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The Book of Mozilla

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Easter egg in Firefox and related web browsers

"about:mozilla" redirects here. For other uses of "about:", see about: URI scheme.

This article relies excessively on references to primary sources . Please improve this article by adding secondary or tertiary sources.<br>Find sources: "The Book of Mozilla" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (August 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The Book of Mozilla is a computer Easter egg found in the Netscape, Mozilla, SeaMonkey, Waterfox and Firefox series of web browsers.[1][2]<br>It is viewed by directing the browser to about:mozilla.[3][4][5]

There is no real book titled The Book of Mozilla. However, apparent quotations hidden in Netscape and Mozilla give this impression by revealing passages in the style of apocalyptic literature, such as the Book of Revelation in the Bible.[6] When about:mozilla is typed into the location bar, various versions of these browsers display a cryptic message in white text on a maroon background in the browser window.

There are eight official verses of The Book of Mozilla which have been included in shipping releases, although various unofficial verses can be found on the Internet. All eight official verses have scriptural chapter and verse references, although these are actually references to important dates in the history of Netscape and Mozilla.

The eight verses all refer to the activities of a fearsome-sounding "beast". In its early days, Netscape Communications had a green fire-breathing dragon-like lizard mascot, known as Mozilla (after the code name for Netscape Navigator 1.0). From this, it can be conjectured that the "beast" referred to in The Book of Mozilla is a type of fire-breathing lizard, which can be viewed as a metaphor for, or personification of Netscape.

While part of the appeal of The Book of Mozilla comes from the mysterious nature, a knowledge of the history of Netscape and Mozilla can be used to extract some meaning from the verses. Furthermore, the Book of Mozilla page has annotations for each of the first, second, third and fifth verses hidden as comments in its HTML source code.[7] These comments were written by Valerio Capello in May 2004 and were added to the Mozilla Foundation site by Nicholas Bebout in October that year. Neither Capello nor Bebout are 'core' Mozilla decision-makers; and there is no evidence that Capello's interpretations received any high-level approval from the senior management of the Mozilla Foundation.

The Book of Mozilla, 12:10<br>[edit]

The Book of Mozilla first appeared in Netscape 1.1 (released in 1995) and can be found in every subsequent 1.x, 2.x, 3.x and 4.x version. The following "prophecy" was displayed:

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

The Book of Mozilla made its debut in an early version of Netscape Navigator.<br>The chapter and verse number 12:10 refers to December 10, 1994, the date that Netscape Navigator 1.0 was released.

The Book of Mozilla page,[7] which includes seven verses from The Book of Mozilla, contains the following explanation in its HTML source code:

The "beast" is a metaphor for Netscape. The punishments threatened towards the "unbelievers" (most likely users who didn't conform to standards) are traditionally biblical but with the strange threat that their "tags shall blink until the end of days". This is a reference to a feature in early versions of Netscape that would make bad tags blink, as seen in the source code comments from the Book of Mozilla.

The Book of Mozilla, 3:31<br>[edit]

On May 10, 1998, Jamie "JWZ" Zawinski changed The Book of Mozilla verse to reference the fact that Netscape had released its code as open source and started the Mozilla project. This verse was included in all Mozilla builds until October 1998, when a rewrite of much of the Mozilla code meant that the Easter egg was lost. On February 5, 2000, Ben Goodger, then working for Netscape, copied The Book of Mozilla verse across to the new code base. It was included in all subsequent Mozilla builds (until the introduction of the 7:15 verse), Netscape versions 6 to 7.1 and Beonex Communicator; it still appears in Classilla due to that browser's unusual history.

The verse states:

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...