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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?
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?
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...)
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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
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?
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?
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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?
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
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.
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
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?
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?
Good afternoon Mr. Beard,
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/. 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!
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
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?
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?
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.
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.