November 15, 2019 • 29 mins
How is Firefox connected to Netscape Navigator? Are Firefox and Internet Explorer cousins? What is Mozilla? Join Chris and Jonathan as they explore the origin and growth of Mozilla.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
I Heart Radio and I love all things tech and
it's time for another classic episode of tech Stuff. This
(00:25):
episode originally published on December twelve, two thousand, twelve. Twelve,
twelve twelve. So what did we cover? Well, it's the
Firefox story. Yep, the web browser known as Firefox. Now great,
this is not a beginning, middle, and end story because
(00:45):
Firefox continued well after two thousand twelve. But I thought
you might like to hear about the history of the browser,
So let's listen to this classic episode. Yeah. So, you know,
there's this guy Tim burns Lee works so its cern
like I feel like I've heard his name. Dude came
up with this neat way of displaying information using on
(01:06):
network connections, which would eventually blossom into the beautiful flower
we know as the World Wide Web. We probably don't
call it that so frequently anymore. If you if you
read like the stuff from the the early nineties Worldwide
Web and Information super Highway, what that they seem to
be required in every single news story. Yeah, well we've
(01:28):
started a little loopy here, but yeah, it's it's clear,
and we haven't we we haven't mentioned it in quite
some time, but we have mentioned it on multiple occasions
that the Internet is basically a medium of communication between computers.
It's it's a network of networks. Uh. Your computer hooks
up to the Internet, and you can send information in
a number of different ways. A lot of them are
(01:51):
our pass a now or or less used than others.
I mean people like Gopher or using transmission protocols like
Gopher and and waste. Um. You know, people just don't
do that very much. Using that is less used than
it used to be. UM has certainly used quite a bit,
and still quite a few people are using fault transfer
(02:11):
protocol sure, sure, Um the different instant messenger protocols. They
none of these are the Worldwide Web. The world Wide
Web basically puts a very public pretty face on it,
in some cases less than pretty, especially if you don't
like crawling graphics and and MIDI files. You know, this
is the old you know, this is the the user
(02:32):
friendly version of what the Internet has to offer. For
a lot of people, they thought the Worldwide web and
internet were synonymous. Not really the case, but we wanted
to talk about a particular browser and a company organization
that that helped bring this browser about and how it
kind of became a power player. Actually it was the
(02:56):
power Player for a while, or an ancestor of it was,
and then it faded to obscurity, rose from the ashes.
But we'll get into that. So we're talking about Firefox
in general. But to to understand Firefox and the story
behind Firefox, you actually have to go back quite a
way as well, before there was ever any sort of
Firefox web browser. So all the way back to nine
(03:17):
two and in ninety two, we're talking the earliest days
of the web at this point, and it seems kind
of crazy. I mean, we're recording this in so that's
you know, just twenty years. But um, a fellow by
the name of Mark and Reeson. Uh, basically this was
this was a college project. Yeah, he and Eric Bina
or or Bina, I'm not sure how to say his
(03:39):
last name. Yeah, they began to work on a browser
for x Windows on Unix computers and this was something
that they decided to start working on this after being
shown the work that Tim burners Lee had been doing
over at CERN and they said, wow, you know, we
should start creating a browser that could access this sort
(03:59):
of stuff. And so they worked together and they created
something they called Mosaic, which was one of the earliest
web browsers. Yeah, and it really it. It sort of
helped popularize the World Wide Web for a lot of people. Um,
for a couple of reasons. One it was it was
not it was reasonably nice to look at, it was
(04:20):
easy to use, UM. But it was also free because
it was well, again a college project, so it was
one of those things that was just offered. Now you
kind of had to know where to find it. UM.
You kind of had to know. I have an idea
what the world Wide Web was, and at that point,
it was uh, sort of a hobbyist thing. UM. You know,
(04:40):
I I used when I used bit net back in
in the day's. Immediately proceeding that, I was using basically email, um,
using chat. But I really had no idea what the
web was. And I started doing some reading around around
that time and said, no, this this looks kind of interesting. UM.
And you know, I didn't have a web client for
(05:02):
Miamiga at the time. UM. But I started using Max
around that time and found out that there was a
version of Mosaic available for which I actually purchased with
a book that told you how to use the darned
thing and it came on a floppy disk, and so
I loaded Mosaic from from from that and got started
on the web. Yeah, some interesting connections we should we
(05:24):
should talk about. I mean, you're going to find out
that there are a lot of connections to various web
browsers out there just coming from Mosaic. One of the
earliest and to me, really interesting ones is that in
n company called Spyglass Incorporated licensed the Mosaic browser. Yeah,
and they began to develop its own code base based
(05:45):
on Mosaic, and then they licensed that code base to
Microsoft and that would become part of what would eventually
be Internet Explorer. So Mosaic and Internet Explorers share some
some code. You go, way, way, way, way way back, um,
and it's uh, you know, that's to me, that's a
very interesting thing, especially when you look later on down
(06:09):
the timeline of the evolution of browsers out there on
the market. Yeah. Yeah, Now, of course that that's less
of a direct lineage than what uh and Reason and
company would do when they decided to go ahead and
make some money off of this thing, which is the
founding of the company Netscape. Yeah. First it was called
(06:32):
Mosaic Communications, but they renamed it before too long to
Netscape Communications. Uh. They being Mark and Reason and Jim Clark. Uh.
This was same year that spy Glass incorporated as licensing
Mosaic itself. Uh. And they come up with the the
browser Netscape, and this was a a pay for browser.
(06:52):
You would buy the browser. I bought a copy off
the shelf, shrink wrapped copy of Netscape too, and it
became the commune Gator. It actually became quite popular. And
there are gator, I'm sorry navigator. There are a lot
of a lot of Do you want to go back? No? No,
well okay, we'll just keep going then. All right, Hey,
guess what, guys, sometimes we go back anyway. And that
escape was that is very rare. Though. I remember I
(07:15):
remember the uh, the little window and the and the
right upper right part of the screen, which you know,
if you've used the web for a while, you remember
that the little thing that would tell you that it's
actually working. Um, it wasn't the you know thing from
left to right in the navigation bar. Yeah, the address bar,
I guess. But yeah, back in Netscape navigator days, they
(07:36):
had an old ship's wheel that was so nice. We
call that the helm. Anyway, the the the browser became popular,
it kind of well. It introduced and a concept called extensions,
which most people are familiar with these days. Extensions extend
the features of a browser by I'll let you and
(07:58):
saw some new code, that is it some added functionality.
This gave websites, uh, or people who were developing websites
the ability to include stuff that wasn't natively supported by
HTML because the browsers were able to interpret the new
code and and render it properly on the screen so
(08:20):
that you're getting the experience that the people wanted you
to have, the people being the web developers and uh.
Around that time, in the early nineties, Netscape was doing
really well. In fact, it might have had a market
share as high as eight percent of the browser market
at that time, and that's pretty remarkable considering that it
was a pay for browser. Yeah, at that point, Netscape
(08:42):
was was writing very high in the market. Um, you know,
of course, they were competing with online service providers like
a O L and compy serve UM. But the web
basically was was netscapes to lose and boy, yeah at
the beginning of the end we escape. Now, see when
(09:04):
you're talking about the possibility of paying you for your
web browser versus a competitor that comes along and offers
one for free, UM, that's freely downloadable and has the
muscle of somebody really big behind it, like I don't know, Microsoft,
like Steve Balmer, it's a big guy. Yeah. Yeah. Microsoft
(09:27):
launches Windows and it has the web browser that's included
with Windows is Internet Explorer. Now. Remember Internet Explorer was
built partially upon that code base from Mosaic, and it was,
as Chris was saying, free of charge. You could download
it freely and use it yourself, so you didn't have
to buy a copy of a browser. And it even
(09:49):
came with Windows, so you didn't even have to bother
with it, right if you If you bought a new computer,
then you had Internet Explorer built right in there. In fact,
that ended up causing some problems. Uh, there were some
issues about Internet Explorer being tied so tightly into the
UM the operating system experience on Windows that it brought
(10:10):
up some antitrust issues for Microsoft down line. But that's
really more of a Internet Explorer story, not so much
of Firefox story. So right, let's go back over to
what's going on. It took some time, but Internet Explorer,
even though it was free, I mean, it did not
immediately take over like it wasn't. It wasn't an overnight
(10:31):
now turnaround. It took about four generations of Internet Explorer
for it to catch up to Netscape. Meanwhile, Netscape branched out.
They did more than just used Netscape Navigator. They also
wanted to create an entire suite of tools that you
would use for email and for um using that in
(10:52):
some of the other stuff. And they built a larger
suite so you you had an option. You could go
with Netscape Navigator if you just wanted to use the web,
or a suite that they called Escape Communicator, which had
the greater functionality. Unfortunately, in doing this, they gradually and
this is common, uh, you know, it's happened into Microsoft
(11:13):
and many many others. Uh, the code gradually became more bloated,
more resource intensive, if you will, um, and made load
time slower, made things more difficult. So now you have
a you know, a heavyweight Internet heavyweight and Netscape going
against uh, the the net newbie Microsoft. But Microsoft has
(11:36):
the leaner, more integrated browser in this case and again free.
So yeah, by that fourth generation of Internet Explorer, we
started to see things switch around to the point where
it was it was clear that Internet Explorer was going
to run away with it. So in n uh Netscape
(11:58):
Communications made a big decision, and yes, they decided that
they would offer Netscape, the Netscape browser for free. Yes,
and that they would freely offer up the the the
source code so that it would become an open source project.
So this, in other words, you could be a developer
(12:18):
and go in and you could tweak Netscape and have
your own version of Netscape and under the right you know,
you had to follow certain rules, but you could do that.
The community very quickly became huge and there was a
new name for this project. It was called the Mozilla project. Yes,
(12:38):
now I understand that the the name for Mozilla came
from it's sort of a fudged portmanteau, which is a
combination of words for mosaic killer or mosaic killer. Um.
Of course that took on the form of dinosaur because
it makes people. The name Mozilla makes people think of
(12:59):
god Zilla. Um, so they of course didn't want to
I'm sure copyright infringement. So Mozilla's dinosaur monster, lizard giant
thing is that red instead of green and really bears
no resemblance to uh, to Godzilla, although the it's more
like a toyrnosaurus or maybe of a lesser raptor. Yes,
now there and there have also been multiple incarnations of
(13:21):
the design for the critter. But yeah, so it looks
nothing like a Firefox into that right, the most little
project launches, but it would not be until two thousand
two before they released Mozilla one point oh. And this
was a browser that included email client functionality among other features.
(13:42):
But at that point Internet Explorer was dominant in the market.
It had a market share. So we're talking about a
time where you know, we went from ninety four or
so where uh that Escape had about eight percent market
share right to two thousand two where I e now
has of the market share. So this is a good
(14:04):
thing to point out. Things change, really, Yeah, market share
can change dramatically from one from one decade to the next,
or even in just the span of a few years.
The reason why that's important to remember is that we
always talk about market share as if it's the most
important thing in the world in some cases, like you know,
talk about and smartphone adoption or whatever. Um. But it's
(14:29):
true that these things can change dramatically, and someone who's
on top and you would think, oh, this guy is
going to dominate the market forever, could very easily become
and also ran in just a few years. Chris and
I will have more to say about Firefox in just
a moment, but first, let's take a quick break. People
(14:55):
talk about the villain the blank here killer, and you know,
those long term listeners will remember that I brought this
up before. It drives me crazy when people talk about
the fill in the blank killer because in just a
few years, they'll be talking about whatever that was killer.
And and in some cases they don't kill so much
as carve out a niche market and uh and go
(15:15):
for it. I mean, um, you know, in this case, uh,
Internet Explorer would have been the Netscape killer, and in
some cases they did. Um, but Mozilla would come back
and carve out its own space. And then Chrome came
along years later, and it is you know, that's it's
sort of what's going on right now? At the time,
(15:37):
Save as it Ever was you Save as it Ever was, so, uh, well,
go ahead, And I was just gonna say, some community
members of Mozilla, what's interesting is you've got the Mozilla project,
You've got the Mozilla Browser. You still have people in
the community who don't necessarily think that the way that
the Mozilla browsers developing is the right way to go.
And that's the beauty of having an open source community
(15:58):
is that you don't you know, there's not necessarily just
one path that you can take. You can have multiple
paths to try and create the best browser experience possible.
Some of those community members decided that there was there
were some issues they had with Mozilla. One of them
was that they felt that it was suffering from feature creep,
which is the same thing we were talking about with Creep. Yeah,
(16:23):
he turns into like Dracula and then Mummy and then
the creature for the Black Lagoon. And I've been watching
too much Supernatural relately watched in an episode last night
that was about that. Anyway, No, the idea that that
they were again Mozilla was starting to become in their
mind bloated the way Netscape head and they did not
really think that that was something they should pursue. They
(16:46):
thought that perhaps they should take the code and make
something else out of it. So this group created a
browser that they called Phoenix, as in rising from the ashes.
Now they were a legendary that Yeah, yes, the one
that was featured heavily in the documentary series Harry Potter.
(17:06):
Um the uh the but it is it fitting? It
is a fitting image for this browser, which at one
time had been Netscape. So Phoenix rises from the ashes,
but also tends to fall again because it turns out
someone else has the name Phoenix, so they can't really
use it. So they renamed it Firebird. That caused a
(17:28):
problem because there was another organization that used the word
firebird about distributed software, so that was an issue. They
ended up thinking, okay, okay, okay, we'll name it something else.
We'll call it a firefox. Yeah. No, firefox has the
benefit here of going with the fire part at the beginning. Um,
(17:49):
but adds another very cool animal image in there. Now,
a firefox isn't actually a fox. It is, in fact
a red panda, which, in my opinion or really neat animals.
But you know, um and actually recently, UM, the Mozilla
Foundation has sponsored uh the well being of a couple
(18:09):
of red pandas in the Knoxville, Tennessee Zoo. Uh. They
even had a webcam up which had the little critters
running around and playing and sleeping and sleeping which they
always seemed to be doing right as it tuned in.
Oh look there's and settling down for a nap um
In two thousand three was when Mozilla created the Mozilla Foundation,
(18:30):
which is an independent, nonprofit organization. It's mainly meant to
manage the daily operations of the Mozilla project. Yeah. Well,
and we didn't really touch on this, but the remnants
of Netscape were purchased by America Online, so a O
L bought Netscape. But the Mozilla Foundation has the ability
(18:51):
to to go off and do their own thing here,
so they have. Yeah. Yeah. So two thousand four was
when Firefox one point oh was released, and uh, it
became a very popular browser very quickly. In less than
a year, they had over one hundred million downloads. So
Firefox was quickly kind of viewed as the the alternative
(19:14):
to Internet Explorer. I can hear all the opera fans
out there screaming at me. But you know that's the
popular The popular view was that Firefox. If you didn't
want to use Internet Explore, you should use Firefox. Yeah. Now,
I had actually been using Opera up until that point,
um as. I specifically remember a friend of mine going, hey,
you know, I know you like Opera, but you really
(19:35):
should try this Firefox out. And I was kind of
skeptical because I was one of the people who was
cranky at Netscape for getting so darn bloated. I tried
Netscape Communicator for a long time and it just drove
me crazy. And I didn't like Internet Explorer for the
Mac very much. So yeah, once, once I tried it,
I got hooked. Give you guys some reference two thousand four.
(19:57):
That's around the same time that companies like my Space
and Facebook are starting to to make a name for themselves.
Of course, at that point, Facebook is strictly a college
only experience, but yeah, that's that gives you an idea
of what's going on around that time. It would be
two years before version two point oh of Firefox came
out that they would update. They made lots of frequent
(20:19):
updates to the Firefox browser, but they were all very
incremental without major changes to the code. Point releases, you
can't say. So it wasn't until you know, it's two
years after a debut before two point I came out,
and it was another two years when version three point
oh came out. So it was two thousand eight. Uh.
The reason why I'm bringing this up is it will
be interesting when we get to talk about what version
(20:41):
is currently how in the wild right now as of
the recording of this podcast. But but yeah, two thousand
eight was when version three point I was released and
Firefox hit of the market share. Now, UM, I'd like
to bring this up because the Mozilla Foundation does a
lot more than just uh than us in Firefox and
(21:02):
pandas red pandas they're so cute um uh. They also
had split off some of the other code that was
part of Communicator. For example, Thunderbird, which is their email client.
UM is UH is sort of the the version that
that used to be the mail client. And there there
was a unified UM basically the derivative of Communicator itself,
(21:27):
the suite, which was called Sea Monkey UM and UH.
They released um early versions of that. Thunderbird one point
oh came out on December seven, two thousand four and
um uh, Sea Monkey one point oh came out on
January two thousand and six. Now, both of these are
probably not as in as much in the public eye,
(21:50):
Thunderbird more so, but Sea Monkey certainly not as much
as as either one of those two. Um, but they
still do work on those projects and over time. I
just wanted to make sure that we mentioned them. But overtime,
Mozilla has brought Thunderbird up to the same basically the
same version system that firefoxes on. We have a little
(22:10):
bit more to say about Firefox, but before we get there,
we're gonna take another quick break to thank our sponsor. Well,
two thousand eleven, we have Firefox version fourth point oh released.
I remember that was a big deal. It was the
one that that came out. And then, um so between
(22:33):
two thousand and eleven and today, this being the end
of November two thousand twelve, when we record this, um
they got busy. So and this is Google's fault, seeing
every couple of years we're seeing a new version of Firefox,
a new a new version number like one to two,
two to three, three to four. So you would expect
(22:54):
maybe the next you know, version five point oh of
Firefox probably come out in two thousand and thirteen or so.
Not the case. The Firefox operating are of non operating
system of browser. We'll get to the operating system in
a second. Is currently at version seventeen as of the
recording of this podcast. So between two thousand and eleven
and November two twelve, we went from version four all
(23:17):
the way up to seventeen. And actually versions eighteen and
nineteen are both in alpha testing right now. That is correct,
and if you're interested, you can download those versions, even
a nightly built if you want. Your mileage may vary, yeah,
day by day, these browsers are changing, and some of
them may not be what we like to call stable,
(23:38):
but it just shows shows the massive amounts of change
that have come out over the last year. Now, now
what influenced that? It was Google with the Chrome browser
which came out and again, um, Google has a lot
of resources that it can uh that it can give
to the Google Chrome project, which itself is a derivative
(24:01):
of Chromium. Um. But Google Chrome came out and started
updating very very quickly, and the folks at the Mozilla
Foundation realized that in terms of new features being added.
Chrome was out doing Mozilla quite rapidly, so they decided
to put themselves on a on a rapid release cycle,
(24:22):
to which frustrated a lot of people because Firefox, more
so than Chrome, has been the standard by which companies operate,
uh Internet Explorer or Firefox, um, you know, not Safari,
not not Opera, not not Chrome. And um, so they've
they've been on not as not on a scale that's
(24:43):
not as fast as Chrome, but they did update, uh
start making updates more quickly and uh much more quickly
than they used to be. And now they're on a
sort of a cycle where they're releasing a couple maybe
three updates a year. It's ut I think, yeah, to
go from four to seventeen, have thirteen major releases um
(25:05):
within the span of like a year and a half.
Really the releases seemed to be on a tight on
on a more level scheduled now than they had been.
They're playing catch up for quite some time. In October five,
two thousand twelve, they released the Firefox build that that
can be used in the Windows eight user interface. That's
that tiled interface that was formerly called Metro UM. So
(25:28):
that that came out towards the end of two thousand twelve. Also,
they they're working on a smartphone i'll bringing system. Yes,
that's kind of an interesting thing that to build a
an OS for phones to really get into that market.
I mean, where are you talking about? A market that's
mainly being fought by Google and Apple, with Windows trying
(25:53):
to make uh name for itself as well at that
same time, and then other players like BlackBerry are trying
to you know, regroup, and some like Symbian are almost gone.
Yeah yeah now, And and it's interesting too because uh,
like what Google is doing with its operating system, the
(26:16):
chromos UM Firefox OS is also leaning heavily on Web
standards for its for its programming. So we're talking about
HTML five, the the newly proposed but not yet finalized
version of the Hypertext markup language, and a lot of
the Mozilla specific API s Application programming interfaces UM. Basically,
(26:41):
these are are plug in play pieces of code that
people can use to make them compatible intercompatible. UM. Mozilla
is basically saying, hey, look, we're open source, we're free,
and you know, we want to see if we can
make inroads on people's smartphones and and people can use
an fire Box OS simulator right now where you can
(27:03):
actually give it a try. Actually. Uh, the name for
the simulator is R two D two B two G
B two G. By the way, it means boot to
ge Go, yes, which was the original name, Gecko being
the web interface that that web engine that Firefox is
built on. But yeah, they they are a primarily web
(27:23):
centric operating Where does R two D two come from?
I don't know. I have no idea, Probably just something
they made up. It's weird because I would think those
were not the droids I was looking for. Entirely possible anyway. Yeah,
so that that brings us up to date with what's
going off with Firefox. Uh, it's a it's you know,
I've used Firefox quite a bit in the past. Um,
(27:45):
and it was for a very long time. It was
my browser of choice. It's still my browser of choice
minus Chrome. And that wraps up this classic episode of
tech Stuff about Firefox. Hope you guys enjoyed. If you
have any suggestions for a future episode of tech Stuff,
you can send me an email the addresses tech Stuff
at how stuff works dot com, or you can drop
me a line on Facebook or Twitter the handle of
(28:08):
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(28:31):
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Text Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How
Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
(28:53):
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
I Heart Radio and I love all things tech and
it's time for another classic episode of tech Stuff. This
(00:25):
episode originally published on December twelve, two thousand, twelve. Twelve,
twelve twelve. So what did we cover? Well, it's the
Firefox story. Yep, the web browser known as Firefox. Now great,
this is not a beginning, middle, and end story because
(00:45):
Firefox continued well after two thousand twelve. But I thought
you might like to hear about the history of the browser,
So let's listen to this classic episode. Yeah. So, you know,
there's this guy Tim burns Lee works so its cern
like I feel like I've heard his name. Dude came
up with this neat way of displaying information using on
(01:06):
network connections, which would eventually blossom into the beautiful flower
we know as the World Wide Web. We probably don't
call it that so frequently anymore. If you if you
read like the stuff from the the early nineties Worldwide
Web and Information super Highway, what that they seem to
be required in every single news story. Yeah, well we've
(01:28):
started a little loopy here, but yeah, it's it's clear,
and we haven't we we haven't mentioned it in quite
some time, but we have mentioned it on multiple occasions
that the Internet is basically a medium of communication between computers.
It's it's a network of networks. Uh. Your computer hooks
up to the Internet, and you can send information in
a number of different ways. A lot of them are
(01:51):
our pass a now or or less used than others.
I mean people like Gopher or using transmission protocols like
Gopher and and waste. Um. You know, people just don't
do that very much. Using that is less used than
it used to be. UM has certainly used quite a bit,
and still quite a few people are using fault transfer
(02:11):
protocol sure, sure, Um the different instant messenger protocols. They
none of these are the Worldwide Web. The world Wide
Web basically puts a very public pretty face on it,
in some cases less than pretty, especially if you don't
like crawling graphics and and MIDI files. You know, this
is the old you know, this is the the user
(02:32):
friendly version of what the Internet has to offer. For
a lot of people, they thought the Worldwide web and
internet were synonymous. Not really the case, but we wanted
to talk about a particular browser and a company organization
that that helped bring this browser about and how it
kind of became a power player. Actually it was the
(02:56):
power Player for a while, or an ancestor of it was,
and then it faded to obscurity, rose from the ashes.
But we'll get into that. So we're talking about Firefox
in general. But to to understand Firefox and the story
behind Firefox, you actually have to go back quite a
way as well, before there was ever any sort of
Firefox web browser. So all the way back to nine
(03:17):
two and in ninety two, we're talking the earliest days
of the web at this point, and it seems kind
of crazy. I mean, we're recording this in so that's
you know, just twenty years. But um, a fellow by
the name of Mark and Reeson. Uh, basically this was
this was a college project. Yeah, he and Eric Bina
or or Bina, I'm not sure how to say his
(03:39):
last name. Yeah, they began to work on a browser
for x Windows on Unix computers and this was something
that they decided to start working on this after being
shown the work that Tim burners Lee had been doing
over at CERN and they said, wow, you know, we
should start creating a browser that could access this sort
(03:59):
of stuff. And so they worked together and they created
something they called Mosaic, which was one of the earliest
web browsers. Yeah, and it really it. It sort of
helped popularize the World Wide Web for a lot of people. Um,
for a couple of reasons. One it was it was
not it was reasonably nice to look at, it was
(04:20):
easy to use, UM. But it was also free because
it was well, again a college project, so it was
one of those things that was just offered. Now you
kind of had to know where to find it. UM.
You kind of had to know. I have an idea
what the world Wide Web was, and at that point,
it was uh, sort of a hobbyist thing. UM. You know,
(04:40):
I I used when I used bit net back in
in the day's. Immediately proceeding that, I was using basically email, um,
using chat. But I really had no idea what the
web was. And I started doing some reading around around
that time and said, no, this this looks kind of interesting. UM.
And you know, I didn't have a web client for
(05:02):
Miamiga at the time. UM. But I started using Max
around that time and found out that there was a
version of Mosaic available for which I actually purchased with
a book that told you how to use the darned
thing and it came on a floppy disk, and so
I loaded Mosaic from from from that and got started
on the web. Yeah, some interesting connections we should we
(05:24):
should talk about. I mean, you're going to find out
that there are a lot of connections to various web
browsers out there just coming from Mosaic. One of the
earliest and to me, really interesting ones is that in
n company called Spyglass Incorporated licensed the Mosaic browser. Yeah,
and they began to develop its own code base based
(05:45):
on Mosaic, and then they licensed that code base to
Microsoft and that would become part of what would eventually
be Internet Explorer. So Mosaic and Internet Explorers share some
some code. You go, way, way, way, way way back, um,
and it's uh, you know, that's to me, that's a
very interesting thing, especially when you look later on down
(06:09):
the timeline of the evolution of browsers out there on
the market. Yeah. Yeah, Now, of course that that's less
of a direct lineage than what uh and Reason and
company would do when they decided to go ahead and
make some money off of this thing, which is the
founding of the company Netscape. Yeah. First it was called
(06:32):
Mosaic Communications, but they renamed it before too long to
Netscape Communications. Uh. They being Mark and Reason and Jim Clark. Uh.
This was same year that spy Glass incorporated as licensing
Mosaic itself. Uh. And they come up with the the
browser Netscape, and this was a a pay for browser.
(06:52):
You would buy the browser. I bought a copy off
the shelf, shrink wrapped copy of Netscape too, and it
became the commune Gator. It actually became quite popular. And
there are gator, I'm sorry navigator. There are a lot
of a lot of Do you want to go back? No? No,
well okay, we'll just keep going then. All right, Hey,
guess what, guys, sometimes we go back anyway. And that
escape was that is very rare. Though. I remember I
(07:15):
remember the uh, the little window and the and the
right upper right part of the screen, which you know,
if you've used the web for a while, you remember
that the little thing that would tell you that it's
actually working. Um, it wasn't the you know thing from
left to right in the navigation bar. Yeah, the address bar,
I guess. But yeah, back in Netscape navigator days, they
(07:36):
had an old ship's wheel that was so nice. We
call that the helm. Anyway, the the the browser became popular,
it kind of well. It introduced and a concept called extensions,
which most people are familiar with these days. Extensions extend
the features of a browser by I'll let you and
(07:58):
saw some new code, that is it some added functionality.
This gave websites, uh, or people who were developing websites
the ability to include stuff that wasn't natively supported by
HTML because the browsers were able to interpret the new
code and and render it properly on the screen so
(08:20):
that you're getting the experience that the people wanted you
to have, the people being the web developers and uh.
Around that time, in the early nineties, Netscape was doing
really well. In fact, it might have had a market
share as high as eight percent of the browser market
at that time, and that's pretty remarkable considering that it
was a pay for browser. Yeah, at that point, Netscape
(08:42):
was was writing very high in the market. Um, you know,
of course, they were competing with online service providers like
a O L and compy serve UM. But the web
basically was was netscapes to lose and boy, yeah at
the beginning of the end we escape. Now, see when
(09:04):
you're talking about the possibility of paying you for your
web browser versus a competitor that comes along and offers
one for free, UM, that's freely downloadable and has the
muscle of somebody really big behind it, like I don't know, Microsoft,
like Steve Balmer, it's a big guy. Yeah. Yeah. Microsoft
(09:27):
launches Windows and it has the web browser that's included
with Windows is Internet Explorer. Now. Remember Internet Explorer was
built partially upon that code base from Mosaic, and it was,
as Chris was saying, free of charge. You could download
it freely and use it yourself, so you didn't have
to buy a copy of a browser. And it even
(09:49):
came with Windows, so you didn't even have to bother
with it, right if you If you bought a new computer,
then you had Internet Explorer built right in there. In fact,
that ended up causing some problems. Uh, there were some
issues about Internet Explorer being tied so tightly into the
UM the operating system experience on Windows that it brought
(10:10):
up some antitrust issues for Microsoft down line. But that's
really more of a Internet Explorer story, not so much
of Firefox story. So right, let's go back over to
what's going on. It took some time, but Internet Explorer,
even though it was free, I mean, it did not
immediately take over like it wasn't. It wasn't an overnight
(10:31):
now turnaround. It took about four generations of Internet Explorer
for it to catch up to Netscape. Meanwhile, Netscape branched out.
They did more than just used Netscape Navigator. They also
wanted to create an entire suite of tools that you
would use for email and for um using that in
(10:52):
some of the other stuff. And they built a larger
suite so you you had an option. You could go
with Netscape Navigator if you just wanted to use the web,
or a suite that they called Escape Communicator, which had
the greater functionality. Unfortunately, in doing this, they gradually and
this is common, uh, you know, it's happened into Microsoft
(11:13):
and many many others. Uh, the code gradually became more bloated,
more resource intensive, if you will, um, and made load
time slower, made things more difficult. So now you have
a you know, a heavyweight Internet heavyweight and Netscape going
against uh, the the net newbie Microsoft. But Microsoft has
(11:36):
the leaner, more integrated browser in this case and again free.
So yeah, by that fourth generation of Internet Explorer, we
started to see things switch around to the point where
it was it was clear that Internet Explorer was going
to run away with it. So in n uh Netscape
(11:58):
Communications made a big decision, and yes, they decided that
they would offer Netscape, the Netscape browser for free. Yes,
and that they would freely offer up the the the
source code so that it would become an open source project.
So this, in other words, you could be a developer
(12:18):
and go in and you could tweak Netscape and have
your own version of Netscape and under the right you know,
you had to follow certain rules, but you could do that.
The community very quickly became huge and there was a
new name for this project. It was called the Mozilla project. Yes,
(12:38):
now I understand that the the name for Mozilla came
from it's sort of a fudged portmanteau, which is a
combination of words for mosaic killer or mosaic killer. Um.
Of course that took on the form of dinosaur because
it makes people. The name Mozilla makes people think of
(12:59):
god Zilla. Um, so they of course didn't want to
I'm sure copyright infringement. So Mozilla's dinosaur monster, lizard giant
thing is that red instead of green and really bears
no resemblance to uh, to Godzilla, although the it's more
like a toyrnosaurus or maybe of a lesser raptor. Yes,
now there and there have also been multiple incarnations of
(13:21):
the design for the critter. But yeah, so it looks
nothing like a Firefox into that right, the most little
project launches, but it would not be until two thousand
two before they released Mozilla one point oh. And this
was a browser that included email client functionality among other features.
(13:42):
But at that point Internet Explorer was dominant in the market.
It had a market share. So we're talking about a
time where you know, we went from ninety four or
so where uh that Escape had about eight percent market
share right to two thousand two where I e now
has of the market share. So this is a good
(14:04):
thing to point out. Things change, really, Yeah, market share
can change dramatically from one from one decade to the next,
or even in just the span of a few years.
The reason why that's important to remember is that we
always talk about market share as if it's the most
important thing in the world in some cases, like you know,
talk about and smartphone adoption or whatever. Um. But it's
(14:29):
true that these things can change dramatically, and someone who's
on top and you would think, oh, this guy is
going to dominate the market forever, could very easily become
and also ran in just a few years. Chris and
I will have more to say about Firefox in just
a moment, but first, let's take a quick break. People
(14:55):
talk about the villain the blank here killer, and you know,
those long term listeners will remember that I brought this
up before. It drives me crazy when people talk about
the fill in the blank killer because in just a
few years, they'll be talking about whatever that was killer.
And and in some cases they don't kill so much
as carve out a niche market and uh and go
(15:15):
for it. I mean, um, you know, in this case, uh,
Internet Explorer would have been the Netscape killer, and in
some cases they did. Um, but Mozilla would come back
and carve out its own space. And then Chrome came
along years later, and it is you know, that's it's
sort of what's going on right now? At the time,
(15:37):
Save as it Ever was you Save as it Ever was, so, uh, well,
go ahead, And I was just gonna say, some community
members of Mozilla, what's interesting is you've got the Mozilla project,
You've got the Mozilla Browser. You still have people in
the community who don't necessarily think that the way that
the Mozilla browsers developing is the right way to go.
And that's the beauty of having an open source community
(15:58):
is that you don't you know, there's not necessarily just
one path that you can take. You can have multiple
paths to try and create the best browser experience possible.
Some of those community members decided that there was there
were some issues they had with Mozilla. One of them
was that they felt that it was suffering from feature creep,
which is the same thing we were talking about with Creep. Yeah,
(16:23):
he turns into like Dracula and then Mummy and then
the creature for the Black Lagoon. And I've been watching
too much Supernatural relately watched in an episode last night
that was about that. Anyway, No, the idea that that
they were again Mozilla was starting to become in their
mind bloated the way Netscape head and they did not
really think that that was something they should pursue. They
(16:46):
thought that perhaps they should take the code and make
something else out of it. So this group created a
browser that they called Phoenix, as in rising from the ashes.
Now they were a legendary that Yeah, yes, the one
that was featured heavily in the documentary series Harry Potter.
(17:06):
Um the uh the but it is it fitting? It
is a fitting image for this browser, which at one
time had been Netscape. So Phoenix rises from the ashes,
but also tends to fall again because it turns out
someone else has the name Phoenix, so they can't really
use it. So they renamed it Firebird. That caused a
(17:28):
problem because there was another organization that used the word
firebird about distributed software, so that was an issue. They
ended up thinking, okay, okay, okay, we'll name it something else.
We'll call it a firefox. Yeah. No, firefox has the
benefit here of going with the fire part at the beginning. Um,
(17:49):
but adds another very cool animal image in there. Now,
a firefox isn't actually a fox. It is, in fact
a red panda, which, in my opinion or really neat animals.
But you know, um and actually recently, UM, the Mozilla
Foundation has sponsored uh the well being of a couple
(18:09):
of red pandas in the Knoxville, Tennessee Zoo. Uh. They
even had a webcam up which had the little critters
running around and playing and sleeping and sleeping which they
always seemed to be doing right as it tuned in.
Oh look there's and settling down for a nap um
In two thousand three was when Mozilla created the Mozilla Foundation,
(18:30):
which is an independent, nonprofit organization. It's mainly meant to
manage the daily operations of the Mozilla project. Yeah. Well,
and we didn't really touch on this, but the remnants
of Netscape were purchased by America Online, so a O
L bought Netscape. But the Mozilla Foundation has the ability
(18:51):
to to go off and do their own thing here,
so they have. Yeah. Yeah. So two thousand four was
when Firefox one point oh was released, and uh, it
became a very popular browser very quickly. In less than
a year, they had over one hundred million downloads. So
Firefox was quickly kind of viewed as the the alternative
(19:14):
to Internet Explorer. I can hear all the opera fans
out there screaming at me. But you know that's the
popular The popular view was that Firefox. If you didn't
want to use Internet Explore, you should use Firefox. Yeah. Now,
I had actually been using Opera up until that point,
um as. I specifically remember a friend of mine going, hey,
you know, I know you like Opera, but you really
(19:35):
should try this Firefox out. And I was kind of
skeptical because I was one of the people who was
cranky at Netscape for getting so darn bloated. I tried
Netscape Communicator for a long time and it just drove
me crazy. And I didn't like Internet Explorer for the
Mac very much. So yeah, once, once I tried it,
I got hooked. Give you guys some reference two thousand four.
(19:57):
That's around the same time that companies like my Space
and Facebook are starting to to make a name for themselves.
Of course, at that point, Facebook is strictly a college
only experience, but yeah, that's that gives you an idea
of what's going on around that time. It would be
two years before version two point oh of Firefox came
out that they would update. They made lots of frequent
(20:19):
updates to the Firefox browser, but they were all very
incremental without major changes to the code. Point releases, you
can't say. So it wasn't until you know, it's two
years after a debut before two point I came out,
and it was another two years when version three point
oh came out. So it was two thousand eight. Uh.
The reason why I'm bringing this up is it will
be interesting when we get to talk about what version
(20:41):
is currently how in the wild right now as of
the recording of this podcast. But but yeah, two thousand
eight was when version three point I was released and
Firefox hit of the market share. Now, UM, I'd like
to bring this up because the Mozilla Foundation does a
lot more than just uh than us in Firefox and
(21:02):
pandas red pandas they're so cute um uh. They also
had split off some of the other code that was
part of Communicator. For example, Thunderbird, which is their email client.
UM is UH is sort of the the version that
that used to be the mail client. And there there
was a unified UM basically the derivative of Communicator itself,
(21:27):
the suite, which was called Sea Monkey UM and UH.
They released um early versions of that. Thunderbird one point
oh came out on December seven, two thousand four and
um uh, Sea Monkey one point oh came out on
January two thousand and six. Now, both of these are
probably not as in as much in the public eye,
(21:50):
Thunderbird more so, but Sea Monkey certainly not as much
as as either one of those two. Um, but they
still do work on those projects and over time. I
just wanted to make sure that we mentioned them. But overtime,
Mozilla has brought Thunderbird up to the same basically the
same version system that firefoxes on. We have a little
(22:10):
bit more to say about Firefox, but before we get there,
we're gonna take another quick break to thank our sponsor. Well,
two thousand eleven, we have Firefox version fourth point oh released.
I remember that was a big deal. It was the
one that that came out. And then, um so between
(22:33):
two thousand and eleven and today, this being the end
of November two thousand twelve, when we record this, um
they got busy. So and this is Google's fault, seeing
every couple of years we're seeing a new version of Firefox,
a new a new version number like one to two,
two to three, three to four. So you would expect
(22:54):
maybe the next you know, version five point oh of
Firefox probably come out in two thousand and thirteen or so.
Not the case. The Firefox operating are of non operating
system of browser. We'll get to the operating system in
a second. Is currently at version seventeen as of the
recording of this podcast. So between two thousand and eleven
and November two twelve, we went from version four all
(23:17):
the way up to seventeen. And actually versions eighteen and
nineteen are both in alpha testing right now. That is correct,
and if you're interested, you can download those versions, even
a nightly built if you want. Your mileage may vary, yeah,
day by day, these browsers are changing, and some of
them may not be what we like to call stable,
(23:38):
but it just shows shows the massive amounts of change
that have come out over the last year. Now, now
what influenced that? It was Google with the Chrome browser
which came out and again, um, Google has a lot
of resources that it can uh that it can give
to the Google Chrome project, which itself is a derivative
(24:01):
of Chromium. Um. But Google Chrome came out and started
updating very very quickly, and the folks at the Mozilla
Foundation realized that in terms of new features being added.
Chrome was out doing Mozilla quite rapidly, so they decided
to put themselves on a on a rapid release cycle,
(24:22):
to which frustrated a lot of people because Firefox, more
so than Chrome, has been the standard by which companies operate,
uh Internet Explorer or Firefox, um, you know, not Safari,
not not Opera, not not Chrome. And um, so they've
they've been on not as not on a scale that's
(24:43):
not as fast as Chrome, but they did update, uh
start making updates more quickly and uh much more quickly
than they used to be. And now they're on a
sort of a cycle where they're releasing a couple maybe
three updates a year. It's ut I think, yeah, to
go from four to seventeen, have thirteen major releases um
(25:05):
within the span of like a year and a half.
Really the releases seemed to be on a tight on
on a more level scheduled now than they had been.
They're playing catch up for quite some time. In October five,
two thousand twelve, they released the Firefox build that that
can be used in the Windows eight user interface. That's
that tiled interface that was formerly called Metro UM. So
(25:28):
that that came out towards the end of two thousand twelve. Also,
they they're working on a smartphone i'll bringing system. Yes,
that's kind of an interesting thing that to build a
an OS for phones to really get into that market.
I mean, where are you talking about? A market that's
mainly being fought by Google and Apple, with Windows trying
(25:53):
to make uh name for itself as well at that
same time, and then other players like BlackBerry are trying
to you know, regroup, and some like Symbian are almost gone.
Yeah yeah now, And and it's interesting too because uh,
like what Google is doing with its operating system, the
(26:16):
chromos UM Firefox OS is also leaning heavily on Web
standards for its for its programming. So we're talking about
HTML five, the the newly proposed but not yet finalized
version of the Hypertext markup language, and a lot of
the Mozilla specific API s Application programming interfaces UM. Basically,
(26:41):
these are are plug in play pieces of code that
people can use to make them compatible intercompatible. UM. Mozilla
is basically saying, hey, look, we're open source, we're free,
and you know, we want to see if we can
make inroads on people's smartphones and and people can use
an fire Box OS simulator right now where you can
(27:03):
actually give it a try. Actually. Uh, the name for
the simulator is R two D two B two G
B two G. By the way, it means boot to
ge Go, yes, which was the original name, Gecko being
the web interface that that web engine that Firefox is
built on. But yeah, they they are a primarily web
(27:23):
centric operating Where does R two D two come from?
I don't know. I have no idea, Probably just something
they made up. It's weird because I would think those
were not the droids I was looking for. Entirely possible anyway. Yeah,
so that that brings us up to date with what's
going off with Firefox. Uh, it's a it's you know,
I've used Firefox quite a bit in the past. Um,
(27:45):
and it was for a very long time. It was
my browser of choice. It's still my browser of choice
minus Chrome. And that wraps up this classic episode of
tech Stuff about Firefox. Hope you guys enjoyed. If you
have any suggestions for a future episode of tech Stuff,
you can send me an email the addresses tech Stuff
at how stuff works dot com, or you can drop
me a line on Facebook or Twitter the handle of
(28:08):
both is tech Stuff h s W. I hope you
guys will go and pop on over to our website
that's tech stuff podcast dot com, because there you're going
to find a full archive of all of our episodes.
You also find links to the online store where you
can purchase merchandise. You can get your own tech Stuff
mug or T shirt. That would be awesome, right, you'd
(28:31):
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Text Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How
Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
(28:53):
listen to your favorite shows.
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Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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