Ghostzilla is a discontinued
open source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...
web browser
A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...
for
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
based on
Mozilla Application Suite
The Mozilla Application Suite (originally known as Mozilla, marketed as the Mozilla Suite) is a discontinued cross-platform integrated Internet suite. Its development was initiated by Netscape Communications Corporation, before their acquisition ...
1.0.1.
It ran the browser inside the window space of another application (e.g. in
Microsoft Outlook
Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager software system from Microsoft, available as a part of the Microsoft 365 software suites. Primarily popular as an email client for businesses, Outlook also includes functions such as Calendari ...
), where the page was then made to look like the content in an email.
When moving the cursor out of the window, the browser subsequently disappeared.
History
Ghostzilla was originally launched as a
shareware
Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer. ...
project priced at US$19.95. The project then became
freeware
Freeware is software, often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the free ...
and later open source. From May 2004 until January 2005, the project was removed from public view due to a copyright claim from
Mozilla
Mozilla is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, publishes and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting free software and open standards. The community is supported institution ...
. It later returned with code directly derived from Mozilla's open source, excluding the core proprietary library used to create minimal pages and
desaturated colors. It also came with warnings about the potential for misuse. In February 2007, the site was removed.
In March 2006, users of
Firefox
Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curr ...
had the option of installing a free
add-on called ''Ghostfox'', which aimed to mimic Ghostzilla's behavior in Firefox, although from June 2010 this extension was no longer compatible with Firefox 3.5. An open source project, ''InstaBrowser'', appeared in July 2007 mimicking Ghostzilla's ideas. By September 2009 this project was renamed ''Ninja Browser'' but was again short-lived.
Features
Ghostzilla is a browser which can be used directly from a CD or USB stick.
Ghostzilla changes the layout of the
web page
A web page (or webpage) is a World Wide Web, Web document that is accessed in a web browser. A website typically consists of many web pages hyperlink, linked together under a common domain name. The term "web page" is therefore a metaphor of pap ...
s pending on the user's preferences as categorized into 6 different "stealth modes":
*As simple text (without any
CSS, advertisement, or
pop-ups).
*Images are hidden or grayed out.
Users can change their preferences so that the navigation bar turns off.
If the cursor is placed outside the Ghostzilla window, Ghostzilla hides itself and can be viewed again by a
mouse gesture.
References
Further reading
*
External links
Last archived version of Ghostzilla site.Final release of Ghostzilla.The Ghostfox extension
at mozdev.org
mozdev.org was a website that offered free project hosting, and software development tools to the Mozilla community. Site hosted extensions for Firefox, Thunderbird and SeaMonkey and stand-alone Mozilla-based applications. It was free to set up ...
{{Web browsers, desktop
2002 software
Discontinued web browsers
Free web browsers
Mozilla
Portable software