have a nice day!
All personal comments should be sent to the author. All other discussion should be done in the Forums
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