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Mozilla's Goodger on Firefox's Future
An anonymous reader writes "The New Zealand Herald has an interview with Ben Goodger, lead engineer for Firefox at the Mozilla foundation. In it he describes how he got started, his reasons for Firefox's existence and what the future may hold for the little browser that could."
She had 5-6 different spywares running at the same time on her windows xp box!
1. Firefox takes over IE's spot as top browser
2. Firefox renders slashdot correctly, since this is the site that promotes it the most.
Keep up the good work!
Its nice to see firefox is doing so well. Mozilla is just a resource hug.. Thats why i changed :)
And Firefox 1.0 PR has already hit a half million downloads. Way to go!
1) Take 90% of browser market share
2) Integrate into Windows Explorer and tell judges it can't be ripped out
My best sig is this one.
Kiwi helping build browser
17.09.2004
By PAUL BRISLEN
The web browser wars are over and Microsoft won, right?
Well someone's forgotten to tell Ben Goodger and his team at the Mozilla Foundation because this Kiwi software engineer is taking market share from Internet Explorer (IE) with Firefox, the browser that's smaller yet smarter than anything else available.
Goodger, back in New Zealand this week visiting family and friends, works for the Mozilla Foundation and has been the lead engineer on Firefox throughout its development.
He began while still at the University of Auckland waiting for the launch of Netscape 5.0.
"I used Netscape 4.0 and basically was just designing web pages and doing web development work."
The wait for version 5.0 was a long one and when Netscape finally ceased development work on its browser and opened up the source code to the Mozilla Foundation, Goodger found himself taking time off to work in the US on the browser itself.
Today he leads a relatively small team of engineers who are hard at work preparing for the release of Firefox version 1.0 and the Kiwi input is hard to miss.
The code names for the previous versions of Firefox include Three Kings, Royal Oak, One Tree Hill and Greenlane.
Firefox has generated an enormous amount of interest among hardcore internet users around the world and for the first time has taken market share away from Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
Goodger said the figures themselves varied depending on the source but US-based web training organisation W3Schools claimed IE 6.0 peaked in May of this year with 72.6 per cent market share among its "early adopter" users and had fallen back to 68.3 per cent in August.
That's the first time IE has declined in market share since its release and could mark the turning point for the browser community.
The mainstream audience is still firmly in the grasp of IE, however, with figures in excess of 90 per cent reported by several different organisations.
Most, however, report that IE is losing ground to Mozilla-based browsers and most of those switching are using Firefox.
In its first day of release the latest version of Firefox was downloaded more than 300,000 times.
So what is it about Firefox that's attracting users? Goodger said it was a combination of things.
"Some like the added features, some like the smaller size of the browser. It really depends."
Goodger is quick to point out that while Firefox is smaller than other browsers, that doesn't mean it's a "lite" version of a browser.
"It's fully featured. In fact if anything it's got more features that people use than many browsers."
Goodger and his team have been working with one goal in mind: to make a browser that makes the internet simple again.
"Do you remember how it was when you first went online? It was easier to search for things, easier to find things, there were fewer annoyances.
"That's what we want to get back to."
Goodger said Firefox gave users the chance to block pop-up windows, the bane of many users' lives, but went beyond that.
Because the browser was not tied in to the operating system, something Microsoft touted as a benefit for IE users, it was not prone to the same security vulnerabilities as IE.
"We also wanted to make the searching experience much easier for users."
Consequently Firefox has a Google search box built in and allows users to search within a web page simply by typing in the word they're looking for without having to launch a separate search box.
Goodger's favourite feature, however, is Firefox's smart keywords utility.
"It's something that's a little bit hidden so people have been slow to find it but when they do it blows them away."
Users might, for example, regularly use the company phone book online so Firefox allows them to add that search to their browser.
"So you can
...just cracks me up. "Mozilla's Goodger on Firefox's Future"
It just sounds DIRTY... If there was some guys Goodger in my future, I'd certainly try to do something about it...
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." - Patton
In terms of features, I don't see why anyone would NOT use firefox. You could call things like tabs, quick searches and easily accesible plugins "innovative features," but its not really that innovative, if you think about it. Its just obvious. Microsoft's IE is just a way to look at web pages. Period. No customization.
Congrats to the Mozilla folks for thinking out of the box and trying to create something that users wanted.
*shrug* Big deal. I've seen well over 400 present (as counted by Ad-Aware).
5-6? Consider yourself lucky that you didn't have to deal with 100 times that amount.
sucket verily and needs to be brought into 1996...
Damien
What's wrong with Ponsonby or Remuera - much classier. Or Manukau, Otahuhu, Papatoetoe - much more authentic. They could offer a porn-optimised version of Firefox codenamed "K-Road".
More useful features, nice interface and CUSTOMIZABLE! Extensions are so good... but we'll have to see if it's too much for a simple end user.
My favorite one : WeatherFox! (URL:http://weatherfox.mozdev.org/). Crafteh (wish I knew his real name) developped this beauty following my suggestion on the MozillaZine forum and did an AWESOME job. Weather prediction anywhere in the world in your status bar... soooo usefull! Use it!
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
One cool thing about Firefox is support for extensions, extra search engines, etc. Totally configurable and that's the kind of users it's going for.
If firefox is to hit mainstream, some of the more popular plugins need to be incorporated directly into the product. At the very least, offer for download a chunky version with lots of stuff already installed. But even that won't cut it. Some features, like tabbed browsing, can't just be added on as extensions because they interact badly with other extensions.
Also, there are backward-compatibility problems with each new release. Developers of open-source extensions aren't going to keep updating their work, so supporting at least the more important extensions should be considered essential from a release perspective, and perhaps they should be incorporated into the core project where possible.
There's nothing wrong with an extension arhcitecture per se. In fact, they have worked very well in open source, e.g. Eclipse and Linux. And that's true for firefox too. However, the management of extensions requires careful consideration. In Firefox's case, there's room for improvement.
(BTW maybe this has nothing to do with the interview but it's slashdotted, that's my excuse for waffling on.)
.........that we (hypothetically) could lock down IE using policies so that IE could *only* browse intranet sites. Then install Firefox as the "Internet Browser". He said it would be too much administration for our PC support group.
:)
I came back with, "More administration than cleaning and recleaning spyware and adware from users' machines on a daily basis? Symantec and Adaware are supposed to come out with a corporate solution in Q2-05 at the cost of roughly $20-30 a seat. This would cost us nothing but the time we spend orchestrating a rollout."
I could see the gears turning, which was encouraging.
-Randy
These things are of course a matter of personal preference, but I find that the innovations in Firefox are almost invariably sensible and useful.
All too often software developers add things that seem good to them, but which the end user finds irritating or just confusing. Opera is a good case in point, with lots of gee whiz cool features that I just never got around to using. That has never happened to me with Mozilla or Firefox.
It seems that with every release I'll find some new little feature that suddenly becomes essential, or at least enhances my browsing experience in some nice way, but without detracting from other things.
The latest was the search bar that pops up at the bottom of the screen when searching in the page. How brilliant! After years of search boxes popping up on top of the text that you're reading, someone figured to drop it in a place that wasn't intrusive.
Sure, there are still things that I would like changed - like moving more of the configuration away from the "about:" system, but all in all I just like Firefox and find that its greatest feature is that it doesn't get in my way - it just does the job and lets me concentrate on content.
Three Squirrels
The main reason I was so interested in firefox to begin with (and the same reason I use it today), was that it focused on trimming out the unnecessary stuff from Mozilla. This makes startup/respopnse time much quicker. It used to take +/- 15 seconds to start mozilla, as opposed to +/- 3 seconds for firefox. Granted, I always run on older hardware, but still.
The other contenders for a fast browser (konqueror and opera) don't render pages correctly a lot of the time. Konqueror's KDE daemons make it slower to start up. Opera's banners make it rather annoying to use.
...that ad-aware counts each cookie as an item. Therefore, if there are multiple Windows accounts, each account has its own IE profile and cookies. So cookies can be counted over and over, and by themself, aren't that malicious.
Overclockers is running a compo on the biggest infection right now (self inflicted though). Check out the current race leader!
perl or python as javascript replacements would be cool (although they would likely not take off)
Other than that I really can't complain - the extension mechanism lets developers scrathc their itches quickly without derailing or sidetracking the main browser effort...the collection of extensions is already incredible.
That comment just doesn't reflect reality, DogDude.
Firefox blocks popups out of the box, doesn't support ActiveX at all, doesn't let you run EXE files directly without saving them first, isn't tied with explorer.exe, etc. How many sites do you know that have spyware which affects Firefox?
I know of none. Can you point me to any please? The only site I've come across which could cause issues is http://www.xpehbam.biz/5 which loads a java class which exploits the Microsoft JVM (NB: not Firefox), and installs a dialer. If you're running the SUN JVM, you are of course safe.
Karma? Hey I just call it as I see it.
I hate to burst YOUR bubble, but your statement seems to fly in the face of certain hard facts, as underscored by the chronic microsoft ie specific security woes which have buffeted microsoft users for the past few years.
While there's no panacea, and this is no time to relax our security vigilance, there's no question that firefox is a much safer choice of browser than ie - to deny that is just plain silly.
The number one reason I switched to Firefox is the LiveHTTPHeaders extension. This handy little gadget docks in your sidebar and displays outgoing HTTP requests and incoming responses in real time. It's a must for anyone who works with server side application technologies, load balancing, content switching, or caching. Good stuff.
Oh, yeah, the pop-up blocking is great too, so is tabbed browsing.
Be Safe! Sleep with a Marine. Semper Fi!
take two clean computers.
now install firefox on the other and leave the other using ie.
now, put average guys to look for porno on the computers... after couple of hours which one is going to be absolutely infested and which one isn't? which of these computers you can use without getting mysterious popups?
sure even firefox can't help you from getting spyware you intented to install(bonzi and whatever)..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I spend a reasonable amount of time testing developments to our company's online DAM product. For sometime now I have insisted on including testing with firefox as well as the usual suspects (IE, safari, IE for Mac, Moz) While there are screeds of comments about trouble in certain browsers and how they should "try reading the HTML spec" before releasing the latest version of their browser, so far there have been no issues posted about Firefox. Long may it continue!
Will never catch on with the neophytes running Windows unless popular plugins install with a single button click and work seamlessly. Any idea why the Flash photo galleries on the USA Today site keep prompting me to reinstall Flash even though version 7.0.14.0 is already installed with Firefox/Win2K.
I've installed Firefox on the computers of two relatives, both have inquired about the problems rendering USA Today's contents. Unable to solve the problem I had to tell them to use IE. Yuck! I will gladly forego using photo galleries on USA Today in favor of using this browers but others won't.
If you check the w3c validator, you will see it finds 129 errors (that may fluctuate due to the content, but there ARE errors).
Oh, and since you've BLOCKED the w3c validator, I had to go through a Coral Cache link.
I've tried explaining how useful tabbed browsing is to people but I end up falling back on "Just trust me" They always understand once they've used it.
Well I can mention one anecdote. I was searching for a crack on astalavista, and one site that had an interesting file I wanted to check out, insisted through a dialog box, that I must click yes and install their firefox extension, before I will be allowed to download the file from their site. Of course I refused, so who knows what it was. Strangely enough, my virus checker reported start.exe contained a virus. Another app packaged with a different crack. Oh the joys of windows.
I suppose the lesson is don't run proprietary software that requires a crack. I think I'm going to setup a user for browsing and a user for mail on my linux box, so my home dir is safe in case I do something retarded, since even the brightest people can be boneheaded some of the time.
If you're running the SUN JVM, you are of course safe.
Yes. We all know that only Microsoft produces exploitable software. It is simply not possible that SUN of *shock* Mozilla may have security leaks dwarfing those of Redmondian products.
Because, you read Slashdot 10 times per hour, so you know what's going on in the real world, huh, buddy?
If Slashdot's HTML is standard, why do you block the wc3 validator? What possible reason could you have for that?
Since an AC here was so informative in posting it, I'll post it to: Coral Cache link of 189 errors in Slashdot HTML.
"This page is not Valid HTML 3.2!" says the validator.
Converting the static code to CSS WAS a helpful experiment, because it's an illustration of how much you could save by modifying your code to generate it. The bandwidth savings alone are awesome. But, hey, "it doesn't scale well," right? The excuse for any user-submitted feature suggestion (because heaven forbid Taco implement something he didn't think of).
Grr. The editors of Slashdot are frustrating.
Despite slashdot's attempts to block the w3c validator, it's still quite trivial to run it against the source code.
File: Slashdot News for nerds, stuff that matters.htm
Encoding: iso-8859-1
Doctype: HTML 3.2
Errors: 180
This page is not Valid HTML 3.2!
I know this is bound to light a fire under a few peoples pants, but most of TBE (Tabbrowser Extensions) really should be stuffed into Firefox itself. It's just got too many good features to be totally left in the cold as an "extension". It's one of the two extensions I consider critical to my 'Zilla browsing experience (the other one being All-in-One Gestures, because mouse gestures are, to quote a friend, "teh fucking pwn")
Lemmy start a small laundry list of TBE's perks though:
-Single window mode (EVERYTHING opens in a new tab)
-Drag & Drop tab rearranging (its just common sense)
-Undo close tab (possibly the BEST feature of the entire extension. I use it daily)
-Modifyable tab bar (move it around, scroll it, make it double layered, etc)
-Customized tab behavior for new links (hypertext/bookmarks/history/javascript/external apps/etc: choose if they open a new window, tab, or load in an existing one. Very nice for steamlining your browsing experience.)
-Tab grouping (including pretty colours!)
-Tab locking (lock a tab to a specific page)
-Auto reloading of tabs
I could go on and on... TBE is like everything AND the damn kitchen sink (which is why some people seem to have a seething hatred of it). Really though, would it kill Mozilla to add just a few of the more popular features? I know extensions are supposed to be this big, grand, wonderful idea, but I think a LOT more people (especially average joe's) would be appreciative rather than pissed off to have a couple more handy dandy features. You've got to remember that if you want your browser to go mainstream, its got to have a bit of a "smack you in the face" slant for all the little old ladies and joe-sixpacks out there that aren't gonna spend an hour sifting through the extension library. Leave the "OMG my browzer has NO bloat n' runs 1.00283% fastr on my AMD becuz I compiel'd it myself" to the geeks who know and love that kind of stuff.
Just my $0.02 anyways. In the meantime i'm just gonna keep loving the hell out of this browser. Firefox RULES! \o/
It has nothing to do with "scaling well", doing a full conversion of a major dynamic site from old HTML and tables to XHTML/CSS is a lot harder than changing one flat page.
Grr. Armchair web developers are so frustrating.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
This is potentially the beginning of a huge change in the way advertising works on the internet. As people get turned on to Gecko, they will get turned on to features like AdBlock. If Gecko captures 50% market share, you can bet many of those people are viewing neither ads nor unwanted Flash content, if they're anything like me.
Does this mean an huge impending change in the way advertising works on the internet? Will companies like the NYT, who make a lot of money from ads, start embedding advertisements in ways such that AdBlocking them with regexp filters would also block out the non-ad images?
Yes, that bit about FF asking users to blindly install software without even mentioneing what it is or what it is for is very anti-security. I was pretty suprised by that.
Once people get used to just DLing and running programs, plugins etc because a tool bar pops up and asks you too, there goes any hope of a secure system.
So I'm one of these slow guys who hasn't figured out smart keywords. So I go to "help" and "index" and type "smart keywords," just like the software geek says. Guess what? Nothing.
My apologies for the casual wording, and the ire it evidently raised in you. I meant, of course, to say that this particular exploit that I was detailing was only effective on MSJVMs, and that the Sun JVM was immune to that particular one.
Now as long as that's clear...
This has been happening for quite some time. Like years.
:(
Sites (like Yahoo, IGN etc) are already making you step through ad pages before seeing content. Sometimes you can block that too, but sometimes not.
The more we fight against ads, the more annoying and intrusive the ads will become
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
3) ???
4) Profit!
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
The reason for the difference between my scan (180) and other others here (189) is that I took a copy of the current page, added the meta content line (which needs to be added if you're scanning from a local hard drive instead of over http) and uploaded the site to the w3c validator.
If anyone is interested in reproducing this, you need to add this element to the head:
(The charset was determined by right-clicking the web page (as rendered over http) and checking the properties.)
Anyone know if there is any specific network ports that can be blocked to prevent these spyware?
Well, I have been using the same AdBlock settings since 2001 and I rarely see an ad on Yahoo, NYT, or anywhere else. You just have to be clever with your regexps ;). In cases where you have to step through an ad page to get to the desired information, I usually get a blank screen with a "next" hyperlink on it. I just click on "next," and never have to see the ad.
... let the fun begin!
I download the ad, but tell AdBlock not to display it. Just doing my bit to bring down the system.
The point is, the vast majority of ads are completely blocked by the filters, as they have been since 2001. And as long as Gecko had 2% of the market share, sites didn't care. Now they'll have to.
I don't have specific sites. Random porn sites that are transitory, most DEFINATELY have various trojans. Firefox lets them through, and my virus checker (http://free-av.com) picks them up. All kinds of trojans. Granted, there are probably fewer because Active X doesn't work, but depending on how much time I spend surfing, I average catching between 1-3 trojans a day that come by way of Firefox.
I don't respond to AC's.
googlebar with pagerank
I can assure you, that if I didn't have a good, up to date anti-virus program running, that my machine would be filled with trojans and backdoors. Firefox lets plenty straight through. I know I'm not imagining thing, when my computer makes a bizarre beep, and my virus checker pops up a window asking what I'd like to do about WormX.
I don't respond to AC's.
As several people have mentioned, there have been some spyware targetting Mozilla, and I have personally run into websites that attempt to install spyware through it's plugin install feature. It looks like the newer versions of Mozilla and Firefox require upgrades to come from update.mozilla.org, thus for spyware to easily get through it must have been put up on that site.
I myself know of Adblock - but I choose not to use it. Sites that have ads that are too annoying to use, I just don't use.
I'd rather have sites stay around longer because they are supported by advertising revenue. I don't mind a few ads as a price, and I would mind whatever payment scheme would have to replace them.
But that's just my personal stance. In the larger sense, I think that the populace at large does not care about ads so much that they seek out blocking solutions, or would even go to the effort of using an ad blocker if they could. After all, the US populace is exposed to ads so often we are just about blind to them anyway.
Popups are a differnt matter as they generate constant unpleasant irritation, and people do go to great lengths to eliminate irritations from their lives.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's lean, mean and quick. It's got a nice feature set, but I do find myself wanting:
- A more exposed menu to temporarily disable popup blocking.
- An option to open new tabs in the background rather than switching to them.
My favorite aspect of Firefox is that it doesn't try to do everything. It's just a browser, like... well.. IE. Only it's better. It doesn't have that Craptive X stuff.
Web designers have gotten sloppy in the last few years, coding only for IE, causing problems for those that don't use IE. The trend is changing and I welcome our new extra workload for lazy web designer overlords!
I still prefer Firfox, but you might as well get your facts straight. If you don't even know the competition, how can you beat them?
---
Find out more about the impending downfall o
I don't have specific sites. Random porn sites that are transitory, most DEFINATELY have various trojans. Firefox lets them through, and my virus checker (http://free-av.com) picks them up. All kinds of trojans. Granted, there are probably fewer because Active X doesn't work, but depending on how much time I spend surfing, I average catching between 1-3 trojans a day that come by way of Firefox.
If you average catching between 1-3 trojans a day that come by the way of Firefox, which of course means you aren't CHOOSING to download these files (that would be no fault of the browser), then surely you'll be able to come up with specific sites and post them here for us to see.
Otherwise it's just pure BS.
I don't see Image search or Froogle. Plus you can't configure it very well.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I reckon this browser needs one last rename.
Firefox Aye Bro.
Ohh... It's a guy. Okay. Carry on.
I prefer a void in conversation to a vacuous one.
It's much, much, *much* more likely that you're getting these trojans through a completely different source and just blaming Firefox. You could have some other resident, hidden trojans that are downloading these things; remember that with XP and 2000 (I assume you're using one of them), once you have one trojan or worm, the floodgates are open for more to install themselves. Some will download porn adware, and some will even generate pop-up ads, hoping that you the user will think it's your browser. These trojans could even get through via a different machine on your local network if you have one, or if you have a poorly secured DSL router.
Couldn't they just make a proxy that records the times that each packet is recieved, and then use this timing everytime?
so the packets would be in the same order, and the reflow bugs would be reproducable?
I just find it hard to understand how we can't reproduce things that happen in such a closed environment (a computer). It's like debugging is still in the dark ages. In science, you need to make experiments reproducable or you get laughed at.
When will computer science be a real science?
If all you're doing is looking at porn then you don't need Trojans.
I can't say that your problem doesn't exist but have you tried with .10 and a fresh profile? As it stands the Flash plugin work seemlessly and the whole process is very slick. First time you go to a Flash site and hit install it just works without a restart. The same will happen with other plugins in the future IIRC. I haven't been prompted again for Flash as well.
.9 and how promising the plugin and extension architectures are I am now very hopeful. 1.0 will feature moron proof access to web plugins and extension with the ability to update without hosing your profile. Its gonna be sweet.
To be honest once I saw the changes pouring in after Firefox was "feature complete" I got really annoyed and thought Firefox 1.0 was going to be a steaming pile of half-finished shit. Seeing how far they have come though since
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
i was going to blame /. for the way the web site renders in Firefox.
,its actually firefox.
/. since its HTML is not valid.
/. or shall i play safe and blame MicroSoft.
Then i read that its not Slashdot
Then i read that it actually is
So can i continue blaming
many thanks for your invaluable opinions.
Wanted : A Signature.
What does XSLT have to do with anything? Sure gecko browsers like Firefox support XSL transforms, but they don't support XSL:FO. Or were you using that page as an example of how things should be? If you were, you might be surprised if you click 'View Page Source'. It's HTML (not XML), with CSS.
Any time you see a tag like <br> without a matching </br>, thats not XML. In XML it's <br/>.
Favorite one I never used, Flashblock.
All flash is blocked, you click the ones you want to display. If only the (un)installing worked.
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
Is it? Remember the word "dynamic" You can change *one* set of table code and ta-da all of the tables automagically get changed.
The problem is we need semantics, and that requires actual design... a few drop-in code changes can't necessarily substitute for thought and planning.
XHTML would be ideal, yeah, but actual valid HTML 4.01 with good CSS would be a welcome change, too. Tables are OK, but see all those FONT tags? Yikes.
OK I am in an armchair right now, but I'll be right back to web development tomorrow.
SYS 64738 NO CARRIER
I'm getting pretty tired of this whole 'Firefox doesn't render Slashdot correctly' thing. WHICH VERSION OF FIREFOX DOESN'T? Because versions 0.9.1-3 worked fine, and so does the latest one, and so will the official release. I swear to Buddha I don't know just WHAT people mean when they whine about it.
IT BLOODY WORKS FINE!
Sigh. Calming down now, sorry for the rant.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. -- G.B. Shaw
No, it's not too much for a simple end user. Many simple end users (including the relatively computer illiterate) are adopting Firefox or Mozilla, especially at universities across the nation. And they love it.
Yeah! And real men read web pages using only cat, parsing the HTML in their heads!
BTW, shame on whoever modded the parent troll. We can have an intelligent debate here over the relative merits of using Firefox instead of IE. Disagreeing with popular opinion on /. does not make one a troll.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
It's not a conspiracy theory. Slashdot editors have unlimited mod points.
New Zealand might be small but by fuck we have some fucking smart people. Props to Mozilla, you have the fine NZ hookup!!!
"The most dangerous creation of any society is that man who has nothing to lose." - James Baldwin, American author
If slash was developed properly, it would be almost EXACTLY as simple as changing 1 flat page. Have you ever looked at slashcode? It's the only code I've seen which is worse than the abombination that is bugzilla.
Just because you can make something a plugin, doesn't mean you should. Shoudl we also make an RSS client in Firefox via an extension? Or would that but up against the one made for FireFox. Or how about a POP3 checker? Or instant message client? Or a bread slicer! Yeah, that'd be better than just plain old sliced bread.
Personally (admission to not being objective), I prefer my functionality to be partitioned into separate programs. While making extensions is presumably easier than writing a full app, maybe the Mozilla team shoudl consider making a small container that can be used to run one-off standalone "extensions". Personally, I think WeatherFox beats the stupid thing from the Weather Channel, but since I don't run MoZilla/FireFox, I won't be using it anytime soon.
From the page linked on you sig : /.! ./ posters to link the alistapart site. Let's begin lobbying Taco right now! Who's with me? :-)
------------
Before you panic because I'm picking on Slashdot, let me inform you that I asked Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda, the guru behind Slashdot, for permission to post this information, and he stated in his reply email:
Have fun. Feel free to submit patches back to us if you come up with anything useful. Slashdot's source code is open source and available at http://www.slashcode.com.
------------
Did you or anyone else involved with alistapart submit a patch to the slashcode? I'd love a 2004-compliant
Now, we only need some frequent
Instant Karma's gonna get you, Gonna knock you right on the head (John Lennon, 1970)
It is rather ironic that we have the technical skills, in droves, to develop dynamically publishable content, yet we immediately whine about the costs of doing it when the stuff is already Open Source.
So much for utilizing projects like Apache Forrest or better yet Cocoon 2.1.5.1.
riiiiiight, which means a complete redesign and a lot of work. And the slashdot folks have stated that they are working on it.
I swear, if I had a dollar for every hack (in the negative sense) who stood on the sidelines and went "you know, that could be done better"....
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
The conspiracy theories are fun to read though... hey, I said we emitted HTML 3.2... I never said it was valid :)
Then you don't emit HTML 3.2. You may try, but you're failing. You emit something similar to HTML 3.2 which isn't HTML 3.2.
Slashdot does emit code to an HTML standard, it just happens to be HTML 3.2.
Yep, you sure didn't say it was valid, but "emitting code to an HTML standard" is something you're certainly not doing.
where does the funding come from?
Why does yahoo do this
If you're not going to produce valid HTML 3.2, why not just call it XHTML? "Hey, we produce XHTML!" There won't be any difference. Heck, I just checked the validator, and you're showing less errors for HTML 4.01 Transitional than you are for HTML 3.2. Maybe you should start saying it's 4.01?
Ever try emailing them?
i sdhfpoisdhfopisdhfopisdhfposdihosdfhii.slashdot.or g
Or, in the alternative:
1) Put up a subdomain: xhilhdioshpfisdhfpoishdopfihsidopfhosdihfopsdhfop
2) Have something (anything) listen on port 80 for any connection whatsoever.
3) Submit above domain to validator script.
Voila, you now know where the w3.org validator connects from. This is strictly a guess, but it's probably an IP somewhere within their netblock.
Just a thought.
have misspelled netcat. Don't mention it, glad to be of service.
HAND.
Firefox Setup 1.0PR.exe - 4,742,005 bytes
Opera 7.54 - ow32enen754.exe - 3,666,195 bytes
People should stop comparing Firefox to IE, that's really unfair, its like comparing a power-plant based on nuclear fuel with one based on coal. It is a difference in age.
However when we compare Firefox with Opera we can clearly see that Opera is a smaller download, it includes a very smart (the smartest I've used) email client, a news reader and an IRC client.
The day when Firefox/Mozilla will have a email client as smart as Opera's M2 and it will be every bit as accessible as it is now M2 is the day I will consider switching. Till that day I'll still be an Opera fan with all the other browser installed as an alternative.
I used to think that the google bar was the killer plugin all categories, first on IE, then the unofficial one for Moz/Firefox. Supersweet.
:)
But now, I've uninstalled it and I miss only one feature - that is not even Google related - the only one I actually used that was special, the "UP" button. I can't for my life imagine why that is not a standard button in any browser, especially with the dropdown it provides. Anyone that fixes that one part as a standalone plugin is my hero forever. Make it so I can put it beside the url bar or something. =)
Anyhow, reason the google bar is unnecessary is Bookmark Keywords (see your Quick Searches folder) together with Find As You Type. Nowadays I only type "ALT+D g search terms ENTER" when I want to search google for "search terms", and I have more shortcuts for images, like "im" and so on. Moreoever, this makes it consistent with my other fast searches, like dictionary, wikipedia, several forums etc. I do admit that Find As You Type is not initially as smooth as clicking the search words in a bar to go to the places in the text, but on the other hand, if you like me usually have your hands mostly on the keyboard, it is faster, especially with the right settings (no '/' to start finding etc). And nowadays, in 1.0PR, it is a small bar with highlight and all that...
Try it out, it really is both smoother and faster than a specialized bar. And I got some viewport space back, too (important on my laptop).
Spine World
Firefox has too few features when compared to Mozilla, Opera or Konqueror (my favourite). Although better than MSIE, Firefox developers should think again whether the path they walk will allow them to maintain a strong share and reputation in the browser market.
Users now switch to Firefox because they want to escape from MSIE. That's great, and I truly believe that very soon Firefox will be used by at least 50% of the web users, including companies, and later its market share may be even higher, assuming that MS will not unveil any fixed or usable MSIE version in the near future.
However, in the long run, users will notice the lack of features in Firefox and start going back to featurefull browsers like Mozilla, Opera and Konqueror. I do believe, however, that Firefox will continue being used by corporations exactly because it is very light without many features.
It is worth noting that a Firefox developer wanted to remove the "View Source" menu option from CVS. But the HTML source is useful to anyone, not just developers.
Firefox developers should not expect that the user will install tweaks and addons. Firefox right now has a powerful engine but only a small portion of this power is available to the end user. Users will soon demand more power.
It is also very annoying to have to install a number of addons and tweaks in order to make Firefox work unveiling its full power. Now consider how many users will have the patience to reinstall addons and tweaks after a HDD format or a Windows reinstallation... They will not accept that hassle so they will soon move to the powerful Mozilla or another alternative such as Opera or Konqueror (for KDE users).
} End:Rant
Deprecation is not a matter of opinion in the world of webstandards
HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 offer exactly the same capabilities, only XHTML offers ease of use inside XSLT based publishing systems. Anyone else might just as well go on writing HTML 4.01.
What matters is that you write valid HTML, and that you separate style and structure, farming out all presentation to the linked style sheet. So I agree with the sentiment to use 'Strict with CSS'.
I see a lot of invalid XHTML on the web, where the use transitional or proprietary markup like 'topmargin' and 'center'. I always wonder, why did they add those slashes? What's the point?
If you don't like having choices made for you, you should start making your own. - Neal Stephenson
just for the record, go into opera, load slashdot, press ctrl-alt-v (validate frame) and you get back a document with some hundred validation erors against html 3.2
PAT
SEO Test: TIGI und SEBASTIAN - Online Shop - V
Want to sniff urls? No problem. Redirect urls? No problem either. Open popups? Easy peasy (even if the user has disabled popups). Send data to some URL? Trivial. Search your drive for files? Sure thing. Run native code? No brainer.
All through a little extension written in chrome that would even run cross-platform unless it invoked a native DLL. And it can contain native code too if it needs to.
So perhaps users only install signed extensions and have learnt to trust where they install stuff from? Nope. No extensions to my knowledge have been signed because getting a cert to sign an XPI is a pain in the arse that no one bothers. It's a good reason why extensions should use a PGP web of trust model or someone should produce a free root CA for signing extensions.
Consequently users are already trained to ignore the "unsigned" warning and install extensions based upon what they claim to do, not who wrote them.
Now Firefox 1.0PR1 improves things a little by requiring users to add domains to their 'trusted' list before they can install an extension from a site. But this is an even more broken than normal package signing. Users are required to 'trust' the domain, but they have no idea if the package has been tampered with, or they are subject to man in the middle attacks or spoofing.
So the day of spyware will come. And it pays not to be complacent about the supposed security of any software. Firefox might be better than IE, but it isn't perfect.
With all the features firefox has what laws can be used to stop microsoft cloning. Who owns the patents on features such as tabbed browsing? It's scary how internet exlorer 7 is rumoured to have tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking. They just need to do an automatic update of internet explorer and firefox will be forgotten by windows users. Or can firefox stay ahead of internet explorer for the long haul?
Microsoft incorporates security in its products, its just not valid security!
COme on guys! I am sure you can do better than that feeble excuse! ;)
Have a nice day!
Nobody noticed that the article contained absolutely *nothing* about Firefox's future?
It has nothing to do with "scaling well", doing a full conversion of a major dynamic site from old HTML and tables to XHTML/CSS is a lot harder than changing one flat page.
That may be so, but they could at least try to make it output valid HTML 3.2 if we're stuck with the old HTML. Should be much easier than a total redesign with XHTML and CSS.
My managers have been quite happy for me to use Firefox. However, since Firefox still doesn't get the file: protocol, and the widely-quoted fix still doesn't seem to work, it's still screwed on just about any intranet in the universe. So, now I'm going to be officially forced to go back to IE at work, because we've just set up a serious intranet, too. :-(
This has been one of the most-duped bugs in the history of Mozilla (it goes back to way before FF's time). It has numerous votes, and should be straightforward to fix, but hasn't been because of a (dubious) security concern. Not exactly the finest example of OSS fixing important problems quickly and being better than the CSS alternatives!
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
W3C's HTML validator finds in the current front page 164 errors. (I had to save the page locally on my hard disk, and validate the uploaded file. Trying to validate the URL http://slashdot.org/ had 403 Forbidden as a result.)
So, the current Slashdot is not in the "outdated" HTML 3.2 standard. There's no problem with an older HTML version, although I prefer XHTML. The problem is it is not valid HTML 3.2.
I do this with a filtering proxy, but here's a version for those who don't use such a thing:
Run an Apache instance somewhere on your network. Add to it a VirtualHost with an alias configured as *.slashdot.org, as follows:
Now make a list of all of the sections which have color schemes you don't like and add them to your /etc/hosts file (or c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts if you're that way inclined) with the IP address of the Apache instance you just configured. It'll look something like this:
Those hostnames will now go to your Apache rather than to the real slashdot, and the virtualhost will bounce you off to plain ol' slashdot.org. If you've got several machines to do this to, you might like to consider setting up a nameserver and having it be the master for slashdot.org, but bear in mind that you'll have to change it if slashdot's IP changes. Also, it can make it a bit of a bitch to read the section front pages, but I don't generally do that anyway.
Alternatively, a much easier solution is just to configure your account to use the "Light" template rather than the standard template. If your browser's default rendering doesn't appeal to you, take a few moments to write a user stylesheet which you do like to look at and other sites will benefit from it too. It's best if you use a browser like Opera which allows you to switch between "what most browsers have as default" and "my user stylesheet" so that badly-written sites don't get tripped up by your unusual choices and cause white-on-white text.
I actually do both of these things, because even in the light template some of the beige continues to show through, for example on the comment form.
XSLT is for tranforming XML data between different XML formats or sometimes from XML to non-XML formats. It doesn't have much to do with "structuring layout". (I routinely use XSLT to transform Simplified Docbook into HTML, LaTeX and XSL-FO)
XSL-FO, on the other hand, is an XML application for describing (loosely) typesetting parameters. It's actually almost parallel with CSS in purpose, but CSS is more rich in functions relating to on-screen interactive content, like support for links and behaviors. XSL-FO could be used, for example, as an internal data structure resulting from applying CSS to some XHTML, although of course in practice browsers just use their own stuff. The relationship between XSLT and XSL-FO is that originally they were one lump (called "XSL") which was used to translate XML documents into FO documents for rendering, but W3C noticed that XSLT has more uses outside of that and split it into two separate specs.
Incidentally, passivetex is an XSL-FO interpreter for TeX. If you're happy specifying typesetting parameters at the lowest level it can be quite useful, but I prefer to just go straight to LaTeX since I trust it to "do the right thing" with regard to page layout and presentation most of the time.
Given your web design philosophy, I must assume that you create your own LiveJournal styles, since the stock ones use some really bad HTML display hacks. LiveJournal's layouts seem to be focused on ig'nant kids rather than people who actually care about CSS and semantic markup.
For all the U.S. residents you can make a tax deductable donation to the Mozilla Foundation.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Lois, this isn't my Batman glass. - Peter
I guess I'm just that old. Maybe it's time we write a validator that takes cross-browser code into consideration...
... and then there was a schism in html coding. The big contenders (Netscape & IE) were hurriedly adding features to their browsers before they were included in an HTML standard in order to gain market share. Beyond that, if one camp's method became the standard, the other camp would not adhere to it but would keep their method of markup. Of course, the word "standard" then didn't seem to carry as much weight as now. That's probably why there were so many issues. [Blink tag, hello? Now there's a blink CSS that works in mozilla yet not in IE.]
Let's talk about "Valid". Valid in this sense means that it conforms to a printed standard with absolutely no deviations whatsoever. That's bullshit, for starters.
If a browser does not recognize markup, it is disregarded. So, as a browser sees it, this code may be perfectly valid. Maybe not so for a textbook course on grading only the source, but hey... you get what you pay for.
Anyone remember the actual Browser War? You know, when table tags were new? Remember when they came up with background colors for pages, or better yet the background image? What a revolution!
Look at the first few 3.2 "errors" for starters:
No type allowed when designating an RSS feed? (Isn't that an anachronism?)
No topmargin, leftmargin, marginwidth, marginheight... come on. If you didn't have that back in the day you didn't start rendering at the top left of either IE or NN.
Bgcolor? Face? NOBR? Come on. Maybe this looks like a foreign language to those of you who haven't been in the field forever, but you need to have a drink and loosen up. Browsers don't care. Your bandwidth is not being soaked up with the occasional cross-browser code snippet.
I realize that now we have a legion of designers who believe that if the page doesn't look right the browser needs to be updated to properly implement CSS. Great, I won't be holding my breath. The CSS Level 1 standard has been around forever and it STILL hasn't been 100% implemented across browsers.
Even now, there are ppl in boardrooms who get upset if their multimillion dollar projects don't look and function the same in IE6 and NN4. That's right, NN4, because one of their clients somewhere hasn't upgraded for a while. Go ahead and prance in there to explain degrading gracefully to them. I'm sure they'll be very interested.
Generally they get paid for clicks, so if you don't click their ads, you are just as guilty as the ad-blockers.
Yes, that is why for sites I like I actually use the ad links a few times a month. Really. That's why I prefer not to block ads, so at least I can click on an ad I have some interest in.
I go out of my way to help people I think are doing a good job.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The reason I said that is because there's a running joke that Slashdot's developers always respond to feature suggestions by saying "it sounds nice, but it wouldn't scale well." History shows this to be pretty much true.
It had nothing to do with "armchair web developers." Sigh.
Heh, now I did find an "Up" button that lets me put it where I want it, great! Would sill like the dropdown that the google bar has, but this is indeed good enough!
http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/goup
Spine World
:)
HAND.