Mozilla's Year In Review For 2003

An anonymous reader writes "Like last year, MozillaZine has published a review of Mozilla's world in 2003. Obviously, the year was dominated by AOL's decision to murder Netscape (though various acts of 'brand necrophilia' will ensure that the Netscape name lives on in one form or another). This, combined with Mozilla Firebird's and Mozilla Thunderbird's steady progress towards replacing the Mozilla suite, made 2003 very much a transitional year for the open source project. Other memories to tell your grandchildren include mozilla.org's fifth birthday, the new roadmap, the Firebird name debate and a new chapter being added to The Book of Mozilla."

Comments

Having just tried Firebird...

[bc90021]

...I must say that I am looking forward to 2004! As time goes on, their products get better and better, and if being able to convince my cow orkers to use Mozilla is any indication, MS could learn a thing or two about what to put in a free browser. ;)

Although...

[ChocolateCheeseCake]

The person simoniker class the whole episode as "Netscape murdered by AOL", the fact remains that the sooner Mozilla moves away from AOL and towards being a non-profit organisation that is user centric rather than buzz word centric the better. The unfortunate thing is that there is now a lack of developers but hopefully with the new political structure, more developers can be encouraged to help out with the same vigor and determination ones sees in other projects, for example, FreeBSD or the Linux kernel. Firebird is a nice browser and hopefully they will start using native widgets rather than the ugly GTK like widgets being used now. With that being said, one could quesiton whether Mozilla has a relevance outside developing a rendering engine. GNOME has standardised on Epiphany for the browser and Evolution for the eMail/Contact manager, so where does the Mozilla foundation fit in. In some ways, this will be good. If they can instead concerntrate on the guts and gore and let the various projects like kmeleon, Epiphany and Camino concerntrate on the native front end, hopefully development will pick up and some of those really old render bugs in Mozilla's bugzilla are fixed.

My thoughts on Firebird

[Mmm coffee]

Switched completely to Linux a few months ago and Opera was the only killer app that I *HAD* to have through the switch. Mouse gestures, speed, well laid out keyboard shortcuts, etc. I'd go on but I'd be preaching to the choir.

After reading a lot of Stallman's writings I decided to let go of even Opera and totally switch to Free software. I was very apprehensive because Opera was the second coming of Jesus as far as I was concerned.

Went to Mozilla.org, Decided against getting the full fledged mozilla because I remembered it being bloated as all hell, got Firebird instead. Downloaded a ton of plugins, fixed everything to where it felt right.

I'm a total convert. Firebird will kick oh so much ass by the time it hits 1.0. It's design is as simple as IE, which is the #1 reason people cite IE as their favorite browser. It's small, almost as fast as Opera, all the features that I loved in Opera are available through plugins, and all the features I didn't use aren't in Firebird because I didn't install them. I have since fallen in love with tabbed browsing. Used to think that browsing three or four sites at once was kinda stupid, but once I got used to tabs in Firebird I began to see myself doing the exact same thing. ;)

The Mozilla project has come a VERY long ways since it first came to be. If you've tried Mozilla out earlier and were disappointed, get it now. Get Firebird. Get Thunderbird. Install plugins to your hearts content. You will be very well surprised.

And hey, you'll be using Free software so that's a huge plus, in my eyes.

Re:My thoughts on Firebird

[thinkninja]

I've been using Firebird since 0.4 and I love it. However, no matter what I do or say I simply cannot get others to give it a try.

They're quite prepared to install junk like bonzai buddy and various dancing things on their desktop but categorically refuse to try another browser. "I use Internet Explorer", they say and look at me like I just suggested they make love to the electric pencil sharpener.

I've long since given up trying.

Microsoft broke IE in November

[Tenebrious1]

My New Year's Resolution is to switch completely off MS products. After a month, MS still has not come up with a patch to fix the IE "double page scroll" bug (introduced in a critical security patch). Not being able to scroll down a page made reading /. a real pain in the ass.

Yeah, I could replace the offending file myself, or use the PgUp/Dn keys, but really, a security patch for IE that breaks IE is too much.

I've been using Mozilla Firebird about half the time, and IE the other half since it's just easier to keep using it after I've opened it to get to sites reqiring IE.

But to hell with those sites. To hell with Microsoft. I'll be spending the rest of my holidays purging the last remnants of MS from my desktops and my laptop. I'd been straddling the fence for years... thanks Bill, you've made up my mind for me.