Mozilla's Major New Roadmap

kerz writes "mozilla.org today released a new version of it's famed roadmap, this time with some pretty major changes. First and foremost, they plan on ditching the large Mozilla suite in favor of Phoenix and Minotaur. Secondly, they have plans to change the milestone cycle to allow for more time to fix the Gecko layout engine to be smaller and more efficient. MozillaZine has the scoop..."

Comments

Phoenix for Mac OSX!

[RalphBNumbers]

Therefore, in switching browsers, we are not dropping XUL on the Mac. We aim to ensure that Mozilla's cross-platform applications and toolkit remain both cross-platform and viable as applications that people actually use. And we need the same kind of embedded Gecko test coverage on the Mac that we get on other platforms. So, when we switch the default-built browser to Phoenix, we will provide daily and milestone builds of it for OS X.

They're finally going to support Phoenix on OSX!
This is a big win for the Mac community imho. Camino is great, but there are barely enough developers to cover the front end, the main body of the Mozilla project being behind a cross platform Phoenix project is a Good Thing?.

Re:Phoenix for Mac OSX!

[bunratty]

No, right now it's Mozilla vs. Camino vs. Safari. It will become Mozilla/Browser (formerly Phoenix) vs. Camino vs. Safari. It really isn't much different than the current situation -- the Mozilla camp is already split between XUL and native UIs.

Happy to hear it

[hawkbug]

I love Mozilla - it's my primary browser, gotta love pop-up-blocking! What I wish they would focus more energy on though is the mail client. I primarily use Netscape Messenger (netscape 4.79) for mail, and I know a lot of other people that do as well. The reason I can't/won't use Mozilla for mail yet is bugs. Basic bugs too - things I reported over 2 years ago, and they still aren't fixed yet. What kind of bugs am I talking about? For example, when you switch between IMAP mail servers, netscape messenger used to remember the last selected message from one mailbox to the other. Mozilla has never done this, but I keep getting updates that this bug is being worked on, or passed on to the next person. The other major bug I notice is that when I type in nicknames in the To and CC fields - 50% of the time, they get translated into the right email addresses, but other times they don't. My other major gripe about mozilla mail is the lack of an option to send just plain old plain text messages again. I don't want the headers of replies and forwards being turned into little graphics. I don't want symbols like ;) being turned into little smiley faces. I want to type in courier just like I can in Pine, or netscape messenger. I think more options with mozilla mail would make a lot of people happy...

Re:Happy to hear it

[Fnkmaster]

Exactly. And that's part of the point of this move. Rather than have a bunch of components that are part of a big nebulous project with versioning, releasing and other kinds of dependencies, where the mail/news component is the neglected step-brother of the browser component part of a big monolithic mass, roll it out into a separate standalone application, with its own user community, using a lighter-weight Phoenix-style GUI. This should combine the efforts of the Mozilla Mail/News developers, the Thunderbird project and the Minotaur project under one roof, working on a standalone mail/news component that should, if Phoenix is a useful model) be much faster and less buggy than its predecessor.

Honestly, the change is mostly cultural and social - a separate development community and process, and a dedicated user community were integral to Phoenix's success. Mozilla has been too large and faceless to really bring the user community in close touch with the developer community in the same way that happens in the Mozillazine Phoenix forums. And the development process seems less nebulous, less roadmap and process driven, and more feature and stability driven.

My only hope is that integration of Phoenix into the Mozilla main project effort doesn't kill exactly those things we love about the project, but it's good to see all those thoughts on changing cultural elements of the Mozilla.org process up in their new roadmap - a breath of fresh air indeed.

Interesting...

[Kircle]

I find it facinating that it at least appears that Mozilla is leading Netscape rather than the other way around. But I am left wondering how this will fit in with Netscape's future strategy. Will they continue with tradition and continue to release an all in one Internet suite, or will they begin to follow Mozila's path?

Re:Makes Sense

[frodo from middle ea]

my words exactly
I have not used mozilla browser ever since phoenix 0.5. And I have been using the phoenix nightly builds.
I use phoenix on linux/windows/solaris, I haven't restarted phoenix on my solaris box for days/weeks. Its fast, sleek, and has a very small memory foot print as compared to the lizzard.
Some of my concerns with phoenix though are

• Can't easily set the Master Password for encrypting the stored form/passwords.
• Can't change setting of any extension that i install. There is a settings button but it is disabled. Have to do it manually. In fact this was working till 0.5 but the nightly builds dont suppot it
• The extensions like pref. tool bar, or quick preferences don't always work. e.g. disabling cookies from either of these, doesn't really disable cookies.

Re:Makes Sense

[commodoresloat]

I just wish they'd also separate out Mozilla Composer and make the basic no frills standalone HTML editor the world needs.

They need to do this

[wowbagger]

The Mozilla team really need to break Mozilla up into smaller, more focused parts. That is one area I will give Microsoft credit for - they made IE and Outlook seperate programs.

The ideal for Mozilla would be (IMHO) a browser, a mail client, a download client, an IM client, and a composer. Each should be replacable - I should be able to tie the browser into whatever download agent I want, have whatever email client I want be pulled up when I click on a mailto: link, etc.

I'd even go so far as to have a caching program that the browser and downloader could talk to (to unify the disk cache system), but then I already run Squid on my systems.

Of course, all the Moz bits could and should access the same DLLs (.so's) to keep the disk and memory footprint down.

Resitance to change?

[mu_wtfo]

This is completely freaking me out.
I can only wonder at how a radical re-design this is going to turn out to be, from both a developer's and end-user's standpoint. The Mozilla project has, by all accounts, been an incredible success, and has been adopted by some major entities, eg. Sun, HP, IBM, Red Hat. By making this radical a change this soon after 1.0, do we risk alienating users and developers? I mean, now that people have gotten used to Mozilla, we turn around and dump something hugely different in their laps?
My fear is that commercial entities, along with the pro-Mozilla-the suite camp, will continue development on Mozilla Classic (the 1.4 branch), while the Phoenix folks work on NGMozilla...a fork.
Hold onto your hats, folks.

Not a smart move and here's why

[tds]

Mozilla for all it failing is starting to get real recognition as a product in the market, it is being seen a real alternative to IE and now just as it starting to get traction it gets KIA.

I find it hard to believe that that a Phoenix based browser is going to reach a level of stability and adoption, any time soon.

(Someone has to say this)
This smack of developers looking at the technology and saying you know I could do better (yeah I'm guilt here as well). You know lets rebuild this and provide no migration path for existing applications and users. There must be a better way to do this with less risk and disruption.

Remember it's not always the product with the most technical merit that wins it the wins just look at IE.

Otherwise Microsoft is going to be very happy they will not have to worry about Mozilla any more.