Mozilla Starts To Follow a New Drumbeat

ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes "Key, then, to the Drumbeat project is openness, specifically openness as applied to the Internet. That fits in well with the original impulses behind Mozilla and Firefox. The former was about transforming the Netscape Communicator code into an open source browser, and the latter was about defending open standards from Microsoft's attempt to lock people into Internet Explorer 6 and its proprietary approaches. Both Mozilla and Firefox have succeeded, but the threats have now changed."

Comments

Crunchy Goodness!

[Frosty Piss]

Rah, rah, rah! Open standards! Who will not support that! It's got OSS Crunchy Goodness!

Actually, what I'd really like to see in FF is *LESS BLOAT* and some attention to memory management... I'll wait...

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[sajuuk]

Tell me about it. The plugins I need for web development push FFox up to 400-500MB of memory usage usually (physical+virtual usage).

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[morgan_greywolf]

Actually, what I'd really like to see in FF is *LESS BLOAT* and some attention to memory management... I'll wait...

Did I hear someone say they wanted a browser with less bloat?

You're welcome.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[Enderandrew]

Firefox has been much better on memory management since FF3. Everyone talks about Chrome being lean and fast, and FF being this bloated piece of crap.

You do realize that using current builds of both, Firefox uses less memory? The UI will likely never be quite as fast due to XUL, but Firefox's memory management is pretty dang good. They could probably take a page from how Chrome handles garbage collection with their V8 Javascript engine, but that's another story.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[morgan_greywolf]

That's a good reason to use Firefox's multiple profiles feature. Use one profile for development (with Firebug, etc. installed) and another for general browsing.

Then again, you could always run 64-bit and stock up on memory. If you haven't noticed, memory is cheap, with prices running around US $20/gigabyte.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[0100010001010011]

This is why I've finally dropped Firefox on my Mac.

It's been a great ride, and I thank them for what they've done. I still run it on my Work PC. (Until Google figures out how to make programs that run behind authenticated proxies).

But they've become just as complacent with their memory usage as Microsoft did with IE6 sucking. Only programs I've ever had use MORE were Photoshop when I'm doing batch processing of HDR images and VMWare when I've given the guest >1024MB of RAM, and even then, they don't beat Firefox by a large margin.

There will be times my computer is running slow as hell and I'll look up at memory usage and Firefox is above 800M, I'll kill it and start over.

Finally I had enough. I researched my 'Ad Block Plus' options and found Glimmer Blocker. It's set up as proxy which means I can use it with all Web Browsers. It supports most GreaseMonkey scripts as is. I can insert CSS, etc. Only downside (which is good) is that it doesn't do anything to https connections.

XMarks syncs all my bookmarks. LastPass syncs all my passwords and so right now Chromium and WebKit Nightly are getting 50/50 usage to see which one I like better.

Chromium has a bare minimum of extensions(XMarks, LastPass, Blank New Tab & Facebook fixer). Chrome just flys. Hell there would be times when I'd hav e Chromeium browsing the web. Safari on Youtube and Firefox having 0 windows open, but it still is managing to consume 600MB of RAM while Safari and Chromium aren't even in the top 10.

The *ONE* thing I thought I would miss the most was Firebug. Until I realized both Chromium/Chrome and Webkit/Safari have Javascript Profiling tools built in and other stuff that put Firebug to shame. I wouldn't be surprised if it's probably what Google uses to develop most of their stuff.

I've left both browsers up for days and fired up an occasional firefox and after 20 minutes I watch my little menu bar graph creep up until my computer was swapping and being slow.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[quantumplacet]

yea, i went that route (6GB of RAM on Vista x64), problem is that Firefox shits the bed long before my OS runs out of memory. in my experience, once FF hits about 1.2GB of RAM, it crashes.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[WoLpH]

The memory usage is just part of the problem though, with the additional memory load comes lots of slowness. I have more than enough memory in my machines (8GB for this particular one) but when firefox is only consuming about 1GB it already gets so incredibly slow that I just restart it every couple of hours. And I don't have any exotic extensions installed, just the usual (firebug, adblock, greasemonkey, etc..)

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[Hurricane78]

Well, the weirdest thing happened to me:
My Firefox always behaved well. No memory problem, no bloat, no slowness.
Until some weeks ago. I don’t exactly know what changed. I know I added some extensions (e.g. “Stylish”). I know there was a minor version update. I know Flash got updated (the thing I still have a feeling is the real responsible one in this). (64 bit Linux here, with 64 bit Flash too)

Now I find that the browser, after having used it a bit, and closed all tabs afterwards (yes, I know about the still loaded old tabs, and I like and need that feature), it eats more and more ram. Just yesterday I found it slowing the whole system down by eating 1.2 GB of virtual memory. With over 750 MB resident.

I think I will try safe mode for a week, before I blame anything.
Let’s see if the problem still persists.
As I have yet to see one single complaint, mentioning that it happens in safe mode too.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[BrokenHalo]

I have no problem with text-mode browsers. Very useful on machines with no X server.

But I get very tired of people complaining that Firefox is bloated, when they usually have an excessive number of unnecessary extensions loaded. People are very quick to complain if their browser doesn't support the latest shiny doodad, but whine about the extra codespace it takes up.

So here you go, folks: the Voice of Reason(TM) says: Lots of features == more code. Less features == less code. Take your pick and stop complaining.

By way of an aside, I used to maintain my own builds of the old Mozilla (minus email client and kitchensink) browser back in the days when Firefox was still called Phoenix. The general complaint at the time was that Mozilla had got too bloated, so a re-write was necessary. However, my builds of Mozilla were significantly more compact and faster than Phoenix. Eventually, of course, Mozilla's codebase stagnated, and since I wanted a few new shiny doodads myself, I went with the flow. But now that Firefox can be accurately described as mature, it might be a good time for me to start doing my own builds again...

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[alexborges]

Okay, you are using a web browser as a development tool and find it trendy to beat on it because it gets bulky when you decide to make it do stuff that it wasn't inherently designed to do.... and thats the developer's fault?

So you want a web browser that can double as the best web development tool in the planet (i do think that ff+plugins is the best dev platform for the web today), and when doing that is faster and slimmer than even browsers that can only browse (like safari)?

Go code your own, lets see if thats possible.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[MBGMorden]

The UI will likely never be quite as fast due to XUL,

Therein lies the problem. Memory management to me doesn't become a problem unless I run out (and I've made sure that on my desktop machines, I won't run out). What matters to me is the speed at which I can interact with my desktop.

Now, Firefox on Windows isn't that bad. Pretty snappy. Firefox on Mac isn't as good, but still OK. Firefox on Linux drags along at a speed slow enough for you to think someone is intentionally sabotaging it. I don't care how much memory it's using, but if the UI feels draggy I don't want it.

Chrome on the other hand - feels like greased lighting in comparison. It's fast and snappy across all three platforms. What's bad is that for a UI LOOK perspective I don't like Chrome. I have to use an addon to make sure new tabs always open at the end of the list, and I wish to goodness that there was a way to move the tabs below the address bar. Not to mention that downloads open at the bottom of my browser rather than in a seperate window. Still, despite those quirks, I've taken to using Chrome on everything just because of it's speed. It's also proven more stable for me. Firefox will typically slow to a crawl if you leave certain Javascript heavy pages open on it for an extended amount of time. If I leave the same ones open on Chrome it's fine when I come back the next day.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[eltaco]

generally you do have a point, but the mentality of just throwing more mem and cpu at inefficient programs is wasteful.
microsoft went that way with vista - just stuff everything in there, lads! people'll just buy more ram. but this backfired badly, as vista came out just before the big netbook and smaller-is-better hype.

we shouldnt need a fracking beowulf cluster of powerhouse PCs to run a browser or some other everyday app.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[morgan_greywolf]

Total memory of Firefox in the instance I'm using right now is around 1.19 G ^&^()&_*&*(&(_)*_*

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem: Shitty Plug-ins.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[thejynxed]

Actually, I am finding that the "horrible" 2.x versions of Firefox consume less memory overall on my system than the 3.5.x series, and this is with the exact same three add-ons installed.

The real issue in my case seems to be Flash. I am on a 64-bit system. Firefox is 32-Bit, and 64-Bit Flash is nothing but so much vaporware. I don't count the 64-Bit Alpha for Linux/BSD. There's been no improvement or new releases on it since. It's been about 4 years now since 64-bit Vista was available for testing, and 64-bit Linux/BSD has been around for far longer.

What's the freaking hold-up. They've had at least 5 years since WinXP 64-Bit at the very least to get a 64-Bit Flash binary out for Windows, and far longer for Linux/BSD.

As I sit here, with one Youtube tab open, and this tab open, Firefox 3.5.7 (firefox.exe) has the following stats (NoScript, Customize Google, AdBlock+, Flash Plugin, latest versions):

31 Threads
1,146,760 Page Faults
1,036,543K Private Bytes
1,599,168K Virtual Size
1,057,548K Working Set
1,017,292K WS Private
17,308K WS Shared
123 User Objects
845 GDI Objects

There is something very, very wrong with this picture.

Just as an aside: All of my crash reports for Firefox have somehow involved the Flash plugin, as contained in the reports found via about:crash.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[ae1294]

once FF hits about 1.2GB of RAM, it crashes

there's a plug-in for that...

But really what plug-in's do you people use? Firefox does like the RAM but I've never got anywhere near that high and I have 4GB available running WinXP and 8GB in SUSE...

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[BitZtream]

Firefox on Linux drags along at a speed slow enough for you to think someone is intentionally sabotaging it.

Its not intentional, but the performance loss you see on OS X and more so, Linux is in a non-trival part due to the crappiness of GCC's optimizer.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[Enderandrew]

I use the 64-bit Flash on Linux precisely so I don't have to double up so many libraries in memory. I have no problems with it.

Microsoft offers 64-bit Silverlight and Java has 64-bit versions.

Flash and Flash alone seems to be forcing people to stick with 32-bit browsers, and it is a real pain.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[morgan_greywolf]

Basically, it's like this: if you want a light browser, run a light browser. Try out Epiphany, for example, or Chromium. When Firefox started (back when it was called 'Phoenix'), it was designed to remove the bloat from Mozilla Seamonkey by making a browser that's just a browser.

People saw it as a potential "IE Killer," so they began implementing features that would make it an IE killer. Today, Firefox is designed around being a 'full-featured' browser, which, if we follow Zawinski's law, means that it will eventually be able to read mail again. :)

If you want speed and a small memory footprint, there are browsers that do that. Firefox can give you speed if you have enough RAM and CPU, but it doesn't really do small anymore.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[jasonwc]

Really? Every time I open a tab in Firefox, memory usage increases. Closing tabs does not reduce usage. After a day or two, memory usage exceeds 300 MB even with only a few tabs open on a Windows 7 system with 4 GB of RAM. I've seen this on numerous systems with Windows 7 and on Windows XP SP3. I don't think my experience is unusual.

I think Firefox is a great browser, and I don't see myself switching to Chrome because of the lack of Adblock Plus and the "Awesome Bar". The latter has made it exceedingly easy to manage and access hundreds of bookmarks. However, I do not think memory management has ever been a strength of Firefox.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[MBGMorden]

I can understand that. That's why I'd like to see more work put into the little polishings in Linux rather than constant new stuff added. My Linux desktop, from a functionality standpoint, works fine. The only thing I could ask for would be a native WoW client and an iTunes port and I swear I'd be in heaven.

What bugs me about it is the little things. Firefox for a long time was an annoyance, but Chrome has fixed that for me. However, I've noticed app crashes a little more frequently on Linux for example. Deluge is a good torrent client, but in the past few months I've had it lockup twice. uTorrent hasn't done that. Banshee is about the closest thing to iTunes that I can find on Linux, but I've had it crash a few times too.

For my video player I use VLC. It's good - lots of codec support, but I get *minor* screen tearing with it and every other video player. This has been tested on multiple computers and with multiple video cards. It's not immediately obvious, and when trying to fix it I usually have to switch to a fast scene and look closely to tell if it's still there, but it is a problem. Also, when seeking files in VLC, if you seek between keyframes it picks up a corrupted image and continues that way until it hits another keyframe to correct itself (several media players on Windows will either start at the next keyframe or work their way backwards to the previous one to get enough data to properly render the current frame). It's annoying trying to skip around a movie to find a certain scene when you click and have to wait 2-3 seconds before you can even tell what scene you're on (in all fairness, this is a problem with VLC across all platforms).

Compiz has problems too. A lot of their animations just aren't smooth. For example, when you drag a window and it does it's "bendy/swingy" animation, it looks fine, but there's a noticeable disconnect between when it stops shaking and when it snaps back into a static window. Such things are usually completely smooth and unnoticeable on other OS's, and Compiz comes CLOSE, but it still lacks the polish.

Then you have the various application slowdowns cause by the compilers used like you mention.

Font's are a huge problem too. Out of the box Ubuntu looks horrible, because the native Xorg fonts are terrible for desktop usage. I used to always switch them to Windows fonts immediately, but recently Google released their Droid font set that's freely useable and it looks just as good - you just have to install it and setup your desktop with it yourself.

I know that a lot of this is targeted at various open source apps and not the Linux kernel so it's not really a "Linux" criticism as much as an "open source desktop" criticism, but this is my main pet peeve about the state of the OSS Desktop. Most everything I need is there, and most all of it works, but it's just a little rough around the edges. I still like it, but I'd much rather see more work focused on cleaning up those edges on current stuff rather than rushing out yet another version of KDE which changes everything around again and still lacks any polish.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[QuoteMstr]

More lies out of you, huh?

gcc's optimizer is pretty good, actually, and the only compiler that seems to beat it is icc, and then not by much. If anything, gcc should have a more profound effect on OS X than on Linux since Apple uses an older version of the compiler (4.2) to avoid the GPLv3, while Linux distributions can use the latest and greatest.

But since when have facts mattered to a troll like you?

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've rarely seen Firefox use more than 100 MB. Right now it has been up for a couple of days, has 10 tabs across three windows and it is at 90 MB. What in the heck can make it go to 1 GB or higher? Running 30 flash videos at a time or something? It has just never done that "memory hog" thing for me although one of the guys I work with says he has problems with FF using a lot of memory. There must be some usage pattern / combo of add-ons or something that adds up to this bad experience. I sure don't know what it is though.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[mister_playboy]

I have downloaded the ICC complier, but I am unable to figure out what flag to use so I can compile FF with it instead of GCC on Linux.

Would you happen to know?

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[mister_playboy]

64-bit Flash works just fine for me in Linux on all three of my browsers (Firefox, Chromium, Opera).

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[Alex Belits]

Now, Firefox on Windows isn't that bad. Pretty snappy. Firefox on Mac isn't as good, but still OK. Firefox on Linux drags along at a speed slow enough for you to think someone is intentionally sabotaging it. I don't care how much memory it's using, but if the UI feels draggy I don't want it.

That's because you run Windows on your shiny new box with >4G of RAM, your Mac is the last model that used PPC, and you run Linux on a throwaway computer that can't run any other OS that you know about.

Stop running Linux on crappy hardware.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[dballanc]

No, it's not that hardware that is the problem. My netbook with FF under windows spanks the interative performance of FF under linux on my main laptop most of the time. 1G Atom vs 4G Core2 2.5. I'm not talking about render time necessarily, I'm referring to responsiveness when I click a button, or try to type in a field, etc.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[fmaresca]

Totally agree. And please, please, please, make / a synonymous of ctrl-f in Chrome.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[MBGMorden]

My Linux box is an AMD Athlon x2 2.3Ghz with 4GB of RAM and an Nvidia 9600GT graphics card. Hardly a "throwaway computer". I also have a MythTV box that I've used as a Linux desktop in the past running a Celeron 2.6Ghz 2GB of RAM and an Nvidia 7300GT. Also not too shabby.

The Windows machine has a tad faster processor (a Phenom 2.5ghz), but other than that has the same amount of RAM and same video card. I've dual-booted Linux on that machine with no improvement compared to my dedicated Linux desktop.

My brother on the other hand uses an old computer I gave to him years ago. AMD Athlon 1.2Ghz with 1GB of RAM and integrated graphics. Windows XP. Firefox is snappier on his machine than on either of those two machines above.

And before you claim "setup wrong" - this has been an observation made on Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, Gentoo, and ArchLinux. I've been using Linux for almsot 12 years now and no, it's not running the VESA driver or anything. The reality is Firefox on Linux is slower - much slower - than Firefox on other platforms. Maybe not in page rendering speed, but in sheer responsiveness of the UI. Particularly opening new tabs and closing old ones.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[MBGMorden]

You know, interestingly enough, I spent so much time using pico in college (and still prefer nano for pure text-mode editing like when I'm using SSH - yes, I technically know how to use vi, but I usually prefer the simplicity of nano for quick editing) that I got very used to doing the Ctrl+W ("where") for search, and unfortunately that will close the active tab in Firefox. There's been a lot of times that I've instinctively hit that combo to search for something only to see my current page vanish :).

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[fmaresca]

Ctrl-Q too close to Ctrl-W in FF is a nice one to hit, too, when lots of tabs are open :| Anyway, I feel simple (one key) keystrokes should be used for recurrent functionality like search. The fact that FF uses / for the first time in a web-browser was good, and yes, I'm a vim user, but I know lots of FF users using / for searching, people who never used vi. I miss it in Chrome. I didn't use much of IE browsers, but I've found FF to be the most usable browser until today. Sadly, performance and responsiveness on Linux is well bellow par.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[Anonymous Coward]

my problems started after I upgraded from flash 9 to flash 10. before 10 I had no memory problems and no crashes. all I run for extensions is adblock+ and the vlc plugin. this is on windows btw, so 32bit exe on 64bit os.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[7-Vodka]

Memory management to me doesn't become a problem unless I run out (and I've made sure that on my desktop machines, I won't run out).

Famous. Last. Words.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[Alex Belits]

"GUI responsiveness" that you and other poster mentioned is a time of memory allocation. You are running way too much crap, so system had to get rid of allocated pages before giving RAM to Firefox process.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[Tetsujin]

You know, I always suspected Mozilla's crash-reporting software was kinda lame under the hood - but I would've never guessed that its crash reporting mechanism was to post on Slashdot...

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[transwarp]

I use Gentoo, and have Portage build some packages with ICC, including firefox. From /etc/portage/packages.icc-cflags:
www-client/mozilla-firefox -xT -O2 -gcc -ipo -parallel -D_GCC_LIMITS_H_
I haven't tried building xulrunner with ICC.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[jonadab]

> > The UI will likely never be quite as fast due to XUL,
> Therein lies the problem.

So go use Chrome. Or Lynx.

As for me, I like XUL. The kinds of extensions it makes possible supply a number of pretty major features, some of which I don't want to be without. I don't care if it makes certain things 20% slower. It still saves me time, overall, because it improves usability and workflows.

I don't care if the next version of Chrome loads every page in Planck time, I still don't want to use a browser that doesn't have Nuke Anything and Flash Block and Web Developer and Image Zoom and Rikaichan and so on.

Heck, bookmark keywords alone (a feature built into Gecko since the nineties) save me *WAY* more time than I lose to slow performance even when using SeaMonkey (which performs significantly worse than Firefox).

Real-world usability is more important than a technical performance advantage.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[jonadab]

> Only programs I've ever had use MORE [RAM]
> were Photoshop ... and VMWare

Apparently you've not used Inkscape. Holy cow does that thing use a lot of memory. (It's not too bad otherwise, and I do have enough RAM that it's not a big problem. But it does use a lot, oh, yes.)

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[MBGMorden]

Again, I'm not running "way too much crap". The same effect is visible when Firefox is the only application open (and I also tune my systems so that unneeded daemons are not running on my desktops - no Postfix, sendmail, Samba, Mysql, or any other daemons run on my systems unless they specifically need them, which my desktop does not). Also, Chrome behaves explicitly faster on the same hardware under the same circumstances. It also completely ignores the fact that Firefox on Windows on the same hardware, for the same users, is more responsive. You're simply trolling by continually trying to blindly peg a perceived weakness that doesn't exist.

Firefox on Linux DOES have performance problems. You can keep trying to weasel your way into blaming it on something else or you can face reality.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[th3rmite]

I'm with you. I don't take much stock in the amount of memory an application uses since memory has been so cheap for awhile. There really is no reason why even a notebook doesn't have at least 4GB IMHO.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[Alex Belits]

Postfix, sendmail, Samba, Mysq

Traditional Unix servers/daemons are safe -- they don't do anything when not handling requests.

On the other hand, desktop / file indexers, MythTV transcoding / commercial scanning and similar applications, use massive amount of memory and I/O. Users often don't notice this because those processes don't show up as using large amount of CPU time, however I/O and pages stuck in memory make up for it. This is actually my only complaint about Ubuntu (other than default color scheme, of course) -- default configuration produces way too much I/O, does not disable those services even if computer is obviously overloaded with it, and does not give the user an option to do so other than by going through the session configuration.

Also, Chrome behaves explicitly faster on the same hardware under the same circumstances.

I am sure, you will find the same result with Konqueror (running without the rest of KDE, of course). Usually because Firefox is running all your extensions and keeping all your tabs with Javascript running, and Chrome or Konqueror do not.

Firefox on Linux DOES have performance problems. You can keep trying to weasel your way into blaming it on something else or you can face reality.

If that was the reality, I would be the first to notice.

I am using it now, and it's kinda sluggish. Let me count the tabs... Holy shit, I have exactly 100 tabs open on a box with 768M of RAM, with Thunderbird and four massive PDFs open in evince! Firefox is 225M in RAM, Thunderbird and evince are around 50M each.

Just closed the rest of tabs -- RAM down to 141M, GUI responsiveness back to normal.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[MBGMorden]

The daemons that I turn off are not limited to "Traditional unix server daemons". Heck last time I setup Gentoo the first things I emerge'd were x11, then WindowMaker, then Firefox. I always do it in that order so that I can get a working system faster since WindowMaker emerges faster than Gnome (I'll normally emerge Gnome overnight sometime when I'm not using the box for a while). That's it - no daemons and a pretty lightweight window manager. And Firefox was still sluggish when I opened it up to browse.

Keep plugging your fingers in your ears and yelling "la la la". It doesn't change the truth.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[Xabraxas]

For my video player I use VLC. It's good - lots of codec support, but I get *minor* screen tearing with it and every other video player. This has been tested on multiple computers and with multiple video cards. It's not immediately obvious, and when trying to fix it I usually have to switch to a fast scene and look closely to tell if it's still there, but it is a problem.

I hear this a lot but it never happens to me. I am using gnome-mplayer with an Intel 945 which isn't exactly a powerhouse video card. Perhaps it is a configuration issue, or a distro issue, or just a case of not using the latest version. I don't know what it is but I haven't had any tearing a a while.

Compiz has problems too. A lot of their animations just aren't smooth. For example, when you drag a window and it does it's "bendy/swingy" animation, it looks fine, but there's a noticeable disconnect between when it stops shaking and when it snaps back into a static window. Such things are usually completely smooth and unnoticeable on other OS's, and Compiz comes CLOSE, but it still lacks the polish.

Again my Intel renders all the animation fast and smooth. I'm not sure why it works so well for me and not for you and others.

Font's are a huge problem too. Out of the box Ubuntu looks horrible, because the native Xorg fonts are terrible for desktop usage. I used to always switch them to Windows fonts immediately, but recently Google released their Droid font set that's freely useable and it looks just as good - you just have to install it and setup your desktop with it yourself.

That could be your issue right there...Ubuntu. I don't know because I don't use it. To me fonts on Linux are superior to Windows fonts. In fact I can enable cleartype but it looks like hell compared to native font rendering , especially light text on a dark background.

Most everything I need is there, and most all of it works, but it's just a little rough around the edges. I still like it,

Despite the fact that everything you have complained about works for me I still have to agree to a degree. There are still some rough spots that turn up every once in a while but what I like about Linux is that those rough spots are always being worked on and things always improve. It's a constant process.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[Xabraxas]

Agreed. That Ctrl-W will be the end of me.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[MBGMorden]

I hear this a lot but it never happens to me. I am using gnome-mplayer with an Intel 945 which isn't exactly a powerhouse video card. Perhaps it is a configuration issue, or a distro issue, or just a case of not using the latest version. I don't know what it is but I haven't had any tearing a a while.

I've not actually tested on an Intel 945 (though I do have a spare system that has one - possible weekend project oncoming . . . ). I have tested with several Nvidia and ATI cards though (a 7300GT, a 7600GT, and an ATI HD4200 and several others going back further - those 3 are the freshest though). One thing that I have noted while trying to solve the problem is that it often seems to be users on DVI outputs who notice the skipping. Analog output users don't notice it as often. Could be some sort of timing issue.

Like I said it's not immediately obvious. I have to watch it for a bit to see if I can notice it. It's most easily noticed on a fast scene with lots of changes, but with that I can tell some minor tearing and a bit of "flicker" to the video.

I've tried it on several distro's though. I'm currently on Ubuntu, but I've tried video at one time or another on most of the popular distros out there at one time or another (most recently ArchLinux, Open SUSE, Mint and Gentoo. I've also used Slackware, Fedora, and Mandrake in the past, but not too recently).

I've tried every little trick on every forum I can find. I can sometimes make it better, but never make it completely go away.

Don't get me wrong I still use the system, and I use Linux servers heavily at work where they can sit in the background quietly chugging away (polish doesn't matter for servers :)). I just that for certain tasks at home on a desktop system it can feel kinda like trying to fit a square peg into a square hole with rounded corners ;).

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[Xabraxas]

I've not actually tested on an Intel 945 (though I do have a spare system that has one - possible weekend project oncoming . . . ). I have tested with several Nvidia and ATI cards though (a 7300GT, a 7600GT, and an ATI HD4200 and several others going back further - those 3 are the freshest though). One thing that I have noted while trying to solve the problem is that it often seems to be users on DVI outputs who notice the skipping. Analog output users don't notice it as often. Could be some sort of timing issue.

I am not using DVI so maybe that is the issue. The other thing that may make a difference is the CONFIG_HZ option in the kernel. I have mine set to 300 which is supposed to be better for multimedia because 300 is divisible by both 50 and 60 (PAL and NTSC Hz respectively).

Don't get me wrong I still use the system, and I use Linux servers heavily at work where they can sit in the background quietly chugging away (polish doesn't matter for servers :)). I just that for certain tasks at home on a desktop system it can feel kinda like trying to fit a square peg into a square hole with rounded corners ;).

Oh I definitely agree. Some simple things end up being a pain in the ass on Linux but then some things I do on Linux are damn near impossible on Windows so it's a trade off that I'm willing to make.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[Alex Belits]

And Firefox was still sluggish when I opened it up to browse.

So are you talking about startup time or actual GUI responsiveness?

Heck last time I setup Gentoo the first things I emerge'd were x11, then WindowMaker, then Firefox. I always do it in that order so that I can get a working system faster since WindowMaker emerges faster than Gnome (I'll normally emerge Gnome overnight sometime when I'm not using the box for a while). That's it - no daemons and a pretty lightweight window manager.

You "always" install Gentoo on desktops in some particular manner? Just how many Gentoo boxes do you use?

Keep plugging your fingers in your ears and yelling "la la la". It doesn't change the truth.

If what you are claiming is the truth, then how come it works fine when I use it?

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[MBGMorden]

So are you talking about startup time or actual GUI responsiveness?

GUI responsiveness. I mention starting the app because one must do that before they can use the GUI.

You "always" install Gentoo on desktops in some particular manner? Just how many Gentoo boxes do you use?

Right now, none. However, do have quite a few computers and I like to experiment a lot with different distros so I'll often switch periodically to try out different systems. I've installed Gentoo using the old no-install disc method at least half a dozen times on various systems.

If what you are claiming is the truth, then how come it works fine when I use it?

I'm guessing that you're either less sensitive to the issue, or you're ideologically devoted to the app to the point that you're willing to ignore any flaws regardless.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[Alex Belits]

Right now, none. However, do have quite a few computers and I like to experiment a lot with different distros so I'll often switch periodically to try out different systems. I've installed Gentoo using the old no-install disc method at least half a dozen times on various systems.

Sounds like someone desperately looking for things to complain about.

I'm guessing that you're either less sensitive to the issue, or you're ideologically devoted to the app to the point that you're willing to ignore any flaws regardless.

What flaws? Lack of "snappiness" in GUI (aka long delay after input, quick update, then more long delays while application is absolutely unresponsive) that Windows users are accustomed to?

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Firefox on Linux drags along at a speed slow enough for you to think someone is intentionally sabotaging it"
Then you have a personal problem.
Of course chrome is fast, it's just a browser, period. FF has hundreds of useful additions.
Anyone with VC++ can build their own version of chrome in less then 5 minutes.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[MBGMorden]

What flaws? Lack of "snappiness" in GUI (aka long delay after input, quick update, then more long delays while application is absolutely unresponsive) that Windows users are accustomed to?

Which is absolutely not the case here. It's not just Windows apps. It's compared to even other Linux apps that Firefox on the platform is slow. Either by ideals, or by the fact that you're simply a troll, you seem to want to refuse to accept that. Doesn't matter. I'll keep using Chrome.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[hkdm]

I'm not sure what you mean by a performance loss on OS X. So far both are performing at or even above what they were on my Windows machine. Maybe it's because I don't bog my browsers down with add-ons that aren't unnecessary.

Re:Crunchy Goodness!

[Alex Belits]

Or maybe you are full of shit because no one else sees this "problem". Even Microsoft astroturfers don't claim that Firefox is slower than other Linux GUI applications.

Take Control??

[rodrigoandrade]

From TFA:

"Mozilla Drumbeat is a global community of people and projects using technology to help internet users understand, participate and take control of their online lives."

It sounds like someone other than myself wants to take control of my online life...

Re:Take Control??

[Spyware23]

No, it doesn't sound like that at all:

"Mozilla Drumbeat is [..] using technology to help internet users [..] take control of their online lives."

Furthermore, directly below what you quoted you can read this:

"Open. Built on technologies that anyone can study, use or improve without asking permission.

Participatory, fueled by the ideas and energy of 100s of millions of people.

Decentralized in both architecture and control, ensuring continued choice and diversity.

Public much like a public square, with space not just for commerce but also for vibrant social and civic life."

Open, participatory, decentralized and public. Does that sound like someone wants to take control of your online life? Doesn't sound like that to me.

Re:Take Control??

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Open, participatory, decentralized and public. Does that sound like someone wants to take control of your online life? Doesn't sound like that to me.

says Spyware23. And just how far we trust YOUR motives, hmmmm? (j/k, of course. GP clearly didn't go to the trouble of comprehending TFA. )

bad writing.

[mooingyak]

Key, then, to writing summaries is quality sentences, specifically sentences that don't read like this one.

Re:bad writing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Key, then, to not writing summaries like this, is not copying random paragraphs from the article.

Re:bad writing.

[mschirmer]

Key, then, to writing summaries is quality sentences, specifically sentences that don't read like this one.

The text was pulled straight from the article. You should direct your energy at the original article writer.

Re:bad writing.

[electricbern]

I have, myself, reconsidered, after reading this summary, what good writing is.

Re:bad writing.

[Blakey Rat]

Writing are hards!

Re:bad writing.

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

That's fits in well with good editorial style.

Re:bad writing.

[Anonymous Coward]

your heart is *truly* klingon.

Re:bad writing.

[mooingyak]

Key, then, to writing summaries is quality sentences, specifically sentences that don't read like this one.

The text was pulled straight from the article. You should direct your energy at the original article writer.

Key, then, to writing good comments is to RTFA, specifically the linked article?

Re:bad writing.

[morgan_greywolf]

I, myself, have, as well, always thought, among other things, that key, then, to good writing, something we should all, absolutely, be striving for, is good, judicial use of, or control of, parenthentical phrases, set off by commas.

Re:bad writing.

[Sir_Lewk]

Isn't it the editor's job to not copy text directly from the article if it is so terrible? Come to think of it, why do we still grace these clowns with the title "editor" at all? They seem rather resitant to actual editing.

Re:bad writing.

[bickle]

It reads like a Babelfish translation.

Re:bad writing.

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Yeah. They really are not editors. I don't really think they necessarily should be, either. They basically just post stuff, editing only occasionally. I mean a garbage man also takes in toxic chemicals to be properly disposed of twice a year, but we don't call them "Toxic waste disposer men".

Re:bad writing.

[rliden]

Occasionally (and I'm not trying to be pedantic), I will try and use parentheses (not that it's a better solution, but it seems to break up the parenthetical expressions in a more visually pleasing manner) to keep my sentences simpler, while other times (more often than not) I'll just get straight to the point (if there indeed a point to be made). :)

Re:bad writing.

[Hurricane78]

I iz a lolcat, u insentieef klotz!

Re:bad writing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Writing are hards!

<homer>Oooh. He card read good!</homer>

Re:bad writing.

[mschirmer]

Maybe you should RTFA yourself and you would realize my comment was entirely correct.

Your original post was not insightful at all. You were purely poking fun at TFA and the "editor". (Not that there was any editing done, a point that's already been made).

The mods on here today must have their heads screwed on backwards to give you Insightful and Funny.

Re:bad writing.

[mooingyak]

Maybe you should RTFA yourself and you would realize my comment was entirely correct.

Your original post was not insightful at all. You were purely poking fun at TFA and the "editor". (Not that there was any editing done, a point that's already been made).

The mods on here today must have their heads screwed on backwards to give you Insightful and Funny.

So bitter. If you examined it a little more closely instead of channeling your nerd rage, you might have realized my 2nd comment was self deprecating and not critical of you, unlike this one.

Re:bad writing.

[GooberToo]

I have, myself, reconsidered, after reading this summary, what good writing is.

William Shatner?! Is that you?!

OMG...OMG...OMG...OMG...OMG...OMG...

Re:bad writing.

[Tetsujin]

I have, myself, reconsidered, after reading this summary, what good writing is.

William Shatner?! Is that you?!

OMG...OMG...OMG...OMG...OMG...OMG...

No, actually he is Kirok.

Communioncator

[roman_mir]

I don't know what this 'Drumbeat' project is and also I am not sure what is Communincator exactly so obviously I must provide an opinion on this 'story'.

Really, whatever is written in the summary, I don't understand what they are talking about, can anyone translate into normal speak for the ununinitiateted?

Re:Communioncator

[Tim C]

Netscape Communicator (or simply "Netscape") was Internet Explorer's main (only?) competition in the late 90s. It was a web browser developed and released by Netscape which at one time was dominant, but has since been relegated to history.

There are two main reasons for its demise:

1) Microsoft finally woke up and realised that the Internet (and specifically the World Wide Web) was important, and developed IE, finally bundling it as part of Windows

2) Netscape decided to make version 5 a complete rewrite from scratch, which gave MS all the time they needed to improve IE to the point that it made Netscape look like a bad joke.

To my mind, 2) is what really killed it; Netscape 4 was buggy and slow, and while it was definitely comparable to IE4, IE5 was superior (and I say that as someone who went from Netscape 4 to Mozilla - I have never used IE as my primary browser, and most likely never will). Netscape did release versions 6 and 7, based on Gecko and the Mozilla code base, but by then it was far too late. (They also sucked compared to Mozilla/Firefox and IE).

Re:Communioncator

[Rhaban]

Do I hear a whoooshing sound?

Re:Communioncator

[Anonymous Coward]

The "Dumbeat" project is how they can justify dumbing their software down so that even the most clueless moron won't be confused by the options, because there aren't any.

Communionicator sounds somewhat Catholic. The Church embracing Web 2.0 or something.

Re:Communioncator

[kaizendojo]

Here, allow me to translate from English to /.:
Microsoft = Evildoers, Satan's Emissary on Earth
Anything made by Anyone Else : Given to us by the Angels, Perfect in every way.

Seriously, it would be nice to read a single day's /. postings where the summaries were actual news and not (horribly biased) opinion.

Re:Communioncator

[1stvamp]

You sir, completely missed the point. See, there, right there it goes *woooooosh*

Re:Communioncator

[dAzED1]

SCO != MS, and SCO != angelic. I prefer to think of EVIL as an array, with MS being merely an element in it.

Re:Communioncator

[ArsonSmith]

SCO derived from Xenix that was once owned by Microsoft.

Re:Communioncator

[Tetsujin]

You sir, completely missed the point. See, there, right there it goes *woooooosh*

Is there a joke somewhere in that post? 'Cause to me, it seems not so much like a joke going over my head as simply the absence of joke-stuff.

Re:Communioncator

[1stvamp]

...

Really? Seriously?
It's not so much a joke as a snarky comment about the lack of editing (as usual) in the summary, which neither informs you about what the hell it's actually going on about, nor does it even manage to spell it's own subject matter correctly, for example as pointed out "Communincator".

Re:Communioncator

[A12m0v]

Rewriting Firefox from scratch would be a suicidal move by Mozilla. A simpler solution is fork Chromium and port XUL to run on top of WebKit and V8. This way they get good code to base their browser on, while maintaining ownership to the (newer) code.
In the meantime they can continue Gecko 1.9 development and try to bring in more of WebKit and V8 into the codebase.
In ways kinda like what happened with KHTML and WebKit.

Re:Communioncator

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, seems most sensible to me. KHTML/WebKit have proven to be much more maintainable and less crufty. There's a reason that they're leading on hot new CSS stuff. Plus the performance of WebKit is by far superior, at least on my computer. Why are they still sticking to their old Netscape code? Pride?

Re:Communioncator

[Blakey Rat]

The joke was that the summary wasn't talking about Communicator, but instead something called "Communincator." Notice the spelling error. It should have a nice squiggly red underline in your browser.

And now I have explained the joke, thus killing it... sorry.

Re:Communioncator

[dAzED1]

if you're talking about the UNIX variant, sure. When SCO was a UNIX vendor, they were fairly well respected. That's not the same SCO in anything but a name, as the one that was so controversial several years ago.

Re:Communioncator

[ArsonSmith]

but the seed had already been planted~

Re:Communioncator

[roman_mir]

hahahahahaaaa :)) I am dying here. Just look at my sig.

Re:Communioncator

[roman_mir]

Right, now that you have gone on some weird tangent, how about the actual explanation on this Communincator thingy?

Re:Communioncator

[Sir_Lewk]

And I am six degrees from Kevin Bacon.

Re:Communioncator

[BrokenHalo]

Forget it. Nobody who logs in as anything other than AC will ever see your sig. If you have anything worthwhile to say, than say it properly.

Re:Communioncator

[BZ]

> port XUL to run on top of WebKit and V8

Why? V8 is slower than SpiderMonkey in a number of cases; Spidermonkey is working on addressing the cases when it's not (and vice versa, I'd hope). WebKit is significantly buggier than Gecko's layout layer in a number of cases (and vice versa in other cases, of course, but the attempt to shoehorn XUL into Webkit is unlikely to help the situation).

Porting XUL to run on top of Webkit would be a huge project distracting from other desperately-needed work.

So given all that, what exactly should the motivation be for spending the time to run on top of Webkit instead of sticking with existing code and not reinventing wheels?

Just to be clear, the idea of maybe using Webkit _was_ in fact considered at one point. It was judged to not be worth the effort.

> In ways kinda like what happened with KHTML and WebKit.

At that time, Apple didn't have a layout engine of its own, so the situation is quite different.

Re:Communioncator

[nine-times]

A simpler solution is fork Chromium and port XUL to run on top of WebKit and V8.

I don't really know whether it'd be good or bad, but I'd be disappointed to see Mozilla switch to WebKit. Nothing against WebKit, but do we really want for every browser to be using the same rendering engine? Diversity in the software ecosystem is a good thing, if you ask me.

In the meantime they can continue Gecko 1.9 development and try to bring in more of WebKit and V8 into the codebase. In ways kinda like what happened with KHTML and WebKit.

It was probably a little easier to bring improvements from WebKit into KHTML, since WebKit was based on KHTML in the first place.

Re:Communioncator

[BitZtream]

Most of Firefox's slowness is XPCOM, not the renderer. Pluging WebKit in won't fix the underlying problem, which they have been trying to address, although it seems like they have one snail doing the work.

XPCOM was overused. Too many things were made into XPCOM objects (with all the massive associated overhead that goes with it) and as a result jumping between XPCOM components all the time, C to JS to C to XPConnect to actual function, on practically EVERY FUNCTION CALL, tends to make things a little slower than they need to be

Re:Communioncator

[roman_mir]

I said it properly, too bad education is not really doing much good to anyone anymore, people should be able to distinguish various types of subtlety based on a written sentence, but there are quite a few who are just too dense.

Re:Communioncator

[TemporalBeing]

Not quite.

SCO (really SCO Group or SCOG) today is really Caldera, which use to be a Linux Vendor. Then they bought the UNIX services groups from Santa Cruz Operations (SCO, now Tarantella), and after a messy reorganization emerged as SCO Group (SCO). Caldera didn't really seem to go bad until Ransom Love left; the new managers seemed to have started all the bad stuff going on, running the company into the ground, and "stealing" all the money from under the stakeholder's noses.

Re:Communioncator

[Tetsujin]

I said it properly, too bad education is not really doing much good to anyone anymore, people should be able to distinguish various types of subtlety based on a written sentence, but there are quite a few who are just too dense.

Oh! I understand now... Like how your post (quoted above) is actually a harsh critique of the pyramid-scheme-like nature of real estate rentals: how wealthy landowners become more wealthy by charging people to live there, and these tenants themselves create a sort of miniature reflection of this system when they themselves rent the property they're renting out to someone else...

Or maybe, you know, it was just a typo.

Re:Communioncator

[roman_mir]

Which one was the typo, the Communioncator, Communincator or the ununinitiateted?

Re:Communioncator

[th3rmite]

Damn this comment makes me feel way too old.

Re:Communioncator

[roman_mir]

No, you are just way too late, someone actually edited the text of the summary and fixed the spelling.

I have an idea

[Jason Quinn]

Imagine if Firefox was perfect and the web environment was stable: in other words there was no need to change it anymore until the environment changed. Would the Mozilla folks let it be? No because people are now employed by the Mozilla Foundation and jobs are at stake. Firefox is effectively a commercial product now. As happens to nearly every commercial software product that meets its users needs and original design goals, the software will come to experience feature bloat as the developers try to keep the attention of its userbase. (For the record, I think the claims that it is already bloatware are premature.) Feature bloat and change for the sake of change are the future of Firefox and it will all come in the name of "innovation". PS In any case, the Linux version of Firefox could use some attention devs!

Re:I have an idea

[TheSunborn]

They could also just start developing other software such as thunderbird or an graphics editor that can export html and which don't suck.

Re:I have an idea

[Eskarel]

I always laugh at comments about feature bloat.

Unless the features included in software are unused by the vast majority of that software's users, then it is not feature bloat. Just because you personally don't need a feature, and that your personal copy would be faster without it doesn't mean it's bloated, it just means it has a feature that you don't need. Personally I find mail merge to be a completely wasted feature in every office suite I've ever used. People who send a lot of form letters on the other hand, or who need to address the same letter to lots of people, probably disagree. Alternatively, a lot of people find javascript debuggers useless, whereas I install extra ones into my browsers. Some people hate the awesome bar in firefox, I miss it when I'm using another browser.

Generally speaking, if software is still successful, excluding rare instances where there is zero competition(including older versions of the same product), it's not actually suffering from feature bloat. Software with too many unwanted features generally becomes unusable and so people stop using it. If a lot of people are using it, then at worst it's getting there, and if a lot of people are using that feature, then it's not really bloated at all.

Re:I have an idea

[cronco]

I completely agree with the last point. I am often amazed at the difference in experience in using FF on the same PC on Windows and then on Ubuntu. It really doesn't feel like the same browser, ie it lags even on a brand new PC on Ubuntu.

Re:I have an idea

[Sloppy]

Imagine if Firefox was perfect and the web environment was stable: in other words there was no need to change it anymore until the environment changed.

I can imagine that. And that vision is extremely different than the world most people live in. Here are two examples:

Many parts of the web (e.g. youtube) require plugins, such as flash.

Many parts of the web (e.g. gmail) provide single-vendor services that people used to be able to take for granted would remain under their own control (e.g. imap server running on my own box).

I'm skeptical that Mozilla can fix these problems (it's ultimately up to users to choose to not lock themselves into proprietary dependencies) but if they think they can do anything about it, they might as well try.

As long as people need Flash, there's a damn good reason for browser makers to try to increase the attractiveness of HTML5. As long as people choose to use webmail, there's a damn good reason for software developers to try to improve email clients to try to bring 'em back to mastery of their own email. And so on. There's certainly a shitload of opportunity for things to get better, so if someone wants to try, I'm not necessarily going to accuse them of bloat or change for the sake of change. The 'net is very fucked up right now and needs help.

Re:I have an idea

[Junior J. Junior III]

Of course, it'll be a long time before Firefox is "perfect". In reality, that will never happen. Still, the same argument could be applied for sufficiently high values of "good enough".

In this sort of situation, I would hope that they'd start putting resources on other projects. Endlessly polishing Firefox to keep people employed does not make economic sense. Those developers could turn their attention to Bugzilla, or to Thunderbird, or come up with a new project. Leave a smaller number of people behind to keep maintaining Firefox and porting it to other platforms, perhaps.

Re:I have an idea

[BZ]

That might have something to do with the fact that MSVC++ generates 30% faster code (on the particular codebase in question) than g++ does...

Not that this is the only source of Linux performance issues (pango, I'm looking at _you_), but lack of a usable pgo mode in gcc (what it does have falls down on keeping track of its own profiling information and errors out when applied to Gecko), is a quite noticeable.

Re:I have an idea

[BZ]

Are there particular Linux issues that are bothering you? "Pay some attention to Linux" isn't nearly as useful as "please fix X, Y, and Z" in terms of getting things to happen.

I would dearly love to know the actual issues Linux users have, as opposed to generic "it sucks, but I won't tell you why I think that" grumbling.

Re:I have an idea

[nine-times]

Would the Mozilla folks let it be? No... Firefox is effectively a commercial product now. As happens to nearly every commercial software product that meets its users needs and original design goals, the software will come to experience feature bloat as the developers try to keep the attention of its userbase.

That has been common, but it's not universal. Take OSX as a counter-example. Apple just released 10.6, which didn't offer many new features but was more aimed at stripping out bloat, increasing efficiency, and preparing for the future. Open source software has an additional safeguard against the sort of bloat you're describing in that, if it becomes sufficiently bloated that people are unhappy, the project can be forked.

Not that you're completely wrong, since it is pretty common that software packages reach a certain point of being "feature complete" and then stagnate and bloat. I don't think it's inevitable, but probably it's happens because (a) the fun stuff is done, and the developers don't want to put in the boring work of making incremental efficiency improvements; and (b) no one of sufficient imagination is working on the project to develop a vision for where it should go in the future. Because of these two factors, instead of continually refining and updating the software or pushing off into a particular new direction, the developers will just tack on whatever improvements that they can think of and hope that it sells.

Re:I have an idea

[snadrus]

As a programmer, I cannot imagine that. Why?

- The state-of-the-art of interpreters (like the Javascript one in FF) is changing rapidly. Ideas for improvements will come from academia.
- Software, like car design (anyone?) is never final, but can always be enhanced even in non-bloat ways. Do we have the final car yet (after 100 years of trying)?
- XUL is ancient and still has possibilities
- Ideas come faster than code (SPDY implementation sounds good, it gives most a 50-80% performance improvement).

Re:I have an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

with a single million euros they got from google, they could employ 50 full time programmers on 20,000 euros a year, how much development do you think 50 FT devs could do for firefox on all platforms.

how many millions did mozilla earn last year again? multiply it by 50, thats how many FT paid employees they could afford, if they were busy feathering their nests with things they don't deserve.

ironically, the only platform where firefox doesnt suck it, is windows, how hilarious, linux, the system that should be the first platform, is the worst browsing experience ever, I'd use chromium with it's faults over firefox on linux, it's utterly ridiculous how that situation has panned out.

Re:I have an idea

[chris.alex.thomas]

it's called feature bloat, because you load it into memory and then use it zero times dummy. if you didnt load it up, it wouldnt be called bloat, it's only called bloat, because people see their memory usage for a single web page running into hundreds of MB's

Re:I have an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

It's about million times slower than windows version. In fact, firefox in wine runs faster than native linux firefox.

Re:I have an idea

[Eskarel]

And my point is that just because you don't use it doesn't mean it's bloat, it's just a feature you don't use. If the vast majority of the software's users don't use it, that's bloat.

You are not the sum total of all users of software and just because you find something useless doesn't mean it is.

Re:I have an idea

[Spliffster]

Yes Boris, for example storing history data in sqlite leads to problems on a normal unix installation where the home (and the profile) is stored on an NFS share. When my ff crashes on linux (which unfortunately happens often due flash) my profile ist dead.

I have started to dump all sqlite databases before starting FF so i can easily recover corrupt sqlite databases after a crash.

Re:I have an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

The UI is quite obviously slower than on Windows. You'd have to be very biased not to see that. Scrolling, general mousing around, everywhere. I attribute it to the use of GTK2, so I guess there's not much that can be done about it.

Another issue is that I often can't tab back to the address bar to give it focus. Something else takes the focus and none of the shortcuts work. Have to click to refocus. Maybe that happens on Windows too.

Firefox is great (mainly because of extensions) but the UI is pretty awful in a general sense, and it shows on Linux more than the other platforms. *shrug*

Re:I have an idea

[BZ]

Do you happen to know whether there's a bug filed on this already or whether I should file a new one?

Re:I have an idea

[Spliffster]

There are a couple of bug reports, but they do not seem to get a lot of attention:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=NFS

this one is the most apropriate:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=478189

I have been working with sqlite and it's clearly stated in the sqlite FAQ that sqlite *will* have locking problems over NFS, it's a design desicion. I think this is the source of the Problem:
http://www.sqlite.org/faq.html#q5

When FF crashes, the sqlite databases are in a state where the uncommited transactions cannot be rolled back nor discarded.

Not sure if this could be fixed without replacing sqlite entirely.

Thanks for your Interest and kind Regards,
-S

Re:I have an idea

[BZ]

Thanks for the pointer; I'll try to get that bug bumped up in priority.

In the meantime, if you control the mount options for the NFS mount (I know, a big if) you should be able to mount it nolocks to trigger sqlite to fall back to dotfile locking... The caveat is somewhat worse sqlite performance, of course.

Re:I have an idea

[Spliffster]

Yeah, the nolocks option works, as long as I have control over the NFS server.

I really appreciate your help! This issue is the reason I am considering using another browser on unix like systems. I haven't had issues like this with chromium or konqueror.

What to do after ?

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

FTA:That's all well and good, but it raises the question: what should Mozilla be doing *after* it conquers the browser world – that is, once it has 50% market share?

Easy, people should begin to explore other alternatives like Chrome, Safari and Opera. There should ALWAYS be choices because absolute power corrupts absolutely whether it's IE or Firefox. It's naive to make simple assertions like Microsoft = bad and Mozilla = good. Any organization that gets that kind of control eventually capitalizes on it. I know the article says "The threats have changed". How about "Mozilla's motivations will change?"

Re:What to do after ?

[fprintf]

Just look at the Firefox 3.6 news where Mozilla is going to be reducing the size of the sandbox that developers get to play in. Many feel this is a good move, but there are plenty of other developers and users that are going to be left in the cold. As long as they don't impede the function of Adblock+ and NoScript then I will remain a happy Firefox user.

Re:What to do after ?

[QuoteMstr]

Huh? I see only minor changes in the pipe. The most annoying one seems to be the removal of the 'properties' context menu item, though I'm sure an extension can add it back in.

Re:What to do after ?

[nine-times]

Any organization that gets that kind of control eventually capitalizes on it.

Worse, any organization that gets too much control will impede the progress of others.

Capitalizing on success is fine. I don't have a problem with Microsoft making money from their browser. I have a problem with IE being the de facto standard and stifling all innovations that Microsoft chooses not to implement in their browser.

And notice I'm not even talking about any misbehavior on Microsoft's part. The point is that monoculture is bad. Monoculture means no competition, which means no innovation that the monoculture doesn't approve of. Plus, on a side note, monoculture means that a single security hole will necessarily be shared by everyone.

Re:What to do after ?

[snadrus]

Organization or corporation impedes others?
Corporations are required to.
Government "Organizations" do for bribes or "for the common good". No sign of these situations here.
Monoculture == universal risks == universal interest in them being prevented, solved, and patched.
I'm not recommending monoculture and think it's impossible in the current browser situation, but such high interest in its maintenance may make it more of a community project than it is now.

Re:What to do after ?

[nine-times]

Organization or corporation impedes others? Corporations are required to. Government "Organizations" do for bribes or "for the common good". No sign of these situations here.

I'm not sure what's behind these two.

Monoculture == universal risks == universal interest in them being prevented, solved, and patched.

None the less, there will be bugs and hacks and security holes. Generally speaking, the more diversity there is, the less likely everything will be vulnerable to the same attack and (in the case of a virus) the more slowly the infection will spread.

This isn't just a software thing. You see it everywhere in ecosystems and in the evolution of individual species. Diversity is required for there to be resilience.

I'm not recommending monoculture and think it's impossible in the current browser situation, but such high interest in its maintenance may make it more of a community project than it is now.

It's also possible that such high interest would lead to consolidation of power and raise a very high barrier to entry into the community. When things become important, entrenched interests tend to take hold.

Too bad

[Dyinobal]

They are still off step.

Drumbeat?

[Sporkinum]

I don't know what this drumbeat is, but I keep having a tap,tap,tap,,,tap in my head and it's driving me mad. Can you hear it?

Re:Drumbeat?

[starbugs]

Jumanji

Re:Drumbeat?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

I don't know what this drumbeat is, but I keep having a tap,tap,tap,,,tap in my head and it's driving me mad. Can you hear it?

Maybe the ringing in my ears should meet the tapping in your head -- they could form a band!

Re:Drumbeat?

[Torodung]

I could a few weeks ago, but then Rassilon fixed it for me with his magic glove.

--
Toro

Re:Drumbeat?

[natehoy]

See? Told you not to look. Silly boy.

Most people just yell "My God! It's full of stars!". You, you have to do the drumbeat thing.

Re:Drumbeat?

[Anonymous Coward]

4 heartbeats

Re:Drumbeat?

[LMacG]

A Time Lord's heartbeat?

Re:Drumbeat?

[Kjella]

In your case, it is just your insanity.

Re:Drumbeat?

[th77]

Exactly what I was thinking. I hope it doesn't turn the Mozilla project into a mad super-villain, which in turn changes all other software on Earth into copies of itself.

Re:Drumbeat?

[Hurricane78]

No. Doctor Who. Watch this year’s Christmas special. It’s pretty great.

Re:Drumbeat?

[dkleinsc]

Yes, but that's because I'm listening to the really long version of "In a gadda-da-vida" right now.

Re:Drumbeat?

[Hatta]

Did someone misplace their diorama?

Re:Drumbeat?

[Anonymous Coward]

oh noes! the master really is taking over!

Re:Drumbeat?

[An ominous Cow art]

The voices from my head can provide the vocals and backup singers.

Re:Drumbeat?

[daveime]

What a bunch of bastards the Time Lords turned out to be eh ? The drums, the drums, the never ending drums.

Am I the only one who had tears in my eyes when the Doctor said "I don't want to go" ? I guess it's the first time I'd realised the "human side" of the character, and the loss he feels when he regenerates. And much better work from Russell T. Davies this time, the last series ending with the Daleks and Davros seemed like a Facebook conversation on steroids.

Re:Drumbeat?

[Yvan256]

That must be annoying. You should see a Doctor about this.

I just want HTML5 to live and Flash to die.

[starbugs]

I really hope Mozilla can make it happen.

Where is Google in this? Why are they dragging their feet?
After all, without openness where would they be?

Re:I just want HTML5 to live and Flash to die.

[Anonymous Coward]

I want HTML5 to die and Silverlight to live.

HTML was never designed to be a web application infrastructure and all the hacks in the world will never make it so. It just gets worse and more convoluted with each release.

Re:I just want HTML5 to live and Flash to die.

[VGPowerlord]

Google would be over there adding proprietary features to Chrome/ChromeOS.

Re:I just want HTML5 to live and Flash to die.

[Anonymous Coward]

HTML5 was *designed* to replace the hack called flash (and now silverlight)

Re:I just want HTML5 to live and Flash to die.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well don't install flash then.

Have a nice hot steaming cup of Java instead.

Re:I just want HTML5 to live and Flash to die.

[A12m0v]

Why would I want WPF on my Unix?
Oh wait, I can't run it!
It says my OS is not supported.
Give me HTML or give me death.

Re:I just want HTML5 to live and Flash to die.

[Simetrical]

Google would be over there adding proprietary features to Chrome/ChromeOS.

Er, "proprietary" as in "open-source under New BSD License"? And "Chrome/ChromeOS" as in "Native Client runs on 32-bit x86 systems that use Windows, Vista, Mac OS X, or Linux. Some ARM and x86-64 support is implemented in the source base, and we hope to make it available for application developers later this year"?

Re:I just want HTML5 to live and Flash to die.

[VGPowerlord]

Google would be over there adding proprietary features to Chrome/ChromeOS.

Er, "proprietary" as in "open-source under New BSD License"? And "Chrome/ChromeOS" as in "Native Client runs on 32-bit x86 systems that use Windows, Vista, Mac OS X, or Linux. Some ARM and x86-64 support is implemented in the source base, and we hope to make it available for application developers later this year"?

No, "proprietary" as in "not part of the HTML5 standard," which is what we're talking about (see the subject line).

Re:I just want HTML5 to live and Flash to die.

[R.Mo_Robert]

I really hope Mozilla can make it happen.

Where is Google in this? Why are they dragging their feet? After all, without openness where would they be?

It's not up to Mozilla, it's up to YouTube: if they switch from Flash to HTML5 video, the browsers and users will follow. (The question then is which codec they will choose.)

Which, of course, is another way of saying it's all up to Google.

Re:I just want HTML5 to live and Flash to die.

[VGPowerlord]

I want HTML5 to die and Silverlight to live.

HTML was never designed to be a web application infrastructure and all the hacks in the world will never make it so. It just gets worse and more convoluted with each release.

Why would I want WPF on my Unix?
Oh wait, I can't run it!
It says my OS is not supported.
Give me HTML or give me death.

The Mono WPF page heavily implies that Moonlight implements "a subset of WPF."
Moonlight 2 isn't even a month old at this point.

So, ignoring your WPF Straw Man, it certainly sounds like Silverlight works on Linux at the very least. I wouldn't be surprised if it works on other OS X/11 or X.org implementations as well.

Note: I'm playing Devil's Advocate here; I actually think Silverlight is a complete waste of time.

Re:I just want HTML5 to live and Flash to die.

[Anonymous Coward]

Show me proof that someone somewhere has ever been able to use Moonlight to run real Silverlight as in the code in one of the very few places that Microsoft has successfully bribed to use it.

Oh, and Moonlight only works on Linux because Linux programmers don't care shit about standards and portability. Just like damn fucking Microsoft.

Every once and then I get this:

Sorry, compiling this "helloworld" program for posix compatible systems developed by RedHat requires version >= 2.34 1.8 but not 1.9 nor 1.11.245 of GNU make.

Somehow coerce it to build only to find that it accesses procfs. How is that different from Windows 3.1 checking if MS-DOS is there?

Open cloud vs Facebook, Google, Twitter

[Anonymous Coward]

The largest challenge to openness stares us in the face every day, and nobody seems to notice: Much of our data is stored in proprietary servers controlled by private companies, including Facebook, Google, and Twitter. The Internet was consciously and carefully engineered to put the power in the hands of the end user; data was stored at the end point in open formats (think of POP/IMAP mail and USENET forums, for example). Now a new generation of less sophisticated users hands over their personal data to private companies. Not only are there serious privacy risks, but we've lost control of our data. You are dependent on Facebook's good will to migrate *your* data to another application. What happens when your cloud vendor goes out of business?

Re:Open cloud vs Facebook, Google, Twitter

[Rhaban]

That's where Opera unite is interesting: potentially, it can be equivalent to most social networking applications, while keeping your data on your computer.
There are still a number of difficulties, such as the fact that a bunch of (more or less) basic social functionnalities is missing, and the problem that most home computers aren't up 24/7, but it's worth looking at.

Re:Open cloud vs Facebook, Google, Twitter

[Rhaban]

And I forgot i wanted to say something:
Unite may or may not grow to be the "next big thing" in social networking, but once the mozzilla community develop an equivalent for firefox while passing the idea as theirs, it sure will.

Re:Open cloud vs Facebook, Google, Twitter

[Anonymous Coward]

The Internet was consciously and carefully engineered to put the power in the hands of the end user; data was stored at the end point in open formats (think of POP/IMAP mail and USENET forums, for example).

Okay... do you have examples in which spam is not a rampant problem, and impossible to deal with due to fundamental design decisions?

What happens when your cloud vendor goes out of business?

Your data goes "Poof!" That is what they mean by "cloud!"

Re:Open cloud vs Facebook, Google, Twitter

[Kjella]

With all due respect, there's a huge difference between distribution and aggregation. Even in the "good old days" of IRC they were trying to build huge networks of servers which would be your one place to network with all your (geeky) friends. Everybody was very busy trying to avoid duplication of long-distance transfers because despite even though it looked like one Internet then doing "long distnace" was expensive for the ISPs. They'd probably be more spinning in their graves (though they're probably not old enough for that yet, oh how time flies) over the extremely wasteful torrent protocol where we pull data all around the world over tons of hubs and down and back up last-mile connections just to do tit for tat swapping. Being able to pull off one world-wide system would be more of a dream.

Re:Open cloud vs Facebook, Google, Twitter

[GNU.Stalman]

Preach it, brother!

Re:Open cloud vs Facebook, Google, Twitter

[awol]

You raise _the_ fascinating question. I am intrigued by the balance between my privacy, independence and the robustness and accessibility (web apps) of the cloud framework.

I love google services, I trust Google to store my data and be there tomorrow. I trust them to be less evil than my needs demand for the services that I use. I use encryption for stuff that is sensitive and mostly (if not completely) I don't particularly care about whether they have access to my data because under the current terms of service (and given that it is all so free it is interesting to test if there is any enforceability of these "agreements") doing something dodgy with it would be a wrong yada, yada, yada.

I could establish these services myself on my servers at home, but I consider the Google infrastructure an outsourcing arrangement that provides a resilience I could not as easily provide myself.

Have I lost control? Well, yes and no. My sensitive data I maintain locally and backup and it is a pain. My email, I leave with gmail. That balance is about right for me. If they went malicious on me and took it all away I would be inconvenienced (and mighty annoyed) but life would go on. Given that I am happy with the intangible price I pay, the next question for me is how much money would I pay for the services that I use. Thankfully I don't have to answer that question yet, but FWIW it aint zero.

Cloud vendor out of business is a great scenario. It is a part of the risk assessment you just have to do with this stuff. I think reexamining the POP USENET examples you give provides a worthwhile excercise, those services were provided by institutions that then passed them on to you, your university (well mine at least) your workplace. But the amount of privacy you had there was equally small and as employers moved to provide these services you had the same set of problems if you moved employers.

So.... I think we have always had this problem. We now have many many times the data and the amenity from these service providers and so we have a few new problems but the fundamental question remains. I don't see a better solution than a market place of reliable providers between whom I can transfer my requirements. The one thing I do see as needing to improve is the ability to have these services built on open standards to make the services more transferrable between providers. That however is perhaps the killer question and perhaps even the develoment for which we really should be pushing.

Re:Open cloud vs Facebook, Google, Twitter

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Actually the article and Mozilla's spokesman address this concern as one of the primary threats to the openness of the web in the future. It is mentioned that this threat, amongst others, will hopefully be addressed by the projects pushed through drumbeat in an attempt to keep information from coalescing into a few central locations. Whether you are cynical or not, like Mozilla or not, or are new here or not, the article is, at the very least, an interesting discussion. I would recommend checking it out.

Re:Open cloud vs Facebook, Google, Twitter

[jellomizer]

What happens when your cloud vendor goes out of business?
Well it depends on how stupid you are...

Cloud computing isn't a flawed concept there are just flawed implementations of it. A lot of SaaS companies offer ways for you to download you data if you want/need it. Facebook and Twiiter are not really good examples because in reality their stuff isn't really that vital... Heck you would probably be better off if it was wiped out. Next this is something slash dotters don't seem to realize when a company of any decent sized goes out of business there are other companies who often come in and pick up the service and the data. If Google went out of business Microsoft or Yahoo would probably jump at the chance to buy gmail and its user base and keep and migrate all that data to hotmail probably in a few month in the meantime they would run gmail as is. If you go with a tiny vender (A Mistake on your part), Don't make a contract where you can get full access to your data (A mistake on your part) and the companies goes out of business your are screwed... However that was due to your stupidity for going with a bad company with a bad plan. For the most part in real life you can setup as part of the contract access and ownership of your data.

Re:Open cloud vs Facebook, Google, Twitter

[TheRaven64]

You know the really interesting thing about Unite? It's not even remotely novel. It was a feature of one of the very first web browsers in CERN (which also had some nice editing features, although back then you could write an editor for all of HTML in well under a hundred lines of code). The original idea of the WWW was that every client would also be a server.

The problem with Unite is that it only works when you are online. To really replace things like PutYourFaceInTheBook it needs to incorporate some of the ideas from FreeNet and let your friends cache your content.

Re:Open cloud vs Facebook, Google, Twitter

[QuoteMstr]

isn't a flawed concept there are just flawed implementations of it.

Ah, the last refuge of ideologues.

Re:Open cloud vs Facebook, Google, Twitter

[Anonymous Coward]

Managed data is a huge advantage to the 95+% of average internet users that have no idea how to properly back-up, transfer, and secure their own data.

Re:Open cloud vs Facebook, Google, Twitter

[Pebby]

The sad thing, to me, is not that this is happening, but, rather, that only a small minority seems to care about it.

Re:Open cloud vs Facebook, Google, Twitter

[jellomizer]

I am not sure what you are talking about. I have seen it work, and many good implementations of this that are successful and hazard resistant.

Re:Open cloud vs Facebook, Google, Twitter

[louks]

The largest challenge to openness stares us in the face every day, and nobody seems to notice: Much of our data is stored in proprietary servers controlled by private companies, including Facebook, Google, and Twitter.

While I cannot speak for Facebook and Twitter (nor do I speak through them because of my mistrust), but I do know that people at Google have noticed, which is why a team there has developed the Data Liberation Front.

Please check them out at: http://dataliberation.org/

To get you started, here is their mission statement:

Users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google's products. Our team's goal is to make it easier to move data in and out.

Re:Open cloud vs Facebook, Google, Twitter

[Alamaraminu]

Facebook's APIs enable applications on Facebook; Google Maps is a true programmable web Only time will tell whether open source or cloud deployment is a better Twitter and the Micro-Messaging Revolution, OReilly Radar Report thanks mold removal portland

Re:Open cloud vs Facebook, Google, Twitter

[Gaffod]

The data gets sold and resold and eventually spills out all over the place, we end up with everybody's whole life indexed and freely, easily accessible. Insurance companies, business, intelligence organizations, law enforcement and so on adapt accordingly and everybody realizes how much screwed they are when the full implications of utter abolition of their privacy sink in. From there, it depends. In the best case, a paranoid minority may have managed to keep at least some of their stuff private, and develop methods to do so, which can then be used by the rest of the public to fix the mess. Or possibly it'll just be too late by the time people realize they need to think about what they stick on their MySpace.

Hold on one second...

[Richard_at_work]

That's fits in well with the original impulses behind Mozilla and Firefox. The former was about transforming the Netscape Communincator code into an open source browser, and the latter was about defending open standards from Microsoft's attempt to lock people into Internet Explorer 6 and its proprietary approaches

I thought Firefox was about Mozilla being bloated and slow, and nothing to do with IE or Microsoft at all?

Re:Hold on one second...

[Hurricane78]

Absolutely right.

After spending several years with that nightmare called Trident, there is no way in hell Mozilla can ever produce something worse than that. I will stop talking to anyone who refuses to stop using that thing, and develop all websites to shut MS browsers out, until that thing is completely trashed, and rewritten from scratch.

And don’t dare modding me down for that, if you haven’t tried to develop a web application with a complex layout in it, or at least spent 3 years, building IE-compatible websites.

Mozilla Foundation is badly managed.

[Futurepower(R)]

Have you seen $200 million worth of development in Firefox? The Mozilla foundation has been getting more than $68,000,000 each year to make Google the default search engine in Firefox. See this article, for example: Google Deal Produces 91% of Mozilla's Revenue.

In return, Firefox is the most unstable program in common use. Every new version includes "stability improvements", but the instability has gotten considerably worse since version 3.5.2. Firefox is so unstable it regularly crashes Windows XP, although not Linux, apparently.

This instability has been reported many times by many people for many years, according to discussions online. For just one small example, see the comments tab for this crash report ID: 67f332db-205a-4944-8f88-1bb7a2091220. (Not a crash from one of our computers.) Typical comments from that comment tab:

"I can't believe how often firefox is crashing recently on multiple computers!!!"
"This is ridiculous! It happens everyday!"
"Mozilla crashes on average 10 a day. Can you help?"
"firefox is crashing on me twice a day. any advice please? thanks Graham"
"This new version of Mozilla sucks. It crashes on my multiple times each day."
"I keep going from tab to tab and after a while Mozilla crashes.."
"please fix this crash problem, thanks"

Firefox is popular because of its add-ons, apparently. People don't want to watch abusive, flashing ads that assume that the reader is stupid, so they use AdBlock Plus. When the same extensions exist for Google's browser, it seems likely that Firefox will lose popularity.

It seems to me that Mozilla Foundation is badly managed.

Re:Mozilla Foundation is badly managed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, I've that there is a trend for schools to stop teach cursive writing, which I couldn't care less about, but have they also stopped teaching the scientific method? Your hypothesis is that FF is the most unstable program in common use, and you back up that hypothesis with your own, no wait, with anecdotal evidence that some people are having issues with FF. The conclusion from that evidence, is that you are correct?

Have you collected any evidence about other browsers crashing, or any program, as state "most unstable program", and not just browsers. Have you collected data on actual program usage to determine crashes per program use? Have you considered that some, perhaps even all, though unlikely, that those users problems might be caused by another source and not the FF programming? Have you considered...

The Mozilla Foundation may be badly managed, it may not. From the simple amount of, what can only be considered crap, data you've 'collected' it is impossible to tell, and your assumption that it is badly managed should be considered nothing more than FUD.

Re:Mozilla Foundation is badly managed.

[BrokenHalo]

Firefox is so unstable it regularly crashes Windows XP, although not Linux, apparently.

The only time I've seen Firefox crash on XP is when my former boss let his 10-year-old son install crapware like dodgy mouse cursors and so forth on his wife's machine. I primarily use Linux and OS X, and I haven't seen Firefox crash in years (literally), although I work it pretty hard. And certainly not do anything as drastic as making the machine fall over.

Seems to me this alleged instability should be addressed apropos of your operating system, not Firefox.

Re:Mozilla Foundation is badly managed.

[Pojut]

In return, Firefox is the most unstable program in common use. Every new version includes "stability improvements", but the instability has gotten considerably worse since version 3.5.2. Firefox is so unstable it regularly crashes Windows XP, although not Linux, apparently.

I have the exact opposite experience in my personal use...Firefox more or less never crashes on my XP machine, yet crashes at least a couple of times a week on my Dell Mini 9 with Ubuntu 9.10 installed and kept up to date. True, the desktop XP machine has 4GB of ram while the Mini 9 is only rocking out with 2GB, but all of my "heavy" internet browsing and viewing is done on the desktop. Firefox on my Mini 9 is used primarily for Slashdot, [H]ard|Forum, Facebook, and Kongregate.

Re:Mozilla Foundation is badly managed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently nobody taught you to differentiate between an Opinion (aka. comment on a forum) and a Paper/Thesis/Study. Unless specified otherwise EVERYTHING in the comments section is opinion. Forcing people to write "In My Opinion" in front of every damn sentence they type is stupid. This is already assumed. And you are a moron.

Ministry of Truth

[Hythlodaeus]

Firefox "was about defending open standards from Microsoft's attempt to lock people into Internet Explorer 6 and its proprietary approaches"? Maybe in Stallman's world.

In the words of one of Firefox's creators: (http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/009698.html)
"We discussed the rot within Mozilla, which we blamed on Netscape and Mozilla's inability to assert independence. He suggested it'd be perhaps preferable to start again on the user interface, much of the code in the front end was so bloated and bad that it was better off starting from a fresh perspective. ... These browser efforts were reactions to the rot we had seen in the Mozilla application suite."

Re:Ministry of Truth

[nine-times]

Yeah, I remember Firefox before it was Firefox (as I'm sure many others do), and I don't remember such clear, specific, and grand plans regarding IE's lock in. It was more that Mozilla's suite had a relatively small but loyal following, and a good portion of that following was displeased by various problems with the suite. For one, it was slow. Rightly or wrongly, a lot of the blame fell on the idea that too much was being crammed into one app (it was a browser, email client, newgroups, HTML editor, and chat client), and it was bloated. Firefox (I think when I first used it, it was Phoenix) was a very lightweight application that seemed to be little beyond the HTML renderer with a toolbar. It was fast, and its UI looked much more native in Windows.

As it became popular, Mozilla may have developed much different goals for Firefox. I don't know the internal politics of the Mozilla Foundation. Certainly at a certain point, the whole "Spread Firefox" thing certainly was about increasing adoption and increasing support for web standards, thereby weakening Microsoft's lock-in. I'm not sure it makes sense to call that the "original impulse behind Firefox," but it was a goal for Firefox that many people had. And still have.

Re:Ministry of Truth

[Gerv]

It's right in the founding documents: http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/documents/mf-ca-ct-registration.pdf

"The exempt purpose of the Foundation is to serve the general public by undertaking activities to (1) keep the Internet a universal platform that is accessible by anyone from anywhere, using any computer" (e.g. not just on Windows) "and (2) promote the continuation of innovation on the Internet". (page iii).

Gerv

Re:Ministry of Truth

[just_another_sean]

Other then fashionable bashing what does RMS have to do with this?

1. Mozilla is Open Source, not Free Software.

2. The term open source grew out of ESR and others (Bruce Perens?) convincing Netscape that
they could beat Microsoft by taking Netscape "Open Source". This was one of, if not the,
first successful attempts to court business with the idea of open source.

3. Mozilla isn't even considered Fee Software anymore because of their take on their IP
embedded in Firefox. Thus Debian's Iceweasel.

RMS had very little if anything to do with Netscape morphing into to Mozilla. RMS does
Free Software, not Open Source.

Yes, you can mod me as troll.

[Verdatum]

Too long; didn't read. Repeating the same mission statement 3 or 4 times with minor modifications doesn't make for a terribly great article. Generally, mission statements shouldn't even be expressed the first time around.

Re:Yes, you can mod me as troll.

[VGPowerlord]

The only mission statements I read are the ones that begin "Your mission, should you choose to accept it." and end with "This message will self-destruct in [some time period]."

Mozilla Developer Center crash reporting

[Futurepower(R)]

Want to see your Firefox crashes? Enter about:crashes into the Firefox address window, and press the Enter key.

There is a discussion of Mozilla product crashes at Mozilla Developer Center crash reporting.

Re:Mozilla Developer Center crash reporting

[Anonymous Coward]

Want to see your Firefox crashes? Enter about:crashes into the Firefox address window, and press the Enter key.

The URl is not valid and cannot be loaded. WTF??

Re:Mozilla Developer Center crash reporting

[Tetsujin]

Want to see your Firefox crashes? Enter about:crashes into the Firefox address window, and press the Enter key.

The URl is not valid and cannot be loaded.

WTF??

Ah. I see what happened, he got the URL wrong. It's supposed to be "about:gullibility"

Re:Mozilla Developer Center crash reporting

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, GNOME.

Oh Please!

[Anonymous Coward]

There will be times my computer is running slow as hell and I'll look up at memory usage and Firefox is above 800M, I'll kill it and start over.

Dude! It's a simple user setting! TURN IN YOUR GEEK CARD! You simply need to open a certain .ini file and find a spacific entry, edit and save. Then go to your Windows system folder, open the Reg Editor, find a certain reg key (BUT DON'T MESS WITH THE OTHERS...) and change a value.

It's just that simple, my grandmother could do it blindfolded. I don't know what all you whiners are talking about with this "memory hog" nonsense.

Re:Oh Please!

[0100010001010011]

I've done all the "Fix Firefox Memory Hog" stuff in the book, on both Windows XP and OS X.

My OS X machine, the one that I referenced in my post (by saying on My Mac) doesn't have a Registry Editor.

Re:Oh Please!

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you are ignorant.

I have been able to reproduce the Firefox memory leak on dozens of computers. All you need to do is open Firefox, a blank page will do, and leave it running. After about 1 or 2 weeks, memory use will have slowly risen until the browser becomes intolerably sluggish and must be restarted.

Mozilla Foundation themselves ACKNOWLEDGE that there is a memory leak bug. Look specifically at the part where they suggest a workaround "solution" that involves restarting your browser. About as elegant as when we used to restart Windows 9x computers to "fix" problems.

BTW, if you were such an in the know geek, you should have been able to specify an exact file and registry hive. You're just a poser.

Drumbeat?

[Megane]

I'm all fine with this as long as nobody named Saxon is in charge of the project.

Re:Communioncator = RTFA

[SargentDU]

Simple, when you don't understand the summary, then Read The Fine (linked) Article (RTFA) and it is explained! Commenting when you have not taken time to read, looks bad on you.

They're investing $1 million plus in this

[darthcamaro]

There is a full interview with Surman about some of the specific drumbeat projects at: http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3857436/Mozilla-Drumbeat-Aims-to-Expand-Web-Participation.htm There is an open p2p university and an open web privacy logo initiative that are kinda cool. An od ya Mozilla is investing $1 million into this too.

they need QA, not drummers

[Lord Ender]

If IE and Chrome can play perfectly-smooth flash video, but Firefox makes it stutter, QA SHOULD HAVE CAUGHT THAT SHIT!

How about they roll up their sleeves and do REAL work: find and fix the major glitches. That is more important than vague mission statements.

Re:they need QA, not drummers

[Microlith]

And I hear people claim Firefox crashes all the time and uses ungodly amounts of RAM, yet I never see these issues.

I'm inclined to believe most quirky behavior like what you describe is the result of PEBCAK and the system it's running on, and not some flaw in the code.

Re:they need QA, not drummers

[Lord Ender]

Riiight... which "user error" are you proposing would cause choppy flash video in Firefox but not in Chrome or IE?

This is a common problem. It has been suggested that Firefox's "feature" to save state info to recover from crashes is to blame. No matter what, they should catch this stuff in QA.

Re:they need QA, not drummers

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple:

* FF is a user's primary browser; user has loads of crap piggybacked on top of it
* User tries a fresh install of a different browser, without aforementioned loads of crap
* User is amazed!

This works both ways, I'm sure this is why most average joes think FF is so much better in the first place.

I'm still confused...

[Pojut]

I don't do web development or anything, but I do have 11 plugins running in Firefox as well as regularly reaching 15-20 open tabs at a time...and I've never had a memory issue since 3.5 was released (running on 4 GB of DDR2800 ram). What is it that you folks are doing that causes Firefox to have such a massive memory leak still? Are you not running the latest version? Are you trying to use it to cure cancer?

I don't mean to sound like a douche, I'm genuinely interested...I'm just curious why so many people have this problem with similar circumstances as myself, yet I don't encounter any of these issues.

It is bloated, nothing premature about that

[Shivetya]

I wonder how long before we get the next great "just the browser ma'am" again. Kind of like when we got Firefox because the last incarnation was a bloat factory. Occasionally we get new stripper models out there but none gain traction.

Hopefully it won't feel so bloated when they thread tabs properly, damn if some pages don't make me feel that Firefox locked up. There are still pages Safari or IE will display properly that Firefox won't.

As for it "becoming" a commercial product, I never thought it wasn't. Foundation is the modern sweet term for Corporation. It might have meant otherwise before but not anymore.

Still I won't give it up for anything else, but at times I do want to scream at them

No need to worry...

[cereda]

Drumbeat will last 'til 2012 and will collapse all Internet. Nice logo thou.

Firefox Settings win32 vs linux Re:I have an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

PS In any case, the Linux version of Firefox could use some attention devs!

Why are 'settings' stored under Tools->Options in FF:win32 but under Edit->Preferences in FF:*nix? I'm endlessly going to the wrong menu spot.

Yes I know I can do it all from about:config, but why are the menu bars different?

As a personal problem: It's even worse when I start launching sessions under X over ssh and have trouble keeping track of which FF I'm looking at. Yes I know I should just use one on all boxes, but due to my employer's preferences, that's not an option. I'm also unwilling to store my bookmarks in the cloud (although oddly, that's where I keep my personal email).

Movie?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone else feel like this is a Movie pitch?

FF is not a single product

[Anonymous Coward]

Before there are too many posts stating "it (still) works for me" let me point out that FF is not a single product even if it has portions in common across all platforms. My observation has been that it seems to work pretty well on Windows but still is a slow, buggy memory hog on Linux. (Although I admit that FF3 doesn't seem to crash as much, it still requires too much memory!)

AC

The Sound of Drums

[Tetsujin]

The drumming, Can't you hear it? Inside my head. I thought it would stop. But it never does. It never, ever stops. Inside my head. The drumming, Doctor, the constant drumming, It's everywhere. Listen. Listen. Listen. Here come the drums... here come... the drums...

Ignore the question much?

[danaris]

The question wasn't, "What should we all do once Firefox tops 50% marketshare?"

The question was, "What should Mozilla do once Firefox tops 50% marketshare?"

Your response, while it makes a reasonable argument and brings up an important cautionary point, is totally useless in light of the question that was asked.

Do you actually have any opinion on what Mozilla should do with Firefox once it reaches 50% marketshare, or do you just like to stand on the sidelines and say, "Whoever's most popular is bad! Use one of the less popular browsers, or face CERTAIN DOOOOOM!"?

Dan Aris

Re:Firefox Settings win32 vs linux Re:I have an id

[cptnapalm]

I'd assume that the preferences are there because that is where they are under most Gnome apps. They are trying to make it integrate as seamlessly as possible with the native desktop. If they moved it under Tools under Linux, you might be happy, but it would annoy me because I'm accustomed to hitting Edit for changing preferences.

Please don't do this.

[johny42]

Ending the summary with a cliffhanger? I must RTFA now!

I can live with losing gmail and facebook

[Fastfwd]

The data I care about are my photos, my word documents and the media I paid for that I only have in electronic format such as itunes songs.

All of this is on my laptop + on a disc a home + on a disk at work

It would bother me a little to lose all my historical gmail data but not the the point where I would pay to get a backup of it. I would not care at all if all my facebook data disappeared tomorrow.

What kind of post is this?

[reed]

Want to give a clue as to what "Drumbeat" is, and maybe some kind of link that looks like it might explain what you're talking about? (A Computerworld article about "the threats have changed" doesn't help.)

The drums, the drums, the never-ending drum beat

[mattcoz]

thump thump thump thump
thump thump thump thump

Re:The drums, the drums, the never-ending drum bea

[Anomalyst]

"I admit the deed! --tear up the planks! --here, here! --it is the beating of his hideous heart!"

Great !

[Anonymous Coward]

This is awesome! Please convince everyone you know to stop developing for IE. I will continue developing for IE and other browsers and this means more business for me !!

Re:Communnimicator

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, seems most sensible to me. KHTML/WebKit have proven to be much more maintainable and less crufty. There's a reason that they're leading on hot new CSS stuff. Plus the performance of WebKit is by far superior, at least on my computer. Why are they still sticking to their old Netscape code? Pride?

KDE vs. GNOME?

Probably was Slashdotted.

[Futurepower(R)]

It works for me now. Probably was overloaded by being Slashdotted.

However, sometimes Mozilla blocks links coming from Slashdot. Copy the link and put it into a new tab.

Re:Probably was Slashdotted.

[Anonymous Coward]

He was talking about about:crashes, which would be rather difficult for Slashdot to overload or for Mozilla to Referer-block.

Thanks for the sanity.

[Futurepower(R)]

Thank you.

Also, of course, if the grandparent poster had bothered to investigate, Firefox experiences a LOT of crashes, and has for years. Apparently Firefox developers don't know how to debug that kind of failure. Apparently the more than $200 million has not been enough.

The randomness of failure reports suggests that Firefox writes to a random location memory that is important in some systems and not others. Definitely the way events are handled has degraded in the last few versions. Firefox often takes a long time to process a mouse event, for example, even when Firefox has been the only program in use for a long time.