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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.
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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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I always maintained that Win2K was such a good OS specifically because of the competition Microsoft was getting from open source, they didn't want to be caught napping and wake up to find Linux as a good desktop solution. This theory kind of fell apart with Vista, I have no idea what that steaming pile is in response to.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Safari is not trailing Firefox as it is being developed in all ways, especially JavaScript performance. I actually prefer to use Firefox 3 on the Mac (much better array of plug-ins, and better security), but the latest WebKit nightlies, on http://www.webkit.org/ since the implementation of Squirelfish (see blog there) are quite a bit faster in JavaScript performance than Firefox. If anything, Firefox is going to have some catching up to do in that department.
And Opera is feeling so pressured by Firefox that it is systematically forced to copy Firefox's features months and even years before Firefox releases them... ^_^
What will Firefox copy next? (what? troll?)
Are you sure that apple just slap their own GUI on WebKit?
http://trac.webkit.org/
middle-click-to-close on tabs comes to mind
It's hard to tell between a left-click, middle-click, and right-click on a one button mouse...
While Firefox may have inspired the release of IE 7 and pushed Apple to jump into the fray with a Windows release of Safari, it is also true that FF 2 was not all that it should have been and just maybe IE 7 and Safari pushed Mozilla hard enough to really ace FF 3 which it seems that they have done.
As a software developer who once loathed the idea of having to code for multiple browsers, I have now accepted that there will be differences and have learned to deal with it and promise to stop whining.
I applaud the browser race and hope that they continue to leapfrog each other for a long time to come.
is that Firefox has been driven (to a large extent) by Opera.
Credit where credit is due, please.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I never knew, that German, was quite so, comma-happy.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
The SQLite manager add-on is incredible.
I'm looking forward to canned index databases for interesting site(s).
The whole idea of exposing data to the user is going to lead to some interesting long-term effects.
If nothing else, one hopes that it will help usher the demise of that ugly data Bastille called the Windows Registry.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
... Firefox, Opera, IE and Safari all are great networking operating systems. They just lack good browsers.
My FF 3.1 never crashes on XP SP2.
Could you provide specific sites that break?
I wonder about your break problems. Is there anything specific that goes wrong?
Is your virus scan up to date?
What is your OS?
Are you Bill Gates perhaps? (sorry for the thought)
Thanks and I hope FF goes better for you,
Jim
Apple does very little of the core work for Safari. They just take the open-source WebKit engine and slap their own UI over it
You are incredibly misinformed. A quick glance at recent WebKit changes readily shows how blatantly false your claim is.
In Ubuntu 8.04, firefox will crash randomly on pages that have flash video with sound. There is a bug apparently between flash and pulseaudio. There have been a few patches that have been released, and it is better, but still sometimes crashes.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Macbooks still only ship with a 1 button trackpad.
Who needs 2 buttons?
Two fingers and a click gives you the secondary mouse button and dragging 2 fingers around the trackpad gives you scrolling (horizontal and vertical). 3 finger swipes gives you back and forward navigation as well.
2 button trackpads are so last year.
They just take the open-source WebKit engine and slap their own UI over it
WebKit was developed by Apple, originally as a fork of KHTML for their Safari browser. Apple open-sourced WebKit and it was so good that many of its improvements were copied back into KHTML. It's also being used by a number of mobile phones because of its strengths relative to e.g, Gecko, including Android.
Without Apple, there would be no WebKit. But don't let reality get in your way.
This reminds me of a comment from Brian Behlendorf concerning the design of the Apache License to allow for modifications of the code for commercial release without accompanying source code, in contrast to the GPL. Behlendorf said that this was deliberate because the Apache Foundation believed that supporting the web protocols was more important than the keeping contributions to the Apache code open source.
Interesting to see this sentiment echoed from the client side a decade later.
I have a problem with pop-under windows. They "reappeared" recently, and I'm using FF exclusively. Unfortunately I can't tell if my switch from FF2 to FF3 was the reason, but it was around the time. Is this a known bug? I know I can try to figure out the domains of the sites appearing in those unwanted windows, but I'd be more interested in a general solution. BTW, I have "block pop up windows" activated in the settings, with a few exceptions.
Apple open-sourced WebKit and it was so good that many of its improvements were copied back into KHTML.
Umm, KHTML was licensed as LGPL, which means Apple had to open source their fork if they distributed it. As for improvements being copied back, well that happened to some extent, but the Konquerer team seems to have pretty much given up on KHTML and are contributing to Webkit now.
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.
I hated every alternative to Opera until I tried... oh wait, nevermind. Still hate every alternative.
See what I did there? Completely subjective.
There is no knowledge that is not power.
Yes, because holding two fingers on the trackpad and then clicking is so much easier than just clicking the other button...err, wait...
Actually it is. According to the usability tests I've seen, it is faster and has a lower failure rate because to hit the second button you have to either stretch your hand over or use your other hand, neither of which is ideal. For mice, where one hand is already off the keyboard, multiple buttons are a usability win for experts, but for trackpad users it is a loss for novice users and expert users and more usable but less learnable for middle of the road users.
No, you're thinking of GPL. The LGPL would have allowed them to use KHTML libraries without giving anything back.
They can link to it without giving anything back, but the LGPL does not allow them to make changes to it and distribute them without giving the source back. Since Apple had to make significant changes to make it work modularly and the way they wanted, they had to give all those changes back. They don't have to open source the code for Safari, which links to Webkit, and in fact they don't.
WebCore's "improvements" are largely Apple's own doing, apart from those changes which were shared upstream before KDE developers abandoned KHTML.
Apple has done significant work to make Webkit better than KHTML was, but they are certainly building on a lot of work that was done before they entered the game. Apple has played nice with the Konqueror folks and gone out of their way to help them integrate changes and revise the way the shared code base was developed such that improvements from multiple groups including Konqueror, Apple, and Nokia can all be included. That said, to claim Apple had a choice about how Webkit would be licensed or if their changes to it would be open source is simply not true.
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.
Well, I can't claim to be an expert on the LGPL, but Wikipedia would seem to be in contradiction with you, and while I don't trust Wikipedia implicitly, I trust it more than random internet guy.
Further...
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Lesser_General_Public_License
So it looks like the LGPL forces them to release the changes made to KHTML, but allows them to link to it from non-free applications (Safari)
As for why other platforms adopted it, perhaps its the fact that one of the big changes that apple made was to abstract the use of widget a bit, to allow for more toolkits than just QT to be used (like, say, theirs?), making it more viable on other platforms.
the LGPL does not allow them to make changes to it and distribute them without giving the source back. Since Apple had to make significant changes to make it work modularly and the way they wanted, they had to give all those changes back.
You are still being imprecise. The LGPL does allow them to make whatever changes they like, so long as the KHTML libraries they are using are used intact. I do not disagree that any modified libraries had to be shared back upstream, but those changes are portions of WebCore, itself a portion of WebKit. There was no requirement that compartmentalized changes, improvements, and additions be shared if they extended beyond the four corners of the KHTML libraries.
WebCore is much more than rewritten KHTML libraries. WebKit is much more than WebCore.
That said, to claim Apple had a choice about how Webkit would be licensed or if their changes to it would be open source is simply not true.
It absolutely is true. There was no obligation to open-source WebKit. There wasn't even an obligation to open-source the entirety of WebCore and JSCore. There was an obligation to share changes to modified libraries.
What's simply not true is that Apple had no alternative. Apple provided WebKit tactically, not out of obligation to disclose it in its entirety and certainly not out of the goodness of their "hearts".
That's incorrect. Changes made internal to LGPL software must be released, it's only external software that links to LGPL that has the right to stay closed.
For what you're saying to be true KHTML would need to be generic enough to be modified by Apple via linking rather than changing any of the internal KHTML code. The changes Apple have made did involve digging into and changing the guts of KHTML. Again, for what you're saying to be true then KHTML would have to be little more than a canvas for Apple to draw upon.
However we know it's not, and that the changes for progress were internal to the software and therefore Apple did not choose to open source it -- it was open source due to the KHTML license.
This is true, other than that Apple approached it as a fork. They didn't take the time to join the KHTML team and win over the developers with strong arguments and robust debate. It certainly wasn't that kind of software development.
Instead what Apple did was divergent, it was effectively a fork, and KDE chose to go with the fork (probably due to the quality of the code). I personally think that what Apple did was acceptable -- it's permitted by the licence. They could have managed the community in a smarter way but then they like being secretive. It's resulted in some great contributions. Overall I think it was a positive thing.
Tabbed browsing, clean mouse gestures, two-handed browsing, single-click image disabling, single-click user CSS mode.. heck, most of the user-friendly advances have been standard features on Opera for many, many years. And half of the really good stuff *still* isn't stock and standard on any other browser.
But, Opera did open its doors to the free download hype as a result of Firefox. So I owe you that much. :)
But.. catch up already would you?
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.
A workaround for this is to run Flash inside nspluginwrapper, even if you're on a 32-bit system.
This way, when Flash crashes, it won't bring down the whole browser with it, and all you have to do it reload the page.
This bug is on Ubuntu's bugtracker.
"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation." -Herbert Spencer
Seriously, I understand it's come far in sheer user counts for being trendy, but if you want to talk about browsers ripping off features then I find it curious he failed to mention Opera.
Because everything that people tote about Firefox--albeit in features that you have to plugin yourself--was being done by Opera first and for years before Firefox came along. Mouse gestures, intelligent pop up blocking system integrated into the browser, you name it and those of us had it while using Opera before Firefox was even a buzzword.
And after all these years, Opera continues to reign superior over Firefox in every area that counts: customization, speed, compatibility, portability, innovating new features with subsequent releases. The only thing that makes it difficult is when you hit a site that denies access, only because you're not using either IE or Firefox...despite Opera being more compatible with web standards and the like. Ponder that. Firefox wasn't the solution to any of the web's problems, it's part of the problem. It's an imitator just the same as IE, and dominating the market despite providing an inferior experience. The only boast to be made is that it's better than IE, and that isn't saying a whole lot.
KHTML provided the HTML and XML parsing engine, the DOM tree exports, the CSS parsing engine, the layout engine.
Source? All indications are that Apple wrote their own DOM, and that their CSS parsing is not KHTML's (which was one of the problems in adapting changes back to KHTML years back). They also certainly wrote the SVG support, which KHTML lacked.
That means that WebCore is a derivative of a pair of LGPL'd products.
No. WebCore does not contain KJS code. That's JSCore. WebCore contains LGPL'd libraries from KHTML, but it contains libraries that are not part of KHTML as well. JSCore contains LGPL'd libraries from KJS.
Further, since WebKit is, apparently, a derivative of WebCore
No. WebKit is a wrapper, providing API-level access to WebCore and JSCore, as well as integrating the debugging unit (starts with a D...). It is not a derivative work for the purposes of the LGPL.
Note: IIRC, WebKit and WebCore are parallel products - one isn't built on top of the other, but one was forked from the other.
No. WebCore is a component of WebKit.
Why is Opera never given its due? Opera engineers always come up with the new ideas and inventions, the rest blatantly copy them and fashion them as their own. Most people clearly see microsoft copying from "firefox", but opera being obscure, few notice that everyone is actually copying from opera. and now firefox has the nerve to say theyre the ones making other browsers better.
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
.
The reason why Safari came out with the faster JavaScript is that the faster JavaScript was needed for the MobileMe service's web interface.
It is nothing more than trivially humorous that a FireFox fanboy describes the world as being Firefox-centric.
Having said that, competition, whether imagined (as with Mozilla's "evangelist," Christopher Blizzard) or real, is always for the better.
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.
The problem is that LCDs have a fixed native resolution.
When viewing an image which is another resolution which isn't an integer divisor of the native one,
- either you get the whole display completely blurry (if the LCD attempts to fit the image using interpolation)
- or you get funny irregularly sized pixel (which is ugly too)
(This is also one of the reasons why games look nicer on CRTs - the other is higher refresh rates)
I suppose KiloByte is having problems because he can't set the resolution of the console to match the resolution of the LCD and everythings looks blurry and ugly.
The problem is a combination of :
- less and less graphic card having good console support (my previous 3DFx Voodoo had a nice accelerated framebuffer device, my current Readeon HD is only usable using the VESA framebuffer - and svgatextmode hasn't been kept up to date with modern chipsets)
- nobody bothers to write framebuffer drivers for newer gpus, because writing X+Mesa drivers is hard enough and there's no point in losing time and diluting efforts in writing additional drivers for things that are only used to draw a bootsplash for most users and that can approximately be handled by the vesa driver anyway
- fewer video modes are available in VESA most of the exotic resolutions require hardware specific drivers
- modern LCDs are 16:9 or 16:10 and don't fit the default 4:3 aspect ratio of the few resolutions available in VESA video modes
thus there's currently no way to get a nice console resolution which fits your LCD's native resolution using the "vga=###" or "video=###" flags of the kernel.
Hopefully, with DRI2, as mode settings is moved into the kernel, framebuffer drivers or svga text tools/drivers could use this functionality to setup either the console frame buffer or high resolution svga text modes, thus a single efforts (the main X/Gallium3D/kernel-dri2 driver) can benefit the console too.
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