Mozilla (idea)

The fact that he is a dinosaur shouldn't cause any inferences on the age or obsolescence of any Netscape browser or of the Mozilla project.

The name was meant to indicate that Netscape (both the product(s) and the company) would become a ferocious beast, which would ravage the earth, and would be impossible to defeat. Some of this is true. Netscape Navigator did become a beast, and it did help ravage the earth, or at least the Web.

According to him, the name Mozilla was coined by jwz. The character was originally designed and drawn by Dave Titus, and the mascot had a strong presence in the early post-release logo and branding of the Netscape company.

The original design of Mozilla was a short, Hanna-Barbera-ish lizard, with light green skin, maroon chest scales, and blue spikes from the back of his head to the base of his tail, which was about four to five feet long itself and thick at the base. He had a large Bullwinkle-like snout with large flared nostrils, and big, cartoony, expressive eyes. He was sometimes seen breathing fire in his atypical moods of vengeance.

There is, of course, a built-in about:mozilla link in most if not all versions of the Netscape Navigator browser. The effect of this link on the UNIX versions is the best.

The Mozilla imagery was shelved by Netscape as a branding gimmick around the release of Netscape Navigator 2.0.

The ODP editorship revived the Mozilla imagery shortly after it was bought by Netscape. The images at the bottom of category pages at www.dmoz.org exhibit this.

The mascot's name has been given not only to the image of the lizard, but also to the Netscape Navigator browser, the Mozilla.Org project, and the ODP.

There is also a Book of Mozilla, of which little is available, and from which the following ominous verse comes:

"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."