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Exactly, there's a balance. Speaking of Windows, note that Windows was rewritten from scratch, when Dave Cutler from DEC was hired to write NT. Now certainly there are some vestiges of DOS, and OS/2, and it's a huge codebase, but it's not Windows 95/98/Me, that is clear.

Joel's article seems to be the defacto standard against rewriting software, but funnily enough, I think he's been proven completely wrong, in hindsight, by the very example he used to prove his point. Think of Mozilla? Mozilla originally started from the Netscape codebase, but they got a lot of flack from folks like Joel for rewriting it. Now it seems IE is the patchy codebase you describe Windows to be.

Sure it won't be integrated like Outlook is in office, but that lovely combo of Thunderbird and Calendar will fill most of the same roles that Outlook does. E-mail, calendar, notes (hopefully), etc.

I manage a pretty high volume medical related website which is 100% fully XHTML compliant. There are a few ASP.NET application on the site which do not validate, though when we move to ASP.NET 2.0 they finally will (don't get me started on ASP.NET and standards please. I didn't choose the tech). We've done this for a number of reasons, but the main ones are:

- The site uses CSS for layout purposes. This has been tested in all major browsers and downgrades gracefully. If the HTML is not valid, the CSS can go bonkers in some browsers, having the site valid means we know that the testing we did before will hold true for new pages, as long as we stick to the predefined HTML elements we tested.

- Having every page on the site be XML means we can use all the standard XML tools on the pages, such as XSL to push the content into different formats, or DOM or XPATH to pull content from the pages for any number of reasons. You could do this with regex or some HTML parser, but having it be valid XML makes this infinitely simpler.

- Lastly...if you don't even have the attention to detail to even be running the HTML Validator extension and glance down at the little icon in the corner as you write pages, then you won't ever work for me. It's really not so hard.

There is a Firefox extension that downloads Youtube videos: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2390/

For commercial sites, it's all about ROI

Aside from the all-important issue of "does it look right?", there is the professional issue of what sort of standards you should apply to your work. It's difficult to come close to a more extensive (and yet simple to implement) baseline metric of quality control with HTML/CSS than the W3C parser. Sure, I could go through and decide how I am going to do everything, but that's time-intensive and inflexible. Running something through the parser gives me a fast and consistent report. I can do whatever I want with the results, but they are there.

It does not solve problems for you or guarantee much of anything, but it allows you to see your formatting code in a more objective way. As a bonus, it can help you spot potential problems, mistakes, and open your eyes to some of the structure you are relying upon.

I always use the Tidy Firefox extension. It is a little friendlier than the online W3C parser interface. Disclaimer: not a professional web designer.

And after a week, some people have lots of different tabs and stuff open, making it annoying to restart Firefox.

Then may I recommend an extension that will make your life much easier in this case and when the browser crashes?

Session Manager :: Mozilla Add-ons :: Add Features to Mozilla Software

Been using FF3 alpha builds for some time now: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nig htly/latest-trunk/

The download page ses that extension won't work in Firefox 1.5 or newer.

Print It! dus, and has an option to put Print Preview on the menu as well.

i only had Opera hangning on me a couple of times (both on Windows and Linux) - when it happens, it promptly apologizes and offers you to open the windows you were browsing at the moment of the crash. Priceless!

I've discovered the joys of TabMixPlus for Firefox. One of its nice features is the exact ability you described. Some times I've shut down my machine without closing firefox. Next time I power it up, I get "would you like to restore your previous session?" and there it is, tabs windows and all. Form data isn't preserved unfortunately but I suspect Opera doesn't do that either.

As for searches in the URL bar, try right-clicking on a search field of a web page and selecting "Add a keyword". Gives you all the URL bar searching you could ever want for Google, Wikipedia, Dictionary.com, imdb, trademe, freshmeat, or whatever you want.

Since it was someone on this site who pointed me to both these features I'm now paying it forward. :)

It could be gmail leaking all the memory, if you check gmail a lot. See bug 321282.

Firefox 2 won't have many performance improvements over Firefox 1.5, since Firefox 2 is a frontend release. Most of the speed improvements that have gone into the trunk since Firefox 1.5 won't be shipped to end-users until Firefox 3.

One major exception is the work on memory leaks. Firefox 1.5.0.x releases have been getting the simpler (less risky) leak fixes, and it looks like Firefox 2 will get most of the less simple memory leak fixes that are going into the trunk, including the nsIDOMGCParticipant work that fixes the large leaks with Gmail and most Greasemonkey scripts.

Firefox 2 won't have many performance improvements over Firefox 1.5, since Firefox 2 is a frontend release. Most of the speed improvements that have gone into the trunk since Firefox 1.5 won't be shipped to end-users until Firefox 3.

One major exception is the work on memory leaks. Firefox 1.5.0.x releases have been getting the simpler (less risky) leak fixes, and it looks like Firefox 2 will get most of the less simple memory leak fixes that are going into the trunk, including the nsIDOMGCParticipant work that fixes the large leaks with Gmail and most Greasemonkey scripts.

I've had to stop using FF as my main browser because I simply can't reliably copy and paste URL's from the address bar or, frequently, text from anywhere else in Firefox's UI. I've tried to find a place to report a bug or more likely add to an existing bug report, and I get stuck in a maze of twisty little bugs, all the same.

Apart from this supremely frustrating bug, Firefox is great and I look forward to 2.0. Until then, well, Opera is growing on me and it's really really fast.

See bug 252371.

I would personally like a friggin r-click option to print. I mean every other thing i use has a r-click option to print. Not just web browsers but regular applications have options to print or print preview. This is a pretty damn ignorant thing to do, this is supposed to be open source so that you can configure it "your way" and they refuse to add it. Bug 204519

What might be better though is an entire context menu options preferences page that allows you to select what options/dividers you want and where. They already have this for the bookmark toolbar folder and bookmarks in general. INASD (i'm not a Software Developer) so i wouldn't know the first thing about wrighting something like that, though i would if i could. I just think it would make a lot of people happier, hell they could even leave off the print option for a default install.

Well enough ranting, if your like me, they made an extension for printing from the r-click context menu here: Right Click Firefox Extension

Darin Fisher did this on the trunk in bug 326273. The complexity of the repair, as you surmised, means that Firefox 3.0 will be the first consumer release to contain these changes.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32627 3

The tab mix plus extension already does this.

> there is only ONE feature opera has I wish other browswers would get.
> the resume function. operas is really awesome. it works so well.

The "Session Manager" extension may help bridge the gap (although not entirely):

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2324/

Download links that use mirrors instead of the main FTP server

Just download TabClicking Options (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/260/). It gives you multiple methods of closing/opening/reloading tabs using the mouse buttons and modifier keys.

Don't know if your just complaining about the buttons in the alpha or wanting drag and drop ordering.. but Search engine ordering plugin lets you do just that.

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/rel eases/bonecho/alpha2/

Yes, get it here.

I'm surprised people still take this guy seriously. He's _not_ a security researcher, in fact a browsing of the bugzilla archives will uncover lots of "bug reports" and "vulnerabilities" that are simply wrong. Check this out (won't work from slashdot, copy and paste into a new tab/window):

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?query_fo rmat=specific&order=relevance+desc&bug_status=__op en__&id=303433

Read through it and you'll see the guy is a complete hack. He even issued an advisory when he didn't even understand the kind of overflow. ... posting from work so I'm AC for now ...

b3h0ld the 0res0meee p000wer 0f da fir3fo)( vide0 e)(ten5i0n !!!!!

DA DA DA!!!

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2390/

death 2 america! na just kidden your alright

Wow, how non-obvious is that. Of course I would expect a *graphical* file manager to open an address box when you type "/". What's so bad about having an address box at the top of the screen? Even Windows Explorer lets me type in a filepath or UNC name. Konqueror works fine for me, thank you.

The Mozilla problem has been sitting in the bugzilla queue for quite some time now, too https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30881 5. I don't understand why everyone suddenly wants to make the keyboard obsolete.

OSS developers are not like Microsoft developers.

Spot on. OSS developers are often employed by companies such as redhat, suse and IBM. Sometimes they need to focus on boring features proposed by their respective marketing divisions, but these horrible tasks are divided between the competing companies so that the developers can spend more of their time doing whatever the hell they like, i.e. working on neat features and rewriting the core.

Not to pick on the parent poster, but for those interested...

gnopernicus
the GNOME Accessibility Project
britty (sorry, couldn't find a web site for it)
speechd-el for emacs users
the KDE Accessibility Project (to be ecumenical)
the Mozilla Accessibility Project

Found the first four on Ubuntu using synaptic and searching for "blind" and "gnopernicus" (OK, I remembered the name on that one); about a minute's worth of Googling turned up the URLs.

Now...that's not to say that those are perfect or meet everyone's needs; I wouldn't know, because I've never used them.

From TFA, it looks like the generic GIMP UI rant all over again; "[fill in blank] sucks, but I won't bother to tell you in particular what needs fixing." That's a great way to get the "code it yourself, then" response, but not particularly useful as far as getting what one wants.

Any real Slashdotter would be using the Slashdotter Firefox extension which inserts a Coral Cache link after each link, rendering you whoring useless.

Firefox does pass the Acid 2 test: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=28948 0#c98

Firefox's antipagination extension doesn't work either.

The problem is that javascript is actually useful on some pages.
Not all of web 2.0s fluffyness is bad.

Thankfully, using firefox theres an extension to selectively enable Javascript per site :)

https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php ?id=722

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32046 5

It's supposed to be here, but none of the links on that page seem to do anything for me in 1.5.0.3. Is it working for everyone else?

Where's the choice on Firefox for MSN search? Any of the browsers that can be used on Linux - Where's the choice for MSN?

Where's the choice on Firefox for MSN search? Any of the browsers that can be used on Linux - Where's the choice for MSN?

> It's been less than a month since the last point release,

A security problem was publicized last week, this week there's a fix for it. That's a problem?

> which fixed 21 critical security flaws.

FUD, Mozilla published eight advisories fixed in Firefox 1.5.0.2: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/known-vul nerabilities.html#firefox1.5.0.2

Most of them were found internally by the Mozilla team which means the numbers can't be compared to proprietary products in any meaningful way.

I didn't see a reply, the following two links might prove usefull:

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/rele ases/1.5.0.3/update/win32/en-US/
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Software_Update:Manually_I nstalling_a_MAR_file

I didn't see a reply, the following two links might prove usefull:

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/rele ases/1.5.0.3/update/win32/en-US/
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Software_Update:Manually_I nstalling_a_MAR_file

Because the downloaded file contains the differences between the binaries, and the updater leaves the rest of the binary file as it was.

See http://wiki.mozilla.org/Software_Update:MAR and http://www.daemonology.net/bsdiff/ for more.

P.S. Look at the source code on the Mozilla Page for some interesting comments on each verse.

You should be using Firebug https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1843/. More information here http://www.joehewitt.com/software/firebug/. And coming soon in the next version, a Javascript debugger. I'm been using it, and it works great.

And the beast shall come forth surrounded by a roiling cloud of vengeance. The house of the unbelievers shall be razed and they shall be scorched to the earth. Their tags shall blink until the end of days.

from The Book of Mozilla, 12:10

And the beast shall be made legion. Its numbers shall be increased a thousand thousand fold. The din of a million keyboards like unto a great storm shall cover the earth, and the followers of Mammon shall tremble.

from The Book of Mozilla, 3:31
(Red Letter Edition)

And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced. But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird. The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire and thunder upon them. For the beast had been reborn with its strength renewed, and the followers of Mammon cowered in horror.

from The Book of Mozilla, 7:15

Back when Mozilla != Firefox, this made sense. The logo for Mozilla is the lizard. This was pretty much used as the icon/splash screen for the suite on most Linux distributions way back when. The logo for Firefox is the drunken fox chasing his own tail around the globe.

Why Mozilla continues to use the lizard is beyond me. They've dropped their flagship product for Firefox, and have prohibited the newer Seamonkey suite from using the logo. All it's doing now is serving to confuse n00bs like yourself about what the actual icon of Firefox is.

I was happily reading a webpage when this popped up. I want it to only check for updates during a new tab or window, NOT when I'm just sitting there browsing or typing or watching something.

Thanks...

You're welcome.

How well would this work with non-Mozilla-based browsers (such as Opera or Internet Explorer)?

If you know your users are going to be using a bunch of different browsers, it'd probably make sense to build your system around XULRunner. That way it'd be pretty much like a stand-alone app, but you (as the developer) would still get the advantages of having a built-in system to handle HTML, XML, CSS, RDF, etc. and the user would be none the wiser (although it'd be pretty almost trivially easy to provide a browser-like interface for the user, reducing learning curves for your app). You should be able to make it so they could even run it directly off the CD / DVD by just double-clicking an icon. They wouldn't really even need to install anything.

What sort of performance would this give for data access? Comparable to database? And would this allow for arbitrary text string searches in any of the lyrics or annotated fields in a reasonably efficient way?

I've personally not used it in this way for my own apps so I can't give you a straight answer with the certainty of one who's directly done it (my own work with RDF data stores in Mozilla has pretty much been just for user preferences and the like). However, I can say that:

1. It's the system that Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, etc. all use and they seem reasonably fast.

2. The new SQL option mentioned by T-Ranger definitely won't weaken any of the platform's existing capabilities in this department, but it could conceivably make things quite a bit better for you if you find that the performance isn't currently what you'd want.

3. RDF's capabilities in the way of metadata may lead you down some interesting paths that you've not yet considered regarding methods of indexing / searching lyrics beyond the straight raw text search.

I think it'll do everything you need and then some. You'll probably even be able to find some existing Mozilla-based programs that will get you part of the way there. You should be able to view the source of all of the products on Mozilla Add-ons to find sample code to do all manner of things.

Finally, since I am not at all up on the Mozilla platform, RDF, XUL, CSS, etc., what would be a good resource (or resources) for me to start learning this?

There's a ton of good info for free online for all of these topics. The Mozilla Developer Center will provide you with lots of tips and an invaluable reference to the Mozilla platform, XUL, RDF, JavaScript, XML, XULRunner, etc. The W3C will provide you with probably all you'll need to know about CSS, as well as further information on RDF, XML, and HTML. There are also loads of books out there; I've personally read and found Rapid Application Development with Mozilla and Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide to be pretty much all I needed to start writing Mozilla apps, but a quick glance through Amazon brings up entries like

Thanks...

You're welcome.

How well would this work with non-Mozilla-based browsers (such as Opera or Internet Explorer)?

If you know your users are going to be using a bunch of different browsers, it'd probably make sense to build your system around XULRunner. That way it'd be pretty much like a stand-alone app, but you (as the developer) would still get the advantages of having a built-in system to handle HTML, XML, CSS, RDF, etc. and the user would be none the wiser (although it'd be pretty almost trivially easy to provide a browser-like interface for the user, reducing learning curves for your app). You should be able to make it so they could even run it directly off the CD / DVD by just double-clicking an icon. They wouldn't really even need to install anything.

What sort of performance would this give for data access? Comparable to database? And would this allow for arbitrary text string searches in any of the lyrics or annotated fields in a reasonably efficient way?

I've personally not used it in this way for my own apps so I can't give you a straight answer with the certainty of one who's directly done it (my own work with RDF data stores in Mozilla has pretty much been just for user preferences and the like). However, I can say that:

1. It's the system that Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, etc. all use and they seem reasonably fast.

2. The new SQL option mentioned by T-Ranger definitely won't weaken any of the platform's existing capabilities in this department, but it could conceivably make things quite a bit better for you if you find that the performance isn't currently what you'd want.

3. RDF's capabilities in the way of metadata may lead you down some interesting paths that you've not yet considered regarding methods of indexing / searching lyrics beyond the straight raw text search.

I think it'll do everything you need and then some. You'll probably even be able to find some existing Mozilla-based programs that will get you part of the way there. You should be able to view the source of all of the products on Mozilla Add-ons to find sample code to do all manner of things.

Finally, since I am not at all up on the Mozilla platform, RDF, XUL, CSS, etc., what would be a good resource (or resources) for me to start learning this?

There's a ton of good info for free online for all of these topics. The Mozilla Developer Center will provide you with lots of tips and an invaluable reference to the Mozilla platform, XUL, RDF, JavaScript, XML, XULRunner, etc. The W3C will provide you with probably all you'll need to know about CSS, as well as further information on RDF, XML, and HTML. There are also loads of books out there; I've personally read and found Rapid Application Development with Mozilla and Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide to be pretty much all I needed to start writing Mozilla apps, but a quick glance through Amazon brings up entries like

The article didn't make the point I thought it was going to make, given the title of the post. I thought the article was going to argue that free software needs to be easy to modify in order for it to be truly free.

One of the primary purposes of making software free (as in speech) is to make it possible for users of the software to examine the code and make changes to it. This is nominally possible with all software released under free software licenses, but some pieces of free software are easier to modify than others.

Consider GNU Emacs (or XEmacs). It's designed to be easy for users to modify it. Indeed, it was written in Emacs Lisp partly to make it easier for users to modify it. There is a tutorial to help new Emacs users learn how to write Emacs lisp. There are also websites people use to share their Emacs extensions and to talk about writing Emacs lisp code.

Or take Firefox. Mozilla has set up a website for people to share their Firefox extensions. Mozilla also provides a tutorial explaining how to start writing your own extensions. You don't need to study hundreds of kilobytes of code before you can start writing simple extensions to Firefox or to Emacs.

Isn't a free software project a better free software project if the software is designed in a way that makes extensions easy to write? Or if the developers provide a guide for people who want to write their own extensions? Or if there are wikis or mailing lists for discussion among people who aren't members of the development team but want to tweak the code?

The article didn't make the point I thought it was going to make, given the title of the post. I thought the article was going to argue that free software needs to be easy to modify in order for it to be truly free.

One of the primary purposes of making software free (as in speech) is to make it possible for users of the software to examine the code and make changes to it. This is nominally possible with all software released under free software licenses, but some pieces of free software are easier to modify than others.

Consider GNU Emacs (or XEmacs). It's designed to be easy for users to modify it. Indeed, it was written in Emacs Lisp partly to make it easier for users to modify it. There is a tutorial to help new Emacs users learn how to write Emacs lisp. There are also websites people use to share their Emacs extensions and to talk about writing Emacs lisp code.

Or take Firefox. Mozilla has set up a website for people to share their Firefox extensions. Mozilla also provides a tutorial explaining how to start writing your own extensions. You don't need to study hundreds of kilobytes of code before you can start writing simple extensions to Firefox or to Emacs.

Isn't a free software project a better free software project if the software is designed in a way that makes extensions easy to write? Or if the developers provide a guide for people who want to write their own extensions? Or if there are wikis or mailing lists for discussion among people who aren't members of the development team but want to tweak the code?