Programming Firefox

Preface

A technology is only a tool.

No matter how creative its design, innovative its approach, or impressive its performance, a technology is still defined (according to Webster) as “a manner of accomplishing a task.”

The successful adoption of a technology into the community of those who rely on it to conduct business is a complicated journey—one that starts with the unyielding work of designers who see something that others don’t. But without the efforts of those who believe in its value and are willing to promote (evangelize), to educate, and to adapt the tool to the needs of the community, the technology remains little more than a subject of academic interest.

The Mozilla component framework, and its implementation in a form more commonly known as the Firefox browser, represents one technology that aspires to be a useful tool for the community that relies on the Internet to communicate, learn, and express (we often coldly refer to these people as “users”).

The evangelists of the Mozilla framework promote its technology as a premier contribution of the open source community, a team of developers whose mission is to develop the best possible software for browsing the Internet (Firefox) and exchanging messages (Thunderbird). This community is also strongly committed to demonstrating how applying the most current standards in electronic document rendition and data exchange can make possible new techniques that improve the richness of expression and the ability to move those rich ideas ...