FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NETSCAPE GECKO BROWSING ENGINE AND MOZILLA.ORG WINNING INDUSTRY
RECOGNITION WITH GROWING DEVELOPER SUPPORT
Mozilla Open Source Development Initiative Receives CNET Builder.com
‘Web Innovator Of The Year’ Award
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (May 19, 1999) – Netscape, a subsidiary of
America Online Inc. (NYSE: AOL), today announced growing momentum for
Gecko, its next-generation small, fast, and standards-based browsing
engine. More than 10,000 open source developers have downloaded the
software from mozilla.org and leading companies including Bradbury
Software, CiTEC, Cyberworld, NeoPlanet, Sausage Software and Telescan
Imagicast are working to integrate it into their products. Netscape
Gecko is the first software product from Netscape based on
contributions from mozilla.org, the organization chartered with
managing Netscape’s open source initiative. Earlier this month, CNET
Builder.com awarded the second annual “Web Innovator of the Year”
award to mozilla.org.
((http://www.builder.com/Business/Innovators98/ss01.html)http://www.bu
ilder.com/Business/Innovators98/ss01.html).
“The mozilla.org staff are delighted that the Mozilla Organization
has received the Web Innovator of the Year award. This award belongs
to all our open source developers and participants who have
contributed so much since the beginning,” said Brendan Eich,
principal engineer of mozilla.org and recipient of last year’s Web
Innovator of the Year award. “Through their efforts, mozilla.org is
poised to deliver the leading browser in the industry.”
“We are witnessing a new chapter in software development, as the
mozilla community that helped build the Gecko browsing engine now
applies the technology to a wide range of exciting new applications
and devices,” said Bob Lisbonne, senior vice president of client
products at Netscape. “Developers around the world are embracing
Gecko due to its speed, small size, exceptional standards-support and
open source.”
Leading companies supporting Gecko and working with mozilla.org include:
– Bradbury Software: The company that develops TopStyle, a cascading
style sheet (CSS) editor for Windows 95/98 and Windows NT4. Among
TopStyle’s features is a real-time style preview, which hosts both
Netscape Gecko and Microsoft Internet Explorer side-by-side. By
taking advantage of both browsers, TopStyle enables Web authors to
immediately see how changes to their style sheets will affect their
entire site.
“As a developer of Web authoring tools, I’m extremely pleased with
Gecko’s capabilities and adherence to Web standards,” said Nick
Bradbury, founder of Bradbury Software and creator of both TopStyle
and Allaire’s popular HomeSite HTML editor. “In particular, Gecko’s
CSS support is exceptional. Gecko provides a light-weight,
standards-based rendering engine that offers a lot of power to both
developers and Web authors.”
– CiTEC: With its DocZilla browser, CiTEC (based in Finland) is
expanding Web technology with Gecko components for the handling of
critical, complex and large information collections. CiTEC’s modular
extensions to Gecko include seamless handling of SGML, HyTime and
XLink/Xpointer links and SGML and XML table markup languages.
“When Netscape created mozilla.org last year and invited the world to
help make the greatest browser, we found the offer to be
irresistible,” said Michael Leventhal of CiTEC Information
Technology, developers of DocZilla. “The current architecture in
Gecko has enabled CiTEC to do a much better job of plugging into and
extending mozilla’s core capabilities. This is a direct payback from
open source development with its open scrutiny and discussion of
ideas, feedback and pooling of the best minds on the Web.”
– Cyberworld International: An early adopter of Netscape’s Gecko
initiative, Cyberworld (based in Toronto) is implementing Gecko
within its breakthrough multi-dimensional viewing technology to offer
digital content creators and Web developers a visually compelling way
to build, organize and present multimedia worlds. Cyberworld, which
is dedicated to transforming the Web experience, is an ideal solution
for e-commerce and on-line business development. Individuals,
businesses and communities of interest can tap into Cyberworld’s 3D
visual interface to seamlessly navigate between 2D and 3D content
such as pictures, video and sound in one easy-to-use integrated
environment.
“Netscape’s open source initiative provides the development community
with a tremendous amount of flexibility,” said Sharleen Sy, vice
president of marketing at Cyberworld. “By offering an alternative
browser control that can be extended by developers, Netscape’s Gecko
creates a flexible and open development path that allows us to easily
enhance the Cyberworld Viewer. With Gecko, Cyberworld will have the
capacity to create an extremely robust, multi-dimensional multimedia
alternative to traditional 3D browsers.”
– NeoPlanet: Developer of the innovative NeoPlanet “browser/portal,”
the company previewed NeoPlanet 5.0 featuring support for the Gecko
browsing engine and will continue to leverage contributions from the
open source model to enhance the ease-of-use of the Internet for
consumers. By offering a choice of browsers with a consistent user
interface, NeoPlanet enhances the ease-of-use of the Internet.
“NeoPlanet believes a small, fast, standards-compliant rendering
engine available as open source to all developers is in the interest
of the Internet community as a whole, especially for end users,” said
Drew Cohen, president and CEO of NeoPlanet Inc. “NeoPlanet is
actively contributing to mozilla, we have released a technology
preview and are submitting changes on an almost daily basis. We now
have full time staff dedicated to the effort and plan to hire more
developers.”
– Sausage Software: Sausage (based in Australia), an Internet tools
developer, is currently evaluating the use of the Netscape Gecko
technology as an internal HTML rendering component for all the HotDog
Web Authoring product family, SuperToolz applications and eCommerce
tools. Wherever there is HTML preview in these products, there will
be the option to preview in Gecko. HotDog, the company’s flagship Web
authoring tool, has consistently been one of the most popularly
downloaded Web authoring tools in the world over the last three years.
“Sausage is committed to supporting all available Internet
technologies. The open source development of Gecko is important not
only in terms of providing balance in Web browser technology, but
ensuring that all standards put forward by the W3C are fully
supported,” said Andrew Walsh, general manager of Sausage Internet
Tools. “Our initial trials with various builds of Gecko have been
very promising. We predict that within a few days of Gecko’s final
release, our users will have access to an updated version of HotDog
Professional, incorporating a Gecko preview option”.
– Telescan Imagicast: Telescan, the largest manufacturer of listening
and viewing stations in retail stores with over 70,000 systems
deployed worldwide, has chosen Gecko as its user interface and
content browser for its next-generation point of purchase terminal.
“We are excited by the opportunity to use Gecko’s leading-edge
architecture in our new device. Gecko shows great promise as a
leading high-performance, standards-compliant browser engine and it
is well ahead of current fourth-generation browsers in CSS support,
an important feature for our application,” said Tom Sharples,
vice-chairman and CTO of Telescan Imagicast. “Gecko’s modular
structure and extensibility make it a good call for resource-tight
embedded systems like ours. Since we don’t need a full featured
browser and are aiming for very low cost, Gecko’s modularity and
small size enable straightforward integration into our appliance. The
Mozilla ‘open source’ model provides a cost-effective alternative to
the heavy IP fees charged by commercial embedded browser vendors.”
Netscape is a leading provider of software and services for
businesses that want to transform the way they create and keep
customers in the emerging Net Economy. Recently acquired by America
Online, Inc., Netscape is based in Mountain View, California.
Mozilla.org is the organization that manages open source developers
working on the next generation of Netscape’s browser and
communication software.
###
Additional information on Netscape is available on the Internet at
(http://home.netscape.com)http://home.netscape.com, by sending email
to info@netscape.com, or by calling corporate sales at 650/937-2555.
For more information about Bradbury Software’s TopStyle, please stop
by
(http://www.bradsoft.com/topstyle/)http://www.bradsoft.com/topstyle/.
Additional information on CiTEC is available on the Internet at
(http://www.doczilla.com.)http://www.doczilla.com.
Readers visit the CYBERWORLD web site at
(http://www.cyberworldcorp.com)http://www.cyberworldcorp.com.
Additional information on NeoPlanet is available on the Internet at
(http://www.neoplanet.com.)http://www.neoplanet.com.
Additional information on Sausage Software is available on the
Internet at (http://www.sausage.com)http://www.sausage.com.
Additional information on Telescan Imagicast is available on the
Internet at (http://www.imagicast.com)http://www.imagicast.com.