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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...
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?
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.
Until Microsoft jacked up the price for anyone wishing to distribute a non-IE browser.
Besides, come Windows update time, the user would be presented with the following:
WARNING: Windows Update could not detect a secure browser on your system. Using an insecure browser may make you more vulnerable to hackers and viruses. Would you like to install a secure browser (Microsoft Internet Explorer 6) now? Cancel [OK]
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.
Possibly they were referring to how GDS does not index your Firefox cache, history and bookmarks. Unless it does, and I didn't notice :)
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?
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.
It does not. Worse though (for me) is that it does not index/search Mozilla mail folders.
The only thing that is yours, is your soul; everything else is borrowed.
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
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.
"Profit" is probably in there somewhere, too.
you have to wait a couple of month, the bug is fixed en the Trunk.
Workaround:
press Control + and then press Control -
I'm from Argentina: Tango, Asado, Mate, Gaucho, Maradona, YPF
The 6% from the post seems to indicate that it is Mozilla Foundation's percentage of the market rather than just Firefox's percentage.
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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.
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!
But what does Dell stand to gain?
Decrease in support costs.
#!/
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.