Mozilla on browser rampage

The Mozilla web browser reached release candidate one stage yesterday, after four long years of development.

The open-source web browser was originally started as a project by Netscape to be version 5 of its browser.

Some of the ground work for Mozilla formed the foundations of Netscape 6. And while Netscape 6 is only available for Windows, MacOS, x86 Linux and Solaris, Mozilla has already been ported to PPC and SPARC Linux, FreeBSD, Irix, Tru64 Unix and even BeOS, among others, giving it a significantly greater reach than either Netscape 6 or Internet Explorer.

The only problem is that there's very little up for grabs in the browser market: Internet Explorer owns most of the space and the rest was picked up by Netscape.

After four years of delays and slow progress it remains to be seen whether Mozilla, designed for standards compliance, performance and portability, can be a contender.

But Mozilla RC1 has been received very warmly by the fans. "The built-in ad banner and popup stopper alone gives it 6 stars, to be able to surf in peace," said one user.

"Every version seems a little faster and more stable and if it does something buggy it's not much, at least it doesn't take Windows with it if it does. Pages render faster than IE more and more correct than Opera, I look forward to every new version which is always advancing further and further," he said.

More info and the release candidate can be found at Mozilla.org.