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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.
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!
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
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.
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.
Keystroke navigation has been present in Mozilla for a long time.
Automatic narration, I'm guessing, is not particularly in high demand -- those who need it in a browser need it everywhere, and already have it from a third-party program.
Magnification...well, whenever I'm not in Opera, I wonder if something is wrong with the keyboard as I repeatedly stab the numpad '+' key, until I remember that it's missing from everything but Opera.
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
Name a feature IE has out of the box that firefox doesn't.
Oh come on. Every time there's a Mozilla thread, there is some idiot posting That sounds like Opera's feature X. Christ, get over it. Your browser picked a bad name, and nobody wants to use it, for fear of being all hoity-toity.
Use your opera, that's fine, but don't expect me at any of your parades.
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
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....)
In Firefox you can press the Ctrl+'+' key to zoom in and Ctrl+'-' key to zoom out.
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.
Yes but Safari dosen't run on Windows, and probably never will... people don't want to reboot in to MacOS just to browse the web.
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.
Chronology could make the link you provide somewhat invalid. That story mentions that market share slipped last month, yet I don't recall it saying where the figures are right now. But that's probably going to become irrelevant.
;) I don't think Firefox developers are going to let a one month slip get to them.
Even if the user-base hit a plateau already and everyone that wants Firefox, has it, this is article talks about providing accesability to a whole new audience. Being the first in the field does give one an advantage when the two biggest competitors are commercial (Opera) and slower than waiting for a new IE (uh...IE).
I know there are others, but when these are the three biggest players, Firefox stands to gain a good deal of respect in the accesability crowd if they pull this off with IBM.
By all means, it won't topple IE, but providing a good set of features to those with disabilities could actually see Firefox instituted in more public terminal situations like schools, libraries and such.
Besides, OSS tends to be pretty stubborn in the fact that the developers usually stop for nothing short of complete bankruptcy
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
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
Is that marketingspeak? It seems interesting that something one browser does can be called "missing" from all the rest. I would reserve the "missing" tag for features that are found in the majority of browsers but not in some.
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.
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
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?
You know, code that will help make Flash and its lookalikes accessible to people who maybe can't see or hear?
That's most likely what the poster of the story intended when he/she speaked of being able to "replace IE in many Windows environments."
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
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.
Just last night I wanted to show my wife a picture of a Merkur XR4TI, so she'd understand why it was funny that Prinicpal Skinner on The Simpsons drives one...
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
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))
'find', while all kinds of weak compared to grep, is sufficient for some tasks.
With proper planning you can make your website work with IE, Firefox, et.al.
/my $0.02
//Hate the new RIA label of what used to be DHTML/CSS
Obviously this requires not to rely on ActiveX and make more use of compliant DHTML/CSS. Is not pretty but if it's done once it can be replicated with less effort.
Benefits: you make access to your website a non-issue and end up with a better designed system.
Web designers take shortcuts/are lazy and that's why they stick with IE. But that will come to bite them in the A$$ with the next release of IE.
- 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
Nobody. Fucking. Cares.
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.
It's not quite what you were asking for but I use the Image Zoom plugin for firefox and it lets you right click on any image and blow it up. This has advantages and drawbacks over Opera's zoom, but for me it's better than Opera's zoom.
You get a whole lot closer to grep by using FINDSTR. No, the arguments are not directly compatible. Yes, you can satisfy quite a lot of your needs with it if you accept the syntax. (and have loads of ASCII-pr0n)
Now that GCC supports Objective-C++, it is possible to build WebCore with the GNU toolchain (rather than Apple's fork). Work is already underway porting WebKit to GNUstep. Once this is complete, it will run on Windows, OS X and *NIX/X11. While it won't be Safari, it will have exactly the same rendering engine, and a UI built by people with a similar human interaction philosophy to Apple (or, more accurately, NeXT).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The ability to add extensions.
What's unique is where the design is going. What exists now is browsers with exta features to translate the non-accessible. What is envisioned is tools to make web sites more accessible in the first place.
One is a slap-on fix, the other is from the ground up. One is ok if it's all you have, but the other will work better in more situations for more people.
This is a community and we all the the right to our own opinions. Most people who populate on this website just happen to like firfox better then MS for x or y reson or a multitude of them.
Slashdot itself, I don't think is a major advocate, and even if it was, it is the owners and editors opinion.
I see people who would bash Kerry or Bush on thier own respefctive websites, and though I may not like thier ideas, they have the right to say them, I just dont go to those websites. You have to put up with people when it comes to a point like this.
I do not know whether it was the comments or the actual articles that has caused you to question this but hopefully you realize they are jnot forcing you to change(unlike the patent offices recommendations to go exclusively to IE)Personally i think all websites should be required to be open to every browser.
"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." ~ Dennis Miller
~~"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." ~~Dennis Miller
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*
or does this sound like...Opera...
Yeah, my girlfriend watches her show all the time; pisses me off.
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
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.
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/
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 don't know about other developers but I'm seriously beginning to stop supporting IE for anything but a basic HTML interface. All the advanced interface features are designed for Firefox. I have no problem with putting a 'Designed for Firefox.' button on my sites and leaving IE users out of the really cool stuff if IE can't keep up.
I'm seriously playing with some sites that combine AJAX, XUL, and Java into a single powerful user-interface. IE will get the same interface that Lynx users get.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
This is nowhere close to IBM WebAdapt2Me which zooms the entire page, not just fonts and not a separate graphics zoom tool. Their WebAdapt2Me tool has several cool features which let you adjust fonts with different sizes, contrast, or weight. You can quickly change the text from black on white to white on black, as well as adjustments for kerning (space between letters) and leading (space between lines). These are all important for accommodation of various visual, motor, and learning impairments.
WebAdapt2me also provides text-to-speach synthesis. Show me a web browser that does all this today. Adaptive software and hardware are quite a bit more complicated that many Slashdot readers realize.
signature pending slashdot approval
the bugfix updates are recieved through the browser's updater, which we have been told does not add to the download counter
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.
That was quite possibly the worst attempt at a joke I have ever seen on slashdot. Maybe if he spelled Opera wrong then it would have had a chance to be considered funny, but no, you took nothing and tried to make it in to something. You are an idiot.
Most countries have accessibility requirements, including the good old EU and US of A:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/Policy/
So, not bollocks at all.
Oh well, what the hell...
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.
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.
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 don't think there is such a thing -- unless you create your own. You would do well to consider one of these, from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
Gary Dunn
Open Slate Project
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.
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
Ah I see... well I've only ever run Firefox on Linux and the evil Windows XP platform.
Obviously you haven't been around here very long, despite the rapidity with which you hurl the idiot line. I mean, I've seen *so* much worse. Granted, it would have been better to construct something around misspelling, something like this:
Yeah, my girlfreind watches her show all the time; peices me off.
But then it wasn't you who attempted to provide an example, now was it?
As for the subject of this thread, well, hopefully many will follow where IBM has now gone.
Gary Dunn
Open Slate Project
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.
If you want Page Zoom functionality, the ColorZilla extension has that ability.
Surely you're not suggesting that Opera is a worse name for a web browser than Firefox?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
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.
...not to mention you can make it behave like Opera (zooming images as you zoom text) by using the View>Image Zoom>Zoom with Text menu item.
Firefox still can't display DHTML menus which prevents me from using my bank web site effectivley. Maybe this update will finally end this.
I have no problem with putting a 'Designed for Firefox.' button on my sites...
These are better... Really.
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
links has some trouble rendering the pictures...
All pages should work with any browser but there is no reason not to create an advanced version for browsers that can support it. Right now Firefox is far and away the most advanced and most standards compliant browser around but Safari is looking as if it could give it a good challenge. Since they are both choosing to cooperate on a standards level the competition is healthy unlike the IE/Netscape war. Why should we limit websites to doing only what IE supports? You may as well avoid using tables, images, etc since some browsers do't support those.
HTML was always a crappy standard. It's time to begin looking for a better standard. We need some sort of standard for tagging XML data to be accessible by screen readers, text-based browsers, etc and then we can just make all our data XML and provide rich interfaces in XUL or some other XML/DOM/client-side scripting style of interface.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Whatever you say.
But I, for one, will not pay for a browser that doesn't provide me with any features that can't be had for free in Firefox. I would probably buy a copy though, if it provided something significant that cannot be had in any of the other, cheaper, browsers.
If Opera was (in my eyes) a truly better product, it's be a no-brainer. But the only advantages I've heard of are few and marginal. Of course, if Firefox was worse, I'd probably be using Opera.
And that's why I don't use Opera. And why, for me, it's not worth the money. I suspect there are a lot of people that feel the same way.
This will be fixed by the work Robert O'Callahan is doing with switching Gecko to use the Cairo graphics library. That'll allow "real" zooming for the first time, although text-only zooming is usually what I want.
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?
Yes, they had vulnerabilities - but they're all fixed.
Secunia links:
Firefox - 14% unpatched, 'Less critical'
Opera - 0% unpatched, not rated (possibly an error)
Internet Explorer - 29% unpatched, 13% partial fixes, 'Highly critical'
Safari - 0% unpatched, yet 'Less critical'
Of course my above post was modded down for saying that a commercial product is better than an F/OSS product, but that doesn't make it less true.
Opera is more safe than other browsers, end of story. Yes, greymagic has a list of known vulnerabilities - that have all been patched. No dice.
It would be a valid point if they released new fixes bi-weekly as new exploits were discovered - but that's not the case. It's on 8.02 now.
If you don't want to pay for the browser, fine. If you can live with a small banner, it's actually free.
I am, however, writing this from my preferred browser, Firefox. Opera is safer, but Firefox has better expansibility, and it has the plugins I like.
Hrm, probably a bad choice of words on my part - I mean to say that if Opera was a much better product. To me, Opera and FF have parity in all the features I use. FF is free. Opera is not. Therefore, FF wins.
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.
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.