Asa Dotzler: Firefox and more

I think it's really premature to say anything about Safari because WebKit development will go on in the nex half year and I'm quite sure Apple is heading for a SVG enabled browser. So it might very well be that the main addition to the engine isn't there yet.

The heck with more features, is Safari 3 faster, more stable, less memory-hungry and more compatible on the web at large? That's what _I_ want to see in each release.

Changing the version number of an application has a psychological effect on its users to assume a change in the 'look and feel'. (i.e. Program is better -> therefore -> it must look better). Imagine if all the playstations (1 to 3) looked the same (externally)? This would have an overall negative effect on sales even though 3 is far better than 1. Therefore I believe it's important to change the 'look and feel' from one version to the next.

My personal recommendation would be to have several of the most popular 'Themes' pre-bundled into firefox (of course, there can always be a lite-version of the application with no themes for all the techies). You'll be suprised at the number of people (especially children) who opted for Media Player's green face.

Aza, Firefox is my preferred browser. That being said, I have to comment on the opera 9 statement you made in your article.

Opera 9 has still miles to go as a browser but, contrary to what you wrote, widgets (I've yet to met anyone using these ;) ) and bit torrent support is not why opera 9 got a major version change; as you probably know, opera 9 introduced its new core rendering engine (I think it was labeled Merlin) and made the browser much more usable with all major websites.

I'm not using Opera that much beyond testing web pages for compatibility but the feeling I had from the new version deserved a 8+1.

Hope I'll feel the same with Firefox 2.0.

Math

It's actually rather amusing, when you give Firefox 2 credit for SVG support, not two sentences after you didn't consider it a worthy bit of the Opera 8 to 9 move. Anyway, I'll chime in with the choir about how I'll love FF2 if it's on par with the Opera upgrade.

ff v.1.5 should have been labeled v.2 and the current v.2 labeled v.3. Then Moz would be more in sync with Apple and we would have a real reason to whine about the lack of improvements between versions :)

I have no opinion on if Opera8 to 9 was merited but this statement is underselling a great release by Opera.

Here's the change log, you be the judge if all this merits a number bump:
http://www.opera.com/docs/changelogs/windows/900/

btw. Merlin is not the new rendering engine. the engine is still the good old "Presto". Merlin was the working title of opera 9

In my opinion, the only new feature that's really noticable and perhaps even noteworthy in Firefox 2 is the theme overhaul. Not to say that Firefox 2 isn't an improvement, but I do acknowledge that Opera 9 was a far bigger upgrade. But I'm sure the download counter will benefit more from a full version bump than from, say, calling it Firefox 1.6, so I'm not complaining.

Yeah, Opera made some *huge* improvements to the rendering engine between 8 and 9. Granted, under-the-hood changes aren't as visible to the end user... until they start noticing things like, "Hey, I can write HTML mail in Yahoo now!"

IMO the rendering improvements alone warranted a version bump, but then I'm a web developer, so my priorities are a little different from the typical user.

Smoke, mirrors and troll-baiting, oh my.

You of course don't mention that many of the big features in Firefox 2 were already there in Firefox 1.5, the now-current major release.

And if you really think Opera 9 = Opera 8 + widgets + bittorrent, then you are just ignorant, sorry. To be blunt, Opera 9 won me over as my default browser because of its VASTLY improved SVG support - far exceeding Mozilla's. Mozilla won't have anything close to this level of support until mid-2007 when Firefox 3 happens - where will Opera be then?

There are still things I love about Firefox over Opera though: extensions, live bookmarks, some UI quirks.

I find it interesting that support for a web technology that's currently less popular than Netscape Layers from 1997 would be the one thing to win someone over to a new browser. I guess that goes to prove the point that none of us here are anything like typical users. Sigh.

- A

Asa, you know, when we start nit-picking it means we know we are wrong.

Firefox is where it is not because of bragging and nit-picking, but because it is innovative. Just let us keep our neurons working to make this 'is' not turn in a 'was', and maybe spend less time with probably not that useful (and also probably meaningless) comparison...

Remember that 90% of the users still use IE and that IE7 is comming - don't loose track of the target...

And why is it less popular?

Without the new bookmarks system, Firefox 2.0 does not seem to warrant a full number jump. Firefox 1.0 is not the latest stable Firefox branch; Firefox 1.5 is, so it is better to compare Firefox 2.0 to Firefox 1.5 and upon doing so, the list of changes does not look very impressive. Had Firefox 1.5 not been released, it would be another story, but because Firefox 1.5 was released, Firefox 2.0 should be called Firefox 1.10, due to the .5 increment established by Firefox 1.5, which I think should have been called Firefox 1.1, as now the most appropritae name for the next Firefox release is Firefox 1.10.

don't you think people will confuse the 1.10 version with 1.1 version? prepare yourself to answer lots of questions

Opera 9 has much more major features than bittorent and widgets, for example: content blocking, site preferences, tab preview, a lot of improvements improvements in the rendering engine.

>> I find it interesting that support for a web technology that's currently less popular than Netscape Layers from 1997 would be the one thing to win someone over to a new browser.
> And why is it less popular?

As soon as Netscape implemented layers they were spreading like a disease over the web. For SVG that hasn't happened, and the web developer acceptance seems less than <canvas>.

javascript is a blessing and desease and so is macromedia flash.. people need to learn how to write websites.. html is not f**king javascript mixed with flash and cookies galore. i use noscript to block both plugins yet webmasters excessively use them anyways.. only websites not blocked is youtube and google video, plus a few gaming sites, what does that tell you?? use pure html for your websites.. assholes.

> Had Firefox 1.5 not been released, it would be another story, but because Firefox 1.5 was released, Firefox 2.0 should be called Firefox 1.10, due to the .5 increment established by Firefox 1.5,

If FF 1.5 was released, FF 1.10 is not a larger number than 1.5. That's not how versioning works. one.ten is bigger than one.five, but 1.10 /= one.ten. 1.10 = 1.1, regardless of how many zeroes follow it. FF 1.10000000000000 is still 1.1 :D

By your logic, with a .5 increment, 1.5 SHOULD be numbered as 2.0 :D

I'm not sure if Safari's a good example for version bumping, as it's a commercial product. Comparing Firefox 2.0 with 1.0, that doesn't sound very convincing either. I believe that most anti-2.0 people do see a big change from 1.0 to the expected 2.0 -- that is not the point of contention, which is that since v1.5 has been released and if the changes in 1.5 were not sufficient for getting to 2.0, a bigger update is needed to justify the 2.0 tag than is currently planned.

Asa you know you are cheating with that list of Firefox features. What you say is absolutely true they are all the new features from Firefox 1 to 2 but you released features in 1.5 too. Apple doesn't release features inbetween version numbers as far as I am aware. So maybe you might like to think of this as Safari 2.5, but Apple just don't like non integer versioning. Otherwise you are comparing the feature upgrades from two big releases from Firefox and one big release from Safari.

As for 10.5 well I think you really have to remember that Apple have more in the bag. They certainly claimed they did at the keynote and I think everyone is hoping they have got improvements to the Finder. The features that they have unveiled are not unimpressive, but they dont seem life changing. It is really just Time Machine, and Spaces that are the big new ones. *Improvements* to everything else should be taken as read and they generally seem quite minor (although I do like the look of the to dos, and iChat is an exception to this rule). They do already have the best OS available so...

"note: apparently I'm not allowed to talk about features in 10.5 that Apple have yet to describe publicly so I've removed the paragraph that was here and it sort of blunts my overall post but I'd rather not delete it completely.."

They are well documented all over the rest of the web. I am not sure why you cant talk about them.

OT: Asa, can you give us some idea of what the Firefox Places development team has been up to for the last three months or so? There don't seem to be any significant recent checkins from any of the developers (including, most notably, Ben Goodger), and I doubt they're being paid to test desk chairs.

It may be that Google has its competitive reasons for sequestering Mozilla developers in its secretive "skunk works," but if they're actually working on Firefox, it seems reasonable that the community should have some idea of what its major contributors are working on.

"bittorrent and widgets seemed to be enough to bump Opera from 8 to 9"

I think you're overlooking the much improved Merlin rendering engine...

Hi,
I totally respect you - that you can't say much about 10.5 ...... but can you tell me if you can really run windows apps on 10.5 or it is just a rumor? Just a yes or no answer will do .......

Thanks