Firefox 2 Easter Egg
Posted Dec 3rd 2006 8:39AM by Ryan Carter
Filed under: Internet, Text, Mozilla, Browser Tips
Mozilla has made Firefox 2 all spiritual for us, by planting an easter egg that quotes from a little known religious text called the "Book of Mozilla." Here is what it says: "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." All the geeks laughed. I love it, mostly because it proves that Mozilla has a sense of humor and can take a joke. There is no end to the Microsoft bashing by a rival, which isn't all that new. To view this enigmatic text for yourself, open up your Firefox 2 and type in "about:mozilla" to see it. As you might imagine, this doesn't work in Internet Explorer.
Tags: about, book, browser, Firefox, mozilla
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
12-03-2006 @ 9:16AM
David said...
This is pretty old but it might also be worth mentioning to newcomers that Firefox was originally named Phoenix (and the about:mozilla page tells the story of the phoenix). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Firefox#History for more information.
Reply
12-03-2006 @ 1:44PM
Aaron Bassett said...
tut tut tut come on do some research first!
This isnt a firefox 2 Easter Egg, saying as its been about since 2003!!
And the Firefox developers are not having a dig at IE with it, it actually talks about the closure of the Netscape devision at AOL and the creation of the Mozilla foundation. The only link to Firefox is at around the same time they created the Firebird browser (which later became Firefox)
Dont believe me, view the source at http://www.mozilla.org/book/
Reply
12-03-2006 @ 1:44PM
Paul said...
Also, the part about thunder is an obvious reference to the Thunderbird mail client.
Reply
12-03-2006 @ 1:45PM
LinkTiger said...
Actually, up until IE7, about:mozilla would display a blank BSOD-blue screen (with some weird non-valid source code) in IE. It was inexplicably removed in the latest version, though.
Reply
12-03-2006 @ 1:55PM
MG said...
It's actually an easter egg built into gecko, the rendering engine. (As such, will work on all gecko based browsers: Camino, Firefox, mozilla, seamonkey, etc.)
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12-03-2006 @ 2:54PM
DaViking said...
Actually, this goes back before Firefox, Firebird, or Phoenix, all the way back to Netscape. From Wikipedia, “The Book of Mozilla first appeared in Netscape 1.1 (released in 1995) and can be found in every subsequent 1.x, 2.x, 3.x and 4.x version.” The passage would change when major evens occurred such as renaming or a new branch. I’m surprised it didn’t change in 2.0. It’s also a reference to the fact Netscape was to be called Mozilla originally but that sounded too much like Mosaic.
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12-03-2006 @ 3:06PM
MASA said...
You could view the source by itself. This has been added ever since phoenix became firefox.
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12-03-2006 @ 4:06PM
Catweazle said...
Yeah, this first appeared in Netscape Navigator 1.1 over ten years ago. Believe it or not it works in XP so I got a screenshot of the original passage:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v739/KR74/Netscape1.jpg
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12-03-2006 @ 4:52PM
leandono said...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Mozilla
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12-03-2006 @ 7:13PM
pbkg said...
@DaViking, it was spelt Netscape, but pronounced as Mozilla...
http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?MozillaBrowser
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12-03-2006 @ 7:32PM
ari said...
I'm working on the abridged Book of Mozilla....the 'good parts' version
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12-03-2006 @ 11:59PM
TheBlunderbuss said...
For Debian users, replace "Thunder" and "Fire" with "Ice."
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12-04-2006 @ 2:06PM
rico suave said...
No BSOD in IE 6.0 SP2 using either about:mozilla or http://about:mozilla . Perhaps OP had spyware?
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