Mozilla – A Web Platform

Allan Beaufour

Goal of This Presentation

The goal of this presentation is to give an overview of the Mozilla organization, its history, application, and (XML) technologies.

Allan Beaufour

• Ms.C. from Univ. of Copenhagen, Denmark
• Currently working for XYZ :)
• W3C XForms working group member
• Implementor of the XForms extension for Mozilla
• (Danish and French citizen)

Language Problems?

• ¿Más despacio, por favor?
• I also speak:
  • French
  • German (a little)
  • Spanish (very little)
  • Danish :-)

Presentation Overview

1. Mozilla: History and Product
2. Firefox: Status and Future
3. Firefox: XML Technologies
4. Extending Firefox
5. XULRunner

Mozilla – History

• 1994: Netscape 1.0 is released
• 1998: Netscape releases source code as open source
• 1998: Mozilla Organization is founded
• 2002: Mozilla Suite 1.0 is released
• 2004: Firefox 1.0 is released
• 2005: Firefox 1.5 is released
• 2005: Mozilla Corporation is founded

Mozilla – Current Status

• Funding from members, business partners, and Mozilla Store
• Around 50 employees
• Mission: Promote choice and innovation on the Internet
• Split into two companies: Non-profit Foundation and for-profit Corporation
• www.mozilla-europe.org – European organization

Mozilla, Firefox, Gecko, ...

• Mozilla was a browser suite
• Mozilla is the organization behind it all
• Firefox is one of the products
• Gecko is the layout engine
• Necko is the network library
• SpiderMonkey is the JavaScript engine

Mozilla – Products

• Mozilla Corp.
  • Firefox: Browser
  • Thunderbird: Email client
• Mozilla Foundation
  • SeaMonkey: The "suite"
  • Bugzilla: Bug reporting system
  • Camino: Native Mac OS X browser
  • Minimo: Firefox for Windows Mobile
  • Sunbird: Calendar
  • (Lightning: Integrate calendaring into Thunderbird)
• Full force on Firefox now. IE7 is coming.

Firefox – Current Status

• Firefox 1.5 released November 29, 2005
• 1.5 million downloads first day
• > 190 million downloads today
• 36+ languages
• 55 million users worldwide
• Main platforms: Windows, GNU/Linux, Mac OS X
• Other platforms: Windows Mobile, FreeBSD, OS/2, BeOS, and probably others

Firefox – usage

• 12% global usage
• 16% in the US
• 20% in Europe overall
• 35% in Slovenia
• – on April 14th 2006

Gecko

• Products are built on top of the Mozilla Framework
• Gecko is the main part
• Platform versioning is Gecko version
• Gecko v1.8.0 is current version
• Gecko v1.9 is next major version

Firefox – Version 1.5

• Very good support of open standards
• Bitmap drawing: <canvas> element
• Vector drawing: SVG (partly)
• Live Bookmarks
• Updated Popup-blocking
• Automatic Update System
• Still a small download (5 - 10 MB)

Firefox – Version 2

• Gecko v1.8.1
• No big backend changes
• Improved feed handling
• Session Saving
• Search Engine UI rewrite
• Inline speal-check
• Anti-phising
• Release: Alpha3 is out, final Q3 2006

Firefox – Version 3

• Gecko v1.9
• Graphics engine, hardware-accelerated graphics
• Rewrite of layout code (fix ACID2 test, etc)
• JavaScript 2
• More "web apps" support
• Improved XUL and XBL2...
• Run on XULRunner...
• Release: Some time next year

Developing Firefox

• ~70 full-time developers (my guess)
• ~350 active contributors (my guess)
• all over the world
• strong base in Mountain View, California
• bugzilla.mozilla.org: ~1000 comments per day
• > 320.000 "bugs" in the system

XML Technologies

• AJAX / XMLHttpRequest
• XUL: XML User interface Language
• XBL: XML Binding Language
• XPath, XSL, XML Schema
• XML Events, SVG, MathML ... and more!
• XForms

XUL

• Firefox, Thunderbird, etc. is built on XUL
• (X)HTML is fine, but not designed for applications
• A Mozilla "standard"
• XML user interface language
• "Normal" widget library: menu, text boxes, trees, etc.
• Simple layout model: box model!
• JavaScript for programmability

XBL

• XML Binding language
• Lets you define new elements with custom look and behavior
• An XBL binding is just like a normal (HTML/SVG/...) element in the DOM
• Really powerful mechanism to implement new "languages" and features
• "Standards"
  • XBL – "de facto" Mozilla standard (implementation)
  • sXBL – W3C standard
  • XBL2 – Mozilla standard
• Simple XBL example
• SVG XBL example

XForms

• Much more about this later... :)

Extensions in Firefox

• Firefox itself is also quite extensible
• Extensions plug into Firefox extending the UI, functionality, etc.
• Extensions are written in JS and XUL, thus platform independent
• Can also be written in C++ (like XForms)

Extension Extravaganza

• 1000+ extensions on addons.mozilla.org
• Download agents, forecast viewing, social bookmarking, etc.

GreaseMonkey + Platypus

• Extension that allows you to add "user scripts" to any web page
• Customize looks
• Customize behavior
• Add functionality
• Fix web site "bugs"
• ... and whatever you can think of ;-)