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FireFox Sets the World Ablaze
An anonymous reader submitted a story about Blake Ross and his involvement in the Firefox project. Just the latest in a steady stream of Firefox PR pieces, although with a more human take than just the 'Firefox is a good browser' stories.
Like David and Goliath, the Mozilla Foundation -- a small, nonprofit organization offering open-source software -- is set to battle the software giant Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Latest News about Microsoft in the realm of Internet browsers.
Mozilla's weapon of choice against its Goliath? Mozilla Firefox 1.0: A super-fast Web browser, in part created by Stanford sophomore Blake Ross, set to compete against Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
As in the parable, the little guy's chances are looking good. On November 9, the day Mozilla Firefox was released, over one million people downloaded the browser. People on all seven continents are downloading and using the browser -- yes, even a research group in Antarctica is surfing the Web with Mozilla Firefox.
Balancing his time between classes and the development of the browser, Ross has been working part-time at Mozilla to develop the project and remains part of the Mozilla Firefox core team. The release of Mozilla Firefox has certainly made a mark in Web culture: Ross has interviewed with major publications such as USA Today, as well as with online zines such as Business 2.0.
A Better Browser
Although the process has certainly been exhausting, Ross said he is eager to witness his creation take full flight.
"It's exciting because open-source software hadn't really taken off until Firefox," Ross said. "Other open-source products were more for techie people and weren't really developed for the user."
Ross started working on building "a better" browser while other kids were just getting hooked on instant messenger. He worked on the earlier versions of Netscape at the age of 14 and eventually interned for the company following his freshman year of high school.
Although he enjoyed the experience, Ross found working at Netscape to be somewhat frustrating.
"Larger open-source companies usually have a group of 50 people making decisions on the interface," Ross said. "Basically, if someone wants to have something in the software, they'll include it. There's no review process. So a friend of mine -- David Hyatt, who now works at Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) Latest News about Apple -- and I started to work on an experimental browser based on the Netscape code."
Their first browser came to be known as Phoenix. The duo promoted the browser to the Mozilla Foundation and began working on fixing the bugs, asking a group of volunteers around the world to help develop the software. Phoenix developed into another version, which they deemed Firebird, which developed into the final version, the now-famous Mozilla Firefox.
Global Effort
The Mozilla Foundation, based in Mountain View, Calif., was established in July of last year and is supported by the Netscape division of American Online. Unlike companies such as Microsoft, which keep their information closely guarded, Mozilla encourages programmers to nitpick through the software and make improvements. Users who locate bugs are highly encouraged to report them.
Kevin Christopher, a senior and resident computer consultant for Faisan, said that he has been using browsers other than Internet Explorer for a few years and distrusts Microsoft's products. He said he prefers using open-source software.
"The concern I share with a lot of other people is a general lack of confidence in Microsoft's code: We don't really know what is well-written versus what is held together by duct tape," Christopher said. "When it comes to the safety of my computer, I'm trusting the application where independent experts can examine the source code, instead of relying on Microsoft's promises."
The Mozilla Foundation is only a tiny organization compared to the market-dominating behemoth, but Mozilla Firefox is already making a dent in Web browsing usage. Since June of this year, Mozilla's share of Web browsing increased three percentage points; Microsoft's share, on the other hand, slipped three, according to the Internet usage tracker WebSideStory.
Challenging Microsoft
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-Teiresias
As to the first issue of the above comment taken from the article, the reason FireFox can't open some sites is because the sites themselves are not coded correctly or require ActiveX *cough*SAP*cough*
Run a page through the W3C HTML Validator and you'll see how poorly those sites are coded or are hacked about to render correctly only in IE.
As far as the second issue is concerned, since when are plug-ins part of a browser? The very definition of a plug-in means they are something to added after the fact to do something.
Maybe the author meant Extensions for FireFox.
As far as I'm concerned FireFox does exactly what I want it to do right after the install. Other than making a few tweaks to turn things off and on, just like you would have to do in IE, FireFox runs as right as rain.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Take this paragraph for example:
Their first browser came to be known as Phoenix. The duo promoted the browser to the Mozilla Foundation and began working on fixing the bugs, asking a group of volunteers around the world to help develop the software. Phoenix developed into another version, which they deemed Firebird, which developed into the final version, the now-famous Mozilla Firefox.
Unless I've blacked out and had my memories scrambled as a result, the reason for Pheonix becoming Firebird becoming Firefox were legal and other dificulties over the usage of those previous names. Anyone reading this article would be given the impression that those were desired name changes, not ones that were practically forced.
And if the article can't even get why Firefox is called Firefox right it makes you wonder what else it's less than accurate about.
Elsewhere in the article it says that "one of the novel features is the tab option, which allows users to open several Web sites at once in the same window." Well, if by "novel" you mean copied from another competing browser that has had that feature for ages, yeah, I guess it's novel.
Seriously, this article has some flaws and inaccuracies that you could drive a bus through.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
...put "ac_add_options --disable-freetype2" in your .mozconfig. Otherwise you'll get errors in grx/src/freetype.
The Army reading list
It is the default Firefox homepage.
I think it doesn't require any special settings on the receiving end. Just add a dynamic tunnel in PuTTY, using some local port (such as 1080). Then log in through ssh, and use 127.0.0.1:1080 as a SOCKS proxy in your browser.
It is the default firefox start page. (If you do a fresh install)
It is the default Firefox start page for Firefox 1.0 . I didn't have a home page set (well, set to a blank page) and after installing Firefox 1.0 on two machines it set to http://www.google.com/firefox. Maybe the 1.0 installer only changes the start page to http://www.google.com/firefox if you don't have a start page set.
Linux Wireless Hardware in the UK
That's because the FreeType people keep changing things. I've no idea which version of FreeType it will actually compile cleanly with, but adding
.../layout/svg/renderer/src/libart/Makefile will make it compile with 2.0.9
-DFT_RENDER_MODE_NORMAL=ft_render_mode_normal -DFT_KERNING_DEFAULT=ft_kerning_default
to the DEFINES line in
putty -D 1080 remote.box
Putty doesn't have a graphical option for this yet...just done from the CLI
Then, configure firefox to use localhost port 1080 (or whatever port you choose) as the socks proxy.
This can be done with ssh also (ssh -D)
There's a checkbox in the installer that's enabled by default to reset your homepage to that site.
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/ wishlist/portfwd-dynamic.html
Um, yeah, PuTTY does. Connection > SSH > Tunnels > Port Forwarding - Source Port 1080 / Destination blank / Dynamic - Add. It'll show up in the box as D1080. Then, just connect to your SSH server (may wish to save session) and you can use the tunnel. You can even choose to run without a terminal/shell and with compression.
And, it's not just people who haven't bothered (or are unable) to upgrade, some to this day are intentionally inflicting such an atrocity upon themselves.
It's not just themselves their inflicting such pain, it's also the the web development community trying to push web standards, their biggest opposition being NS4 users.
These are not flaws in the article, they are called editing. The purpose of the article was to give some background into how Firefox was developed, and how it stacks up to IE. It was not to present the Complete History of Browsers. Nothing they said was incorrect. The browser did go through three names - that is a fact, and the nitty gritty details of why this happened were completely inconsequential to the story. Tabbed browsing is novel for the 90% people in the world who have never seen it, and taken in the context of what about Firefox is better than IE, is a completely accurate statement.
If the author of the article did include the arcane details of every irrelevant piece of information related to the browser, the finished article would be far less readable and interesting - in other words if you had written the article then it would be flawed in achieving its desired intention.
Kevin Christopher, a senior and resident computer consultant for Faisan, said that he has been using browsers other than Internet Explorer for a few years and distrusts Microsoft's products.
For those wondering just what "Faisan" is, and what it means to be a computer consultant who is both resident and senior, here's the scoop. Faisan is a dorm at Stanford (actually it's a section of a larger dorm, Florence Moore hall, where I spent freshman year about a decade ago). The quoted gentleman is a senior at Stanford, and a "Resident Computer Consultant" which basically means he's the go-to guy for IT questions at that particular dorm.
Apparently the author believed this particular dorm to be so well-known that no explanation was needed.
Not only that, it has already had 1,147,499 downloads through the WIndows Marketplace.
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
--Aristotle
For 'rich client-side functionality', you can host .Net Windows Forms controls in IE. It's ActiveX all over again except it's .Net. See article Hosting .NET Windows Forms Controls in IE
Also, some of the more advance ASP.Net controls only work in IE such as the TabStrip control available from MSDN.
Rampant Ninja related crimes these days...Whitehouse is not the exception
This was the first thing I set up on my machine at the new company I started working at 3 months ago. They had a single web proxy as the only route out of the intranet. This is how I did it.
First the client:
I installed putty, and under tunnels, set it to do port forwarding from my local http and vnc (5900?) ports to my remote firewall as if they were local to the firewall (eg. 10.0.0.3:5900).
Then I set firefox and VNC to look at localhost as the proxy or address to connect to.
Then, the server:
I have an ssh server running on my openbsd firewall at home, locked down to only allow connections to a few IP addresses. I added the company's outside IP address.
I installed TinyProxy as a web proxy (that was all the configuration I needed on the server side)
Then, since the proxy only allows web traffic through standard ports, I had my putty traffic go through the company's https port.
Finally, I had to redirect traffic from the company IP address on the https port to port 22 (ssh).
Works like a hot damn!
As an aside, my wife is currently in Japan, and I talked her through (over the phone) how to set up the same thing to connect up to her computer here through VNC (when she was having trouble setting up her mail on her mom's computer in Japan).
It's that easy (once the server is set up)
That the page that Google uses to replace the MSN Search bar you get when you run a default search engine in IE. See here.
Direct away from face when opening.
I've read better articles on firefox and Interviews with their creators. I found it sad that they didnt include probably the most powerful feature of the browswer that is leaps and bounds ahead of explorer. That feature that wasn't mentioned was KeyWord bookmarks, basicly the association of a keyword to your bookmarks! Imagine using the address bar on your browser as if it were a customizable search engine unto itself. An example is that you can bookmark FedEx.com then right click on it and attach multiple keywords to the bookmark, now if you need to track packeges via fedex.com there is now no need to actually visit the site; all you have to do is type in your address bar: track: (enter tracking number here) and firefox will plug that tracking number into FedEx and immdiately return the status of your package and all pertinent details. The possibilites of this feature are endless and saves so a lot of time that you would be normally be spending on load times from navigating said site. Like I said this feature is so awesome and unique I fail to see why anyone would leave it out when talking about FireFox.
r ch/
to read more about this feature: http://mozilla-europe.org/en/products/firefox/sea
Did someone say they wanted a guide?
Here is a guide I just made... with pretty screenshots and such...
Dynamic Port Forwarding Guide
What you're saying is that you're screwed if the system dies or even if someone clears your stored data.
Invest a little time with software which can reveal passwords, write everything down and seal that information away in a physically secure location.
Alternately, consider creating passwords according to a formula.
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
This is different... it is a subject search that restricts searches to Mac oriented sites. The same goes for http://www.google.com/microsoft and http://www.google.com/linux. The others are listed here.
*tag* i'm in.
Proof? Easy. What market do you want? OS, Browser, Email. lets keep it simple...
*Netscape lost to IE. Regardless of the marketing/antitrust issues, by IE4 vs. nn 4 time, IE won. Why? Because It is harder to keep a lead(Netscape) then it is to take over a lead(IE).
*Google over Yahoo. Yahoo was top dog, with altavista and a couple others, granted. But Google came on the scene, them being late to the game meant they could design around other's(yahoo's portal) faults.
Having a system in the lead means you need to keep improving on that system to stayin the lead. This gets harder and harder.
The persuer(those who join later, or are just a lesser-product) have the ability to see the field and design around the problems others have had.
*Gmail vs. Yahoo Mail and Hotmail. Size regardless, their design(how they can have 1 gig a user is genious in how they handle it) and their UI is unmatched.
*BeOS vs. Mac and Windows. BeOS was the shiznit, because it was created after seeing what absolutely sucked about Windows and Mac(and Unix).
*Firefox vs. IE. IE was stagnant and asleep at the wheel. Firefox came in(and replaced mozilla) as the light, fast, leave browser that worked great and was safe.
What is so hard to understand? The persuer has an advantage because, among other things, they have a fresh start.
Microsoft woke up, and will move towards an IE7 release. Competition is a good thing. Remember?
The Pentium started life as a 60, 66 and 90MHz chip. There was later a 75MHz chip (with 50MHz front end: usually with a 486-style chipset), but those are as slow as it goes.
Reference
I still use Netscape 4 on a couple of machines (NT4 fileservers). Last time I used Netscape 3.x was on a Windows 3.1 computer dialing in via SLIP! :)
Linux IT Consulting and Domino Development in Michigan