The Inside Track on Firefox Development.

« Why the Mozilla Browser Sucks | Main | The Start of Something New »

January 26, 2003

Blood On My Hands

Last night I published a lengthy, rambling piece describing what I saw to be wrong with Mozilla today, from horrendous UI offenses to the more minor. The more observant (and bonsai-equipped) among you may say, "but Ben, you wrote some of those!" For the record, I want to state that in no way did I want to absolve responsibility for my part played in those things. If so, why would I mention them? My memory isn't that short. But, for the interested, from the list that I rattled off here are the things I have been involved with, and the extent of my involvement:

  • "When Mozilla starts, open..." Fonts and Colours and Cache control. - During my early days as preferences Front End owner, I revamped the preferences dialog several times, which included touching and updating panels.
  • "Languages and Content Packs" - much of the logistical work regarding bundling and packaging of these components was done by me, (although let the record also show, against my wishes, you can check the debate out for yourself in the relevant bug, the number of which I do not have on hand)
  • Search tab opening/Sidebar Search Preference. I'm not going to go into this in detail but let's just say I was there as this one played out.
  • Form Manager - I have in the past devoted numerous hours to FE development for this broken form-fill model, not all of it has been checked in however.
  • Mousewheel preferences - I designed this panel originally and stubbornly defended it for a while.
  • I remember doing something on "System" but I can't remember what.

As you can see, at least some of the problems or excess was created by me, and if not created, then certainly opportunities to clean up were missed in various rewrites. I am as deeply entangled in this mess as anyone, and I would like to play a part in fixing it, if the opportunity presents itself. If that weren't the case, I really would have "given up", and gone to use Internet Explorer.

Posted by ben at January 26, 2003 12:25 PM

Comments

HEATHEN. You are banished to New Zealand! Never to touch prefs again!


er, wait.

Posted by: Jason at January 26, 2003 2:58 PM

So... how about we beat some sense into drivers/staff on this issue and stop running the damn thing as a democracy? You think there's any chance of that?

Posted by: Boris at January 27, 2003 9:26 AM

©1997-2006 Ben Goodger. All Rights Reserved.
Opinions expressed here are my own, and not those of any organization that I may be affiliated with.
Reload icon is © Stephen Horlander;
Firefox logo is by Jon Hicks, and is a trademark of The Mozilla Foundation.
GetFirefox buttons are from rakaz

eXTReMe Tracker