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Introduction
Conventions Used in This Book As you read this book, you will find boxed icons that highlight additional information of interest. The informational icons include the following: This icon indicates special information relating to the current section that you may find useful.
This icon indicates information that explains the best way to do something or alerts you to special considerations you should be aware of when performing a routine task.
This icon indicates a reference to related information in another chapter.
This icon indicates cautionary information, alerting you to potential hazards encountered within the tasks at hand.
Being a Part of the Community The Mozilla initiative, in existence for more than seven years now, is the divine spawn of the Netscape Corporation. Several years spent in planning and restructuring have lead to some incredible products, including the Mozilla Suite, Firefox, Thunderbird, and many other smaller projects. Several of these projects are currently official releases, with Firefox being the flagship, standalone browser. The key to the Mozilla community is that it is now an official nonprofit international organization with many volunteers who help in debugging, hacking, and documenting the interface and features. The community of people who use and create for Mozilla is tremendous, and as large as it is, it still requires the assistance of all users, basic or experienced, to find and submit bugs that may come up or to submit requests for options that are currently not available. While you might hear a lot about the Mozilla organization, this book also covers the other supporting sites and individual initiatives, such as the XULPlanet, MozillaZine, MozDev, Extension Room, and Extension Mirrors sites. All of these help users and programmers support the Mozilla efforts by hosting web forums, extension homepages, and independent projects.