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Q&A with Firefox's Blake Ross
dotlin writes to tell us the Seattle PI is running a lengthy and interesting interview with Firefox's Blake Ross. In the interview Ross addresses many of the issues surrounding the future of Firefox including their attempt to streamline Firefox in 2.0, the feature comparison between Firefox and IE, different ways of measuring browser market share, and many more.
But does it run on Linux^H^H^H^H^H OS/2?
Oh arse
You know the phrase "If you assume you make an ASS out of U and ME"? Well, sometime it's just yourself who ends up looking like a derriere.
Oh arse
Your request for a flame war has been rejected for the following reason(s):
[ ]Incorrect assumptions about what people care about.
[ ]Uncreative formulation.
[x]Too obvious an attempt to start a flame.
Considering how slashdot is designed to cross post, I don't see how this can be avoided.
After all submissions are made based upon what users of websites find, so its inevitable that some of those sites are on your bookmarks list.
As it happens I read 2/3 of the sites you listed, but hadn't read this interview so slash is doing its job.
liqbase
> I assume everyone here reads ars,
no
> inq
Never heard of it.
> and el reg
Shit. They think they're funny, but they're not - and most of their stories (apart from the...uh.fascinating "ram production up 2.1% in Q2" type nonsense) are on Slashdot anyway.
Crikey folks, it's a joke! lighten up & mod the original up!
Has anyone got any comments about the actual interview ?
Or are we just having a slagging match/moaning war....
Erm... no. As my boss says (without a hint of irony) "When you assume, you make an ass of yourself
Having wombled around the Firefox support site for awhile looking for answers to memory issues, I came to the conclusion that there was a certain level of disinterest in problems that were less than exicting to fix; more so, than other OSS projects. (I fully accept the subjectiveness)
This snippet sort of ties in with this feeling.
Sure, OSS developers can do what they like - I'm not paying them so I don't have much right to complain, fair enough.
But if you want to compete against MS, who are too customer focused then maybe a balance needs to be found which doesn't involve letting so many go.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
And quoting The Art of War from Sun Tsu:
I, for one, have pleasure being in the Firefox side of this "war".
And it's relieving to know that Blake seems to have a very clear sight while leading this.
If I clone myself, can I call it a thread?
If a girl winks to us, can I call it a race condition?
I'm personally more than greatful for firefox, because back in the day, netscape sucked so bad I actually really LIKED IE.
As my boss says (without a hint of irony) "When you assume, you make an ass of yourself
At last, a sane saying. I've never understood precisely how you assuming something is supposed to make an ass of me.
From everything that I've heard mentioned both here and on other sites, the biggest memory hog in Firefox is the Forecastfox extension. Once I uninstalled that, Firefox's footprint dropped down to the 30 megs or so that it's at now from the 70-ish that it was at. Granted, I haven't used said extension in quite a while, so it's possible that this problem has been fixed as well.
and he must be going on 10 years old now :P
Seriously, it took a teen to turn the Mozilla project into something worthwhile. Imagine how great the world could be if we demote the old guard!
The day Netscape released the source to Navigator I compiled it and gazed in wonder at this 'real' browser I compiled on my Linux box. I followed the development of the Mozilla project from the failed start based on the old Navigator code via the slow-starting gecko-based suite all the way to the Mozilla suite. Then, suddenly, Firefox (under one if its many names) and Thunderbird appeared. They looked more modern than the Mozilla suite and individually had slightly better performance. I started using the threesome (Firefox, Thunderbird and the suite) next to eachother. For day-to-day browsing I used Firefox, for more involving things the Mozilla suite has always been more appropriate. I have also followed the development of Firefox (and to a lesser extent Thunderbird) closely, building local versions, testing nightlies, etc.
But... my experiences with the latest iterations of Firefox (both the 1.5 series as well as the 2 and 3 development series) have left much to desire. The biggest complaint is the incredible amount of memory the browser consumes - even without any extensions (errr.. Add Ons... Change the name only because Microsoft copies the feature under a different name...?) and with a clean profile. If a browser manages to bring a 2 Ghz system with 768 MB to its knees in a mere half hour of browsing there is something wrong. Unfortunately this often-heard complaint does not seem to get the attention it deserves. Firefox' development strategy being what it is there is not that much opportunity - other than by filing bugs - to influence priorities and design criteria.
So... lately I have switched more and more from using Firefox/Thunderbird to using the Seamonkey suite - the successor to the Mozilla suite. It still feels a bit more dated than Firefox and Thunderbird but it does offer much more in features while having a much smaller memory footprint. Add the Seafox theme and it looks quite a bit like Firefox/Thunderbird.
The way things look now I think Seamonkey will be my browser and mail app of preference. Should Firefox and Thunderbird ever run on top of XULrunner I might switch back but for now I have better things to do with my memory...
--frank[at]unternet.org
Sorry, since Ars redesigned away from the Black and Orange to that horrible mess, I don't come back.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
I have a 768 MB RAM 2.4 Ghz comp and I always use firefox, I have never experienced problems so far, I can even have firefox open while I play some 3d games , I don't see where your post is coming from, is it really about a real experience? D you use like 30 browser windows at the same time?
I have never seen firefox use more than 70 MB of RAM , that is too much but it is not enough to bring down a comp like mine/yours.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
because they're started by developers for developers -- people scratching their own itch -- tend to end up with very geeky products. They don't believe in marketing, they don't believe in the mainstream. They're supposed to be the anti-mainstream, right, so it's very hard for most open-source projects to break out of that mentality
Geeks want geeky products, users want usable products. Why can't OpenSource projects break out and make usable products. Live would be much better if at least some could overcome this barrier.
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
Since these issues are apparently fairly well-known about, is there anything that the Mozilla team has done to try to prevent or resolve them? Is there some easy way to kill an extension that may suffer from a memory leak at runtime, without taking down the whole Firefox or Seamonkey session? Likewise, for plugins. What about preventing such issues in the first place? Is there a mechanism in place to limit the amount of memory a particular plugin or extension can consume?
From the sounds of it, a lot of these problems are not much different than those issues that operating systems typically deal with: allocating resources to competing third-party programs (extensions or plugins, in this case). Perhaps it is time for Firefox to off-load such responsibilities to the operating system it is running above, and instead just provide a standard method of communication between an extension or plugin running as its own, separate, killable process.
I want to know when Firefox is going to fix its rendering of forms. I often view a page with about 50 seperate forms on it, Firefox however stops rendering them after about 25... It only started doing this after the last few releases. (IE always has and continues to show the full page).
I would also like to know when firefox is going to allow its users to turn off the cursor going to the first text box on a page by default. It is a security risk. I enter my username on a login page, tab to the password box and begin typing my password only to find that when the page has loaded fully firefox has oh so wisely decided to help me out by placing my cursor back in the username textbox. There in the username textbox is my full password for all to see... this is more and more unnacceptable.
More reasonable memory management would be nice too. Also it would be nice if it didn't decide to start a new cache on a crash or if the power should go out...
I don't have an ebuild for IE7, not even in ~x86.
Konqueror is the browser that runs fast enough on my 800MHz laptop while simultaneously being feature-rich enough (sorry, dillo). The fact that this one application (a web browser) is so much faster and less memory-hungry than Firefox, is the main reason I downgraded the speed of the rest of my desktop from xfce to KDE.
One thing I've always wanted in firefox: A download manager that can resume files, even after having restarted the computer. I have a friend with a modem connection and he has to use Getright (eew) because he usually downloads large files, and he can't leave the computer on all the time.
Q: You're working on a startup with Joe Hewitt, but you seem to be in stealth mode. What can you say about what you're doing?
Ross: I honestly can't say anything at this point -- especially to a Seattle newspaper.
Q: Why especially to a Seattle newspaper?
Ross: Because the people who are most likely to care about the startup are most likely to be reading your paper.
Q: Over in Redmond?
Ross: Yep.
Q: There seems to be a good relationship between Google and Firefox. Where do you see that relationship going in the long run?
Can anyone say Microsoft Office killer? Google recently revealed a beta spreadsheet app with collaboration features. If Firefox and Google worked together, they could produce one hell of an office suite available from any computer with Internet access.
What are you doing now, you lazy drunken obscene unsayable son of an unnameable gipsy obscenity?
Question for parent: the suggestion of a flame war has been raised by (check all that apply):
[ ] Suggesting that Unbuntu is better than OS X
[ ] Pointing out that Linux is a hodgepodge of little compilations
[ ] The mention of a Macbook Pro
[ ] Use of Redhat Linux
[ ] KDE vs. Gnome flamewar attempt
[ ] K is for "Krap" classic troll
[ ] Mention of iPod
Two guys go to do a presentation. One assumes the other will have the material. They get there, and neither have it. They both look like asses, at least to whoever they were supposed to present to. See?
Slashdot - where to disagree, is to be a troll
There was a time we had to make a tradeoff -- IE or Mozilla? IE would start up much, much faster, being built-in to the OS and all. Mozilla would be even slower, it being a whole Internet suite (browser, mail, chat...)
But at that point, the choice was pretty clear. Have the Mozilla quickstarter load on boot, or run Linux and have the sheer speed of Linux vs Win98 trump any advantage IE might have over Mozilla. I almost look back and want to call these the golden days of open source, the time where we could've seized enough market share before Win2k to bring the MS Empire down.
Anyway, Mozilla was still damn good. Firefox was just that much better, and eliminated any thought of giving anything up. You can now switch to Firefox and run IE in a Firefox tab. But even before Firefox, the choice was pretty clear.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Matching feature parity? What sort of nonsense corporatebabble is that?
Sure, interviews are tough. It's easy to say something stupid without meaning to do so. But you really shouldn't announce that you're "very careful to say" something stupid.
It sounds like Blake Ross has been possessed by the spirit of a dead sales-department mid-level manager.
No way... It must remain a religion... I just redyed my black Firefox hat again a few days ago (I shit you not, the black fades to orange because of my sin: being outside too much).
They created a holy grail already too...
Surely you've seen it?: http://developer.mozilla.org/contests/extendfiref
It's religious, and IE will burn in flames less holy than those of the great fox.
For your situation to be true, both would have to assume the other will have the material, so they've both made asses of themselves.
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
Not the parent, but I think Ubuntu vs. OS X is shaping up as the "easy to use, non-MS mass desktop takeover" battle. There was a digg flamewar about it when an article mentioned two promenient converts from OS X to Ubuntu. And it's also totally OT. Unless you count the fact that they both run Firefox.
FF is a windows application primarily, and they are not near as concerned with open source and linux as they could be. He blatantly states they "ripped off" features from IE to make windows users "comfortable".
What I would like to see is another browser project, COMPLETELY dedicated to ONLY running on open source OSes. All FF has done is to give that multi billion dollar convicted monopolist company a little breathing room, and they just take what the open source guys make, tweak it a little, rebrand it as their own, and continue to use their cash to go to war against open source. Seems sorta silly to keep doing MS work for them, yes?
I would have much rather the past few years seen MS and MS users have to squirm and come up with their own web security fixes, and not be leeching off of open source, the concept I mean. I am more a purist and would rather the two camps go very separate ways. If you prefer closed source/propietary, swell, stick to it then, don't be a hypocrite in other words. If someone feels MSW is the bee's knees and just the bestus, then use their browser only.
I just can't see "improving" MS OS for them as helping open source and linux in any long term fashion, and it is NOT leading people to switch OSes in any significant numbers. I heard the claims it would be like a "gatway" drug, but have yet to see a single bit of actual proof. Desktop linux is at the same point it was three years ago, statistically insignificant, and one of the main reasons is the crutch that FF gives people who use XP or other MS OSes. If they had no security options with their browser, having to rely solely on MS/IE or IE based browsers, we would have seen a much larger "switching" campaign and much more of a heightened interest in desktop linux from this "the masses" guy, and desktop linux would be years ahead of where it is at right now.
thanks for the tip, I thought it was just me somehow. I was updating gnome and jeez loweez do the latest GTK things just suck bad. so many things broke and my system got so slow and unresponsive I just reinstalled my OS rather than trying to track them all down. Now I am NOT upgrading any gnome "features", I am actually scared to do so to avoid going through that mess again, and might be switching totally to KDE apps and Qt based stuff. Been a gnome user since day one using linux, but really,if it is that cairo thing and moz based browsers are going to it, this is going to require a serious re-thinking. I already don't use FF, use sea monkey browser instead, but they are based on the same gecko, and if that is going to be based on cairo...well.. I am not a dev and trying to fix major problems is a PITA for me, I would rather have a little less features and more stability and much less resources required, I want to milk my computers out and not have to upgrade hardware once or twice a year just to run the same normal type apps. Again, thanks for pointing that Cairo out, now I know what to look out for.
[ ] Suggesting that Unbuntu is better than OS X
[ ] Pointing out that Linux is a hodgepodge of little compilations
[ ] The mention of a Macbook Pro
[ ] Use of Redhat Linux
[ ] KDE vs. Gnome flamewar attempt
[ ] K is for "Krap" classic troll
[ ] Mention of iPod
[X] All of the above.
I don't know what kind of funky extension these people are running, but I've never seen that happen. I've had firefox running for days at a time without seeing anywhere over 100 MB. I rarely ever see it go over 75 MB.
Ah, that's an old classic. "I don't have that problem, therefore it doesn't exist for anybody."
Us in the real world call that "denial".
Why Firefox sucks.
...and a lot more complaints I can't remember at the moment
Let's start with a personal note. I am a system operator for a huge network on a dutch highschool. Some time ago, I installed Firefox on all network computers because there were some fanboys who wanted Firefox on the network. They convinced me with propaganda about web standards, spyware, safety, usability etcetera etcetera. You probably heard all that meaningless crap before. After a lot of whining, irritating, endless stories, guarantees and promises from a select group of students, I decided to try Firefox.
The first day I set Firefox as default browser, lots and lots of people complained about the browser and related issues. Especially people who didn't have much experience with computers, but even experienced users! My phone was ringing non-stop and I almost went crazy...
Most-heard complaints
People didn't understand the interface
Sometimes, it reacted so slow, people thought the network had crashed or the internet connection was down
It freezed and crashed constantly, sometimes sucking more than 90% of the CPU load for no obvious reason
Pages showed up completely wrong or didn't work at all
Wanted pop-ups didn't open
Completed downloads could not be found
Bookmarking gave problems
PDF-files caused crashing
Pages "disappeared" by accidentally using tabular browsing
Lots of obvious keyboard- and mouse shortcuts were missing
I uninstalled Firefox the next day. Firefox is clearly NOT meant for the general public!
I, and my university's students aren't the only people with problems
Since I told some people about this site, I got many comments. Some nerds thought Firefox was God, and I was exaggerating. I never exaggerate. They do.
These nerds started to whine about Firefox supporting web standards, speed (???), stability (???) and Firefox' invulnerability for spyware. That are about the main arguments for switching to Firefox. But it's bullshit.
Let's analyze their points:
Web standards are bullshit when 90% (or more) of websites don't respect them. Only some stupid weblogs support standards fully, because nerds that visit them think that's "so cool". Web Standards are dead when Microsoft's Internet Explorer keeps on ignorig them, because 90% still uses Internet Explorer. Site owners dont't ignore their biggest audience and they make sure that their pages are showed correctly by Internet Explorer. With Firefox, there are always pages looking screwed because the page is outdated or the designer didn't know abouyt rendering diferences between FirefoX en Internet Explorer.
Next: speed and stability. That's funny. Firefox renders pages slow and freezes/crashes non-stop. I experienced it myself, and many students, friends and relatives experienced this too. Firefox is not a stable, reliable browser.
Last point: spyware. Not supporting Active-X is NOT an alternative. Lots of sites don't work in Firefox because it does not support Active-X. A more simple solution where the great Active-X still works: Latest MS Service Pack, disabling all unsigned certificates and a good virusscanner, just in case.
Remove Firefox!
Do you want to know how to uninstall Firefox from your computer? There are different ways to do that:
Go to the place where you installed Firefox. Search and open the folder "uninstall" (default: C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\uninstall). Finally, double-click UninstallFirefox.exe.
Download UninstallFirefox.exe from this server: click here (coming soon).
Or go to the "add or remove software" screen. Search "Mozilla Firefox", and click on "Change/Remove", then click "Yes". Firefox will now be automatically removed.
When having Firefox uninstalled, there'll be remaining a folder (default: C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox) with preferences and some register-keys. You can safely delete these items manually. Like you want Firefox back!!
Alternatives
Alternatives to browse the internet without any pro