The Inside Track on Firefox Development.

July 2, 2006

Sticky

It's Fourth of July Weekend here in the States (not being a native 'Merkin I always end up finding out about these things just as they're happening) and I'm sitting at home after a long day of tidying up the house and running errands. I find myself sitting here at my desktop computer, which I originally bought for Firefox development back in 2003, but never ended up using that much. These days there doesn't seem to be that much difference between state of the art and old tech - this computer is three years old and doesn't feel significantly slower or less well featured than my Google-issued system which is about 18 months old. Without getting into the scary optimizations like RAID and so on, is there much about new systems that really makes them worth upgrading? Every Mac upgrade I've been through has felt more impactful. Anyhow, on to the point of this post.

I am writing this post (and the last two posts too) in the Firefox browser that was installed on here. I look in the about box and discover it's Firefox 1.0RC1, a build dated October 1, 2004. That's almost two years old. (The About box reads "Preview Release" because back in the day we didn't rev the version number until the 11th hour, because otherwise we knew someone would misinterpret our test builds as official and let all of the air out of our release balloon...)

I know there are countless security bugs and so on that have been fixed since 1.0RC1, but I had to think hard about the things that would actually get me to upgrade. This build being pre-release there's not even a red christmas tree in the top right corner to entice me to upgrade. Where's the innovation been in Firefox over the past two years that I care about? Well, a couple of things manifest themselves:

The build is noticably slower than the branch, mainly with session history operations. This is where Firefox 1.5's back and forward cache really makes itself known. Yes it uses memory. Yes it's a feature. Yes there are real memory leaks in Firefox in addition to this one. Moving right along...
Tabbed browsing is much harder to use. This might be the single biggest bang for the buck in Firefox 2. It feels much more difficult to me to manage tabs with the mouse in this build, the weird position of the close box at the right of the tab strip seems more pronounced. 1.0 also lacked a proper single window mode, which is now the default for Firefox 2, and it works properly in pretty much every situation, unlike the off-by-default one that shipped with previous versions.

This isn't to say that a lot of other very good worthwhile work didn't go on during the time between Firefox 1.0 and 2.0 - it did. But just using the browser for casual surfing and blog posting, these are the two things I noticed most. (On my work system where I'm constantly crashing and restarting, I often appreciate session save too) Every release of FIrefox gets a little better. As long as we continue to have at least one feature per release that is "sticky" enough to keep people from downgrading, and continue to make improvements to performance, memory usage and overall product polish/quality, I think we're in good shape.

Posted by ben at July 2, 2006 7:50 PM

Comments

"As long as we continue to have at least one feature per release that is "sticky" enough to keep people from downgrading, and continue to make improvements to performance, memory usage and overall product polish/quality, I think we're in good shape."

Exactly!

For 1.5 it was software update.
For 2.0 it's Session Save/Restore.
For 3.0, I'd like it to be printing even though it's not sexy enough (though really hasn't been touched in a *long* time and needs some love).

Posted by: Rafael at July 2, 2006 10:52 PM

Sure, evolution is good ... but revolution wouldn't hurt as well. :)

Posted by: Dao at July 2, 2006 10:56 PM

I really put my hopes on the chrome polish in Fx 2.0. It makes it really easy to show that Firefox is being improved actively and that the developpers continue to make your browsing as pleasant as possible (given the messy look of IE7).

(Offcourse, every other improvement is.. well.. an improvement too! :-))

Posted by: Bram! at July 2, 2006 11:57 PM

Rafael, printing is a P3 for Firefox 3. So, sadly, I don't think you'll get the love you're hoping for... unless someone in the community takes it upon themselves to address the problems there.

Posted by: Peter Kasting at July 3, 2006 12:01 AM

> On my work system where I'm constantly crashing and restarting, I often appreciate session save too
And because of the session restore Firefox is crashing much more often...

Posted by: Anonymous at July 3, 2006 2:20 AM

Or you could just have a software update which nags you if you don't update ;)

Posted by: James AkaXakA at July 3, 2006 7:19 AM

For me, the most notable feature of 1.5 is its ability to use arbitrary downloaded cursors, i.e. cursor: url(...) CSS2.1 property.

Posted by: Mithgol the Webmaster at July 3, 2006 8:03 AM

All your self-congratulating posts are belong to us :rolleyes:

Posted by: olextraplus at July 4, 2006 7:13 AM

Opera has a built-in option to have one tab close box in one fixed location, just like the window close button, and SeaMonkey. Unlike the useless space wasting tab icons that CSS can simply discard, CSS cannot give me back a proper single close tab button in getting rid of the space wasting repeated close tab buttons. You get yourself an arthritic mouse hand and try to close the last 7 of 25 open tabs quickly (or at all without mistakes) and see what I mean. I guess when 1.5 support ends I'll need two SM windows open instead of one SM window and one FF window. And don't say extension. Extensions are for fluff, not basic usability.

Posted by: Felix Miata at July 4, 2006 9:10 AM

This was not meant to be self congratulating - if anything more of an attempt at a reality check - for myself if no one else. I posted earlier about my thoughts on the strength of the 2.0 release even post-places, and I still think the release is strong, but a few particular changes contribute more to that strength than others, in my opinion, based on my non-technical use over the weekend. This doesn't mean that the other work should not be pursued, just that we should collectively keep things that might be useful to everyone in the back of our minds.

Posted by: Ben at July 4, 2006 1:08 PM

Felix: There's a pref.

Posted by: Justin at July 4, 2006 7:28 PM

Justin, I don't see any such about:config pref in July 1 Minefield, which my understanding of bug 324227 seems to confirm.

Posted by: Felix Miata at July 4, 2006 9:38 PM

I know, (excusme Ben) that this place isn't adequate to do this kind of annotation, but i not found your personal email address. Excusme again.!!!

First of all, congratulations for Firefox web browser. Is an excellent tool and the plugin arquitecture is very usefull.

Now, My name is Juan Pablo Romero Bernal. I'm active member of GLUD (Grupo Linux Universidad Distrital in English: Linux Group of Distrital University) at Bogot� - Colombia. Actually, we are preparing an event called: Linux Week - Distrital
University (fifth version). This event promote the use and development of free software in academic and enterprise contexts. The purpose of
this email, is invite you in a special way to assist to Linux Week as main guest. The Linux week will take place the first week of October of 2006
(2-6 October) at Bogot� (Colombia). We would like to count on your presence, well you represents a succesfull project in the free software world. !!!!

I hope your ideas about this subject ....

Posted by: jpromerobx at July 5, 2006 8:50 AM

Felix: It does not exist by default. You have to add it.

Posted by: Justin at July 5, 2006 1:45 PM

You do know that a Merkin is a wig for your crotch, right?

Posted by: Tony at July 6, 2006 8:09 AM

Hey Hi Ben,

I certainly can't comment on any of this, however, I have been asked by your alumni mag (U Of Auckland) to do a profile on you.... looking for a way to get in touch.

By the way, I'm an ex-CRACCUM editor which would genetically, in the past at least, mean we'd be mortal enemies.

Louise Rafkin
(510) 595-3393

Posted by: Louise at July 10, 2006 10:07 PM

I'd like to contact you, Ben, so here is my email addr - paul at aptana dot com.

If you have a moment, send me an email, thanks.

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Posted by: call2biz.gxs at July 17, 2006 8:05 PM

Posted by: call2biz.gxs at July 19, 2006 12:15 AM

Did you know that you can significantly speed up Firefox? You can find manual how to easily speed up Firefox over here: http://www.mozila.pl/firefox-speed-up.html

Posted by: mozila at July 26, 2006 7:22 AM

Hey man, Just thought I'd let you know myself and some of the guys on my mailinglist seem to be having lots of problems with firefox, it keeps hanging on our computers causing messed up dvd burns and just generally hanging requiring us to force-end program..

we are all using windows XP and think it may be to do with flash on sites. we have the latest versions of firefox and are thinking of trying out opera now.. firefox has great features and all but we really need something reliable..

I'm not posting here to bash firefox or anything, i sincerely hope that firefox gets more relable in the future.. regretfully my internet explorer is now more reliable then my firefox browser and i thought youd appreciate the feedback as its kind of a big deal!

cheers

paul

Posted by: computer repair guy - Paul at August 6, 2006 7:16 AM

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