The Book of Mozilla

The Book of Mozilla is a series of ‘Easter eggs’ found in various versions of the Camino, Firefox, Flock, Netscape and SeaMonkey browsers. To activate simply type about:mozilla in the address bar. There are several biblical like ‘verses’ written by various Netscape/Mozilla engineers/programmers and which one you will see will depends on which browser and version you are using. Note: Mammon refers to Microsoft Internet Explorer. The passage numbers are in reference to historical dates with Netscape/Mozilla. In Firefox 3 you will see:

Mammon slept. And the beast reborn spread over the earth and its numbers grew legion. And they proclaimed the times and sacrificed crops unto the fire, with the cunning of foxes. And they built a new world in their own image as promised by the sacred words, and spoke of the beast with their children. Mammon awoke, and lo! it was naught but a follower.

from The Book of Mozilla, 11:9

(10th Edition)

This passage number 11:9 references to November 9, 2004 which was the day Firefox 1.0 was released. This passage was added in January 2008 and “10th Edition” refers to the 10th Anniversary of then the Netscape Communications Corporation (note: ‘Mozilla’ was the name of the user agent for the Netscape Browser) now Mozilla.

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

This passage, (which is my personal favorite) is viewable in Firefox 1.5 and 2.0 and refers back to July 15, 2003, the day AOL shut-down Netscape browser division and the launch of the Mozilla Foundation. The ‘great bird ‘ refers to Phoenix which was the original name of Firefox. ‘Thunder’ of course refers to Thunderbird. In the pre-AOL days, The Netscape Browser also had its own built-in email client, Netscape E-Mail. While the beast (Mozilla/Netscape Browser) had fallen and the unbelievers (those who thought an open-source browser could not compete against Microsoft’s IE), the rise of Firefox/Phoenix and Thunderbird was the rebirth of Mozilla much to the horror of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

You can see all The Book of Mozilla passages and their meanings here.