Firefox 4 Will Push Edges of Browser Definition

Chris Blanc writes "Mozilla Lab's push is to blur the edges of the browser, to make it both more tightly integrated with the computer it's running on, and also more hooked into Web services. So extended, the browser becomes an even more powerful and pervasive platform for all kinds of applications. 'Beard wants the new online/offline, browser/service to be more intelligent on behalf of its users. Early examples of this intelligence include the "awesome bar," which is what Mozilla calls the new smart address bar in Firefox 3. It offers users smart URL suggestions as they type based on Web searches and their prior Web browsing history. He's looking to extend on this with a "linguistic user interface" that lets users type plain English commands into the browser bar. Beard pointed me towards Quicksilver and Enso as products he's cribbing from.'"

Comments

"Blur the edges of the browser"

[Raineer]

Cleartype fonts will clear that right up.

Re:"Blur the edges of the browser"

[CaptainPatent]

"Blur the edges of the browser"

Cleartype fonts will clear that right up. That's just the text edges, what you really need is good antialiasing.

Re:"Blur the edges of the browser"

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does firefox 2.0.0.13 under linux open new windows in tabs even though my prefs are set for open new windows in new windows? Am I the only one having this problem?

Re:"Blur the edges of the browser"

[monkeyboythom]

Welcome timetravelers to the world of 1996!

Funny..will they talk about about running applications from a browser window...and will they then tout pay-per-services through a web-based subscription model? And yes, why use Microsoft, when a thin OS client is all that will be needed when Netscape...oops...Mozilla runs everything from a browser.

Gee, I bet they'll next try to sell me on Savings & Loans created funds to house all my Dot.com gains!

Re:"Blur the edges of the browser"

[koh]

Install Tab Mix Plus.

Re:"Blur the edges of the browser"

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does firefox 2.0.0.13 under linux open new windows in tabs even though my prefs are set for open new windows in new windows?

Well, show us the prefs, then. And: Any extensions installed?

Am I the only one having this problem?

Can't speak for everybody, but I didn't have this problem ever. Well, and I'm a strictly-no-new-windows person, anyway ...

Re:"Blur the edges of the browser"

[Clete2]

Kiss the original reason for Firefox's invention goodbye. "Now introducing Firefox 4! Now with added bloat!"

That said, I'm using Firefox 3 Beta 4 and it's less bloaty (memory footprint wise) than Firefox 2.

Re:"Blur the edges of the browser"

[Hatta]

Ironically, fonts are more blurry with Cleartype than without.

Re:"Blur the edges of the browser"

[hairyfeet]

Not to mention that a browser,which is the single biggest source of viruses and exploits,really shouldn't be more tightly integrated into the OS it's running on.The fact that IE is tightly integrated is the reason I have it blocked at the firewall on all my machines and am using Firefox in the first place.But at least with Open Source if Firefox royally bones it there will be Seamonkey,Kmeleon,or some other fork pop up that uses the Gecko engine without doing something stupid like tightly integrating with the host.Now if I could just get Noscript and Adblock running in Kmeleon I'd have what Firefox was supposed to be originally:a fast lightweight and nicely customized browser that gives me the web MY way.But this is just my opinion,YMMV.

Re:"Blur the edges of the browser"

[Raineer]

Took 6 hours for someone to say what I knew when I posted it :D

Re:"Blur the edges of the browser"

[Billly Gates]

"

Welcome timetravelers to the world of 1996!

Funny..will they talk about about running applications from a browser window...and will they then tout pay-per-services through a web-based subscription model? And yes, why use Microsoft, when a thin OS client is all that will be needed when Netscape...oops...Mozilla runs everything from a browser.

Gee, I bet they'll next try to sell me on Savings & Loans created funds to house all my Dot.com gains!
"

You are %100 correct and its all coming true, though your comment was intended to be sarcasm.

Look at Google apps as an example?

Microsoft killed the network computer by changing the EULA for its windows monopoly to somehow make it appear that smart terminals were dead.

It is coming true and dumb terminals of the 1980's are certainly the right way to go for large organizations thanks to networking and the internet.

True active desktop using push technology was stupid and not a real implementation but look at KDE and konqueror as an example?

Oh and dotcoms not making money? I just complemented an e-commerce course at my college and the market is now just exploding thanks to highspeed internet that was unavailable to most users during the 1990's. Amazon just made its first profit and the internet as a marketing tool is exploding and ecommerce has been growing tremendously. Especially this is true in asain markets.

The browser is the computer as far as I am concerned and many businesses will be looking into servring intranet and web apps as a cost reduction measure. New apps like myspace and even slashdot are changing the way we network and learn more about our IT jobs.

However Google and Microsoft already have a heads up and pissing off google might be bad. Information retrival is the next wave of the future as storage capacity gets larger. The windows vista search utility is really cool when looking up java docs.

Re:"Blur the edges of the browser"

[Anonymous Coward]

What's sad is the developers will outright deny that the browser was meant to be slim and fast :( They couldn't resist the siren song of feature dickwaving.

Re:"Blur the edges of the browser"

[m50d]

Now if I could just get Noscript and Adblock running in Kmeleon I'd have what Firefox was supposed to be originally:a fast lightweight and nicely customized browser that gives me the web MY way.

This is going to come off as trollish, but it's here already and it's called Opera.

Re:"Blur the edges of the browser"

[Grizzlysmit]

The article is all lies Chris beard has no beard, how can I trust any thing he says

Re:"Blur the edges of the browser"

[Grizzlysmit]

Kiss the original reason for Firefox's invention goodbye. "Now introducing Firefox 4! Now with added bloat!"

could be I started to read the article and didn't want what there were selling.

Re:"Blur the edges of the browser"

[hairyfeet]

Nice try,but no sale.I have my oldest nephew that swears by Opera,but without Noscript and Adblock filter lists it is IMHO useless for me.I am not sitting there for hours and typing every ad I don't want into some .ini file.I had enough of that from Win9X,thank you very much.And without per site whitelisting of scripting I just don't feel in control of what is being run in the browser.

And for those that miss the old firebird days when it was a super fast thin browser,it turns out someone HAS made noscript and adblock for Kmeleon! Gotta love the ability for open source to fork and hack the code.While I haven't tried it yet,I will be installing them as soon as I get done posting this.And the installers for Kmeleon is here.Enjoy!

Some recommended commands

[Anonymous Coward]

Look

Look at rock

Pick up rock

Eat rock

Re:Some recommended commands

[Yvan256]

Score: 5, Confused

Re:Some recommended commands

[FredFredrickson]

There are no nutrients in [rock]. Dragon kills you. You are dead. [Restart?]

Re:Some recommended commands

[ectal]

Look

Look at rock

Pick up rock

Eat rock
When I experimented with writing text adventures, typing those commands was how you won my first test game with full points.

I hope they implement this as plugins

[pembo13]

Because I would like my browser to interact with my machine as little as possible && and I am not at all into social networking.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[calebt3]

Ditto. Integration with the OS is the last thing I want. That's exactly what gets IE into so much trouble.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[jellomizer]

But this is an Open Source Program not a Microsoft App. So it is good for you. Come on Drink the Koolaid. Just because my Integrating the browser with the OS for microsoft created a whole bunch of security conserns doesn't mean it will do the same with your Browser/OS.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[dvice_null]

The summary does sound quite bad, but if you read the article, it sounds actually much better.

"At the moment, these are two separate projects Mozilla is running to push out the edges of the browser: Prism and Weave."

"Prism
Prism is Mozilla's shot at busting apps out of the browser. Part of the Prism project is making the browsing core available to apps developers so they can build products like Zimbra Desktop (review) that are essentially Web apps, but that don't look like it. "

"Weave
Weave extends the browser in the other direction: Not toward the desktop, but instead into the Internet. Mozilla wants an individual's browsing experience to stay with them no matter what machine they are on."

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[iONiUM]

You're not the "average" user. You know how I know?
a) you're on slashdot
b) you used && in your comment, perhaps by mistake
c) "I am not at all into social networking."

On the plus side you definitely belong here!

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[dedazo]

Cool, then the Firefox developers will be able to blame not just memory leaks but everything on plugins. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.

Personally I'll wait to see if Firefox3 doesn't consume 700MB of memory after being open for three days before I think about buying into the idea that the Mozilla foundation should be pushing any envelopes.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[bkr1_2k]

"Weave extends the browser in the other direction: Not toward the desktop, but instead into the Internet. Mozilla wants an individual's browsing experience to stay with them no matter what machine they are on."

Screw that! My employer doesn't need to know I read slashfiction or what kind of porn I browse at home. Now, the porn I browse at work, that's different!

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[CastrTroy]

Since you can save your session, is there really any reason to be keeping your browser open for 3 days. Granted, I also keep my browser window open for days on end, but I rarely see it go past 150M of memory usage. I suspect it's probably some extension you are running that is consuming all the memory.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[zappepcs]

I don't want huge OS/browser integration either, but there are some things that I would like regarding browser oriented services. http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Feature_Brainstorming:Bookmarks#Bookmark_tags_and_keywords

when the Browser is keeping tabs on sites visited and metadata regarding that AND making that available to the OS and other Apps there is a great many things that can become easy based on your use of the Internet. More than I can mention here, but I'd like to see it. Imagine some mashup apps run locally on what you view, or optionally what others view via a tracking service not entirely unlike del.icio.us that allows you to categorize files on your hard drive also, where the tag clouds are shared, and downloading files uses the tags to organize etc.. as a basic premise.

No, the tags do not have to be shared with the world, and files will still be files, but finding them would be easier than saving everything to the desktop. This is one area that I think has not been sufficiently explored to assist casual users. They can remember that the file was something to do with banannas, but not that it was about Costa Rica. Tags allow easier memory tracks for humans.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[mpe]

"Weave Weave extends the browser in the other direction: Not toward the desktop, but instead into the Internet. Mozilla wants an individual's browsing experience to stay with them no matter what machine they are on."

Which may well be the exact opposite of what is wanted in plenty of situations...

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[dedazo]

Since you can save your session, is there really any reason to be keeping your browser open for 3 days.

The correct question here is why should I have to restart my browser every three days.

I rarely see it go past 150M of memory usage. I suspect it's probably some extension you are running that is consuming all the memory.

On this machine FF has been running continuously for 4 1/2 days. I have one tab open (this one). The Windows task manager says the process is using 430MB of memory, with about the same for VM. That means it's been a good week, since I've see it go to 700MB.

As for extensions, I have IEView, AdBlock Plus and CustomizeGoogle, plus Google Notebook, which is installed but disabled.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Darfeld]

But what will restrain you to ONE individual browsing experience?

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[trolltalk.com]

"Prism is Mozilla's shot at busting apps out of the browser. Part of the Prism project is making the browsing core available to apps developers so they can build products like Zimbra Desktop (review) that are essentially Web apps, but that don't look like it. "

Why bother? You can already be done on most platforms. Java, wxWidgets, tkpython, c/c++, etc. You have NEVER needed a browser to "interact with the web" or "build a web app." http is just one more protocol to exchange data.

Weave extends the browser in the other direction: Not toward the desktop, but instead into the Internet. Mozilla wants an individual's browsing experience to stay with them no matter what machine they are on."

That
Is
Sofa
King
No
Tag
Good-eyed
E.A.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[webmaster404]

I honestly don't want Firefox integrating too much with Ubuntu or other Linux installs. Now while Firefox is a great browser (I usually prefer it) recently it has gotten very popular and is now more of a target for malware, while most malware doesn't target Linux, if Firefox has a flaw in all versions, it would make just adding a Linux binary to the malware to make it affect Linux, and that is something I would rather not ever have to deal with.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[FunkyELF]

Unless that Linux binary also exploits some service running as root the worst that can happen is an "rm -rf ~"
Running arbitrary code on a Windows machine is worse since you can't play minesweeper without being an administrator.
Not to downplay deleting your home directory, that would suck...I'm just saying its still not as bad.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and I want my browser to use minimum resources. Not some kind of memory-cpu-network parasit.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem isn't that IE takes advantage of Windows; it's that Windows takes so much advantage of IE. Using systemwide resources isn't a problem: it just improves integration and reduces duplication. If an application uses a systemwide spellchecker, security database (e.g: Keychain on OS X), or look and feel, that's good.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[mhall119]

Personally I'll wait to see if Firefox3 doesn't consume 700MB of memory after being open for three days before I think about buying into the idea that the Mozilla foundation should be pushing any envelopes. I've been using Beta 3 and now 4 on windows at work(*) for several weeks now, and after a leaving it open for a week it will usually consume ~75MB of memory. I have seen it peak at about 130MB when in heavy use. But nowhere near the 300+MB I would get doing the same with FF2.

(*) I have beta 3 on Ubuntu at home, but I've never checked the memory usage because even though I run the same apps at home, I've never had any memory problems on Ubuntu.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[webmaster404]

Yes, in all that is the worst thing, but think of adware/spyware that could also run, while your computer might not become some zombie and it would be easy to just nuke the user and create a new one, it still allows adware and other annoyware to be on there even with Unix style permissions and if Firefox gets more integrated what is to say that your Desktop environment might not be your browser and from there, the implications of what adware could do are then very bad.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[dedazo]

That's bloody impressive, if they've gotten it that far down. What plugins do you have loaded? Do the 2.x plugins work with 3.0?

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[moranar]

I'm appalled at how people downplay the effect of rm -rf ~ . A Linux install can be reinstalled in a couple hours, but the important documents people have usually aren't backed up at all, and are therefore much more valuable than the contents of /usr or /etc.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[neumayr]

Uh, yeah. Because making a web application is a simple matter of implementing HTTP.
Makes you wonder why web browsers, the most commonly used web applications for 15 years, still are so far from being feature complete...

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[DogDude]

Prism is Mozilla's shot at busting apps out of the browser. Part of the Prism project is making the browsing core available to apps developers so they can build products like Zimbra Desktop (review) that are essentially Web apps, but that don't look like it. "

Mozilla, welcome to 2008. What you're trying to do was called "Active X", and it was done about a decade ago.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[aix tom]

That is exactly the thing.

I switched from Netscape to Phoenix at that time because it was more LIGHTWEIGHT.

I like programs better that do one thing, and do it good, than the ones that do everything a little.

Also, integrate Firefox into the OS? As it runs on many OSes that integration will either be bloated without end to fit all OSes, or they don't integrate well, or they fork into different versions for different OSes.

All things that not really help make the browser better, just cost a lot of time an manpower.

So when they go through with that, after Firefox 3 is may be high time to look for a more lightweight browser again.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[thrillseeker]

Do the 2.x plugins work with 3.0?

None of the most useful ones. Not: Google Sync, Update Notifier, Tab Mix Plus, Filterset.G Updater at the least - all extremely useful.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[jeremyp]

Your case is helped by the blatant lie about Minesweeper.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[neumayr]

Session saving? In Firefox?
Yeah, it does exist. Shame it sucks - you choose "Show my windows and tabs from last time", which should be default behaviour anyways imho, and close the window.
But oh noes, there's still this utterly useless download window open. Meaning the session didn't end, and as such wasn't saved.
Good luck trying to find all those tabs in history...

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[mhall119]

Some of the 2.x plugins have been upgraded to work with 3.0, others work fine they just need the version compatibility bumped up to 3.0. Currently I'm running:

AdBlock Plus
Aging Tabs
Download Statusbar
Firebug (disabled when not in use, otherwise it is a memory hog)
Fission
Flashblock
IE Tab (Stupid intranet sites)
Java Quickstarter (huh, I didn't install that)
Web Developer Toolbar

The only one not working is LiveClick for more usable RSS bookmarks.

It's been running all day, with between 1 and ~20 tabs open, and is currently sitting at 65MB memory with 5 tabs open. Really, the memory improvements in FF3 are really very impressive. It'd have been running longer, but I had to reboot Windows, it started forgetting to drawn windows when they would popup, or I restored minimized ones, go figure.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Tumbleweed]

&& and I am not at all into social networking.

And if you keep using programming terminology like '&&' instead of 'and', YOU NEVER WILL BE.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Vexorian]

So, you don't use it when you browse porn, duh?

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[dedazo]

Cool, thanks for the info. AdBlock is really the deal breaker for me, if 3.0 doesn't have it (or it doesn't work well) then I might as well go back to IE7. I'm pretty sure eventually they'll all be updated.

I have to say I'm impressed that they've reduced the memory usage by that much. On the other hand, it's a bit ironic that they fixed all these leaks that before you'd get flamed for even suggesting existed.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Vellmont]

Because I would like my browser to interact with my machine as little as possible

I think the point, at least of Weave is to eliminate the idea of "a web browser is a nice square window that delivers web pages". And create the idea that "Firefox 4 is a platform that can render webapps that don't look like they live inside a traditional "web browser". That doesn't really mean your browser is going to change anything else on your computer.

I'm not sure why you think this kind of technology is limited to social networking. To me it sounds very general-purpose, and has the potential to create webapps that you didn't even realize were webapps. The only reason google-maps looks like a webapp is because it's rendered inside a traditional web-browser.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Abcd1234]

Unless that Linux binary also exploits some service running as root the worst that can happen is an "rm -rf ~"

A remote, non-root exploit is just a local root exploit away from being a serious problem.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[cheater512]

But on Linux, backing everything up is far simpler than windows.
cp -rf ~ /backup does the job.

Compare it to Windows where data is everywhere and its impossible to back up everything properly.

Anyway most malware wants to make the maker cash, not be disruptive.

Admittedly, no I do not backup. :P

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[suggsjc]

The GP wasn't actually saying that you "must" be root in order to play Minesweeper, (s)he was just alluding to the fact that *most* Windows installs only have one maybe two accounts for the system. Those accounts are what the users would most likely use to play Minesweeper and it just so happens they are also an Administrative account too.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[nschubach]

Who said they wouldn't ship LinFox. A Linux based OS with Firefox as the GUI, and default user login with no privileges. An Internet appliance of sorts. I'm just brainstorming here. Haven't really thought this through yet.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[CoreDump01]

I'm appalled at how people downplay the effect of rm -rf ~ . A Linux install can be reinstalled in a couple hours, but the important documents people have usually aren't backed up at all, and are therefore much more valuable than the contents of /usr or /etc. While I do agree that a rm -rf ~ is pretty bad and basically screws up your box just as bad as a rm -rf / would have done, I somehow can't seem to feel pity for all these morons who do not back up their important stuff to an external media.

If you didn't back it up, it wasn't that important in the first place, right?

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[nschubach]

The firewall at work not allowing you to access the same sites you do at home, thus getting IT to come down on you with nasty emails and possibly the esteemed opportunity to job seek!

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Anonymous Coward]

I took it more as integration of web services as applications on your desktop with the browser displaying inputs/outputs. I.e. the services are acting like local applications... not that they are doing anything to your local filesystem, etc.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Anonymous Coward]

The correct question here is why should I have to restart my browser every three days.

For the same reason that you get the fuck out of the basement at least every three days.
Turn off your computer when you leave the building or go to bed. You might even go entire days without turning your computer back on. [gasp] That 90 seconds of boot time isn't going to hurt you when you get back from the outside world.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[nickyj]

I agree, cp -rp ~ /backup as a root cron job can easily save your @$$. you can even be fancy using tar or other commands/scripts. But even the Simplest one is better than none. I keep my mp3s in sticky bit dirs and have a cron just chown them so once they are there, they can't be deleted except as user mp3 :)

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[bob.appleyard]

Browsers don't just implement HTTP, though. They have to have an HTML renderer at the very least. Then you get onto CSS and Javascript, which means making a virtual machine, and there are a whole slew of other technologies that your modern browser is expected to support (e.g. binary plugins for Flash, Java and what have you). Furthermore, they have to do these things in commonly-agreed ways, and those ways are being revised all the time. It's a mean task: no wonder so few actually manage to do it decently.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Anonymous Coward]

AdBlock Plus has a shitload of memory leaks. Especially if you use a large filterset.

Try Flashblock instead.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Darfeld]

Clearly, I wasn't expressing myself good enough, I was implying you could always have two or more set of bookmarks, cookies and stuffs. One with no porn sites for example. ( why porn? we're on /., aren't we? ) And an other with all your favorites flash games, hacking stuffs, torrents, and whatever you wouldn't dare looking at at work. (like porn, yes...)

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Jugalator]

That's exactly what gets IE into so much trouble. Mostly what got IE into so much trouble. IE 7 is actually no longer integrated with Windows Explorer, that's the big news. ActiveX also gave some trouble, and that's why IE 7 has that support disabled by default and you have to manually approve everything you want to run. I still think that's too bad though; ActiveX shouldn't be supported at all, because as soon as the user makes a poor decision based on lacking computer skills, s/he'll immediately give the ActiveX plugin full system access once again and nothing is won.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Threni]

I don't care about IE's problems. If tying it into the OS means we get the power of the OS instead of having to arse around with shitty, clunky add-ons and non-standard standards, I'm all for it.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[trolltalk.com]

Implementing an http client is trivial for most competent programmers in most languages.

Also, a desktop app doesn't need to implement javascript, css, the dom, or any of those encumbrances. It's an app, nmot a bastardized web page!

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[bunratty]

Now that's just silly. Mozilla developers never flamed anyone for saying leaks exist in Firefox. In fact, they said that of course Firefox has memory leaks. On the other hand, even with the leaks it seems to use less memory than other browsers. So saying it's got horrible memory leak problems, far worse than other browsers, will probably get you flamed. But simply saying it has memory leaks is an objective, verifiable fact that no reasonable person should disagree with.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[pthisis]

I'm appalled at how people downplay the effect of rm -rf ~ . A Linux install can be reinstalled in a couple hours, but the important documents people have usually aren't backed up at all, and are therefore much more valuable than the contents of /usr or /etc. Absolutely. FWIW, it's not hard if you're user "john" to create a "johnbrowser" user, set the preferred browser to "sudo su - johnbrowser firefox", and "chown -R johnbrowser:john ~/.mozilla ~/Downloads". There are a few details, but distributions could very easily set it up.

Then your browser doesn't have access to your documents; you can save stuff in ~/Downloads and that's about it. Well, in reality johnbrowser has access to connect to your X Server so there may be some avenues of attack there, but it gets that much trickier to just wipe out all your stuff.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[trolltalk.com]

If you're writing a desktop app, you don't need to implement html parsers, the dom, javascript, css, or any of the other encumbrances that browsers face when interacting with the end user - just formulating the request and reading the response. Then handle it the way you want.

Really, the browser web page model is not the end-all, be-all.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that deleting all your files wouldn't be bad, of course it is. The thing is, deleting your files is about the last thing that any malware would want to do, so the risk is basically zero.. Virus/malware writers want to keep your computer working while they steal your information or turn your computer into a bot. Deleting pictures of your cat is of no interest to them.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Jugalator]

I hope they implement this as plugins Prism do sound like currently intended as a plugin, perhaps something that requires some extra API calls only available in a Firefox 4, but still a plugin.

And Weave is the other feature about stuff like bookmark synchronization. Opera has made that work pretty well and seamlessly in Opera 9.50, and that's something I don't really care much if they'd even integrate it in the browser. It certainly sounds less risky.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[PitaBred]

So much for being able to upload family photos to a website...

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[dedazo]

I never said it was the developers.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Jugalator]

If they do it like Opera, they will require some sort of account on a web service to synchronize to first. And they also need you to configure which, if any, of these synchronization targets to actually use. If done like this, I don't have too many worries of what you talk of. You'd probably simply not choose to synchronize your browser online. Or just synchronize from one computer to another, but not that other computer at work.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[sykopomp]

I don't use tabs, but my two FF windows are currently using 21mb of RSS and 181 of VM.

_

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[evilbessie]

But if it's not backed up it can't be important...

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[greymond]

"It offers users smart URL suggestions as they type based on Web searches and their prior Web browsing history."

I can see my coworkers even more curious about my browser history now.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[WK2]

Actually, all the malware would have to do is wait until the user uses sudo, and then it can quietly and permanently acquire root privileges. Or it can configure the shell to use a trojaned version of su instead of the real version.

Multi-user privileges on a single-user system, while useful, is over-rated.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Lennie]

That's what profiles are for. :-)

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait a second. Two people just clearly stated a stance against integrating the browser with the OS, and yet, you answer them by trying to imply that (correct me if I'm wrong) the average open source "fan" holds the opposite stance, due to (I'm presuming) group-think or some general inability to think for oneself?

I just read a few more comments, and lo and behold, it seems that the average open source "fan" agrees with the first two! So where does that leave you?

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Lord Flipper]

Actually, all the malware would have to do is wait until the user uses sudo, and then it can quietly and permanently acquire root privileges

No way, if you take a little proactive action. Not sure how it works in Linux (I suspect it is the same) but all you do is sudo set your timestamp to zero. All activity is serial, so there is no 'window of opportunity' to piggyback on a user-issued su or sudo, or admin pw, whatever. Been doing that in the Console on a Macintosh for years.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Hatta]

Then give the browser user read permissions but not write permissions to your ~. Put him in your group, and set your umask to 022. Seriously, UNIX permissions are not that complicated.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Anonymous Coward]

I think his point was that you must have administrator rights to do relatively normal stuff. I've had several games that required administrator rights to run, probably because the games wanted to check if the CDROM was inserted using some crazy copyright-protection scheme that requires to run as root. Also, installing software often requires root privileges, although I don't really have a problem with that. Thing is, switching between your normal user account and the administrative account is inconvenient, so most people give in to the temptation to always run as administrator, especially when they know little about the security risks involved (and even if they do they often don't care :)).

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Pescar]

Why would you possibly want the same slashdot page loaded for 4 days? i'm genuinely curious..

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[WK2]

Setting the sudo window to 0 helps a little bit. However a) most distros don't set it that way by default and b) it still leaves a hole open.

A piece of malware can still "trojan" sudo, just like it can trojan su. One way to do this is to add "~/long-path/bin" to the beginning of the PATH variable, and put the bad sudo and su into that directory. They can attempt to hide that they changed the path by also trojaning other commands, such as set, echo, and which.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[cobaltnova]

I think what you meant was "UNIX permissions are just that flexible." Most people don't want to know how their computer works, or change its behavior.

However, this could easily be implemented in distributions (I am looking at you, Ubuntu).

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[kesuki]

this is the annoying thing so many Linux newbies thing that rm -rf ~ is the 'worst' thing a Linux browser exploit can do.

No the worst thing a Linux browser exploit can do, is install apache+php+php uploader application in ~
one that you know, now loads every time the browser is loaded. after all it was the browser that got hacked...

combine it with some sort of dynamic dns app and the machine can have it's own host name that changes every time it's ip address changes... or instead of a web server, they could just install an irc bot, that loads every time the browser is loaded, thats a little less noticeable... and negates the need for a dynamic dns, it just needs to auto connect to an irc server.

unless you've specifically modified your home directory so that it can't contain programs, they can always infect your home directory with mal-ware.

OTOH since without a combo root escalation all you have to do is 'ls -a ~' to detect said mal-ware its easy to see if you've been hacked...

and this whole concept of where firefox 4 is supposed to be going, just makes it worse, firefox 4 might as well call itself 'ie 5' because if they really do make it so hyper integrated it will become the next best rootkit installer since ie5.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[madprof]

I can play minesweeper without being an administrator...(lucky old me)

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[jellomizer]

Ok how about except for a rm -rf ~ how about a version that will copy all your data in your home directory to an other server. Used for Identity theft, Or blackmail...
The way most of us use computers today are less relevant on the software that we have, and more on using the web to do our work. And we use our computers to save data. Back in them Old days data files were not worth much because it was common to back them up to floppy and there was and you knew it if your dial-up connections was uploading your home directory. But now your home directory is more valuable then the OS. I can take my Home Directory from my system, whip out my OS install a different os OS X, Windows, Linux... and put back my home directory and I am back to working like normal, not really caring what OS I am using. But in the old days if you had to reinstall your OS having your config files and documents everywhere it was a real mess.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. It's suggested that you understand a product before drawing comparisons and/or describing why it will fail, even (especially?) in the face of whatever shitty spin a PR person has put on it.

Having said that, Prism really isn't that exciting. It's a chromeless window. XULRunner is far more interesting.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[JackieBrown]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_OS

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[xouumalperxe]

While I wholeheartedly agree with "tight integration is bad", at the very least Firefox is thoroughly multi-platform, which means the only sane way to do this at all is with some sort of system abstraction layer, which substantially reduces the area exposed to attacks. But that's only a mitigating factor... and a slight one at that.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[xouumalperxe]

Actually, I think that windows could really do with ~/bin, ~/usr/bin, etc (uh, well I guess ~/etc too, yes). Installing software locally to a user would be a Good Thing. There's very little software out there that should actually need root privileges to run, and only that sort of software should be unable to be installed locally to a user. Windows's way of installing system wide and only adding shortcuts to the present user is a mockery of that concept. Of course, the amount of people who actually install stuff in their home directories is pretty small if they actually have root access to their NIX box, but meh.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[CastrTroy]

I personally think the problem is with Adblock. Tons of people seem to report problems with memory usage, and a lot of people use adblock. The group may not necessarily be correlated, but it's worth investigating. I don't use Adblock, and have never had a problem with memory usage. You should try disabling it for a few days to see if that clears up the problem. I don't have to use adblock, because years of being bombarded with ads has given me mental adblock, which means even though the ads are in my field of view, I don't notice them.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm appalled at how people downplay the effect of rm -rf ~ . A Linux install can be reinstalled in a couple hours, but the important documents people have usually aren't backed up at all, and are therefore much more valuable than the contents of /usr or /etc. I'm appalled at how many people remove the responsibility of regular backups from the user, and instead expect their web browser and various other software to be a catchall for their own laziness.

Rsync scripts keep me backed up daily. "rm -rf ~" would certainly be an inconvenience, but not a showstopper for my work. Similarly, user education continues to be a far better malware scanner than anything I've seen on the market.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[psyberjedi]

Is not one of the chief flaws in Windows the tight integration of the browser with the OS?

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[v_thunder]

Weave encrypts all data on the server by default. Whether you choose to let your boss see your history data or bookmarks will be up to you.

Firefox can do a lot more than it currently does to facilitate both augmenting users' online presence, as well as sharing some of it while still giving users control for what to share, and with whom.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[MrNaz]

Wow! That's a great solution, now all I need to do is give my Mum a crash course in command line usage, file ownership manage and UNIX file permissions! She'll have our family albums up in no time!

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[slash.duncan]

Talking about which, as I had thought of it awhile ago and saw mention of again recently, how hard is it to get Mozilla running as a low-priv alternate user, either nobody, or perhaps with slightly more rights, but only to its own dedicated home dir, for saving and the like? How does one manage the X sockets and permissions, etc, so it still displays and takes input fine in the regular logged in user's setup, but can't read/write to anything there but the screen(s) and sound device(s)? Can anyone point out a tutorial/HOWTO on setting up X based apps (such as firefox) to run as different users in a normal user's X/KDE session?

Duncan

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[MrNaz]

I'm appalled at how after 10 years of dealing with regular every day users, just how recalcitrant open source nerds are in failing to recognise basic behavioural patterns that just won't change.

I agree, not backing up is stupid. But as an IT admin, ensuring all of my users' data is safe is my job. It'd be like a security firm hired to manage a company's building security saying "dumb staff, if they aren't second dan black belt karate masters with a 9mm tucked into their belt I have no sympathy if they get mugged in the lobby".

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[poopdeville]

How about scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa haxor.box.cn?

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

I'd argue you're worse off. Getting used to typing your password >20 times a day will lead to you typing it with much less concern for security, and being more apt to fall for a look-a-like program/page/whatever, not to mention over the shoulder attacks and other out of band security issues.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[mhall119]

From what I recall, most of the memory savings are coming from preventing fragmentation and being more conservative in their caching. While there were memory leaks that got fixed, they don't make up any large share of the new memory savings.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Lord Flipper]

I'd argue you're worse off. Getting used to typing your password >20 times a day will lead to you typing it with much less concern for security, and being more apt to fall for a look-a-like program/page/whatever, not to mention over the shoulder attacks and other out of band security issue

I understand what you're saying. And yes, it can be a pain to have to repeat the typing, but, in many environments, such as my workspace, there is zero 'over the shoulder' opportunity. Still, my method works for me, but it is not a one-size-fits-all method. I employ other normal, or widely-used, precautions and 'safeguards', seeing the presence of layers of protection as being not so much a guarantee of anything as a positive step in the right direction. I made peace with the zero timestamp a while ago. You're correct though, it is not invincible (social engineering, over-the-shoulder, etc), nor is it for 'everybody.'

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[sumdumass]

Seriously, Why don't they just reopen the mozilla application suit and mangle it while continuing to trim the fat out of firefox. I realize that ever since 2.0, they have been forgetting the entire purpose of firefox but seriously this is overkill. They should have never killed win9x support. They couldn't do half of what they are talking about if they had to support win98

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[sumdumass]

Speaking of over the shoulder, I recently had a situation where I was in front of someone else who had to type her password in to start our business arrangement. She was an accomplished typer and I was on the other side of the desk facing her. I couldn't see the keys but for some reason, I could read the password as she typed it.

A little into our session, she left for about 3 minutes and when she came back she had trouble logging back in. She made a comment about the computer messing up and I told her she didn't enter the right password and corrected her mistake. She was able to log in after that and started drilling me on how I knew here password and got her manager and all. They really made a big deal out of it. Threatened to call the cops on me. Anyways, it was an easy password to get, nothing fancy or anything and they didn't believe I just got it from watching her log in until the manager told me to read what he was typing. I was close but off by one charactor.

The point is, the "over the shoulder risk" can be a "right in front of you risk" too. If I can do it, anyone can. I didn't even know I could until this day when it happened without even trying.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[kasdaye]

It's called hyperbole.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[tarpy]

Screw that! My employer doesn't need to know I read slashfiction or what kind of porn I browse at home. Now, the porn I browse at work, that's different!

This is actually a really good point. One of the problems with Google Browser Sync is that it does sync the browsing histories...so if I use firefox at home to view some NSFW sites, then those show up the next morning in my history as sites I've browsed in my work laptop's history.

I work for a company that's pretty cool (and "gets it") about these things, and the IT guy in charge of things, I could explain this to, and he'd grok it...but if I worked at my wife's place of business, they'd look at me and say, "homo say what?" as they showed me the door for violating their AUP.

Perhaps a way of having multiple profiles and managing what follows you where would be in order.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[sumdumass]

I don't use AdBlock unless it is built in and I don't know how to turn it off. But I see my memory usage sore when about any script is loaded. And it doesn't release. I had to add noscript just to keep things sane and stop crashes. To give you an idea, I have had the computer on for about 5 hours since the last reboot, I have about ten tabs open, 4 of them in the last 10 minutes browsing this thread and I am at 251,956K It is going up as I write this. If I open another window or jump between tabs, it goes faster. If I open the noscript to allow scripts from just this site, it jumps from 255,732 to 267,252.

What ever the problem is, I wish they would fix it. I have followed the directions to limits it but they don't seem to help. Earlier today, I got upto almost 650,000k because I had to turn noscript off to check a bank statement with my webmail open. Of course I had a few other things open too but that is besides the point. I rebooted and opened the same windows and only had about 140,000k usage.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[JasonTik]

Yeah! No chance at all that it would install some resident process that waits until I type 'sudo somesuch', then uses the saved sudo auth token within the default five minutes to rootkit me.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[XanC]

I was close but off by one charactor.

Was it an "a" to "o" transposition?

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[i.of.the.storm]

Uh, one nice thing about Vista, and XP sort of has it too, is that the profile folders are at least in theory supposed to contain everything. Vista does it a little better where instead of C:\Documents and Settings\username\ profile folders are under C:\Users\username\ and then they took out all the useless "My"s in front of everything. XP made it hard to find your user profile folder (can't go My Documents and then up) but in Vista it's one of those sidebar things. So the same idea works, just do a robocopy C:\Users\username\ D:\backup\.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[pipingguy]

Neither do I, it causes beeping sounds.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[cheater512]

That is nothing like how Linux does it.

Copy your home directory to another computer.
Instantly every file of yours is available, all your programs act the same way, all your preferences are saved.
There will be minimal junk copied as well.

Windows will copy a whole pile of junk (tmp directory, etc...) and then leave all your settings behind on the old computer (registry).

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[i.of.the.storm]

Well, I suppose that's true, but it really depends on whether programs choose to store settings in the AppData folders where they're supposed to or the Registry, which I think they're trying to kill (but of course it's like a hydra at this point...) But from my experience, my parents' computer's hard drive had a bit of corruption recently which rendered Windows unbootable, and then I used Linux to back up the hard drive and copied their profile folder onto the freshly installed copy of Windows, and Firefox and Thunderbird (the main programs they use really) had all the settings as if they had never been wiped. The problem is that Microsoft created the registry, and now it can't get rid of it because legacy apps would break, but as long as companies keep using it they can't get rid of it.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[m50d]

But if they don't back it up you can't make it safe, because there's always the chance of physical hard disk failure. So it's not worth the admin worrying about it.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Anonymous Coward]

You do understand the difference between read access and write access, don't you? There's different permission bits for that in Unix, and just because a process can't write to a file doesn't mean it can't read it. Depending on your umask, files may well be created with default modes such as 644, allowing every user (account) to read them, and on system that only has a single user (in front of the keyboard), that definitely makes sense. So your browser would have no problems accessing your photos in order to upload them: it just couldn't access them in order to delete them if an exploit managed to run a local command such as rm -rf ~ .

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Per Wigren]

"If you didn't back it up, it wasn't that important in the first place, right?"

Is that what you say to your dad/mom/daughter/son/best friend/grandma when they come to you in tears because they just lost three years of photos or cubase masters?

It's true that they should had backed up the data, but it's just evil to put it in their mouth that the data was somehow unimportant for them. Just like if wake up late, risk your life in panic trying to get to work faster than it's possible, arrive 10 minutes late and then hear "I see that you don't care about your job, right?". Or to make a car analogy: If you didn't wear your seat belt, your life wasn't that important in the first place, right?

Repeat after me: People are humans. Humans error.

Not everybody have computers as their hobby like you and I. In 2008 people a LOT of people have their whole lives on their computer with no back up what so ever, but somehow I really think it's more the fault of the makers of operating systems and sellers of computer systems. Just like Windows pop up warnings saying "your antivirus is not updated", it should say "Your home folder doesn't seem to have a backup. In case of a hardware failure or a virus you may lose all your data. Do you want to back up now?". Power users like you and I can turn the warnings off and implement our own rdiff or Git backed scheme and others (and lazy power users) can use the better-than-nothing built-in system, but at least they will no longer be unaware of the problem and they can keep using computers for what they were meant for: Being lazy.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[b1scuit]

I'm appalled at how many people remove the responsibility of regular backups from the user, and instead expect their web browser and various other software to be a catchall for their own laziness.

Similarly, user education continues to be a far better malware scanner than anything I've seen on the market.
Noone wants to learn how to use their computer. Computers are just appliances to the vast majority of users. Microwave, TV, Computer, Dishwasher, Car (yes car), etc. They expect the internet to be just like cable TV (that is, it's harmless in terms of being an attack vector) just with a million channels. This attitude might change one day, but it's unlikely, and the only way an OS is going to propagate in the meantime is by conceding to that mentality. Computers are still magic to, probably billions of people, and they like it that way.

Regular people are never going to notice Linux until it becomes something that does not need to be noticed at all. At which time it'll become all the rage.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[c_fel]

And what if what they mean is a better integration with the other software, like say, use the OS MIME definitions to open the right program instead of redefine it in their usual non-working way ? There's a lot of place to a better system integration without needing to fiddle with the OS arcanes.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[sumdumass]

I actually forget which character I was off by. For some reason I think it was a consonant I got wrong but from looking at my spelling of character as "charactor" it could as easily been an "e" to an "o". Like I said, I was actually surprised that I could read what someone was typing upside down from watching their fingers move on the keyboard.

You should check into doing it. You will be surprised to learn how easy it is or how easy it is to get part of what is being typed.

This also reminds me of a story a while back where someone was able to record the sounds of keystrokes and decode them later using some custom software. It is definately something to think about when considering an "over the shoulder" threat.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[paving-slab]

It's easy to do using sudo, I've been doing it for years:-

Add a user, e.g. "netuser", to use when surfing.

Add the following line to /etc/sudoers:
yourusername LOCAL = (netuser) NOPASSWD: ALL

Add the following to your menu:
sudo -H -u netuser /usr/bin/firefox

Add the following to your ~/.xinitrc and/or ~/.xsessions files:
xhost +local:

Add yourself to the netusers group.

Change netusers permissions so that members of the group have read and write access.

Thats it, unless I've forgotten something or there's a typo...

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[riondluz]

what i would like to see, unless prevailing wisdom declares it ungood, is to think in terms of running multiple instances of a UA, say one for general browsing and another to run a specific webapp.

Since Web2.0 has evolved the www from documents/pages into webapps with callbacks, if FF enabled extension creators with the ability to control chrome, the webapp could look more like say, kai powertools.

People could then download a (signed) webapp that would have the functionality to render widgets like a native app.

Just a thought

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[niceone]

cp -rf ~ /backup

Personally, I use cp -a , I know I'd accidentally type rm instead of cp if I used -rf. And that would not be good in that command.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Anonymous Coward]

It was no accident. It's very hard to double tap a character accessed with shift. UUnless your drunk that is.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[marcosdumay]

Do programs stop breaking if you put "My Documents" on a network map?

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[trytoguess]

Ah don't take it too badly, I've a nurse for a mom, and her views are essentially "dumb nerds, they can't do healthy even if it came with a porn star."

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Earle Martin]

I'm running 3.0b4 and AdBlock Plus works like a charm. Kudos to them for keeping it updated for the beta users.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[slash.duncan]

Thanks. I think the xhost bit was the piece of the puzzle I didn't have. I'm looking at putting it in place here now (but perhaps with setuid/setgid instead of sudo, so it's not possible to forget and invoke it without the sudo).

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Hes Nikke]

ahem: http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/timemachine.html

while it doesn't pop up any warnings, if you plug in a hard drive it'll ask you if you want to start backing up to it. it's all automatic from there.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[MarsMartian]

Repeat after me: People are humans. Humans error.
this line, complete with mistake, should be written on the back-hand of every system administrator.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Mr Z]

Apparently there's a memory leak that affects GMail. If you leave GMail open, it'll slowly leak memory. The memory gets reclaimed when you close the GMail tab. I find that closing GMail once a day works pretty well to avoid too much memory leakage. Often the browser will freeze for a couple moments when I close it, which I presume is due to GC cleaning up the mess. I also hear this is fixed in Fx 3.

Now, you say you're seeing this large footprint with only one tab open. I will say this: When I close GMail, I don't see the resident size go down immediately. Apparently all that freed up memory is freed up within Firefox, but not released to the system. That said, periodically closing GMail does seem to prevent Firefox from marching its way to a gigabyte. This current browser window has around 400MB resident and has been up for 4 days. (I also have about 50 tabs open across 4 windows) Before I started nuking GMail daily, it'd probably be at around 800-900MB by now the way I typically use it.

--Joe

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

I forgot to mention my preference -- Trustable single signon solutions like pgp agents and ssh agents. Admittedly if your host is compromised you're at greater risk, but for home use and for managing a lot of servers this can be a massive time saver and again arguably keep you more secure.

I just wish there was a way to shove all your remote website logins in through the same system. Would put microsoft, yahoo, and google's single signon stuff to shame, and arguably be able to replace openid (just go by your public key)

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[bhtooefr]

There's always registry emulation...

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[bob.appleyard]

Well indeed. My point there was that using HTTP to share data and being a web browser are different things.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[Eivind]

So, what you're saying is that it'll completely blow away all my files, all my configurations, all my settings, stuff that would take hundreds of hours recreating, if it where possible at all.

But that's not so bad, because the OS, which I can reinstall in an hour, is saved ?

Seriously. The value is ALL in the data, nobody cares if they lose their copy of Ubuntu, it's not as if it's difficult or expensive to get a new copy afterall.

Yeah yeah, backups help. True, but that's unrelated to the STUPID claim that rm -rf ~ is really all that much more benign than rm -rf / would be.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[FunkyELF]

cp -rf ~ /backup

Personally, I use cp -a , I know I'd accidentally type rm instead of cp if I used -rf. And that would not be good in that command. Yeah, not something you want your fingers to get in the habbit of typing. Much better off in a cron job anyway.

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[mgv]

Is that what you say to your dad/mom/daughter/son/best friend/grandma when they come to you in tears because they just lost three years of photos or cubase masters?

I guess that they really should consider getting a mac for this reason - integrated backup - the reason I went to 10.5

Michael

Re:I hope they implement this as plugins

[pthisis]

She shouldn't have to know about it--distributions should set it up so it's that way out of the box.

Security?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they're going to do that, I hope they build it on this. Although, at what point does it cease to be a web browser and turn into a virtual operating system? Or worse, emacs.

is it just me?

[Ecobady]

I really dont want mozilla suggesting anything in my address bar

Re:is it just me?

[dvice_null]

Usually these features can be disabled quite easily from the about:config.

Re:is it just me?

[jellomizer]

Oh yea it is easy type about:config (like that is a common way to change preferences in application of the 21 centory) Then hunt down for some feature name that is probable more reference to a Varable Name and less of what it actually does and then figure out what the value should be... A piece of Cake, I have no Idea why people say Open Source Software is hard to use.

Re:is it just me?

[calebt3]

This is where Google comes in handy.
http://zacgarrett.com/software/disable-url-search-in-location-bar-of-firefox-3/index.html

Re:is it just me?

[g-to-the-o-to-the-g]

Actually, in this case they can't. I personally HATE the new "awesomebar", it really sucks. Luckily, there is a way out.

I'm really hoping Mozilla does not take Firefox in the direction of "wow new features!" that actually reduce functionality.

Re:is it just me?

[peragrin]

Firefox 2, and Safari both do this to different extents now.

If you type in a URL you have already visited up comes a list, including websites from your bookamrks(safari), it is useful though some of the other apps just sound dangerous.

Weave while a good idea, means a central server somewhere which will either be loaded with adds(google or MSFt hosting it?) or you hosting it and that means configuring a server yourself.

Re:is it just me?

[Mateo_LeFou]

Oh, yeah, sure. I'm going to go and... read, whatchamacallit .. *instructions about how to do the thing that I want to do.

Not likely. Firefox doesn't behave how I like by default because it's, um, open source software I guess.

-PseudoJello

Re:is it just me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who came up with that horrible idea, anyway?

Re:is it just me?

[SatanicPuppy]

gp is right...You shouldn't have to look up instructions on how to change a basic setting. It irritates the hell out of me when FF does crap like this. You can add an "Advanced Configuration Options" button that will provide this sort of functionality without forcing the user to remember a piece of command syntax.

Re:is it just me?

[QuantumRiff]

I totally agree. I mean just the other day, I wanted to change the MTU of XP, and turn off the "master browser" feature. why would I want to google and find something.. I just deleted one line out of my registry at a time until I got what I wanted. BTW, for some reason, I had to re-install...

Re:is it just me?

[aslate]

I've found this feature incredibly useful. All my regular sites appear at the top of the list as i start typing, although regular sites aren't the ones that i've found it useful for.

Say i've just found a webpage via a link or a search and accidentally closed it too early, i'm sure we've all done it. I just need to remember a snippet of information such as part of the URL or part of the title and i can usually find it first try. None of this going through your history crap to find it by the limited information available there.

All the sites are pages you've visited weighted by last visit, frequency etc. They're just taking all the stats that are usually recorded and making them a useful feature of the browser. It runs great on an old server machine we booted up after a few years. Celeron 1.1GHz, 256 RAM and XP, i don't see it slowing down or bloating Firefox much either.

Re:is it just me?

[Anonymous Coward]

In version 4, about:config will describe you.

Re:is it just me?

[at_slashdot]

I have no Idea why people say Open Source Software is hard to use.

I have no idea either, open source is a just way to develop programs, I see no connection between this and the complexity of programs or their user-friendliness, I bet there are many tic-tac-toe programs that are open sourced... I can write a shitty program with close source or open source alike. If it's open source at least there's a chance that somebody else can fix it.

Re:is it just me?

[Anonymous Coward]

A piece of Cake, I have no Idea why people say Open Source Software is hard to use. I bet that's true, because you demonstrate a total lack of curiosity. If you don't like how the Mozilla team does something, don't aimlessly bitch about it -- get off your butt and contribute something better (or just different, which often leads to better).

I know, I know, not everyone is a programmer. Still, why does that prevent you from suggesting a different/new/better/shinier/happier solution?

Consumers, sheesh. Always vocal; rarely constructive.

Re:is it just me?

[ZlatanZ]

Opera 9.5 already has this "awesome bar" functionality, and it is quite useful (surprisingly).

Re:is it just me?

[Idiomatick]

Agreed that 'about:config' is a little strange and not widely known ... BUT once you get there it is a pretty easy interface... Theres a searchbar and most things are true/false. Which may be a bit intimidating for regular users, but anyone posting on /. should be fine. Also, try to remember these are EXTRA options, the normal options work fine for regular users. In a closed source application you would NOT get the option to change anything thats found in about:config. If all these options were stuck in the tool bar it would be overwhelming for everyday use.

Re:is it just me?

[soliptic]

That way out doesn't look like it would be any use to me. From the comments:

Would it be possible to add an option to give the same search behaviour that the old address bar gave? i.e. Just search based on the beginning of the URL, not searching against sub-strings within the entire URL and title.

This is what bothers me, not the presentation.

The current autocomplete matching behaviour suits me perfectly. I press "l", I get "last.fm/user/myusername" suggested. Which is what I want. Because it's the most common site I visit beginning with "l". Which is why I frickin' pressed "l", goddamnit! Not because four weeks ago I once visited a page with <title>Little random thing I have no intention of visiting again</title> !! Ditto "f" for facebook, "e" for "en.wikipedia.org", and of course "s" for slashdot... etc etc.

With almost every single one of the short list of daily / most-visited URLs (not even just sites, but specific URLs), "initial letter, down arrow, enter" gets me straight there.

Of course, sometimes this isn't enough. My two most visited forums both begin with "d". Big deal. It's not a chore to type two letters, down arrow, enter.

It is a chore to have the autocomplete search space vastly increased with a bunch of crap, whereby simple mathematics dictates the S/N ratio will be worse and the matching will get worse. I mean, ffs - it's been standard SEO policy to have lengthy <title> tags and lengthy URLs, containing the maximum possible number of keywords and keyphrases, for years. One or two letter autocomplete terms will be guaranteed to match almost every page in my history.

Now, people will say, "great, you're a geeky power user who remembers wikipedia will autocomplete from "e" for "en.", but a normal person would type "wiki"..." In that regard I don't really mind that they're monkeying about with this. I am not wanting to be that stereotypical slashdotter who presumes his own habits are the be-all and end-all, if something works perfectly for him then god forbid millions of people should dare to differ, etc.

In that spirit, whilst I can see what this post is getting at, I wouldn't give a damn if changing this back was in about:config. In my experience, every time I've needed to delve into about:config it was something where I felt, "fine, fair enough, that's the sort of geekism where anyone caring enough to change it will be cool with googling the about:config tweak".

But from what I gather, it's not even possible to change this with about:config. Which makes me want to reach for the :mad: smilies I would have available on the more frivolous boards I frequent.

Re:is it just me?

[rabuksak]

in this case, removing the urlbar's auto-complete feature can be done by setting 'browser.urlbar.maxRichResults' to zero (default is 25). i hope that helps some, like me, who find that 'feature' obnoxious.

Re:is it just me?

[merreborn]

Oh yea it is easy type about:config (like that is a common way to change preferences in application of the 21 centory) Then hunt down for some feature name that is probable more reference to a Varable Name and less of what it actually does and then figure out what the value should be... A piece of Cake, I have no Idea why people say Open Source Software is hard to use.

That's quite a bit easier and safer than what you have to do to get that level of control over IE. Want to control the number of simultaneous TCP connections firefox makes to a server? Open up about:config. Want to do the same in IE? You'll have to fire up the windows registry editor.

About:config contains hundreds of settings. 99% of firefox users don't need to alter any of them. Adding a full UI for all of them would only serve to confuse and intimidate most users.

Re:is it just me?

[thesolo]

Chances are if you're posting here, you're not Firefox's default user base. Their default settings are for simplification, not to please every person who touches it. That's why there are so many options & plugins available, because no two people browse similarly.

Re:is it just me?

[Xtravar]

Think of all the proprietary software that doesn't let you change the things you want.

I imagine the reason Firefox makes some options harder to get at is because they want most normal users happy and easy to troubleshoot. If you are advanced enough to want those features and mess with about:config, you are advanced enough to fix things yourself when they go wrong. A lot of the settings in there could be detrimental when used inappropriately.

Re:is it just me?

[gambolt]

And now FF is wanting to work on integrating more with gnome. That means the already inadequate preferences will likely be stripped down until it's as useless as epiphany.

Re:is it just me?

[R.Mo_Robert]

Am I the only one who actually likes the new address bar drop-down in Firefox 3? I think it's most helpful in that it allows you to search for page titles in addition to addresses--helpful for a page I want to find again, where I remember what it might have been called but not the address (this happens frequently after Google searches).

Yeah, the fonts could be a bit smaller, but it's not terrible, especially as you type more and narrow down the results. And the one I want is usually one of the first, if not the very first result.

Re:is it just me?

[aj50]

No, you're not the only one, I had an discussion the other day with someone about why he loves it and I hate it.

It basically comes down to this: I don't use my address bar to search, I use it to type addresses and so I only want it to auto complete addresses. When I do want to search I open history and search there.

I realise that some people do use the address bar to search and so I can see why they would think the awesome bar is a great idea but I wish they'd left me some way to turn it off.

Re:is it just me?

[jimbojw]

You can add an "Advanced Configuration Options" button that will provide this sort of functionality without forcing the user to remember a piece of command syntax.

I look forward to your forthcoming patch with inspired optimism and an open heart.

Re:is it just me?

[dvice_null]

> You shouldn't have to look up instructions on how to change a basic setting.

That is what the help forums are for. So you can ask for help from there if you can't find it yourself. They can't put all the options to the GUI, because there are so many of them. Several people have told they they didn't like that setting at first, but they soon got used to it and after that they think it is wonderfull.

Perhaps everyone should give it a try and if it really is that bad, they should have enough motivation to ask for help how to remove it. Just bitch at Slashdot about how bad Firefox is because it can't do this or that and you should soon have 5 replies telling you how to do it.

Re:is it just me?

[Fallingcow]

"e" for "en.wikipedia.org"

OK, you may already know about this, but I feel compelled to spread the Good News in case you don't.

You can right click on any search field, and click "add a keyword for this search" to be able to type "[keyword] [search term(s)]" in your address bar to use the search.

For example, every Firefox installation that I use has Wikipedia set up as, "wp [keyword(s)]". If I game on it, it's got Gamefaqs set to "faq [keyword(s)]". I'm so used to it that I try it without thinking on other people's machines and am always a bit taken aback when it doesn't work :) Much faster than selecting the desired search provider in the box at the right.

Re:is it just me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when is disabling a useful piece of functionality that shouldn't be disabled at all a basic setting? WTF is wrong with you retards?

Re:is it just me?

[noamsml]

Meh? I *love* the awesomebar. It's so nice and easy to read. What's not to like about it?

Re:is it just me?

[Hatta]

How is a shitload of buttons any better than a shitload of about:config options? If you shove everything that's in about:config into an advanced configuration dialog, it's going to be just as hard to find things. Actually, quite a bit harder, since you can't filter buttons.

Maybe about:config should be accessible under the "tools" menu and be names "Advanced config". Other than that, the situation is pretty close to ideal. I don't understand the fetish people seem to have for buttons.

Re:is it just me?

[Ben174]

My two most visited forums both begin with "d". Please don't say digg... please don't say digg....

Re:is it just me?

[Hatta]

Listen, if you were to implement all the about:config features in menus do you have any idea how hard it would be to find them? Or worse yet, tell someone else where to find them?

go to tools, now select advanced configuration. Now click on the "browser" menu. You may have to scroll down. Did you find it? OK, under the browser menu, select tabs. Did you find it? OK. Now click on "warn on close" and select false.

Maybe we could come up with some sort of shorthand for navigating through menus. Something like:

Advanced Config->Browser->Tabs->Warn on Close false

There isn't that easier? But wait! What's the difference between that and this:

about:config browser.tabs.warnonclose false

Easy huh? You're just trading one hierarchy for another, and the about:config dialog has the benefit of being searchable. This is just another example of how "user friendly" usually isn't.

Re:is it just me?

[Jugalator]

I really dont want mozilla suggesting anything in my address bar What does this, and the awesomebar tag, have to do with the article?

This is about Firefox 4 and desktop integration, neither of which is relevant here...

Sorry if I'm being a jerk, but come on...

Re:is it just me?

[sabernet]

No, I actually enjoy it very much myself.

Lots of URLs are just odd, and typing in the title is sometimes more convenient.

However, I understand why some people would like the option(in the options area, not about:config) to switch that behavior on and off.

Re:is it just me?

[Urza9814]

I used about:config all the time, I've never looked up a single setting. If you read the names, it's generally fairly obvious what they do.
And yes, what the average user may not agree with that, but I can't think of anything the average user would need to change that isn't in the normal settings box. Only time I've ever really had to go into about:config was to change pipelining settings, and what 'average user' do you know who will even know what that means? And I believe the variable name for those settings all start with 'http.pipelining', so it's pretty obvious. Oh, and there's that little search function too.

Re:is it just me?

[jellomizer]

Yea it is just the general attitude of Open Source Developers, and lack of any good QA people in Open Source Projects.

Re:is it just me?

[jellomizer]

No if a product is designed correctly then you wouldn't need those help forums. You can actually put a lot of features in a GUI without making a GUI Crowded.

The common complaint about Open Source Software is if you don't like it fix it. Lets be realistic. Most of us work full time jobs and have a life after that. Digging threw Firefox code to make a feature more usable isn't worth most of our time. I would just use a different browsers either Safari, IE, Opera... Because it takes less time to download a different browser then stick it with one I don't like.

Bitching in areas where we hope the people who's lives do consist of digging threw firefox code would be more pressed into making it better. The argument isn't about Firefox it is about the attitudes in designing features and the ego stating that it is the users fault for not being able to find a feature right away but will need to search the internet to find solutions for, is not efficient.

Re:is it just me?

[pherthyl]

An option would be better, but there is an extension to bring back the old address bar. Unfortunately I can't find it at the moment.

Re:is it just me?

[soliptic]

No, I wouldn't class that as a forum to be honest, I've only been there once or twice but it looked like a news aggregator with story comments. Whereas when I say forum I mean like a phpBB / vBB install with users starting topics, not commenting on posted stories, although with them being user-submitted posted stories I can see where the boundaries blur. Anyway, I was talking about a couple of small music-related communities not worth a slashdotting :)

Re:is it just me?

[aj50]

There is, it's called oldbar and it's linked above.

Unfortunately, it only replaces the look, not the functionality, of the firefox 2 address bar.

Re:is it just me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that it's not a "basic setting."

And "command syntax" my ass, the internal config editor is completely pointy-clicky. This is in comparison to the actual "command syntax" of the prefs.js file that you would otherwise be editing.

Pay particular attention to the fact that, yes, in fact, about:config is for editing the various internal data used by Firefox. This is no different from other apps, where the behavior of a feature is just chalked up to a result of its blob of logic. Again, compare this to editing data at some memory location with a debugger that you would otherwise be using. Those things are not simple, standalone "preferences" intended to be modified by the average user. This is for the person who really wants to effect some change in the application's behavior, but it just happens to be very well-documented on how to go about doing that, and, not to mention, contrastingly simpler.

It just occurred to me that my saying to compare this to using a debugger may be seen and, without thinking, written off as one of those oft-employed, weak (stretched) analogies. Realize that this is not the case; this is a strong, one-to-one, whatever, analogy. If you wanted to, you could still take the debugger approach.

Re:is it just me?

[pherthyl]

Oh. Missed that. Sucks that it doesn't bring back the old behaviour. Personally I love the new bar, but it really only works on faster machines. On my EeePC, the new address bar is quite slow.

Re:is it just me?

[smussman]

Firefox doesn't behave how I like by default because it, um, can't read my mind, I guess. fix'd

Re:is it just me?

[softwave]

whadaya mean "quite easily"????

Re:is it just me?

[NnT042]

Well, I dunno, maybe the fact that they mention this Loath^H^H^H^H^Hawesome bar in the summary?

Maybe the fact that, since it's cited as an "early example" of this integration TFA is going on about, that we could look at it as a sign of what could be lurking in the next-next release?

...Maybe the beta users just felt like venting frustration?

Re:is it just me?

[TheNetAvenger]

Much faster than selecting the desired search provider in the box at the right.


Faster, maybe, but easier for grandma to use to find something on Ebay instead of doing a google, probably not, especially when IE 7 supports the Open Search specifications and all that makes it pretty easy for grandma to type test and add any search to her dropdown.

Since you threw in a good tip, I thought I would pass one on to you, as this is something you would use more than the average person.

Do yourself a favor and go look up Start++ for Vista.

Then, hit the Windows Key and type "goo donkey", or "weather 99999" to show the weather in 99999. It taps into web, applets, or even acts based on results of a search or Vista virtual search folders.

So like "pa Madoona" plays all the Madonna on your system or "p fire" plays all the songs or groups with "fire" in their name. And if you like the "wp [keywords]" stuff in Firefox you will fall in love with this, as you don't even have to open the browser and results can return in the browser or inside the Vista Start Pane as you like.

It also does all the dictionary stuff that every new Leopard user thinks makes Jobs a god, and also several users have taken the pictures and movies and map concepts that are fashionable web applets/pages and threw them in as well.

It is kind of a cool idea, especially since it is just using off the shelf search, applet, and/or scripting capabilities of Vista. Basic idea, but clever levels of extensibility. It was written by a MS developer in his spare time, but is something MS should seriously looking at making a Vista standard feature.

Re:is it just me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Usually these features can be disabled quite easily from the about:config.

Not in this case. The horrible new look for the suggestion list can be turned off, but instead of the current (v2) behaviour of completing the URL while you type, you get suggestions that are apparently found by matching all over the titles, middle of urls in your bookbarks, google "I feel lucky" results, and some apparently random additional bookmarks in no apparent order. Which you CANNOT turn off. The Mozilla developers have decided anyone who wants the old behaviour is stupid and should install an extension to get it back.

Re:is it just me?

[RealGrouchy]

I personally HATE the new "awesomebar", it really sucks. But... it's the awesomebar...

It's what browsers need.

- RG>

Re:is it just me?

[gumbi west]

Uh, the linked page (I think correctly) says you really can't get the old one back. Sigh, I like everything else about FF3.

Re:is it just me?

[gumbi west]

For me, what the urlbar should suggest is painfully obvious: only things I've previously typed in! I type in maybe 10 addresses, why make me look at the rest of my browser history every time I type a key. Plus, on my older computers, it can take 2 or 5 seconds for it to refresh, meaning it is faster to just type in the entire address--so why was there suggestions in the first place?

This is a big old regression, it's too bad, because FF2 was a good browser that didn't try to copy M$'s "I know what you want" strategy of annoying the living heck out of me. But FF3 is a better browser that has either no urlbar suggestions, or really lame urlbar suggestions.

Re:is it just me?

[Nullav]

What's the preferences menu for again? It's escaping me at the moment.

Re:is it just me?

[smussman]

Firefox doesn't behave how I like by default because it's, um, open source software I guess. -PseudoJello

What's the preferences menu for again? It's escaping me at the moment.
If you have to change it in the preferences menu, it's not a default

Uncessary Complexity

[ximor_iksivich]

Why would a browser need to be a feature monster? Its becoming like the cellphones, too much unnecessary bloat. At least I hope there is an easy way to turn the *features* off. -- Hates the new address bar in firefox 3.

Re:Uncessary Complexity

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure you can turn it off with a plugin that will break with every single release.

Re:Uncessary Complexity

[mpe]

Why would a browser need to be a feature monster? Its becoming like the cellphones, too much unnecessary bloat.

I recall seeing a "review" of such a phone. They must have covered everything you could do with it except how well it worked as a telephone!

Re:Uncessary Complexity

[sm62704]

At least I hope there is an easy way to turn the *features* off.

I'd rather be able to remove features I don't want entirely, and do so without much hassle.

Re:Uncessary Complexity

[Darfeld]

I don't really see the problem with this address bar... Is it because some find it embarrassing when it show the porn website they look?

It's not that bad if you type fast enough. ;)

ooo, just what I wanted for Christmas ...

[daveime]

Yet another "toolbar" cluttering up my window, making my browsing even more "enveloped", while at the same time collecting my browsing habits and selling the data to the highest bidder.

Re:ooo, just what I wanted for Christmas ...

[Traxxas]

It's not a toolbar, it is THE ADDRESS BAR!

Re:ooo, just what I wanted for Christmas ...

[koh]

No problem. We just have to remove the address bar from the navigation toolbar (yes, you can do that) and navigate the web using bookmarks only.

AwesomeBar

[zulater]

I vote we tag this awesome article "AWESOMEBAR"

Re:AwesomeBar

[CaptainPatent]

I vote we tag this awesome article "AWESOMEBAR" Until now, I just thought the AwesomeBar was what Chuck Norris ate for breakfast!

Re:AwesomeBar

[techpawn]

I just thought the AwesomeBar was what Chuck Norris ate for breakfast!

What? No! He eats rusty nails and spits out brand new staples...

Re:AwesomeBar

[geekoid]

Nope
the Awesome Bar is what Chuck Norris shits out every morning.

Re:AwesomeBar

[sm62704]

Until now, I just thought the AwesomeBar was what Chuck Norris ate for breakfast!

No, it's where I go to drink.

Re:AwesomeBar

[MojoStan]

I vote we tag this awesome article "AWESOMEBAR" I agree.. and why the heck did they chose such a boring project code name? Weave? They blew the opportunity to use a neat-o project name: Project A.W.S.O.M.-O!

Re:AwesomeBar

[jo42]

As long as it also gets tagged "bloatware".

Re:AwesomeBar

[Culture20]

Why can't they be both things?

Re:AwesomeBar

[Anonymous Coward]

And what his wife calls his penis.

Re:AwesomeBar

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope
the Awesome Bar is what Chuck Norris shits out every morning.

No, that's the Awesome Log

Wow

[Changa_MC]

More integrated into the OS!1!!!
More integrated into the interwebs!1!

May I be the first to say... Eww.

I didn't RTFA, so hopefully the summary is wrong.

Re:Wow

[tehBoris]

So you don't want more features in Firefox?

Then don't use it. Firefox is done by Mozilla, and the Mozilla guys love adding stuff to their browser, because they really like having big browsers.

Currently, I don't use Firefox. I use Epiphany, a Gecko (Firefox's layout engine, perphaps their greatest contribution to humanity) based browser precisely for its 'OS integration'.

What integration you say? Well, for one, it actually looks like a native app, because it is. Its interface is written in actual GTK2 instead of XUL, so its widgets follow my current theme, ans so do its icons.

Now, TFA wasn't talking about that kind of integration, but of integrating web apps into your desktop thru, for example, Prism. Now, I followed the link to Prism and they say that currently they are just experimenting and that, so far, they have written an app that lets the user make launchers for web apps in their platform's (OS, DE, etc.) native way, and that manages settings for them.

Yes, that's it.

They get right to the door of your OS and leave a box in front of it, and let the OS and the user take care of things from them.

No weird native code running from the browser or anything of that sort, they are integrating web apps better by making it easier to run web apps.

To me, it seems like a fancy intrawebs delivery service, which is a way to see what Firefox does for the user —as it lets him get web stuff— and they want to be better at that.

I don't see why is Slashdot so paranoid about Mozilla nor why are they raging because they want to improve the software (ok, extend, but they did improve Firefox's memory management, didn't they?), but I look forward to see more stuff from the Mozilla guys.

Active Desktop?

[Hatta]

Didn't we try this 10 years ago, and it sucked? I want more separation between my browser and OS, not less.

Re:Active Desktop?

[michaelggreer]

Agreed. And my least favorite feature of FF3? That "smart" toolbar, that refuses to listen to what I'm typing in preference to its own idea of what i want. No thanks.

Re:Active Desktop?

[imsabbel]

Thanks for stating my most favorite feature of firefox3.

A address entry that finally does smart autocomplete (and not that idiotic, basic one that only cares about the first letter of the url (which are most often "cgi" or "forums",)?

Re:Active Desktop?

[Blakey Rat]

I like when people who use OS X's Dashboard, or Vista's Sidebar, or Google Widgets say that Active Desktop sucked.

It's the same thing! From my perspective, Microsoft was a full decade ahead on this front.

(Not saying that the parent doesn't also hate Dashboard, Sidebar, Widgets.)

Re:Active Desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's up with morons like this getting modded up? If what you type is not in the suggestions, just finish typing it, damnit. The address bar gets smarter with time, learn to use things before complaining about them.

Re:Active Desktop?

[nschubach]

I personally don't like that the "Clean Up" button was removed from the download window. Now I have to right click, then click a menu option. Talk about adding needles steps.

This is all wrong!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely Firefox is going in the wrong direction! IMHO, blurring the edges of the browser should be the job of the Window Manager.

I'll get my coat..

Re:This is all wrong!!!

[archen]

I thought it was the OS in the corporate world, and emacs in the open source realm..

Re:This is all wrong!!!

[aj50]

I realise that's a joke, but it brings back painful memories of MSN messenger and WMP when they both got the glossy look with rounded corners and no window decoration.

Re:This is all wrong!!!

[Jugalator]

Are you nuts!?

Surely, for performance reasons, the browser and its required network stack should run in kernel mode.

Beard...

[Naughty Bob]

From his picture in TFA, Chris Beard, VP of Labs for Mozilla, has no beard, despite his high-up position within the open source movement.

Does open source play by ZZ-top rules now?

Re:Beard...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all right. He doesn't have a beard, he is a beard.

Re:Beard...

[sm62704]

Local Springfield IL joke (Google Maps is your friend)

A travelling salesman calls his wife excitedly. "Honey you won't believe what just happened!"

"What happened?"

"Well, you know how my anscestry makes it so I can't grow a beard? Well, I just now stopped in Beardstown and went in a bar for a drink, and everyone was wearing a beard. They told me if I spend the night here I'll have a beard in the morning!"

She was skeptical, but told him to book a room. The next morning he calls her excitedly "Honey! It's true! I grew a beard, and it only took one night!"

She replies "Well, tonight go stay in Petersburg, OK?"

Re:Beard...

[ChameleonDave]

She replies "Well, tonight go stay in Petersburg, OK?" That would make much more sense if she told him to go to somewhere like Penistone instead of a place with no innuendo in the name.

Re:Beard...

[Anonymous Coward]

'peter' is a valid innuendo for penis, albeit a rather tame one.

Re:Beard...

[Anonymous Coward]

'peter' is a valid innuendo for penis, albeit a rather tame one.

No it isn't, unless you're one of these fucktards who think that every word in the English language is a slang word for penis.

Re:Beard...

[sm62704]

Pesintone is in Britain. Both Beardstown and Petersburg are close to here.

Can I get a simple browser, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh no, one more "intelligent" application!

I am already pissed off by Firefox 2 for using the same process to view multiple pages (with all the problems of cross-window data exchange).

Why can't a browser be just "a browser"????

Igor

Firefox 4?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's just stick to getting Firefox 3 released, okay?

Re:Firefox 4?

[Lemmy Caution]

No kidding. In a commercial product, promoting the n+2 version when you are on the n version and about to release the n+1 version would be suicide. Can you imagine if, just before the iPhone release, Steve Jobs said, "the iPhone 2.0 will have built-in GPS, 3G, and shoot lasers!" Granted, free software is somewhat different than for-pay gadgetry, but it still takes the winds out of the sails of the pending next release.

Re:Firefox 4?

[Iloinen Lohikrme]

Promoting n+2 version in a commercial product is not a suicide. When a customer buys an product he or she buys it because of current features and benefits, but also because of secured future. Why buy it because of secure future? Well, because usually all things, devices and software require more of less considerable time and learning investment. When an customer switched products he or she has to make an effort to learn again to use the product, but if the customer upgrades the product, he or she will usually spend less time in learning to use the upgraded product than when switching to totally different product. In this background, at least in my mind, it's a good idea to promoted future versions including n+2 and so on to give customers an image that their choice has a continuum and secured future.

Re:Firefox 4?

[Lemmy Caution]

I'm sorry, but "n+2" isn't a secured future per se, it's a deferred one. Adding features incrementally is a lot more promising. It isn't as if Mozilla is seen as on the verge of extinction.

The way to communicate a secured future is to say "we are constantly improving our software" and having new features get added bit-by-bit. The n+2 release is almost a way of saying that the n+1 release is going to be completely reinvented anyway, so don't get too comfortable. It is a poor communication strategy.

Sounds Scarry.

[jellomizer]

Even though this is Open Source It sounds to Scarry.
We origionally used firefox because it was a fast simple browser without all the overhead of Mozilla/Netscape. It seems like it is going back into that direction again. Why because once it got popular people began asking oh One more thing. The firefox team needs to learn to say NO to feature requests and Yes to fixing bugs and not finding excuses not to fix them.

Re:Sounds Scarry.

[TubeSteak]

At this point, I'd take a browser with half the awesome and none of the bloat.

Maybe FireFox needs a "lite" version.

Re:Sounds Scarry.

[ScentCone]

sounds to Scarry

Not as scary as your spelling, though.

Re:Sounds Scarry.

[Xarius]

Maybe FireFox needs a "lite" version.

Heh, oddly enough FireFox started out as a "lite" version of the original Mozilla.

Re:Sounds Scarry.

[PoliTech]

There is a "lite" version ... Opera. Even that's getting a bit bloaty these days, (Bitorrent client built in? Why?)

Seriously, who in their right mind wants their intertube browser to be their OS shell? Talk about drive-by downloads. I be "driving by" this one that's for sure.

Re:Sounds Scarry.

[jbeaupre]

Funny but if "scarry" means causes scars or covered in scars, it's more scary than "scary".

Re:Sounds Scarry.

[xtracto]

Maybe FireFox needs a "lite" version.

The funny thing is, that Firefox was supposed to be the lite version of the "bloated" Mozilla suite, and extensions were supposed to be used sepparately by peple who wanted to add some functionality. In theory very good, in practice, the functionality and efficiency of loosely coupled extensions can not compare to the efficiency of a "total" well engineered software such as Opera or (please don't kill me) IE 7 (by the way, I *hate* the darn IE7 and its non-compliance to CSS... why is it that all the stylesheets I use *must* have some patch to be used in IE7 while Opera, Firefox and others render them beautifuly?).

Re:Sounds Scarry.

[bkr1_2k]

They have a "light" version for OS X. It's Camino, though I don't use it much so I can't tell how "light" it actually is. Anecdotally, it's noticeably to be faster on my machine than firefox, browsing the same sites. I don't think they have anything similar for linux or windows though.

Re:Sounds Scarry.

[mpe]

We origionally used firefox because it was a fast simple browser without all the overhead of Mozilla/Netscape. It seems like it is going back into that direction again. Why because once it got popular people began asking oh One more thing. The firefox team needs to learn to say NO to feature requests and Yes to fixing bugs and not finding excuses not to fix them.

In some ways extensions/add-ons are a good way to address the issue of someone's "must have" feature is someone elses "couldn't care less" or even "bloat".
One thing I really wish they would fix is the handling of global plugins. Not only do you have to use an obscure command line to install them, but any later updates are likely to wind up installed per user.

Re:Sounds Scarry.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have the perfect name for it. What do you guys think about "Phoenix"?

Re:Sounds Scarry.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe FireFox needs a "lite" version. I agree. Maybe they could call it "Phoenix", you know, because it's rising from Firefox's ashes or something...

Re:Sounds Scarry.

[Val314]

> Maybe FireFox needs a "lite" version.

LoL

And just for the fun of it, call it "Mozilla Suite" ;)

Re:Sounds Scarry.

[scott-thomason]

Amen. On the other hand, what are all those idle FireFox developers to do now that their baby is more-or-less perfect?
---scott

Check out Robocode in VB: http://scott-thomason.org/vbrobocode

Re:Sounds Scarry.

[oboreruhito]

Yeah, I've been thinking about forking this Mozilla project Web browser because it's getting way too bloated. It was great back when it was just Netscape, just a Web browser, you know? Then they're adding all this extra crap, probably because of all this corporate sponsorship, and it'll get all slow and suck up tons of RAM when all I want to do is look at some Web pages.

Let's make it just a stand-alone browser. I think I've already got a name for it, too -- Phoenix, you know, like rising from the ashes?

Re:Sounds Scarry.

[coobert]

Hilarious. Firefox was the Lite version of SeaMonkey.

I highly recommend a WebKit derived browser... Safari on OS X/Windows, or some of the promising Gtk/QT browsers on Linux.

Re:Sounds Scarry.

[Wellington Grey]

And so continues the software circle of life.

Re:Sounds Scarry.

[tolan-b]

Yeah they should call it Phoenix or Firebird or something.

Re:Sounds Scarry.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah! I mean, why should a browser support such complex and bloated things like javascript or images? What good have these done for the web? Lets just all go back to HTML2, after all it is light and simple...

The web is becoming more complex as a platform, and that's the way it should be.

Re:Sounds Scarry.

[Anonymous Coward]

That whooshing sound is the parents' sarcasm rushing by over your head....

Re:Sounds Scarry.

[HiThere]

Well, it works all right with Konqueror.

OTOH, if they're going to do this, why shouldn't I just *use* Konqueror?

(Currently, I'll admit, what I use is SeaMonkey. And it's nominally independent of FireFox.)

Re:Sounds Scarry.

[solaraddict]

Oh my god, it's full of scars!

NOOO

[Anonymous Coward]

It will only eat up 6 gigs of ram after running for 10 minutes. Someone stole my fucking roller blade invention

IE 4.0 Lives in Mozilla...

[tjstork]

Wow, FireFox jumps the shark...

time to check out Opera.

Re:IE 4.0 Lives in Mozilla...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have, and it's poo.

Re:IE 4.0 Lives in Mozilla...

[Raineer]

I tend to agree. I think this is fine for the crowd that knows nothing about computers and WANTS to know nothing about computers. You doubleclick one icon and it does everything, they can't tell it's laggy and they don't care.

Techies need techy programs, quick/fast/onlywhatyouneed. For some reason FF3 (which I have been impressed with up until now) has seemed to lag quite a bit lately. I'm trying out Opera 9.5 (my 3rd go at their beta) and Webkit (forced to use windows here, webkit is my choice on OSX). Both have quite a bit of merit.

Re:IE 4.0 Lives in Mozilla...

[CastrTroy]

You could always use webkit on windows, either by using Safari, or Konquerer

Re:IE 4.0 Lives in Mozilla...

[jp10558]

But the whole point of Opera is one app that does *everything*... I can't imagine you'd like it?

Re:IE 4.0 Lives in Mozilla...

[Raineer]

I don't, but my impression of Opera hasn't been that it wishes to expand my webapps elsewhere...unless I'm just missing where they are going with the program.

Re:IE 4.0 Lives in Mozilla...

[jp10558]

Well, they do have widgets which I *think* is sort of what Mozilla wants to do with one of their projects, websites as a separate window (though not really separate from Opera itself). And I can't imaging that they will not support the local storage once it's a real standard.

OTOH, they don't seem to really want to integrate into the underlying OS - that makes it really hard to have one core for Mac, Linux, Windows and smartphones + Wii etc.

Oh please DON'T

[snarfies]

I don't WANT the edges pushed. I just want a browser, really. I just want to look at web pages, maybe even post to the occasional online forum (like Slashdot). I don't want a huge bloated thing that will suck up all my system resources and take two minutes to fire up. I just want a simple, standard-compliant, browser. Please, just let Firefox be that and make a new program to do all that other crap.

Re:Oh please DON'T

[calebt3]

Or make whatever improvements might be necessary to have these features be plugins rather than part of the browser itself. Honestly, I think they need to make everything into a plugin (tabbed browsing, spell check, etc. and just include the most popular in the default install.

Re:Oh please DON'T

[pohl]

No kidding. This is the second really alarming thing I've read from the FF crew today. It's almost as if they've become disheartened by the pace set by Opera and WebKit, and are engaging in random attention-seeking behaviours.

Re:Oh please DON'T

[moderatorrater]

I don't want a huge bloated thing that will suck up all my system resources...I just want a simple, standard-compliant, browser You obviously haven't read the standards. Honestly, they're so complex they scream "bloat" at the top of their lungs.

Re:Oh please DON'T

[mpe]

Honestly, I think they need to make everything into a plugin (tabbed browsing, spell check, etc. and just include the most popular in the default install.

Spell check really shouldn't be anything other than a plugin, since you need one which is appropriate for the language you are using.

Re:Oh please DON'T

[soliptic]

That blog post wasn't alarming. Or at least, maybe that one was, but try this one, which says a similar sort of thing, but makes its case at greater length, and, well, generally better.

In fact, if you compare and contrast this quote:

... virtually none of the issues on the Acid 3 list are important enough for us to take at this stage. We don't want to be rushing fixes in, or rushing out a release, only to find that we've broken important sites or regressed previous standards support, or worse introduced a security problem. Every API that's exposed to content needs to be tested for compliance and security and reliability...

With this story from the same day, then you get a sense that maybe the Mozilla guys aren't so clueless on this topic as you suggest...

Of course, don't get me wrong, I'm not literally suggesting that the Safari guys were so busy getting to 100/100 they directly introduced that security bug as a result of one of the acid3 fixes. (I know the dates don't work out, for starters).

What I am saying, is that were Mozilla saying "fuck acid3", that's alarming. But when they're actually saying things more like the "only add these fixes with thorough QA", above, or

[acid3 tests] should be fair to the web; they should be based on how good the web will be as a platform if all browsers conform...

We will fix standards compliance bugs; it's what we do. But we won't fix them all with the same priority, and I hope that we won't prioritize Acid 3 fixes artificially highly, because I think that would be a disservice to web developers and users.

Then it's not exactly random attention-seeking as much as carefully and broadly considered development strategy.

All that said, I still completely agree that this new address bar and "blurring the edges" talk is hovering somewhere between stark raving bonkers and epic fail.

Re:Oh please DON'T

[pohl]

Thank you for the link to Shaver's blog post. Indeed it is more reasonable than Rob Sayre's "sour grapes" post, although i find Ian Hickson's response to Shaver's blog post to be more reasonable still. (Worth reading if you missed it.) Also don't miss Maciej Stachowiak's Scenes From an Acid Test. It does touch on the careful approach they have taken. I wish we could peek behind the curtain at Opera to see what's really going on there.

Re:Oh please DON'T

[skeenan]

No kidding. I'd like to see the FF dev's focus more on making a lightweight browser that doesn't take 200+MB of ram after using it for a couple days. I love the browser, but I don't need an awesome bar... give me a super fast browser with tabs and a search bar and a small memory footprint and I'll be a happy camper! Please don't give us another Vista in a browser :P

Re:Oh please DON'T

[prockcore]

and I want roaming profiles and better web apps that aren't constrained to the same box that every site gets.

and it sounds like mozilla likes me more since they're giving me what I want and telling you to go fuck yourself. :)

Re:Oh please DON'T

[Anonymous Coward]

People always say this, for every technology, from "I don't want a horseless carriage" to "Netscape 3 is all I'll ever want in a browser". Strangely, they almost always seem to eventually realize that new technology isn't as bad as they feared.

And I don't know where you heard "a huge bloated thing that will suck up all my system resources and take two minutes to fire up". Sure, nobody wants that. Did I miss the paragraph in the article where he said this is what they were building?

P.S., if you want to use a particular version of Firefox forever, use it. Nobody is making you upgrade.

Translation

[Xeth]

We're not going to fix the memory leaks.

(Seriously though, I love Firefox. But please remember why it was spun-off from Mozilla in the first place...)

I hope they have plans to implement embedded video

[Sark666]

Opera now has this (i forget the specifics, it's part of html5 i think). I read an article last year saying it'll be in opera and ff. It's in opera's latest, but afaik, it's not in ff3. Is this on the horizon for ff4?

A bold new future

[HitScan]

It offers users smart URL suggestions as they type based on Web searches and their prior Web browsing history.

It's the future! Just imagine what it will be like to browse the web in the year 2000!

Of course, there's still the chance that it still won't have autocomplete back. :/

Software Prole Drift...

[Butisol]

I think the subject line says it all.

IE

[ifranto]

Didn't M$ get in trouble with the justice department because their browser was tied in to the OS too closely?

Re:IE

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because they were selling the OS, and had a monopoly, and it was an unfair business practice.

Frightful?

[Gay for Linux]

Anyone else find the security aspect of this a bit frightful? They want a database which will track our browsing habits, constant updates to the Mozilla servers, and integration with the OS?

Firefox starts to sound like the next big brother.

Re:Frightful?

[garett_spencley]

Actually the first thing that I thought after reading the summary was that FF4 was going to be Internet Explorer.

I think everyone else hit the nail on the head. We originally used Phoenix because it WASN'T these things. It was a light, simple, fast, usable browser. Now they're talking about integrating it with the OS ... isn't that something we've been complaining about with regards to IE for the last 10 years ?

Re:Frightful?

[xtracto]

Firefox starts to sound like the next big brother.

At the risk of being unpopular and stoned to death by this crowd that is looking me funny, I think "the next big-brother" is no one else than your friend Google. You can't guess the quantity of information they OWN. Yes, they OWN information about you, it is theirs and they can use it for whatever they might.

Yeah, I know currently they have this "do no evil" motto, which can be modified in the non too distant future. Although IMHO such thing has no real value.

And why does it relate to firefox? because indeed there is a small text field in firefox which directs you to Google search by default. There is great money to be done from that from what I have read, and a great amount of information for Google.

Re:Frightful?

[dtml-try MyNick]

Yeah, I know currently they have this "do no evil" motto, which can be modified in the non too distant future I'm pretty sure that everyone knows in the back of their head that the 'do no evil' thing *is* going to change someday. Yet we all use it on a daily basis and about half of the worlds population (ok, that pushing it I know) is dumping basically their life in google's databases.

Google's power grows day by day, month by month, year after year. That power *will* be abused someday. It's there, just waiting for it to happen. Power corrupts, that's pretty much a historically proven fact.

By the time Skynet had become self aware it had spread into millions of computer servers across the planet. Ordinary computers in office buildings, dorm rooms, everywhere. It was software and cyberspace. There was no system core. It could not be shut down.
Replace skynet with google and wait a few more years.

Re:Frightful?

[pizzach]

Actually the first thing that I thought after reading the summary was that FF4 was going to be Internet Explorer. Actually, FF4 is IE4. That was the first version of Explorer to start putting the tendrils into Windows. On the bright side the Gecko engine is open source, so it can and IS used in other projects. Also, a fork of an older version of FF is not out of the question if things get bad.

Re:Frightful?

[Twitch42]

Maybe Opus Palladianum will be finished by then.

Re:Frightful?

[emilper]

Google's power grows day by day, month by month, year after year.

Google's power grows only as much as Search Engine Optimization allows it to grow. Ten years ago HotBot showed up, and it was good, really good, and pushed AltaVista et. comp aside, until SEO got hold of it, and you had to get to the second or third page of results to find something relevant. Nine years ago I found Google and after a few days never used anything else. Now, Google is not only a search engine, but also a popularity contest, so it's more difficult to game it, but it's not very far from where HotBot was in 1999. I think that if the social networking applications will get more traction, Google will be forced to index them, and then you'll see real link spam, and a new search engine that will do smarter NLP than google does now will take over. Google will become the new Yahoo: big enough that you can't ignore it, but no longer indispensable.

As to the information that Google collects ... I doubt they can make much use of it, otherwise they would know that I am not really able or interested to buy "computers on a chip" in batches of 1000 and would stop showing me the link to the company that sells them.

Re:Frightful?

[Ilgaz]

Mozilla servers or Google servers? Think again if you are in conspiracy mood ;)

Re:Frightful?

[v_thunder]

I think you're not looking at the complete picture here. Let me explain:

Lots of people are giving out their personal information right now in exchange for basic data sharing with others. In most cases (and this is specially true for people who aren't computer experts--i.e., most users) users are a) not even aware that they are doing it, and b) without any reasonable choices other than not sharing their data at all.

It's hard to find good easy-to-understand examples, but one analogy would be if all of the shipping companies kept a file of you and indexed every letter you'd ever sent. You get to choose whether you send mail to a friend or whether your data stays private.

Now, what is different with Weave? Weave encrypts all data placed on the server before putting it there. Only you have the passphrase that unlocks your data. Sharing can be implemented by means of public-key encryption, where you can securely give access to a 3rd party while keeping the data encrypted from everyone else. And without sharing your username, password, or encryption passphrase with anyone (including the 3rd party).

Of course, some people don't care about privacy, and will allow their data to be public. And that's fine too--as long as it's a user decision and not just the lay of the land.

The "awesome bar"

[daveime]

Install "awesome bar" today. You can see how much memory Firefox is leaking in real time, AND share it with your friends on your favourite social network ;-)

smart adress bar

[antikaos]

I use firefox 3 and the "awesome bar" isn't very awesome at all, I actually find it to be one of the biggest downsides, but I do like the idea of linguistic integration, I've always wanted to be able to just type what I want to know/find into the address bar.

Re:smart adress bar

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree about the awesome bar being a pain. When I type an address I want simple auto-completion of the address I've started typing. Nice simple, reliable behaviour so that I know I can type the first few letters and it will give me the rest. This new 'intelligent' search of previous URLs I've visited gives me different results every time. If I start typing news.bbc.co.uk it gives me the URL of the last story I looked at on BBC news. I just want it to complete news.bbc.co.uk every time.

The awesome bar sounds like a good enhancement on paper, but I believe it's less rather than more usable than the simple behaviour.

Seriously

[joppinkaru]

I don't WANT the edges pushed. I just want a browser, really. I just want to look at web pages, maybe even post to the occasional online forum (like Slashdot). I don't want a huge bloated thing that will suck up all my system resources and take two minutes to fire up. I just want a simple, standard-compliant, browser. Please, just let Firefox be that and make a new program to do all that other crap. What other Windows Vista features can I expect in Firefox 4?

Wrong direction

[calebt3]

FF is shooting itself in the foot with this one. Just stick to getting those standards implemented while staying as small and responsive as possible.

Sounds like an OS

[tknn]

So why don't they just break down and admit they are developing an OS that runs on top of other OSes?

Re:Sounds like an OS

[denis-The-menace]

Sounds a bit like Java or .Net...

I'll be switching to Epiphany

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to worry that Firefox is making the same mistakes IE 5 and 6 did with "closer integration". On the upside, however, Epiphany using the WebKit engine seems to be coming along awesomely and now passes Acid3, so I think I've found my next browser...

Let me make sure I have this right...

[msauve]

Microsoft integrating a browser with the OS = bad.

Mozilla integrating a browser with the OS = good.

I know /. loves to Microsoft bash, but this demands a loud "WTF?"

Re:Let me make sure I have this right...

[calebt3]

You haven't been reading the comments. I haven't seen anyone mention it in a good way yet (or neutral, for that matter).

Re:Let me make sure I have this right...

[joe 155]

I don't know why you think this needs a "WTF", the reason most people are annoyed at what MS did was that the browser was integrated into the OS in a way that you just couldn't get it out, even if you really wanted to. On XP this also introduced a whole host of security issues (although this may have been fixed with Vista's sandbox but because I'm not even remotely interested in MS products I've not looked that up).

Firefox won't be integrated into any OS in the way that IE was, because you can uninstall it. Not only that I suspect that the integration won't be the team going "Oh, lets stick parts of this browser into the kernel..." I think they are going for a smoother transition from Firefox to OS to the point where at the user level you'd struggle to tell them apart - but I think that the actual OS will see a very clear divide.

Re:Let me make sure I have this right...

[peragrin]

I can understand people not reading the article but can't people even read the comments?

over half the people posting thinks this is a stupid idea in general, with maybe one or two good points about it.

Re:Let me make sure I have this right...

[agwis]

No it doesn't. Have you read all the previous comments before yours? One thing about /. readers, open source/fss zealots, linux users, etc. is that the majority are equally critical across the board.

I'm with the plenty of posters before you. I switched to FF to get away from IE and Netscape because of how bloated and integrated it was becoming. FF was awesome when it first came out. Now it seems like history shall repeat itself. Hopefully the FF developers are reading this and taking notes.

That's an awful leap to take in saying that /. readers will bash MS for something, and then praise open source for doing the same thing. I don't see that here, and can't think of anything before where that has occurred.

Re:Let me make sure I have this right...

[pembo13]

read comments before posting, it's the right thing to do.

Re:Let me make sure I have this right...

[msauve]

My bad. I forgot, this is /. I'm supposed to comment on the comments, not the article.

Re:Let me make sure I have this right...

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to actually read the discussion before commenting on it.

Re:Let me make sure I have this right...

[Zephyr14z]

Strawman argument. If you actually look at most of the comments here, very few /.ers seem to think this is a good idea. It's bad when Microsoft does it, and it's bad when Mozilla does it too.

Re:Let me make sure I have this right...

[Lemmy Caution]

I actually like to attack Microsoft-bashers, but the problem with IE wasn't the integration with the OS, it was the bundling and integration with the OS. Clearly, the OS will work fine if you don't install Mozilla, no matter how much they integrate the browser with it.

Re:Let me make sure I have this right...

[graymocker]

My bad. I forgot, this is /. I'm supposed to comment on the comments, not the article. Well, if you're going to comment on the community's reaction to a certain piece of news, then yeah.

Re:Let me make sure I have this right...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that would be dandy if that were your intention, except. . .

I know /. loves to Microsoft bash, but this demands a loud "WTF?"

So if by this statement, you were referring to the content of the article summaries, yeah, you would have a defense to the backlash of your comment. Except then your statement wouldn't be correct. The large majority of Microsoft bashing occurs within the comments; most of the article summaries about Microsoft's actions don't include opinionated language like "What is this shit? Goddamn, those decision-makers at Microsoft are fucking stupid." Replace the Mozilla-specific stuff in the summary with Microsoft-oriented names and products and it's exactly the way most article summaries about Microsoft on Slashdot appear. I think you'd find that most summaries about Microsoft on Slashdot are surprisingly objective. You can check.

Pre-emptive defense: I'm consciously using the word "most" with the understanding of what it means. It's not going to be difficult tracking down summaries that do bash Microsoft. So it seems there can exist three groups of summaries on Slashdot, with regard to the current discussion: negatively opinionated summaries, positively opinionated summaries (by your own admission), and neutral, or un-opinionated summaries.

This particular summary is an example of the latter. You can check. The only gushing going on about the product is contained within quotes of the article. A great deal, if not most, of the Microsoft-oriented summaries are phrased similarly, wherein someone affiliated with the company says something positive about how they love whatever approach they are taking, and how revolutionary they feel it's going to be, then a summary is written pointing to said content where such statements are made. The exact same formula has been applied here. By that, even if you were to disagree with the evaluation that this summary is neutral, but instead positively opinionated, then so, too, would be the summaries about Microsoft, which would contradict your assertion about the rampant Microsoft bashing.

Not specifically with regard to this article alone, I think that your perception of how the summaries pose the subject of the article, favorably or unfavorably, is being altered by recognizing what the opinions of those posting in the comments will be, and then inferring that bias into the summary itself. So no, the summaries don't exhibit a bias of Mozilla good, Microsoft bad.

I am, of course, assuming that your use of article was a slip of the tongue, and that you meant "summary" rather than "article." If it was wrong to make that assumption—if your allegation of Slashdot bias was indeed meant to refer to the actual article, you know, the one written by a third party unaffiliated with Slashdot—well, then I guess you're just fucking stupid.

rewrite html first

[spectro]

Instead of blurring and complicating all this even more, why not take a fresh look into HTML and how to create a new open markup language that allows for powerful and rich UIs instead of having to mess with HTML/XML/Javascript/Ajax/etc.

HTML and all the technology around it did its job. Now it is time to come up with something better.

Re:rewrite html first

[plague3106]

You should check out XAML.

Re:rewrite html first

[spectro]

forgot to mention not based on XML please... xml is - imho - ugly

Re:rewrite html first

[plague3106]

Well, seems kinda weird to rule anything base on xml due it being "ugly." But then I would suggest you check out BAML.

Re:rewrite html first

[pohl]

I think Joel Spolsky was right about the eventual antidote to "messing with HTML/XML/Javascript/Ajax/etc." when he suggested that eventually these things would simply become the "instruction sets" that compilers target. GWT is an excellent example of that right now. Browser developers can continue to refine support for these standards and we can both use them and insulate ourselves from minor deviations from one browser to another. And, I dare say this is a much better idea than 'checking out xaml'.

Re:rewrite html first

[jefu]

xml is - imho - ugly

Indeed. But XML is also very flexible and powerful. By the time you add in the flexibility and power to almost any other markup language you'll have something just as ugly - but in another syntax. If it gives more power than XML, great. Otherwise, why bother?

Really the next step up is a web based on an embedded programming (rather than markup) language. Hey look: Flex, Silverlight.....

One other Firefux Feature

[Anonymous Coward]

It will use up memory in record time, forcing someone to reboot within minutes.

Oh no, did Bill Gates write that?

[cyber1kenobi]

This sounds scarily just like IE and Win95 and the motives back then. I'm sure Billy G is jealous of Mark Zuckerberg and Brad Greenspan and sits at home at night poking needles in to doll and chanting curses at them. "Another idea I should have had!" Ahhh, The Road Ahead...

so predictable

[The End Of Days]

The software Luddites ran out in full force to declare that they hate features in their applications. Good for you guys, you can continue to use 1970s paradigms until the endtimes. Just stop acting like you somehow understand what other users want out of things. It gets old.

(and before you passionately explain to me the superiority of your opinion, note I will probably mercilessly mock you for being stupid)

Re:so predictable

[plague3106]

Not a luddite, more like a "who cares?" Zimbra is nothing more than an email / calendering client.. which is the same as Outlook or Evolution, and the other one talks to web services. OHhhhh!! Big deal.

So you end up with an email client that has a scripting language to talk to web services and can view web pages.

IE 4

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds a lot like what IE 4 was marketing years ago.

Not a good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't IE's push to "blur the edges of the browser" the reason most of us started using Firefox in the first place?

Nothing to do with feature request

[microbee]

When something gets popular it wants to take over more of the market share and expand into other segments.

It's not difference if it's firefox or IE, Mozilla or Microsoft.

Uhh...I got an idea

[Drakin020]

You know...I see a lot of negativity in the comment section of this article. But I have an idea....Don't upgrade. it's not like there going to pull the plug on Firefox 2 or something. No one forces you to upgrade. Just keep what you have.

Yeah the update may be worse but that doesn't mean you have to ditch the browser as a whole. Hell I still run Firefox 2. I'm not worried about 3 yet. Version 2 does everything I need.

Re:Uhh...I got an idea

[daveime]

Version 2 uses all the memory I have. There, fixed that for you.

Re:Uhh...I got an idea

[Drakin020]

Please.....Yes it can be a memory hog. My laptop has 2 GB's which I understand is more than the typical home PC, but my Firefox "With as heavy use as it gets" never breaks 150MB in memory.

It's an issue, but let's not go to some crazy untrue number.

Re:Uhh...I got an idea

[AmigaMMC]

Don't upgrade now... ok. But what about in a few years when HTML/CSS etc get another overhaul and your FF2 just doesn't cut it anymore? Plus the famous memory leaks (last year on a FF usenet I asked for help with memory leaks and all the FF developers told me it was my imagination, if my FF2 was using 350+MB of RAM for a couple of tabs I was the one doing something wrong).

Project .hack anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone else feel a faint connection to Altimit OS?

DO NOT WANT

[Anonymous Coward]

With the security history of this swiss-cheese bloatware (remember when Firefox was the "lite" and "secure" browser? I used to tell people that Firefox would be no more secure than IE and they laughed at me... apparently "open source" is some kind of magical security pixy dust), I'm gonna have to say NO to this.

Don't people realize the security house of cards we're building here? Insecure browser itself. Insecure code on both the server and running in the browser. Insecure designs. Too much complexity and too many layers (browser plugins? web services? Ajax? The average Web 2.0 app is basically written in 5-6 different languages from HTML to SQL to JSON to XML to JavaScript to Ruby to .......).

Disaster waiting to happen (though some could make the case that it's already a disaster).

SeaMonkey

[DoktorSeven]

Odd that Firefox was spun off from Mozilla because Mozilla was too bloated and heavy, and now we're back around where Firefox is going to be (is?) the bloated one -- and the new Mozilla, SeaMonkey, is actually light and simple compared to Firefox.

So I've switched to SeaMonkey. So long, Firefox. I've used you since the early days when you were known as Phoenix. I shan't be using you any more, given the direction you're heading.

Re:SeaMonkey

[lysse]

Hmm. When SeaMonkey was the Mozilla Foundation's "blessed browser", it was bloaty, buggy and into world domination. As you say, that led directly to the development of Firefox.

Then Firefox became the "blessed browser". And now it's bloaty, buggy and into world domination...

Could there be a leadership issue here, perhaps?

Privacy

[scubamage]

I don't mind the new features as they will make the lives of a lot of people easier who are casual users. I just hope they're modular/plugin type features that can be disabled so we can get the speed-demon performance of FF3 beta. Plus I honestly don't want someone who sits down at my workstation to start typing in something and have it suggest websites out of my history... what if I questionable websites? Will I have to log in to my own browser?

Isn't this what Microsoft got flamed and sued for?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

More integrated into the OS!1!!!
More integrated into the interwebs!1!

May I be the first to say... Eww.

I seem to recall Microsoft losing an antitrust suit over this very issue.

IMHO this is a big step backward. I like my OS and applications to be compartmented. It helps with both security and portability across platforms.

What I want in a browser

[Todd Fisher]

I'd like a browser that's smart enough to know that if a user (me) mistakenly enters .con instead of .com it doesn't display a "Page not found" but takes a wild gamble and resolves to the .com site.

Penultimate stage of the browser life cycle

[Bovius]

Lemme break it down for you:

• Gestation: Initial release of totally awesome browser is developed.
• Infancy: A few people start using the browser and see how totally awesome it is. Word spreads.
• Childhood: User base grows explosively. People start complaining that totally awesome browser doesn't have feature X.
• Adolescence: More and more features get tacked on to browser. Side effects of bloat become noticable. Users start to ask for a lite version.
• Maturity: Browser starts performing tasks entirely unrelated to web browsing. Browser becomes hefty and clumsy (FireFox is somewhere in this stage)
• Entrenchment: Browser has enough of a user base to establish its own nonstandard rules for web content, essentially branching the web. Alienation and hostility ensue.
• Death:: User base dwindles becuase the browser doesn't play nice with the rest of the world anymore.

Those of us who think the new vision is a bad thing aren't necessarily curmudgeons who don't want anything to change. We know a lot of very specific things about how we want to interact with a computer, and we don't want the same organization that produces our web browser of choice to dictate the rest of that interaction. It doesn't really matter whether they get it right or not.

Firefox development should fork

[MyDixieWrecked]

The whole original premise of Firefox was that it was lightweight, fast, and actually worked. Because of this, I think they should keep the firefox brand as-is... make it smaller, faster and more lightweight, but no reason to go fill it up with these features.

I think they should fork development into a new product. Basically going in the direction that they are discussing with version 4. These features look like they could be a great idea. A lot of really progressive and great things look stupid on paper, but once you see them and use them, they can surprise you, at times.

Personally, I think they need to make firefox even moreminimalistic. Something that will have the absolute smallest memory footprint after being launched and be snappy and responsive. Modern websites have a TON of code ([x]html/css/javascript) and graphics so it's understandable that the footprint would grow when you have 30 tabs open; but on slower hardware such as the eeepc or older laptops, I'd like the browser to not impact the system quite as much in the memory department.

Re:Firefox development should fork

[rrohbeck]

Amen. It's time for a lean and fast browser again. One without plugins and extensions, and limited Javascript.
I want a browser, not an OS.

Re:Firefox development should fork

[Abcd1234]

Err... wtf... no plugins or extension? Why? The additional overhead of such things is quite minimal, and it means you can have a bare-bones browser if you want, and you can have something more advanced if you want, too.

Re:Firefox development should fork

[Abcd1234]

BTW, by "such things", I meant a plugin/extension architecture.

Re:Firefox development should fork

[denis-The-menace]

Why can't they just let choose.

Make 2 versions:

1-Light Browser with extensions (awesome bar as an OPTIONAL extension)

2-Bloated browser with OS integration/Web integration and Bloat-bar.

Re:Firefox development should fork

[rrohbeck]

If they can be done securely, fine. But I prefer external apps over plugins, and extensions always scare me and they're usually the reason if you have problems with Firefox. They should be relegated into separate processes with minimum privileges that I can kill if necessary.

Re:Firefox development should fork

[Richard Dick Head]

Have you ever tried K-Melon? The feature set is the same as good ol' Firefox 0.8 without so many bugs.

Re:Firefox development should fork

[BenoitRen]

The whole original premise of Firefox was that it was lightweight, fast, and actually worked.

That was never the premise. The premise was to have a fast cross-platform web browser with the right set of features. No lean mean light stuff, except for not being too large a download.

Source: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/charter.html

Re:Firefox development should fork

[prockcore]

yeah.. why can't they just double their workload? please.

don't like it? pay someone to build you your own browser.

Re:Firefox development should fork

[Tangerinux]

Recently i tried to switch from firefox to k-meleon, but i found the preferences dialog and the tabbed browsing too alien for my taste.

Re:Firefox development should fork

[Anonymous Coward]

Every major version of Firefox has been faster than the previous, and also added significant features. Firefox 3 memory usage is lower than Firefox 2. What makes you think that version 4 will be slower? I must have missed that part.

Re:Firefox development should fork

[Zantetsuken]

ya - fork it into the Mozilla Suite 2.0 - which is why the Mozilla Suite exists, to make that bloated version of Firefox with features that none of the people here on /. want... If I want an email client, I'll download Thunderbird, not use my web-browser, which is meant for browsing the web...

Re:Firefox development should fork

[Abcd1234]

Or you could just... not install them. Because you wanted a minimal browser. Remember?

Re:Firefox development should fork

[rrohbeck]

But I'd prefer a mechanism that would translate the plugin metaphor into an external program. Behave mostly like a plugin, for the convenience, but run a separate program like Flash or Java and position its window in the right place in front of the browser. That way the plugin can't crash the browser (which happens way too often) and plugins can't collide (just try to run two different Java applets at the same time.)
As for extensions, I'd really like good functionality ported into the browser core. Extensions were once thought of as a testbed for future browser enhancements, but theses days the view is "we don't need to add this functionality - we have an extension for that." And the next time a new Firefox version is out, the extension is broken, or it collides with something else and breaks the browser. The extension mechanism is a little fragile - if they're really needed, extensions should run in some kind of sandbox (read: external process) and communicate with the browser through well defined interfaces.

Re:Firefox development should fork

[denis-The-menace]

don't like it? pay someone to build you your own browser. Or stay with the old version and wait for a fork or common sense to set in.

It's EMACS all over again.

[serviscope_minor]

Firefox will be a great OS. The only thing it lacks is a decent browser.

What we need is the browser equivalent of vi. And it actually exists. How wierd is that?

Re:It's EMACS all over again.

[happy_smile]

Quoting from http://elvis.the-little-red-haired-girl.org/elvisman/README.html: "Elvis is a superset of vi. It runs on more operating systems than vi, it is free, and you can obtain the source code. Elvis also has many new features.." is it true? Haven't heard elvis before this... Personally, I like vi-style editing, and I like it more because vi is commonly available in *nix system. Somehow in my life experience, I never found any *nix system without vi.

Re:It's EMACS all over again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm... visiting a site with "red-haired-girl" in the URL is simply out of the question at work, no matter what the content is. They need to lease a new URL...

If the smart address bar works as advertised...

[Y.A.A.P.]

Then I'm all for that. If this can miraculously find what I'm actually looking for (unlike the mountains of garbage that I have to sift through when I put a query into a search engine these days), then I would love this thing enough to actually kill for it (not kidding or exaggerating in any way).

Somehow, I doubt that it's going to live up to that, however.

The rest of it just sounds like bloatware creeping into an otherwise good browser.

Maybe they should shoot for more useful goals. Things like 100% Acid3 score, selective javascript control, and sandboxing Flash or other resource-intensive web technologies.

Re:If the smart address bar works as advertised...

[calebt3]

then I would love this thing enough to actually kill for it (not kidding or exaggerating in any way) So you're the one that has been killing the kittens!

"Awesome bar"

[bkr1_2k]

Hey, get your fios commercial out of my browser!

Nothing to do with $65 mill from Google?

[f0dder]

This to me sounds suspiciously a lot like something Google would want to be made popular. If it works it pretty much sidelines any advantage of having an OS.

Can I just have a browser

[Giant Electronic Bra]

That doesn't use 200mb of RAM and does a good job displaying web pages?

Time to move on...

What is Awesome in that bar?

[xtracto]

Am I the only one that finds the awesome bar very counter-productive?

In firefox 2, opera and others I just type the first two or three letters of the site I want to visit (like sl for slashdot or gm for gmail) and firefox would show me sites that start with such names, generally taking me to slashdot homepage. However, with this new "awesome" address bar, it tries (and fails) to guess which site am I looking for, therefore I have to type more than three letters and often browse through the list of suggested web sites (usually, it tries to take me to my slashdot user page, instead of the homepage).

Is there a way to turn of that "awesomeness" and leave it as it was before?

Re:What is Awesome in that bar?

[prockcore]

However, with this new "awesome" address bar, it tries (and fails) to guess which site am I looking for

I believe it ranks them based on how often you visit.

I just tried it and simply typing "g" gives me gmail as the first entry in the list.

Weave is a good idea, but dangerous

[lpangelrob]

I like the idea of Weave. I log into 3 different Firefox browsers each day. None have the same bookmarks or history. My last attempt at synchronizing them over the internet resulted in Google deleting the vast majority of my bookmarks. I wasn't about to try that again. That said, I really don't want my cookies, passwords or favorites ending up on a desktop in Thailand unauthorized, for any reason whatsoever.

I also like Prism. I know people like to complain about the bloat of Firefox. It's not like FF has been getting any slower. In fact, through the last 3 beta versions of FF3, it's been getting faster, and the memory usage has actually gone down. What's the big deal?

The primary roadblock at this point is network access. Sometimes I don't have network access on my MacBook, depending where I am (Alaska comes to mind). The ability to continue working on web-based applications, absent of a network, is tantalizing, to say the least. Imagine writing a whole bunch of emails on Gmail, and synchronizing once you get network access. (Like all the stability of Outlook (ha!) and all the continuous service updates of Gmail, rolled into one.)

Re:Weave is a good idea, but dangerous

[bkr1_2k]

You can do that with a standard pop email client using gmail now. Why should it be built into the browser functionality?

Re:Weave is a good idea, but dangerous

[Itchyeyes]

I like the idea of Weave. I log into 3 different Firefox browsers each day. None have the same bookmarks or history. My last attempt at synchronizing them over the internet resulted in Google deleting the vast majority of my bookmarks. I wasn't about to try that again. That said, I really don't want my cookies, passwords or favorites ending up on a desktop in Thailand unauthorized, for any reason whatsoever. There are about 50 Del.icio.us extensions for Firefox as it is that do exactly this. No need for an entirely new browser to get this kind of funtionality.

Re:Weave is a good idea, but dangerous

[lpangelrob]

You can do that with a standard pop email client using gmail now. Why should it be built into the browser functionality?

That's true for email, but from a general standpoint there's only a finite number of applications possible for an infinite amount of web applications. Desktop versions of Picasa, Google Calendar, or even any given corporate intranet app would be nice. Plus, from a developer's standpoint, the idea of being able to push out fixes and having users automatically receive them every time they connected to the network would be a good thing.

Frankly, it sounds a little bit like Java, which is why even as I type this, I wonder where I've heard all this before. (In fact, I work in the commodities industry, and one of our trading platforms works just like this, except they have official releases.)

Re:Weave is a good idea, but dangerous

[tepples]

You can do that with a standard pop email client using gmail now. Why should it be built into the browser functionality? The browser would allow deployment of an application into a sandbox.

Re:Weave is a good idea, but dangerous

[Zantetsuken]

its called Foxmarks - create a free account, upload to their servers (or setup and specify your own) then download/sync changes to other machines

if this is what Mozilla is going to do, they might as well just use the majority of the work Foxmarks has done

the upside of using it as an extension instead of including it with the browser, is that if people don't wanna use it, they don't have to...

Re:Weave is a good idea, but dangerous

[Chris Pimlott]

There are about 50 Del.icio.us extensions for Firefox as it is that do exactly this. No need for an entirely new browser to get this kind of funtionality. Great, but that's only bookmarks. There's a lot more stuff I would like to have synchronized, like about:config settings and history. And especially extension settings. Addons like greasemonkey, stylish, noscript, adblock are quite nice, but configuring them and keeping them up-to-date on multiple computers gets tiresome real quick.

This is where weave would really shine. I am really looking forward to it.

Re:Weave is a good idea, but dangerous

[STrinity]

My last attempt at synchronizing them over the internet resulted in Google deleting the vast majority of my bookmarks

Do what I do -- install a synchronization program and point it at the Firefox profile. Not only will it keep your bookmarks synced, but it'll ensure all your installations have the same extensions.

Re:Weave is a good idea, but dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

Why wait for FF4? Use Opera now. Seriously.

Since 9.5, Opera Link gives you automatically synchronized bookmarks, history and more. FF4 Awesome Bar? Have you seen the 9.5 smart location bar with full text history search? And the bookmark nicknames?

I switched to 9.5 for these great features. I still have to get used to the mail thing though (now I use Thunderbird) but Opera Mail detects mailing list headers automatically and keeps your inbox clutter-free with POP and IMAP support.

IMHO FF is just too slow...

Re:Weave is a good idea, but dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

We do, in fact, have Internet access in Alaska. It just comes via sled dog.

(Full disclosure: I'm a dog handler in Willow, Alaska, the site of the Iditarod restart.)

"more tightly integrated"

[Zakabog]

Mozilla Lab's push is to blur the edges of the browser, to make it both more tightly integrated with the computer it's running on, and also more hooked into Web services.

So what they're saying is, "We're cloning internet explorer"?

Doesn't Firefox already use up enough memory? Currently Firefox is running on my computer using up nearly 800MB of RAM. I have 3 tabs open and none of them are doing anything intense. I'm glad my computer has 2 gigs of RAM but I bought that for Photoshop not Firefox...

Re:"more tightly integrated"

[nebulus4]

Doesn't Firefox already use up enough memory? Currently Firefox is running on my computer using up nearly 800MB of RAM. I have 3 tabs open and none of them are doing anything intense. I'm glad my computer has 2 gigs of RAM but I bought that for Photoshop not Firefox...

Mozilla developers have made a lot of significant changes to the platform on which Firefox 3 is built on, many of those aiming to reduce the browser's memory footprint.

Re:"more tightly integrated"

[lpangelrob]

Doesn't Firefox already use up enough memory? Currently Firefox is running on my computer using up nearly 800MB of RAM. I have 3 tabs open and none of them are doing anything intense. I'm glad my computer has 2 gigs of RAM but I bought that for Photoshop not Firefox...

Odd. I have Firefox 3.0 beta 4, 9 tabs open (at least 3 at a time always, and Gmail open all the time, which is the real killer), mem usage 133 MB. Windows 2000, 784 MB RAM, but I don't think that matters.

Re:"more tightly integrated"

[nebulus4]

Nothing strange about it. He is most definitely using Firefox 2, and due to its caching system and a lot of badly written plugins it leaks memory, a lot of it. I don't really want to repeat myself, but the platform on which Firefox 3 is built on has been significantly changed and therefore it has a smaller memory footprint.

Re:"more tightly integrated"

[Jeff Carr]

800mb? You're doing something wrong.

Mine is currently using 179mb of memory, with 12 tabs open and 21 addons including custom Greasemonkey scripts and Stylish styles running.

Yes, I'm running Windows here at work, but I run the same setup at home on KDE, and still use nowhere near 800mb of memory.

Yes, Firefox could stand to lose a bit of weight possibly, but Firefox 3 is supposed to be shedding some of that.

Besides, the integration that everyone is so up in arms about without reading the article, is Prism, a separate stand-alone application. It would be like complaining that Thunderbird is bloating Firefox because they're based on the same code-base.

Re:"more tightly integrated"

[imbaczek]

FF3 smokes even Opera in memory use. Too bad I still get occasional crashes.

Hold on...

[GameboyRMH]

Firefox is free open source software. Anyone could make a spin-off project in 5 minutes, plus the old source will still be there. What's the issue? If the new Firefox is bloated in the opinion of an at all significant number of people, a Firefox Lite project will spring up in about 3 seconds.

I'd tag this article "dontpanic," but I don't think there is such a tag, plus then I'd be encouraging the use of tags, which are distractingly humorous web-toys at best.

Re:Hold on...

[pizzach]

The question is: How difficult is it to retrofit a new Gecko into an old Firefox?

Now that Firefox is a business and not a nonprofit

[zymano]

Were any of you drawn to firefox and mozilla because it was open source and non profit?

Now that it is getting kickbacks from google do you question it's integrity?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/technology/12link.html

Re:Now that Firefox is a business and not a nonpro

[Kostya]

It's funny you calling it a business. It would be a wonderful turn of events if Firefox/Mozilla became a juggernaut again and put the hurt on MS. It would be like Netscape's Revenge--10 years later, it's decision to open the codebase comes back to haunt and harass MS when they are battling so many fronts.

The Awesome Bar

[Scrameustache]

Where the women are easy and the booze is cheap!

What is it with everyone and HTTP / XML?

[shish]

It seems that the world is moving back to a thin client setup; but instead of a client having a network connection to a server, its communication is via several abstraction and generic transport layers (HTTP / AJAX); instead of using a relevant protocol, everything is translated into XML-based RPC; and instead of using a useful widget set, everyone is bastardising HTML (eg, the hundreds of javascript-based calendar widgets; when all GUI toolkits I know of have one built in).

Is it just me, or is this hideously inefficient, ugly, and Wrong(tm)?

Re:What is it with everyone and HTTP / XML?

[ardor]

Well, there is some wisdom in this setup, however the current stacks are not built for this. GUIs belong in containers like XML or JSON, the actual program should only handle events (button clicked, dialog box closed, text entered etc.) Its the good old model view controller pattern, with the program being the controller.

As said, the current stack is absolutely INappropiate for this kind of usage. HTML just wasn't built for this kind of operation; XUL/XAML are more suited for this. The whole AJAX thing uses the wrong technologies for the job, the HTML/Javascript/XML stack isn't designed for dealing with things like latency, clear MVC separation (note that parts of the controller and model are mixed up with the view in AJAX), standard widgets, accessibility, standardization etc.

So while scripted GUIs are a very good idea (since they allow RAD without code generators, bring you skinning for free, and allow the GUI designer to work independently of the coder), AJAX is only a lukewarm implementation.

Re:What is it with everyone and HTTP / XML?

[Dhalka226]

Is it just me, or is this hideously inefficient, ugly, and Wrong(tm)?

Well, I understand all of your points but I think you're reacting a bit too much.

Is it inefficient? I presume you mean using a smaller pipe (WAN) to move bigger applications than we would have when thin clients were all the rage. It's true. However, there is a clear money value to using free or subscription services rather than rolling your own. Over time you'll exceed the costs that using your own server and buying/making software yourself would cost (assuming you're not really factoring the cost of software upgrades you're getting automatically through a subscription service in and ignoring IT time on your end), but for smaller businesses and any e-business without a brick office, it certainly makes sense to let somebody else worry about those things. So long as your connection and the server's are fast enough to make the software usable to you, the inefficiency doesn't matter that much.

Ugly? Honestly, I think HTML and JS can produce some really sexy-looking things even if they are a bit of a hack, code-wise, to support all the various browser issues. I like, for example, Google Calendar's look at least as much as I like any "real program" calendaring application I've used. Presumably you don't, so it really boils down to a preference thing.

And wrong? Nah. I'm a believer that things are worth what somebody's willing to pay for them, so if somebody finds enough value in services like this to ignore whatever pitfalls they may identify, I'm not going to fault the service. It's obviously providing something for somebody, and I don't think that's wrong at all.

Re:What is it with everyone and HTTP / XML?

[Vellmont]

Is it just me, or is this hideously inefficient, ugly, and Wrong(tm)?

Maybe it's inefficient, ugly, and "wrong", but having a client on essentially every computer that speaks the same language, and being actively developed is a major advantage over trying to develop your own client and display language. (And then have to distribute and maintain that whole package).

The web-browser as client, http as transport, html as display, and javascript as client language has problems, (and large ones). But it's not going away anytime soon for the above reasons. Many of those problems are slowly going away as people build layers so you don't have to directly mess with html, javascript, or deal with the limitations of http.

Re:What is it with everyone and HTTP / XML?

[m50d]

It is. But unfortunately, this horribly inefficient widget set and protocol are the only ones you can rely on all of your clients having installed.

There are several things I blame for this; C++ for not including a standard GUI API, RMS for killing TCL (which would have given us an efficient way of doing apps-in-the-browser), Sun for fucking up java god knows how many times. But as it is, it's sad but true that this hideous mess is the best way available.

Re:What is it with everyone and HTTP / XML?

[Anonymous Coward]

Generality (in the sense of using generic protocols etc.) has its advantages, though. There is something to be said for tried-and-true solutions, and if you want to object, your objections need to be more than merely academic. ("hideously inefficient" obviously isn't true anymore in today's world where there's an abundance of computing power etc.; "ugly" is subjective, and "Wrong(tm)" is what you're trying to assert, so you can't say it's wrong because it's wrong).

Re:What is it with everyone and HTTP / XML?

[master_p]

You are right, and I've been telling this for quite a while (for example, my most recent post here).

I have also suggested this in other sites (example: LtU), but the response was "oh no!" and "disaster!"

For me, it's clear that the so called 'standards' for development of web applications are of very low quality: badly thought out, inefficient, without any concern on security. Perhaps if more people recognized this, the community would be pushed to create something better...

Re:What is it with everyone and HTTP / XML?

[Stu Charlton]

I'd say that HTTP and URIs themselves are enough, XML-based RPC is something of an abomination.

But otherwise, I don't think it's inefficient or ugly if a major goal is global-scale interoperability. Which seems to be the best path to flexibility these days...

Re:What is it with everyone and HTTP / XML?

[jsebrech]

instead of using a useful widget set, everyone is bastardising HTML (eg, the hundreds of javascript-based calendar widgets; when all GUI toolkits I know of have one built in).

Nonsense. Straight X11 doesn't have widgets, it doesn't have much that is useful. The widget sets layer on top of it. I see no reason why html+css+js is so inherently poor to layer on top of. These protocols were designed from the start for low-bandwidth use, graceful degradation for alternate access methods (modem access, small devices, disabled people), and are agnostic to which side (client or server) your content and logic originate from, which allows smoothly balancing load between client and server as needed.

Now, admittedly, the one weakness is the fact that HTTP is stateless, and you end up reconstructing the session on every page request, but this is something that can be worked around through clever design.

On the other hand, flex beats the html stack hands down for performance, ease of development and ease of use, so as a protocol flash/flex wins. Too bad they didn't implement it as a standard that all browsers were forced to carry.

Jesus.

[SatanicPuppy]

Wasn't until I clicked your link that I realized the crappy address bar font explosion I've been idly trying to find a way to disable is a new FEATURE. It's fricking hideous!

Re:Jesus.

[Wavebreak]

Hideous at first? Yeah. Awesome? You're damn bloody right it is. Takes some getting used to is all.

Didn't Microsoft already try this?

[Itchyeyes]

integrated with the computer it's running on, and also more hooked into Web services So Firefox 4 is going to have Active X?

Re:Didn't Microsoft already try this?

[ceroklis]

It already has: http://www.iol.ie/~locka/mozilla/mozilla.htm

Summary of all comments

[radl33t]

"Get off my lawn"

Re:Summary of all comments

[discord5]

"Get off my lawn"

I hear firefox 4 will come with a built-in lawn

Damn!

[sm62704]

You only read my journals at work? =(

(Caution: Link is NSFW)

ha

[ImTheDarkcyde]

"also new in firefox 4, speed dial"

Well, they might as well since Opera is all firefox is aspiring to be. Also: Didn't IE blur the lines of what a browser is a long time ago?

All I want from the address bar

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

All I really want is for the address bar to include sites I've visited many times, but just have never typed in the actual URL before. It's a real pain to start typing only to find that the address isn't coming up in the suggestions and resorting back to the bookmarks menu. Anything more complex than that is a pain for me -- I want less typing, not more.

Re:All I want from the address bar

[SilentGhost]

it works. bookmarks are included in that search. and you can type page title as well.

Re:All I want from the address bar

[el_chupanegre]

Typing into the address bar? That's so old school. If I have a site I visit frequently, it goes on the HTML page that I built myself locally that just contains a nicely CSS'd group of links. Set it as your homepage, use Tab Mix Plus to set every new tab to auto go to your home page and just click what you want to go to. Or, if you have only a few sites, use Speed Dial to get a little thumbnail view of each web page and just click the thumbnail.

Why would you actually type in the bar any more?

Re:All I want from the address bar

[MP3Chuck]

Sounds like you want something like Firefox 3's address bar. When you start typing in the address bar it basically searches your history and bookmarks. So I can type "dot" and it'll still bring up "slashdot" since that's the most relevant result for me.

Re:All I want from the address bar

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Why would you actually type in the bar any more?

Because typing the first 2 or 3 letters of a domain name is the fastest and easiest way for me? I don't want my own homepage with links because that is another thing I have to manage, and that's exactly what I don't want to have to do.

Re:All I want from the address bar

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Ah. Thanks. I'm on 2 at the moment. How stable is 3?

No

[geekoid]

No NO NO! I want an application that runs when I want it, and then has no presences at all when I'm not using it.

Blur the edges of the browser

[theeddie55]

I use compiz to blur the edges of the browser... looks good.

Re:Blur the edges of the browser

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

A few shots of tequila blur up the edges as well. That or taking out my contacts.

Vaporware

[QuietLagoon]

FF v3 is not even released yet. Mozilla is becoming worse than Microsoft, both in vaporware and security-challenged browsers.

Jumped the shark

[Quattro Vezina]

Tagged with "jumpedtheshark".

A web browser should be a web browser, goddammit.

The Mozilla Foundation is the single biggest thing hurting Firefox. The MoFo has already turned Firefox into proprietary software. Seriously, Firefox isn't as free as you think, all while falsely claiming Firefox is open-source. They commit extortion against people who make custom icons, and they've announced that no one is allowed to distribute Firefox without MoFo signing off on it. Debian and the FSF want nothing to do with them, and for good reason.

I have much less of a problem with Opera. Opera doesn't hide the fact that they're not free at all. It's a closed-source browser that admits it. The Mozilla Foundation lacks that honesty.

Not to mention performance: Firefox is a giant memory leak, while Opera just keeps chugging along. Then again, Opera has managed to piss me off with 9.50...I hate how 9.50 totally locks up my computer and makes my hard drive grind for 30 seconds flat every time I type a URL into the address bar.

Re:Jumped the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Mozilla Corporation. Also try understanding what open source means.

Re:Jumped the shark

[trytoguess]

I second the look into what open source is, or at least elaborate you curious "freedom is slavery" like oxymoron. Also, why on earth are you complaining about Opera 9.50 when that is labled as beta?

Web Application vs. Web Service

[Digital_Quartz]

I'm thinking TFA means web applications, and not web services. Even though "web service" is a stupid name, since web services have nothing to do with the world wide web, the two are very different things. I have a hard time seeing web service integration being all that useful in Firefox.

Awesome bar - as envisioned by the A.W.E.S.O.M.-O

[ILikeRed]

Come on - the awesome bar sounds almost as good as the A.W.E.S.O.M.-O 4000

This is what's wrong with software development

[Zuke8675309]

See, now that Firefox is successful, they have to go and add new things in it to justify further development and therefore their jobs.

Here's a novel idea... Write a piece of software, make it work and be bug-free, then STOP. Declare success and move on to something else.

Instead, it sounds like you have Mozilla developers planning to do the exact same thing they and everyone else criticizes Microsoft for - adding bloat.

Beard

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's just me, but when I RTFA (yes, I know... how unusual) it seemed rather ironic to me to see this is what Chris Beard looks like. :)

Huh? Why?!

[neowolf]

They really need to just work on having the fastest and most standards-compliant Web browser available. That is what people want and expect from Firefox.

Microsoft has been trying to "blur the lines" of their browser for years, and look at the mess that's ended up being. Once you start blurring the lines and hooking more and more into the operating system- you create security and reliability risks. Firefox is popular now because it is more standards compliant than IE 7 (and probably IE 8) and is considerably safer and more reliable. Why ruin a good thing?

Re:Huh? Why?!

[RealGrouchy]

They really need to just work on having the fastest and most standards-compliant Web browser available. That is what people want and expect from Opera. Quite true.

- RG>

What made firefox great in the firstplace ...

[gjacobi]

All of these features sound interesting. But, what made firefox great was the fact that it removed all of the bloat. This seems like the beginning of the end.

Privacy?

[assertation]

" It offers users smart URL suggestions as they type based on Web searches and their prior Web browsing history."

That sounds like the kind of privacy issue people (rightfully) yell at Google about. Hopefully they will have an _easy to find_ off switch in case you don't want your browser watching where you go.

Bad move.

[pushf popf]

If I wanted my browser "more tightly integrated with the OS", I'd be running Windows and IE.

I smell a Firefox fork coming down the road.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

off your central topic, but...

[Bandman]

Do you know how many times I've wished for vi style editing in text boxes?

Re:off your central topic, but...

[obender]

Do you know how many times I've wished for vi style editing in text boxes?

Here you have vi in a text area.

Re:off your central topic, but...

[Bandman]

A) that's not really what I meant, but

B) that's outstanding

Thanks a lot. I'd never heard of that, but I'm impressed.

Huh

[Vexorian]

IS this topic proof slashdotters never RTFA ?

Yeah, that's great. What about standards?

[Millennium]

Firefox put Web standards on the map. Now it seems that standards are a distant second to "features" no one knew they wanted (and for good reason). Has Mozilla become the next IE?

Browser Integration

[Dracos]

Didn't we learn the integration lesson from MS and IE (and Word, and Outlook, and Media Player, and...)? Does Mozilla somehow think they won't run into most of the same issues because they're not also an OS vendor, or because they're not Microsoft?

Let apps be apps, let OSes be the OSes.

Not frightful, Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

No. It is just autocomplete based on what is in your bookmarks and history. It's already in Opera 9.5.

This only goes to prove, once again, that the next Firefox is always a badly executed version of the current Opera.

History

[Kaki Nix Sain]

How about just fixing the most broken metaphors of browsing that no longer fit how people use the browser? I'm looking at you History.

Now that tabbed browsing is the norm, it seems that the metaphors surrounding the browser's history are getting a bit dated. For one, it all looks so linearly organized. While over in reality, we have tabs spawning other tabs. When they are opened isn't necessarily at all when they are used (and thus remembered to be relevant). Some tabs are hubs that are returned to again and again, spawning the same or different pages each time there. Sometimes those spoke tabs last for one reading (or less). Sometimes they give rise to other tabs directly, with a middle click, other times indirectly (open new search on something related to the page's content).

All this rich information is completely lost in the current views of history. The complex path we took from then to now is all lost in a flat view that is only somewhat usable, largely because it has some search capability (but even that doesn't reach into the contents of the pages we are presumably searching for).

If there is a plugin for a richer history, I'd be happy to know.

Awesome bar

[Draconistarum]

I use the dropdown bar to go to frequently-typed web sites. I hate that it doesn't work the same way in Firefox 3. Yeah, yeah, I'll get used to it and can use the bookmarks toolbar, but it seems like I'm having to get used to new stuff way too frequently nowadays

Integration ?

[zentronium]

Integration with KDE would be nice.
(Use QT widgets, QT open file dialog, that sort of things)

Drop the awful GTK already !!! GRRRrrr

Re:Awesome Awesome Bar awesomeness!

[Petrushka]

Maybe I've been sheltered, but this is honestly the first time I've seen what truly seems to be astroturfing for free and open source software. I find it hard to believe that there is actually someone outside Mozilla who thinks the Awesome Bar and OS integration are good ideas. Can anyone independently confirm/deny whether the parent works for Mozilla?

There's more than one way to integrate.

[Vellmont]

To all the people panicking about IE like OS integration, I think you're all over-reacting and missunderstanding. There's more than one way to join two things together.

The article doesn't go into specifics, but I'd imagine that what Beard is talking about is creating a browser that has a richer UI, and not limited by the traditional browser window. The effect would be a browser that doesn't look like a browser, and webapps that don't look like webapps. This doesn't mean a tightly-coupled OS/Browser combo like IE is/was. Obviously Mozilla can't really do that, since they don't have control over any OS.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

What is a browser for?

[v(*_*)vvvv]

Web surfing, period. If I wanted to do other things, I'd get the other things that would do it. At least make it a plugin please.

What makes me wish a web page were more tightly integrated with my OS? Absolutely nothing.

What makes me wish the address bar did more than go to where I type? Absolutely nothing.

Things that I wish for:

1) A fast, stable, independent browser that launches and terminates quickly.

2) The address bar not to reset focus when a page is done loading if I am typing.

Firefox is great because of all the plugins. I managed to get it just the way I want it, and I couldn't have done it without them.

Firefox sucks out of the box though, so maybe the developers can work on making a more impressive initial package.

What firefox really needs

[fulldecent]

Open arbitrary mime-typed content using a web service.

Screenshot of the latest Firefox branch:
http://fulldecent2.blogspot.com/2008/03/what-firefox-really-needs.html

This worked SO well for Microsoft!

[argent]

"Mozilla Lab's push is to blur the edges of the browser, to make it both more tightly integrated with the computer it's running on, and also more hooked into Web services."

So Mozilla 2008 == Internet Explorer 1997?

NO, no, no, a thousand times no! BAD Mozilla. No biscuit!

Re:This worked SO well for Microsoft!

[sbsheetz]

Why in the world isn't Microsoft crying "FOUL!"? Didn't tightly integrating their browser with the OS end up costing them BILLIONS? Double-standard, anyone? I'm not trying to evangelize Windows, in fact I work almost entirely in Ubuntu and OS X, but fair is fair. I love Firefox, but it burns me when I see these things!

Re:This worked SO well for Microsoft!

[argent]

Why in the world isn't Microsoft crying "FOUL!"?

Because that would mean admitting they fucked up?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

There are many paths to the same flaws...

[argent]

To all the people panicking about IE like OS integration, I think you're all over-reacting and missunderstanding. There's more than one way to join two things together.

Just because two people take different paths to a goal, if both paths cross the same unsafe bridge they will both fail.

Firefox has already blazed a trail over one of these unsafe bridges with XPI. Instead of having an inherently secure Javascript that has to have extra methods and classes added when it's being used as part of the user interface, they have implemented a path from the unsafe browser environment to the trusted desktop environment - one the XPI installer uses, in fact - and there have already been multiple security vulnerabilities caused by insufficient checks in the browser.

So I have no faith in their ability to solve the problem that Microsoft has been trying to solve for the past 10 years. Let them make Firefox inherently secure, so that the security model fails closed, and then see what kind of integration they can implement in that context.

Re:There are many paths to the same flaws...

[Vellmont]

Just because two people take different paths to a goal, if both paths cross the same unsafe bridge they will both fail.

I think what I'm saying is MS and Mozilla are pursuing different goals, but people are using the same word "integration" to describe them.

As to the rest of your argument, I'm not sure what XPI has to do with changing the usability and UI one comes to expect from a web-browser. Are you just trying to say you "don't trust these mozilla guys"? If so, that's fine I guess. I just don't think it has anything to do with the two different ideas presented here.

Re:There are many paths to the same flaws...

[smallfries]

Try reading his comment again. The connection between "changing the usability and UI one comes to expect from a web-browser" and XPI is exactly what has broken IE ever since Microsoft tried this (as the GP pointed out). When you blur the boundaries between a trusted environment and an untrusted environment, you break the very rudimentary security that the web-browser has. The main outcry in the comments here today is not even about the assumption that FF4.0 would be "bloated" - it's because it'll become the same insecure mess that IE is.

A real desktop application is trusted. I installed it. I gave it access to my local drive. It is fundamentally different to some webapp running in a page that I happened to surf across.

My browser profile is private. If it's going to "float" between browsers then how is privacy going to be guaranteed?

Most people don't want a tightly integrated experience - because the security problems that it would cause are too much hassle for them. They want a browser that works - it browses the web (including whatever scripting, and media that requires) - but it works within a sandbox, away from the rest of their system.

Re:There are many paths to the same flaws...

[argent]

I'm coming at this from the point of view of a security guy.

I think what I'm saying is MS and Mozilla are pursuing different goals

What I'm saying is that they are following the same path.

I'm not sure what XPI has to do with changing the usability and UI one comes to expect from a web-browser.

The fact that they implemented XPI in such a way that it is inherently unsafe and depends on the security of many many internal security and validation checks is one of the indications that they are following the same path as Microsoft in their browser extensions. Since they will need to grant untrusted content more control over the user interface to satisfy their goals, this will increase the complexity of the problem that they are attempting to solve and that Microsoft has been attempting to solve.

Who's even making that koolaid?

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on Drink the Koolaid.

Dude, who's even making *that* koolaid?

Lite weight web browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like its time to start donating to Dillo so the developer can get it off the ground. Anything that lets me browse the internet quickly on my 486 is a friend to me. http://www.dillo.org/

Yeah, but what do you suggest?

[coder111]

Of course it is inefficient and Wrong(tm), and I have commented before on this same issue. And don't get me started on writing rich web applications that run on different browsers. Cross-browser compatibility very frustrating and maybe even harder than cross-platform compatibility.

However, what else do you suggest?

1. A Browser is already available on most systems, nothing to install.

2. Having an application run inside your Browser is reasonably secure.

3. HTTP is a protocol that is enabled/working on 100% of machines connected to the internet.

4. Zero administration. User doesn't have to do anything to get it working.

If you were to have another Application Client, you would need:

1. Damn good design and balance between various issues (performance, friendliness to user, ease of development, security, features, integration into OS, etc). And of course open standards. This can be achieved, but it's not easy. A lot of projects tried it and failed.

2. Popularity. It would have to be on >30% of machines out there. You would basically have to convince Microsoft to include it with Windows. And that is not going to happen, because it would threaten their office monopoly and other products.

3. Networking. You would have to convince millions of clueless network admins and security policy makers to allow another protocol on their network, especially in corporate networks. Not going to happen, and will impede your popularity a lot.

So writing applications for browsers is a really bad idea, but it is the best we have. If Microsoft didn't have a monopoly, and we could easily distribute another client to desktop/home machines, this might be less of an issue.

And practice shows that thin clients are a GOOD idea if you have clueless users. And most of the users are. You cannot trust users to administer their machines properly. Well designed server is more reliable than a malware ridden desktop machine. And it can backup files automatically, preserve user settings, work from different places, etc.

--Coder

"plain English"

[fejikso]

What about plain German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Japanese, Chinese.... ?

It better use dual and more unlike fire fox 2

[Joe The Dragon]

It better use dual and more unlike fire fox 2

Holy Creeping Microsoftism!

[Anonymous Coward]

What a thoroughly bad idea!

It is way past time to have an open source browser that has *nothing* to do with microsoft windows or that way of thinking and doing. NO, having a browser integrated with your apps and OS is just plain dumb.

"More tightly integrated"

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla Lab's push is to blur the edges of the browser, to make it both more tightly integrated with the computer it's running on, and also more hooked into Web services. Moz-ActiveX, anyone?

Big Mistake

[psherma1]

Faster, more secure,lower memory usage.
That's what they should work on and would make it even more popular.
Why waste their time making it more boated and vulnerable
to hack/attack. (Integrating with OS cannot help but do this...)

Konqueror- Or not?

[martinw89]

We are all making comparisons to IE trying this direction years ago. I was tempted to further comment on KDE's similar attempts that were split up with 4. But in making looking to the original article, I found that I couldn't compare much. Prism, the direction in which "the lines are blurred", does not make attempts at system management or even at messing with your files. It does however give the option to make web applications like GMail work similar to local apps. According to more information about Prism, this also gives the options of having specific profiles for specific web applications. Think about it: you could have a slimmed down, no add-on profile for quickly checking your e-mail. And for general browsing you could have the full profile, no-script, adblock plus etc. Sounds pretty original

Firefox Lite exists

[Tumbleweed]

Maybe FireFox needs a "lite" version.

It already exists: K-Meleon

Web -2.0

[fph il quozientatore]

Cool. This way on, Firefox 7.0 will be looking much like Emacs.

Re:Web -2.0

[bazald]

Actually, I'm pretty sure that there is an emacs command to make it behave like Firefox 7.0. If only I could remember it...

How about fixing 3 first?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't they actually you know, concentrate on making 3 not a buggy bloated piece of shit and releasing it in a usable state, before setting their bar too high for the next next version?

Re:How about fixing 3 first?

[pandrijeczko]

Why don't you, you know, concentrate on not being a moron?

Firefox 3 is still beta state - therefore it's safe to assume that there will be a few major bugs in it still.

Are they the same team to begin with?

[pizzach]

Interesting. From what I have seen, the Firefox and Gecko teams are separate entities. I don't think the Firefox guys work on the engine at all to speak of. (A Firefox version increase not meaning a Gecko version increase is a symptom of this.) But I could be wrong....

Linspire

[dunc78]

Isn't that the same argument the guy creating Linspire (or whatever the hell it was called) was trying to make. I guess the issue was the default user in Linspire was root or something, but I also forget what the exact issue was? Anyway, his point was users data is pretty much the most important thing on a computer, the rest is just a tool to generate and keep the data.

Re:Linspire

[moranar]

No, I don't agree with that. The root user in a Linux distro has the power to install, configure and run any kind of server, while an unprivileged user doesn't. It's better for the rest of us that people on our networks don't run as root. Hijack a privileged account and you can set up a spamserver, whatever you want.

Re:Linspire

[Anonymous Coward]

That's BS. Regular *nix users can run "servers", they just can't listen on a low port. In practice this a meaningless distinction for your friendly neighborhood botnet spammer.

Sure it will blur...

[M0nk-e]

but will it blend?

Even if you were right, you'd be wrong! :)

[Xtifr]

Numerous people have responded to point out that you're not right--almost nobody is defending this move for FF. Nevertheless, your argument would be invalid even if it were justified: MS didn't get in trouble for integrating the browser with the OS! They got in trouble for trying to shut down competition by leveraging their monopoly! Integrating the browser with the OS is how they were leveraging their monopoly, but it wouldn't have been a (legal) issue if they weren't trying to abuse their monopoly position to shut down competition. MS has a monopoly, so they can engage in anti-competitive behavior--Mozilla doesn't, so it can't. Which means that if this were a good move on Mozilla's part, it would not be hypocritical to say so while still condemning MS's actions. Which is what you were suggesting.

Bottom line: even if Mozilla integrates FF with the OS, you'll still easily be able to remove it and use some other product instead. When MS decided to integrate IE with the OS, it became unremovable, and still gets used for some processes (like updating) even by the most fanatic IE haters.

more tightly integrated

[nurb432]

Umm since when is this what we wanted?

Re:Now that Firefox is a business and not a nonpro

[Xtifr]

Were any of you drawn to firefox and mozilla because it was open source and non profit? Yes.

Now that it is getting kickbacks from google do you question it's integrity? No.

Any more questions?

(I could elaborate on my reasons, but first I'd want to be convinced that parent wasn't trolling. I will point out that "open source" and "non profit" are orthogonal concepts, though, for those who want a hint.)

awesomebar...

[revery]

I don't know how much I'll like the awesomebar. For the past few years, I've been using a combination of the keyconfig extension and Firefox quick searches to give me quick acess to all the sites I use. (In case anyone's curious, I use keyconfig to map Ctrl-space to select the address bar and then I've modified a lot of the quick searches and added some of my own so that I type "d word" to search dictionary.com, "w topic" to search Wikipedia, "y search term" for youtube, etc...) It works great for me and it's gotten to the point that my wife has started to use it as well.

So I don't know how I'll like the "awesomebar"...

Acid tests

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn. You know what would be even more awesome? How about skipping all that extra junk and focus on perfecting standards support. I'd like "stripped down and perfect," not "everything to everyone." Please?

Damn Chuck Norris worship

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have called it a "piece of shit".

Which is also what I call the new URL bar in Firefox 3, coincidentally.

Microsoft Bob or Clippy

[ruinevil]

So Firefox is going to get Microsoft Bob or Clippy? I already hate awesomebar, but now they want to either save important private information on 3rd party servers or integrate itself with my OS? :\

Good thing I'm using Konqueror4 to write this... If the Mozilla people are reading this, give Firefox better KDE integration.

Awesome Bar?

[AmigaMMC]

The only "awesome bar" I care for is the one where free drinks are offered. I have been betatesting FireFox 3 for almost a month now and I can already tell you I hate their "awesome bar." The so-called smart suggestions get in the way, when I type something in the search bar I'm more interested in having an alphabetized list of sites I've visited, as it is standard, than a load of crap I have to search through to get what I want. With tons of extensions that don't work and their "awesome bar" I'm afraid it won't be too long before I switch back to FF2 or some other browser when 2 becomes obsolete... hate to admit it but IE8 doesn't look that bad (and I'm not talking about actual "look"). "awesome bar" ... tsk!

OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

This fucking sucks. Get rid of that stupid motherfucker.

Hypocrisy

[Anonymous Coward]

More tightly hooked and coupled into the OS? Wasn't that the main complaint about Internet Explorer?

M$ haters crack me up.

Awesomebar?

[Junior J. Junior III]

I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.

This is nice but...

[kilodelta]

Would they please get the add-on's rocking for FF3? I'm still using 2.0.0.13 right now because I use a ton of add-on's that aren't available for FF3 yet.

How to diagnose faulty addons?

[Chris Pimlott]

I often hear this explanation - that it's the firefox plugins causing the crashes, the memory bloat, the slowness, etc. Accepting that this might be true, what's a user to do about it? Is there a good way to determine what plugin(s) are causing memory leaks or are using up too much CPU? In short, how can you distinguish between the good and bad plugins?

Re:Awesome Awesome Bar awesomeness!

[NoMaster]

The only part that interests me is the potential for a bar to provide intelligent answers to everyday questions.

Unfortunately, they seem to have started developing that potential by implementing the "Retard Bar" - one that thinks the answer to the question "What's the 'News for Nerds' website starting with 'sl' that I visited the other day?" is http;//www.fuglybitches.com/ads/banner/popup.html, because it has the page title "Sluts with nuts"...

powerful & invasive platform?

[lpq]

"...to make it both more tightly integrated with the computer it's running on, and also more hooked into Web services. So extended, the browser becomes an even more powerful and pervasive platform for all kinds of applications."

Anyone else see "browser hooking into the OS and web making it a powerful and invasive platform for all kinds of spyware for reporting back to 'web services' on user activities" in all of this, or is this just my paranoia talking?

When they start speaking like this

[Anonymous Coward]

Its probably a good time to fork the project.

Not "Firefox". The Mozilla platform maybe.

[Flammon]

Seems like many Slashdotters are missing the point. The idea is to use the same technology that is used in the Firefox browser such as the rendering engine (Gecko), style sheets, scripting, XUL, etc. and use it for more than simply browsing the web. Let's call these parts the Mozilla platform. So now we have a web browser, Firefox, an mail client, Thunderbird and a calendar application, Sunbird. Why not an instant messenger, a media player, a bittorrent client, a document reader.

I would love to be able to set the look of my desktop by simply changing a style sheet or extend my applications by writing a little JavaScript. The Mozilla platform has become very capable over the years and could make the development of powerful network integrated desktop applications very easy. The name Firefox was used in the article because it is familiar but The Mozilla platform would have been a better choice of words.

right

[Stu Charlton]

Next, solve this problem we have with IP having a limited address space, let's call it IPv6 ....

HTML 5 is the attempt to make it better, and it will probably take 10 years. There's no alternative that has the right players supporting it (and HTML 5 barely has Microsoft supporting it as is). If an alternative rewrite did emerge, it would have to be 10x better and have major support that isn't just Microsoft (which rules out Silverlight).

too true

[Stu Charlton]

Many technical people want to cling to what they're comfortable with. To the crusties, the web is just "one app" among many non-web apps vs. the newer view that different apps are just different ways of working with "the web" of documents & data -- so why not have a platform? Likewise, calls to make plugins or multimedia become isolated or minimized, to see less richness & more leanness, etc. is often the opposite of what many people seem to want, which seems to be "make everything I do available on the web".

it's funny how the pattern of arguments never go away. higher-level languages were a toy through the 1970's and a bit into the 80s, assembly was the only way for Real Nerds to program.... through 1994, a GUI was a toy, Real Nerds used the command prompt.. and that argument still had cred through the late 90's.... Then the web came out and people wondered why Gopher or FTP wasn't good enough... then the Web added IMG tags with animated GIFs and JS and Flash and people wondered why most didn't just turn these off or use Lynx...

What's common about these argument is that the conservative forces typically have wound up losing, and it seems to be happening quicker (i.e. there's less inertia these days)...

Not quite

[amake]

He used && && and.

...Really...?

[SEMW]

But on Linux, backing everything up is far simpler than windows. cp -rf ~ /backup does the job.
Compare it to Windows... Is xcopy %UserProfile% D:\backup /s /i /h really that much more effort to type than cp -rf ~ /backup? I mean, I know the latter is a bit shorter, but it's not exactly "far simpler".

Re:...Really...?

[cheater512]

Doing that on Windows will copy a fraction of your settings, some of your files and a huge amount of crap.
Linux gets every single file of yours, every single setting and very little crap.

Slight difference dont you think?

Re:...Really...?

[SEMW]

Doing that on Windows will copy a fraction of your settings, some of your files and a huge amount of crap. Linux gets every single file of yours, every single setting and very little crap.
Slight difference dont you think? Well, yes, there would be... if your first two sentences were accurate. Sadly, however, repeating stating the same thing without evidence doesn't make it true.

Let's take a quick look at the differences between Windows' \Users and Linux's /home, for both files and settings. Files first.

Linux:
- Save As dialogues almost universally default to the current user's home directory, which itself can be placed anywhere (e.g. on a different partition).
- The Home directory's location can be easily found programatically though the environment variable $HOME.
- Saving documents in places in the filesystem other than the home directory is strongly discouraged, a policy enforced through permissions (root access is needed).
- However, users do usually have permissions to save files anywhere on any other mounted hard drives (adjustable using user/nouser flags in fstab).

Windows:
- Save As dialogues usually default to the relevent subfolder of the current user's userfolder depending on the application; such as the Documents subfolder. The userfolder can can be placed anywhere (e.g. on a different partition).
- The user folder's location can be easily found programatically though the environment variable %UserProfile%, and various subfolders through variables such as %Documents%.
- Saving documents on the hard drive other than the userfolder is discouraged, a policy enforced through permissions in more recent versions of Windows (admin priviliges needed), but not enforced by default in older versions.
- Users do usually have permissions to save files anywhere on any other mounted hard drives (adjustable using ACLs).

Looks pretty similar so far, doesn't it? A differently named environment variable here, an s/root/admin there, but they're broadly similar. Let's look at the picture for settings.

Linux:
- All user-specific settings stored in hidden subdirectories of the home folder.
- Settings can usually be copied to a different computer without problems.

Windows:
- User-specific settings stored in \appdata subfolder of the userfolder, and in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER section of the registry. The latter is stored as a hive in two files in the userfolder. In older versions of Windows, many programs tended to store settings in the program's folder in Program Files rather than the userfolder; in more recent versions, such writes are silently redirected to the appropriate subfolder of the userfolder through file and registry virtualisation.
- User-specific application data and registry hives are divided up into "Local" and "Roaming". Application settings stored in "Roaming" (including the registry hive NTUser.dat) must be copiable to a different computer without problems, which I assume is the basis for the Roaming user profiles in Active Directory. However, application settings stored in "Local" (including the registry hive Usrclass.dat) will not work when copied to a different computer, as the name suggests (e.g. this is where web browsers might store their cache, and other computer-specific crap).

So, a much larger difference between the OSes in the way they store settings than files. And Linux certainly is the simpler one, and has the definite advantage that you can just copy and paste the entire home folder when restoring without having to worry aboutg the difference between Local and Roaming.

But the evidence for your claims of huge differences in the way the OSes store user data is notably lacking.

Re:...Really...?

[cheater512]

Under Linux, every program obeys the conventions.

Under Windows you'll find data in Program Files, C:\ (my sister uses that for example *shudder*) and in the registry.
The programs which use the 'correct' folder are somewhat rare.
All the big ones do it properly of course.

Stuff which is in the registry cant be extracted cleanly without massive headaches.
90% of programs store all their config data in there and its impossible to backup properly.

I dont really care about new features Vista has.
I'm telling it how it happens in reality and not what 'should' happen.

(Oh btw you forgot about ~ on linux.)

Re:...Really...?

[SEMW]

Under Windows you'll find data in Program Files, C:\ (my sister uses that for example *shudder*) and in the registry. The programs which use the 'correct' folder are somewhat rare. I addressed all this in my post (first Windows paragraph, third bullet point). Yes, it certainly is possible to store data anywhere you like if you're logged in as admin (root in Linux), and most people usually were admin in XP and prior. The obvious answer is that if you actively choose to store your data somewhere other than your userfolder, in any operating system, then back that place up as well as your userfolder! You claim that it is rare for programs to use the correct folder *by default* is not true in my experience: very few programs go to the bother of writing their own file dialogues; most just use the Windows common dialogues, which default to My Documents unless the program explicitly specifies some other parameter (which few do).

90% of programs store all their config data in [the registry] and its impossible to backup properly. xcopy %UserProfile%\NTUser.dat D:\backup\ /h ?

I dont really care about new features Vista has. I'm telling it how it happens in reality and not what 'should' happen. ...That you don't care about the way programs in recent versions of Windows store files and settings is a slightly strange statement, given that we are engaged in a discussion about the way programs in Windows and Linux store files and settings...

(Oh btw you forgot about ~ on linux.) Using $HOME is more reliable than ~, since tilde epansion is a feature of the specific shell you're using rather than Linux itself; and some shells (e.g. ASH) don't support it. $HOME will always work.

Re:...Really...?

[cheater512]

Off the top of my head: Eagle stores all its data in its Program Files directory.
(Its a common PCB CAD program and in the latest beta they have moved it to My Documents)
I seem to recall Microsoft Money doing the same thing. I'm not sure about the latest versions.

Backing up the registry is a awful idea.
Anyway correct me if I'm wrong but dont programs also store their settings globally? Not per user?

Its nice that they are trying to rectify the problems but the fact still stands that you'll miss settings and data if you only back up your profile directory.
Also you'll get a couple of gig of crap since the temp directory is in there and it accumulates crap rapidly.

I see where your coming from but if I was running Windows and I needed to do a backup, I would not simply do what you described.
I'd be doing a through scrub of the system looking for data. ;)

I'd rather

[DerWulf]

I'd rather they focus on, excuse me, AJAX and Flex execution speed and footprint. Already there are webpages out there where firefox will hog all of the CPU and over 100 megs of memory. This will only get worse as rich client webapp frameworks like GWT, ECHO and JSeamless become better known and is one area where they could hit internet explorer where it hurts.

Webkit + Safari/Konq is looking better and better

[foniksonik]

I have to say that for web browsing, webkit + Safari/Konqueror is looking like the browser of choice. No fancy plugins, no toolbars that waste resources.... just a fast rendering engine and a web browser that does web browsing. It's got the best features (tabs, nice bookmark manager, rss reader builtin, developer tools - console, network monitor, resource viewer, dom/html/css inspector) and is quickly adding support for CSS3, HTML5 and of course has passed ACID 3.

David Hyatt has a clear vision of what web kit should do and the Safari team and Konq team seem to know where to put their efforts as well (ie, not in lame bells and whistles unrelated to web browsing)

Safari on Windows got a bad rap recently due to a decision to push it out via iTunes so there is that still.... and yet I think that is probably not a real downside to the software itself, more of a mark against Apple's marketing team for making a bad decision about how to improve their install base for Safari.

Emacs works great for me.

[PaulGaskin]

Does Emacs have too many options for you?

Can we start by being CSS1/2/3 & HTML 5/SVG...

[tyrione]

Compliant? I want the browser to actually cover the Standards. Try that first.

dowsie

[Anonymous Coward]

It was that damned 'tighter integration' that made the abortion that is windowsie. It's so damned integrated you might as well be naked to the net.

Re:Now that Firefox is a business and not a nonpro

[poofyhairguy82]

It would be like Netscape's Revenge--10 years later, it's decision to open the codebase comes back to haunt and harass MS when they are battling so many fronts.

Not only is it Netscape's revenge for Firefox's increase in market-share or financial success, but it now it seems that Firefox is working to achieve Netscape's greater vision. This vision is worse to Microsoft than the mere thought of losing market-share: running applications through a web browser and making the OS obsolete. Microsoft's infamous monopoly case before the DOJ was due to extreme tactics they undertook to kill Netscape's vision. They have even killed IE itself for a while before the second browser war in order to keep IE from getting there. Now other browsers like Firefox, Opera, and Safari are able to get to the point where the OS matters less and less despite MS best efforts.

HALT, ABOUT FACE, MARCH!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla Foundation: TURN THE SHIP AROUND NOW.

Do NOT blur the line between browser and anything else. If you do, you will simultaneously kiss your most devoted user base goodbye.

Firefox 4? 3 isn't even out yet. Mozilla, you're acting more corporate all the time... did you put someone stupid in charge?