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Mozilla Picks Up Third Party IRC and RT Messaging
Floris writes "Mozilla picks up steam - it is actually starting to look like a real OSS project now ;) New third party contributions are IRC andReal Time Messaging clients. Funny to think that Mozilla might actually fulfill the promise the browser once was and integrate all internet protocols into one interface."
Some people seem to be forgetting that the World Wide Web was designed to be a medium that transparently handled other protocols. Users could familiarize themselves with one interface -- the Web browser -- and exchange information via HTTP, FTP, Usenet and gopher.
I'd like to see more protocols adopted as part of a Web browser, but not in the "office suite" style that Netscape seems to have adopted. The e-mail and Usenet clients should look and act like Web pages if they are part of the browser, the same way that FTP directories do. You should be able to use them without feeling like you've left the Web. Posting to Usenet from a browser should look like posting to any other form. Reading and writing e-mail using your ISP's SMTP and POP3 servers should look like a free-mail site.
Spawning separate programs with their own unique interfaces is not an improvement. For instance, there's no compelling reason to go with Netscape's e-mail client instead of a third-party's program, because the learning curve is the same -- and both are much harder to learn than a free-mail site like Hotmail or Prontomail.
If Mozilla can assimilate IRC and other messaging standards as part of the Web interface -- rather than a separately spawned interface -- I think it's a great reason to start using the browser again. If it's just being used to bundle and deliver separate apps together a la Microsoft Office 2000, the benefit to users is negligible.
Rogers Cadenhead (Web: http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench)
I think it's very important for Netscape (or is this really going to AOL ? If so i might as well give up now.) to have clear goals for mozilla. Adding to the already totally rewritten codebase, third party products of dubious quality or usability seems a littly pointless.
From the start as i understood it, the goals for mozilla was to have a very fast layout engine (NGLayout is brilliant) and a thin footprint. That is exactly what most serious users want out of this client. A stable and speedy browser, not bloatware.
Though i do understand that the target market includes many users who do not spend over 5 hours a day on the internet or hacking their 1980's tape kernel drivers for linux. Any such addons such as an instant messager should be a seperate entity that can be downloaded if required.
All the hard work has nearly been done, do not wreck it with bloatware or a by diluting the original worthy goals.
Having seen many posters express concern about Mozilla becoming bloated or
s /irc/js/lib/irc.js
trying to integrate too many things, such as IRC, into the browser, I
wanted to correct these wrong attitudes:
First off, the code for the client was written by rginda, who does not
work for netscape. So, it is totally "third party" and serves as a great
example of what can be done with Mozilla. The Mozilla team itself is
focused on delivering the browser that everyone is screaming for.
THE SIMPLE PICTURE of how Mozilla works: (At least how it appears to me!)
The Common Perception:
[ M O Z I L L A ] = One unit with everything inside it.
The Reality:
[ [[core][core][core][core]] [optional] [optional] [optional] ]
There is a set of core components which make a usable, basic, web browser
which supports the standards defined at http://www.w3.org.
Beyond that core, everything else is just an optional component, like a
plug-in. That's it. The IRC Client is in no way part of the core, (and if
you read below you'll realize its a javascript which utilizes the core
functionality)
Blah blah wait there's more if you want to be able to make an informed
criticism next time:
To summarize the technical documents linked below, Mozilla is built using
components which are for the most part self-contained. A certain number of
these components are necessary to form a working web browser capable of
rendering HTML, CSS, XML, XUL, JPEG, GIF, PNG, and other common web
formats and standards. You can read about these core functionalities and
how they are built in a component-based way at:
http://www.mozilla.org/newlayout/overview.html
Beyond those core functionalities, other components may be created which
are also self-contained and do not in any way interfere with the core
browser components. The IRC client works like this. In fact, it only uses
a small component that is loaded when a Javascript file explicitly asks
for the component. The rest of the client uses Javascript and html and XUL
(XML Based User-interface Language: http://www.mozilla.org/xpfe). So,
basically the IRC client is a javascript! What makes it function like
other clients is that is that it _completely_ leverages and relies upon
the flexibility of those core components listed above. In short, it
introduces no bloat.
Some technical documentation on the subject:
http://www.mozilla.org/roadmap.html http://www.mozilla.org/newlayout/
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xpcom/
http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/source/extension
Mozilla is doing nothing wrong. Keep in mind that commercial products you only see the final, optimised, cleaned up, perfected app. If you get to see a "beta", it has been "polished". The mozilla code is the development code. It's full of debugging information. It's not been optimised. It's "in progress".
So yes, as anyone who develops code knows, code doesn't just "happen". I don't start a project that is automatically feature-full, and production ready. It's a long process to get there.
That seems to be the drawback of a highly-visible open source project. People who don't understand software development download the latest milestone, find out it's not finished, and then proclaim that the project is a "failure".
It's not. Even Internet Explorer had a time when the browser was at the point Mozilla is now. Don't forget that. Even though you you can only see the "beta" or final product, don't think that it started out that way. It was a long project, just like Mozilla is.
The project is progressing, and as all projects do, soon reach that finish line. At that point it'll be time to see if it's "fast" enough. For now, it's not. For those wanting to help, find out what's being worked on right now, and what bugs are being looked for. Find bugs and missing features that already in the road map. It does no good to complain that feature "xyz" is not there, when the roadmap already shows that feature "xzy" is planned to be implemented in Milestone 12.
-Brent--
A lot of the posters here are missing the point. There are *optional* features. Because of the fact that you have the source code for Mozilla, you can disable these features with little difficulty - or add new ones, if you so desire.
This is what Open Source / Free(d) Software is all about. It's about choice. Nobody is forcing you to use these addons, but you have the option to use them.
A few months ago (maybe even a few weeks ago) many people were saying Mozilla is a failure. Try out the latest builds - it's getting better and faster all the time. I would use it as my main browser except for the fact that it uses more memory than I'd like (I only have 32MB because my motherboard has a bad SIMM slot). It looks better than netscape and very soon will be faster.
It think it's great that people are able to add things to Mozilla if they choose - don't you agree?
Hey all you /. folks! :)
/.! To make some corrections to the posts that I've seen floating around, allow me to submit the following comments:
I am actively helping in the Jabber project, and I am sad to see so many hastily posted comments here on
1) Jabber is not a rip-off of anything. Jabber is completely different than other IM systems. The first thing that sets it apart is that it is open source and GPLed. But what is more interesting than that is the fact that Jabber has the ability to speak to any type of communication protocol that ANYONE would care to develop a module for. The thing that makes this even cooler is that the modules just need to be installed on the Jabber servers. That way a Jabber client (like the one that is going to work WITH Mozilla) can instantly have access to other protocols as soon as the server has been updated - no updating of the clients is necessary.
2) I have to PARTIALLY agree with the posts about Mozilla getting bloated. But I say partially because I don't believe that most of the posters (especially the AC's) realize that what makes Mozilla bloated is the MODULES (not sure what the "official" term is for modules in Mozilla). The Mozilla Jabber client just works WITH Mozilla and may not necessarily be included in the binaries and so forth and I can't imagine it being required in source packages. DaKrushr already wrote a good post covering this.
3) Jabber has hardly anything to do with Mozilla. Yes, we will be developing a CLIENT to use with Mozilla, but that is just one client. We have clients for almost anything you can think of - Java, Windows, X Window using GTK+, a JavaScript one for browsers, MacOS, Linux command line and more! Please realize that the Jabber client that will be working with Mozilla is just a tiny part of what the Jabber project is all about.
Thank you for your time, and I hope that you will look more indepth into Jabber before writing it off in a heartbeat.
If you'd like to ask some questions, feel free (as temas already posted) to pop into #jabber on the Open Projects IRC Network (try carter.openprojects.net).
Eliot Landrum
Leader of Jabber Documentation Team
eliot@landrum.NOSPAM.cx
my guess is that Mozilla, although "Netscape," is not AOL. I've seen Jabber before -- it's supposed to be an implementation of EVERY IM protocol -- but they're not going from the official AOL docs. (assuming there are some somewhere) AOL might still end up locking it out and/or putting pressure on Mozilla to have it removed. personally, I think this technique would backfire (check me on this here -- I haven't read the NPL all that carefully) if someone is allowed to fork the source tree. of course, AOL could end up blocking it anyways (if they still have anything up their sleeve) but it's horrible public relations (although mostly with people not likely to use AOL) and I don't see them risking it. They might say "well, Microsoft is a company and so we have a problem with them, but this is a "community project" and so we're ok with it." kind of a cop-out, but there you are. then their only recourse to blocking Microsoft would be legal and not technological.
offtopic amusement: when I went to MozillaZine, there was a banner for MSN Instant Messager. Hmm...
Lea