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The Mozilla 1.0 Definition
The Evil Beaver writes: "Here we go. Mozillazine is reporting that Brenden Eich, mozilla.org's Technical Bigshot, has released the criteria to what is to be the 1.0 milestone. The 'manifesto' also explains why 1.0 is so important to reach, and why it isn't just another milestone, either. The Mozillazine article is here and the definition document here.
Where's the "World Domination" item?
Score:-1, Funny
Better-than-any-competition standards compliance
There in lies a bit of an issue. The standards aren't done yet. Nor will they be. Standards are an evolving thing. The big issue of the Netscape/IE wars in the late 90s was that both parties tried to predict where the standards were going, and tried to go straight to the final standard without waiting for them to be ratified.
And they both failed.
We had 'non-complient' browsers, different object models, different CSS models, IE and NS specific tags.. it was a right old mess. Trying to be 'most standards complient' implies an attempt to out-do the other browsers, which is precisely where NS particularly, and to a degree IE, fell down. It gave everyone a right old headache.
The problems arise when the web designers find a new feature they happen to like a bit (CSS colour control of scroll bars being a current example), that doesn't work in all browsers, and theres a great big shift toward the browser that does the 'coolest' things.
Yes, be standards complient. Be 100% standards complient hopefully. But just remember that it has nothing to do with how complient the others are.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
People have been complaining about the time that it has taken mozilla to reach version 1.0, but from a developers point of view finally stamping "1.0" on the thing is a very hard thing to do. You cant say "oh that will be fixed in the next version" and "that feature is coming soon". Well, you can (and do) but people dont tend to respect you as much...
I'm glad that they have been taking the time to get 1.0 to standard necessary, for some reason AOL saw fit to release netscape 6.0 when they did, which I think was a huge mistake. Lets be glad that the mozilla folks are not so keen to release a product before it is ready.
* Is fixing this bug vital to web content developers, Mozilla distributors, Gecko embedders, or others who will depend on 1.0 for stable code and a minimal set of frozen APIs?
* Is there no alternative to fixing the bug that frees people to work on other 1.0 bugs?
* What goes wrong if we don't fix the bug, and just live with it for 1.0?
* What do we give up from 1.0 in exchange for fixing the bug?
* Can you stare down slashdot and C|net together and at the same time, and argue credibly that the bug is a 1.0 stop-ship problem? While we are not yet at the "about to ship, why should we take any more risk" stage, this question can help us prioritize and avoid unpleasant surprises later, when 1.0 is within our grasp.
Now that is proper requirements management, unusual in most open source projects. These are the 4 basic rules on requirements management.
Full on for them in doing this. They are running it like a proper project and trying to control requirements creep.
Open Source goes back into the Cathederal ?
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
In this light, an essential feature of Mozilla is backward compatibility between minor revisions. So, 1.0 means: "We're done with the APIs. Please come and hack away with them, we won't break your software".
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you
I don't think 1.0 is artificial in this case. The Mozilla devel team has posted very much in advance a specific roadmap... it's not like everybody else... hmmm, 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, oh what the hell let's call the next 2.0. (ahem cough cough KDE) Mozilla has proceeded in an extremely ordered and thorough manner with a specfic and detailed roadmap. I think this 1.0 will be what 1.0 are supposed to be, stable, mature, and a platform to build on if you are a developer without it changing out from under you because of a whim.
I give the Mozilla team muchos kudos for sticking to their guns and applying rigor in a age where rigor is sorely lacking.
Toddlers are the stormtroopers of the Lord of Entropy.
No the 1.0 is not artificial read the 1.0 definition!
The 1.0 marks the Mozilla API as a stable compatible API.
This means that users and developers can be sure that applications developed for the 1.0 version is compatible with other 1.x versions.
Just look at Galeon for a example of the problems following the Milestone releases.
For each new milestone Galeon stops working until it's updated to use the new API. After the 1.0 version is released this will no longer be an issue.
--
Pretor
Hm... I look at the 1.0 release a little differently. It's a few things:
.1 or .2 release, they expect the .0 releases to work as they should. Netscape lost a lot of die-hard fans (including corporations) with the release of 6.0. I think the Mozilla team has taken this lesson to heart and the 1.0 will be rock solid.
* Feature/interface freeze. A time to stop adding features. Features are being added as we speak, like the tabbed interface in 0.9.5.
* Removal of all debugging code during the release.
* Symbolic 'ready for prime time' version.
I think that the first is the most important to developers. How many skins and plugins have been made that break on the latest milestone?
For the end users the most important thing is the feeling that they're not using alpha or beta quality software, but they're using a *stable*, completed application.
This is one of the reasons that Netscape pissed me off with 6.0. It's a totally unusable browser branched of a Mozilla release that wasn't too usable itself. Then it was crudded down with Netscape's own crap. I think that this turned a lot of people off, and Netscape will pay for it down the road.
Especially on Windows. The Windows world is not the *nix world. People don't wait for the
At least I hope it will.
(btw. 0.9.5 is *really* good, I'm using it right now and find myself using MSIE 5.5 SP2 much, much less often.)
Since Mozilla is beginning to look rather slick these days I have a quick question to someone enlightened. Is the new AOL (7.0?) interface based on Gecko or does it still use the IE control? Anybody in the know?
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
Then, for each product or deliverable (something you can touch, or something that now exists when it didn't before etc) that you need to produce, classify them via the acronym MoSCoW:
Must
Should
Could
Won't (i.e. not in this release)
Helps to focus the mind on priorities. Otherwise, an excellent idea and full marks for the announcement so far.
Aegilops
Hey, all the team needs to do is ask.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
At the bottom of the buglist we see Bug #100309
Description:
Opened: 2001-09-18 08:55
we need preparation as well as a good place to have the biggest & coolest party
ever!
that's a good bug to have
~z
sig?
I've been thinking about the length of time its taking to get to 1.0 and must admit that i have been critical of the dev process for Moz in the past but no more. it just occurred to me that one of the reasons that we've been so bitchy about how long its taking is the fact that development of Mozilla is taking place in the wide open. it was a daunting task when they began and it still is. there tons of closed projects that take years to get done but we never hear about them until they are done. we've been following moz from the beginning and so the whole thing seems to take longer than it should. maybe I'm just late figuring this out but i just wnated to make sure it was said.
-
Listen I have been using Mozilla on and off since it began to be bundled with various distros.
.94+ version I am using right now and use it for most of my work. However, I do wish the thing was quicker in rendering pages. Any thoughts on this? Is it just my perception of the program?
When it first came out I swear the pages it could render came up as fast as anything I saw from even Opera but the program loaded really slowly. In other words, when it finally came up it was really fast unless it crashed.
Now, Mozilla can handle most any page Netscrape can handle and loads faster but the page rendering seems to be slower on regular html pages not nearly as fast as when it came out initially. I was impressed by the
ACK
I just wanted to keep everyone informed about what is happening to mozilla.org on the server side right now. Bugzilla has currently been shut down as a result of large amounts of database queries, etc, I have talked with those running the servers and this probably wont be up right away, but you never know. Mozillazine.org is also somewhat down (the sql server is dead), but a mirror of the article is availble at http://www.necrosys.net/mirrors/mozillazine-moz1.h tml. www.mozilla.org is still up and should continue to serve out Brendan's words of wisdom.
Please stand by,
When Mozilla is recommmended by Slashdot.
:-)
You over-estimate your own importance, dude
When Mozilla is 100 percent compliant to all standards including IEs broken ones.
Oh well. Looks like we'll never beat IE, then. Because we'll implement its extensions when hell freezes over.
Gerv