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Mozilla was a rewrite of Netscape and Firefox was a restructuring of Mozilla. The only reason they still exist today and have relevance is their willingness to
by statictype 10y ago
Mozilla was a rewrite of Netscape and Firefox was a restructuring of Mozilla.
The only reason they still exist today and have relevance is their willingness to rewrite.
I don't disagree with Joel - but his main point seems to be - be prepared to spend longer than you expect on a rewrite - that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.
- quincunx 10y agoWasn't Mozilla the open source version of Netscape Communicator, rather than a rewrite?
- statictype 10y agoYou're probably right. An earlier version of Netscape was a rewrite. Mozilla was a refactored version of Netscape (to remove closed-source dependencies)
- nailer 10y agoNetscape 4 was pre XUL. Mozilla browser was Netscape 6 with XUL 'hotness' and massive UI lag. Firefox was stripped down and fast (though XUL is apparently still around).
- toyg 10y agoMozilla started as a big rewrite of Communicator 4, which was then open-sourced at an early stage. It wasn't great because it concentrated a bit too much on rewriting underpinnings (XUL, Gecko etc), resulting in a relatively poor UI. Eventually a skunkwork project was started to drop all non-browser components and focus on user UI, and that became Firefox.
- hsivonen 10y agoInitially Netscape Open Sourced Mariner that was on track to becoming the engine of Netscape 5 and was an evolution of the engine of Netscape 4. Netscape 4 lacked proper DOM support and proper CSS support. (Project to add DOM support was called Perignon, IIRC.) Netscape had purchased another company called Digital Style. Their layout tech became Gecko but was called Raptor and NGLayout before being renamed to Gecko. Mariner / Netscape 5 was canceled and Mozilla migrated to Gecko, which was used in Netscape 6. SpiderMonkey survived the transition from Mariner to Gecko and is used in Servo, too.