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April 26, 2006

Firefox 2 Is Cool

A lot of people read my previous post and came to a very reasonable conclusion: "If you take Places out of Firefox 2, shouldn't it be called Firefox 1.6?"

I don't agree that Places was the one and only thing that sold Firefox 2 though. I took a look through the Firefox 2 Requirements page to look at some of the other stuff that's going on. Reading that document, I think I can see now why people are down in the dumps about no-places Firefox 2. I don't think that document necessarily does the best possible job of capturing the excitement I have about some of the Firefox 2 features we're pursuing.

For the past week or so, I've been toting around a printout of another document, which I wrote because I wanted to convey some of the vision I have of the Firefox 2 product as a whole - a more holistic view as it were.

Safer, Faster, Better

If you take a look at the black buttons stacked in the right column of this page, you'll see that one of them reads "Safer, Faster, Better." I don't knowwho came up with that one but it's a good tag line. It has a certain cadence about it. People have attached lots of these to Firefox in the past - "Take Back the Web" was the one I came up with, there's "Rediscover the Web", the FirefoxFlicks project has yielded a few good ones too - I like "Web For All". But "Safer, Faster, Better" is not just a tag line, it can also map into a set of themes for product development.

So, taking a look at the Requirements page, I attempted to do that. My document wasn't a comprehensive collection of everything on that page, I was focused more on the things immediately visible to most users. I guess my problem with the Requirements page has always been its very engineering/technical focus. The result of this is that the priority of items tend to reflect how difficult something is to implement, or where it lies in the development cycle, not necessarily the impact on the user. What I ended up with I guess is a sort of "Shadow PRD" that reflects what I personally thought was cool about Firefox 2, and what I wanted to get out of it.

A copy of the document is here.
Some notes:

• Assume the scratched out section for "Retracing Your Steps" will be part of a future release.
• The priorities shown are my opinion, and relate to potential impact on the user.
• The document does not represent all of the work being done, just a readily marketable subset.

All in all, I think there's easily enough here to justify a "2" designation. That's just my opinion though. I also think whole numbers are probably easier for the general populace to understand than decimals.

Firefox has never been about date driven development (within reason). The changes with Places should not be seen as a change in this sentiment. What we're about is high quality software development with real advantages to
users, and I think that with the updated plan we're still on a trajectory that supports and encourages that, perhaps more firmly now than before.

And that's it from today's "Ben waits for the tinderboxen to clear" report.

Posted by ben at April 26, 2006 2:34 PM

Comments

My point in the last post is really that things need to be more consistant with versioning. It's not just for marketing, but for IT professional evaluating the product for deployment, and developers.

I could easily buy that 1.5 was mislabled and should have been 2.0, and this upcoming release should be 2.5.

But I don't see how a years worth of Gecko changes, among many improvements are +0.5, but mainly UI improvements (not to discredit their value) are +1.0.

I just don't like the slippery slope that leaves.

IMHO there should be a consistant scheme used, so by looking at the version numbers you clearly understand the scope of the changes included.

It's objective... but I hope some documentation on a policy for version numbering is eventually developed.

Posted by: Robert Accettura at April 26, 2006 6:17 PM

i just hope the visual refresh is breathtaking...

Posted by: Jeff Schiller at April 26, 2006 6:36 PM

Jeff: how could it not be? I'm pretty confident the individuals working on it really know what they are doing.

Posted by: Robert Accettura at April 26, 2006 6:47 PM

OK, I like what I'm reading in your doc, Ben. I think I'll take back my vote for 1.6 and once again christen this thing as 2.0... provided that the following really make this release cycle:

1) the search enhancements
2) MUCH improved feed handling
3) protection from phishing

Those three items will help you to "keep us with the Gateses" (never thought I'd be saying that) in the minds of average web users. It looks like IE7 will handle all of that quite well and Firefox should too.

The update tweaks and spell-check will be nice add-ons and a better default theme would help too (not me, I use Brushed). With Places on hold, I'd say this all sounds very doable. Let's rock and roll! Wheeeee!!!

Posted by: Patrick Lee at April 26, 2006 7:30 PM

I was hoping to see session restore in Fx 2.0 :(

Posted by: gandalf at April 26, 2006 7:32 PM

So, are you saying Firefox will start rendering pages more accurately? I'm sorry but even 1.502 has serious problems in that regard. Just to give you a quick throw-away example, check out www.mobilitydirect.com. The content of that page isn't the point, its layout is. That's just one of many merchant pages that don't render correctly in Firefox. Even CNN's video portal has issues with Firefox.

No doubt the problem is in the HTML itself, but that's irrelevant. If the 800-pound ape, IE, gets those pages right, you must also. The security troubles of IE are vastly overstated. They do exist, but the reality is that any browser is only as secure as the dummy driving it. If you head into the back alleys of the Internet, you better expect to be attacked.

Firefox? Bleh. I just uninstalled 1.5x for the fourth time after giving it two weeks to awe me.

Posted by: Scott Royall at April 26, 2006 7:37 PM

Thanks, that was actually pretty helpful. I admit that I'm not as excited about the release as I was, but having tried a BonEcho nightly a day or two ago, I 100% believe it was the right decision. Places was plain broken, and I totally support giving the crew more time on it.

Posted by: Nick Fagerlund at April 26, 2006 8:02 PM

I was hoping to see session restore in Fx 2.0 :(

It is, see "Comfort & Convenience".

Places was plain broken [...]

Well, this was somewhat intentional. It was the first alpha and focued on the places backend.

Posted by: Dao at April 26, 2006 9:49 PM

Well I think you are going to have to explain this a lot in the next few months. I looked again at the list of features and no matter how you look at it there are going to be very few visible end user improvements. A few buttons may be moved. So the theme gets a little brush up but that's it.

I get the impression that the 2.0 label has been decided on already and that this is just a matter of not wanting to revert on that decision, no matter what. It's a bit like Vista in that sense :-).

You're saying that you are not doing date driven releases but this is exactly it. You're going to do a 2.0 in Q3 with several intermediate milestones planned. 2.0 is going to be whatever is ready then. If it were a feature driven release you'd have planned lists of features and would be moving the deadlines or inserting milestones instead of simply moving the features to the next release. I'm not saying one approach is better than the other. Historically, mozilla development has always been deadline driven (with never a clear/specific vision beyond the next upcoming milestones or even how many are needed). In fact this is how most OSS projects are planned and executed. Most of the interesting features in firefox 1.0 were invented and implemented within the scope of maybe 1 or 2 milestones (e.g. the RSS feeds). The current mode of operation prevents such features from being implemented because they conflict with the deadline driven approach.

Posted by: jilles van gurp at April 27, 2006 12:05 AM

Miranda-IM was "Smaller, Better, Faster". Now it's "Smaller, Faster, Easier", but it's still looking like yours new tag line.

Posted by: Andrew at April 27, 2006 12:20 AM

The only thing listed that excites me is spell-checking, and I half-expect that to be nixed due to it putting the Firefox download for Windows over 5MB. The "improved close-reselection heuristics" are not an improvement for me or most of the people I talk to on IRC -- the general feeling is that Firefox now selects a random tab when you close a tab. The feed stuff sounds potentially cool, but so far I've only seen the dirty backend parts that let Gecko ignore mime types and XML well-formedness errors. It sounds like crash recovery will give users a choice between "recover all of my tabs" (which is likely to crash again) and "start fresh", neither of which is particularly useful compared to, say, bookmarking the tabs that were open. The blacklist-based "fraud protection" thing will just give users a false expectation of protection while eating up bandwidth and causing privacy concerns.

Posted by: Jesse Ruderman at April 27, 2006 1:16 AM

I don't understand this.

1. "Firefox has never been about date driven development"

2. Places was a major part of Firefox 2.0

3. Places isn't ready

so....

4. As Firefox isn't about date-driven devlopment, we can wait till it is ready. That's easy then.

If we release versions that don't look different enough from the predecessor people will stop upgrading and lose interest. This is bad. This is what MS Office does.

Posted by: Tom Page at April 27, 2006 2:09 AM

Tom: Fx 3.0 will base on different Gecko version. And Gecko 1.9 will be a much better environment for Places than Gecko 1.8 is.

Posted by: gandalf at April 27, 2006 3:08 AM

People (and the press) are going to start making very side by side comparisions between FF and IE7. IE7's UI is pretty ugly at the moment, but it is greatly simplified. The menu is gone and there's a lot less buttons.

What I'm hoping for with FF2 is that an end-user can compare IE7 and FF2, and *see* that FF2 is the better choice, under the hood stuff won't facilitate that completley. Also Extensions will need to be a major focus point for FF2 as this is a main advantage FF has now that IE7 has tabs.

Posted by: Kroc Camen at April 27, 2006 5:14 AM

What I'm missing from the list is improved KDE desktop integration. Currently in Firefox 1.5 it is quite bad. Practically non-existant. Firefox doesn't even offer you KDE applications when it asks you with which application to open a file you download. Is anything being done to correct this?

Posted by: Jure Repinc at April 27, 2006 6:09 AM

Feature driven development doesn't mean features can't still slip to the next release. If it looks like most of the features are going to be ready for a certain date, but there is one feature that is going to take much longer what should you do? Have all those finished features sitting around unused while you wait for the late feature to be finished, or release what you have and give the developers of the late feature more time?

Just because it is not date driven, it doesn't mean dates are irrelivent.

Posted by: Ian Thomas at April 27, 2006 7:49 AM

I'd really like to believe that I misread the requirements page; that I could not see through the 'engineering' and that I therefore missed the real potential.

Nope.

You can spin it the way you want Ben but the improvements to search really just bring it up to par with the other key Fx UI/functionality elements.

There's always great debate about the need for a Go button as techies are so familiar with the command line use of Type, hit Enter but newbies like point and click. The choice was made to include Go by default but seems everyone just forgot about Search? Talk about one foot on either side of the fence. Now it will at least be consistent but don't try and tell me adding a button to the UI is genuine innovation. This would have taken all of five seconds to code. The same goes for resizing and a larger box by default.

Will we still have the gross inconsistency of the weirdo search drop down icon menu? I remember the claim that adding a teeny weeny down arrow was a UI improvement. Turn it up! Just make it a normal drop-down box! Every freaking drop down or scroll element on every platform is on the right hand side. Do users a favour and conform to this consistency.

Identity Fraud Protection? What's this a fancy name for the anti-phishing code that Google is/was supplying?

When are you *PAID* MoFoCo devs going to get innovative? Stop waxing the work of volunteer extension developers and pretending you've innovated and produced a new release:

- Session restore
- Spell checker
- Tab improvements

I give up, MoFoCo innovation via Firefox is dead. Does Blake even touch Fx code anymore? Who else drove early development and where, oh where, have all the heroes gone?

[oh yeah, and who gives a toss about versioning numbers? Really they are not the ultimage issue. That issue is whether the next round of features planned for a release is worthwhile]

Posted by: pd at April 27, 2006 7:59 AM

All that concerns me is that the release has to have a compelling enough feature set that users want to upgrade. Don't forget that most likely all of their extensions will stop working during the initial upgrade week or two. People learned that with 1.0 and 1.5, and are going to hesitate changing unless they see some feature that's "worth" upgrading for.

Those who want phishing protection probably already have Google's Extension installed. The search engine UI problems are also already provided in extensions. Spellcheck is already provided in an extension. Session saving is already provided via extension. There's no compelling reason for these people to upgrade (OpenSearch? You think that will sell it to them? New icons? A new RSS feed setup?). The only reason they will upgrade is that auto-update will probably do it without asking.

Then they'll come flooding in to us "users in the know" wanting explanations for why their extensions broke, how its any better than what they had before, or why they get some new error. Put the release off (or keep the relase number down at least) until there really is something compelling about it. Something innovative. Something that actually earns the name "Take back the web". No offense to the upgrades that are being put forth. They're things that needed to be done. Things that were done wrong before, and needed to be fixed, but none of them really push the web forward.

Posted by: Doug at April 27, 2006 8:19 AM

I don't see anything about fixing dataloss bugs. On a priority scale from P1 to P4, I'd place that at P0.

Posted by: AnotherGuest. at April 27, 2006 12:35 PM

Thats a pretty out of order comment about Add-ons, I mean there's hundreds upon hundreds of Add-ons, of course tens of them cover some of the basic things like tabs, session saving and more. Its really not on or remotely right to say thats anything like copying, its a community, Firefox can take from any dev of Fx or Add-ons in the community, any browser, anything, anywhere. Being different for the sake of it brings bad results. Opera and IE are even willing to agree where things in other browsers are good for the user in various ways. I applaud IE in some ways for copying much of Firefox, and innovating on the interface, and yes I'd encourage innovation like this on the Fx interface aswell, some for 2.0 now even. Make better use of space, remove un-necessary items (join stop/reload and things).

Again I too think Fx 2.0 should remain 2.0, its a good decision to hold back on Places and I think things should be simplified, reconsidered. The list of things to do is stacking up however and we hope rather than constantly being pushed back, Fx is going to really ahead of IE and the wider competition with:

*Basic UI improvements like to back/forward buttons dropdown list (should show as seperate button when hovering over it)
*Better space using in the UI (IE7 is a new level of simplicity, Fx needs to begin to be simpler at least)
*Bookmarks toolbar off by default as wastes space, when turned on is at top line of UI
*Ability to remove search engines with the UI
*Fix memory leak/hogging issues once and for all
*Auto updating Add-ons, fully, regularly
*Phishing protection
*Places - more simplified/seamless

Perhaps some smaller things/improvements can be done even to some extent for 2.0 now even.

Posted by: Kris Silver at April 27, 2006 1:16 PM

My major concern is that the spellchecker will probably be American English, and spell words wrong. Honestly - labour, mum, titbit.
As one Kiwi to another, Ben - promise me I won't have to be inflicted with that cruel language?

Posted by: Greg at April 27, 2006 2:16 PM

So make a en-GB dictionary, license it under the LGPL and ship it with that distribution ;-)

Posted by: Ben at April 27, 2006 4:20 PM

I congratulate Google for giving the public a choice between browsers. Thank goodness for firefox browser!

http://firefoxdownload.ws

Posted by: Larry David at April 27, 2006 6:41 PM

I am firmly of the opinion that every release of Firefox should have a higher version number than the previous release; anything else would just be too confusing. Beyond that, I don't care if you call the next release 1.6, 2.0, or (Ubuntu style) 6.10 as long as the software itself is better than 1.5.

Posted by: Jonah at April 27, 2006 8:31 PM

One feature I'd like to see added to the file type handling in Firefox is the ability to easily set Firefox itself as the application to handle a file type.

Example: I sometimes (rarely but it doeshappen) get a popup asking me what file should open a plain text document. Well.. Firefox can open that and I would prefer not to load an external program when the browser itself can handle it, butt here is no option to "display in browser". This happens sometimes with other file types, too, like JPEGs.

Posted by: Don Eitner at April 27, 2006 9:50 PM

"just a readily marketable subset"

I don't see that there's much in the subset that's going to appeal to that many people. Spellcheck is good, but it still needs work and is on the P2 list.

The search improvements will be good, as will the feed improvements and tab overflow stuff, but I find it hard to see that those will excite either existing geek users (who have been able to do those things anyway, although it's been awkward) or new users that are being introduced to those features.

Having said all that, I don't see any harm in calling this release 2.0, and the next one 3.0. Calling the last one 1.5 rather than 2.0 has rather confused things, IMHO - that should have been 2.0, and this could have been 2.1 (or 2.5 or whatever)

Posted by: Michael Lefevre at April 28, 2006 3:51 AM

Disappointing. Surely FX 2.0 can wait until Places is ready?

If I was involved with Moz I would be pushing for better RSS/History/Bookmarks integration and passing Acid2 as the basis for the next release with disregard for everything else. Perhaps updating the theme would also fit.

Like it or not, we live in a Web 2.0 world, why not have a browser that reflects that?

Posted by: Jeremy at April 28, 2006 4:12 AM

Just call it 2. 1.5 should have been 2 (and 2 should have been 3). Whole numbers are easier. Who cares about the abstract perception of developers for the amount of improvement. Every release with new features (rather than a maintenance release) should just up it by 1.

Posted by: Tom at April 28, 2006 7:06 AM

Jeremy: "If I was involved with Moz I would be pushing for better RSS/History/Bookmarks integration and passing Acid2 as the basis for the next release with disregard for everything else."

You seem to be under the impression that all the people working on Firefox are willing and able to work on any part of the front or back end, which isn't the case at all. Acid2 is being worked on (I understand there are special builds that actually pass now), but all that stuff, like the places history/bookmarks stuff, isn't going to be ready for months (around 9 more of them, last I read).

What's wrong with doing a release now with the stuff that's ready now, and then another release with the rest of the stuff later?

Posted by: Michael Lefevre at April 28, 2006 1:49 PM

I agree that 1.5 should have been 2.0, and 2.0 should have been 2.5, as it's more in synch with the Gecko revs.

Perhaps if we leave 2.0 and 3.0 as they are, then the next Gecko 1.9(.1?) release should be 3.5 (or 3.1 if you plan more than one), and the Gecko 2.0 (woo!) based release should be 4.0, and so on.

Posted by: Ian at April 29, 2006 7:09 AM

"Disappointing. Surely FX 2.0 can wait until Places is ready?"

Absolutely not, we need something to counter IE7 with.

Something about real developers shipping? ;)

Posted by: Ian at April 29, 2006 7:10 AM

If the only reason 2.0 is going out is to counter IE7, you might at well just release a FF1.5 Special Edition... maybe change the default theme if it makes you feel good. The people's extensions won't break, and they can feel like they're up to date.

Posted by: Doug at April 29, 2006 8:14 AM

The items under User Experience (tab UI, session saver, spell checker) seem interesting enough to bump the version number by 0.5, provided that at least all the P2 are shipped. Oh, and please don't forget us Canadian neighbours who spell slightly differently from the Americans. ;)

For other ones related to search, feeds, and default theme/UI, I don't really care too much 'cause I don't really use them. But they could mean the biggest things to some people. That's one of the beauties of Firefox, where everyone can tailor the browser to their own needs and taste. I think it might benefit MoCo to conduct a survey to see who (casual, power user, multitasker, etc.) is using what (themes, extensions, UI screen caps) to do what (main online activities). Maybe use the automatic update system to let the user know about the survey?

As for Places, I have no problem waiting until it's mature. There's no need to force implement something when it's not ready as long as there are enough merits for the upgrade. Microsoft did the same thing with Vista, but at least we won't have to wait years for the next version containing the feature to come out. It's due time for an overhaul for the Firefox bookmarks (which is why even though Firefox is my default browser, I spend a lot more time using the Mozilla Suite & SeaMonkey), but please take your time to ensure the quality and performance of Places.

Posted by: sanopup at April 29, 2006 12:04 PM

"What's wrong with doing a release now with the stuff that's ready now, and then another release with the rest of the stuff later?"

Because to the end user FF2.0 doesn't look to be a significant step forward from 1.0. Overhauling the Feeds/Bookmarks/History would be a significant step forward in my opinion, which is what MS are doing with IE7. I don't see how FF2.0 is going to be any more enticing to a possible IE7 user than 1.5 is. This could be the defining moment of the Firefox browser, because MS have done a lot of work on IE7, and it may be the final thing that convinces current IE users that IE is the way to go. I don't see how FF2.0 will convince them if 1.5 hasn't convinced them already.

Posted by: Jeremy at April 29, 2006 2:00 PM

Scott Royall: From the perspective of standards promotion, which the Mozilla Foundation is very interested in, bad HTML is hardly "irrelevant" to judging undesirable rendering. Judging things by what Microsoft Internet Explorer "gets right" is no way to promote standards, it's a way to let Microsoft dictate how things should be.

I would hardly be surprised if different versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer rendered the same markup and CSS differently. In the past with their own secret document formats they have shown that they don't do interoperability well, even among their own programs (I'm thinking of Microsoft Office programs not handling old files well, and a particularly bad spate of this occurring around Microsoft Office 97). Around the world people see what happens when a monopolist like Microsoft experience unconstrained capitalism (their US settlement was a slap on the wrist and the EU has yet to levy any serious sanctions against them).

Posted by: J.B. Nicholson-Owens at April 29, 2006 6:25 PM

Firefox is doing a great job. I wonder if firefox browser can ever overtake Internet explorer as top browser? It already is the best browser. Take your browser and internet connection fo a Speed Test. http//bandwidthspeedtest.blogspot.com

Posted by: joe como at April 29, 2006 9:53 PM

Firefox is doing a great job. I wonder if firefox browser can ever overtake Internet explorer as top browser? It already is the best browser. Take your browser and internet connection fo a Speed Test. http://bandwidthspeedtest.blogspot.com

Posted by: joe como at April 29, 2006 9:54 PM

I totally agree that Firefox has been excellent in this programming, as well as, marketing its product. The interface is clean, fast and useful. However, I have to admit that Internet Explorer 6.0 is still the building stone to most of these advances. Whereas, IE 7.0 is just an attempt to catch up with Firefox's features

The reason why I still use Internet Explorer is because, there are so many IE-compatible websites, requiring the use if IE in order to access. This is without doubt, mostly Microsoft website.

One may argue that Microsoft is trying to monopolise the market, nonetheless it has to be true too. Basically it is a company by profit. On the other hand, Mozilla is an organisation by free source. (Please correct me if I am wrong).

I do not like monopoly, but in someway or another, it is such which has brought about the today's technology. As I have came across before, without IE bundled along with Windows, users won't be able to download Firefox or experience the rest of the non-MS products.

Firefox 2.0? I have not used it, neither seen it. My comments are, if you make it safer, faster and better, that's good. However, it is also has to be efficient and effective. If accessing a 5kb page, would require 50kb of bandwidth, just to ensure that Firefox 2.0 is fast, then I'd rather keep to IE 6.0, despite that it is non-tabbed.

Posted by: Keith at April 30, 2006 2:59 AM

Keith wrote

>The reason why I still use Internet Explorer is because, there
>are so many IE-compatible websites, requiring the use if IE in
>order to access. This is without doubt, mostly Microsoft website.

the reason why I still not use Internet Explorer is because, there are so many Universal-compatible website, not requiring the use of IE in order to access. This is without doubt, mostly NOT Microsoft Website.

I will just add that : when my job and money is coming from linux/unix and os x works, why I should care with "microsoft websites" ?
Why should I care when EVEN msdn and channel9 are perfectly accessible in Safari and Firefox ?

it's just lies to say there are "many ie websites only". these are bugs, and things really improved in recents years.

>One may argue that Microsoft is trying to monopolise the
>market, nonetheless it has to be true too. Basically it is a
>company by profit. On the other hand, Mozilla is an
>organisation by free source
what is your point ?
it's not a good thing microsoft or opera or apple or nokia or whoever monopolize the web.
to be sure noone is ever able to monopolize it you need 2 things:
- universal free (no royaltie, no cumbersome licence) web standard protected by states and international organisations
- free(as beer and liberty to use, modify) opensource implementations of that standard.

nothing else is important.

>I do not like monopoly, but in someway or another, it is such
>which has brought about the today's technology. As I have came
>across before, without IE bundled along with Windows, users
>won't be able to download Firefox or experience the rest of the
>non-MS products.

it's false. operating systems was sold with netscape or even opera.

>However, it is also has to be efficient and effective. If accessing a
>5kb page, would require 50kb of bandwidth, just to ensure
>that Firefox 2.0 is fast, then I'd rather keep to IE 6.0, despite
>that it is non-tabbed.
just suppositions and bias.

I'm a Professional, I understand need of enterprises and I do not work to let money be lost, WE NEED _free/liberty to use_ STANDARDS and everything will be done to that.
It's THAT important to do business in the web-centric world.

Posted by: michel at April 30, 2006 5:40 AM

>> I do not like monopoly, but in someway or another, it is such which has brought about the today's technology.

No, Microsoft didn't bring about technology. They see a threatening new tech, they put out an inferior version and eventually gains enough market share, then they kill it. For years (since 2001 until very recently) MS didn't have ANY full-time developers working on IE. None. Similar things happened to developer tools, compression, etc, and I shudder to think what would happen to the security apps when OneCare or whatever takes hold.

>> As I have came across before, without IE bundled along with Windows, users won't be able to download Firefox or experience the rest of the non-MS products.

How about computer makers shipping a computer with Netscape Navigator instead of IE so I didn't have to do it myself? Of course, once MS got IE up to a certain point, they worked to "cut off the air supply" to Netscape and the rest is history. (I know, Navigator development stalled and everything, but the fact MS used the OS to make sure no one shipped PCs with alternative browsers anymore tells me they couldn't compete purely in the market).

>> Firefox 2.0? I have not used it, neither seen it. My comments are, if you make it safer, faster and better, that's good. However, it is also has to be efficient and effective. If accessing a 5kb page, would require 50kb of bandwidth, just to ensure that Firefox 2.0 is fast, then I'd rather keep to IE 6.0, despite that it is non-tabbed.

I don't know what you mean by using 50kb bandwidth for a 5 kb page. The server doesn't care (largely) what browser you're using. I think you mean using 50kb RAM or cache. The truth is Mozilla can work on minimizing memory footprint. However, new computers with 512MB/1GB RAM shouldn't have too much problems handling it.

Posted by: TL at April 30, 2006 5:57 AM

how about ACID2 test in firefox 2.0 ?

Posted by: prleu at April 30, 2006 7:35 AM

I'm kind of disappointed that Places won't be in Firefox 2. I'm very happy with a lot of what Firefox does, but we simply HAVE to get away from bookmarks.html. Actually, the only browser I've found that does a truly great job at bookmarks is Epiphany. XBEL based, ability to put bookmarks in multiple categories, Smart Folder-like bookmark folders like "top visited sites" all add up to a truly modern bookmark system.

I really hope a revamped bookmarks system arrives soon. It's the last ugly vestige of the old Netscape 1.0 days.

Posted by: Robert D. at April 30, 2006 7:49 AM

Way to go...! "dumb-Ass" another shot at Microsoft. you guys should know better than to place blame on microsoft for your own incompetence. Make you software better than microsoft and quit playing the microsoft card.

Posted by: yardman at April 30, 2006 9:26 AM

if you replace "Firefox" for "IE" in this article, it sounds a lot like it´s from microsoft... sorry to see the ff team rushing to get it out, probably to try to shadow IE7.

ff doesn´t need it. take your time, make it right, "do no evil"

if you say 'X' is coming out on version 'Y' people want it. see the Win Vista drama.

Posted by: D.Signer at April 30, 2006 9:35 AM

who needs places when you got chipmark from www.chipmark.com

Posted by: BobJ at April 30, 2006 10:23 AM

Well after reading the document all I have to say is, "ho hum". This is Firefox 1.9 not a 2.0. You need something juicier in 2.0. Sure IE may leap a small bit ahead, but you have to develop the software that you want to develop, if it's the best then great, if not work harder...:)

Posted by: Rich Lee at April 30, 2006 4:59 PM

From what I've been reading in the development for the last couple of months, the Places feature would be the biggest reason to upgrade and use over internet exploiter. Instead of saying 'we have tabs' and 'dont let microsoft control the web'.

Thus this firefox should be labled Firefox 1.7 because it doesnt need to be released as a 2.0. If you want to make it a 2.0, then add 2.0 features.

Put some more effort into this technology and make a difference.

Also stop whining about release dates. I remember it took years to get from 0.6 to a stable 1.0.7.

Posted by: Steve at April 30, 2006 5:06 PM

Since you're improving web searching, could you also _fix_ searching on page (finding, that is)? Yes, that infamous form problem. Or finding in the frame _I_ want, not where my browser decides. Don't get me started about disappearing cursor in textarea (BTW - fixed width of this div makes really awful things with this form).
Are these not important usability things? Are they not about "Being Productive"? Are they so minor they should be ignored for two (or three, including 2.0) big releases? It would be great to get rid of these annoying bugs so users wouldn't call FF "buggy", "fat" etc.
That's all. I feel really relieved after writing this :) Thanks for your attention...

Posted by: Roger at May 1, 2006 5:38 AM

Just curious, but will 2.0 support the ablity to move tabs around? Just a click and drag to reorder the tabs would help out when i've got 10 tabs open and would like to catorgize them in some loosly logical fashion.

Thanks.

Posted by: Buba at May 1, 2006 12:15 PM

Buba, Firefox 1.5 has drop ordering of tabs!

Posted by: Kris Silver at May 1, 2006 4:27 PM

FF 2.0 didn't really have any major feature enhancement in the first place. mostly playing catch-up with all the other modern browsers out there.
FF has some annoying and/or buggy features, is below minimal required features in a modern browser (without extensions) and becomes fat when bloated with the 20+ extensions I need to install to get the level of features I'm used to and cant do without.
As this minimal level of features is not even announced as part of FF 3, I've switched to opera 9 for obvious reason of usability and accessibility.
The only reason I still use FF is for some specific extensions that I have yet to find an equivalent for opera, maybe it's somewhere on www.userjs.org ; and for webpage testing purpose.

One big feature dropped in earlier versions of FF is the "installation not required to use" feature, I wish to see that one make it back in firefox.

Posted by: bugmenot at May 1, 2006 4:42 PM

Scott, there is a reason that that site renders poorly, and it's no fault of firefox.

meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 6.0">
meta name="ProgId" content="FrontPage.Editor.Document">
meta name="Microsoft Theme" content="indust 001, indust 0001">

Frontpage produces code that does not meet ANY web standards but their own.

Posted by: Steve at May 1, 2006 5:05 PM

While I agree that Places is not ready for prime time, I fail to see the reason to go up to 2.0 without it. The other "features" already exist as extensions or are geared to make FF look more IE7ish. If the plan all along was to relase something, anything, as 2.0 in Q3, then the version number should've been increased evenly since long before the latest round of updates.
In my opinion, too much emphasis is being put into version numbers as a whole. I've been using Firefox since before 1.0 and I have seen many people switch to Firefox in the last year. They all know it as Firefox, not Firefox 1.0, 1.0.7,1.5.2, etc. Pick a numbering scheme and stick to it, and if the greatest FF version turns out to be 2.10.5.3c so be it. As it stands now, it's confusing to those of us who do pay attention to version numbers, and the rest who don't know or care will get a negative impression of the situation when it catches the media's attention.

Posted by: Felix at May 1, 2006 5:44 PM

Before focusing on new features, I suggest FF should try to better the OS integration, which is pretty crappy under *nix versions, especially under non-GNOME environments.

Why doesn't FF read the $PATH env variable for helper programs ? Why can't we directly input the program paths (the user is compelled to use the Gtk file finder dialog... ) ? Why does not firefox always remember the app I finally picked up ?
Why doesn't Firefox read the default mailcap file ?
Why does FF make grey the "open with" choice when the downloaded file is wrongly detected as a binary bitstream file ?
Why not put an "open with" option in the context menu ?
Why do I need to be root in order to install some extensions (search engines, in particular) ?

Well all these little things do really bother me, but I still use FF because I think it is the best browser for html rendering and general compatibility (compared to konqueror). However if there was a gecko-based browser for KDE, I think I would not USE FF anymore.

Anyway, good work you've done, but please take better care of your *nix users !

Posted by: Aldoo at May 2, 2006 8:44 AM

Michael:
>>the reason why I still not use Internet Explorer >>is because, there are so many >>Universal-compatible website, not requiring the >>use of IE in order to access. This is without >>doubt, mostly NOT Microsoft Website.

>>I will just add that : when my job and money is >>coming from linux/unix and os x works, why I >>should care with "microsoft websites" ?
>>Why should I care when EVEN msdn and channel9 >>are perfectly accessible in Safari and Firefox ?

I have to agree with you in this aspect, but which means you don't surf MS sites that's all, as I know you probably won't need to.

Furthermore, I don't think you really can, since Linux does not have IE package for you to install, though there are walkaround to do that.

>>it's just lies to say there are "many ie >>websites only". these are bugs, and things >>really improved in recents years.

Well. not that I know of, I have said there are many IE websites. However, it is true that things do improve over the recent years, but that is because the standard has been raised. Do you prefer to go back to Firefox 0.9, where others are using 1.5.0.3?

>>what is your point ?
>>it's not a good thing microsoft or opera or >>apple or nokia or whoever monopolize the web.
>>to be sure noone is ever able to monopolize it >>you need 2 things:
>>- universal free (no royaltie, no cumbersome >>licence) web standard protected by states and >>international organisations
>>- free(as beer and liberty to use, modify) >>opensource implementations of that standard.

I think I mentioned I do not like Monopoly by any organisation. Well, I'm not sure what's the point you're trying to make this time. But clearly, I do agree with what you have said.

>>it's false. operating systems was sold with >>netscape or even opera.

The last time I know that, was 10 years ago!! We are not dinosaurs living in the stone age. When anyone purchase a new systems right from the store. That IE is just default pre-installed, about 90% of the time.

>>just suppositions and bias

True. It's bias on my part, because it is my personal point of view. Firefox 2.0 is going to have more functionalities.... and so... less memory demanding than Firefox 1.5??? It's simple maths, you don't get more things with less money.

Nonetheless, I am just putting in my two cent's worth of opinion. I use Linux almost 75% of the time, so Firefox is still my commonly-used browser. As far as this is concern, I am quite fair in comparison. The only thing is that I have not used Opera.

---------------------
TL:
>>No, Microsoft didn't bring about technology. >>They see a threatening new tech, they put out an >>inferior version and eventually gains enough >>market share, then they kill it. For years >>(since 2001 until very recently) MS didn't have >>ANY full-time developers working on IE. None. >>Similar things happened to developer tools, >>compression, etc, and I shudder to think what >>would happen to the security apps when OneCare >>or whatever takes hold.

Where do you get the fact from? If MS does not have full time developers, are you saying these are part-timers? And if the enterprise is so big, where does the developers devote their time to? Anyway, I take your words as only part of your own opinion and not the actual situation, unless you are someone from Microsoft.

>>How about computer makers shipping a computer >>with Netscape Navigator instead of IE so I >>didn't have to do it myself? Of course, once MS >>got IE up to a certain point, they worked to >>"cut off the air supply" to Netscape and the >>rest is history. (I know, Navigator development >>stalled and everything, but the fact MS used the >>OS to make sure no one shipped PCs with >>alternative browsers anymore tells me they >>couldn't compete purely in the market).

That was history, as I mentioned above to Michel. Netscape contributed to its own downfall. They have focussed too much advertising onto the browser until it has become too poorly designed.

In conclusion, FF and IE, perhaps Opera, are high competitors in the market. In recent news, I have read of FF having memory leakage (could be rumours). So, in terms of stability, maybe Opera might win the race. On the other hand, FF and IE remains the more popular ones. As for anti-MS supporters, you are more than welcome to raise the standards. MS is just there for you to take over.

Posted by: Keith at May 5, 2006 2:00 AM

Gut! Sehr schoen seite! ^^ Wirklich! :)

Posted by: Wikipedia at May 5, 2006 6:34 AM

Gut Seite! Sehr gut! Danke schoen fuer Information!

Posted by: Erotik at May 11, 2006 4:52 AM

>But "Safer, Faster, Better" is not just a tag line,
>it can also map into a set of themes for product
>development.

Nah, it's called "Believing your own hype" cf General Custer et al for the results.

Posted by: Michael at May 13, 2006 11:37 PM

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