April 2011 Archives

Some of the trees we spent time under today at our little log home in the woods:

Photo by Flickr user unifiedphoto and used under a Creative Commons license.

Coast Redwoods (also called California Redwoods) Sequoia sempervirens.

We have around two hundred of these beauties on our little plot, including about 60 fairly large ones and a couple of great big giant ones. It's the dominant tree in the area.

The ones on our land are mostly new growth trees that I think came up in the late 19th century after heavy logging and fire swept the area. There are a few that are pretty massive for that era and might date from well before then, having escaped the clear-cutting. Our big one is about 250 feet tall and has a diameter of over 7 feet. It sits just above the creek and is surrounded by Tanoaks and Bigleaf Maples.

Our little bit of woods here borders the Portola Redwood State Park and there you can find thousands of redwoods including some old growth trees that are ridiculously large.

Photo by Flickr user Phil Petersen and used under a Creative Commons license.

Coast Douglas-firs (also called doug-firs) Pseudotsuga menziesii.

We've got about 50 of these scattered among the Redwoods, including a few hefty ones. Doug-firs are common around Redwoods and are often the largest trees around. Several big ones around our cabin come right up to the tops of the Redwoods, towering around 200 feet above our heads. The biggest has a diameter of roughly 5 feet.

Douglas-firs can been seen all over the Santa Cruz Mountains but the foothills on the Western side have some of the largest ones I've ever seen. The drive from our place to the coast offers views of a dozen or so that must be at least 7 feet in diameter.

In the next installment, I'll share some about our Tanoaks, Bigleaf Maples, California Bay Laurels, and Coast and Canyon Live Oaks.

There have been several articles written about Firefox's Do Not Track feature that are basically asserting it's a failure because "Less than 1% of Firefox Users Use 'Do Not Track'".

I have one very simple response to that:

What do you think that percentage would become if Firefox alerted a person when she was being tracked with something like, "The site, http://foopy.com, is tracking you. Would you like to tell sites to stop tracking you?"

Tracking is invisible to most people so blocking tracking isn't high on a person's list of decisions when online. Make it visible and I'll bet those numbers change in a hurry.

As many of you know, Firefox 4 just crossed the 100,000,000 download mark. I thought this would be a nice time to re-visit the Firefox 4 vs Internet Explorer 9 early usage share numbers.

As you can see, Firefox 4 is already well above the 8% mark while IE 9, is right around 3%. (I'm sure you can also see the point in the graph where Microsoft started enabling Windows Updates for IE 9)

If all goes according to plan, we'll be letting Firefox 3.5 and 3.6 users know about Firefox 4 with that "advertised" or "prompted" update in about 10 days. I'll bet we see a nice uptick in the Firefox 4 trend when we actually start to communicate its availability to users of older Firefox versions.

Firefox 5, which is currently available on the Aurora channel, has received some nice polish that streamlines the primary interface in really nice but subtle ways. Have a look at the comparison:

(For a side by side comparison, rather than stacked, click here)

As you can see, the buttons and textfields are much crisper. The corner radius has been sharpened up a bit and the button and textfield shadows have been tightened up and pulled into the border line.

The overall effect might seem subtle but after using it for a while and then going back to Firefox 4, you can really "feel" the difference.

update: some of you don't see the difference and thanks to Dão's excellent suggestion, I think I've got a way to make it more clear. Have a look at this nifty APNG image :-)

Does that make it more clear? The buttons are more square (the rounded corners are less rounded) and they no longer have the separate drop shadow. The textfield no longer has the shadow inside the top border nor the highlight below the bottom border. The overall look is more streamlined and modern without becoming totally flat and uninteresting.

Today, Yahoo made a horrible awful no good decision. Read all about it here.

Until this change, Yahoo had an industry leading data retention stance. They only held on to your search data for 90 days. But now, with no reasonable explanation (just some meaningless blather about aligning with the industry norms) they've decided they need to hold onto your data for 18 months.

Yahoo search is back-ended by Microsoft's Bing technologies and the only feature they still had going for them was their strong privacy policy.

Now I have no use for them and while I have no direct say in the matter, I will advocate for their removal from Firefox.

Oh, and Anne Toth, Yahoo Chief Trust Officer (really?!) your explanation of this change is total horse shit garbage. You had one thing going for you with Yahoo Search and that was a world-beating privacy policy. You tossed that away without any legitimate justification and with it you tossed out any trust you had earned.

This is a step in the wrong direction and I predict it will only hasten your demise. Yahoo, you should strongly re-consider this change.

update: I've been asked elsewhere whether I have any authority to actually pull Yahoo from Firefox. The answer is no. I'm not directly involved in those kinds of product decisions.

But I'll tell you this, I'm going to talk with all the people who are and I'm going to do my damnedest to make the case that Yahoo no longer ads any value for Firefox or its users. They don't offer a better technology. (It's basically just Bing.) They don't offer a better user experience. (That's been going downhill for years.) And now they don't offer better privacy for users. (With this change, they went from best to worst.)

I can see no compelling reason to keep Yahoo as a default Firefox search provider and I don't think Mozilla should continue using its considerable market power to send traffic to a declining service from a failing and flailing company like Yahoo.

Photo by Flickr user Kanaka Menehune and used under a Creative Commons license.

I'm sure you've already read the news that Google is the only modern Web browser that has yet to sign on to the Do Not Track feature that is or will be included with Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Opera. It seems pretty obvious to me that the Chrome team is bowing to pressure from Google's advertising business and that's a real shame. I had hoped they'd demonstrate a bit more independence than that.

But, it shouldn't be a surprise to me. Back in the early days of Mozilla, some of us (including some of the Chrome team who were early Netscape/Mozilla contributors) realized that the AOL/Netscape browser team was in a similar position.

We were getting ready to ship Mozilla 1.0 with an awesome pop-up blocker to kill those annoying advertising pop-ups that were destroying the usability of the Web. The Netscape browser team was going to be releasing Netscape 7.0 which was basically Mozilla 1.0 with a Netscape theme and a couple of proprietary Netscape features (AIM integration, AOL radio, partner bookmarks, etc.)

The Netscape browser team, however, wasn't as independent as most of us would have preferred (including most of the engineers on that team.) You see, the browser team actually reported in to the AOL/Netscape Web Properties team -- the folks responsible for AOL/Netscape's vast empire of websites (oh, and Time-Warner sites too). Those sites made all of their money from advertising and a big chunk of it from annoying pop-up advertising.

So, when the Netscape browser team shipped Netscape 7, they did something really unfortunate. They disabled the pop-up blocker. They did extra work to remove a feature that some of those same people had just built for Mozilla 1.0. They weren't horrible people, but they really had no choice because their paymasters over at AOL/Netscape Web Properties demanded it.

The result was that Netscape 7 got crushed in the press. The press theme around that release was "Don't bother with the crippled Netscape 7 when you can get almost everything it has plus a great pop-up blocker by downloading Mozilla 1.0."

The AOL/Netscape browser team and their Web Properties masters heard that message loud and clear and so they rushed out a quick follow-up, Netscape 7.0.1 "now with pop-up blocking". Only problem was that the greedy bastards at AOL and Netscape Web Properties couldn't get even this right and so when they launched 7.0.1 they shipped an exclusion list with the pop-up blocker that allowed all of the Netscape/AOL/Time-Warner site pop-ups to continue unblocked.

So, a Netscape user would grab the exciting new Netscape 7.0.1 "now with pop-up blocking" and after install the browser would launch and load the default homepage, www.netscape.com and, yep, you guessed it, infuriating pop-ups!

It was then that some of us realized that Netscape, because they were beholden to the Web Properties team -- AOL's web advertising revenue stream, would never be able to do the right thing for users. They were incapable because it conflicted with AOL/Netscape's need to generate advertising revenue.

OK, that's kind of a long story, but I can't help but think we're seeing the same kind of thing playing out here with Chrome and Do Not Track. This is doubly a shame because Chrome's lead, a former lead for Firefox, was there with us at AOL/Netscape fighting just this kind of stupidity. He was one of the good guys. Then again, he and I and others failed to convince Netscape that doing right by the users was more important than ad revenue. I suspect the same thing happened at Google. I'm sure he at least tried.

What a shame.

Photo by Flickr user TrevinC and used under a Creative Commons license.

It's been a little over a year since I made the switch to Bing and today I'm very happy with the change.

I switched to Bing because they have a much better privacy policy than Google and not because I thought they had better search results.

I'll admit that I still found myself going back to Google every once in a while for the first few months. But three things changed in 16 months since I made the choice to get out of Google and I rarely ever need them any more.

The first is that Bing results are much better than they were in late 2009 and early 2010. When I first made the switch, I'd have to resort to Google for one or two searches out of every ten. I just wasn't getting the results I needed every time with Bing. Today, I think I head over to Google about one out of every 50 or so searches. I almost always find what I'm after on the first page of Bing results. They really have improved the size of their index and the ranking of results in the last year.

The second thing that's changed is that Google results seem to have fallen off of a cliff in that same time. Now when I do head over to Google because I'm not getting great results from Bing, I often find Google's results are worse -- and not just a little worse, but overrun with spam and completely useless worse. Now, more often than not, when I don't get a great result from Bing, go to Blekko. If I see the slightest bit spammy results from Bing, Google is not the answer, Blekko is.

The third thing that's changed is that I've learned Bing. I can't be a lot clearer on what that means, except to say that without realizing it, or understanding precisely how, I'd learned to craft my queries to optimize for how Google works. The same thinking about queries didn't map perfectly to Bing but after using it for a while, I just started getting better results and I think it's because I learned, without quite realizing it, how to talk to Bing in a way that Bing understood better. Like I said, I can't be a lot clearer, but I do think there's something to this. So, if you don't get great results from Bing on the first day, do think about using it for a bit longer. I think you'll adjust quickly and your results will improve.

OK, so you're convinced? Or you're willing to at least give it a try? Here's how:

In Firefox 4, simply click the Google logo in the search box. That will give you a pop-up that offers a number of other search services. Third on that list is Bing. Click that and you're ready to search with Bing. Here is a nifty animation showing how easy it is.

See, simple, wasn't it. If you make the switch, or even just try, please let me know how it goes. I'm very interested. If you haven't made the switch or even tried, I'm interested in hearing about that as well.

Firefox 4 (the US version) shipped with Google, Yahoo, Bing, Amazon, Ebay, and Wikipedia. That's three general search services, two e-commerce search services, and one reference search service.

I think that's decent search coverage but there's one newer and very important category missing, IMO, and that's people search. I search for people at LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter regularly, but none of those are available by default in Firefox's built-in search list.

LinkedIn and Twitter let me search for people and give useful results without having an account with the service. Facebook doesn't (that I know of) so I'd probably hold off on adding Facebook search to Firefox until they improved that. But LinkedIn and Twitter are pretty useful and cover slightly different areas of people search (similar to how Amazon and Ebay cover different areas of e-commerce) so I'd be all for adding them to Firefox's default search bar.

What do you all think? Does a people search service belong in Firefox? If so, which one(s) for which countries?

Adobe and Microsoft make some of the best tools in the business for creating applications and content. I have been hoping for some time that the two of them would move decisively into modern Web technologies like HTML 5 audio and video, CSS3, SVG, Canvas, WebGL, JavaScript, etc. The signals that they will are increasing.

While we have emphasized the role of HTML5 as the foundation of the recently released Internet Explorer 9 and have shown an unprecedented commitment to being leaders in HTML5 browsers, we have probably not emphasized enough the tooling for HTML5. We're going to emphasize that much more going forward as the clarity of feedback and the emphasis our customers want us to place on these tools for the professional toolbox is clear.

and

"Wallaby" is the codename for an experimental technology that converts the artwork and animation contained in Adobe® Flash® Professional (FLA) files into HTML. This allows you to reuse and extend the reach of your content to devices that do not support the Flash runtimes. Once these files are converted to HTML, you can edit them with an HTML editing tool, such as Adobe Dreamweaver®, or by hand if desired.

Let's hope this trend continues. It's slower than I'd like (will a newcomer challenge them on this new front?) but it is movement.

Unfortunately, Net Applications decided to stop providing their daily tracking for Firefox 4 and IE 9 so this chart going forward will just be StatCounter numbers. Without further ado, here are the facts.

Yeah, Firefox is stomping IE and no amount Microsoft spinning can change that.