Firefox 3 Plans and IE8 Speculation

ReadWriteWeb writes "Information about the next versions of Firefox and Internet Explorer suggest that the two biggest browsers are heading in different directions. Mozilla has published a wiki page detailing its plans for the next version of Firefox, codenamed 'Gran Paradiso'. Among the mandatory requirements listed for FF3 are improving the add-on experience, providing an extensible bookmarks back-end platform, adding more support for web services "to act as content handlers" — all of which show that Firefox wants to be an independent information broker rather than a simple HTML renderer in its next version. Also in the works is Microsoft's IE8. According to ActiveWin.com, a Microsoft official at CES told them that work has already begun for IE 8 and it may be released as a final product 'within 18-24 months'. Looking ahead, it's obvious that IE will continue to hook into the advanced functionality that Vista offers."

Comments

Internet Explorer 8

[anss123]

"Looking ahead, it's obvious that IE will continue to hook into the advanced functionality that Vista offers."

Does that include the ability to only run on Vista?

Re:features

[chrismcdirty]

I could have sworn the reason that Firefox came into existence was that the codebase of the Mozilla Suite was bloated, and had too many features that a lot of people didn't want in a web browser. And here they go repeating the past.

Re:features

[Anc]

I could have sworn the reason that Firefox came into existence was that the codebase of the Mozilla Suite was bloated, and had too many features that a lot of people didn't want in a web browser. And here they go repeating the past.

What makes you think so? If you look at it closely, Firefox sticks to its assumptions. The new features are either supplementing or replacing previous ones, like the improved bookmarks system, or are mostly about streamlining the already existing usage paths.

It's hard to relate to your statement since you provided no concrete arguments or examples. In fact, it sounds as if you were implying that the sheer fact that there's a new release and therefore new stuff coming up means that the application is getting bloated. Perhaps they should halt the development, so not to introduce more bloat, huh?

On a similar vein

[Solandri]

Why do tabs have to be along the top? Why can't they be on the side?

• Widescreen monitors and notebooks are becoming the norm rather than the exception.
• Even the normal 4:3 aspect ratio is wider than it is tall.
• In addition to starting smaller due to aspect ratio, the vertical space in your browser is taken up by the window bar, menu bar, toolbars, tab bar, status bar, and temporary popup info bars. Windows' taskbar defaults to using vertical space as well.
• Horizontal space is taken up by the scroll bar, that's it.
• Most web content automatically adjusts itself to the width of your browser, but to see excess vertical content you have to scroll.
• Many forums I visit already limit the width of their text for legibility, indicating there's excess horizontal space available.
• It's already difficult to read text due to the width if you maximize a browser at 1280x1024 or 1280x800 resolution, again indicating there's excess horizontal space available.
• Books, newspapers, and magazines are larger in height than width. Browsers attempt to mimic this by allowing you to scroll vertically, but there's something to be said for being able to view a larger vertical chunk of text or images at once.
• Pictures in portrait mode are common, and I'd like to be able to view them in a reasonably large size instead of having to always squash them down so they're significantly smaller than pictures in landscape mode.
• Most Western text layouts reference the top left corner as the origin. So if you have a tab bar (or any other bar) that pops up along the top or the left, the content shifts forcing you to spend a split second to relocate what you were focusing on. Suddenly the link I clicked on to open the tab is no longer under my mouse pointer. If the bar popped up on the bottom or the right, this would not happen.

All this seems to point to vertical desktop space being overutilized and horizontal desktop space being underutilized. So why force tabs into vertical space? Give me the option to put them on the side(s).