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.

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.

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.

[7] 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.

The following "prophecy" was displayed: The chapter and verse number 12:10 refers to December 10, 1994, the date that Netscape Navigator 1.0 was released.

The punishments threatened towards the "unbelievers" (most likely users who didn't conform to standards) are traditionally biblical but with the strange threat that their "tags shall blink until the end of days".

This is a reference to a feature in early versions of Netscape that would make bad tags blink, as seen in the source code comments from the Book of Mozilla.

On February 5, 2000, Ben Goodger, then working for Netscape, copied The Book of Mozilla verse across to the new code base.

It was included in all subsequent Mozilla builds (until the introduction of the 7:15 verse), Netscape versions 6 to 7.1 and Beonex Communicator; it still appears in Classilla due to that browser's unusual history.

The Book of Mozilla page has the following comment in its HTML source about this passage:[7] Again, the "beast" is Netscape.

The text probably refers to Netscape's hope that, by opening its source, they could attract a "legion" of developers all across the world, who would help improve the software (with the "din of a million keyboards").

The "legion" is actually a reference to the biblical quote Mark 5:9 in the King James Version (KJV) bible ("And he asked him, What is thy name?

The word "mammon," in various Semitic languages, is related to money and riches; it appears in English translations of the Bible, and is sometimes used as the name of a demon of avarice.

In the HTML source of Book of Mozilla page, this verse is accompanied by the following annotation:[7] The "beast" falling refers to Netscape being closed down by its now parent company AOL.

The bird rises from the ash like a phoenix – a reference to the original name of the Mozilla Firefox browser (known as Firebird at the time this verse was written).

Netscape's lead browser engineer Christopher Finke contributed the next verse of The Book of Mozilla.

The 8:20 chapter and verse notation refers to August 20, 2006, when the first internal email was sent mentioning the possibility of developing the next Netscape Navigator in house.

Unlike previous verses, the HTML source for the Book of Mozilla page does not feature any verse-related annotations.

[10] Additionally, "10th edition" is an allusion to the Mozilla Foundation's 10th anniversary, which occurred during the Firefox 3 development cycle.

[17] The Quantum Project contained the first major piece of code taken from Servo,[18] the layout engine written in Rust, to which "oxidised metal" is a reference.

In the HTML source of the Book of Mozilla page, this verse is accompanied by the following annotation:[7] Emphasized words refer to Firefox Focus, Reference Browser, and Firefox Reality, all of which had switched to the Quantum-based GeckoView for higher performance.

"And when the beast had taken the quarter of the earth under its rule..." is probably a reference to the 25% market share Firefox had gained over the more popular Internet Explorer.

could possibly be making a reference to the fact that it is open source, and that they shared their good deed (their creation of the browser) with the world.

In response, it changed the name to Iceweasel and the icon to a white weasel-like variant of the Firefox logo.

Iceweasel includes the about:mozilla Easter-egg and showed the standard page from the Firefox version it was built from.

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 about:palemoon; 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.

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

With version 28.5.0, the page's text was once updated: The landscape changed as time went on: flowing, twisting, corrupting.

The din of many keyboards like unto a great storm shall cover the earth and the followers of the beast and Mammon shall tremble.