Web Browser "About:" Keyword

The “about:” keyword activates special functions and windows in the Firefox / Mozilla / Netscape family of browsers.

The early Netscape browsers started this trend with support for a wide range of “about:” commands that returned interesting information about your Internet browsing status simply by entering the command into the address bar and pressing return. The Mozilla and Firefox browsers, coming from the same code base and tradition, still support several of these commands, such as the powerful “about:config”. For some unknown, intriguing reason, the Internet Explorer 5.x versions also recognize the about:mozilla command, returning a blank blue page.

The known full range of “about:” commands can be found below with an indication of which browsers support them. Please note that even though the commands are given as links, almost none of them work in that form, and in general these commands must be manually entered in the address bar to work.

Netscape programmers. Several of the original Netscape programmers had personal web page links built into the browser through the “about” command as listed below. For the benefit of those without an older Netscape browser (<v6) to retrieve these pages, the Team Member column provides the programmer’s full name linked to their current page or to a historical page retrieved from Archive.org where a current page could not be found.