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Firefox Losing Its Way?
An anonymous reader writes "NeoSmart Technologies has a recap on Firefox 2.0 and its shortcomings. Aside from the technical aspects, the article raises some good questions about the Firefox 'community,' it's future, and what it's goals are at the end of the day. Their conclusion? Firefox 1.5 was a much better open-source project/community model than 2.0 ever will be, and that 'It seems Firefox has lost its way somewhere along the passage to fame.'"
Last time I checked, Firefox was still open source software. If they're not fixing bugs fast enough for your liking, by all means, download the source and fix them yourself.
We hear that reasoning a lot from open source advocates. But when it comes to Firefox and Mozilla in general, it just isn't a case. Their code is a mess, regardless of whether it's C++ code, or whether it's JavaScript code. Look for yourself: http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/.
I don't follow the project closely enough to know why the quality of their code is so low. It may be due to inexperienced or untalented developers. It may be due to rushed development. It may be due to a lack of refactoring. But the end result is that it's very difficult for most programmers to come up to speed with the code even just to fix a small bug, let alone implement entirely new functionality.
The poor quality of the Firefox and Gecko codebases could be indicative of why we've seen to many quality and security problems with Firefox as of late. Firefox does suffer from pretty horrendous memory leaks, even when not using any non-default extensions. The number of serious 0-day security glitches has increased dramatically, as anyone on any notable security bulletin mailing list can attest to.
Quality software builds upon a quality codebase. And until the Mozilla project can obtain that quality codebase, we will continue to see them produce poor-performing applications that suffer from frequent security flaws.
> I must say, I'm having a feeling akin to the one I had when Netscape went over the 3.0
> version number: things feel somewhat slower and buggier, with more bling that I don't
> really need.
I don't know what you/need expect from a browser but from my point of view Fx 2.0 *is* faster and uses less memory. Also I find that few new features (improved tabbed browsing, closed tab history, more polished interface) simply nice and usefull to me.
What bloat you are reffering to exactly? Since Fx 2.0 comes with very few new visible features and all of them are usefull for some people. And what bling?
> One of the most irritating "features" I keep hitting is whenever I open something with an extension,
> be it a pdf with Acrobat reader, a flash animation, a video with mplayer or a java applet:
These are not extensions but plugins. Plugin is binary platform specific library that you load up into the browser. Extension is multiplatform XUL code running on top of Gecko/Fx engine.
> about 1 out of 10 times, the cpu goes to 100% and FF is dead in the water.
I can not confirm that. Have you tried your Linux (I assume Linux since you've mentioned mplayer) distribution's Bugzilla? I use Linux, I use features you mentioned and Fx does not crash on me. Neither I've seen reports similar to yours so.
(...)
> I don't know, perhaps there's a pattern with very large, popular
> open-source projects: the more popular they grow, the more developers
> tend to focus on adding features instead of correcting bugs...
To cut the bullshit. Have you filled a bug report about your problem?
I noticed our library hasn't upgraded to Firefox 2.0 at Umass Boston. I thought it was interesting and asked the reference librarian why. She said the IT people didn't think it was significant enough to bother upgrading and people also didn't like the way it looked. Interesting, I thought to myself.
n t=c_linuxseafox.php and add an extension to enhance the UI like MonkeyMenu http://markbokil.org/index.php?section=tech&conten t=c_linuxmonkeymenu.php and you have a better browser than Firefox 2.0
This is one of the reasons I switched back to the Mozilla Seamonkey Suite. It uses less memory when you run Mail and the Browser together than Firefox and Thunderbird. I like the more community orientation of the development also. All you need to do is throw on a good theme like SeaFox http://markbokil.org/index.php?section=tech&conte
Before you instantly flamebait me for critizing a high profile OSS project please let me briefly explain my background.
I am an almost 100% Linux user simply because its the OS which works best for me. I keep a spare windows partition only for playing
games. Also I try to suggest OSS solutions in my dayjob and have so far succeeded in getting my company dependent on Apache/MySQL, Imagemagick, Ghostscript, PHP etc (unfortunately all on windows servers, which I loathe).
Anyway allow me to get to the point:
Can anyone tell me why Firefox both starts and run so much slower on linux than windows. It almost feels like its made for windows and the linux version is running on some emulation layer. Now I know thats not the case, I know about their XUL platform and all of that.
The very slow loading could have something to do with the dynamical linker being somewhat slower on linux?, or is the instantiation of lots and lots of objects? slow memory allocation. But I seem to recall linux being much faster at that although I can't point you at any graphs or papers.
Why is it slower than the windows version when you have lots of open tabs?. I've seem to recall hearing that this is due to the flashplugin for linux being slow and since almost every page have flash everywhere yadda yadda.. Haven't tried to compare the two using pages with no flash objects so that sounds quite reasonable.
Why is it slower doing DHTML? again I don't really know if that is the case but try opening http://dojotoolkit.org/ "See it in action"->General widgets->Fisheye (sorry but I can't be bothered to try and dig out a direct link into that steaming pile of javascript (no offense dojo devs)) and compare the rendering speed in firefox/win32 vs. firefox/i386?
This isn't meant as a whining post. Im genuinely interested in why there is such a huge different between the windows and linux firefox experience, I've been wondering about that simple fact for several years now.
and no I can't provide sources and all that crap but being developer myself and having used the software for a long time, I sure can tell when an application is noticeable faster on the same machine.
if any firefox dev is reading this: don't get me wrong im grateful for what I got, firefox is a great browser. I just think its sad that the greatest OSS browser runs worst on the greatest OSS OS (GNU/Linux).
Dealing with MS and the mindset that goes with it is what is the big fat mess, and it always has been. The linux devs need to make a *serious* fork and just go their own way,completely, even to the point of renaming the new open source browser something else and work ONLY for open source operating systems. Let the Microsoft volunteer partners (like novell and suse now and the bulk of the mozilla people) deal with making crap work with WINDOWS. FF is 99% a WINDOWS product. We need a LINUX browser.
Messing with behaviors from older versions is a lame thing to do. For example: Replacing the menu hot keys (this totally broke my sage extension hotkey. GRRRRR), and changing the behavior of backspace on the linux platform. Had to dig through about:config to find and fix the latter. No easy way to do the former without messing with your personal css files. Not cool.
Last time I checked, Firefox was still open source software. If they're not fixing bugs fast enough for your liking, by all means, download the source and fix them yourself. That's not meant as a smart-ass excuse for not fixing a bug, but the article's author says:
This is such an elitist position and really hurts both opensource in general and Firefox specifically. I am going to go out on a limb here and say that a large marjority of Firefox users, myself included, don't have either the chops nor the time to gain the chops to fix bugs. Also, even if I had the chops to fix bugs, I don't have the time to get familiar with the source tree to be effective. It's not like debuging is a 5 minute deal.
I updated to FF 2.0 and downgraded to 1.5 wihtin a few days because 2.0 kept freezing and crashing and to be honest, I didn't seem any new features that made upgrading compelling.
Now I think FF is a GREAT browser, I use it all the time and only revert to IE when I have to. And I have themed it and added extensions. I reccomend it to friends and spread the word. But, yeah, I have to agree, 2.0 was less than I had hoped for.
However, I also want to sincerly thank for Mozilla Foundation and any volunteers working on the Mozilla projects for all their effort because people like me can't build this stuff.
*KHTML is > Gecko. It is lighter, faster, and more standards compliant.
*Konqueror does NOT require all of KDE; just mainly KDElibs and QT
*It DOES have an extension system.
Any questions?
The article is slashdotted, but I think the main problem here is that Firefox has pretty much reached perfection.
I doubt very many find Firefox perfect. But I do think that most people have got what they wanted - an alternative browser which is usable on mainstream pages and that runs on Linux and Mac. By mainstream sites I mean market share, Opera was standards compilant for years and never got the market share to make sites standard compliant. For many people that's probably "good enough" that they'd rather spend time using Firefox (or doing something else) than develop it. With the inertia it has, hopefully that'll be enough that the "IE-web" never comes back. The Mac market getting an upswing also promises well for that, and Linux... on the desktop any day now, right? And should Firefox flaunder and fail, I'm sure by then KDE4 and Konqueror would be there to carry the banner. Personally I'll be happy on Opera as long as IE's market share stays low.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"Any questions?"
Yes: Is sombody working on a firefox that uses khtml for rendering, or alternatively: A khtml-based browser that supports firefox extensions?
There are **plenty** of sites that can get around FF's popup blocker. And IE 7's popup blocker is getting good. I'd say they are about equal now.
And before that you claim it was merely a PR stunt. What the fuck, man? How did that get modded Interesting and Informative? Seriously. Microsoft gets absolutely blasted for less than what you just implied the Mozilla Foundation did with Firefox 2.
The Mozilla Foundation judged it to be worthy of a public release. It was put out there for all people to evaluate. For the first time ever I saw Firefox in my local newspaper (comparing Fx2 to IE7).
You can't seriously claim that the browser shouldn't be judged based on this release.
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
Yes, the zoom function definitely comes in handy at times.
n speed
I honestly cannot say if firefox is better once it is setup with the right extensions, Opera just has everything I need already built in. I also know that the cold startup time for Opera is WAY less. According to:
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html#wi
Opera 9 takes only 2.74 seconds to startup compared to FF 2.0's time of 11.64 seconds. That alone will keep me from seriously testing out FF, when I start up a browser I want it working NOW and having to wait over 4 times longer is not acceptable.
FF definitely has a lot more extensions to use and they may be better but Opera does have widgets now so it no longer is held back in regard to not having support for any third party extensions. Until I see a significant reason to switch over to FF I am sticking with Opera since I am used to it and prefer how it is setup and I think most diehard FF users are of the same mindset regarding FF. I used to be a Moz user until about 5 years ago when I discovered the tabbed browsing that Opera had and that is what got me to switch over at that point in time. To each their own.
Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.
I have experienced the same browser locks with FireFox for as long as I can remember (definitely goes back beyond the 1.0 mark). Usually what occurs is that the entire browser locks while the content is loading (be it a video, or pdf, or whatever) and you are unable to switch tabs. Sometimes the browser simply stays unresponsive.
For me, this is the only severe issue I encounter with FireFox on a regular basis. If I am loading a video, pdf, or sometimes even a web page that is slow to respond or is unable to contact the server/resolve dns; I need to be able to open a new tab or switch to an already open tab and view something else while I wait.
What I find so interesting about this post is that it's exactly why companies are nervous about using open source for mission critical projects. You're absolutely right - since people pay nothing for the software then they can make no demands of it. I've even posted bug reports on open source projects that start out saying something like "I know that I haven't paid anything for this so I have no right to complain, but..." So give me one good reason, after reading this post, that any IT manager would want to bet their future or the future of their company on open source? At least with proprietary software you have the right to demand that things get fixed, and if you don't get what you want then you can find an alternative.
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
> I wouldn't judge Firefox because of the 2.0. Better wait for 3.0.
When 3.0 comes out will you say not to judge it because of the major changes scheduled for 4.0?
Not trying to troll here, but what we should judge a software by, imho, is the current released stable version. You can't judge a game by what the game will end up looking like when they finally patch the bugs; what they release is what you have.
Especially if they're going to make a huge PR push for people to use 2.0, they really ought to consider that a version people should judge by.
That said, I like FF 2.0 just fine, but maybe I'm easily pleased?
That's right they volunteered. The volunteered to dot a job. Now apparently some didn't realize that when you volunteer, you have to actually support the project instead of just call yourself a "developer" and shuffle deck chairs around. When the user base wants something fixed, then it should be fixed. That's called "being responsible" and "taking pride in your work." Volunteering is not a one way street, and some would have you believe. It's work and it doesn't mean that only have to do the the easy things that you like to do. That's why people don't volunteer. This is doubly so, when the group, like mozilla, has placed high barriers to entry. Specifically, the code is a poorly documented bizzare mishmash of multiple languages spread out among directories that don't have obvious names. Also, the review process effectively eliminates all external development, as the the codebase moves faster than the review process, and the sheer arrogance of the developers that "I own this." I'm sorry, you can't say you "own" it in one breath, and in the very next breath say "fix it yourself."
The argument that if something is provided at no cost, it's somehow above reproach is an absurd intellectual cop out. The cost of something is completely irrelevant to its merits. Let's take your soup kitchen analogy. Suppose you walked into a soup kitchen and was served a soup consisting broken glass in a fine urine base. Would you honestly say, "Oh. Well this sucks, but I shouldn't complain. Afterall, it's free." Bullshit. Incompetence is incompetence at any price.
"It only took them THREE MONTHS to put a patch out for it." - So how does this stack up with OSS? Let's see - FF leaks memory for many, many months and the community keeps getting told it's not a problem. I've stopped using FF for the most part because I don't want to have to restart my browser on a regular basis. I lose too much work that way.
I'd also be interested to know how any commercial software vendor ranks against vendors of other products. How long does it take for Detroit to issue a recall on a car? I don't know the number myself, but I'd be shocked if it's less than three months. A problem has to go on for a very long time before a recall is issued, even if it's for safety.
"How often we've had to knock a patch out ourselves? 1 time... in 5 years" - I don't get it, you complain that vendors aren't fast enough but then you say that only once in five years have you needed a patch quicker than the vendor can provide it?
I don't know about you, but many IT departments neither have the time nor care enough to want to fix other people's code. They are willing to work around the limitations of the software that they have, or live without a feature until the vendor makes it available. You may think that this is bone-headed, but it's reality. And F/OSS is doing little to address this issue. I applaud Ubuntu for putting out 6.06 LTS. It's a clear recognition that what matters most to the people making the decisions is stability, not features.
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
There is a big difference between 2.0 and 3.0. The 2.0 is only getting small changes and some eye-candy, they never accepted any bug fixes to 2.0 that could potentially make it unstable. In the 3.0 they are changing the whole rendering engine to a complitely new one. 4.0 is too far away, but currently I do bulieve that Firefox 3.0 will be a much greater success than 2.0 ever will be.
And yes, I agree with you. I don't hate 2.0, but I think it was a mistake to release it, just because they think the release cycle between 1.5 and 3.0 would have been too long. Then again, I'm a programmer and Firefox has had a pretty good history in marketing, so I think they know better than I. After all, it is the marketing that has given the Firefox the status it currently has. AFAIK majority of the people like 2.0, but I think there have been more complaints about 2.0 than there were about 1.5. Then again the user base is increasing constactly which could be the reason for this.
s/Firefox/Internet Explorer/g
s/3.0/7.0/g
s/2.0/6.0/g
If somebody made THAT argument in public, they'd be strung up. But because it's Firefox, it's okay? Come on. 2.0 is a MAJOR release. If it was a temporary / bugfix release, it should have continued as 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8, and so on... and the "3.0" version should have been labeled 2.0.
Clearly, Mozilla felt this release was "the second MAJOR release of Firefox," with all that that statement implies. And the generally sluggish performance & horrendous memory footprint of the 2.0 version of Firefox is the main reason I switched *back* to using Safari for home use, and IE6 at work.
I spend almost all of my time fixing things, and I think life is richer for it. It's an incredible learning experience and those that fix and repair are far better suited to create as well.
As for all of your accusations about this or that being "juvenile" - OS has been trying to penetrate to a larger audience for some time now - what seems juvenile to you is considered "user friendly" to others, and there's nothing wrong with that especially when you have the power to modify or disable these features. Additionally, a lot of people go into OS because they are enthusiastic, creative individuals striving to produce more than just a paycheck. Don't confuse creativity for immaturity.
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