Planning For Mozilla 2.0

wikinerd writes "The MozillaWiki maintains a number of pages on Mozilla 2.0 which reveals lots of possible new features of the popular browser. What does your wishlist include about Mozilla 2.0, and how has the release of Firefox affected your use of Mozilla?"

Comments

Firefox never worked for me...

[Bloodlent]

So I always used Moz. Personally I think the best change for Moz would be to make it less bloated, and make it totally modular. Basically make it so you can strip away most of the program and turn it into something closely resembling Firefox if you so choose.

Magnifying

[Szentigrade]

I would like to see something like what opera has with web page magnification. Its on firefox too but you cant make images any bigger then they already are like you can with opera. But i still like FF better.

Re:Who has firefox affectd my use of Mozilla?

[gandell]

Ditto. Mozilla was bloated anyway. If you wanted its full features, you could take advantage of it, but I preferred the lighter Firefox, anyway.
The features I wanted are already found in Firefox (i.e., tabbed browsing, popup blocker, themes & extensions). I just don't need Mozilla any more.

build in page validator.

[AeiwiMaster]

I would like to see a build in page validator.

There is a lot of badly coded web pages out there.

It might take a rewrite of gecko by I think it is wroth it.

The normal web based validators really don't cut it
when your developing dynamic cgi scripts.

A Manual

[obender]

I know it does not sound like much but I think a manual is what Mozilla really needs. Many users that switch from IE get to use Mozilla/Firefox the same way they used IE and not more. And there's much more to Mozilla than just tab browsing.

I still remember the day when I tried running two separate instances of Mozilla on the same Windows machine. Neither Google nor the forums helped. Luckily I can still read C++.

Open source should mean you can look into the source if you want to, not that you have to look into the source every time you try something non trivial.

Re:New Theme

[Ciderx]

Shameless advertising post!

I've been working on a project to be able to manage Firefox with Group Policies, but I may be extending it to cover Mozilla as well. Its a bit rough and ready, and needs a good deal of optimisation but importantly, it works and there's a number of people using it successfully...

http://spaces.msn.com/members/in-cider/

My picks

[Anonymous Coward]

• SVG support.
• Make it easier to disable flash temporarily so I can turn it off on those sites that abuse it.
• Make a better interface for managing plug-ins and extensions. Let me enable/disable them and check for updates for them.
• Change Mozilla 2.0 to basically be Firefox+Thunderbird sharing the same rendering engine (for reduced memory usage if you use both).
• Improve the download manager. Show the date/time something was downloaded, and let me sort by that field. That way the download manager becomes a download history as well. Allow plugins to use new download methods that integrate with the download manager (eg Rsync, BitTorrent)
• Jpeg2000 support.
• I like to browse with text size increased. But every time I open a new tab or window, I have to re-increase the text size. So let me set an option so the text size is always 125% or 150% of normal, unless I reduce it. And no, changing font sizes in options does not do the same thing.
• When increasing or decreasing text size, my place in the current web page is lost. I have to scroll around to find where I was. Make changing text size preserve my current place on the page.
• Remember what tabs I was reading (and my place in those tabs) so if Mozilla crashes or I close it, I can go back to where I was instantly.
• Ship with more themes and a few of the more popular extensions already installed.
• Add an HTML verifier to Mozilla. Let me choose an option from the menu, and Mozilla will verify the HTML of the page I'm viewing.
• Do a thorough security audit. Mozilla is gaining in popularity, and security bugs are starting to be more common. All new patches should be reviewed by a group of security-minded folk.
• Produce more and better documentation and examples for XUL. Try to get more people writing extensions.
• Port Mozilla to the last great platform it doesn't yet run on: Emacs.

Gecko Rendering Engine

[lwells-au]

Though its not directly related to the Mozilla Suite (sorry, I tried to RTFA, but its down) my biggest wish is to see the Gecko Rendering Engine (GRE) finally split from the Mozilla/Firefox/et al code base. This seems to have completely dropped off the road map despite being discussed for months (years?).

The idea of running the GRE as a service (started at boot) and then simply launching the frontends for the various Mozilla apps (in my case, Firefox and possibly Thunderbird) appeals to me immensely.

I value "snapiness" greatly when it comes to my web browser and email apps. Having to run multiple instances of the same rendering engine is a bit of a downer IMHO. (Yes, I realise there are some benefits. Yes, I realise we all tend to have ample computing power.)

Re:Simple

[KlaymenDK]

[A graphical history record]

That, combined with a history TREE instead of a linear, self-overwriting history (go back 3 pages and click another link -- those 3 pages will drop out of the history). That's what I wish for.

And for the troll/poster thinking this is for prn -- nope, it's for retrieving pages with 'unknown' URLs. Surfing page to page, one is likely to not read the URL or page title, but to recognize the page body.

Some changes I would like to see

[Anonymous Coward]

• load in less than 5 seconds on 1+G CPUs, all O/S
• use less memory when a large number of pages are loaded (I can easily use most of my 256M on my laptop), maybe provide a max memory limit option
• include mozilla.org packages for Linux O/S (rpms, debs, etc.) released along with the default tarball and accessible for update programs (e.g., yum) (O/S/package release managers?)
• support Active X controls under Windows
• option to shrink the text (reduce font size, ec.) when I shrink a window
• include integration with desktop search and include a free search add-on for non-Windows O/Ss
• include an easier ability to get updates, plugins, etc. and load them in via current native format without a cycle of "download, save, rpm -Uvh, etc." but not without prompting and some type of verification (easier but not automatic and not a virus/trojan vector)
• updates, packages, etc. for Linux should be in the native package formats (rpm, deb, etc.)
• include an RSS reader
• provide some form of diagnostics to the user when mozilla fails to properly start (I've had this with multiple O/Ss and multiple versions -- it fails to start and no error is displayed)
• provide some form of reset settings/options when you can't get mozilla to properly load
• include a mode where mozilla can run under a chroot jail and possibly under a secure account under Linux/UNIX
• include option for pdf printing
• include 3d rendering and VRML as plugins
• provide some xquery support (plugin?)
• include a wget type mirror tools (plugin?)

Of course, some of the above may alreay be planned but as I can't get on mozilla's web site, I can't check.... Maybe it was slashdotted?

Missing the point...

[alyosha1]

One of Mozilla's greatest strengths is not as just a web-browser but as a cross-platform application development platform.
Just try playing around with XUL a little. It's surprising what it can do. I'm just starting out with it, but having worked my way through MFC, QT, TCL/TK, WTL, GTK++, FLTK, wxWidgets etc. etc. in search of the One True UI Library, I'm liking what I've seen so far.

Re:2.0?

[bunratty]

Talk about ancient history! When mozilla.org first decided to focus on Firefox, they were going to "replace" the suite with FIrefox/Thunderbird. They quickly junked that plan when they realized that many large organizations, including ones that support Mozilla with money or developers, preferred the suite. Dropping support for the suite would mean losing those companies' support for Mozilla.