User counts for Firefox continue to increase. Its marketshare may be decreasing, but that doesn't translate to dropping usage numbers in a rapidly growing market.
Rest in Peace, Steve. You were a visionary and a true inspiration to many of us. You accomplished more in life than most of us could do in 10. Your legacy and story will live forever. For me, there's no greater honor than that.
You can remove the signature code (it's all in the META-INF dir IIRC) and the add-on will continue to install and work. I'm not sure what happens if you change it in your profile while being installed, but I suspect it should still work.
Not that I agree with the GP on this being a good solution...
Sufficiently large corporations should know how to configure Firefox in their employees' machines so that they are not automatically updated until they decide to. For example, I know IBM is currently using 3.6 and was in the process of certifying 4.0. While the default behavior in the future will be to silently update, it shouldn't be difficult for large businesses to stay on a specific version they know they can support.
It will be a problem because only the latest versions will get security updates, though.
The idea is to eventually implement silent background updates, so you won't even know which version of Firefox you are using. It will just be "Firefox".
AMO Editors (extension approvers) don't reject add-ons due to having a maxVersion that is "too big". In fact, the only upper bound is the set of maxVersions that the addons site allows. You're probably right on 8.0a1 becoming available only recently.
I don't think you should worry about Firebug being incompatible with a release version of Firefox. Recent versions of Firebug should be compatible with Beta and even Nightly versions of Firefox. Same goes for most major add-ons. The rest can be a hit-or-miss, though, but the majority are up to date.
My understanding is that the standardization of ActiveX for secure banking in South Korea happened before SSL was well-known and widespread. Also, this was a country-wide standard, not something that was internally chosen by banks.
Have they caught up yet? A few weeks ago half my extensions didn't work so I reverted.
Most popular extensions have caught up. The Compatibility Dashboard has more details. However, we can't force all developers to update and inevitably some add-ons will lag behind or be abandoned.
I'm going back to 3.6.15, because this was an absolute letdown, and a knee-jerk release triggered by yesterday's IE9 release (in which case the browser actually IS leaner and faster).
Actually, the release date was planned well ahead of today, and it was released because there were no more blocker bugs.
The long beta cycle for Firefox 4 has paid off in this regard, and the majority of add-ons are already compatible. Pretty much every popular add-on already works well in Firefox 4.
Bring back the option for a status bar. You can leave it off by default but it is annoying as hell for a web developer to not have a status bar.
The statusbar is still there, but it is now called the Add-on Bar, and it's empty and hidden by default. Like the other reply states, some add-ons exist that move previous statusbar UI back to its original position.
*There's also the boiling frog scenario - toss a frog into boiling water he'll try to jump out. Put a frog in cold water and slowly warm it to boiling he won't. Some research says this is legend, some says it's true as long as you're really, really gradual. Me? I wonder if it also depends on the frog. Anyways - there are probably people less likely to notice being slow cooked than flash burned.
Remember the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. It was supposedly headed towards DC. The attacks were only partially successful in that regard.
I wonder how different things would be if the 4th plane would have crashed on its target. It seems 9/11 is normally remembered as an attack on the WTC (rarely the Pentagon is mentioned), so maybe in that parallel reality 9/11 would have been remembered as the attack on the White House.
Yes, I'm referring to alternatives like Yahoo and Bing. When the search agreement renewal came up on the news a few months ago (maybe more?), and lot of people were asking the same question, and several people from Mozilla answered it very thoroughly (don't have reference handy, sorry). Mozilla has plenty of money saved for the future, and Google is not the only one capable and willing to fill that search engine spot.
Of course, you're free to be skeptic about claims coming from within Mozilla. (Full disclosure: I work for them)
Slashdot Mirror
I think many Slashdotters should get that reference, though the lack of replies is a little disconcerting :).
User counts for Firefox continue to increase. Its marketshare may be decreasing, but that doesn't translate to dropping usage numbers in a rapidly growing market.
I think your ID does that job fairly well ;)
Rest in Peace, Steve. You were a visionary and a true inspiration to many of us. You accomplished more in life than most of us could do in 10. Your legacy and story will live forever. For me, there's no greater honor than that.
Thank you for everything.
They tek er jebs!
You can remove the signature code (it's all in the META-INF dir IIRC) and the add-on will continue to install and work. I'm not sure what happens if you change it in your profile while being installed, but I suspect it should still work.
Not that I agree with the GP on this being a good solution...
Nope. I enjoyed it as well.
You're probably talking about the 3GS, which is a different model. Those are still available, yes.
Sufficiently large corporations should know how to configure Firefox in their employees' machines so that they are not automatically updated until they decide to. For example, I know IBM is currently using 3.6 and was in the process of certifying 4.0. While the default behavior in the future will be to silently update, it shouldn't be difficult for large businesses to stay on a specific version they know they can support.
It will be a problem because only the latest versions will get security updates, though.
The idea is to eventually implement silent background updates, so you won't even know which version of Firefox you are using. It will just be "Firefox".
AMO Editors (extension approvers) don't reject add-ons due to having a maxVersion that is "too big". In fact, the only upper bound is the set of maxVersions that the addons site allows. You're probably right on 8.0a1 becoming available only recently.
I don't think you should worry about Firebug being incompatible with a release version of Firefox. Recent versions of Firebug should be compatible with Beta and even Nightly versions of Firefox. Same goes for most major add-ons. The rest can be a hit-or-miss, though, but the majority are up to date.
My understanding is that the standardization of ActiveX for secure banking in South Korea happened before SSL was well-known and widespread. Also, this was a country-wide standard, not something that was internally chosen by banks.
This is a good read if you're interested.
Have they caught up yet? A few weeks ago half my extensions didn't work so I reverted.
Most popular extensions have caught up. The Compatibility Dashboard has more details. However, we can't force all developers to update and inevitably some add-ons will lag behind or be abandoned.
I'm going back to 3.6.15, because this was an absolute letdown, and a knee-jerk release triggered by yesterday's IE9 release (in which case the browser actually IS leaner and faster).
Actually, the release date was planned well ahead of today, and it was released because there were no more blocker bugs.
The long beta cycle for Firefox 4 has paid off in this regard, and the majority of add-ons are already compatible. Pretty much every popular add-on already works well in Firefox 4.
Um, the text is inside a box, not floating on its own. Changing the background color of the page won't have any effect.
It'd be interesting to try to tack something to the left of the floating box. With the right alignment and styling it could be a cause for concern.
Have you ever considered if your perception of that "perfect software experience" might just possibly change if you were to be, for example, blinded?
The iPhone is actually quite accessible. Here's a review by an accessibility developer at Mozilla: link. He's blind, by the way.
It's still in development. I don't really know how usable it is at the moment.
I believe Blue Griffon will interest you.
Bring back the option for a status bar. You can leave it off by default but it is annoying as hell for a web developer to not have a status bar.
The statusbar is still there, but it is now called the Add-on Bar, and it's empty and hidden by default. Like the other reply states, some add-ons exist that move previous statusbar UI back to its original position.
*There's also the boiling frog scenario - toss a frog into boiling water he'll try to jump out. Put a frog in cold water and slowly warm it to boiling he won't. Some research says this is legend, some says it's true as long as you're really, really gradual. Me? I wonder if it also depends on the frog. Anyways - there are probably people less likely to notice being slow cooked than flash burned.
The "boiling frog" meme is just an urban legend.
I agree with everything else you said, though.
Remember the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. It was supposedly headed towards DC. The attacks were only partially successful in that regard.
I wonder how different things would be if the 4th plane would have crashed on its target. It seems 9/11 is normally remembered as an attack on the WTC (rarely the Pentagon is mentioned), so maybe in that parallel reality 9/11 would have been remembered as the attack on the White House.
There are some mentions of this in Zeitgeist: Addendum. Of course the whole thing is conspiracy theorist's dream, so take it with a few cups of salt.
Yes, I'm referring to alternatives like Yahoo and Bing. When the search agreement renewal came up on the news a few months ago (maybe more?), and lot of people were asking the same question, and several people from Mozilla answered it very thoroughly (don't have reference handy, sorry). Mozilla has plenty of money saved for the future, and Google is not the only one capable and willing to fill that search engine spot.
Of course, you're free to be skeptic about claims coming from within Mozilla. (Full disclosure: I work for them)