The Book of Mozilla

The Book of Mozilla is a computer Easter egg found in the Netscape, Mozilla, SeaMonkey, Waterfox and Firefox series of web browsers.

It is viewed by directing the browser to .

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. When 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. 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

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:

thumb|300px|alt=Screenshot of The Book of Mozilla, 12:10 in Netscape Navigator 1.1|The Book of Mozilla made its debut in an early version of [[Netscape Navigator.]]

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, It also may be referencing Luke 3:22 of the Bible.

The Book of Mozilla, 11:9

thumb|300px|Screenshot of The Book of Mozilla, 11:9 in Firefox 4.0.1

This verse landed in the Mozilla trunk codebase on January 9, 2008.

It was included in Firefox 3.0 Beta 3 through 20.0.1, SeaMonkey 2.0 Alpha 1 through 2.17.1, Thunderbird 3.0 Alpha 1 through 20 Beta 1, Mobile Firefox Alpha 1, Flock Browser Version 2.0.6, Waterfox, and Songbird.

In the HTML source of the Book of Mozilla page, this verse is accompanied by the following annotation:

The Book of Mozilla, 15:1

thumb|300px|Screenshot of The Book of Mozilla, 15:1 in Firefox 21

This verse landed in the Mozilla trunk codebase on January 23, 2013. It first appeared in the nightly builds of Firefox 21 (Specifically, Firefox 21.0 Alpha 1 build 2013-01-23). Instead of a plain background, it now features a subtle radial gradient.

It is included in all Firefox versions from Firefox 21.0 to 58.0, all SeaMonkey versions since 2.18 Beta 1, and all Thunderbird versions since 21 Beta 1.

It can be still seen in SeaMonkey, XULRunner and the Wine Internet Explorer due to the unusual histories of them.

The "twins of Mammon" refers to Apple and Google, whose mobile operating systems, respectively iOS and Android, have taken a duopoly of the mobile OS market. The "new darkness" refers to the closed nature of traditional app stores. The beast moving "swiftly" refers to the new rapid release cycle of Firefox. The phrase "went forth and multiplied" refers to "Firefox becoming multiple things"

The Book of Mozilla, 11:14

thumb|300x300px|Screenshot of The Book of Mozilla, 11:14 in Firefox 58

This verse first appeared in Firefox Nightly 58, landing in the Mozilla trunk codebase on September 22, 2017, and was later uplifted to show up in Firefox 57 Beta.

It refers to the major changes that culminated in the Firefox 57 release with the Quantum project. "Time and Space" refer to Quantum itself, while "Flow" refers to the Quantum Flow project, "new raiment" and "Light" refer to the UI refresh known as the Photon project. The Quantum Project contained the first major piece of code taken from Servo, the layout engine written in Rust, to which "oxidised metal" is a reference. The 11:14 chapter and verse notation refers to November 14, 2017, the day Firefox 57 was released.

The Book of Mozilla, 6:27

thumb|300x300px|Screenshot of The Book of Mozilla, 6:27 in Firefox 117

This verse first appeared in Firefox Nightly 80, landing in the Mozilla trunk codebase on July 22, 2020. According to its annotation, it was intended to be added on June 27, 2019, with the introduction of Firefox Preview.

In the HTML source of the Book of Mozilla page, this verse is accompanied by the following annotation: The "24 wise men" refer to the 24 staff employees of Flock at that time. The "stars" refer to the star used in the branding ("Flockstar"). Though this verse was released 5 November 2007,

The source markup of the page defines the text color as white. The page still can be seen (even in Edge for Windows 10) when using the URL: (however, without using this URL in IE10, it will cancel the webpage navigation). The about page was defined in a registry entry .

The Wine Internet Explorer displays the 15:1 verse.

Iceweasel

Due to a dispute with the Mozilla Corporation, the Debian project was forced to change the name and branding of Mozilla Firefox in its distribution. In response, it changed the name to Iceweasel and the icon to a white weasel-like variant of the Firefox logo. Iceweasel includes the easter egg which shows the 15:1 verse. However, when users navigate to they see a thematically similar message from the Book of Ice that describes the dispute with Mozilla and the creation of Iceweasel.

The "Corpse" in this edition represents the Mozilla Corporation and the references to the prohibition on "flying in my name" is a reference to the trademark prohibition.

Netscape

Starting with Netscape 0.93beta (and up to version 1.0), produced the text "Mozilla Rules!".

Viewing the page with a Unix version of Netscape would change the throbber to an animation of Mozilla rising up from behind the "planet" logo and breathing fire.

Pale Moon

Prior to Pale Moon version 26, typing would show the 15:1 verse. However, in Pale Moon 26 and above it displays the following:

This verse is also included (with branding modified) in the Basilisk web browser.

Similarly to Iceweasel, Pale Moon has its own take on The Book of Mozilla, this time dubbed "The Chronicles of the Pale Moon", which can be viewed by navigating to ; however, instead of the chapter and verse number referring to a date of significance in the browser's history, it refers to the version number the verse first appeared in, and instead of being in the middle of the page, the subtle radial gradient is near the top right. In Pale Moon 24.2 to 27.0, the page title read "The Child of the Moon", and it showed the following text:

The phrase "the form of metal" is a reference to Google's Chrome browser.

Since version 27.1 (when Pale Moon became a true fork), the page title reads "The Dragon's Roots". The text reads:

The "ancestor" is believed to refer to Firefox, while the "bed of withered roots" is believed to refer to the Firefox ESR 24 codebase.

With the release of Pale Moon 28, the version number references were abandoned. The page title does not contain a title for the verse, and the text reads:

In this verse, the "old nest" is believed to refer to the old Mozilla XUL Platform used by prior versions, which had been abandoned in favour of a fork named UXP under the hood, while retaining the older but customisable interface from Firefox versions 4 through 28.

With version 28.5.0, the page's text was once updated:

In this verse, "landscape" seems to refer to the current browser scene, "tainted metal" may be a reference to Chromium (referencing the migration of browsers like Opera and Vivaldi to Chromium), and "sanctuary" may refer to Unified XUL Platform (UXP), which provides a common platform for XUL-based applications to build on.

SeaMonkey

In versions of SeaMonkey browser later than 2.0, displays the 15:1 verse. In some newer versions of SeaMonkey, <code>about:seamonkey</code> will display a verse similar to "The Book of Mozilla, 3:31 (Red Letter Edition)", only with few wording changes, and the book's name is switched to "The Book of SeaMonkey, 1:30". It's also notable that the background color is changed from maroon to teal (<code>#33CC99</code>).

References

External links

The Book of Mozilla
New Chapter in 'The Book of Mozilla' (MozillaZine)
Some Clarifications Regarding about:mozilla (Gervase Markham)