February 2012 Archives

A number of people have been asking how we intend to build Firefox for the Windows 8 "Metro" environment, and whether or not it would be a separate product from Firefox for Windows 8 "Classic" environment. Here's where we're going with this:

Windows 8 Consumer Preview introduces a new programming paradigm called Metro style. Metro style apps offer a clean, polished user experience that push app experiences to the forefront, and immerse the user in a full screen environment that's tailored to the user's hardware and context. Windows 8 Consumer Preview also continues to offer desktop app experiences as found in previous versions of Windows. In Windows 8 Consumer Preview, the browser that the user sets as the "default" for handling web pages and associated protocols may be designed to access both the Metro style experience as well as the traditional desktop experience. This type of browser is called a "Metro style enabled desktop browser". This guide describes how to create such a browser. The information in this document applies specifically to browsers that will be made available to end-users as the default viewer for the http:// protocol and associated web pages and protocols on the x86/64 architecture.

That's from Microsoft's Developing a Metro style enabled desktop browser [DOC] documentation. The document goes on to describe a "Metro style enabled desktop browser" as:

A desktop browser that chooses to participate in the new Metro style experience when the user has expressed preference for the browser to do so. Such a browser can provide HTML5 rendering for webpages and service HTTP / HTTPS requests. By definition, such a browser has full access to Win32 APIs for rendering HTML5, including the ability to use multiple background processes, JIT compiling, and other distinctly browser-related functionality (like background downloading of files).

So what else does this document say and what will we be building? First, it describes a development path that should give us system-level parity with IE 10. IE 10 is not a traditional Metro-style app. It is actually sort of a hybrid program that bridges both the Classic and Metro environments and is built using both the WinRT and win32 APIs. This is something that the browser vendors discovered last year and it's been our assumption, validated by the document above, that us third-party browsers would be afforded the same capabilities.

Second, we should be able to build a single product, that when installed into the Classic environment via traditional means -- a download from www.mozilla.org, will be able to become both the default browser in the Classic environment and in the new Metro environment. We'll, of course, have a Metro-specific front-end that fits in with the new environment, but we will not have to deploy two completely different browsers.

Third, if we do our job, Firefox on Windows 8 Metro should be every bit as capable and integrated with the system as Internet Explorer.

Microsoft had an awful big head start with IE 10 but now that we know what's possible, we hope to close that gap. There are still a lot of questions to answer (what language will we use for the Metro front end? can we integrate web apps with Windows contracts? will any of this transfer to the ARM version of Windows, etc.) and quite a bit of work ahead of us, but we've already started our proof of concept work and we're committed to bringing a kick-ass Firefox experience to Windows 8 Metro.

If you're a programmer or a designer interested in helping build the next generation of Windows Firefox, drop me a line at asa@mozilla.org.

Remember Firefox Flicks? It was nearly seven years ago that Chris Beard and I launched that program. Well, we're doing it again. Take a look at the new teaser trailer and then get involved.

This blog has been hosted at mozillaZine for most of its life and before that I was a regular mozillaZine-er. I'm attached to this place for nostalgic reasons but I'm about to move on because of a change in the MT install. With a recent update, the "Accept Comments" checkbox changed from being a "don't accept any more comments, but leave the ones that are there as they are" to a "hide existing comments and don't accept new ones." That seems OK at first but as it turns out the overwhelming majority of the spam that hits my comments are on older posts that no longer get new relevant comments and so I'd save myself a whole bunch of spam culling and moderation if I could just close older posts to new comments. Right now, doing that hides all of the existing comments. Is there some way around that? Is there a change in prefs somewhere or a change I can make to my templates to preserve existing comments while disabling new ones? If I can't solve this, I'll have to move this blog to my personal domain and hosting where I can manage it with WordPress more effectively. Any help is appreciated.

Rather than squabbling and pointing figures at competitors saying "but they do it", tech giants should see Mozilla as a role model. It didn't wait until public pressure mounted and the government forced its hand. Mozilla stepped up and heeded the FTC's request for a way to give control back to the citizens of the web. Maybe we need some sort of Presidential Medal of Internet Freedom to honor and encourage these kinds of contributions.

A decade ago, we pioneered tabbed browsing, integrated search, effective pop-up blocking, browser extensions, and a number of other features that are now commonplace in all browsers. We set an example, users flocked to Firefox, and other vendors were forced to respond. Their responses have made the Web a better place for everyone, even the billion or so users who aren't running Firefox. This is success in Mozilla's view. For a year, we've been working on Do Not Track and now that other vendors, including many of the largest websites in the world, are getting on board, the Web will become a better place for everyone, not just the the 500 million people using Firefox.

Over the years I've received a lot of questions like "Are you worried now that Microsoft has re-assembled the IE team and plans on shipping an IE 7(/8/9/10) that will certainly crush Firefox?" or "Does the rise of Chrome scare you"? and my answer has always been no. These are Mozilla successes. Choice, innovation, competition, these are fundamental aspects of Mozilla's non-profit mission. We make the Web better not by winning all of the users or being number one in browsing or search or apps or social but by setting an example and showing users and the industry what's possible. We do that as a public-benefit organization so the world knows that we are honest brokers and absolutely do not have profit or control as a motive. We ship those possibilities in products like Firefox and if we do a good job, market forces will drive our mission goals across the entire Internet products and services landscape.

So I decided to see what VLC 2.0 has to offer.

Guess what that big red button *doesn't* do.

C'mon people, it's not that difficult.

I'm not going to apologize for complaining about the terrible, awful, horrible, no good, very bad experience I had when I decided to give LibreOffice a try. It was abysmal and improving that experience should be a top priority for that team if they care about expanding LibreOffice beyond the few Linux users who get it pre-installed. But, I do think I could have done more to propose fixes rather than just rant about the brokenness of the experience so I've done just that.

I read through almost all of the LibreOffice bugs relating to the website, the installer, and the java dependencies and I've filed new bugs where appropriate and added comments to existing bugs as well. If you'd like to follow along, here are the bug reports.

Bug 44585 - "Download" button should auto-detect OS and language and initiate download of the latest release version
Bug 46269 - remove icons and older versions from download page, offer direct links for all OSes and languages
Bug 46267 - provide a lightweight stub installer with app selection
Bug 46268 - re-order LibreOffice Program Group on Windows
Bug 31354 - Message that JRE is missing and required pops up multiple times on first run

I read an article on the Web somewhere that there was a new LibreOffice version. It's been several years since I gave OpenOffice a try and I've been interested to see what OpenOffice had evolved into, so I thought, "Hey, maybe they've improved some. I'll install it and see." Here is what happened.

I visited LibreOffice.org and, nice! -- a big green download button.

The big green download button has been well tested and is widely recognized so we're off to a good start.

I clicked the big green button expecting a download to start. I was disappointed. Instead of triggering a download, I'm dumped on one of the worst download pages I've ever encountered, a page titled LibreOffice Productivity Suite Download » LibreOffice which looks like this.

After clicking the thing that looked like a link right under the big Download label about three times,

I realized that was not a link at all, just cleverly designed to impersonate a link and piss me off. I scanned down the page looking for another big green download button. No such luck. Scanning further down the page I see some additional potentially fake links but these ones have some file size information attached so maybe they're what I'm looking for.

But WTF, there are 4 of them. Which one do I want and what's the difference between the "I" version and the "checkmark" version. Maybe the first one is documentation -- an "I" for information? The second one has a green checkmark and that's sort of like a green download button. Let me mouse over it and see if it gives me more information in a tooltip or something. Nope, nothing. OK, I'll click it and see what happens. Nothing.

So now I'm annoyed and I go back up to the top of the page and start reading the actual content. I just wanted to download LibreOffice, but if I must read a page of documentation before I'm allowed to do that, so be it. OK. Now I see, the "I" icon is just stupid, and meaningless. Actually, it's worse than that, it's misleading. It is supposed to signal that this is the newest version of LibreOffice while the "checkmark" icon is the previous version of LibreOffice. What the icons are supposed to add to the experience, I have no idea, but having read the text, I now understand that I want to go back down the page and find the "I" icon version of the download.

No problem. Or, so I thought. WTH! Which of the two links do I want?

I've been around software for a while, so even though the amazing people at LibreOffice didn't bother to label these downloads in any meaningful way, I think if I read their crazy filenames I might decipher what I need to know here here. The first one says LibO 3.5.0 Win x86 install multi.msi. "LibO". OK, that's problem some project shorthand for LibreOffice. "3.5.0". That sounds like the version I remember reading about in the article that kicked this whole thing off. "Win". I'm on Windows, that's probably a good sign. "x86". I guess so. "install" hey, now we're getting somewhere. "multi.msi". Hrm. What does multi mean. Is this one part of several? Could that be what the second link is about? Or is that because it's going to install multiple programs? OpenOffice was certainly a group of separate programs. And then the "msi" bit. I know that's for corporate deployments or something so I hope I don't need some kind of enterprise software manager to make it go. I'm gonna just go ahead and assume that's like an .exe and it'll just work.

But what's this other file. "LibO 3.5.0 Win x86 helppack en-US.msi". Do I need "helppack"? Is that just help documentation? Is it a "helper" pack with additional features? Why is it a separate download instead of an option in the primary download. Well, I'll go ahead and download it and if I need it later I'll have it on disk ready to install.

So, downloading .... downloading .... Is 200MB really necessary? I suppose there's a lot in there. I really only want the Word and Excel equivalents. Maybe they could have offered a small download that let me pick components and then only fetch the ones I need? OK. Download complete. Let's see what the installer looks like. (Nice, it tells me in at least three places that what I'm seeing is the Installation Wizard -- just in case that wasn't obvious.)

Interesting. So I'm installing something called "The Document Foundation"? What is "The Document Foundation"? Oh, I see. A quick look back at the website makes things clear. The company name is "LibreOffice" and the product name is "The Document Foundation".

OK. "Next". "Next". "Next" and I'm installing! But now I realize that I am indeed installing LibreOffice 3.5, not The Document Foundation. I know this because the installer panel is helpfully telling me in at least 4 different places.

Installed! I finished the installer.... Hmmm .... Nothing's happening. Did it fail? Do I have to launch it? I'll try that. I'll just go to the Start Menu...

Uhh. What's "Base"? Is that the shared shell thing that Office has where you can pick which kind of document you want to create? Or is that some kind of shared library? What I'm really looking for are the Word or Excel equivalents. Lemme check "All Programs" in the Start menu and see what's there. Ahh, there's the program group. Great.

There's that "Base" again. Ahh. Yes. The last two look promising. Writer is probably the Word equivalent. What's the generic "LibreOffice" item at the end there. Could that be the... Nevermind. I'll play it safe and start up Writer.

ARGH!!!!

No. I won't. Eff you, LibreOffice. Seriously. After all this, you're going to tell me I need to locate and install (on my own) some other piece of Java software because you couldn't bother make it a part of your already awful download and install process. Are you kidding me?

Maybe I'll wait a few years more and try again. Probably not.

I've updated the Firefox strategy and roadmap document with our plans for the Firefox Desktop in 2012. It's going to be an amazing year with lots of exciting projects and products from Mozilla.

I've been with the Mozilla project for almost 14 years and I say with confidence that if we exit 2012 having executed on this plan, Firefox and the other major Mozilla initiatives will have have more impact than in any prior year of the Mozilla project.

If you're new to the project, take a look at the work ahead of us and if it interests you, let me or any of the other product leads know and we'll help you plug in. If you're a long-time contributor, I encourage you to keep these goals in the front of your mind and your work queue.

2012 is going to be a critical year for Mozilla and for the Open Web. Execution matters more than ever and there's no team I'd rather be working with than Mozilla's global community of contributors.

John Battelle has a very thoughtful and thought provoking article on the future of the Web that outlines a plan for ensuring that the Internet continues to be a commons and that it not devolve into a collection of walled gardens.

At Mozilla, we're working to build that "open" and "independent" Web platform and commons. We have a lot more to do to make the open Web the first choice for users and application developers -- especially for the mobile environment, but I have no doubt that we can do it and I believe we can do it *this year*.

Photo by Flickr user I dream of Nici, used under a creative commons license

Mozilla will be publishing a series of 2012 strategy and roadmap documents in the next few days that will describe how we get from where we are now to an experience for users and developers that can rival and in many cases beat, the walled gardens and proprietary mobile platforms. Stay tuned.

I know this isn't news, but it makes me happy every time I see it (Yes, I'm a web geek.) Those of you who use Bing or have looked at it more than once know that they put beautiful background images on their search page. Those images have little highlighted nodes with information and trivia about the image. But every once in a while Bing puts a video background in, like they did a few days ago with this one:

And what I love about that is that they serve WebM video to Firefox. A few years ago, this would have been Flash and today it's an open format that I can easily hotlink right here in my blog :D (You can click the video to view it full-sized.)

Hot on the heels of rumors of a Windows Phone NDK comes this nugget from The Verge

Synergy between the phone and the PC / tablet is going to be a big one. Not only will Windows Phone 8 share the same Metro style user interface as Windows 8 for tablets and PCs, but developers can reuse the same code for both operating systems. Additionally, the Zune Desktop is being scrapped in favor of a sync relationship with a companion app and the Xbox companion app will have a partner client on both Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. Similar to Windows 8, seamless SkyDrive integration will also play a big role with cloud syncing. And then there's NFC: in addition to providing that aforementioned "wallet experience" it will allow for tap-to-share capabilities between hardware-supported phones, tablets, and PCs.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I thought we'd start to see this kind of convergence that was more than the skin deep (Metro Style) bits we've seen so far. I hope it continues.

Why all the interest in Windows Phone you ask? Well, I'm hoping that Microsoft can pull off the pivot they're entering with an entirely new and fresh version of Windows. This is the biggest experience overhaul since Windows 95, in my opinion, and I want it to be successful because I don't want to look up in a few years and see that the only two viable operating systems are a locked down iOS and Android. I also think Metro is the most compelling new computer experience to arrive since Mac OS X and that kind of innovation isn't rewarded often enough in this industry.

update: And I was right, it seems, in speculating that Windows Phone would adopt the NT kernel. Paul Thurrot has more.

From Danny Sullivan at Marketing Land comes news of a surprisingly candid Microsoft explanation of why services on the Web give you things for free.

Google is in the process of making some unpopular changes to some of their most popular products. Those changes, cloaked in language like "transparency," "simplicity" and "consistency," are really about one thing: making it easier for Google to connect the dots between everything you search, send, say or stream while using one of their services.

But, the way they're doing it is making it harder for you to maintain control of your personal information. Why are they so interested in doing this that they would risk this kind of backlash? One logical reason: Every data point they collect and connect to you increases how valuable you are to an advertiser.

To be clear, there's nothing inherently wrong with wanting to improve the quality of an advertising product. But, that effort needs to be balanced with continuing to meet the needs and interests of users. Every business finds its own balance and attracts users who share those priorities. Google's new changes have upset that balance, with users' priorities being de-prioritized. Thats why people are concerned and looking for alternatives.

If these changes rub you the wrong way, please consider using our portfolio of award-winning products and services....

Google likes to say that alternatives are just a click away but that's not really true. It takes a while to extricate yourself from Google's services and to learn and train new services. I took me a while to get used to Bing but once I learned how to talk to Bing (think about it, you've been learning what Google search wants to hear for years) I started getting really good results. I never used Gmail for anything but a throw-away account but I'm still stuck using their office apps because my colleagues do. Anyway, my plan was never to become invisible to Google, just to try to keep them from knowing everything about me. They still surveil me with their ad networks and their analytics probes and their various youtube and maps embeds and whatnot, but connecting that web-wide surveillance up to my daily interests is now a bit harder for them because I've distributed myself across several service providers instead of just one.