Why Browser Innovation Matters

dvanatta was one of a several people who noted a new article by Mitchell Baker on Mozilla.org about why browser innovation matters - especially Gecko, and why it will survive things like Safari Whoops - got the name wrong. Updated.

Comments

Re:Inovate

[2flo]

U exaggerate.
Mouse Gestures are available for Gecko based browsers also!

Re:Inovate

[xZAQx]

Optimoz (for Mozilla has mouse gestures, too, you ignorant clod.

Re:Wheew, Mozilla must have great medical cover...

[vondo]

But in this case, this Mitchell is a woman. Confusing, I know.

survive safari?

[asv108]

I've tried safari and besides getting rid IE as the default browser on OSX, there is nothing that is great or revolutionary about Safari. I can understand the joy of "mac fans" because they are getting rid of another MS program, but Safari is not an innovative product, it is a lightweight IE replacement.

Personally, I use Chimera on OSX, Moz on faster linux and windows machines, and Phoenix on slower linux and windows machines. Konq is a good choice too.

Re:survive safari?

[iJed]

What is great about Safari is its integration with things like Rendezvous and the address book and small details like the snap-back button for searching and its clean and simple interface. Its this kind attention to detail that differentiates an Apple product from everyone elses.

Re:survive safari?

[quigonn]

Safari is _fast_, extremely fast, but you can only see (and feel) it when you're network connection is fast enough, too. ;-) Rendering time is just great. I compared it with some complex websites that our company created, and Safari definitely rendered it all fast enough.

And it starts up quickly, which is very nice, too. And it has this sexy brushed-metal look that most OSX application created by Apple have. :-) And, what I find really great is that the development of Safari also improved Konqueror's quality in terms of rendering speed and Javascript support.

Re:Inovate

[adamwright]

http://optimoz.mozdev.org/ - Mozilla gestures. Works great!

Re:Inovate

[TheShadow]

Then again, if MS integrated this into IE, I'd go right back to IE because of page compatibility, esp. for forms and secured areas.

If that's the case, go buy an IntelliMouse Explorer. One with two thumb buttons on the left side (in addtion to the two buttons + mouse wheel on top). You can use the two thumb buttons to go back and forth with one click. Plus, the explorer is an awesome mouse to begin with... no cleaning out gunk on the wheels.

Re:What about standards?

[galore]

As an occasional website designer, I would like to avoid having to delve into the DOM to maintain a consistent appearance and functionality across platforms/browsers.

by replacing vendor-specific APIs, that is exactly the problem the DOM solves...

Try RadialContext

[jeti]

Opera ouse gestures are nice and efficient. But as you have
to learn them by heart, people use only a few of them.

An alternative is the RadialContext menu
for Mozilla and Phoenix. It has the same feel as gestures,
but adds a GUI to them. It takes some getting used to, but
you'll end up using a lot more gestures than you would with
other implementations.

Re:What innovations?

[gmuslera]

Normally one don't see innovations until they are used and proved that are good. Tabs, gestures, popup blocking, form prefilling and a lot more were in their moment big innovations in mostly mature browsers (well, I think that browser tabs in opera were there from the start).

I don't think that browsers should "innovate" in HTML (like Netscape 2 frames or all the crap in IE), that is the job of w3c, but there are a lot of usability innovations waiting to be done.

Re:What about standards?

[virtual_mps]

Well, it might be that you're trying to do something that's not really a good idea. HTML isn't a page layout format--perhaps you should use pdf?

Re:What about standards?

[furrygeek]

But the DOMs are different for IE and Mozilla/NS. Each time a new version of browser is released, there is a divergence from the previous DOM. Doubtless, this is true for the other browsers, as well. I've noticed that this complicates scripting for XML.

Her name's Mitchell

[Bruce Perens]

Her name's Mitchell, not Michelle.

Bruce

Re:Whatever...

[machine of god]

The gestures in opera let you hide your porn faster. It's easier to just move the mouse a little than it is to hit the little x in the corner.

Re:What about standards?

[ReadParse]

As an occasional website designer, I would like to avoid having to delve into the DOM to maintain a consistent appearance and functionality across platforms/browsers.

Then delve into barebones HTML. But if you want to do anything fancy and make it look/work THE SAME across platforms and browsers, the DOM is what we have, and thank goodness for it. If you don't like the DOM, write something else and get browser support for it. That should only take 3 or 4 years fulltime.

RP

Re:The ultimate browsing experience

[Anonymous Coward]

I also like Opera 7 (fasted damn browser I've ever used) but I haven't stopped using Mozilla & Phoenix for one reason and one reason only.....tabbing.

The Moz/Phoenix tab interface is better for the type of browsing that I do, CTRL-click and it opens the link in another tab and retains focus on the originating tab. Opera's SHIFT-clck opens the link in another tab but moves focus to that tab.

I dislike that shifting focus but have been unable to find how to change it (if it's possible).

Re:It's also surviving iTunes...

[ianscot]

No objection to the other choices you list, but Safari does offer leanness, in both design and responsiveness. That's a change from Mozilla in both respects, as long as the article's about Mozilla. You're right, though -- the "survive" line in the article overblows the thing.

As usual, Apple releases a beta of an app and people either a) exult or b) express dismay that it didn't utterly change the world. It's a Web browser. By version 1.0 maybe they'll have a nice, stable, lean little browser that hooks into the rest of the OS without becoming cancerware like IE on a Windows box. That'd be handy.

-- fellow Chimera user.

Re:The job is not done yet.

[ptaff]

Time to clarify fileformats.

GIF: non-lossy bitmapped format
PNG: non-lossy bitmapped format
JPG: lossy format

GIF: 8-bit, 1 alpha channel
PNG: n-bit (as needed, up to 24), 8-bit alpha (as needed)
JPG: no alpha

PNG is also patent free and typically gets smaller file sizes than GIF.

There is no reason left but MSIE to use GIFs.

Re:*IE is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

For my dollar, I'd bet on the IE replacement that's faster than IE. I got sick of waiting for Mozilla to load.

Internet Explorer has kernel hooks. Mozilla loads itself when you boot (in Windows). Until someone puts Mozilla in the linux kernel, it will never be as "fast" as IE. Why can't the naysayers understand this?

Re:Overall a decent article, but one point...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because we turn down patches we don't agree with doesn't mean we are shills to Netscape/AOL. We're allowed to control the direction any way we want.

--Pink

and those buttons work in linux!

[ShortSpecialBus]

yeah, that mouse rocks

and you can use the 4th/5th buttons in linux, too

xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 2 3 6 7 4 5" &
xmodmap -display :0.1 -e "pointer = 1 2 3 6 7 4 5" &

imwheel -p -k -b "67" &
imwheel -p -k -b "67" -X :0.1 &

just remove the second instance of each if you don't use dualhead on an nvidia card

and have a .imwheelrc with the only the following in it
".*"
None, Up, Alt_L|Left
None, Down, Alt_L|Right

works great.

.. but that is not a simple comparison

[tjwhaynes]

Safari/KHTML vs. Gecko/Mozilla is just like KDE vs. GNOME. It's a matter of personal preference based on what is important to the end user.

Safari vs Mozilla is not a simple comparison. Safari is an extremely competent web browser, with a few shortcomings in the XML department which will no doubt be tackled and fixed as developers get to it. Mozilla is really the first viable web platform to appear that has the capabilities necessary to deliver a fully integrated web UI, using all the power of XML wrapped up in the XBL integration with XSLT, XUL, SVG and other XML-based markup and integration utilities. With Mozilla, you really can build a fully operational crossplatform application to do considerably more than trivialities.

While the previous platform sounds like the worst marketing blurb, it also happens to be a crucial point for the next generation of the web. The "Web As A Platform" is where Microsoft really wants to be - to fully integrate everything you see and do through one web delivery system is an extremely attractive proposition for a number of software vendors. Being certain that the platform will remain around even if the parent company moves on to other things or goes into the financial abyss is also extremely important if vendors are going to leverage Mozilla as the next big thing.

Of course, given that all the XBL/XUL/XSLT/etc. are published specs, there is no reason why Safari won't get them in time. Vive la difference.

Cheers,

Toby Haynes

This article is a pile.

[Squidgee]

A pile of propaganda, of course. What'd you think I meant? ;)

Seriously, though, I'm using Safari build 64, with tabs flipped on. And, IMHO, this browser trumps Chimera hands down. It is fast on my iBook where Chimera was a bit dumpy. Its implimentation of tabs not only looks better, but switches instantly whereas Chimera woulda take its sweet time in switching tabs. Its interface is damn prettier than Chimera's. Safari takes up much less CPU time. And let's not forget Safari's excellent implimentation of Bookmarks.

Safari also has some other nice things. Like, when I click "History", I get the last 10 URLs I've visited. Then if I want to wade through history, I get a context menu with the dates. This is much preffered to as opposed to Chimera's "Click history, wait 10s for history to load, search for URL" bull.

Finally, KHTML is far better than Gecko. I apologize, yes, Gecko was once king. Then it became a bloated mess. Safari, with far more features than Chimera mind you, is 2.9m. Chimera is, last time I checked, 7 or 8megs. This is not neccesary, and it is because of Gecko.

So, in conclusion, don't listen to this article. Safari is better, and if you wish to work on the part of the browser that actually does anything important, you can. I don't know about you, but I'd rather help impliment better CSS positioning in a browser than make the interface look better (Hey, I love interface programming, but let's be serious; an interface isn't worth a damn if the browser can't render properly; if it were I'd be using Omniweb over all of these browsers (If it had tabs, of course) because its rendering engine is the most beautiful thing I've seen, as is its interface. Sadly, it mangles pages too often).

Now if Safari were to impliment the "Ask if you want to accept cookies" feature, I'd be set for life. But as it is, Safari is still better than Chimera, and I don't blame Apple for choosing KHTML. Seriously, which would you want: A lean, quick, beautiful, works-but-is-slightly-unproven rendering engine (That can be quickly whipped into shape if there's an issue) or a bloated, slow beautiful, proven rendering engine? I think the choice is obvious.

Re:Inovate

[packman]

Nice flame... *sigh*

I tried all the guesture plugins mozilla/mozilla based browsers have - but none of these work well.. Actually - the one you pointed out cause my mozilla to show up a completely blank window - nothing on it - guess the XUL interface choked on it... And since I couldn't find how to install such a plugin in an easy way as a normal user - I installed it as root on my gentoo system - bad Idea - it modified the global settings - so for every user - mozilla was suddenly useless... Oh yeah - phoenix choked on it too... Galeon wasn't affected - but the mouse guesture plugin doesn't work for it anyway... had to re-emerge the whole mozilla bloat-thing to get rid of it (in an easy way ;) :p) And when recompiling mozilla - I can't stop wondering what that huge amount of code does - when gecko can be - and is so fast (see galeon) - and mozilla is plain slow.

I still favor Opera for a lot of other things, like the multi-window interface - not the "fake" and uncomfortable in use "tabbed window" interface... You can't even customize the position of the tabs (top/bottom/left/right), let alone reorganize or drag and drop (only in Opera 7 however - not yet there for linux :( ) - or save window setups...

Until now - opera seems to me as the most innovative browser around - in every version - new and handy (little) features show up... In mozilla - maybe it's just me - I can't detect such innovations. The only innovation in mozilla is the gecko engine - I consider the bloatware XUL user interface as a (very very very) bad thing (thats why I use galeon from time to time - but it lacks a good user interface).

If you would ask me - what innovations are you talking about? - well there are some very nice things here:
- page zooming
- back-forward using mouse only without even moving the mouse (as already pointed out)
- Quick menu to enable/disable/control popups, proxy's, java, javascript, plugins, cookies, referrer logging and browser identification
- inline find
- hotkeys for everything... keyboard-only browsing is not only perfectly possible - it's even quiet comfortable..
- crash recovery (no program is perfect - opera also crashes now and then) - continue exactly where you were before...
- Linked background windows
- Easy to reach page reload timer
- Powerfull file transfer manager
- quick search with any search engine using the adress bar

For any of these features - you need more than 2 mouseclicks - I didn't had to look into menu's or preferences to find them - they are all right here on my screen, being used - or easy to reach thru right-click-menus... That's what I like about opera - and no other browser even comes near to what opera has to offer on UI level. Open source is nice - I like it - but out there are companies that also have to earn money and deserve it - Opera is one of these where I gladly give money for to have this comfort. Opensource will catch up - but when it does - the opensource community will 'bring/keep their own standards' (on ui-level at least - like it already tried a lot) while other ways can be way more handy - so users that are used to the Opera interface will have difficulties to switch - and rather stay with opera (and maybe pay for it - or look at banners) than to switch to a simular but 'incompatible' user interface, or Opera will maybe have a whole load of new handy small features... Don't be mistaken - a user interface is something very complicated - details are everything - and with opera - almost all the details are there...

PS: Guys like you piss me off... calling peepz you ignorant clod while it could very well be applied to themselfs... You clearly never used opera - so you don't know what you are talking about... - you should really try it - you could learn something from it - and maybe even bring it to an opensource project...

Re:The ultimate browsing experience

[zxSpectrum]

This is one thing I would GLADLY pay for if it came out on Linux (and think it was a small price to pay, too)

Opera 7 is available for Linux. It is currently only a preview version, but please help Opera out by testing it, and help out by leaving useful feedback in the opera.linux newsgroup.

Re:Inovate

[edbarrett]

1. Read the mozillazine forums. Especially phoenix users. It's a 0.5 release, fer crying out loud!
2. Install Preferential. It gives you a primitive, regedit-type editor for all(?) of the options in mozilla/phoenix, even the ones that aren't in the original preferences UI.
3. ??
4. Profit from being able to use your browser again.

Use a bookmarklet

[jopet]

Define something like this: javascript:(function(){ var e,s; IB=1; function isDigit(c) { return ("0" =0; --e) if (isDigit(L.charAt(e))) { for(s=e-1; s>=0; --s) if (!isDigit(L.charAt(s))) break; break; } ++s; if (e0) return; oldNum = L.substring(s,e+1); newNum = "" + (parseInt(oldNum,10) + IB); while (newNum.length oldNum.length) newNum = "0" + newNum; location.href = L.substring(0,s) + newNum + L.slice(e+1); })(); as a bookmark and put it in the personal toolbar (in Mozilla). Clicking the bookmark will auto-incrment the last number in the URL. I got this from somewhere in the net, I am sure you find more if looking for "bookmarklet"