Hmm, your point is?

@ Johnnt the Baldy: The point is that Firefox is the top choice for small platforms that need a top-quality browser! The little guys need good web communication more than anything else (they have few printed magazines and often live far away from each other), they often lack the resources to write their own web browser from the ground up and even if they could, who would support it? Enter Firefox: State-of-the-Art browsing, good market share (and growing), open source, active user community, lots of respect from eb designers and it's well suitable for porting.

So, say hello to the RISC OS guys!

What version of Firefox has been ported?

Johnnt - just compare for example the closed-source browsers:

Microsoft Internet Explorer for Solaris - cancelled
Microsoft Internet Explorer for HP/UX - cancelled
Microsoft Internet Explorer for Mac OS X - cancelled

Netscape for Mac OS X - cancelled at version 7.2
Netscape for Linux - cancelled at version 7.2
Netscape for other non-Windows/IA-32 platforms - cancelled at versions 4.x-7.x

Opera for BeOS - cancelled
Opera for QNX - stalled at version 6.0 (cancelled?)
Opera for OS/2 - stalled at version 5.something (cancelled?)

And Firefox extends - Linux/IA-32, Mac OS X/PPC, Windows/IA-32 (three official Mozilla.org "tier-1" platforms), Solaris/IA-32, Solaris/sparc, OS/2, AIX, HP/UX, Mac OS X/IA-32, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD (9 operating system-vendor ports - by IBM, Sun, HP, Apple and the three *BSDs), and the four community ports: Windows/x86-64, Linux/PPC, BeOS and now RISC OS.

Only Opera is comparable to Firefox here (Win/IA-32, Linux on three hw platforms, Solaris on two hw platforms and FreeBSD), but it supports a smaller number of platforms (also, when you support Linux it's no big deal to port to *BSD or Solaris), and because of its closed-source nature, nobody but Opera can port it to $operating_system_of_your_choice. They won't do it if they don't see profit in it.

This is great news, will have to dig out my old RISC OS machine and try it out.

That won't run on any of the old RISC OS 3.x machines I had... :( oh well.

Opera supports a helluva lot more mobile platforms than Mozilla's offering, that's for sure.

Rick,

Oh yeah, and how many people do you know who use their mobile phone (or another mobile device - other than a laptop computer or a tablet PC) as their PRIMARY browsing machine/platform?

Also, what this shows is that programmers don't need to wait for Mozilla to make Firefox compatible with a certain platform. With the correct know-how, they can do it themselves. Why? Because of Firefox's open source nature.

In any case, there's the Minimo project to get a Gecko-based browser on mobile devices.

And how many browsers will run from a USB pen drive like Portable Firefox does?

This is the latest CVS version.

marcoos: To be fair, BeOS and OS/2 are, themselves, cancelled.

Sounds hood, What is the defference on a regular firefox, a portable firefox and a zipped firefox?

marcoos, you are a genius. Thanks

Between installer Firefox and a zipped build, the only differences I know about are that a zipped build isn't going to make shortcuts for you on the desktop or program menu, and doesn't throw stuff in the Registry that plugin installers look for.

Portable Firefox, I'm not too sure. This maybe would help:
http://johnhaller.com/jh/mozilla/portable_firefox/

Hmmm, Asa, I think you mean "Unlike the other, closed source, browsers, Firefox's reach ..." not "Unlike the other closed source browsers, Firefox's reach ..." -- that is you are using "closed source" parenthetically to label the other browsers. Without the commas in there it sounds like you are talking about the set of closed-source browsers, of which 'Firefox' is one!

Asa, will you read this article: Opera: Firefox user figures 'inflated' from http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39204643,00.htm and comment on it?

@Smylers - Where did you learn grammar? If you have a string of adjectives (such as other and closed source), you seperate them with commas but without a comma after the last one. For example, correct: "It is a bright, beautiful, sunny day." Not correct: "It is a bright, beautiful, sunny, day."

Asa's right ;)

Gah, I can't read at 8AM apparently. While your suggestion is still grammatically incorrect, I see your point and do agree that his could stand to be revised as well.

But getting back on topic, yay Firefox! :P

Ryan: My point is that "other" and "closed-source" are _not_ equivalent items in a list. (In your example you could swap the order of "bright", "beautiful", and "sunny" and it would still have the same meaning.) As it currently stands Asa is describing 'Firefox' as "closed source", which is wrong!

I presume what Asa means is "Unlike the other browsers, Firefox ..." and where the tag "closed source" is applied only to the "other" browsers. In that sense "closed source" is non-restrictive, so it needs to be set aside with a pair of commas -- one each at the beginning and end; they have nothing to do with list commas.

Yes, I know the grammar is still dodgy -- but this is only a blog! And picking grammar nits in blog entries just for the sake of it is not a worthwhile pastime -- in this case though I was just alarmed to find 'Firefox' being called "closed source"!

Re Kelson: BeOS and OS/2 are not cancelled, they just switched hands. BeOS is actively being developed by yellowTAB GmbH and is nowadays called Zeta. Similarly, OS/2 is currently being developed by Serenity Systems (with some parts still being developed by IBM). It too has a new name: eComStation.

Re Asa: I hate to rain on the parade, but most small ports are developed despite the Foundation and not due to its help. I've witnessed several cases where Foundation employees were blatant about the small ports being nothing but a waste of time and resources. One of them even expressed joy at the thought of how the upcoming Cairo transition may kill the small ports. Sad, but true.

If you want more details, you know my my email address.

Prog.

hi. i tried to trackback your site with something i wrote about firefox in france and there's nothing in the window when i click trackback.

http://anina.typepad.com/anina/2005/06/got_firefox.html

i wanted fashionistas to know what firefox is since no body knows in fashion industry....

best,
anina
www.anina.net