Exactly three months after leaving the Netscape nest, the Mozilla lizard heads have made a bold push to target
end-users with a slew of new product releases.
After scoring a $2 million
pledge from America Online and separating itself from Netscape
Communications, the non-profit Mozilla Foundation released Mozilla 1.5, the
last version of its Web browser project under the Mozilla brand.
Mozilla 1.5 features a
nifty spellchecker for MailNews and Composer and an overhaul to ChatZilla,
the built in inter-relay chat (IRC) client.
The open-source alternative browser project also introduced a new version
of the Mozilla Firebird browser with enhancements for tabbed-browsing,
pop-up blocking and privacy controls. Mozilla Firebird version 0.7,
formerly Phoenix, is touted as a lightweight browser that strips away the
bloat and doubles the speed in which Web pages are displayed.
A upgrade to the Mozilla Thunderbird mail project was also released.
The Mozilla Foundation also announced a major push towards serving
end-users, introducing a redesigned beta Web site to hawk software
CDs, browser downloads and telephone support for end users of the Mozilla
Internet suite.
It is the first time end-user support would be available for users of the
Mozilla products. The Foundation said telephone support would cost $39.95
per incident.
Mozilla’s moves mirror those of Norway-based Opera Software, which also
introduced new
browsers this week for the Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris
platforms.
Mozilla and Opera compete with Microsoft’s dominant Internet Explorer
(IE) in the Web browser market.