December 2007 Archives

I've been tossing around a "2007 year end" post for a few days but after reading Mitchell's post, it seemed better to just restate and link to her.

2008 is Mozilla's 10th anniversary year, and I'd like 2008 to be the year of Mozilla. I hope to see us celebrate what the web has become, what it can be, what Mozilla has done and Mozilla's future throughout the year. I don't have or know of specific plans yet, but that's what 2008 is for!

In the meantime, 2007 has been another astonishing year for Mozilla; let's be sure to pause and enjoy it for a moment.

Ignoring Firefox, arguably the most successful consumer-facing open source project ever, this opinion piece suggests that innovation doesn't happen in open source software.

I guess it's easier to make an argument if you simply ignore contrary proofs.

According to the Netscape blog, Netscape browser development is done.

Good riddance.

One of the primary reasons that Firefox exists is because a few Netscape employees working on the Mozilla project realized back in 2001 and 2002 that Netscape was incapable of, or more precisely, unwilling to, make a really great browser. The reason was pretty simple -- their motivation.

Netscape's only real revenue back then was from advertising at their web properties (netscape.com, Netscape webmail, etc.) and the big reason they were allowed by AOL to continue building a browser was to drive traffic to those web properties. As a matter of fact, the team making the browser at Netscape reported into the AOL-TW group that owned those web properties.

Here's a perfect example of how we knew Netscape just wasn't going to be able to make a great browser. Back when Mozilla was getting ready to ship Mozilla 1.0, the basis for Netscape 7, the Netscape browser team was required to remove the pop-up blocking feature that those same Netscape engineers had developed in Mozilla. The reason? Obviously because AOL and Netscape web properties generated lots of advertising revenue from pop-up advertising and they couldn't very well ship a product that closed off that revenue stream.

Well, as you can imagine, Mozilla 1.0 shipped with a pop-up blocker and Netscape 7.0 shipped without a pop-up blocker and the tech press destroyed Netscape because it was so transparent what had happened.

In a desperate attempt to counter the negative press, Netscape whipped up a super-fast follow-up version, Netscape 7.0.1. This new version included Mozilla's pop-up blocker -- but here's the funny (sad) part, they disabled it for AOL/TimeWarner/Netscape web sites.

But here's the real kicker. You're gonna love this one. Netscape goes on a bit PR push, "Get the new Netscape 7, Now With Pop-up Blocking!!" Users download and install the all new Netscape7, Now With Pop-up Blocking!! and on first launch it loads up the Netscape.com homepage, which, get ready for it, yep, you guessed correctly, launched pop-ups.

That was 2002, the year that Blake, Dave, Ben, and I started the project that would eventually become Firefox.

And it wasn't just the pop-up blocker. In desperate attempts to stay viable to AOL, Netscape began selling off real-estate in the browser chrome. Default Boookmarks were sold. Sidebars were sold. "Personal Toolbar" space was auctioned off to the extent that a default install of Netscape 7 offered no space for any user ("personal") bookmarks at all. Hell, they even sold a primary navigation button -- "print plus", a menu that hung off of the Print button that did nothing but send users to buy printer supplies. Toss in a big pile desktop shortcuts for every AOL product under the sun that came default with every Netscape install and you start to get a pretty clear picture.

They drained every penny they could out of the browser until finally giving up in 2003 and closing down browser development at Netscape. Future versions were outsourced efforts built on Mozilla and Microsoft technologies and offering pretty awful user experiences and even further tie-ins to AOL and AOL partner services. Combine that with Netscape and AOL web services tanking and you've got a pretty clear death spiral.

I couldn't end this rant without saying that I'm hugely thankful to a lot of amazing people from Netscape who made Mozilla happen back in 1997-8 and to all of the great engineers and other talent at Netscape that built much the platform we depend on today. Those people deserve a lot of credit for Mozilla's and Firefox's successes today.

Having said that, I'm glad that sad beast has finally been put down.

update: TechCrunch has more, though I don't buy that Tom Drapeau comment about no room for a browser in AOL's new ad-supported world. Hell, that's the only reason they've kept a browser around as long as they have -- because it was useful in driving traffic to their ad-supported world. The real truth is probably closer to "we weren't building a compelling enough product to be able use it to bring users to our ad-supported world and it doesn't make sense spending more on browser development than we recoup in increased ad revenue as a result of that browser work."

update2: yeah, I know they brought the browser back in-house but that clearly didn't come with increased commitment to making it a viable product.

update3: Ryan Naraine's got another reason to celebrate this news: security.

update4: A couple people have asked so I'll answer here. I was an AOL Netscape employee from 2000-2003. Before that I was a Mozilla volunteer for a year or so.

Harry McCracken's posted another update in his PC World stats series and it continues to show strong Firefox growth in 2007, accelerating over the previous two years!

This morning's backyard bird world: one spotted towhee, a gang of cedar waxwings, white-crowned sparrows, an annas hummingbird, robins, a couple of house wrens, a scrub jay, and a nuttalls woodpecker.

Mozilla Japan's video program was an amazing success. I often feel a bit divorced from what's going on there, but this program and the amazing videos that came out of it really helped me connect.

There's something transcendent about fan-created art.

A post by John Slater (pointing out posts from David Tenser, Fligtar, and Mike Morgan,) a press release from Melissa Shapiro, and nudge from Alix have convinced me that I should share something with you all about Ken Kovash.

I don't really have anything to share, but I figured this link-filled post was contribution enough.

Cool.

I wonder what "IE8 standards mode" means. Is that "IE8's 'standards mode'" or "IE8 standards mode"?

I just read that Google's IM client can now do automatic translation using the Google translation services. This sounds great. I don't do a lot of IMing, but I'd love to see this in the browser. If I could just surf the web and have all web pages that weren't in my preferred language be auto-translated into my preferred language on the fly that would be really cool. Maybe we should do that in Firefox. I'm sure there'd be a performance bottleneck, but there are probably service side and client tricks that could mitigate some of that. Even if it was a bit slower to deliver translated pages, that beats not being able to read them at all or the interruption of carrying the URL to the translation service manually.

What do you all think? Are we ready for sharing all of the worlds information, regardless of language? Would it be worth it in terms of performance and degraded content fidelity?

With the launch of Firefox 3 beta 2, we're seeing another spike in the volume of reporting on Firefox and Mozilla. It's during these times of high coverage that we really can use your help at For the Record. To start participating today, simply add fortherecord@mozilla.org to your email address-book and forward blog posts or articles about Mozilla projects or products that are a) factually inaccurate or misleading, b) relevant to Mozilla, its products, or the Open Web, but fail to mention Mozilla, or c) thoughtful stories that are factually accurate and favorable, or at least fair about Firefox. Please include a short note explaining why you've forwarded the story.

It sounds like both the recent Safari and IE security updates are causing user headaches. It sounds like IE is either failing to start or failing to connect to the Internet while Safari is crashing frequently for some people. How big of a problem? I've no idea, but big enough to get some press.

Web browsers are some of the most complex pieces of software that a consumer will come into contact with. Even the smallest of changes can have a widespread impact. At Mozilla, we are fortunate to have the best engineers in the world, an increasingly robust test framework, great QA people and processes, and tens of thousands of people following every change in the code that we make. This lets us turn around security updates in less than a week in most cases. But, as we're seeing with Safari and IE, and as we saw with Firefox 2.0.0.10, sometimes flaws creep in or are exposed by changes you make when trying to keep users secure.

After a short email back and forth, I wanted to post an apology to Håkon. It sounds like he was trying to say something quite different from the way he was quoted and I should have given him the benefit of the doubt before posting.

I read Håkon's quote as suggesting that Firefox wasn't really that successful, except maybe with Open Source people, and that Firefox couldn't be counted on to continue its successes.

What Håkon was trying to say, I understand, was that with Microsoft's control of the operating system, it's terribly difficult for all of the non-IE browsers to compete and that Firefox, even with the successes it's seen, has had a much more difficult time than it would have if Microsoft was not abusing it's monopoly in operating systems.

That I can completely agree with. Sorry for the misunderstanding and my somewhat snide response, Håkon.

"'Firefox has attracted a lot of users, especially in the open-source world, but it has not been climbing consistently,' said Håkon Wium Lie, Opera's chief technology officer."

He's right, of course. In that nothing in that sentence is an out right lie.

We have attracted a lot of users, about 130 million users worldwide.

We have attracted a lot of users in the "open-source world" -- Firefox is the dominant browser on the Linux desktop and there's no one contesting that Firefox very probably has a higher percentage of those users who care about open source than those users who don't.

And yes, we're gaining users somewhat inconsistently across time and geography. Our growth varies from day to day and there's some pretty strong seasonal effects, and despite doubling our user base in the last year, and growing to about 20% of the global web browser market, we' ve only managed to capture 30% of the European market. That's not terribly consistent.

update: It seems I've misunderstood his comments.

A while back I commented on a project that looked really awesome but that I wasn't sure would happen. Well, I just read over at starkravingfinkle that they've got working code.

That's awesome. Good work guys!

David just blogged this, but I wanted to add some emphasis to what he said. Firefox has taken off because of people like you -- fans of Firefox who reached out to others and helped them find, download, install, and use Firefox. Over 80% of Firefox users tell us they got Firefox through a friend, family member, or colleague. This really is a people-powered movement and you all are making it happen.

If you live in San Francisco (or the area,) and you want to help us keep the fire burning bright, head over to David's blog and get the deets on this once in a lifetime event :-)

I'm a little behind on news the last 24 hours, but as I'm catching up, I see there's quite a bit of commentary on the topic of Opera's call for an EC investigation of Microsoft for bundling IE and not supporting Web standards.

I may have missed some articles because I'm only pulling from the sources that mention Firefox or Mozilla where my real interests lie. But what's most surprising to me is the hostility towards Opera and this complaint.

Here are a few of the articles that I've read today:

BetaNews - Out of options, Opera files EU antitrust against Microsoft "Opera has struggled against Microsoft's Internet Explorer, only managing a little over a half percent worldwide market share compared to IE's 77% in November, according to NetApplications. The browser is also falling further behind fellow alternative browser Firefox which now has 16 percent of the market, so filing an antitrust complaint seems like a last ditch effort."

Mashable - Opera To EU: Boo-Hoo, Microsoft Is Evil "The question is: why now? I reckon it's just free publicity, but maybe the folks at Opera know something I don't."

Inside Edge - Opera starts throwing rocks at Microsoft "To be honest it all sounds more than a little desperate to me. Some might point out that Firefox has managed to compete rather well with Microsoft, with market share of around 25% in some regions, something Opera has never got close to. And Firefox does take the standards compliant route. So what is Opera doing wrong that prevents it from being a power player in the web browser world and forces it to adopt a position of throwing rocks instead? Could it be, quite simply, that it just isn't as good a browser as either Firefox or Internet Explorer?"

The Guardian - Opera makes anti-trust complaint against IE, rekindling the spirit of 1998"If you enjoyed the last century's IE anti-trust cases in the US, Opera could help you relive the experience in Europe.... Still, you have to wonder whose fault it is when Opera can only get a market share of 0.65%"

Wired - Opera Software Tattles on Microsoft to European Commission "It's not clear, though, that we really need Opera to speak on our behalf. Even if Microsoft is a big bully, why does Mozilla Firefox continue to steal share away from Microsoft if it's if it's so difficult for other software makers to break into the browser market?"

The Machinist - Opera's misguided antitrust charges against Microsoft "Opera's latest innovation -- an antitrust charge -- leaves me skeptical."

Ars Technica - Opera tries to force IE into W3C compliance with EU complaint; Firefox's success may work against it "The state of competition in the browser market may actually work against Opera's complaint, however. Since its 1.0 release in November 2004, Firefox has gone from a blip on the browser radar to double-digit market share...Europe, in particular, has become something of a stronghold for Firefox. As of July 2007, Firefox has surpassed 40 percent market share in three EU member nations...The open-source browser is also well above the 30 percent mark in other EU nations....Firefox has managed its surge in popularity without the benefit of bundling agreements (and there's no reason why Opera can't negotiate agreements of its own) and in the same competitive environment that Opera has faced...."

Tech.Blorg - New Browser War: Opera sues Microsoft "I don't see how Microsoft can ship an OS without a browser so getting them to unpack IE would be hard to justify. It's the onus on Opera, really, to get people to be more aware of the existence of other browsers besides IE."

BloggingStocks - Microsoft may suffer from European Opera performance "Users of Microsoft Windows may be surprised to learn that they have a third alternative for an internet browser beyond Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. The Opera browser has been around since 1994, a product of the Norwegian telecom industry, which claims to be an equal to the big two in speed and security. However, its use has been minuscule, around 1% by some estimates."

TechDirt - Antitrust Law Is Supposed To Protect Consumers, Not Competitors "I don't know much about European antitrust law, but it's a little hard to take Opera's policy argument seriously. Mozilla has reported that Firefox's market share is 28 percent in Europe, a number that has been growing steadily for most of this decade...As far as I can see, there's nothing stopping consumers who are dissatisfied with Internet Explorer from downloading Firefox, Safari, or Opera. Indeed, a quarter of European Internet users have done just that. Perhaps the money Opera is currently sending on lawyers would be better spent on figuring out why Mozilla has been so much more successful than Opera at attracting new users."

DownloadSquad - Opera files complaint against Microsoft with European Commission "Opera wants Microsoft to either unbundle IE and Windows or to bundle alternative web browsers as well as Internet Explorer. As for the supporting standards bit, are you serious? "

By-Expression - Losing Respect for Opera "For a long time I have been an Opera user. I have licensed PAID versions back to either Opera 3 or Opera 4 all the way through the current version 9 but today I lost respect for the Opera company...What I want to do is set-up my computer with the applications I use and nothing else. I do NOT want more crap pre-installed on my computer, keep your legislative hands off!"

SiliconValley.com - Opera vs. Microsoft: Didn't the fat lady already sing this one? "And, hey, if the Firefox folks can grab 16 percent of the browser share with a good product and a vibrant community, then what's Opera's real problem?"

ZdNet's All About Microsoft - Why Opera's antitrust complaint against Microsoft is a bad idea "With Firefox, Mozilla has proved you don't need government intervention to wrest a substantial percentage of the browser market from Microsoft."

ValleyWag - Opera's drama-queen antitrust lawsuit "Opera Software, maker of a feature-laden but forgotten Web browser, is complaining to the European Commission about Microsoft's Internet Explorer....This smells like a publicity stunt meant to remind people Opera still exists."

Tech Law Prof Blog - Opera Files Antitrust Complaint with the EU Over IE Bundling "This is honestly a case of failed marketers seeking refuge in the apron of regulators. It's hard to see a problem when Firefox has a market share somewhere in the mid 20s. Where were they three years ago? Somewhere outside of Oslo even the elk are laughing, and Norway's neighbors to the east are Borking it up."

The Inquirer - Microsoft and Opera are both right "Opera hasn't made it as a rival browser in the way that Firefox or even Safari has, which makes its claims sound a bit shrill and late in the day."

Matt Assay's The Open Road - Opera, Microsoft, and competition: A plea for an end to the whining " Opera failed to mention that other browsers like Firefox are doing just fine. Instead, it wants to turn its failure to be relevant into a case of victimhood. My heart bleeds for Opera.... Could it be that Opera emasculated its own efforts long ago by trying to sell a browser into a market that had decided that browsers are free?....Opera doesn't need the EC to wring a few Euros out of Microsoft for it. It should focus on competing for customers, not on regulating its way into relevance."

Over the last 7 or 8 years, I've had the opportunity to speak to quite a few audiences all across the globe. A major component of many of those audiences has been college students and so I'm not at all surprised to read of this Eduventures study which says that among college students, the divide between those who prefer IE and those who prefer Firefox has narrowed to zero.

The study finds that 45% of college students prefer IE, 45% prefer Firefox, 5% prefer Safari, and lesser known alternative browsers make up the remainder.

A few months ago I purchased a Logitech QuickCam Orbit AF and while the form factor is a bit odd, the mechanics, the software (RightLight™ 2, specifically) and especially the optics are amazing. The Zeiss lens combined with the RightLight&tm;2 software kicks serious ass and puts out the best video of any webcam I've ever seen. It's just phenomenal and I think most of the great picture comes from the great glass in this thing.

Where the Orbit really shines are in odd lighting scenarios, something quite common to desktop broadcasting. The combination of the amazing lens and the RightLight™2 (pdf) software that does spot metering, dynamic frame rate/exposure adjustments, removes noise by refreshing static content less frequently, and other tricks to dramatically improve the quality of the video, automatically, make this camera and software bundle a really compelling package.

The Orbit has three minor downsides. The auto-focus is a tad slow, the form factor is pretty odd and not very versatile, and when sitting atop its extension pole, it can get a bit shaky. I can live with the auto-focus slowness (we are talking about a $100 camera here :-) but the form factor and the shakyness when extended make getting a direct and level face shot difficult. Other than that, I couldn't be happier -- especially with the video quality.

Looking for a form factor that would sit atop my LCD screen (the Orbit sits on the desk and comes with a 12" extension that doesn't lift it high enough for a straight-on face shot,) and having had such a great experience with the Orbit, I opted to get the Logitech QuickCam UltraVision SE, a slightly lower resolution camera with a fixed-focus glass (not Zeiss) lens. The camera is the right form factor for putting atop my screen and giving a nearly straight on face shot.

Unfortunately, the optics on this model are just piss poor compared to the Orbit. Even the quite amazing RightLight™2 software wasn't able to make the picture quality anywhere close to that of the Orbit. And I'm not so much concerned about the missing pixels. I was fully aware of that when I got the camera. It's not the resolution, but the quality of the picture. It was so poor that I had to check if maybe there was some piece of protective plastic film covering the glass.

Looking back over the Logitech site and a few webcam reviews, I think I probably should have gotten the QuickCam Pro 9000 which comes with Zeiss glass and a 2MP sensor - possibly even the exact same lens, AF, and sensor setup as the Orbit. I'm going to see about ordering that one and will let you know how it goes.

If you've got suggestions for a ~$100 webcam that's going to impress me as much as the QuickCam Orbit, please let me know in the comments

I used to follow the browser metrics from a couple dozen popular blogs that have public Site Meter stats. After a while, I realized that the average of those blogs was trending right along with boingboing.net's browser breakdown so I stopped looking at Site Meter. Well, boingboing seems to have dropped their stats page so I went back to Site Meter to look over the stats for the couple dozen or so blogs I used to track and something looked really wrong.

• Gizmodo - 1,793,849 average daily visits
  • Firefox 1.x - 44.4%
  • Firefox 2.x - 2.5%
• N4G - 354,568 average daily visits
  • Firefox 1.x - 31.0%
  • Firefox 2.x - (null)
• Daily Kos - 476,164 average daily visits
  • Firefox 1.x - 36.4%
  • Firefox 2.x - 1.8%
• Gawker - 255,243 average daily visits
  • Firefox 1.x - 26.6%
  • Firefox 2.x - 2.9%
• Eschaton - 79,393 average daily visits
  • Firefox 1.x - 46.0%
  • Firefox 2.x - 1.0%
• Lifehacker - 571,772 average daily visits
  • Firefox 1.x - 71.0%
  • Firefox 2.x - 1.0%
• Instapundit - 218,936 average daily visits
  • Firefox 1.x - 40.0%
  • Firefox 2.x - (null)
• SportsBlogs Nation - 135,368 average daily visits
  • Firefox 1.x - 35.3%
  • Firefox 2.x - 1.4%

The stats are clearly backwards. There's just no way that Firefox 2.x is in the 1-3% range and Firefox 1.x is in the 30-70% range.

I've heard about this kind of problem with other stats packages but it's surprising to see SiteMeter, the service used by so many top blogs, getting something like browser share so completely wrong. I sure hope none of those blogs made browser support (or any other) decisions based on this data.

Mitchell's report from India.

OK. justin.tv is falling down a lot this afternoon and I don't have time to fight with it or wait it out. I'll try again next week and if that doesn't work, I'm investigating Mogulus (we use it for Air Mozilla Live) as a justin.tv replacement. Their video is superior but their chat is pretty busted. We'll see.

Dean, over at the IEBlog, introduces the world to the name of the next IE release, "Internet Explorer 8" and not much else.

He closes with "please don't mistake silence for inaction."

I don't think people were mistaking silence for inaction, Dean, and talking down to them like that does your efforts no good service.

You all shipped IE 7 more than a year ago and presumably wrapped up major development on it 3 to 6 months before that, so I've got no doubt you all have been working on IE 8 for at least a year and a half. Your IE blog audience can figure that out too.

It's not the lack of action that people are concerned about. It's the lack of communication.

What your silence for the last 18 months of IE 8 development tells the Web developers of the world that you don't give a shit what they've got to say about it.

If that's they way Microsoft is going to continue doing business, then so be it, but don't pretend that it's something it isn't. Don't treat the people at your blog like children. They won't appreciate that.

"mushroom farm of the troglodytes" by Flickr user djimison and used under a CC license.

Matt Assay asks over at The Open Road if open source is capable of spreading FUD and if so, then is there a double standard at work. This is my quick response.

Matt, there's nothing wrong with making people afraid, uncertain, and doubtful of proprietary companies doing bad things. But since open source organizations never do bad things, it's definitely wrong when FUD is directed at them.

Just kidding :-)

But there's more than a grain of truth in what I wrote. Convincing people to be afraid of real dangers is different than causing fear, uncertainty, and doubt where no real danger exists.

For example, when telling people that condoms can protect against the very real dangers of STDs, it's a reasonable time to spread some fear, uncertainty, and doubt. I'd even argue that sometimes, and with some audiences, it's reasonable to be a bit melodramatic when describing the danger in order to make sure the message is heard.

Looked at from another direction, FUD really requires that the spreading party have some authority and/or that the receiving party lacks information or the ability to digest that information. If that power imbalance is abused, it's almost always a bad thing.

A major difference, I believe, between most open source efforts and some of the commonly cited proprietary efforts, is that open source model tends to be employed by people or organizations who want to educate and distribute information and power while many proprietary efforts seek more control of information and power. As I see it, that makes open source efforts less likely to engage in the abusive use of FUD.

Another common differentiator, and a variation on the dissemination vs. control of power (information, money, access, etc.) comment above, is that many open source efforts have put in place institutional mechanisms that make the it less likely that bad FUD can be used. These controls range from governance, which is often distributed across enough different kinds of people to prevent the coordinated tactics abusive FUD often requires, to the project transparency that makes those in glass houses less likely to throw stones.

The opposite is often the case in proprietary organizations where a top-down hierarchy can enforce or coordinate message cohesion that makes FUD attacks most effective. Similarly, the opacity of most proprietary processes or organizations makes it much easier to accuse others of the kinds of wrongdoing, ulterior motives, or mal-intent that the proprietary organization may itself be engaged in.

Finally, I believe that a lot comes down to motivation. When institutional mechanisms require that a company optimize for, say, shareholder profitability, using FUD as a weapon is probably going to be more likely than with organizations that are motivated by a public-benefit mission.

It is worth noting, just to make sure no one writes this off as the rantings of some open source fanatic, I'm not an open source fanatic. I'm a pragmatist working for a public-benefit organization delivering public goods to the world. I believe that open source is an extremely valuable tool for what we're doing -- and that we probably couldn't do it any other way, but there are certainly other people working for other kinds of organizations who can effectively and ethically operate with proprietary processes. That is, to state the obvious, not all closed companies are bad or spread FUD in abusive ways and open source efforts are not necessarily immune from spreading FUD themselves.

I think the more interesting question is "when, if ever, is it a good thing to mislead" and as I suggested at the beginning of this post, I believe there are times when melodramatic explanations, over-simplifications, and even exaggerations are a useful tool. Maybe I'll post more on that later.

My wife alerted me that my Wikipedia entry was nominated for deletion because I'm not notable enough. Interested in this -- not the concern over my entry, but rather the idea that there was a process for nominating articles for deletion, I decided to read up a bit more.

After more than two hours of reading the discussions on specific articles nominated for deletion, I'm determined to never do that again. It's just too much fun and I could really lose a lot of hours to it.

I'll leave you with these gems and a promise to never go back there.

"This is no less important than any article on wikipedia about Klingons."

"Note that this is not an article about the phrase the realm of possibility, which could conceivably be verifiable, but instead an essay about the realm of possibility itself."

"This is notable because this is a special, groundbreaking, and important episode in the history of power rangers."

"Even if she wasn't murdered, she was still somewhat of a popular porn star."

"Preschools have the same right to have a Wikipedia article as elementary schools, junior high schools, high schools, and post-secondary schools."

and my favorite:

"Within the Zork universe, the 'White House' is quite notable"

Cool.

New H.264/HE-AAC options

Flash Player 9 Update 3 (9.0.115.0) includes H.264 video and High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio codec support that opens up a broad ecosystem and selection of standards-based video — up to HD quality — that developers can leverage in their applications. Supporting a subset of MPEG-4 Part 12 (container) and Part 14 (H.264), including baseline, main and high profiles, Flash Player can play back existing MP4, M4A, MOV, MP4V, 3GP and 3G2 content.

Press Release.

According to Scoop, Firefox comes out on top of the best software category in "biggest ever tech survey undertaken in Australia".

According to Net Applications, a web survey company that's consistently reported the lowest shares for Firefox of the major stats companies, has Firefox gaining more than 1% in November while IE lost just about 1% the same month. This is the first time that NA has reported Firefox at over 16%.

According to the study, there's nothing much moving elsewhere in browsers.

When someone at Mozilla sneezes, there's someone somewhere writing about it. From Twitter to the New York Times and everything in between, Mozilla attracts an amazing volume of coverage.

This volume is both good and bad. We don't have the marketing and pr budgets of the software mega-companies so the press buzz we get organically is wonderful. The downside is that because of the sheer volume of coverage, it's difficult to follow it all and make sure that Mozilla is being represented fairly.

What Mozilla lacks in marketing and pr budget, however, it more than makes up in the enthusiastic and capable community of participants who have already brought Firefox to 130 million users and made Mozilla a household name.

For the Record (FTR) is a community-driven public relations and press response program that will harness the energy and knowledge of the Mozilla community to 1) catalog all of the online coverage of the Mozilla Project, 2) develop a sustainable team of spokespeople who feel empowered to respond to online coverage, and 3) build a collection of talking points and responses to frequently asked questions.

To start participating today, simply add fortherecord@mozilla.org to your email addressbook and forward blog posts or articles about Mozilla projects or products that are a) factually inaccurate or misleading, b) relevant to Mozilla, its products, or the Open Web, but fail to mention Mozilla, or c) thoughtful stories that are factually accurate and favorable, or at least fair about Firefox. Please include a short note explaining why you've forwarded the story.

The For the Record team, our marketing team, PR representatives, or various spokespeople will take it from there.

Want to join the For the Record team, and help us further develop the program and write a set of FAQs and other materials that will make it easier for in the Mozilla community to better tell the Mozilla story and respond effectively when needed? Well, that's easy too. Simply subscribe to the mailing list. Please note, unless you're really interested analyzing the flow of Mozilla news and helping to distill relevant content into documentation, this probably isn't the list for you. If, on the other hand, that sound like great fun, we'd love to have you involved.

The spec and a million or three blog posts all rclearly state (rather than explain) that in CSS, padding cannot be negative. Browser implementations seem to agree with that so indeed negative padding is not allowed.

My question is "why not?" Why shouldn't I be able to set negative padding. What "doesn't make sense" about being able to, for example, move an element's border in closer to or even overlapping the text it contains?

And given that browsers won't let me do this with something simple like negative padding, how can I simulate text underline with a bottom border that actually intersects text descenders instead of sitting below them?

Or, alternatively, why can't I, or how can I, set text underlines to be a different color or weight from the text itself.

I think I hate the Web.

update: I really don't understand how people can think there's no value in negative padding. Why shouldn't I be able to bring an elements border in far enough to overlap the element's content? Why shouldn't my bottom and top borders be able to cross the ascenders and descenders of the text contained within?