I just wanted to take a minute to give a big thanks to a few developers who have, in the last year, made my internet experience a dramatically better. First, a huge thanks to Ben Goodger for all his work on Firefox and to Scott MacGregor for Thunderbird. I honestly believe that these are now the best web browser and the best e-mail client on the planet.
One of the things that really makes these apps shine, in my opinion, is that they don't try to do everything -- to satisfy every oddball user on the face of the planet. They focus on being clean and fast with a very solid featureset that would satisfy most users. Niche features are left to extensions.
I, being one of those oddball users, am hooked on a few extensions so I also have to thank Henrik Gemal for Linky, Myk Melez for Forumzilla and now Chris Neale for URIid.
I've used a lot of extensions, but Linky and Forumzilla are in a different class from all the others. They are permanent and I use them as integral parts of Firefox and Thunderbird. Without the efforts of Henrik and Myk, my internet experience wouldn't be nearly as enjoyable.
This evening I spent a couple of hours re-writing my browser and mail (for Forumzilla) userContent.css files to take advantage of the new URIid extension and even though I've only had this for a little while, I can already tell that this is going to be a permanent addition (at least until bug 238099 is fixed). URIid gives me the web browsing satisfaction that other features like pop-up blocking and junk-mail controls do and I think this functionality is something that I just won't be able to do without.
So a huge thanks to Ben, Scott, Myk, Henrik, and Chris. You all rock!
