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

Re:is it just me?

[dvice_null]

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

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: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: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

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.

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

[jeremyp]

Your case is helped by the blatant lie about Minesweeper.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Try Flashblock instead.

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: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: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: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.