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It doesn't sound like the old extension mechanism is going anywhere:

http://steelgryphon.com/blog/2010/01/09/on-personas-and-themes/#comment-107468

(that comment is by the blog author; the key part is "I personally don't think we're anywhere near the point where we can look at the old-style extension model and claim it's not needed anymore. But the goal is to drive everything that can be moved to Jetpacks to that model, because it's a better model for users and developers." )

As far as I remember, Mozilla removed MNG because of bloat and instability.

Ah, yes:
http://steelgryphon.com/blog/?p=14
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19528 0

However some people prefer Opera because it's
1) more secure .... link 1 .... link 2 .... link 3 .... link 4 .... link 5 .... link 6, September 16th 2005
2) faster
3) Is actively worked on -from Mike Connor, an important Firefox developer
4) smaller (3.7mb vs 4.7mb)
5) less bloat/ram usage

When there are not 'may eyes'. Just because a pro
ject is OSS does not mean that 'many eyes' are actively looking at it. Most OSS projects are one person, some are a handful, a very few are a dozen, and the exceptional ones are several dozen.

We know about the issue of FireFox lacking reviewers already: http://steelgryphon.com/blog/index.php?p=37

We geeks really need to stop being swayed by ideology or anti-establishment 'cool' and try thinking for ourselves for a change.

There is no 'silver bullet' and that includes OSS.

>quantify that.
Hum. I guess the stylesheet switcher is one of the best examples. They took it out post 0.9 (along with the Javascript console, work offline and view source (yes, they really did)). We fought back, on BugZilla "re-instate sytlesheet switcher UI" received hundreds of votes. The Mozilla team did listen, and put the UI back in for the 1.0 pre-release, marking the bug as resolved. And yet, in the builds day before 1.0 final, they pulled it out again, but this time got away with it, because everyone was too hyped up in the marketing. Today that bug is still marked resolved, but there's yet to be any development on fixing the few bugs with the UI, and re-instating it is not mentioned in the roadmap.

The other example is the age-old single window mode bug. Back then we all used TBE (since now banned from polite society), but hundreds of ppl voted for an integrated single-window mode in Mozilla/Firefox. What did we get? A couple of hidden, very buggy prefs. Resolved? No. A quick bodge to clear a bug blocking a hugely anticipated release. Now a lot of us use your extension - we say thanks :)

What I think we should be seeing is more custom builds, with better default prefs and some handy patches.

>themes
not sure I mentioned them, but yes cutemenus makes Firefox a lot prettier, and more importantly icons are much quicker than reading text.

>linux,rpms
go to opera.com and you can download .rpm .debs etc for more distributions than I can name. I'm in fc3, I went to download it just because the guy swimming the Atlantic impressed me, and then was struck when I had a package to myself. Now Firefox, only provide a win32 install, zip, mac and source builds. Internationalisation takes months. Not great.

>on google owning Firefox.
This year's April fools joke wasn't funny. Google are our new overlords. To quote http://steelgryphon.com/blog/index.php?p=37
"Of the six people who can actually review in Firefox, four are AWOL, and one doesn't do a lot of reviews. And I'm on the verge of just walking away indefinitely, since it feels like I'm the only person who cares enough to make it an issue... Things I've raised in relatively private contexts have gone unanswered"
That was taken off the official Mozilla feedhouse. I guess they, like Google, can't hack ppl talking about them. A free/open development process? Doesn't sound like one.

Please say how you will fix these organizational problems:
(From http://www.steelgryphon.com/blog/index.php?p=37)


58. Josh Says:
March 7th, 2005 at 12:31 pm

Honestly, I'm skeptical too of the whole 1.5 release. As good as the MoFo has done on the current release of Mozilla, Firefox is clinging by a thread. I got so fed up with the crashing bullshit that I reverted to Mozilla. I'd rather use an older, insecure version in place of a buggy, crash-every-5-minutes-for-no-fucking-reason version. Really, I don't think you know how upset I get when I'm staring BugZilla in the face AND it too crashes! How do you document BugZilla crashing??? MoFo needs to rethink their approach to dominating the browser market, the road ahead is a bumpy one, people will be tossed and turned, but selling out is NOT the way.


58. # M2Ys4U Says:
March 7th, 2005 at 6:47 pm

Well, I think the problem is you need more people telling other what to do. As it is at the moment, nobody knows what to do.

I tried building firefox 4 or 5 times, each time I had to struggle through tonnes of useless google results to find out how to build it, and even then I had to use my noggin to work out what'd gone wrong when the errors happened.

Better docs, and more bossy people; this is what you need.


59: # Anonymous Says:
March 7th, 2005 at 12:52 pm

I was PAID to work on Mozilla a few years back and would never do it again. Can't see why a volunteer would either. What's the fun of programming if you can never wade through the social heirarchy of unresponsive powers-that-be to get anything checked off?

I understand, of course. How many people outside of Mozilla have even HEARD of C++, let alone have a PhD in it? Can't be more than twenty, right? Then, on top of that, it helps if you'd enjoy tweaking Microsoft. You're only left with three people who are qualified to help you. (Those numbers are off, you say? Then there must be another reason you're not attracting help...)

Twenty-two years of programming in the Valley and I have never seen such a glacial project.

You twelve-year bottlenecks can keep it all to yourselves. I'm busy getting stuff done, making things other than Mozilla work. And I'm enjoying myself.


60. Peter van der Woude Says:
March 7th, 2005 at 1:13 pm

Am I wrong to think that the ONLY problem is proper guidance ? We need someone at the top telling/asking us individuals what to do and when to do it.


74. M2Ys4U Says:
March 7th, 2005 at 6:47 pm

Well, I think the problem is you need more people telling other what to do. As it is at the moment, nobody knows what to do.

I tried building firefox 4 or 5 times, each time I had to struggle through tonnes of useless google results to find out how to build it, and even then I had to use my noggin to work out what'd gone wrong when the errors happened.

Better docs, and more bossy people; this is what you need.


76. Cusser Says:
March 7th, 2005 at 7:20 pm

I think the problem stems from the lack of guidance and help with respect to getting started. There are many, many talented programmers out there who should be working themselves up the ranks.

I am not one of them, at least not yet, but I have submitted basic patches which get bitrotten and die over and over again. A no hand-holding policy is all well and good, but when you need extras, you should be extending that proverbial hand outwards.

As a final note, hang in there. You may feel like you're the only one that cares, but it's people like you who get things changed in the world.


77. # Gerry Says:
March 7th, 2005 at 7:33 pm

> David Lynch:
> I'd argue that better tools reduce the cost-of-entry for new people, making it more likely that talented people (who already have other obligations, and thus not all that much time to donat

1. MoFo doesn't want to have to fully support two differant projects; they don't have the resources to do that. So it's proposed that there won't be a 1.8 final release, as that would take a lot of QA work and entail still more work later on to keep up with security patches.
2. Obviously some people don't like this. Oddly enough most of them are users of the suite.
3. Several developers have stated that mofo shouldn't continue suite releases, at least not in the same way. None of them have suggested spinning firefox off into a seperate foundation.
4. Slashdot has posted an inflammatory article about the issue; very few people commenting have bothered to go to the primary sources to see whats going on. (Surprise! :))