Before we look at our first example of a Mozilla application, let's make sure you have everything you need to get Mozilla running on your system along with the tools you need to create your own applications. Every Mozilla application developer will need two main tools: Mozilla itself and a text editor.
If you don't already have Mozilla installed on your computer, it can be easily downloaded from mozilla.org. You have two main choices when picking what to download. You can choose between a precompiled binary or you can grab the source. Either option will work with the examples in this book. Appendix A provides more information about the different available options.
You will also need access to a text editor. Any editor that can save as plain text will do. HTML editors will also work fine. If you normally use HomeSite, BBEdit, or another editor to create HTML files, these programs are suitable for working with the examples in this book as long as they can save files in plain text.
Although there are other tools such as debuggers and specialized editors that you can use to assist with your application development (several of these programs are described in Appendix B), the core tools that you will need are simply Mozilla and a text editor. Once you have these tools up and running, you can start working with the examples in the rest of the book.