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IBM Donates Code to Firefox
OS24Ever writes "Internetnews.com is reporting that IBM has donated new DHTML code to the Mozilla foundation specifically targeted as accessability and rich interactive applications (RIA). These new features are expected to be in the next major update of Firefox (v1.5). Is this the first OSS application to get RIA/DHTML support for accessability? I would think this could open some doors for Firefox to replace IE in many Windows environments."
Well, I can't exactly speak to this topic, but I am not so sure I see it happening, nor do I hear anything about it.
Maybe not.
Now I can watch all the fading starwipe page transitions I want!
So for people who aren't on Windows?
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
This is good news --
with continued support from IBM and other vendors, FireFox will soon be a worthy competitor for IE!
Big Blue is also contributing code that makes it possible for Web pages to be automatically narrated or magnified as well as navigated by keystrokes rather than mouse clicks.
Is it just me, or does this sound like functionality that has been available in Opera for some time now?
Thanks for supporting Open Source, and thanks for supporting Firefox.
-Random Person.
I would really love to see the code. It is in CVS yet? I am rather excited, since I have been working on several RIA things lately. Anyone seen the code yet? Or at the very least, anyone have a more specific list of new functionality?
bash: rtfm: command not found
Why not go with Java's versioning, and just make 1.5 (version code) release 5!? .. seriously it's great that IBM is contributing back to those communities it is getting the use of... it's how "Free" Software is meant to work. Hopefully this will continue, would love to have a paying job working on f/oss software.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
DHTML is certainly less annoying than 30 second flash intro's, but I want a simple,fast, non-Microsoft browser. I hope this doesn't become a bloated browser like Navigator became.
The Big Yuan - tracking mainland China
Who's found out where the FireFox code lives for getting the value (after is pressed) that was in the "URL" text input field? And the function that's called (after is pressed) with the data in the "Search" text input field? I'm pissed that the developers split that functionality of a single field (in Mozilla) into two (in FireFox), and I want to change it back. But I don't want to decipher the entire GUI/event codepath just to fix that design screwup. Who's got the landmarks, so I can hack the patch?
--
make install -not war
Nobody talks about Mozilla anymore, shouldn't that be a firefox icon on the story?
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
I bet it attracts attention from SCO. No open source project related to IBM will be safe until they are put underground.
the DOM magically becomes the same as MSIE's.
Not unless XML Islands are suddenly implemented.
This comment was randomly generated by a school of piranhas chewing on the PCB of a Microsoft Natural Keyboard.
It looks like firefox has peaked. It did show a lot of people that their is room for an alternate browser. Now that Apple and Windows are now going after the the same market (Intel chip users), now might be a good time to switch to check out Safari. Safari doesn't have the bloat that Firefox has and has a growing market share.
Looks like Steve is about to hit yet another homerun.
From the article:
:-). Too bad I haven't noticed anything about this, with even government sites using rediculous amounts of javascript.
"In fact, in the European Union they frown on the use of JavaScript (define) because it's not accessible"
Living in the EU, this sounds like really good news
I think SCO is now looking through their SVR5 versions to see if they can somehow link this publicly released code to there existing case.
In fact, in the European Union they frown on the use of JavaScript
Whence was this bollocks dragged?
Really, if you want firefox to eventually gain more than a marginal acceptance rate, it has to be miles betters than IE and it has to be brought to the attention of the public at large. The spead firefox campaign was a start, but only a start.
To many people who are only casual users of computers still consider firefox a bad Clint Eastwood movie and equate IE (and it's little icon) as THE internet.
Dumb, but not everybody is as smart as us.
I am sure IBM didnt donate this code out of gratitude to firefox developers. How does this move help IBM in any way?
Dont waste you time reading stupid sigs like this.
Name a feature IE has out of the box that firefox doesn't.
Many internal parts of Mozilla/Firefox, and most "XUL" applications that depend on mozilla, use DHTML for very basic interface actions. This may not actually be a good design decision, but it's a design decision they already made and it's too late to go back on it. If the DHTML code is improving then this will make the whole thing overall tighter and will be all in all an action against bloat.
Yup, I know, the Flash player isn't open source. But there's an open source compiler, MTASC (*), and with ActionStep, there's a rapidly growing (BSD licensed!) open source component library.
All sorts of nifty open source things are happening with Flash these days; you can track that sort of thing on OSFlash.
(*) Written in Ocaml, how cool is that? (**)
(**) Very.
The Army reading list
I can (and often do) use the same browser window from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep. If that isn't stability, then I don't know what is. And yes, I do have loads of extensions.
accessibility is a wonderful buzzword to stick on your program. its like saying KDE is 'user friendly'.
/dev versions, their inabiltiy to get sound working right (even by someone who has done low level unix programming like JWZ), which would take weeks of time and thousands of dollars of labor, when they can just write it once for windows and maybe macintosh.
actually being accesible and user friendly, thats a whole nother ball game, one that microsoft has been winning for a long time.
accessibility needs to get low level with the hardware. something that is best served by having a stable consistent API to access that hardware. something that linux has never had
and probably never will have because its never
been a priority of the people that lead it.
there is no business logic for an accessibility
company to port their software to the 12 flavors
of linux, their various
it would be not only a waste of their time and money, and possibly endanger their business which i cant imagine is all that stable to begin with, but it would be a disservice to the users.
Usually IBM has got good code, so there is hope that this will make a better browser. Certainly, it will be a great merit for firefox. Branding IBM code is a quality sign in my eyes, and might lead to wider acceptance of Firefox, as IBM seems to have noticed the browser.
Assembling etherkillers for fun an profit
I would think this could open some doors for Firefox to replace IE in many Windows environments.
Why on Earth would you think that? Have you heard anyone shouting for RIA support. I'd never even heard of RIA, prior to this article and I definitely haven't missed it.
MS IE maintains it's stonghold because most websites are built for it specifically. Additionally, many many applications are build for IE exclusively.
Firefox is not being held back by the lack of RIA. It is being held back by the sheer dominance of IE and that dominance continues to grow. While the community pats themselves on the back and congratulates themselves about 80 million downloads, they turn a blind eye to the fact that there have been 10 releases so there are actually only 10 million copies of Firefox in use. the other 70 million have been overwritten by newer releases.
You'll both just have to suffer through this.
bulletproof security?
*ducks*
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
ActiveX. It's great that FireFox gets a little added functionality, but I've spoken with many IT people that cannot implement FireFox into their network for the simple reason that they need to have ActiveX fuctionality. If we could get that addon(or maybe it exists?) that would be spectacular for FireFox and it's spread.
A Linux flavor for every Month!
It's "accessibility", with an "i". But I guess news like this happens too fast to spell check.
Does anyone have a version of this article that isn't a vague promise that several buzzwords now have more to do with each other than ever?
I would expect this code actually does something, but the article is so vague I'm not really sure what. What's an example of something that does not work now that will work after this code is integrated and released?
(Preferably from someone who actually knows; I could make stuff up based on the article too, like this: "Before, if you set the ALT attribute on a dynamically-generated IMG tag, the screen-readers couldn't pick it up. Now they can." But I'm not sure if that's what they mean; that's just my plausible interpretation of the buzzword soup that I'm not very confident in, as I would have thought that works fine now....)
While this doesn't necessary concern Firefox itself, I would like to comment on embedding Gecko. For the past week or so I have been attempting to embed Gecko into a proprietary C++ graphical user interface toolkit. So far I have found it quite difficult.
The existing documentation is either extremely out of date (ie. 2002 or earlier), or partially complete. Some of the documentation contains old names for various XPCOM interfaces. While the various embedding examples are a start, they are very poorly commented and as such are quite useless.
Now, I realize that Gecko is a very complex piece of software, but in order for it to become widely accepted there needs to be many pieces of software which use it. But as of this time it is quite difficult for a developer to quickly embed Gecko within an existing application. That may very well be because there is a complete lack of documentation describing how to do so.
The path to more users is more products. The path to more products is easier development. And easier development is often due to accessible, correct and descriptive documentation. So please, if there is someone reading this who has the knowledge and resources, write us developers a decent guide on embedding Gecko.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
stop making up acronyms for every stupid little thing (ESLT).
Long signatures suck.
AJAX has opened many doors for me, and this addition will help me rule the world. To all those who oppose.... hmmmm well....
but seriously, keep buying IBM and support OSS.
I'd certainly like for it to open doors but features like these won't really matter unless IE pick up on them, too. The sad reality is that most sites need to work 100% with IE and the attitude towards Firefox/Safari is "if the site's legible, then it's ok". Maybe it can get some headway in some specialized areas, libraries or job centers or some other place where accessibility is a real priority, I don't know. I do however know that the one and only thing that will help Firefox dethrone IE is browser stats. It needs to hit some serious percentage. Only then will people stop "optimizing" for IE and start building their HTML according to standards.
:)
Great job on the DHTML patch, though! This sort of thing is why I use Firefox
I work with websites, but have never done anything specifically toward accessibility. Aren't large subsets of the CSS specifications just for those applications, though? CSS2 and CSS3 have large sections devoted to screen readers, plus most browsers have the capability to scale content to whatever size you want. I'd rather see the Firefox crew make sure they handle CSS3 while keeping the bloat out. It'll keep the browser fast while giving site and application developers the option of using those standards.
Really, can DHTML make it that much easier on someone with an impairment than a well designed site using CSS3?
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
That's not a feature, it's a bug!
I bet it's some dipshit that doesn't know a damn thing about Firefox source. Sorry, it's just a pet peeve of mine when people waste mod points downmodding shit they don't know anything about.
Perhaps you confuse Internet Explorer with all web browsers not named Firefox? My, but that's rather silly of you.
Things like being totally unable to turn Firefox into a pop-up-less, completely tab-based web browser like Opera is?
I'd spent so long trying to get that alone to work, and it flat out doesn't. Not to mention the tab related extensions turned an already unstable browser into a crashing hell.
I want to like Firefox, I really do, but it's just so terrible that I find I am compeletely unable to.
The biggest thing outside of those two, relatively simple things is that I cannot configure damned-near anything in the Options, so what the hell is it for?
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
Yah, and with a nick like OS24Ever, this person is obviously the perfect choice for making predictions about the acceptability and potential for success of a product....
(Sorry, I couldn't resist. I'm a former OS/2 user and licensee myself. "Blue Spine" all the way, baby.)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Firefox already adheres to standards better than IE, has a more rubust, and secure environment, and arguably provides a superior user experience to IE, and yet IE lives on... So why would some (arguably nice) DHTML addons make a difference?
I think the situation's kinda like this: Those who care, and/or are "in the know" are already using Firefox.
The rest of the users still left on IE either
- Don't care (lazyness, "not my pc", whatever)
- Are too intimidated by technology to go outside the little box they've created for themselves
- Think IE's still the better browser
I suspect the bulk of the switchers have already switched, and the rest either will not switch until either their OS of choice changes (OSX anyone?), or they are faced with a computer-oriented crime which makes them paranoid about using IE (be it identity theft, stolen cc info, whatever)So while IBM's gift is a "nice to have", I don't see it making a huge difference in the lives of the average IE user. Not at the moment, at least.
Then you have had some bad luck.
I can install firefox with no extra extensions and normal tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking work fine for me.
P.S. I just woke up... don't make fun of my horrible spelling.
Really? How have you stopped new windows of Firefox from opening and instead having them open as tabs? It's not an option even with extensions.
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
Firefox allows site-by-site popup blocking/allowing, would it be too much of a stretch to have the same feature for Javascript?
From my experience, all the new 'pop-unders' that are experienced with Firefox are triggered by Javascript. Of course there are multiple sites that depend on Javascript for core functionality (Gmail, others). So it'd be nice to do a site-by-site feature so that it is easy to put, for example, webshots on the blacklist.
Asa, are you out there and browsing at at least a +2 level?
1. go to about:config
2. filter for "tabs"
3. find the option about single window mode prefs
4. change it to true
5. look at your advanced options again
6. rejoice!
So no, you're not really following the completely stopping new windows part, cause it didn't work, websites could still open new windows on me instead of them being tabs.
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
Damn, IBM just sold our campus their WebAdapt2Me product which provides assistive technology for visually and motor impaired web surfers. It works only with MSIE.
The basic features of IBM WebAdapt2Me are: font size adjustment, web page magnification (125%, 150%, 175%, etc.) which magnifies the entire page, font selection (bold, inverse bold, font style), kerning (spacing between letters), leading (spacing between lines). These features go way beyond the MS magnifier functions. If true, this is fantastic news that IBM is dontaing the technology to Mozilla.
signature pending slashdot approval
The SVG master of mozilla, isn't he from IBM? Isn't he contributing code to mozilla continuously?
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
It may help them sell more servers and services?
Wild guess, but custom web-based apps are pretty popular in mega-corps. Mega-corps have to support a wide variety of users, including those with accessibility needs. Making Firefox more accessible in DHTML areas means they could potentially sell more servers and services to better support the needs of mega-corps.
?
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
When did slashdot.org become a major advocate for Firefox? Firefox is great and all, but do we have to spend every day supporting it and pushing for it's adoption?
Big Blue is also contributing code that makes it possible for Web pages to be automatically narrated or magnified as well as navigated by keystrokes rather than mouse clicks.
Firefox 1.5 [will be] the first browser in the world to add these accessibility functions for visual- and motor-impaired Web surfers.
Actually, haven't these features been around for a while? For instance, my preferred browser, OmniWeb (Mac OS X) . . .
I can navigate pages with keystrokes, I can speak the name of links to "click" them, I can zoom in (OS feature), I can have the page narrate itself using Tiger's screenreader feature.
And that's at an OS level. Windows has similar feature built in, too. Linux, maybe. What's unique here?
- At some point you're going to need to know how to do [X random thing] that your sample code doesn't already do. Your only options at this point are to start scouring the internet for firefox extensions, looking for extensions which do something kind of like what you want to do, and then looking at their source code to see how they did it; or mercilessly bother the IRC channel until somebody who's already done this comes by
- At some point, inevitably, you're going to hit a point where the sample code deceives you! All code contains implicit contracts. You cannot learn those contracts simply by looking at source code. Without documentation to make those contracts explicit, you are left either breaking contracts-- and thus your entire program, when some other part of the program expects something to be X at a certain time when it is in fact Y-- or doing a crazy kind of cargo cult programming, terrified to change anything unless you break the magic incantation that makes the component or preferences or whatnot system recognize your existence. I lost about two weeks on my project because I looked at the sample code, saw it always did a certain thing a certain way, concluded I could do the same thing the same way elsewhere, and was entirely ignorant as to the fact that there was another file in a totally different part of the package which I had to modify for every instance of this specific thing. What this meant was that I made extremely simple alterations to the file I was working on, and the entire extension broke-- for no reason I was aware of-- because I had accidentally caused a mismatch between the file I was working on and a totally different file.
And this is just for extensions, a VERY common thing many people have done. As I started to poke my nose into more intricate and obscure things-- say, components-- I found the amount of available information on how to proceed went from inadequate to absolutely nonexistent. I can only imagine what you are going through trying to embed the entire engine.I've had serious stability issues since the last FF release. After 10 minutes of browsing I'm up to 106,340k mem usage and 190,552k VM size (which grew to 110,312k/200,208k while typing this btw). The crashman cometh.
This is my post. See sig above ^
Or wonder what the big bad wolf is *actually* up to. :-). It sure is in the mood to shake things up real gooood.
Java Oracle Linux Enthusiast
Firefox and Google.
Why do I visit Slashdot multiple times a day, everyday? [sigh]
Look for an extension called TabBrowser Preferences. Every new link that opens on my machine opens as a new Tab in the one browser window I have open.
I was recently looking into why the filter tag doesn't work in Firefox, and learned that it's actually DHTML. Exploring the question on the Firefox help forums, I learned that these features, (shadows at least) were likely to make it into 1.5 (next version).
Perhaps this means that Firefox was negotiating with IBM to get this code?
Leave it to slashdot moderators to mod up the blatently obvious.
But even if this is correct, it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the article you are actually posting in.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I'm starting to get tired of Firefox. It was cool when it was an unknown browser that avoided all popups and other IE problems. Now with its popularity more and more people are writing programs to exploit it. Time to move on.
The ability to add extensions.
1.5 is not a major update. 1.5 is a minor update. 2.0 would be a major update. It goes major.minor.
No existe.
Unless you have a Mac, in which case the TabBrowser Preferences extension will royally FUBAR your entire Firefox install, disabling menus, not letting you quit. Oh, yeah, the download link SAYS it works in MacOS X, but obviously the bastard lying programmer never even tried it.
Sorry for the harsh language, but that buggy-ass piece of shit extension soured my extension experience forever. It's even better that, apparently, Mozilla.org doesn't care if some of their plugins are mislabelled as supporting a platform when they, in fact, cause HUGE problems on that platform.
Comment of the year
I heard that SCO is claiming that code is theirs!
*DUCKING*
The code checks one box that IE doesn't have checked - Accessibilty for rich internet apps.
This is a carefully designed move to further boost Firefox. It's an excellent reason to give for switching, especially at government facilities.
I dont like DHTML. To me it is popups, scrolling things flying across the windows and windowless popups and various annoying web stuff.
I like simple Non-Javascript, no animated gif, no flash websites.
The OpenLaszlo project has a set of Rich Internet App components and a framework for building them, it compiles to Flash player format, however, not to DHTML at the moment. But if you are trying to make a cross platform browser-embedded app, this is probably the least work to have the same code run on Win/Mac/Linux browsers.
As this movie was made before I (and I suspect quite a few others here) was born, here's some help:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083943/
Karma whoring bitch.
Just to inform the author of this article, RIA, in this context, stands for Rich Internet Application and NOT Rich Interactive Application. The term was originally coined by Macromedia in late 2003. In addition, Rich Interactive Application is a pretty generic term and could apply to any number of areas where an "application" of any sort (not just an Internet application) might be used.
I believe Opera already has this feature for a long time due to the need to have this in their embedded version.
There is also a mozilla based browser that already does this
Linux is not Windows
You're quite welcome. Thanks for providing us with all of this free code that we have made hundreds of millions from. Our top executives and stockholders and quite happy. Would you like an official IBM polo shirt for all of your effort?
- IBM
I don't respond to AC's.
IBM helps make Firefox more accessible
Firefox
The world's most popular open source browser is about to become more open. IBM is contributing 50,000 lines of source code to Mozilla's Firefox browser to make it easier for all users - including those with visual and motor disabilities - to access and navigate the Web.
IBM is contributing Dynamic Hypertext Markup Language (DHTML) accessibility technology to the upcoming Firefox Version 1.5, due out in the fall. The technology enables developers to build "Rich Internet applications" (RIAs) that are more visually engaging and interactive, yet can be accessed and navigated by the disabled. The new capabilities will make it possible for DHTML Web pages to support automatic narration or screen magnification. For those for whom the use of a mouse is difficult or impossible, the technology also makes it easier to navigate Web pages with keystrokes.
IBM's donation will make Firefox 1.5, running on Windows, the only browser to give developers the ability to add accessibility to RIAs. Rich Internet apps, like Google Maps and My Yahoo, are popular because they offer capabilities to the Web once found only in locally installed software. But while RIAs are welcomed by most users, they made surfing more difficult for the disabled or elderly. Many had to install additional programs on their PCs just to restore the usability they once enjoyed before RIAs proliferated.
Social responsibility and corporate strategy converge
IBM has a long history of making IT as accessible as technology permits. And when we found technologies insufficient, we rolled up our sleeves and improved them. IBM hired its first disabled employee in 1914, 76 years before the Americans with Disabilities Act encouraged others to follow suit. IBM was among the first to create special needs products, including a remote-controlled keyboard, a talking typewriter and a rudimentary speech-recognition device.
IBM's latest contribution to accessibility has the added potential of helping the company strategically.
Microsoft may not make money directly from Internet Explorer, but IE is important to its continued PC desktop monopoly and efforts to extend that dominance to other devices. In fact, it's so important that IE is one of the few Microsoft apps designed to run on other operating systems.
But Firefox has real momentum behind it. The open source browser is approaching a worldwide user rate of 10 percent, according to researchers. More than 75 million users have already downloaded it and PC World named it 2005 Product of the Year.
IBM's contribution to Firefox will make it the first practical alternative to IE for people with disabilities. That's important because the market for accessible IT is large and growing. The World Health Organization reports between 750 million and one billion people have some sort of disability. In the U.S., baby boomers born between 1946 and 1964 constitute more than 27 percent of the population, and about two-thirds will experience a disability after age 65. In Italy, Spain and Japan, 45 percent of the population will be over the age of 60 by 2040.
Firefox's new capabilities will also lay the foundation for increased adoption by government agencies around the world. Many governments promote accessibility. In the U.S., for example, federal agencies must make their IT accessible to employees and citizens, regardless of their abilities.
The continued success of Firefox also helps because it promotes the open source movement itself. Web browsers are perhaps the most frequently used applications in IT. While most surfers won't know or care that Firefox was developed collaboratively, industry insiders know its provenance and understand that the open source "upstart" is making inroads in a space one proprietary company once all-but owned.
The new version of Firefox will be a boon for enterprises because it enables them to serve all users with one Web site, rather than supporting a separate one for those requiring adde
I was just reading a press release about some new dvd being released to commemorate the blues brothers movie, 25 years.
How ya feel now?
If i read RIA i must always think of a criminal cartel called RIAA... what chimp invented that abbreviation?? I would love to hear it called WA for Web Application. This RIA really hurts my eyes...
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
"As you've guessed, IBM's promotion of open source is not altruistic."
That's OK. Most people's aren't.
What if a corporation were to decide they were tired of IE and wanted to support Firefox on windows?
That'd be an instant desktop switch over. That's what I was thinking, the corporate computing side. The side that buys new machines every year and has the eye of all the vendors, not the home user that has a computer they bout 5 years ago that is slower than molasses.
Just a thought.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
They are not counted in the download counter. This has been pointed out several times, and people keep on missing it.
"If the Mozilla developers themselves cannot offer such documentation because they're busy with their development tasks as well, then perhaps a company such as IBM could step forward to provide such documentation."
Looks like the Bazaar needs some help from the Cathedral.
Does this mean the retun of Browser Elitism that was prevailent in during 199?-2000? Firefox forced M$'s hand in turning many sites away from "This site requires IE to view" (eg. MSN Zone) because IE lost their market dominace (A more mature DOM/CSS helped too). I would hate to see the return of this on the web even if the browser in favor is open source.
I recently designed a website that has a cross fading slide show. On IE it crossfades, in FF it just shows the images in sequence with no crossfade.
There's one feature for ya.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Ah I see... well I've only ever run Firefox on Linux and the evil Windows XP platform.
Hmmmm???
And is this code stolen from someone they partnered with sometime in the past? Hmmm??? Microsoft perhaps? A little poison pill?
How crazy that would be hey?
I've been Googling a lot lately, and missing good information because the keywords (like "accessability") are spelled wrong.
THAT'S why spelling matters!
It's in the latest nightlies, I'm using it right now. It will be in 1.5 when it is released.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
If you tried to use keyboard navigation in Opera, you probably know it still has a long way to go. I did a hack to add numbered links which helps somewhat. But the issue is still mainly those pesky DHTML pull-down menus and other such trickery.
Exploits!
Who here uses IBM software? Anyone? Bueller? Does anyone here uses any of the websphere software? Anyone here? Hello, is this thing on?
Through the years of Mosaic dominating, then Netscape dominating, then IE dominating, then Mozilla starting over from scratch, then Firefox starting over from scratch, then Firefox getting some code, it's a lot like watching coal miners in the 60's.
No matter what happens in the world. No matter what problems the world has moved onto, there is always this club which eats, sleeps, and breaths web browsers. They insist that winning back the lost users in 1998 is the most important breakthrough, that it wasn't Mozilla rewrite #20 but this version. This is the version which is going to get back the users they lost to Microsoft in 1998.
Just like coal miners saying the future isn't in space, it's underground, these web browser programmers seem to be eternally in 1998, endlessly chasing after the web browser trophy while maybe the world isn't watching anymore.
IBM, Oracle and everyone else in the industry does not want Microsoft(or even Intel) to achieve a total monopoly in the IT market. Microsoft has enough of a stranglehold on the market as it is. Every way in which Firefox becomes more competive with IE is another opportunity to take market share (ie. money) from the 800lb gorilla in the industry.
Of course any chance of revenge for the OS/2 screwjob is just bonus points for Big Blue.
but I'm not sure why IBM is helping Firefox. Then again, IBM has been going more open source these days. As more and more big players endorse Firefox and open source, people are realizing what open source offers.
All your base are belong to Wii.
Firefox still can't display DHTML menus which prevents me from using my bank web site effectivley. Maybe this update will finally end this.
Your bank's website must be using IE-specific javascript hacks.
I'm familiar with "accessibility", but not "accessability" ... is that some sort of new software package that IBM had that is now opensourced to the Mozilla foundation?
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
the ability to crossfade images in javascript.
I recently designed a website that has a cross fading slide show. On IE it crossfades, in FF it just shows the images in sequence with no crossfade.
There's one feature for ya.
Nope. I've done this on a few sites, and I design in Firefox.
.hta anyone?
seriously it's good.
Before we go get a room with IBM in gratitude, just remember for a moment that he is in fact a withered yellow toothed dude in a black hooded cloak, offering you a gift from his gnarled, bony hand.
However in this case I think we're ok, because he's just trying to get one over on a different bad-ass hooded dude.
Coming Soon from Microsoft: Visual Javascript for Application
Quote from Microsoft: No one uses VBA for dHTML, so we we thought we would throw together something IE 7 and Windows Vistas/Longhorn.
We pray to our gods that you'll use THIS closed source product.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Mozilla has already replaced 9,500 IE desktops at the Sherwin-Williams stores. The converted from SCO Unix to IBM TurboLinux with Mozilla as the browser. Hey, it's a start.
Thanks for stabbing us in the back and lobbying for European Software Patents.
SpyWare Friendly?
Forced Muliple windows & entries in the taskbar.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
I'm sure that there are many other people/organizations who contributed to Mozilla and nobody glorifies them in Slashdot articles. So I'm wondering how "big contribution" it really is and how much IBM self-glorification is in it. ;-)
Anyway it is nice to here that IBM is interested in Mozilla (as a perspective market).
Well, I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slave ship just goes in circles.
HW
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Adware and Spyware... IE has it pritty much out of the box.
Mods: +5 flamebait, plz.
j0b.org - A famous domain name for sale
Not your fault, sorry for the rant. I don't even mind that it didn't work in OS X... the part that pissed me off is that the author of the extension *KNOWS* it doesn't work in OS X and yet the mozilla.org description, which he could easily edit, says it does. Lying scumbag.
Comment of the year
Great. I can only imagine that the lawfirm of Larry, Darl, & Darl are filing a new lawsuit demanding that all Firefox users pay SCO a $99 licensing fee for stolen intellectual property.
Trust me. This is an inactive account. Regardless of what the
No useful documentation (provide your own!). No useful support (provide a patch!).
Something tells me that most of these programmers have never worked on a commercial project with a deadline and with other people.
Bunch of arrogant primadonnas. Just like OpenSSH.