The Future of Firefox

sebFlyte writes "As Firefox moves swiftly towards 1.1 and Internet Explorer keeps trundling towards IE7, ZDNet UK has an interesting set of articles about Mozilla. Among other things, they look at the history of Firefox all the way from the pre-phoenix days, and have an interview with chief evangelist Asa Dotzler looking at what has driven the browsers success and why he thinks the release of IE7 will cause a massive boost in the uptake of Firefox."

Comments

Re:Main advantage

[savagedome]

Mod parent up up up. I don't care which browser I am using. I switched to IE (Version 4 I think) from Netscape since IE4 was better. I switched to Firefox (around ver 0.7 I think) since IE had gone down the tube. If IE7 is better than FF (I don't think it will be), I will switch. Otherwise, I am happy with FF.

'Better' is relative and don't try to nitpick on that.

Re:Name one platform Firefox doesn't suck on.

[Nimrangul]

The requirement of so much work to get Firefox to work in what I think of as a sane manner is what has convinced me to uninstall it.

I am still running it today, as I have yet to download Opera, but the lack of ease with which to modify the appearance alone of Firefox just drives me bonkers.

I have spent more than three days reading, researching and trying my damnedest to get Firefox's addressbar to work the way I want it to (keep favicos and put the most recently used domains on the top of the drop down) and have been spending a fair bit of time trying to get Firefox to stop opening more windows and only use tabs, which seems to be impossible.

I admit that this was my first time trying anything Mozilla since like Mozilla 1.3 or so, but I just cannot stand the way it works. At least with Opera it starts almost how I want it and I can easly change what I don't like.

Extensions are fine and all, but I'd rather the browser work right without me spending so much effort on it.

Needs resuscitation

[OpenSoresTroll]

Like most open sores projects, Firefox may have some technical superiorities, but for the majority of users (currently almost 90% in the case of Firefox), there is absolutely no need to subject themselves to the difficulties of downloading and installing a new browser when it's very easy to continue using IE. What's that you say? Security updates? Also very easy. I just click on Windows Update and it installs all the patches for me lickety-split. If I need security patches for Firefox, I have to re-download and re-install the whole frickin' thing! Ludicrous!

Remind me again why I would ever want to fiddle around with this Firefox thing? Why is it that Firefox loads slower than IE and uses more memory while it's running? I thought it was lean and fast? Doesn't look that way to me. Why is it that some web sites don't look right with Firefox? Tabbed browsing? Who cares? It just takes up space that could be used to display a web page and has no other benefits that have been able to easily determine so far.

I say it's a done deal and, try as they might, the Mozilla folks have so far failed to produce a superior product. Maybe they should look outside of the former Netscape intern, over-eager Stanford student with rich parents crowd for developers, or maybe professional management would help.

Love,
OpenSoresTroll

Re:Security

[goldspider]

You know, you can defend your position without being a flippant, condescending ass.