The Inside Track on Firefox Development.

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March 10, 2005

Firefox Alive and Kicking :-P

There's been some talk lately about the future of Firefox. We believe Firefox has a bright future, and we are all working hard towards our short and long term goals.

First off, we are executing on the Firefox 1.1 Plan. This is an important incremental update to Firefox 1.0 that includes major enhancements to the Gecko platform we are built on, as well as a few application level enhancements.

Secondly, we are developing a plan for Firefox 2.0, which will include many feature enhancements and generally make browsing faster and easier than before. Coupled with the releases on the way to 2.0 will be significant platform enhancements that make it easier for people to build their applications on Gecko.

The way the Firefox browser releases generally go is this - we come up with a loose plan of features we want in a particular release, assign engineers to the various tasks, and go. Firefox releases are generally content driven, not time-cycle driven. When we set a date we try to hit it, but we try to avoid a churn since we know our customers want meaningful updates.

To help spread the load more evenly, I'm pleased to announce that Mike Connor will be taking over management of the downloading front end, Benjamin Smedberg will be assisting with the Extension Manager, and Brian Ryner will be helping Chase, I and others with the client aspects of the Software Update system. If you are interested in helping with these and other areas please let us know - either by helping us plan for the future at the Mozilla Development Wiki or by filing and patching bugs.

This will allow me to spend more time managing the releases: driving bugs, reviewing code and helping people come up to speed. In the coming year I predict I will return to some long neglected areas of Mozilla code - Bookmarks, History, Search, and be pitching in with XULRunner where I can be valuable, as well as continuing to direct UI and product content for Firefox.

Posted by ben at March 10, 2005 1:48 PM

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