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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
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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 followers of Mammon shall tremble.
from The Book of Mozilla, 3:31
(Red Letter Edition)
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And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced.
But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird.
The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire
and thunder upon them. For the beast had been
reborn with its strength renewed, and the
followers of Mammon cowered in horror.
from The Book of Mozilla, 7:15
About The Book of Mozilla (1/2)
There is no real book entitled The Book of Mozilla. However, apparent quotations hidden in Netscape and Mozilla give this impression by revealing passages similar to the Book of Revelation of the Bible. 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 three official verses of The Book of Mozilla (official in the sense that they have been included in shipping releases), though various unofficial verses can be found on the World Wide Web. All three official verses have biblical-looking chapter and verse references, though these are actually references to important dates in the history of Netscape and Mozilla.
The three verses all refer to the activities of a fearsome-sounding "beast". In its early days, Netscape Communications Corporation 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.
About The Book of Mozilla (2/2)
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 apply some meaning to the verses. Furthermore, the page www.mozilla.org/book has annotations for each of the three 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.
In some versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer, about:mozilla produces a blank blue page, which some have conjectured refers to the blue screen of death.
Before Netscape 1.1, about:mozilla produced the text "Mozilla rules!".
