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

bad writing.

[mooingyak]

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

Re:bad writing.

[Blakey Rat]

Writing are hards!

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).

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!

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?"

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?

[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!

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: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.

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."

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: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.