... and I assume that MS will ship Lonhorn with a slightly modified version of IE 6.0, because there is not much time left for building a new browser from scratch. Good for us, bad news for the web.

--Thomas

It's not like mozilla.org would've optomized Firefox for Longhorn anyways...

Personally, I see it as a good thing that the Moz devs aren't wasting their time trying to add support/optimization for yet to be seen features in Longhorn. There is really no point, the way I see it.

Personally, I hope Fx will get forked into something like Camino or K-Meleon based on Avalon, but this time - truely extensible (and this time, maybe really a fork of Fx, not just a browser built around Gecko). That one might be quite interesting to have a look at : built on a framework resembling Moz's own (to a degree, that is), but a native framework at that... Yeah... ;)

> truely extensible
Yeah they should stop using Gecko for page and UI rendering, and instead use gecko only for page and something completetly different for the UI... I see how much better it is to have two rendering engines.

Anonymous :

Quite frankly, I fail to see how your reply relates to the words "truly extensible" you quoted. I mentioned "truly extensible" as opposed to e.g. Camino (many downloadable extensions for that one you know of?). Now, again, what does THAT have to do with "two rendering engines"?

> I see how much better it is to have two rendering engines.
You may or may not see how much better it is to use native APIs for the GUI, but *I* have yet to see a comprehensive study that would prove beyond reasonable doubt that using an extra layer of abstraction around the GUI improves browser performance. And until I do see such a study (and then get to see the benefits with my own code), as a programmer, I'll have a very tough time believing that. OK?

"I guess the lesson to take away from all of this is that it's better to under-promise and over-deliver than the inverse."

It's all about managing people's expectations.

It's like this: Set a deadline date 2 weeks after you actually expect to finish something, then when you finish it 2 weeks early people are like; "wow, you're so great!" ... Of course if you slip a week you still have a week to play with, and if you slip two weeks, your release is on time!

"I guess the lesson to take away from all of this is that it's better to under-promise and over-deliver than the inverse."

I think the lesson is never rely on MS marketing hype. They are really the kings in selling vapour ware. Just remember every of the last patch releases (they call it new OS), how much hype they created to divert attention from their buggy products. Where people would be eglible for a free bug fix, they made money from their bugs. They are two years away from release and make people speak about their promised vapour ware and hold their breath. Thats hype marketing at its very best.

Well, What he actually is saying is:

* Avalon and Indigo will be made for WindowsXP and 2003 (Thats sooner than planned).

* WinFs Willl be in beta by when longhorn ships.

It seems like Longhorn is shaping up to become what Windows XP was. A new GUI and polish to the former OS released. With these latest news, I don't really see what's so exciting about Longhorn. WinFS was a big deal, but now that won't be in, and Avalon, Indigo and WinFX (the successor to the Win32 API) will be released for XP and 2000. It would be better if they said what would *be* in Longhorn that isn't going to be in XP. :-)

"They are two years away from release and make people speak about their promised vapour ware and hold their breath."

It isn't vaporware since several releases have been made to the public (no, I don't think "leaked" alphas are leaked, but released for PR and hype purposes). So there's sign progress is being made. However, the feature set and goals for Longhorn seems to change on a day by day basis. :-)

Personally I think it'd be silly for the mozilla devs to ignore longhorn and it's avalon/winfs/foo features. It's not like Firefox isn't already specifically optimized and modified for specific operating systems and their features (gtk in linux, os /x , etc). When avalon and winfs become realities, or are closer to becoming realities, then I'm sure the mozilla devs will jump on the new features and be able to use them to make firefox even better. But I agree that it's good they didn't take Scoble's advice and invest lots of time and money in something years away.

Wasn't some kind of DB FS supposed to go into WinXP? I'm sure I remember MicroSoft saying it was going to develop this feature in the past, but dropped it.

Arcterex, we certainly do what we can to take advantage of platform features. I expect we'll continue to do so.

--Asa

Eric: They were at least talking about a database-based filesystem before Win2k was released. I don't remember exactly where I read about it, but it was at the end of a book on Windows NT in a section about future Windows features. I was still in college when I read it, and I graduated in 1999, so depending on when I read it, either NT 3.5 or NT 4.0 was the current release at the time.

It missed Win2k, it missed WinXP, and it's missing Longhorn.

some of you people seem to fail to understand that WinFS will be released for Longhorn (and not WinXP) in 2007, also although Avalon will be released for WinXP it's not going to be anything like the Longhorn experience.

" The inclusion of Avalon on Windows XP does not mean that XP is getting the Longhorn user interface. It's not. Avalon is a presentation layer that enables rich media experiences and powerful display technologies. But Windows XP will still look like Windows XP after Avalon is installed; all that means is that XP users will be able to take advantage of Avalon-based applications and services. To get the advanced Longhorn user interface, you will still need to upgrade to Longhorn."

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/longhorn_preview_2004.asp

Their will be plenty new features in Longhorn when it's released.

Arrogance will bring the doom onto mozilla, just like it did to Netscape. WinFS is not gone from Longhorn, it will not be shipped right with the Longhorn, but it will be there. Sooner or later Microsoft will blow away mozilla, since mozilla team is composed of the same guys who couldn't compete with microsoft when they were working for netscape. There are even less of them now, since most of them are laid off.

Microsoft bashing is a good sign of where things are headed for mozilla. I don't think it is worth to invest any time or money on mozilla.

I haven't seen Scoble telling Asa to work on winfs right now. He said you should take a look at it. I think Asa is simply misquoting Scoble.