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Firefox's Effect On Other Browsers
An anonymous reader points out an interview with Mozilla's "evangelist," Christopher Blizzard, regarding the future of Firefox and how it affects other browsers. It's an Austrian site, so forgive the comma abuse. From derStandard:
"It's sort of interesting though, part of our strategy is to make sure, that we continue making change and the indirect effect of this is that Microsoft continues to have to do releases, because if we get so far ahead that we're able to drive the platform they are not able to keep up and keep their users. I mean, we have this joke which says 'Internet Explorer 7 is the best release we ever did,' because they would not have done it, if we would have not built Firefox. And the same is true for Apple, they are doing a lot to keep up with us. Safari 3.1 is a good example, as far as we see it, the only reason they did this release was that Firefox 3 would come out and have Javascript speed which would be twice as fast as theirs, cause that's how it was before. So by pushing other people to make releases we can go on our mission to make sure the web stays healthy."
What astonishes me is more that this latest release has gotten even my totally non-tech-savvy friends to download it and acknowledge its superiority to Internet Explorer 7. The Firefox team has not only improved the browser for those of us who already used it, but managed to convert another large segment of the market. It's sort of like the Nintendo Wii effect -- they realized it made more sense not to enlarge their slice of the tech-savvy pie, but to expand the pie to include casual users as well. Or at least that's how I see it, feel free to correct me with your own interpretation.
Or maybe they did it because they were pushing javascript apps for the iPhone, and working on the javascript-based SproutCore frameworks and the associated MobileMe apps.
Not everything revolves around Firefox.
Apple did not release Safari because of Firefox. After all, Firefox was on Apple. They released it because they wanted to be in control of their future. As it was, MS had announced that they were going to pull MSIE from them. What amazes me, is that Apple has not pushed OO to be on there. They would be smart to add a few coders to the project just to ensure that it can compete against Office on their platform.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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You are indeed correct - but there was more to it than that. Keep in mind that at the time they put Win2K into the planning stages, OS/2 had the server market (due to all the vertical market businesses that IBM catered to). MS needed something that competed, and was decent.
Of course, the other added factor was continually breaking and changing networking implementations and such to ensure that since "your" workstations (mostly) ran Windows, the server had to as well.
Before that, you could manage a Windows domain from OS/2 simply by drag-n-drop. Since MS couldnt beat that (and still doesnt have anything remotely close), they had to make another release (both for competitive reasons and to break compatibility with LanMan).
The key thing (competition) is what died in those areas... fortunately in the browser market, MS can no longer leverage their monopoly to create a similar situation, leaving everyone having to either play catch-up to stay in the game or fighting to stay ahead. We all benefit...
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Except Opera lagged behind with the most significant feature: being free.
According to the wiki timeline it wasn't until around 2000 when a 'free' version became available (supported by inbuilt ads), and then as recent as 2005 when finally the ads were removed.
Firefox will eventually use tamarin, which should be on par with Squirelfish.
Yes, but Squirelfish was developed first. Hence proving my point, Firefox is not the only leader in innovation; as this "evangelist" seems to be implying.
I suggest taking a look at the commit history of both Gecko and Webkit in the last year or so where JS perf is concerned.
You'll find that they've basically been pushing each other, in almost perfect alternation: one checks in a patch that makes it faster, the other responds with changes that make it faster, etc.
Seriously, go read the checkin logs.
KDE open-sourced KHTML. Apple didn't have a choice in the matter.
Nonsense. KHTML is LGPL. Apple could have used the libraries without contributing anything back.
Moreover, the DOM is Apple's, not KHTML's. WebCore, the basic component of WebKit, has very little relationship to KHTML.
It was so divergent that the KDE folks pretty much had to accept WebKit as the new KHTML if they wanted to accept the improvements.
That's not at all true. Most of the improvements shared back upstream, including KHTML's ability to pass Acid2, were adapted prior to the merger. KDE adopted WebKit by choice. There was nothing stopping them from continuing development of KHTML separately, nor was their any requirement that the KDE people actually adopt any of Apple's improvements.
Sour grapes that KHTML was largely abandoned in favor of something better doesn't explain why it's WebKit, and not KHTML, that is being adopted by other platforms.
LGPL isn't the same as a BSD permissive-style license,
No. But neither is it the same as the GPL generally.
The reason it was known as the Library GPL is that it allowed the non-contributory use of GPL'd libraries by other types of software licensed under terms incompatible with the GPL.
The KHTML library changes would have had to be shared per the terms of the licenses. This requirement, however, does not even encompass all of WebCore, let alone WebKit.
As far as I know, however, any changes or improvements made to the LGPL'ed programme itself must be distributed Freely, with source, if it is to be distributed at all.
Any changed or improvements to the LGPL'd software, which it is a complete program or a library. In the case of KHTML, it is a set of libraries. Those libraries were adopted into the codebase for WebCore--and only those libraries derived from the KHTML libraries would need to be shared.
It does not extend to other libraries written by Apple or any other developer, and it does not extend to products merely containing those libraries. Limiting that "wagon-hitching" (widely, and in some ways regrettably, known as "parasitic") effect of the GPL is the reason the LGPL exists in the first place.
You obviously didn't deal much with Win 3.x. Registry is much better than config files scattered throughout. I wouldn't mind if it were replaced, but it needs to be a step forward, not back. Linux still has config files scattered in a zillion different places. It would be nice if all configs went into an organized hierarchy.
Um. All the configs do go into an "organized hierarchy"! It just happens to be a filesystem hierarchy (/etc) rather than an impenetrable binary file.
XML files located in a couple of standardized locations. As in one location for machine level configs, and one location each for user level configs.
XML sucks for configuration files, to be honest. Trying to hand-edit XML in a 40x80 nano session in single-user mode... no thanks. Not to mention that XML is decidedly grep-unfriendly.
I think I'm going to have to assume that you don't have a clue what you're talking about, I'm afraid. Try harder!
Pirate Party UK
or even competition. I don't view them that way (I don't pay for any of them) - they're just different choices.
And to all those ignorant mods who called me a troll: Opera has been around in fairly significant numbers since about 2000. Even if it had minimal market share, that is the timeframe in which it became noticed by the web cognoscenti. Firefox came out around the end of 2004 (pre-Mozilla came out around the end of 2002).
At the time Mozilla/Firefox was being formed, IE was pretty static, with no significant feature development occurring (IE6 in 2001, IE7 not until 2006). IE certainly wasn't driving feature development in other browsers. Safari didn't even exist in public until 2003.
In addition to the obvious tabbed browsing (no, they didn't invent tabs, but they did popularize them in browsers), Opera has also set the bar for standards support and rendering speed.
Specifically with reference to the article and Mozilla/Firefox, the three most significant UI features of Mozilla/Firefox, tabbed browsing, easy inline find, and custom shortcuts, all appeared in Opera previously.
Yes, Opera has been a significant factor in driving feature development in other browsers, and it deserves that recognition and respect, even if you choose to use something else.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
IE7 has the security and reliability. It's also quicker than FF and doesn't leak memory like a sieve
In the classic battle of IE7 vs FF2, he's absolutely right.
I tried FF2 a few years ago when everyone seemed unable to get enough of the kool-aid. While superior to IE6 for its tabbed browsing, once IE7 rolled out, FF2 lost its only edge.
Today, I run FF3 with minimal addons. I don't use NoScript, because it turns normal web browsing into a circus of "allow" clicks, and makes UAC look good.
Still though, I refuse to drink either side's kool-aid. Firefox is not the shining gift from heaven some people think it is, and IE is not the complete trash slashdotters generally insist it is.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
...you mean something like /etc/ and /home/ ?
"Scattered" is just another way of saying fault tolerant.
If all of my eggs aren't in one basket, and a poorly constructed
basket at that, then I don't have to worry about them being all
destroyed by one stupid mistake.
One app doesn't NEED a mechanism by which it can conveniently
destroy everyone else's configuration or the configuration for
every other app.
Once you centralize something you need to start thinking about
how little things like disaster recovery and change management
are going to be handled. "Some XML file" just doesn't cut the
mustard. It's another registry quagmire waiting to happen.
It's this simpleminded "convenience centric" thinking that clobbers Windows.
You've identified no clear problem that needs to be solved with this poorly thought out new mechanism.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.