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4 Years Later, The Mozilla Tide Has Turned
dave writes "In 1999, I editorialized that the browser was the battleground that would win or lose us the whole thing. 4 years later, in light of the excellent Firefox 0.8 release it is time to update the article with a slightly more optimistic view."
Posted by dave on Feb 11, 2004 2:55 PM
By Dave Whitinger
In 1999, I editorialized that the browser was the battleground that would win or lose us the whole thing. 4 years later, it is time to update the article with a slightly more optimistic view.
On November 5th, 1999 I wrote an essay to the community titled The Battle That Could Lose Us The War. In that essay I described my mounting frustration over the losing battle we were fighting in the area of web browsers. My conclusion was that if Microsoft was able to dominate the web on the desktop, it would be a short matter of time before they could extend and dominate the web on the server. I knew that Mozilla was our last and only hope for winning this.
In the years since then, despite enormous and sundry pressures against them, the Mozilla project has moved forward at a remarkable pace. They somehow rebounded from each major setback even stronger. Milestones were passed, 1.0 came and went, and the layout engine Gecko started to pick up speed and became used in a variety of applications, including Galeon and Netscape 6 and 7. When AOL finally turned the developers loose, they responded by apparantly doubling their efforts and moving even faster and smarter. Whether you like Mozilla or not, their persistence is an inspiration to the entire Free Software community.
So much progress has been made, in fact, that today, more than four years since my gloomy outlook was keyed, with unspeakable pleasure I am now in a position to report that this tide has finally turned. The Gecko layout engine seems unbreakable and is reportedly more standards compliant than Internet Explorer. The Firefox browser is fast and stable, and supports the plugins out there that the users want and need, and, for the first time in several years, my wife is actually excited about her Linux desktop again. For the first time since Internet Explorer 3.0 was released, I am seeing people switching browsers in droves.
Furthermore, we now have the same browser as the Windows users. By making sure that my web pages look good in Firefox, I can be sure that it will look similarly in Firefox for Windows. Speaking of Windows, many of the Windows folks that I know, including those computer newbies that still think the "internet" is in their "Internet Explorer icon", have already made the switch to Firefox. Joe-User is excited about Firefox, and this means fast adoption of this browser in all computing circles.
Not only is Mozilla/Firefox a superior product, but it is built in the best traditions of quality software: simple, extensible and free (libre). The extensions support in Firefox is simply genius and will continue to create an entire industry of software products to enhance and customize the browser for individuals.
At the risk of fostering an attitude of complacency, I must say that the Mozilla project has breathed new life into the web, and as a side-effect, into the Linux desktop. The war is still far from over, but the tide of this crucial battle has most definitely turned. Things have never looked brighter for Linux (as a server, and a desktop), nor for the computing community as a whole, as a direct result of the tireless and outstanding work of the Mozilla developers. Well met!
Move on. 7.1 is the final version. Go get Mozilla or Firefox, where the updates keep coming.
By I remember from mozilla 1.3, there is something like richtext edit in mozilla, lemme google it... link1 and link 2
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/embedding/
FireFox uses about 20 megs of RAM, I've seen its virtual size at 120 megs but that isn't the amount of ram it is using. Its resident space is usually about 20 megs.
Yes, the GRE (Gecko runtime environment) has been around for a while. See http://www.mozilla.org/projects/embedding/GRE.html
Try loading about:config and changing the browser.cache.check_doc_frequency setting to 1. I think that does it.
It only monitors what browser is being used for a subscribing site. As a metric, it's only useful to say that the percentages of browser use is accurate for the types of sites that subscribe to Webtrends as they don't have more than maybe 10% of the web servers out there covered.
There's lies, damned lies, and statistics. Be careful what you accept as facts and what context the facts are from.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I am aware of the control, but IIRC it isn't compatible with IE's implementation. So it really doesn't help with the webmail providers.
In any case, Rich Text email is highly overrated. My family can barely send an email, much less know what to do with all those formatting buttons! Sometimes, less is more.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
i know it crashes more often than not for me, and after a bit i have to restart it because it gets so slow it's unuseable
I'm always curious what exact configuration the people who say this are running. I've run both the suite and the separate browsing app (firebird/firefox) for literally years, and ever since about mozilla 1.2 it has been fast and stable for me, on at least 10 different machines.
One well known caveat is that if you're having stability problems you should start with a fresh profile. I've had this problem exactly once. Saw crashes, created a new profile, copied over bookmarks.html, and the crashes disappeared.
It's already implemented. Mozilla has Rich-Text controls; They have dubbed it Midas.
It's been in Mozilla since around 1.2 or 1.3. Of course though, their implementation is standards-based, while IE's is not. Just like XML document loading, and various other features of the DOM, you have to code for standards, and then again for IE to work.
If you have a text area whose ID attribute is called "edit", you can easily start to use Midas by doing something like:
You can also view a Midas Demo.
I disagree - it's hard enough to get people to switch FROM their default browser (by downloading a new one) simply because it's the one that came with the system. So they hesitate. However:
IE can do tabbed browsing, with an extra download.
It can do pop-up blocking, with an extra download.
It can do probably do better cookie management and other features, all with extra downloads.
Why not just download the one browser that has it all? It won't be any help if everyone switches to a new IE that has all these features built in, but it's one of the great examples of how it's MS playing catchup, and not everyone else.
I introduce more and more people here at work to Mozilla all the time. It's great when I visit people and see them using Mozilla. I might see a pop-up on the screen, and say "you know you can disable that?" Or sometimes when we get into privacy concerns and someone mentions cookies - "Mozilla has a great cookie manager, instead of accepting or rejecting, you can select wether you want one or not". Some people say "but there's so many, what a pain!" to which I can respond "but it'll remember the sites that you say are ok!" "Really? Wow!"
Even the image management is great - sometimes you can't get rid of ads entirely, but you can block a lot of images.
I think there are a LOT of compelling features in Mozilla. Mozilla is, IMO, the technological leader, not the follower. IE may have more users, and it may be the leader in usage, but it's simply not as good as Mozilla, IMO.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
It has to be possible though, and without much extra work, because I have seen WYSIWYG editors on message boards now, that work in IE and Mozilla with no trouble.
Whatever they use at Codejock, which I think is WebWizForums, says that If you are using Internet Explorer 5+ (windows only), Netscape 7.1, Mozilla 1.3+, Mozilla Firebird 0.6.1+ it should work fine.
Morphing Software
Yes. This is correct
docs
Serious question: Why is Firefox supposed to be "better" than Mozilla?
It's smaller, faster. The UI is more easily configurable. It doesn't include an email app, WYSIWYG HTML editor or IRC client that I'm never going to use. For fellow Gentoo users, it compiles faster. Default theme sucks less than Mozilla's.
Firefox takes dozens of basic features like animated GIF removal away from the configuration panel -- instead you have to know what undocumented value to insert in a hidden configuration screen. Even Internet Explorer offers this option in a mouse-accessible location!
This is being worked on. Firefox is not complete. It is not even "One dot Oh". Firefox is incomplete software. The GUI for preferences is slowly but surely getting better. Mozilla has more people working on it than Firefox does. Eventually Firefox will supplant Mozilla as the official mozilla.org browser. Eventually. Not yet.
If you don't like it, don't use it.
Every once in a while I like to masturbate a new word into my vocabulary, even if I don't know what it means.
No one mentionned this ?
Ad-blocking with Mozilla is GREAT. See http://adblock.mozdev.org/
It even works with Slashdot ads....
Animoog.org
What I dont like is that the scroll bars are screwed up on Firefox if you load anything other than the default theme (Under OSX anyway).
Several of the bindings for Firefox changed between the 0.7 and 0.8 versions, so older themes that have not yet been updated for Firefox 0.8 will have problems; one of those problems manifests itself by making your scrollbars disappear. Once the themes are fixed, this problem won't exist (it's not specific to OSX).
Also, as for Firefox vs. Safari, I have a Powerbook, but I prefer Firefox on it. While it handles tabs similar to Safari, I can't browse anymore without find-as-you-type, a feature that only Moz/Firefox has (to the best of my knowledge). My only complaint about it is that NSITheme isn't fully implemented on OSX, so you don't get native-looking widgets (unlike on WinXP).
One solution is to download and install the User Agent Switcher Extension. You can then have FireBird/Fox/Mozilla send the IE 6.0 User Agent string.
Another extension that was a requisite for me to move from IE to FireBird/Fox was the GoogleBar, which emulates the Google Toolbar for IE. (They also have ones to mimic MSN and Yahoo! toolbar, IIRC.)
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
IE6 is remarkably web-standards-compliant
Bullshit.
It manages to get CSS 1, a specification over seven years old mostly right. However, it ignores or screws up vast swathes of CSS 2, a specification that will soon be six years old. It doesn't even attempt to handle the four year-old XHTML 1.0. It doesn't understand most selectors. It doesn't understand any of the CSS table model. It violates a number of mandatory sections of the five year-old HTTP 1.1 specification. It can't render PNG images correctly, despite the fact that Microsoft promised support in Internet Explorer 4 and the fact that it's been around for over eight years. It can't even decide between "quirks mode" and "standards compliant mode" reliably, as it throws an eppy when faced with the XML prologue in XHTML documents.
Don't even try to argue that Internet Explorer is in any way a decent browser when it comes to supporting standards.
That address bar embedded in the taskbar in Windows XP (Right click on taskbar -> Toolbars -> Address Bar) uses the system's default browser. If you set the system default browser to Mozilla, that will launch Mozilla to that address
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
Microsoft's IE still supports the original keywords of course, but that's because Microsoft pretty much came out at the beginning and said they'd challenge the patent in court if need be, and Netscape backed down (or at least didn't sue.) Opera et al though had more to fear from a lawsuit and adopted the "!"s instead.
You're right, if it wasn't for the built in extentions to IIS and Apache to translate HEAD to HE!D, etc, on the fly for non-Netscape browsers, we'd all be stuck with Netscape and IE.
Racists should be sent back to where they came from
It is possible, and has actually been available for some time. I use Kevin Roth's rich text editor. It works in any recent IE or Mozilla based browser. Other browsers should display a normal textarea input.
No matter how many of my rights are taken away, somehow I still don't feel safe. -Frigid Monkey
Or you could download and install the Preferential Extension (Project page | [Extension Room) and be able to edit settings directly from the Tools menu.
JMHO
css/edge
This site showcases some amazing stuff, all done with standard HTML and CSS. No Javascript, no (specific browser)-only code. That doesn't mean it works in all browsers, as the different versions of IE have varying bugs and/or missing implementations. This site is flat-out proof that the internet doesn't need the majority of proprietary code that sites use. The fact of the matter is that in most cases, the author used the easy way (auto-generated proprietary code) as opposed to the right way.
Demo and Demo-IE are a good example. IE does get it mostly right, but not quite. On the complexspiral pages, you can see again that IE doesn't do the background image the way it's supposed to.
This is a great site. It's 100% standards-compliant (i.e. it follows the rules set up to ensure proper operation of the web), does some neat visual stuff, and points out IE's flaws all at once.