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Ask a Mozilla Person About Firefox 2.0
Last week's interview guest was Dean Hachamovitch, formal title "general manager Internet Explorer at Microsoft Corp." This week we have Chris Beard, Mozilla's Vice President of Products. (Here's a recent "pre-Firefox 2 release" interview with Chris that you might want to look at to avoid duplicating questions.) Chris will be calling on other Mozilla and Firefox people to help answer your questions, but he's the point man here. Slashdot interview rules apply, as always.
How was the cake from MS?
WTF?
What pushed you to redesign the user interface as you have?
What were you thinking with the changes to the tab UI? Everyone who opens enough tabs to trip it hates the scrolling, yet the justification for the feature was based on those who don't open enough tabs. Will it be changed back, or will we forever need to visit about:config on installing FireFox?
In retrospect, knowing what you know now about the features that made it into the product, would you have wanted to stick with the v2.0 moniker? Or would you have rather made it v1.6?
Dear Chris Beard, I have used Firefox since before 1.0, and one thing that Internet Explorer has always beaten FF on is rendering speed. With the release of IE7, Microsoft has made IE at least feel faster than before, and it certainly has adopted many features that made FF such a stand-out, security not withstanding. I would like to know if Mozilla has made it a priority in the past to give FF a rendering speed competitive with or faster than IE, and if we will see FF becoming competitive with or faster than IE in rendering web pages in future releases? Thanks.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
What do you feel are the greatest strengths and weaknesses of Opera?
What do you feel are the greatest strengths and weaknesses of Safari?
What do you feel are the greatest strengths of IE7? (I won't ask about weaknesses...)
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Dear Sir, why did you call your product Firefox 2, rather than the much more correct Firefox OE, Opera Edition?
I kid, I kid... What's that I see in the distance, an army of FF fanboys with pitchforks and torches?
Global warming is a cube.
To me JavaScript without a JIT is all Script and no Java. When does the new JIT'd JavaScript interpreter come out? What is the state of it, is this the highest priority for Firefox at the moment and if not, why not?
With the continued growth of Firefox, there are still a lot of users out there that do not even know they have a choice as far as browsers go. Is there any effort to reach the average joe consumer, other than word of mouth, and if so what would that strategy be.
In a world of acronyms, the words are the real victims.
Why didn't you fix Firefox's single huge glaring flaw, the memory leak that makes it practically unusable?
The man who never alters his opinion is like the stagnant water and breeds Reptiles of the Mind -- William Blake
Ever since Mozilla corp was formed the primary motivation of the project has been making lots of cash.
7 4) is easily the single most demanded item in bugzilla by an order of magnitude and yet it has been ignored for six years in favor of 'donations' by macromedia.
For example, BUG 18574 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=185
As far as I can tell, Mozilla (and it's for profit subsidary) exist only to line the pockets of the few powerful folks at the top such as Mitch Kapor.
Why call it a community effort when you ignore community demands?
Thank you for including scrolling acceleration in Firefox 2.0. It's smoother than before, but still not as smooth as Apple's Safari. What gives?
Sent from my iPhone
If Microsoft were to GPL Internet Explorer (warning: suspension of disbelif required) why would you carry on developing Firefox/Gecko?
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
Can we expect just as much doublespeak and question avoidance as was given to us in the IE guy's interview?
It's like sex, except I'm having it!
Dear Chris,
Why did you not tell slashdot to f'off because you just did another interview, and will likely get asked the same questions regardless of what the post says about reading the other interview and not asking dupes?
Why do you think this is happening? Do you lack developers who use / know / deal with Linux; is it because something is wrong with Linux; or is it because there are more people out there using Windows?
What does the long-term future have in store for Firefox? Is the web browser going to become more feature rich, or is the Mozilla team going to aim at keeping Firefox very minimalist and optimized? If the former, what features do you think will help advance the user experience of the web? If the latter, how will you differentiate Firefox from its competitors and maintain the brand in absence of flashy new features?
There has been a rather glaring memory leak since the Firebird days; it's not as bad today, but it's definately sill there. Is the problem found, waiting to be fixed, or can we expect just marginal improvements in Firefox 3?
What exactly has been done to fix the memory leaks reported in 1.5x?
With the most recent releases of FF 2.0 and IE7 almost simultaneously, from a person who does QA for a web deliverable software company, trying to debug and locate the source of inconsistencies in the way that FF 2.0 and IE7 handles DOM - what steps is the Mozilla foundation taking to help blaze the trail for some kind of standardization in DOM? I realize that IE has its own version of DOM, but is there hope that 1) Mozilla will better respond to erratic DOM programming from those that develop for IE or that 2) Mozilla will somehow influence the Microsoft camp to come over to standards?
/* somewhat functional - fix later */
Why did the options for handling cookies change between the versions? In FF 1.x I had the ability to only accept cookies from the originating site but I don't see this option in FF 2.x. Was this intentional or an oversight?
Thanks,
Jim
For the 20-30 pages I visit regularly, I haven't noticed a rendering difference between IE7 and Firefox.
... they do, they are a corporation complete with a board of directors and chairman.
I suspect the same holds for 80% of the internet population. The 80/20 rule.
So why would the 80% try out a "slower" browser? And before you say Mozilla doesn't care about the 80%
Firefox was created partly as an alternative to the bloated Mozilla suite. Now as Firefox matures, it too is gaining features. While all of them are fairly useful, some, such as spell check, web feed previews, and session restoration, might be better implemented as extensions. Firefox is still a fairly lightweight browser, and I appreciate Firefox 2.0's improved response speed, but I still worry that Firefox is becoming the kind of software that I hate.
How committed is the team to keeping Firefox's core as small as possible, and what, if any, features might be turned into extensions in the future?
Are you working on any innovations to the browser that you feel could revolutionize the internet? Do you think we are on the brink of a big change or do you feel that the internet experience will continue to improve in small steps as it has been lately.
Read my short stories - You won't regret it.
Chris;
Does FF worry that an unscrupulous add-on developer could produce what could be a click-fraud capable bot net hidden in an add-on that could be promoted and distributed by FF team? What steps are taken to prevent it given the add-ons are no signed or hosted by FF?
Thanks
Paul
Two things really turn me off about Firefox.
1. Non-native widgets. Why not use native widgets (ala wxWidgets)? Why is Firefox the ONLY application I use on a daily basis that looks out of place on my system?
2. Memory leaks. I realize that people say that it's not Firefox leaking all the RAM, but instead its extensions. Why not sandbox the extensions, or provide some other facility to clean up after messy extensions?
I'm sure you'll see a lot of tongue-in-cheek questions here about the recent IE team cake--but in all seriousness do you think Microsoft was sending any message, subtle or not, with their gift? Was the cake a gesture of altruism or do you think they were telling Firefox not to forget that they are a competing member of a browser war?
How do Firefox members believe they are perceived by the "competition"?
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
I am one of those people who use firefox because it is better; I really don't care 2 cents about MS wars and open source. I use fire fox because of four features, tabs, save all bookmarks to folder, cntrl+ , and clear private features.
Most of my friends are the same.
So, I, and I assume most of your users, have zero loyalty to firefox - or IE; that is the way consumers are, they are awful things to have as customers (and that is why in the real world, contrary to all the biz school bs, the 1st thing any business trys to do is create some sort of barrieer to lock consumers into the product)
So, what is new about ff that I should care about ?
And, if you do not have an active IP policy, how on earth do you ever expect to stay ahead ?
What would I like ? how about a recorder, seperate audio and video streams,just hit the button and whatever is playing on the screen is captured (sort of like camtasia)
How about link farm blockers
But most of all, a good yellow pages equivalent - that, with wikipedia, is probably 50% of my browsing
Has the Mozilla team considered adopting timeframes to the resolution of bugs, no matter what the severity. I've seen bugs on Bugzilla that while minor, have been open since before the browser was named Firefox, some without any comment besides the initial confirmation they exist. Why do issues stay unaddressed after multiple major releases?
Many of us first switched to Firefox because it was so much smaller and faster than Internet Explorer. In fact, much of the early progress was directed at removing unnecessary code. Now it seems as though Firefox is following in the steps of Netscape Navigator by including many more features, some which everyone will use (spell check) and some which many may not (better RSS handling). The result is a larger download.
How does the Firefox team choose which features are going to be included and which ones should be left as add-ons? From a marketing aspect, is it possible to promote a product for being small and compact, or is a long feature list necessary?
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
What are the top priorities for the next Firefox release? Will there be an attempt to add any new features in IE 7 to Firefox? Will standards compliance come first? Or will security be the main focus as Firefox becomes more widely adopted?
A number of reports indicate that Mozilla is making significant amounts of money out of Firefox thru Google clicks. Do you have plans to give back to the community, be it in the form of donations to other open source projects or in any other form?
I've noticed that more and more preferences get taken out of the dialog with every release and they can be changed only through about:config. I can understand that you wouldn't want to crowd the dialog and confuse the users too much, but do you ever go back and review all those options and put back in the dialog some of the most used ones?
The Tab Mix Plus extension is widely considered to be greatly enhancing to any Firefox experience, alongside extensions like AdBlock Plus and All-In-One Gestures (and similar gesture extensions). Are these 3 features - enhanced tab manager, advert blocker, and gestures - going to be included in the initial Firefox package at any point?
And along the same lines, what would you rather do - streamline Firefox by removing features and making them optional add-ons, or enhance Firefox by building in more features which can be enabled and disabled without the need for extra installations?
I know I'm not meant to ask multiple questions, but it's all on the same theme - would you consider creating two major download versions for Firefox, one which is "barebones" and the other preloaded with the most popular extensions?
There have been several things that FireFox (or FireFox fans) have done to promote the browser; some rather mundane, such as purchasing ad space in a newspaper, while others have been unique and interesting, such as the FireFox "crop circle".
Aside from word of mouth, what methods of advertising and promotion seem to help the most? Do you ever notice a significant increase in downloads after an advertising campaign? What are your future plans for promoting FireFox, and what weird ideas have people come up with that have had to be turned down?
Love sees no species.
about support for MNG/JNG image format support?
I have posted a question for the IE interview and ask you, what keeps you from fully implementing the CSS 2.1 standard in FF 2? Granted, you adhere to the spec much better than IE, but this is not justification enough to not follow.
Håkon Wium Lie's response about IE not following spec is that it is not in their best interests as a monopoly to do so. MS's response to this question revolves around priority. What priority is standards compliance to Mozilla? Also, what other things do you think hinder compliance as far as Firefox is concerned?
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
...and Walter Wart beat you both by several minutes. You sir, lose.
I submitted a "bug" report to Mozilla some time ago, stating that a very simple and effective spam- and and unwanted-ad-blocking strategy would be to simply include a "block this domain" list in the settings. Mozilla (via Bugzilla) responded that this was identical to a previous "bug" report. That bug report is very old but still open.
Yet even in FF2 this feature, which would be SIMPLE to include and use, is still missing. Why? It would solve some of the most common complaints of internet users.
There is a Firefox extension called AdBlock that will block ads from a list of domains, but it only does part of the job. It should not be necessary to install an extension to do this, and it only does part of the job. It does not completely block domains.
If the FF people really want to make the experience of using their browser better for their users, they will include domain blocking as part of the browser, ASAP.
I'm well aware that there are already several questions about the infamous Giant Firefox Memory Leak, but I'm going to ask a slightly different question.
When are the Mozilla developers going to admit Firefox uses an unreasonable amount of memory?
I'm sick and tired of the excuses.
"It's just memory caching." Wrong. Opera and IE both have superior cache support (back is faster) and they don't use gobs of memory to achieve it.
"It's the extensions you're using." That may be true, but Firefox extensions are mostly written in JavaScript. If the extensions are leaking memory, it's because Firefox's JavaScript's garbage collector IS BROKEN.
"You don't know how to read the memory usage column." That's just insulting, but still easily worked around. Simply open each browser to a blank page, not the initial memory usage, and then compare the increase in memory usage. That nicely takes care of any "shared memory" issues that might arise, giving a clear picture of memory use required as pages are displayed, still leaving Firefox as the clear loser.
So, does Mozilla have any intention of actually addressing the Giant Firefox Memory Leak, or are they going to continue to blame everything but Firefox for the unreasonable memory usage Firefox demands?
The question: What is Mozilla planning to do about supporting current and future design strategies and technologies such as SVG (I know it partially works/is partially in the pipeline), embedded XML support, proportional table rendering, and though I despise them, ActiveX Controls? In other words, what is Mozilla doing to incorporate more support than its competitors?
The rationale: If FF supported a greater number of standards, technologies, and design paradigms than its competitors, I can only imagine it would meet with a significantly greater market share and interest. The only reason I keep IE on my computer is that some pages are not supported adequately by Firefox. Many layout and design elements seem to render improperly. For example, I have always had trouble viewing friends' MySpace profiles - FF has a tendency to stretch and skew the proportions of table layouts that use proportional sizing. The reason I suggest ActiveX support is only because I have run across numerous webapps (often proprietary ones, such as educational portals like the one my college used) that are not FF friendly. Generally this is only because developers refuse to develop crossbrowser support (not that I blame them). I recently started developing extensively with SVG, and FF's native support is not sufficient for its many capabilities. Though IE does not have native support, the Adobe plugin (unsupported though it may be come 2008) is smoother and faster.
Missing the point completely. the question was asked because people DO care about rendering speed. I could just as easily say "Who cares about the acceleration speed of my car? It still gets me from point A to point B" People want things to go fast. Fast cars, fast internet, and fast browsers. If people weren't concerned about speed, we'd all be on 9600bps modems.
(Futurama) Fry: "My folks were always on me to groom myself and wear underpants. What am I, the pope?"
Do you believe that forcing Debian to rename the high-quality patched version of Firefox that they will distribute in Etch, conforming to the FHS and generally forming a harmonious part of a distribution renowned for its stability, and with security fixes to be backported long after Mozilla have abandoned that version to the wolves, will be good for the Firefox brand?
A lot of technical people use FF because they feel it is a better product. With this being said, FireFox is still not well known in the general population of everyday computer users? What steps are mozilla taking to make their product more mainstream?
I beleive they already answered that question, though I don't remember where. The reason CSS isn't perfect, is because Firefox's priority is to render correctly as many pages as possible, as opposed to implementing a specification.
Does FF team have any plans of releasing the large amount of work done for Skinable UI as a library. It would of great benefit for portability of code between Linux and Windows as well as KDE and Gnome with a uniform look and feel.
Does FF 2.0 work on hyperthreaded computers now? Prior versions after 1.5 do not run well at all on my hyperthreaded computer.
Why the UI change, without an express option to change back to something closer to the original version?
I don't know about you, but I hate the way programs want to be slick, glossy, and unique.
Tabs=good idea.
Crazy Chrome look=bad on my eyes.
That's not even getting into all the other little changes that just make me think "Great, why mess up a good thing" ?
Did you realize people would feel that way? Any chance of a reversion?
Good afternoon Mr. Beard,
/. crowd.
/. article titled "Nine Reasons to Skip Firefox 2.0", TFA states "a growing number of users are reporting bugs, widening memory leaks, unexpected instability, poor compatibility, and an overall experience that is inferior to that offered by prior versions of the browser." While there's no doubt that your company has worked hard to bring 2.0 to fruition, what is your company's response to such a backlash? And will such a response prompt a maintenance release to address such issues?
Thanks for taking the time out to field questions from the
1. What is Mozilla's direction with regards to implementing out-of-the-box email security with Thunderbird? Granted, there are extensions like Enigmail that add the functionality after the fact. However, the average user may not be aware of such an extension, or have the knowledge to use it. Perhaps your company could work closely with the folks at GnuPG to include such a functionality into Thunderbird (along with a friendly UI for the initial setup process) and offer secure email to the masses? In doing so, the end user would also have a trusted source for receiving GnuPG updates (only to the extent of Thunderbird functionality of course) by way of automatic updates.
2. While Firefox has come a long way, there are still some issues with rendering certain web pages that use style sheets. While it is mainly due to the use of non-standard web publishing practices, one problematic page load of a website may be enough to deter a newcomer to Firefox. What is your company doing to address such issues?
3. One of the more widely discussed issues with Firefox has been memory leaks. Whatever the cause, this has also been a deterrent for new users, and thereby affected market share. In this recent
Thanks again for your time!
What does the Firefox team feel is more important to the future of Firefox: adding features or fixing bugs? I ask because the old memory leaks still aren't gone and the problem with sometimes being unable to enter anything into text boxes, including the URL and search boxes, still has not been fixed. Should we just get used to Firefox becoming more and more buggy over time, until it becomes the new Mozilla and someone else strips out the rendering engine and start over? And as a Firefox evangelist, how am I supposed to convince people that Firefox's regular releases are any better than the few-and-far-between releases of Internet Explorer if many of the updates seem mostly cosmetic or security related?
Considering that web developers are limited by what browsers can render, those who write the browsers have quite a major effect on the web as a whole. Bearing this in mind, how do you imagine the World Wide Web will have changed in ten years time, and how do you think it will get there?
Would it be possible to permanently remove one developer's commit access (i.e. knock off a hostage) each day until the horrendously annoying freeze bug that I've experienced only since updating to 2.0 is fixed?
Also, is there a place that we can send a box of chocolates to the person(s) responsible for the new UI widgets and text box spell checking? I 3 those changes.
HitScan
In creating animated graphics for websites, using both Flash and animated GIFs, I have noticed that Firefox 1.5 and 2.0 render the animations faster and more faithfully than IE6. In IE, the animations are so slow as to be almost unacceptable, and the .GIFs also have artifacts.
Thunderbird, as a companion to Firefox, seems to be getting the "also-ran" treatment. Releases tend to trail Firefox releases by weeks or months, and there seems to be very little promotion or marketing.
Do you expect the influx of Eudora developers to change this? Are there any plans for more coordination between Firefox and Thunderbird in terms of scheduling, marketing and promotion?
What happened to the "Block Images from This Site" context menu option for images?
What happened to Sunbird? I mean Mozilla Firefox is mature and the more you mess it up by innovation (see Netscape user interface) the more problems we get. Does Mozilla really care about the other tools as part of the family: Sunbird, KompoZer, ...
Chris,
I've been a fan of Firefox since 0.8... I'm typing this in Firefox for Windows under WinXP Pro. It's been running since first thing this morning, and according to the task manager, it is currently utilizing 114MB of memory. What's being done about the rampant memory usage in Firefox? I know of the rendering debate and memory usage. Can't there be some middle ground on memory collection to keep a 6MB file download from consuming now 115MB of RAM?
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
How do you feel about people putting in an extra capital letter in the middle of Firefox's name? Is it extremely aggravating or just annoying?
Why does Mozilla depend on a volunteer distribution network when you bring in loads of money from Goggle?
How do you support yourself making free software?
Hi! Are there plans to make Firefox running in small gadgets, like mobile phones and PDA's?
What drove you to so drastically change the tab UI without providing a simple way to customize it? I can't stand the new UI coupled with a lack of options in FF 2.0! The multiple "close tab" buttons are definitely making it harder to browse in my usual manner, and the tab scrolling is very frustrating. Why not allow users to open a new tab bar directly below the original instead of forcing the user to click a tiny arrow to scroll?
Like many people, I've been using various tab-management extensions (e.g. TabBrowser Preferences, Tab Mix Plus) since FF 1.0, and I really enjoy being able to customize tab behavior to my liking. If you are integrating extensions (such as anti-phishing, spell-checking), why not integrate better tab management? I know one of the goals of FF is to reduce clutter, reduce bloat, and limit menus to reduce end-user frustrations, but why not tuck away a "advanced tab preferences" menu someplace deep within the user preferences?
"Equal bytes for women!"
Is firefox ever going to get a file upload progress bar?
Since Firefox 1.0, the XUL interface toolkit has been relatively stagnant (no really new compelling features). I like the idea of Firefox 3.0 just being a "skin" on top of a more general application development platform, XUL Runner, or something similar. My question is... is XUL going to get some more love? It is starting to show its age.
What are your plans for pushing version 2 to the current group of 1.* users? Do you have a strict policy of not pushing major version changes through automatic updates, or is it something that will be done eventually?
Either way, do you have any plans for those users who don't posses automatic update capabilities (pre-1.5)?
Favorite quote: "
Also, have you stopped beating your wife?
Are there restrictions on using the Firefox name in open source?
As reported on Slashdot, Microsoft invited the Firefox team over to the headquarters to discuss compatibility with Windows Vista. Did you learn enough about Vista to be able to offer a significantly better experience on that OS?
How to use coral cache: http://slashdot.org.nyud.net:8090/~oscartheduck
Since upgrading to FF2, Firefox has gone from crashing approximately "never" to crashing approximately "always." It literally freezes 4 or 5 times per day on me. I've read that this is an iFrame/JavaScript issue and that engineers are aware of it and working on it, but my question is: How could you release something this buggy?
Debian Firefox Question Asked of Chris and Mike. No Response yet. The solution in my mind is a simple no-brainer. Firefox's debian package maintainer should work for Mozilla. Mozilla keeps patches in house, approves for quality and can release FireFox under its own name in the debian format. Why is this not a viable option? Anyone? Alternative: FirefoxD, Problem Solved, No Splitting up brand Name Recognition like the current IceWeasel solution, No Trademark Problem. Why is this not a viable option? Mark? Chris? Mike?
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
It seems to me that the source of most browser instabilities such as crashing, freezing, and
...
cpu-hammering are due to misbehaving plugins. As an x86_64 linux user this problem is so severe
that it seems that my choices are to either put up with frequent browser crashes or to miss out
on content delivered via flash, video, java, etc.
I've always wondered why broswers don't do know more to help deal with these sorts of problems.
For instance, my operating system is quite good at letting me kill a runaway application without
having to reboot. Why can't a browser give the ability to kill a particular instance of a plugin
wihtout having to restart the browser?
It would also be nice if I could enable/disable individual (already installed) plugins without
having to restart the broswer. Is there any reason why this can't be done?
(If this feature already exists then maybe it needs to better documented)
Finally, it would be really nice if there were a third option (besides enable/disable) called
something like "user prompt". This would give the user the ability to decide which plugin
contents they want to view much like the existing flasblock extension except that it would
work for all types of plugin content and would also provide the ability to turn plugin content
off that has already been turned on.
OK, this sounding more like a comment than a question, but I guess what my question is
Is the firefox team considering any improvements to the browser-plugin interaction (such as the
above suggestions) that would make the browsing experience more stable and give the user more
control?
What are the biggest differences, from a user's perspective?
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
It uses three to four times as much absolute RAM as konqueror, with far more resident and far less shared with other apps.
This seems to be a general problem with gtk/gnome based applications, but how come the Qt/KDE guys are so much more efficient?
p.s. I'm typing this in Konqueror rather than Firefox simply because KDE+Konqueror is faster and lighter than Gnome+Firefox.
Deleted
That text is directly from their road map; Gecko's version numbers are in lock with Mozilla's.
I noticed a drastic change in the way accesskey works in Fx 2.0.
Prior to 2.0 if I assigned accesskey="1" to a link, simply pressing Alt+1 in Windows worked the same as clicking on the link. In order to get accesskey to work in 2.0 I need to press Alt+Shift+1.
Why was this change incorporated into 2.0? It makes accesskey virtually useless, just like it's always been in IE where Alt+1 simply gives focus to the link but doesn't actually simulate clicking on it, which means you have to click on it anyway; or at least press Enter.
Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions.
Alright! I know I'm in there! If I don't come out, I'll have to come in after me!
How did the exlax in the cake treat you?
For those of us who prefer the full meal deal, will development on Seamonkey keep pace?
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
Why does it take soooo many years to implement display:inline-block? (bug #9458 since 1999)
Firefox is my pornographic browser of choice. However, I often encounter memory consumption that brings my computer to its knees. Please advise on what you can do to erect this situation.
Patiently waiting with one hand on the keyboard,
AutopsyReport
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
Is there any chance of getting native-looking controls in forms? Even as of 2.0 forms under Linux still have the Windows 98-ish look to them.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
Why is Firefox 2.0 slower than Opera in spite of having lesser features ? Will you change this in FF 3.0 or will it become worse ?
I don't want a signature.
I've roasted many marshmallows on the browser flamewars. They can be fun to watch, but not too enlightening.
;P
One question that I'd like to hear an educated answer to is what you think Firefox's (and mozilla's) greatest innovations are. What are your best additions to the field, and which are simply refined from other browsers?
Also, the spell checker in FF2 detects suxx0rs and roxx0rs as real words. Should I try to use them more?
Powered by Web3.5 RC 2
As a Web developer, I would very much like to be able to start a new instance of Firefox which would be isolated from others, and hence maintain separated sessions.
Tyranny isn't the worst enemy of a democracy. Cynicism is.
I have no idea how I keep triggering this thing, but having the inline search pop up every time time the apostrophe key is pressed is mildly frustrating. Please remove this feature.
There are a thousand markup languages, covering everything from geometric data to maths equations to typesetting to fonts. (BLOBs seem to defeat the whole purpose of an ASCII-driven markup system, IMHO.)
There are a million capabilities that couldn't be done as extensions (multicast mosaic was a definite curiosity and only touched the outer fringes of what's possible).
There are a billion ways that any browser could be tweaked to tune it dynamically for not just the system but also the network weather of the time.
The sheer volume of possibilities would overwhelm anyone, and many browsers have met with unfortunate ends as a result. (I can't even remember the name of Sun's pre-Java web browser.) However, those that don't venture out have all eventually stagnated and died.
My question, then, is how do you choose? By what black magic do you discern what will kill and what will cure?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Why doesn't FF adopt a similar "page zoom" or page scaling feature to the one Opera uses (entire website gets larger instead of just the text)? I find it annoying to have my websites look totally different depending on how much I want to zoom in.
My ecommerce software, my BBS software, as well as many other web-based programs out there use Alt+S to quickly save a page after editing. In FF2, I just the history page when I do that. What's the deal? Is that configurable?
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
That's one great question. There's really no way to verify an extension without walking through the source, and even then it's not impossible to obfuscate something nasty. And any extension that uses XMLHttpRequest can download its own code.
By "an add-on... promoted and distributed by FF team" you mean anything hosted on https://addons.mozilla.org/ I guess. There are a lot of extensions there, some of them quasi-commercial, and the review process required to have an extension hosted isn't (cannot be, in fairness) thorough.
Perhaps addons.mozilla.org need to be a bit more explicit that you can't _quite_ trust the extensions hosted there. Perhaps they could digitally sign 'popular' extensions that they 'trust'?
Imagine what a PR disaster a malicious extension would be.
Andy
And the fact that there isn't an infinite amount of programmers working 24h/day on the codebase also means that as stated in the IE case it's a matter of priorities.
If you just fix crashers people complain that you haven't complied 100% with some spec, and if you work on improving specs the people will ask why aren't these crashers fixed. So they try to do both little by little as do the other browsers.
Disclaimer: the IE case is different, MS let IE stagnant for too long instead of working on it. We can (must) blame them for that and I think that too many people will never forget that fact, if you rely on a monopoly to improve things you aren't thinking wisely.
You might want to reinstall your operating system. There have been several clues recently that third-party software can cause Firefox to hog memory.
If you're still convinced that it's a problem with Firefox, help to narrow down what the problem is so it can be investigated.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
How to you make it permanently go away?
Passing the acid2 test would ensure that Firefox is compliant with all of today's meaningful web standards. Why doesn't the development team buckle down and say this is priority for future versions of Firefox?
Go Gusties
When will Firefox get some much needed love on Mac OS X? The toolbars look hideous, the form widgets don't look aqua like, and there is no integration into OS X services (like the dictionary). Plus there is always a need for speed improvements.
I'm curious as to when FireFox will start taking the Enterprise market seriously and work on heavily requested features like MSIs (in house ones rather then third party) and possibly add features like the ability to set up a background update that administrators in an Active Directory environment can set up so that users don't need to be power user or above to actually update FireFox?
I have talked with several people heading up IT departments and lack of MSI and the ability to easily deploy via group policy is the only major obstacle that is keeping them from deploying FireFox.
-Locri
This question is useless, it's too bad I don't have mod points. This is the kind of crap we bitch about being posted as a story. It's not going to happen, so why not ask a question that matters?
No sig for you!!
I can't speak for Flash but I believe IE has a maximum frame rate for animated GIFs, which may be why you find them to be too slow.
Why do Firefox use so much RAM? After a few minutes of surfing, Firefox is likely to use about 70MB. After a few days, 200MB. And when I close pages containing e.g. media or lots of text, then Firefox do not clean up RAM. It's really annoying, especially on a shared system, since other users complain on memory usage. On Windows Terminal Server, Internet Explorer really stand-out by using shared memory compared to this awful memory-code.
Wow. Mozilla is borrowing from Microsoft's playbook. "Problems? Reinstall the OS"
The man who never alters his opinion is like the stagnant water and breeds Reptiles of the Mind -- William Blake
What is the future for XUL? Are there plans to allow XUL to perform over remote HTTP, fixing the current security problems?
/dave
It seems to me that a lot of work has already gone into XUL and so much was achieved in this area, yet few advancements have been made over the last few years. Many believe that there is a true opportunity here to provide a platform for networked application delivery, but will XUL be a true competitor to Flex and/or XAML?
just a few questions: - Why don't you integrate Noia theme as default, since it is the most popular theme according to addons.mozilla.org - and lets face it your theme kinda sucks being spartan and all.. look at what Mark Shuttleworth wrote recently, and you know he is right - How about investigating further into famous memory leak? Version 1.5.0.7 was far worse than 1.5.0.4 , 2.0 is alot better than 2.0, but it still hangs now and then - maybe just concentrate on one fully stable release without new features? I know it's hard being open source and all.. but ;)
- Will there be a lightweight version of Firefox for older computers and/or small devices?
- How was the cake? heh
Do you agree that Firefox really doesn't really have a memory usage problem?
If so what can you do to convince people of this so I don't have to hear so many people whining about it?
(This message comes to you from FF2.0 running on a T20 Thinkpad with 256M of ram, the user of which is now donning a flameproof suit)
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
Mozilla has tended to make decisions that have been extremely controversial among the community. Relevant examples include the removal of Qute and MNG, the use of difference licenses for source and binaries, the creation of Mozilla Corporation, and more recently the trademark/copyright debate that led to Debian's fork of Firefox called IceWeasal. Does Mozilla feel that these decisions and others like these were correct and ultimately important for its users?
I was quoted out of context in my autobiography...
I think AJAX-style apps have a place not just as apps obtained over the network, but also as locally-installed apps. So my question is, are there plans to have some form of Firefox plugin that includes both a local storage engine (like Derby) and a Dynamic Application framework (like Jetty) so that we can deploy apps on the desktop using web-based interfaces.
Note that this can be done now (I've done it), but it's a big pain to put it all together the very first time and can put newbies off.
A better alternative would be something where Firefox could instantiate both the SQL and App Server and connect to it on localhost.
As for those who ask what good is this for, the answer is embedded apps, and disconnected apps from the network in case the network fails. A real example is a customer order processing system; in the event of network failure the app could redirect to firefox itself and instantiate a scaled-down version of the ordering app where orders could be taken, and then when the network is back up the orders can be uploaded to the remote server.
Anyways, I know that at least the SQL part is in the works for Firefox 3.0, but I think this is something urgent that demands attention ASAP as it solves real problems that many are facing today.
Will there always be a need to restart Firefox after an extension install/uninstall or theme change? I find this an annoying distraction, and while I know I can always save the session I would prefer to not have to. Trying out new themes takes much longer than it should.
If history repeats itself, why can't we study the future?
First of without a doubt Firefox has managed to achieve excellent market share considering it is competing against a browser that is pre-loaded and tied into the dominant OS platform.
Is it of interest or a priority to try to get Firefox preloaded on OEM PCs?
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
Does it tickle your whistle that IE is including a lot of the features that Firefox/Mozilla has brought mainstream? When do you think they will get their own ideas? Thanks, Sam
www.qsopht.com ~q
what bothers me the most with firefox is that the UI never feels right, not under windows, not osx and not GNU/Linux. i know K-Meleon, Camino and Epiphany (and probably a lot of other gecko based browsers) exist for different platforms, but it would be a lot better if the official firefox builds used the system's native widgets. i know that the osx version of firefox 3.0 is planned to use cocoa widgets, what are the odds of this happening for GNU/Linux (gtk) and windows builds as well?
I'd rather use a browser that supported CSS and rendered pages fast enough, than use a browser that didn't support CSS, and rendered them only a little faster.
I hear you. But realize that while this is how you feel, not everyone necessarily agrees with you. To some people, that increase in rendering speed might be worth the errors. They might care more about how "snappy" the browser feels, and don't really care whether it looks perfect.
To you, that might seem ridiculous. But I could definitely think of some people who are that impatient, and would easily trade some (to them) minor rendering errors for an increase in rendering speed and UI responsiveness. Particularly if they don't know that the errors are happening, or have any reason to care.
While I'd never use IE, I switched from Safari to Firefox, even though Safari is the "better" browser in terms of standards-compliance, because Firefox 'feels faster' and renders some pages noticeably faster on my machine. For me, that extra rendering speed was more important than passing Acid2 or some other test for everyday browsing. I could easily see how some person even less patient than I, might go even further and throw away any attempt at compliance, and accept IE's rendering in order to get its speed.
The tradeoffs that you feel are valid, are not universally accepted. Lots of people may do the same math and come up with different answers for what's "most important" to them.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
From what I've seen 2.0 is just a UI update and not much of an update for developers, the same as IE7 is. Why is that?
Mozilla firefox is all over the place, and in the news all the time, but unless your a geek, tuned into the Mozilla project and its codenames for things, it tells you nothing.
Firefox browser, Thunderbird email would go a long way to telling joe average user what these things actually do, and why they would want it.
"Firefox internet browser by Mozilla" if gotten into the press, would go a long way to telling folks about it.
What happend to the theme in 2.0? I haven't checked it out on Windows, but on Gnome it looks atrocious. It was as if I was using Opera or something. The tabs were particularly annoying, and there was several other inconistancies here and there. It certianly wasn't anything like a GTK+ app.
That advice is not coming from "Mozilla." It's coming from a fellow user who used to have memory problems and is trying to help those who are still having memory problems to fix them. If you do not wish to listen to their advice, just ignore it. However, I get the distinct impression that those of you who are still complaining have no interest in fixing the problem, but would rather just keep complaining about it.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Any plans on improving the spellcheck? For instance the word spellcheck is listed as a miss spelling. I still use the Google toolbar just for the spellcheck function.
Also any hope for full page zooming? Opera 9 does this so well that I am tempted to use it instead of Firefox as my primary browser.
And of course Acid2. When will FF pass Acid2?
Other than those little things I love FF.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I see conflicting reports on 2.0's memory usage. In my own "stress tests", where a number of tabs (20-50) are loaded, each showing 50-100 mid-sized digital photos, the memory usage in Task Manager showed a nice stable 100M, but the pagefile space usage went up to 2G, making the system slow and unusable.
What is up with the difference between reported process memory usage in Task manager (which is reasonable) and real pagefile usage (which is horrendous with lots of images)? I've brought this up twice already, and no one has commented on it.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Lolz!
Recently, it has been confirmed that the Debian Project will be stripping out Mozilla Foundation trademarks such as Firefox and Mozilla from their main repository when Etch is released, renaming the "firefox" package to "iceweasel." What are your thoughts on the usage of such trademarks, and do you have any comments on the non-free permissions of the Mozilla Foundation's trademarks and artwork?
~ C.
The aftermarket car stereo industry primarily sells products that offer features not found in stock car radios. For example, MP3-CD players, DVD players, and Navigation were in aftermarket first. For Firefox to survive, it must continue to implement "must-have" features like tabbed browsing.
What new features in Firefox, like tabbed browsing, improve the internet browsing experience? How will Firefox motivate me to replace the "good enough" browser that's pre-installed on my computer?
No, I will not work for your startup
As regards your claim in that Debians patches are more significant in scope than Ubuntus in the question "I understand that Ubuntu is based upon Debian. Is that the same or different than the IceWeasel browser that Debian is shipping with their latest release?" on your blog, and in light of the response at Glandium.org, did you lie about the scope of the patches applied by Debian, or were you merely misinformed?
Alternatively is Mike Hommey incorrect in his analysis, and if so, how?
How can firefox continue to solve the major problems of the world like bad html/javascript, war, and the cancellation of firefly?
Can firefox or open source help solve any of these problems?
Between all the competing browsers, FireFox has the worst support in displaying OWA content. Naturally IE 6 & 7 displays OWA pages just fine. Opera and even konqueror on linux displays most content without issues. (taking into account the right click feature does not work) But Firefox has a few issues that I have posted in detail before on feedback pages, and yet 2.0 still did not get it right. The question: When are we going to see FireFox fix some of the issues (which is at the browser level) to display corporate email such as Outlook Web Access? Thanks.
I heard that IE7's Phishing protection works better then Firefox because black lists can't catch up to new phishing sites fast enough. Some even say it's better to have no protection rather than incomplete protection as it creates a false sense of security. Any plans on implementing heuristics to add an extra layer of security to the current implementation?
Which, by the way, can be fixed by this code in userChrome.js:
Slashdot Classic
The problem with memory not being freed up might be bug 130157. It's particularly bad on Linux systems that do not have an mmap/munmap based allocator, but only a brk based one. The problem isn't that memory isn't being freed, but freed memory cannot be returned back to the operating system due to excessive memory fragmentation.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
In the 90's, the idea that scared Microsoft into creating a web browser in the first place was that the web browser could be a platform that made the underlying operating system irrelevant. In the Browser Wars 2.0, it seems like that idea has been put on the backburner so far. There are very few third party developers who create applications on the Mozilla platform. The notable ones that come to mind are Flock and Songbird. Firefox is one of, if not the most popular cross platform applications existing today, so it makes sense that people would want to build on top of its success. However, the developer interest in XUL doesn't seem to be that high. As someone who is looking to create a cross-platform application in the near future, why should I pick XUL, and what are you doing to make it a more attractive platform?
Firefox Most fun since the BeeGees (if you know who they are)
Firefox game (hah, hah, hah, hah, Staying alive, staying alive...)is the most fun since the BeeGees. Sugar buzz caused me to mess up the post before, sorry
Have you considered creating a website which allows people to vote on features?
For instance: You could build it into FireFox where people are notified about up coming votes, and you could select if you want to vote (so most people don't get hassled with notifications) on new code features to be put into the engine and new UI features/integrating extensions. This way it could be put to a vote on whether or not to build AdBlock and AdBlock Filterset.G Updater into FireFox, how the tabs are handled, etc.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Has Mozilla considered developing a website similar to a cross between W3C.Org and PHP.Net for web development?
This way people developing could just go to one resource for a DOM/HTML/CSS/JavaScript/etc reference and post comments/suggestions, so this could be used as the definitive reference of what is implemented and how it is implemented in FireFox. This would be an invaluable reference for developers, might help you gain a bit of market share with them and remove dependencies on external standards organizations which do not seem to accurately reflect what the development community want now a days.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
At the time of writing, this was the 4th acknowledgment of it being a good idea. Can we get a 5th (and 6th, and...)?
:D
O yeah, and also some brains/hands/funds to implement it!
"Good news, everyone!"
I believe one of the advantages of open source could be/is the ability to include people that would otherwise be left outside (the development loop) - in other words to be inclusive, accessible (and just plain well designed). Firefox, as one of the most successful open source projects going, could do a lot to help promote accessiblity and usability. Do you believe it has any place to do this, and if so what is it doing?
Simon
OATS Project
I agree with the parent and sibling posters. An much-touted feature of Firefox is that it can be extended, but how do we know that the extensions are benign? Is there any way to guarantee / certify / vouch for the lack of subtle malware in the extensions that we so blithely download?
That last question is almost rhetorical; I would love to see anyone answer anything other than "NO". If you thought ActiveX had vulnerabilities where, under certain specific conditions, evil hackers can get you to execute arbitrary code, then what the heck would you say to some extension that said, "Hey! Download me! Install me! Run me!" And if, like me, you are a Linux fan who enjoys thumbing his nose at how vulnerable the MS Windows environment is, then wouldn't the cross-platform XUL base be even more of a security risk?
In fact, if I were an evil hacker, I would write this benign and cool extension --I dunno, makes it easy to download pr0n or something-- and get it really popular. Then once it becomes popular, I would add the new feature that it rootkits your computer or something --people with the auto-upgrade would never know, and even with manual upgrade, most people would answer the question "New version! Want to upgrade?" with "Yes".
Personally, I believe there should be a two approved classes of extensions.
Class 1: such extensions are just a way for the Mozilla developers to add functionality without applying a patch, and without adding it for people who don't need the function. Such extensions are written by the MozDev team themselves.
Class 2: the source code of the extensions have been reviewed and signed by the MozDev team. They weren't written by members of MozDev, but the code has been found to be trustworthy by at least two people. (Or, optionally, by 3 people who aren't part of MozDev.) And, by this, I don't mean that the extension is "cool" or "neat-o" --I mean some effort is made to see that it's not malware.
Everything else is unclassed, and is to be installed at your own risk, just like downloading arbitrary software off the Internet.
If Konqueror ever gets a decent and selective adblocking function, I am seriously thinking of switching back from Firefox to that overloaded piece of Krap, just for security.
[Okay, so Konq isn't really "Krap", but it sounded good, and I needed to fit a "K" in somewhere.]
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
Why Mozilla developers don't implement user-requested features which are, in my opinion, essential? The best example - people asks for signature manager in Thunderbird for years without a response. Do you think that message tabs and tagging is a reason to bump version to 2.0?
Firefox 2 and Thunderbird use its own mechanism to display UI. Effect is following: it doesn't look properly anywhere and integrates well nowhere. The worst situation is on Macs and KDE. Is it just a NIH trend (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_invented_here)? Real cross-platform applications should use OS' native widget toolkits. Firefox should use GTK+ on GNOME, QT on KDE, Cacoa on Mac OS X and Windows API on Windows. As we see, browser which renders itself is just a stupid idea. Users don't care about XUL and other stuff like that.
Yes. Firefox 3 will feature the XUL tag.
Somebody has made it look *better*, not good -- but then, it practically had nowhere to go but up.
I've been using GrApple for 20 minutes now, and so far I've noticed:
- popup menus look weird: they don't have the correct drop-shadow, and the tint/opacity might be a little off, too
- if you click a button and mouse off, it stays highlighted, unlike every other button in the world
- it doesn't use the native toolbar editor, so there's a dozen things it gets wrong there
- toggling the toolbar keeps the window size fixed, and has no animation, both unique to Firefox
- dragging something (like a tab) still drags an outline, unlike every other Mac app
- the status bar is taller than the resize grip (unlike the screenshots), which looks odd -- no native apps have the ugly gap between the resize-grip and the scrollbar
- the "UNO" one doesn't look like the picture (yes, I see the disclaimer); there's extra lines and junk
- the View Source window has an extra row across the bottom just for the resize grip, and a gap in the corner where it should go, in a normal Mac app
- there's a "Smooth scrolling" preference in the System Preferences; even with GrApple, Firefox ignores it
- disclosure triangles look wrong (they have a border!), are on the wrong side, and when you click them there's no animation
- the default button doesn't pulse, nor do they (always) dim when you focus another window
- still can't cmd-drag to scroll/resize without bringing-to-front
So while he did an admirable job of making a screenshot that looks like a Mac OS X screenshot, it's still not at all what a Mac user would consider a native, integrated Mac app.
Oh, and if you compare the original complaints:
- the toolbars look better, until you try to use them (e.g., problems 1-5, above)
- form widgets still look like Win95 widgets -- no change
- this new theme does nothing to integrate with OS X services
- it offers nothing in the way of speed improvements, either
So this addresses part of one of the four complaints. Congrats.
This theme has seriously hot screenshots. The truth doesn't match the screenshots. Non-Mac users have nothing to be jealous of: Firefox on Windows integrates with Windows far better than Firefox on the Mac does with Mac OS X, even with this pretty theme.
why is the rendering in firefox still so slow, and ugly looking and why do you not use native objects and still try to draw your own?
portfolio
FF uses a really large amount of RAM. In comparison, the Maxthon browser (which is practically IE but different), has this clickable option to "Free Memory Regularly". With that, it manages to maintain a slightly smaller RAM footprint when opening the same set of tabs against FF. Any chance that FF can include this in the future? Maybe there's an extension that does this already, does anyone know?
James
no sig = no personality(?)
- Why isn't there more transparency about MoFo/Co's finances - why can't you publish where you get money from, how much, and what you do with it?
- Is it not in fact the case that the Mozilla project is now mostly controlled by Google, which provides the overwhelming majority of funds?
- How much money does Google make due to FF/SM's choice of Google as the default search engine, and how much of that money goes back into Mozilla development?
- It seems to an outsider that very little effort is devoted to Mail&News / TB compared to FF. Is this true?
- How do you see the future of Mail&News/ TB development, considering the conflicting interest Google has in the matter (GMail)?
And unrelated, technical questions:
- Why does Gecko continue not to support significant aspects of CSS2 properly? Example: bug 5016.
- How does FF2 / Geck trunk measure up in the W3C CSS testsuite?
- Why is Gecko, and FF/SM/TB, not multi-threaded (these are two questions!) ?
- Why does Firefox' memory footprint balloon up to hundreds of megabytes so often?
- Why don't Firefox and Thunderbird share most of their memory, the 'engine' part?
I do not wish to remove from my present prison to a prison a little larger. I wish to break all prisons. -R.W. Emerson