Mozilla is not just a Web browser. Mozilla is also a framework for building cross-platform applications using standards such as CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), XML languages such as XUL (XML-based User-interface Language), XBL (eXtensible Binding Language), and RDF (Resource Description Framework), as well as Gecko, Mozilla's rendering engine, and other technologies.

The Mozilla development framework also makes use of programming languages such as JavaScript, C++, C, Python, and IDL (Interface Definition Language), plus framework technologies such as XPConnect and XPCOM, Mozilla's component model.

In addition to Netscape's Mozilla-based browsers (Netscape 6.x and 7.x), the Mozilla framework has been used to create other browsers such as Galeon and Chimera, and chat clients such as ChatZilla and JabberZilla. Developers have also used Mozilla to create development tools, browser enhancements, and games, as well as many other types of add-ons and applications.

This book explains how applications are created with Mozilla and provides step-by-step information about how you can create your own programs using Mozilla's powerful cross-platform development framework. This book also includes examples of many different types of existing applications to demonstrate some of the possibilities of Mozilla development.