Slashdot Mirror
Happy 5th Birthday To Firefox
halfEvilTech writes "Five years ago today, Mozilla released Firefox 1.0. Ars celebrates the occasion by taking a trip back in time to revisit our classic coverage of the original release." For fun, we dug up the oldest Slashdot Firefox story, which was a Firebird story proclaiming yet another name change from Feb '04. At least this name change stuck.
Firefox is great. But it's all the amazing addons that make it really shine. So kudos to Mozilla, but even more kudos to all the hard-working code monkeys who gave us addons like NoScript, Adblock, and (appropriate for this forum) Slashdotter.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
bad feature bloat
Emacs
You broke my sarcasm meter. Thanks.
I can't believe I'm making this point, but here goes...
As a web developer I actually appreciate the bloat. The average user does not have patience to look for extensions that fill in the core features that other browsers offer. Without the "bloat", those users would have likely stayed with IE, Microsoft would have no motivation to improve, and we'd likely be stuck developing for something much closer to IE6... ugh...
So for me, bloat is forgivable -- I'm just happy we're finally at a spot where web standards are taking hold. It's hard for Microsoft to embrace and extend they're losing so much ground.
Happy Birthday, Firefox =)
A "Thanks for trying but we are still #1" cake?
More like "thanks for raising the bar and forcing us to improve". I have long argued that the role of OSS isn't necessarily to take over the world but to make it a better place by doing things better for free than most companies do for profit. (Sort of like the NDP party in Canada, they'll never run the country because every time they have a good idea the Liberals take it, implement it and claim it as their own.)
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
More like "thanks for raising the bar and forcing us to improve".
This!
I remember in the days of Windows 3.1, it seemed like a big deal that you could change IP address on Linux without rebooting. Once a few thousand geeks realised there was nothing inherent about the PC platform that prevented things like this, and memory protection, pre-emptive multitasking etc., there was a strong market incentive for Windows to improve.
I don't think Windows would be as good as it is today if it weren't for competition from Linux. I'm sure MSIE would be far, far worse if it weren't for Firefox. (Yes, yes, OK, Opera. But for years Opera cost money.)
Which piece of bloat would you remove first?
I am sure that many will say "the awesome bar". I don't. In fact, I use it so much that I think that I could now live without bookmarks.
YMMV, of course.
Just curious to know if I'm alone. As the web has gotten more bloated (not just firefox), I find I use lynx more for quick, routine checking of websites. And you can script it.
I like firefox a lot, but sometimes Lynx is better.
Meh, I can tell you why Internet Explorer has any market share at all - because there's millions and millions of corporate PCs where it is too much trouble to get anything else installed. I end up using it on a regular basis for no particular other reason than it's there. Just like my #1 most used graphics application at work is MS Paint to crop screenshots, doesn't mean it competes with Photoshop or really anything at all, just that it works good enough you don't get anything else installed. Even corporate intranets are starting to figure out it's not 2001 anymore, but there's still not a big return on switching or offering multiple alternatives...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings