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What's Next For Mozilla?
ezberry writes "After releasing version 1.0 of Firefox, what's ahead for the Mozilla Foundation and the venerable Firefox browser? With 6% of the market, and a notable exclusion from Google's desktop search software, PC World states that Mozilla may be thinking about adding desktop searching to the browser. Using plugins from third party vendors (and more), desktop searching may become a regular part of firefox. The article also talks about Mozilla improving firefox's popup blocker and getting OEMs to include firefox on their machines."
If they had on demand porn, it would have a 70% market share.
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getting OEMs to include firefox on their machines.
is all thats needed for world dominance (tm)
My pics.
Which will it be? A plug-in or a regular part of Firefox? I'd be okay with a plug-in, but Firefox doesn't need extra bloat, and I don't need another way to search for things on my own computer.
-Rich
still missing from ns4...
Pre-installed Firefox would be oh so sweet.
Especially if it was with a major manufacturer (Dell, Compaq/HP, or Gateway). I bet IE's marketshare would plummet.
--Ender
Loose things are easy to lose. You're getting your hair cut. They're going there to see their aunt.
Not here - integrates into Firefox just fine here.
Jolyon
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
Mozilla is doing "goog things" and I will continue to support their efforts, they have revolutionized browsing in my opinion.. There are features on firefox that are seen no where else in the market. I support innovation, and creative thinking ( most often in a monetary way :-) )
Continued market penetration is what should be the main focus now Firefox 1 is out - and of course, as we're seeing, it certainly is.
If Firefox can reach the 10% threshold, it should snowball from there.
I'm personally converting everyone I know - usually against thier will - to switch to Firefox.
With a 10% + market share, it'll be a major boost for Open Source !
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
Firefox is the app that will save the Internet. From blocking popups to auto-install worms/viruses - if IE was left to roam free, unchallenged, the net would become a niche market for the people who could either a-stand it, or b-were savvy enough to get around it. Firefox is about bringing the 'net back to the people.
pissing off the company that sells them OEM operating systems at very low prices?
what needs to be done? I think its just right, blocks everything except javascript open in new window popups when i click on a link. Its a lot better then IE (medium setting lets too many thru, and high blocks everything, even javascript open in new window when i click on the link popups. anyone know what i'm talking about?
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
Beware of trying to extend a browser into a platform. It may just end up being bloated to the point where people don't like browsing with it. XUL has already made Firefox deathly slow on computers more than 3 years old.
Venerable?! "Commanding respect by virtue of age, dignity, character, or position." Who are you kidding? Yourself, mainly.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Turn sunbird into a really kick-ass iCal / Outlook replacement goddamnnit!
About desktop search, I don't really view it as that important of a feature and not worth too much time. How often do most people search for files on their hard drive - my guess is not that often. I think of it like this - whenever my internet connection goes down either at home or at work, I don't sit there and start browsing my hard drive - that's boring. I turn off my monitor and go do something else. All of my information is tied to the internet - not to my hard drive, so a desktop search feature, for me, is very low on my priority scale.
Is this really a big deal, or is Google kissing up to the Borg? I don't know what DG is about as I really couldn't care less personally, but I think if FF incorporates a search capability for the local system, that would be a killer app for a lot of folks.
BTW, good job on FF 1.0, Mozilla developers. It's great that my browsing from Debian takes a back seat to no other browser (in fact, it's been that way for some time now). Cheers all around!
- Nate >>
"Insanity is doing the same thing over again expecting a different result."
Oh man, Google Desktop Search is a must-have for me. I can't imagine how I ever lived without it.
-----
PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
When I install Firefox on a Windows PC, I replace the standard icon with the IE icon. Then put that icon in the place where the real IE icon is.
if your pants fit well, it's not only because of the pants
I think Mozilla's biggest problem is their marketing strategy, or lack thereof. Of course us geeks know what it is but we only make up what, about that 6% of the market share they have? Talk to anyone outside the nerd world and they will likely stare blankley at you when you mention FireFox or Mozilla. Marketing and consumer awareness should be their next step.
Personally, I think Firefox redefines the websurfing experience. I have Firefox as default browser on all my machines.
However, what is to stop MSIE from copying all the features that made Firefox so good? Are simple features like "tabbed browsing" patented/patentable?
how about an integrated mail client, calendar program, HTML editor, etc. Things to make firefox a more fully featured suite.
about the browser. They'll just use whatever is easiest. If IE comes with the computer it's what they'll use. John Q Averageuser doesn't care about the politics or rhetoric behind Firefox or the security issues associated with IE. (S)He just wants to buy a new set of hubcaps on eBay. Replacing IE as the default installed browser on new computers is the only way to really get 'the masses' to use it.
How could you actually do anti-scam?
It would be great if many of the Firefox developers (who clearly have lots of time on their hands...) could concentrate on some of the other applications, specifically Sunbird/Calendar and Thunderbird - if there was even basic contact and calendar sharing between users, it would take off in a big way in the business community.
Syncronisation with PDA/Phones is already proposed in the roadmap, but has a long journey ahead of it, and could do with some extra development!
Pissing off the company that sells their OEM operating system pre-installed at very low prices?
It's a two-way street. I don't know exactly how much Dell pays MS for their OEM OS's, but something tells me it wouldn't be a major hurt to buck the system. Besides, I imagine Dell and Microsoft have a contract in place for prices-- I doubt Microsoft can just arbitrarily hike the prices up because Dell grows a spine.
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
How is Firefox going to be put on computers...since Windows is the OS for almost all these companies' computer's, don't they have a contract or something to make sure that these companies use IE for their comps instead of a 3rd party (FF) browser?
I have Mozilla will start including some of the most used extentions like AdBlock and an advanced tab preferences!
Get major corporations involved, and let them get their names/logos/colours on the skins.
Integrating desktop search sounds just plain stupid to me... When I install an internet browser I just want it to surf the net and display web pages, I don't want it searching my desktop and I don't want it making me coffee...
The following statement is true
The preceding statement is false
I think Google is going to regret not including Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird in their search features by default. I just don't understand their thinking on this, it's not like Mozilla, et al., use some kind of proprietary/obscure file format. How hard can it be to search what is basically nothing more than a text file?
How long will it take Google to back pedal after Mozilla provides its own solution (or has an extension.)
--Sunbird, the real reason we will all stop running MS somday.
...where the hell did that "6% of the market" figure come from. Yesterday, the statistics all the news sites that were covering the launch quoted that Firefox had 3 percent - I know that the launch was successful, but not enough to double the share overnight.
A day out off the presses, and it's "venerable"?
The adjective "venerable" has 2 senses in WordNet.
venerable -- (impressive by reason of age; "a venerable sage with white hair and beard")
Are you talking about Netscape 7, Mozilla 1.x, Firefox 1.0, or what?
sigs, as if you care.
A big improvement would be if you clicked the popup blocker icon that appears whenever a popup was blocked, instead of getting a dialog asking you if you wanted to allow popups on the whole site, it showed you a dialog to "release" individual popups.
We're already seeing sites like CNN telling us to turn off our popup blocker to use it. Rather than flooding us with popups because we have to turn it off for all of cnn, users would be able to just release the popups that were needed to proceed.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I agree completely. It's bloated enough as it is. What ever happened to keeping things lean and mean?
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The only thing that is yours, is your soul; everything else is borrowed.
Perhaps FireFox could examine the page you were viewing, its domain name, et al, and then compare them to the top result in a Google search for the same information. If the content was close to the same but the sites were distinct (and especially if the links were very different coming off of the page) might that not suggest a scam site? At least, a certain kind of scam site. Another flag might be JavaScript showing false URLs in the status bar on hover.
I guess that some of the criteria above might be triggered by mirror sites, but that seems like the kind of thing that might be resolved (in my uneducated opinion, so be kind) by entries in something like robots.txt on the main server -- perhaps in the form of "hey these sites are my mirrors, so don't flag them as scam sites, FireFox!".
*shrug* I'm sure there's a fatal flaw somewhere there.
Sharpies don't just sniff themselves.
... Firefox would be an inseparable part of the users operating system desktop? And would be deliverd as part of an OEM system?
What a novel idea.
!hoD
Having FireFox pre-installed isn't good enough, take this example and imagine I'm a Joe Six Pack.
In the UK, if I bought a new PC with FF installed and then wanted to connect to the internet, I'd have to pick an ISP. They'd then send me a CD (or I'd pick it up from a shop) and that would auto install their customised version of Internet Explorer and tell FireFox to push off.
Back to square one again.
What is needed is to encourage ISPs such as AOL and BTInternet to provide FireFox as their browser.
Summation 2
The next big step is to continue to market it. Companies will realize how many problems using Firefox can alleviate, and as it gains more users and attention, it will gain more bug reports (you'd hope).
As mentioned in another thread, a vendor might want to include Firefox as the default browser (please include plugins) because they deal with SO many service calls regarding adware/spyware/viruses. I forget the statistic but it's mind-boggling and IE is costing vendors more money than it's worth.
Berto
But they could if a clause in the contract specifically does not allow for the installation of alternative browsers.
Isn't that one of the issues that Microsoft got in trouble for during the antitrust suit - disallowing OEMs from selling alternative software with the machines?
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
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I know this is a little off topic, but I was surprised to see them do a story about Firefox on Fox News (hmm firefox on fox how ironic). Anyways they did a small story about it on Neil Cavutos business show. They mentioned the fact that firefox is taking away market share from IE.
It's a privacy invader, and probably windows users need it, we Linux users know exactly where files are because of how our filesystem is arranged.
So let's keep it a plugin for people that choose to have it, and not force people to it.
btw I am a XUL developer myself, SiteBar Sidebar is what i make.
Update the Mozilla mail client would be my vote.
Might be nice let the user decide to have firefox block java and/or javascript from specific sites. Similar to the way it currectly blocks images. I surf with all images blocked and only allow them on specific sites.
Speaking of "getting vendors to preinstall", do Microsoft still demand contracts banning the vendor from installing third-party software?
I was under the impression that these had been deemed illegal - but Microsoft still do it.
New York Times ad my arse.
Of all the sites that could be broken in Firefox, it has to be slashdot.
To some users, that's Firefox's fault. Explorer loads it fine. [Deinstall]
1) Feature creep
2) Feature creep
3) Increase market share
This is the point where much software starts to go down hill. It happens with open-source stuff as well as commercial applications. Things that one check box become a whole screen of options. The product goes from 10MB to 100MB. More "non-features" are added that average users don't want.
A better idea at this point is to go back and refactor portions of code that aren't clean. Or to eliminate options by making the browser smarter. Fix security holes.
If they want to add features beyond this point, I believe they should fork the product into some sort of "advanced" version. I don't want desktop searching. I don't want a better popup blocker (AFAIK - It is absolutely perfect as is!). I don't want even one checkbox in the preferences. Mozilla and Firefox do very well with mom & pops, which is very important for gaining market share. For every new feature or option, you alienate them a little more.
Even in a fast-moving field such as software, there is a time to slow down the pace or even stop.
You might think that
- Profit
would be even more efficient, but I've tried it and it didn't work at all.The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
That would not be a problem, unless of course MS win their appeal.
- This and all my posts are public domain. I am a Physicist. I am not your Physicist. This is not Physically advice
that desktop searching will be added to Firefox, just that they are considering making Firefox work with other people's desktop searching software (such as Google's).
We need an integrated empornium.us search'n'download bar!
They don't demand it but with some remarks from Balmer about third party apps causing security holes, I believe they are trying to go back to the premise they had years ago that if you install anything on it you "void the warranty" so to speak.
But Balmer's speeches and reality some times diverge greatly.
I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said: "I drank what?" - Chris Knight (Val Kilmer)- Real Genius
"Profit" is probably in there somewhere, too.
As a novel idea, they could stick to what they're really good at, and continue to make a browser so good that the buzz gets louder. They're making great inroads and doing the near impossible by taking on MicroSoft and winning. It also means their success is fragile, and should be nurtured with care.
~D
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
There's still a couple of webpages I use for work which *only* work with IE. The bad part is, it's affecting my ability to recommend migration because those 2-3 sites are 50% of the sites that work uses. It has to do with some piece of JavaScript which Firefox doesn't recognize regarding dropdowns with, I believe, HierMenu. I can't show any examples because the pages aren't public. Being a proud user of FF but basically knowing zilch about Moz, is that something that can be brought up to them? If so, how? I did some searching on Google but couldn't find anything. Enlighten me, if possible.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Slashdot does not "not show" the year of posts. It is you who have not changed your settings to display that. Go to your Homepage settings and change the Date/Time Format.
Although the parent AC is obviously trolling, its not a bad point.
How are Moz going to profit from this; not through advertisments (users wont bother if its just another adware, marketers dont particularly like Firefox), people wont pay for "another" browser on their wintel boxes, I doubt they could go the "support contract" route RedHat et al have gone down.
At the end of the day, IE is pre-installed and free. Moz just can not make any money with their current business model.
Having said that, I am typing this from Firefox 1.0... but I sure as hell didn't pay for it
Why in the world would a browser perform desktop searches?
$8.95/mo web hosting
But they could if a clause in the contract specifically does not allow for the installation of alternative browsers.
Weren't they specifically forbidden from doing that. I believe that was in the same ruling that declared that they must make it easier to remove the IE icon from the start menu.
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
Probably a better way for it to be done is to just make the desktop search capability into a library so that we don't need to run a web browser to use it, just a front end, maybe from Mozilla, maybe somewhere else.
And more importantly to me, I don't need to start X to be able to use it.
I would like to have in a browser a feature to allow the users to store their important pages outside our desktop, in an private area in a site, where they could access it on the fly. When traveling i would like to have access to my private pages stored in this private area, and i would like to retrieve this pages using an engine like google, only for my important informations stored. My idea is: To have a button in the browser, where each time i want to store the page remotely, i only would have to click on the button, after that the browser would do all the work to store in a secure way my page remotely. I sent this idea to the google guys, and don't reveived any answer about that, i think they have a lot o money to be preocupied with this kind of detail.
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But what does Dell stand to gain? I don't believe for one second that Firefox comng pre-installed is going to earn then much in the way of extra market share. Meanwhile, pissing MS off enough could be real bad; sure, it might not affect anything *now*, but what about the future? Is there anything to prevent MS from say dropping the price for Longhorn to all major OEMs *except Dell*? It's their product, surely they can sell it to whoever they want at whatever price they see fit? (Serious question - I'm not overly familiar with US anti-trust/monopoly practice law)
Even supposing Dell have nothing to lose, what do they have to gain?
It's official. Most of you are morons.
1. Get Venders to include with their machines.
It's getting a fair amount of publicity. It might be worth vendors pre-installing it simply to add "Firefox browser" to the list of features. (Next to "intel inside", and all the other things they like to hype).
World domination!
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
An extension that gets passed the site domain, and checks the domain against a built in list, and presents an image based on the list. If the image doesn't show, you're being phished.
The list could be refreshed either per day or on user request.
Now, it does mean that someone, somewhere has to be the maintainer for that list.
Until Firefox can prompt the end user for updates, Joe Six Pack will always be out of date.
And extensions that don't break after each release. After each release so far, I get used to an extension just to have it break on an update.
Why in the world would a browser perform desktop searches?
Because a browser is where most people now go to perform full-text searches on large sets of documents (via Google).
If you think of it as treating 127.0.0.1 as just another part of the internet, it does make a certain amount of sense.
Use a better browser, like Microsoft Internet Explorer. It looks fine on my computer, which has version 9.0 optimized installed.
a browser that stores its config in the current directory instead of "my documents"
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Going to mozilla.org to download latest version, and I find that their "firefox" promotion is REALLY geared towards the windows platform. What happened to Linux? I mean, their support for installation etc. on the Windows platform is detailed, but for linux, other than a quick line about firefox-installer, you don't get much. I mean, I can download and install on SuSe9.1 but have to jump through hoops to replace the original version that was installed, as there are no rpms for YaST......or at least none that I can get to work properly, which is a whole different issue.... You'd think mozilla, or SuSe, or whatever other distro would have explicit install instructions, so you don't have two or more different versions. A new user like me gets confused and frustrated pretty quickly when you can't install an app easily.
Will mozilla be leaving the Linux platform on the side of the road in it's attempt to gain market share and glory? I hope not as I am starting to like the Linux platform, but somebody has to bring all this software install to some degree of conformity.
Desktop Search is a must-have for me
Whew, I just can't figure out why people need desktop searching; clean up your icons if you've got so many of the things you need a search engine! Sheesh!
Software patents are pure evil. We cannot use them - even if Moziila would really be the first browser/sw to use them. We cannot use them because the whole idea of sw patents is bad and we are fighting that idea. If we used it to stop Microsoft copy our features, Microsoft would use its patnets to kill free software.
---if anyone still needs a gmail invite, message me, i have few to spare.
But what does Dell stand to gain?
Decrease in support costs.
#!/
It's the moribund Slashcode's output that is broken rather than Firefox itself.
However, you can change your preferences so that Slashdot displays "light" markup. It says that it is intended for limited browsers and/or slow connections, but it also works nicely in Firefox on a fat connection. Give it a try.
This is the option you want:
[x] Light (reduce the complexity of Slashdot's HTML for AvantGo, Lynx, or slow connections)
If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
Are you on a Windows machine?
Please stop stalking me, bro.
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Most people have to keep using IE for one reason or another. Perhaps for Windows Update, or a corperate Intranet site that they have to use. So to get more people using firefox, mozilla should consider adding the ability to keep your IE favourites synchronised with your firefox bookmarks. I know I/someone could write a plugin for this, but this sort of feature isn't aimed at a tech savy /. reader like myself, it's aimed at the average windows user who might not like moving away from IE for something as "silly" as not being able to switch back to IE easily.
How about making it to me a rock solid development platform?
..... However, those information just scattered across the net.
Well. It started already. We have XUL and related technologies. We have thunderbird and sunbird. There is also a commerical firm out there to build and IDE using Mozilla technology.
To me, FireFox is good enough. slim and rock.
It may be better to push and polish Mozilla technologies for application development side. Just like M$ did when they push VB, VC, Visual Studio.... and captured a lot of developers to make applications for the Windose platform.
Personally I dont think Mozilla technologies, such as XUL, xpi...., are simple enough for average CS grad to grab them. How about building an educational site which contains dos, examples, tutorials, applications? Of course, we had developerWorks, XULPlanet,
Any more ideas?
Firefox/Mozilla will not make any headway in large organizations without the ability of admins to centrally control settings, features, etc.
There needs to be an easy (pref with GUI) way to define and distribute a policy that, for example, sets and locks proxy settings, sets and locks the default web page, "brands" various portions of the browser and that restricts the ability to load extensions at will. This should work cross-platform in order to make it easier to adopt other desktop operating systems.
It would also make it easer for Windows-based IT shops if patches/updates had an MSI file with just the updated files/settings. If you want widespread adoption, you have to at least make it as easy to deal with as what they have now. Microsoft may issue tons of patches, but they aren't that difficult to get on the boxes.
There may be ways to do some of this via a prefs.js distribution, but that's not going to fly in the hostile corporate IT environments where the sole admin left (due to outsourcing) is forced to find a way to distribute a prefs.js manually across thousands of diverse desktops.
IE settings can be managed by the IEAK and various GPO settings under Windows and that is a big sell. Mozilla/Firefox needs an equivalent.
I'd gladly help but I can barely find the time to work on my own, pathetic, foray in to the open source world, let alone contribute coding time to the best open source browser on the Net today. I'd be glad to share extensive requirements with any folks who have time time/energy to take up this noble effort.
Mind the gap...
Unless I'm mistaken, IE is pre-installed and free when Windows is pre-installed and free. Which is never... IE may be pre-installed with Windows, but you're shelling out some bucks for the OS on a new machine. Regardless, I see your point about Mozilla not making money on a free browser.
If life is a waste of time and time is a waste of life, let's all get wasted and have the time of our lives.
So, the mirror sites would be checked in the extension. As the extension would show the "image" in part of the browser outside of the main browser window (like how the lock is shown for SSL), there's no way they can touch it (I think).
As for 70 million, get real yourself! There are only about a dozen major organisations targetted in the UK. Even stretching it to total banks and building societies + Ebay + Amazon, it's only about 1 hundred. In the US, 1 thousand?
I think I need to check this out, then. I have huge piles of paper on my desk, and it takes ages for me to find anything I need. It's usually scribbled on the back of something totally unimportant...
I say we take-off and slashdot the site from orbit... it's the only way to be sure
How often do most people search for files on their hard drive - my guess is not that often.
At home, no. At work, all the time. I have folders with code, folders with documents, archive Outlook folders, and current Outlook folders. All of which Google Desktop indexes, and searches very quickly.
Google Desktop search is far faster than Outlook's search, and will search all the archives at the same time. If I want to find a mail conversation about something, I use the desktop search. If I know I had a peice of SQL that updated a certain table, but can't remember exactly what it is called, I can use the desktop search. Find a presentation, announcement or memo that isn't very recent, search.
Just like on the internet, where these days I don't keep huge numbers of bookmarks, I just search. Now while I try to keep files on my machine reasonably orgnaised, if it is something more than a month or to old it is much quicker to search than to browse.
I know I keep my stuff way more organised than most people at work. I think it is the work environment where the deskptop search is most valuable. People have loads of important information scattered across their hard drives, and search lets them get there easily.
I wasn't sure if it was "Thou shalt not sell any other OS" or "Thou shalt not install an alternative browser" that got them in trouble.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
I didn't think they were about making profit. being an org and all. However if you're thinking of providing financial support for the org then a whole bunch of people just donated a total of $250,000 I believe.
I think that the way in which they could get money is through extentions.. they could build extentions or provide services to companies wanting to build extentions... assuming none of this sells out the user and we end up with exploiting spyware type things.
However, most people are involved because they pretty much love to bring something better, something corporate types find hard to understand about open-source.
I guess the real key with any solution is to be effective against the most blatant offenders and conservative on the unknowns to avoid scaring people.
Another good extension along these lines, though not identical, might be something that automatically looks up ratings for an online retailer from resellerratings.com or something. Might be good to instill greater faith in smaller stores at a glance or to warn people off of lesser ones.
Sharpies don't just sniff themselves.
I use it all the time i do not know what everybody is talking about, it works perfectly with firefox, everything that it can do in IE it can do in firefox..... i feel like someone is being paid to say that it does not work
So you weren't alive before a month ago? Man, you're an advanced 1 month old. My daughter's a year old, and all she can do it bang on the keyboard, and screw up my slashdot posts 4itgharweg89 has
glgr34 waecav 3ugae35;
ERIO
I'SG AAS JEG
a'eir zdf
a0350
/. is a bunch of nerds at a million typewriters. It's not a political conspiracy determined to undermine your beliefs.
It's really not that simple. For example, "account details" looks just like "account details" to the user, but a string search won't pick it up.
:)
As a side note, I orginally discovered that as a way to get around the word filter in forums. For example, "fu[b][/b]ck off"
Unless I am really mistaken this is a feature that would require leaving the sandbox and decreasing the security Firefox has come to be proud of.
Glimpse and locate are enough and they should not be run from the browser but a seperate GUI if a GUI is what the user wants.
Firefox can already be built with the SVG option enabled. It does a good job at displaying static SVG right now. With Cairo rendering support taking shape, there will be a solid stable multiplatform rendering engine for it, readily available. And it is not a huge addition to the footprint.
Why not make SVG support a default part of the development build starting now? That way it will be properly stress-tested and debugged before the next release.
IE already dropped support for URLs with an @ in them, and some people accused Microsoft of breaking yet another standard.
For more information, click here.
Well one interpretation of that definition would be:
/respect/ with all of these traits, even though its position (low market share) is somewhat ironic.
Age = relatively new
Dignity = free: no catch
character = works well plus standards compliant
position = growing market-share rapidly
And it commands
Because we do not have enough distros as it is 8^)
Science is the Real TRUTH!
But the real issue is what Firefox is doing for the Open Source movement as a whole - for the first time, a FOSS application is becoming well-known across the entire PC-owning world and Joe Public is beginning to see that Microsoft is not the only way of doing things any more - all of a sudden, there's a truly free product that beats a commercial one (yes, you still have to buy Windows to use IE).
Sure, those of us in the know already run The GIMP, Open Office, etc. in Windows or in Linux/UNIX but Firefox is the first FOSS product to really get the exposure to the public at large.
The only thing Mozilla needs to do is to continue to keep the core Firefox code as lean and mean as possible and continue to add features through plugins to let useres choose what features they want - after all, most people are used to "skinning" and customising apps these days so let them decide what functionality they do and do not want.
Otherwise, the developers at Mozilla have done and A1 job so far and deserve our heartiest congratulations for a job well done!
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
The phishing one is binary. Either they are legit, or they aren't (and that could include stores asking for credit cards too).
No, it isn't returned...several E-machines I have came with Netscape 6.2. I've been wondering about that for a while :D
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Firefox is outstanding in part because it is just a browser that works well.
Why has Firefox rocketed in popularity when Mozilla has been around forever? Partly because they stripped out the mail/news reader and all of the other bloat that was unnecessary for a good web browser. ~4 MB download for an excellent browser. That's all I want and need.
The direction of Firefox specifically should proceed further down that road. Fix the bugs, make sure rendering is perfect according to web standards, and focus on the browsing experience. Continue to refine security and privacy features.
Plug-ins are fine; they leave the choice of including them to the user. But for Mozilla, just leave the browser lightweight and work on the way it does its job.
Exactly. I'd be willing to bet that Dell receives tons of support calls for problems that are actually the result of vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer.
Firefox would reduce their IE support calls to simply answering the question of "Where's my blue 'E' to get on the internet?".
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
Yep when you have a lot of files then a good search is vital. The question I have is why has this not been addressed by open source yet? It would seem like an Ideal function to intergrate into Linux as well as Windows.
Some features I would like to see.
1. Searches thunderbird mail.
2. Could search websites in your history. I do not know now many times I want to find something a site that I had casualy surfed too but forgot to bookmark.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I think that's still quite useful, but the browser needs to drop everything but the actual domain in the status bar information.
Sure thing, we'll just submit a new RFC that gets rid of a legitimate, widly used and useful URI scheme to keep idiots from harming themselves. Anything else we can ruin while we're at it?
Maybe I should just get on and find out about XUL and write a pre-alpha experimental version of my idea.
Irritating when I upgrade the browser I have to start all over again with installing the Adblock extension and lost my huge list of blockable iframes and images...
I've been trying unsuccessfully to use auto-update in Firefox to download the new version so I'd say that the next thing Firefox might want to deal with is their popularity. The updater recognizes that 1.0 is available and I go to install and it just hangs.
My fear is that the (unexpected?) popularity has made it such that the update servers can't keep up with demand when a new version and/or update comes out. This is only going to get worse as more people try Firefox. The problem is that an average user, if they ever try to update, will get confused and frustrated if the update doesn't go through.
Generally concentrate on making a better browser. If you go for world domination, we'll end up with a half-assed mess that doesn't do everything that people would like it to do. I like Firefox because its a web-browser, nothing more.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Mozilla has a team of people writing virii/worms for IE to get people to switch, they just need to crank out more!
but that is as much of a tin foil hat i will wear
How about start focusing more on Thunderbird? There are a lot of bugs that need fixing, in my experience, many more so than Firefox.
# fuser -v
#
That just screams 'security issue' of the sort that gave us the Word macro virus.
I imagine that done wrong, this would leave the user open to having searches of thier hard drive report back to remote sites.
**TODO** Steal someone elses sig.
Build a bit-torrent client in and integrate it with the download manager. This would enable mon & dad level users to download torrents as easily as regular files.
Distributing a single file, such as prefs.js, is incredibly simple with a .msi file. Just build one up using the tools at wix.sf.net and deploy to the users. A little clever thinking would put the source prefs.js file in a .cab outside the main .msi file where it can be updated and then the .msi told to redeploy via a group policy object in Active Directory.
On my 400 mhz machine XUL widgets are much slower than Internet Explorer(I use Opera).
I know this is remotely lame, but i wish that they would add color scroll bar recognition... there are certain designs that demand inframe scroll bars... and sometimes the regular grey just looks terrible. Other than that... firefox is definitely the best browser on the market.. i would even make my dead grandpappy use it.
If it makes it bigger, bulkier, or slower, then go away. I want my Firefox to stay FAST. Go make an extension.
(you forgot annoying, irritating, vexing, wasteful of screen real estate...or maybe that's me. Hence the following)
I agree so much with this statement, but must tilt at windmills yet again:
Look at the find bar and now the plugin bar.
Just when I thought I'd get used to the find bar, it turns out to be the biggest POS for yet another reason and should never have been implemented over find as you type.
Two big reasons: trying to type in a command line syntax, in a text box with a "/" or a " ' " and the find bar pops up with FAYT disabled.
What...the...fuck!?
(and, drumroll please: you can't get rid of the find bar because it is not an EXTENSION)
The plugin bar, that annoying GD bar that pops up telling me I don't have flash ever 10 seconds, to serve even more ads, can be turned off with the about:config route. (forget the setting, ATM)
However it took 30 minutes of digging thru the mozilla forums to find that one.
Whoever implemented the find bar as part of the browser now, needs a swift kick in the nuts for putting in one of the biggest mistakes in browser history, second only to integrating the browser into an OS.
To him/her, I say, as you did, this: Go make an extension. and include (fscking moron)
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
This may not be as far away as you think:
MSI packages for Firefox
You can share your requirements for better network deployability in Bug ID # 231062 in Bugzilla (I'm not gonna link directly to the bug since Bugzilla just blocks traffic from Slashdot anyway). That would help the devs improve the packages and get you the sort of thing you're talking about.
Read my blog.
Come one Who needs desktop search, locate takes on every need I have. PLEASE!
I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma
Using plugins from third party vendors (and more), desktop searching may become a regular part of firefox.
Some of us are rather fine with using the default search function in the OS.
Why should we have a manditory feature that wouldn't really be used?
Just tried that one in firefox, and it showed me a nice popup warning me that this website could indeed not be legitimate, and gave me the choice whether or not to go to it.
have you not seen the red arrow that appears below the min/restore/max buttons?
that arrow tells you there are updates available for the browser and/or extensions
the history of the world
It would only reduce support calls if it was made the default browser.
Many OEMs already include Netscape but it is not default so most do not use it.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
The Mozilla Foundation isn't trying to make profit. It isn't a company.
This whole open source and free software thing kinda passed you by, huh? ;)
It would be better to put some effort on updating existing extensions to work with Firefox 1.0. Most of them probably just need to up the version numbers.
Then I would suggest an independent usability check. Small changes could do wonders for Mom & Pop users.
"I think this line is mostly filler"
I wouldn't call Firefox venerable .
impressive by reason of age
Mozilla and Netscape, yeah, but Firefox?
Maybe Google just has not gotten around to adding support for Mozilla yet.
-----
Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
First things first.
A friend of mine just went to download Thunderbird and saw only the text "Free Download For Linux".
He assumed that it was not free for Windows and went away again. He is a very smart guy, but just Joe Average computer user.
So here's the clue:
Linux users already know it's free, and already want it. We have to make it easy for Windows users. That means a nice big obvious link "Free Download For Windows right there on the front page, not buried two pages down in the middle of another page for God's sake.
Because a browser is where most people now go to perform full-text searches on large sets of documents (via Google).
The way I see it, I go to google to do searches, not a browser. Should the browser implement e-commerce just because people go to amazon.com to shop?
$8.95/mo web hosting
Tying in retailer ratings to an established site like resellerratings.com would kind of take care of that problem by itself, as its ratings are determined by many users' (sometimes thousands) experiences in several categories.
Sharpies don't just sniff themselves.
Or an easy one, any site that is asking for credit cards and has an IP number as part of its address. Can't believe how many links like that I see.
MSIs: great stuff!
Bugzilla: I always hesitate to make feature requests since the volunteers work hard on just getting out the core product. I was waiting until 1.0 before whining, so I guess I have no excuse (also, thx for the bug id).
Mind the gap...
Anyone with a brain strips html tags (or any tags for that matter) first before doing text searches. You bypassing the forum's filter is simply because the coder was lazy. In php, this can be done in one lineIn perl its nearly just as easy.
Regards,
Steve
This is another great opertunity for the Mozilla guys to loose focus and produce another "do all" browser WE DO NOT WANT!
FireFox is light, tight and focused - That's why it's on my PC. If I wanted a browser that burrowed into my OS I'd use IE. If they want to produce a desktop search engine please let them develop it as a seperate product.
RFC 1738 already makes @ illegal for HTTP, so there's no need for a new one.
And if Firefox's Auto-Update mechanism worked properly. (FF has had several big security holes over the last few months.)
Dell ships machines with Windows Update set to full-auto.
Hello! Google Desktop Search already works with Firefox!
Mozilla Foundation wants to drive a revenue stream. That's evident from the appeal for donations for the full page ad in the NYT.
:)
Kinda like, um, Red Hat, Mandrake, and other *for profit* companies that are making dough on the "free software thing".
There's nothing wrong with making a profit with free software, and the two aren't mutually exclusive. You should spend some time reading up on the collected works of Eric S. Raymond and Richard M. Stallman
Assumeing that most companies use Microsoft products, with most running Windows 2000 or XP.
One thing Mozilla and Firefox really lack is a quick easy way to deploy & maintain them in an orginization. A MSI based installer with security updates provided by MSP (patches to the MSI install) would allow Windows administrators to deploy and maintain Firefox via an Active Directory Group Policy...
I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
People often kick around various percentages that Firefox, supposedly, bit off Microsoft's IE. Some say Firefox has 3%, some say 6%, some say already 10%. But it's meaningless and pointless because:
1) It's a free product in a marketplace for free products. Opera is the only company that really needs to care about the marketshare, because each user is either 30$ for them, or a stream of advertising money.
2) All users are different. Do you count downloads, installations, number of users, number of people using, number of companies, number of page visits, number of hours spent using it, etc., etc.?
Because of 1) it doesn't really matter which indicator will you chose for 2), they are all pointless.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
...is a multithreaded UI, cuz right now, it's a total pig when opening and working with multiple tabs. Other than that, and managing extensions better (especially when they screw up), I think it's doing quite well. I'm not sure what else it needs that can't be handled by extensions.
Strangely, Firefox is noticeably slower on my machine than Mozilla is, though I've not yet tried the moox optimized builds yet.
It's amazing how in the huge world of software everyone keeps talking about the same shit over and over again. Now we are doomed for 2-3 years to listen about desktop search on every occasion from every single company. "Hi, I am Gill Bates, the CEO of Useless Widget Software. We are planning to introduce desktop searching capability into the next version of our product for no apparent reason, just because it looks cool". Shit, I can understand why Google wants to create desktop search - they are a search company, after all, and they have a severe case of money-pocket-burnus. And of course Google is too cheap to create a desktop application using Windows API or even something cross-platform like Java, so they use browser to operate the search, which is just a pathetic hack. But why should Firefox do desktop search? Contrary to what many may think, searching personal computer files has nothing whatsoever to do with browser.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
well, searching for microsoft sucks on their service:
Results 1 - 10 of about 2,050,544 containing microsoft sucks
Compared to google's 640,000. Nah, I didn't use quotes.
I think it's very likely that you may see a combination FireFox 1.x/Thunderbird 1.x that will become the Mozilla 2.x suite.
No I am not. Which part of "it also works nicely in Firefox on a fat connection" made you think that? May I suggest that you get a grown-up to read and explain it to you?
But thank you anyway for proving a causal link between ignorance, functional illiteracy, and homophobia.
If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
Goddammit! Happier customers maybe?! Would someone PLEASE think of the customers!
Heh. Seriously, does the customer really mean so little these days?
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
I just wish I could think of a way to add gay marriage to the list. But hell, that dosen't hurt ANYONE.
/. is a bunch of nerds at a million typewriters. It's not a political conspiracy determined to undermine your beliefs.
how do these Mozilla guys make money?
I mean, on the Mac, FireFox takes well over thirty seconds to start up. Now you're probably thinking I'm joking, but I'm not. It's well over 30 seconds on my 1ghz iBook G4. While part of that is due to its severe lack of RAM (only 256mb currently with 512mb on order due any second now) I've also used this on Macs with double that amount and it STILL takes the better part of twenty seconds.
When you just want to hop online and check something real quick, that's a lot of finger drumming time. Free is great, and I REALLY like the way it looks (even if it's lacking in a simple method to get from tab to tab without using a mouse), but Safari is several orders of magnitude faster.
So hows about optimising the code a little bit, huh? Sure, we've all got cycles to spare these days, but one of the most common complaints I hear from F/OS people is how bulky "proprietary" code is. I can tell you that it doesn't matter if the code is open source or proprietary: lazy programming is lazy programming!
FIX IT!
Shesh. Try using it once and then you will know why. I am pissed of at google for not being able to add more extensions (such as asp, pl, htm etc) to be included in their indexes (restricted to doc, xls etc).
Because in Soviet Russia, The Operating System is integrated in to the....
pah, forget it. It's not even remotely funny.
SpreadFirefox.com reports *zero* downloads. Even more disappointing than the election numbers. It's just not a good year for democracy and grassroots marketing.
Please focus on a stripped down version for PDAs. Pocket IE it's not a browser, it a joke. I think a minimal but modern browser could have a lot of public.
BEST way to improve Mozilla:
a c/india/opport unities.htmld o+it+yourself%22
Mozilla developers have to get breast implants, start prostituting their asses,
and outsource their previous typewriting jobs to Pakistan / India.
Adequately enthusiastic mozilla developer could bj 30-50 cox a day, earning, despite unattractive outlook, $ 500,
paying 30 pakistani typewriters to take his mozilla job.
Every open source developer, outsource your project, finance it by selling ass !
We'll help Novell lawyers/capital ownerz beat those dark side Microsoft lawyers/capital ownerz.
Letz make Novell top law firm on the planet !
Usefull links:
Template for hiring your own India typewriters:
http://www.novell.com/offices/asiap
Breast implants:
http://www.google.com/search?q=breast+implant+%22
Good point, it should be part of the OS like Apple's Spotlight.
This is definitely what Mozilla needs to get OEMs to do. Imagine if the link for IE is completely removed from the system (sans the exe of course) and replacing Firefox, and having "web browser" or "Internet browser", or just "Internet" (which is already done on the start menu in WinXP if it is set as the default browser). Get consumers to *believe* that Firefox *is* the Internet. Underhanded? Probably. But consumers like being spoon-fed, at least the ones who purchase Dell computers do.
Many comments opine that further additional feature for Firefox should be realised as extensions to keep the main program fast and lean. Some argue that the RSS support in the current version should have been an extension. Those were my first thoughts, too, but I do wonder: how does plugin performance compare to "native" performance? That is, in terms of memory usage, processor usage, interface latency, etc.
I'm fairly clueless wrt the plugin mechanism, but apparently plugins work platform-independent, ie. a given plugin works in Windows Firefox, on *nix and on Mac OS. I assume there is some XUL (is that the word) magics going on behind the scenes, but isn't that fairly slow compared to a platform native approach?
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
Try this open source search tool.
Hunh? What exclusion from Google's desktop search? It's, well, uh, desktop search software. Not a browser. Let's see, who else is excluded? IE with 91% of the market share. Opera and other browsers with 3% of the market share... Looks like lots of browsers are excluded from Google's desktop search software.
Is it me, or is there no real connection with that statement?
On my 300 mhz machine Internet Explorer is much slower than XUL widgets.
Reason being that it would survive uninstalls/re-installs. It would also automatically be ported during upgrades.
Basically, extension = less hassle for the non-admin user = less hassle for the majority of the population.
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
Then you've obviously never looked at GNOME. GNOME 2's user interface is much simpler than GNOME 1's. Most configuration dialogs don't have any tabs and are very small, with only 5 or 6 config options.
GNOME didn't turn into a feature creep - it went to the opposite direction: they cleaned up the interface and removed options. And guess what? Slashdotters massively whine about it! They keep whining about config options being removed!
And this is exactly why removing options is bad. You may not like feature creep, but you have no choice! Stand still, and your product will never evolve. Everbody will go to the competition. Clean up the interface, and Slashdotters will whine. Add more features, and Slashdotters still whine.
set up a server farm that is reliable enough to serve update.mozilla.org
i had problems connecting to it all the time for the last couple of weeks. if mozilla cannot provide a stable backend for updates/extensions (remember: this is the only trusted site by default) then you can forget about market success
Turn it into multi-platform multi-im client. A FOSS mult-platform version of Trillian or Miranda. Gaim without the GTK and a nice clean interface.
Knowing nothing about programming, it would be really useful to be able to arrange tabbed pages after the have loaded.
When looking through article/databases, it is helpful to have tabs for similar pages near each other.
Since FF is gaining popularity and Mozilla code enjoys active development and security improvements, MS might eventually drop its IE and use gecko engine for their MSN Explorer.
MSHTML will be used for for UI building only for the time being.
Later on, MS will bastardize gecko code and we are left with MSgecko(used both for MSN Mozilla-browser and Windows Mozilla-explorer replacement) and gecko2(or whatever name for the next generation rendering engine) v0.0.1a.
The "next page" graphics (http://www.google.com/nav_next.gif) in google search results appears to be a face of a naked lady in my newly updated FF1.0 but appears normal in IE...
Am I being 0\/\/n3d?
Indeed. After spending a little while starting up (30-40s) both Firefox and Thunderbird run just fine on my P2-350.
I second this, LDAP profiles are a must now days. Bookmarks, etc.
Also, a single place where they can auto force settings in a corp, like proxies, and other settings.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
lol I can't tell if your serious or not but I'll say this anywase. Desktop Search refers to searching your Desktop PC, i.e. the hard drive, not the Windows Desktop.
Typical conversation since the 1.0 release "Have you downgraded Firefox back to one that works yet?"
I think that's still quite useful, but the browser needs to drop everything but the actual domain in the status bar information.
;-)
Yep. username:password@www.pr0nsite.com should only show www.pr0nsite.com.... Guard those passwords
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Or a third party tool like google desktop search, but it shouldn't be a part of your browser. Now if it's a new mozilla product, that's cool, but it should be added to firefox.
$8.95/mo web hosting
Heck no, what are they smoking??
I don't even think it's suitable as a Firefox extension.
What would it have to do with web browsing anyway?
A separate application like Google Desktop Search but open source and extensible by plugins to intelligently parse files to generate metadata sounds great though!
If they're indeed thinking about adding it to the browser I can't see why they separated Thunderbird from Firefox, and also don't have Sunbird integrated in their mail client.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
phaw, I hardly think Reader's Digest is an authoritative source. Venerablle implies old or holy, or both. It was misused in this story, probably because the poster/editor had NO IDEA what it means, but thought it sounded cool - seems to be a common problem on Slashdot (as well as the obstinate illiteracy of most of the posters. The parent was quite right to complain.
Instead of wondering what new features should be added, how about fixing the html / css / object plugin support? During some recent development I was frankly surprised and very dissappointed that the java applet support (via the plugin) -sucked- in Firefox and Mozilla (ok in IE). The meta tags don't work like they should, etc, etc.
Too often open source developers run after the next wizbang thing without finishing their work. Thus, only a few great projects with outstanding developer leads actually complete the rigorousness required to make them globally acceptable applications.
I'm sure this will be modded down as a troll, but as a lead on an open source project that requires true enterprise quality, I'm begging you guys to keep at your great project until the kinks are worked out a little more.
As far as the 'next big thing for browser functionality' goes, I'd like to see browsers replaced with a single video/voice/IM/Whiteboard/edit-in-place-HTML application. The web is all about communication. That communication can finally change from simple downloadable text (ala BBSs and Mosaic) to a bi-directional P2P multimedia communication platform. Do that, get rid of the bugs, and the Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird teams will own the web.
KDE is the first desktop to have true seemless integration of the Mozilla rendering engine. It can be used interchangably with the Konqueror rendering engine, which means any KDE that has an HTML pane, frame, etc can automatically seemlessly use the Mozilla engine.
The same thing needs to be done for Gnome, Windows, and OSX. In every way the browser should feel like a native app. On OSX, Safari should be able to switch between KDE's renderer and Mozilla's. On Windows, IE should be able to switch between the Microsoft and Mozilla renderers. In addition, any apps that make use of a web browser renderer should automatically be able to use the Mozilla renderer.
updates.mozilla.org is swamped, and all I wanted was to look for Firefox themes...
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
I have almost a terabyte of files on my home computer. It mostly consists of music, movies, television episodes, and games, but it also contains pictures and books. I definitely need to search for files on my hard drive... and not just file system level searches, but meta-data level searches.
Support for more advanced forms would be great. Apparently Novell is working with Mozilla to implement XForms. That's nice, but XForms doesn't degrade will face a chicken/egg situation with sites/users. The WHATWG has a Web Forms 2.0 specification mostly fleshed out, and it degrades well in current browsers, meaning that sites can start implementing it today without pissing off their users. There's nothing I'd like more than Gecko support for Web Forms 2.0.
As much as Notes/Domino is the platform that users love to hate, It is a powerful and often under utilized platform. It also has a HUGE install base. With IBM (Lotus' parent) being so pro linux, Firefox and Domino being cross platform, there is a good match. Currently iNotes is only certified for IE. The Firefox team needs to get this rectified.
Given the huge number of Domino/Notes seats, getting Firefox to be the preferred browser for accessing web based Domino applications, would give a very good foothold into the business world.
Allow me to log in to my FTP servers that don't offer anonymous access. ( Yes, I realize the irony in my posting this anonymously. )
imagine this: you're a new user. what's all this about firefox? huh. maybe i'll go and give it a try. hmmm. the download site appears to be down. oh well.
Get the maintainers to get some of my favorite plguins up to speed with the 1.0 release.
Things absent from 1.0 at this time:
Add Bookmark Here
Firesomething
Textzoom
CTC
Cute Menus
all the orbit themes
I have 1.0 on my work system, but home still runs 0.8, because of all the stuff that just doesn't get updated anymore. Hell, if the maintainers have gotten pissed because of the constant need to update their work because of the changing plugin arch, then hell, I'll jump in on a few of them.
The plugins are my favorite part of firefox, and most of the good ones do not work with 0.9 and 1.0.
Oh, and the default theme still sucks.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
I don't know what you're saying; I search for files ALL THE TIME at home.
I can see the spyware/spam/virii abuses already.
However, why can't I get a browser based console?
There's that nice little address text area. I could type in there ls and it would show me in a new tab my stuff. I could type Xemacs winword and that app would open.
"How often do most people search for files on their hard drive - my guess is not that often."
Are you kidding? I've got ten years worth of project files, code, email, etc. on my laptop. Google Desktop search is incredible. Even if you keep things reasonably organized on your hard drive, the context in which you are searching is not always the context in which you saved it. I may have all of my files organized by customer but what if I want to go back and see what projects I specified a certain piece of hardware for? Google finds it all in no time.
I've gone to a purely digital model. If I didn't get it in electronic format then I scan it. OCR does a reasonable job of reading text allowing text search. People are always amazed when we are in a meeting and I can pull up documents from a couple of years ago instantly.
Desktop searching and information retrival is the killer app these days. At least for anyone who does any real work on a computer.
Personally, I use Firefox and love it, but I have this one pet peeve about it - Every time a new version comes out it breaks a lot of my extentions. If Mozilla wants to pursue plugin scalability, they're going to have to put an end to this problem.
-R
Seriously, if you're gonna rip off Opera's tabbed browsing, at least do it right. This means there should be a simple switch in the config (which defaults to ON) which makes it so that any window I open or pop-up that occurs, goes into a new TAB -- NOT A NEW FUCKING WINDOW. It should only go into a new window if I explicitly tell it to. It is this issue alone that keeps me from using Firefox as my standard browser. It simply won't happen with a horrible implementation of tabbed browsing.
Yes, I'm aware of the addons that supposedly give you this feature but they don't fucking work right. Opera's works ALL THE TIME -- no exceptions.
Quick quiz for any Firefox devs who may be reading this: what is the point of tabbed browsing?
I'm guessing you have no clue what the answer is.
I honestly don't think people put any thought into software design.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
Is that on my computer:
P4 2.4Ghz
512MB DDR400 ram
80GB 7200rpm drive
starts up Firefox a lot slower than my gf's computer:
P3 733Mhz
256MB ram
20GB 7200rpm drive
which starts it up considerably fast. Not to mention my work computer (P2 400) starts it up just as fast as the P3 733. So I have no clue where the choking is, but something tells me it's not the processor.
Anyone know what it is?
You Can also try my system called POPsearch http://www.popsearch.net/
I disagree.
The devs of mozilla are clearly focusing most of their efforts on firefox, and not mozilla.
Improvements come to firefox first now, and then mozilla later (if I'm lucky.)
When firefox first started, it was the other way around.
What firefox needs to do is PORT, PORT, PORT.
Port to PalmOS
Port to PocketPC
Port to Blackberry
Port to Mac OS earlier than X
Port to my old Commodore Vic 20 (Ok, maybe that's a little overkill.)
IE has showModalDialog. Mozilla needs something like this. It is very important in business applications.
Thank you for your interest in Windows Update
Windows Update is the online extension of Windows that helps you get the most out of your computer.
You must be running a Microsoft Windows operating system in order to use Windows Update.
---
Wonder why?
I use it quite a bit. It is FAST. I used it to search through hundreds of directories worth of source code to find a string in an error message yesterday and it came up within seconds.
It also makes up for some of the lacks in our VCS which just happens to be the Worst VCS Ever (MKS).
Google's Desktop search doesn't work with Firefox? I didn't seem to have any problems...
"hey, could you pass me a paper towel? er.. I mean... DEPLOY ABSORBTION PANEL!"
Where does CNN fail without popups? I have gone to CNN with opera set to block unwanted popups, and never had a problem. Please provide a URL where this is an issue.
These desktop search tools are one more step towards user vulnerability. I still remember the crap google's desktop search tool created. Now it seems that more people are fond of that idea. Let's see where this goes.
No problem... btw, for some reason they haven't updated the web page to reflect this yet, but they do have an MSI for 1.0 final. Here's a direct link:
MSI package for Firefox 1.0 final
Enjoy :-)
Read my blog.
Though I admit that my site's intended audience is biased towards Firefox, my site stats currently report Firefox at 65%, IE at 24%, and Opera at 6.5%. Everything else is <2%.
1) Get OEMs to distribute Pornzilla
2) ???
3) Profit
Thats what they should do next....add a fucking hide command for the plugin bar.
Oh and stop dicking around with the layout of the close buttons, and fix the bugs, and have a "check for decent downgrade" button in the settings, also remove the advertising in the help menu.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
MovableType: The best spamming tool since South Korea got mail servers.
or, make it not suck on Gnome.
...
It looks like a great browser on Windows, but it looks like a weirdo on my Linux box. Menus aren't the same font, buttons aren't the same size or shape, focus works differently,
For years I've seen programs try to emulate some other toolkit or interface. It has never worked. They always look like weirdos. I just can't see Firefox being anything but a second-class citizen on Gnome until they fix this.
Yeah, I know some Linux distros include it by default. But note that on features, it beats Epiphany hands-down; the only reason they aren't *all* including it is the weird interface. So distros have a choice: do we want a weird interface A (widgets don't act quite right), or weird interface B (not as many cool features)? That's kind of a "which idiocy do we hate less?".
Hell, my kid got on the computer for the first time last year (at 3 months old.) He took a screenshot, opened up Word, pasted the screenshot into the document, typed up a storm, and then saved it before shutting down the computer. All this in about 45 seconds.
I'm still waiting for the day I look away for a minute and find out he's got Gentoo installed.
Interesting that even in Firefox 1.0, there are still some obvious problems with commonly used features. I love Firefox, but a few things still work horribly, for example the download manager window. Using the pause option in the download window does not really pause a download (download continues in the background, clicking resume causes the bar to skip up to where the download now is). On the other hand, if a download is actually broken (for example if you reconnected to the Internet) then the resume link does not work (even where the server supports resume).
Another gripe, which you won't notice unless you're a modem user, is that sometimes (not every time for some reason), when you are viewing a page that hasn't completely loaded and click a link in it, Firefox often spends a long time continuing to load the original page before it stops and loads the link you clicked.
Quite how the developers managed to miss some of these issues, particularly the obvious problems with the download window, I'm not sure. Maybe it isn't quite ready for world domination yet?
(And before you start, yes this was with a clean installation of Firefox)
Executive summary of MS history: Microsoft lost in court, and were convicted of monopoly abuse. They got away with mostly a slap on the wrist in the US, after Bush came in the first time and the DOJ basically backed down. Europe gave them a small but significant fine, but pretty much threw Ballmer out on the street when he went to ask for an 11th hour reprieve.
Executive summary of relevant anti-trust law, as it applies in most places relevant to this conversation: You may not treat a customer prejudicially in a market where you hold an effective monopoly (e.g., operating systems) because they don't follow your lead in another market (e.g., web browsers).
Given that Europe has warned MS once and could easily throw the book at them if they misbehave again, and in the US Microsoft's best friend at the government (Ashcroft) has just stepped down, now might not be the best time for them to try something of dubious legality...
Lower customer support costs (good) and better customer satisfaction (priceless).
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
why the hell people need extra software for this ?
it's been part of windows since version 3 and probably before ! and linux has had the find command for even longer !
This may be a dumb question, but is Mozilla Suite going to go away? I mean is Firefox meant to be a replacement in the future?
"he drew his sword Ringil that glittered like ice... and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds..."
If you know part of the filename, "locate" works even better than find.
And then: at least search my entire pc, not only the desktop!
If Microsoft was mass, stupidity would be gravity.
For example, if you want to use the e-commerce functions of buycrap.com, you would have to somehow determine that cookie requests from both www.buycrap.com and annoying.marketer.com were both being blocked by the browser. If you just remove the www.buycrap.com entry from the block list, you still get rejected when trying to proceed.
If the user could somehow see for every web page a report on what cookies the browser blocked, then it would be easy to go into your preferences and adjust cookie settings for those individual sites, without forcing you to allow everything, and have crap like Doubleclick infecting your machine.
Using the above example, I'd have a way of knowing that I needed a cookie from annoying.marketer.com, and could decide to accept it only for the session. Right now that's impossible without firing up IE to find out the source of the evil cookie.
There is a little "eye" icon on the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser that does this function, and in that window, it allows you to change the cookie settings for that URL to always accept, always block or use default setting. Firefox would be just about perfect with this little addition.
"Change the theme to something that looks nicer. What exactly was wrong with Qute?"
Please, don't waste more time pricking around with the theme. The theme does not make me more productive, a full featured form manager does, also a fully working download manager - i.e. make pause resume actally work.
what would make me switch from opera to firefox would be automatic saving/loading of sessions, tabbed browsing to act the same as opera and adblock bundled with the installer.
you must have a pretty fast computer. I looked away for a couple days, came back and my kid was still compiling Gnome.
I've gotten quite a few requests from various sites that want to try and install some type of extension into my browser (XUL?)
Maybe they turned the setting off since then, but why don't they just remove this stuff altogether instead of potentially opening yourself up for attack?
That's the whole reason why IE started to fall because they wanted flashy web apps through ActiveX that eventually became exploited.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
I know for a fact that several CSS 2 tags are not supported by mozilla.
Off the top of my head:
- 'page-break-before'
- 'page-break-after'
- 'page-break-inside'
do not work.I know their are others, but I do not know what they are.
The page break tag is actually very useful, and without it I am unable to print the reports on my site correctly.
But I need these URLs to get into one of my web sites. Good thing I use Firefox so that I don't get screwed over by this blatant breaking of standards. :-/
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
And RFC 2396 permits it. But everyone knows that Anonymous Coward means Troll anyway. :-)
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
This is because 128.61.107.1 does not require authentication. If it were set up to require authentication, Firefox probably wouldn't display the warning.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
I belive it'd be best understood as a sort of corollary to Zawinsky's Law of Software Envelopment. JWZ said "Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail". Though email is specified as the featured feature, it's explained as just a special case of the broader tendency of software packages "to evolve into toolkits and application platforms". With desktop search apparently being the "hot new killer app du jour", we can easily see how it makes sense to substitute "perform desktop searches" for "read mail" in the original observation.
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
#1) Help your average user understand the value of tabbed browsing. This is really the best feature of an alternative browser. Most people will be perfectly happy with IE's sp2 popup blocking and google's desktop search. The key is the tabs. It helps to show them what tabbed browsing is like. I point people to breasy.com so that they can play around with the idea of tabbed browsing without downloading a whole new browser.
What'd be nice is an extension showing a little flag representing the country in which a server is located.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
.. instead of pushing out new features/products.
No wait, it's _Microsoft_ that ignores long standing bugs and just pushes out new features/products.
I'm sorry.
Sigh.
I'm a perfectionist but I'm trying to cut back.
When I updated to 1.0, it added 2 start menu shortcuts, a quick launch shortcut, and one on the desktop. If I wanted those, I would have added them myself, asshats. Oh, and thanks for all the new bookmarks, fucktards.
So Mozilla is thinking of adding desktop search?
That's really great. And you know why? It's because it gives people one less reason to buy longhorn.
My PC (circa '98) didn't come with NetScape on it, only IE, but rather with a 'software CD' that you could install NetScape with. (Which I did.) However, to me, IE is crap (between crashes, spyware, and having my homepage hijacked) and NetScape (You think 6.2 is old... the CD came with version 4. :p) is just plain old SLOW.
Then I discovered FireFox, and my life has never been the same. Goodbye days of Spyware! (Although I still have peers that claim IE is the best...)
As for desktop searching as a feature in FireFox: NO!! What I love about FireFox is that it's a browser, does everything a browser should, and nothing more. Nor should it. If they want desktop searching, well, that's what extensions are for.
Mark me as a flame if you absolutely must, I just used up all my moderator points.
I'm now using WxPerl but just about to get into packaging with pp. But what I always wanted was 1) perl embedded in mozilla, and 2) an easy to use version of mozilla that would let me write and distribute perl programs cross platform, writing in XUL, using a XUL designer to lay it out first.
Well I don't think any of that every materialized but I'd say it would be a lot more useful than searching the desktop (is this an attempt to do better than M$ will?) and the entry of XULperl apps in cpan will make things very interesting. Make and ruby bindings too if you like. But I'm tired of hearing how Mozilla is the savior of all when it still takes a whole development team to do anything with it. (Apologies if I am too harsh and thinks have suddenly gotten better in the past year). Also, the mozilla calendar app could be seriously worked on too, it isn't ready for prime time (I tried.. ended up rolling own and using phpicalendar, no good uploader off osx yet, and too hard for newbies too, and only English last I checked) so I would put ICal and vcalendar compatible development higher priority. Great product though, I use firefox every day now since it is lighter than mozilla, and don't even mind when it flakes out with bugs nobody believes exist!
This is a troll, and an unsightful one at that. He meant Google Desktop. Not Google.com Nice try at trolling AC but better luck next time.
This is a troll, and an unsightful one at that. He meant Google Desktop. Not Google.com Nice try at trolling AC but better luck next time.
If you're referring to me, you're wrong, I'm not trolling. You did get my initials right, at least.
I now see he meant the google desktop search, but still that's not really a browser feature, it's a program that runs in a browser. It currently works in IE or Mozilla or any browser you have on your PC. So I still ask, why would Firefox, a browser, implement a local file search tool?
$8.95/mo web hosting
I felt the same way as you did before I tried it. You've got to try it.
Woudl it be possible for Firefox to somehow ne stubbed in as a replacement for IE? I know a lto of things rely on the IWebBRowser2 COM interface to use a browser component... what if FireFox implemented that too? COuld it start to be a drop-in replacement fro IE so it could become a "web browser component", not just a web browsing application?
All I can say, is that you should try it. I can't wait for them to start adding more features, and updating it to work on more than your C: drive.