"Lots of companies pay people to work on Mozilla, including IBM. It doesn't mean they do things only to benefit their employers."
But while Firefox is an open source project, it is not a free-for-all. There are only a few persons that decide on the UI design, and IIANM, one person has the final vote: Ben. That's why Firefox is more usable for most people than Mozilla, its UI hasn't been designed by a committee. Which means that Ben has a real power. The possibility of a fork is mostly theoretical. If Ben would manipulate the UI a bit to be even more Google friendly, but it stays usable, no fork will happen. This wouldn't even have to be a conscious choice to thwart other search engines. Of course there will be no secret hidden code that sends your soul to Mountain View.
I'm not saying Ben is or will ever become corrupt. But it does feel a little bit weird that someone with real power in the browser world is paid for by a search engine.
How would you feel if Linus was being paid (exclusively) by AMD? Would optimization for AMD chips get in the Linux kernel a little bit faster than optimizations for Intel chips?
Actually, Opera's widgets are not from QT. You either get the native widgets for the platform when using a 'native' skin, or the cross-platform widgets defined in the skin file when using a non-native skin. The desktop versions of Opera 7 (for Windows, Linux, Mac, FreeBSD or Solaris) use a cross-platform windowing layer, which makes it possible to develop a single UI. This is a light-weight layer BTW, which contains just enough for what Opera currently needs. As opposed to XUL...
Because of this, the development of the various desktop versions is completely synched. There is only a relatively small portion of platform specific coding.
You don't have to buy. You can also use the ad-supported version, that would not make you a freeloader. You deprive Opera of the occasional click on an interesting ad.
It might not be immoral (which, in the end, each has to define for himself), but it certainly is thievery (you do something you are not allowed to do).
LOL! Firefox is a branched from the same Gecko core as used by Mozilla and Netscape 6 and 7, it is the little nephew of Mozilla. Sure, lots of independent work went into the interface before it became the focus of the orphaned, oops I mean liberated Mozilla project. But AOL paid for the 'ground up' development of the Gecko code for Netscape/Mozilla for several years. But as this is open source software, it doesn't matter much who paid when for what.
Keeping the Netscape brand alive isn't such a bad idea, AOL paid enough for it when they bought Netscape Inc.
I'll bite... Opera has never been bloated bytewise, it is still significantly smaller than Firefox for example. The Opera 7.2 release might be considered to be the culmination of 'feature' bloat. After that, Opera didn't stop adding features, but the interface cleanup in 7.5 and now 8beta show that the package can be streamlined and goodlooking while it still offers lots of features out of the box.
Yes, Opera 4 (June 2000) introduced a 'Windows bar' that works just like the Windows taskbar. Before that, you only had the traditional MDI controls for handling child windows.
In the Opera 8 beta the 'Page bar' will work more like a tabs bar ala Firefox, but you can choose to get the old taskbar-ish behavior.
Read the press release: the licensing will be changed for this new release, and this specific upgrade from 7 will be free. More bang for your back if you happen to use multiple machines and/or OS's. But you are of course welcome to pay for a new license. Or maybe buy some Opera Goodies?
Maybe Opera's mirrors are actually working just fine (use the offical download page, not direct ftp links). Or maybe Opera users are not using Slashdot as their primary notification for new releases...
Except you forgot the 11Mb Java download that is mandatory when you install Opera. Firefox just works. I'll add that in.
The Java download is not mandatory, there has always been a non-Java version available for download. In fact, starting with this beta Opera will offer the big download anymore. You are invited to download the Java JRE when you come upon a page that needs it - if your system doesn't have a JRE. And Firefox needs an installed JRE just as much to show you Java applets, it doesn't pull this out of thin air.
Opera includes the Flash plugin in the download; if you have Opera installed, Firefox will happily use Opera's plugin. If not, you are prompted by Firefox to download it on the first page you see that has embedded Flash.
Opera - Very large initial footprint Firefox - Tiny footprint
WTF?
This beta is 3.6 MB, and includes the Flash plugin. Firefox (for Windows) comes in at 4.7MB, and doesn't have the Flash plugin. Neither have the Java JRE.
Opera - Very long time between updates and releases Firefox - Fixed and updated with the speed of the open source communities non-sleeping programming hordes
If you call the.6-.7-.8-.9-.9.1-.9.1-.10-1.0 series 'updates', be my guest. But Opera has been delevering great browsers for years, while Mozilla and Firefox have been struggling for years before finally producing a usable browser. When will Firefox 1.1 final be released? And what spectacular new features will it have?
Let's face it, there are no hordes of developers working on Firefox, especially not fulltime.
And trying to give Firefox 2 points for being Open Source *and* free is misleading.
You miss two important items: Opera has lots of tightly integrated productivity features (and no, they don't get in the way) that can make a power user out of anyone interested in doing more with their browser, and it has a nicely integrated mail client (that also doesn't get in the way when you don't use it).
Firefox might render more pages correctly compared to Opera, for the same reason as MSIE renders correctly compared to Firefox: developers test for it.
I want to discourage people (after installing on a school network) to install extensions and in general to prevent drive-by installations (these kids happily click OK everywhere).
But when they come across a site that calls for a legitimate, known plugin, shouldn't that install without fuss? If Firefox itself can discover which plugin I need and seemlessly install it, why should that fail, silently or with a proper dialog?
Making things hard is a great job? If I want to make an installation 'secure' by disallowing 'install from site' (the only option apart from the whitelist) then I can't install plugins, it fails without any explanation. Just try to install Flash or Java, where Firefox itself fetches the proper plugin files (so what risk?). I click 'install' and nothing happens.
But make sure that your alternate browser it is a recent version of Firefox or Mozilla. They have responded very quickly to security issues, and are being proactive about security, much more so than the the people behind Konqueror or Opera.
A fixed 7.54u1 is being distributed at this moment. See the Opera advisory.
And as far as solutions go: why expect perfect safety online, when we don't have it offline either? Software should improve, online systems should be more secure (it is stupid if money can change hands online only secured by a single login), and most people will smarten up in time. Perfection will not be reached.
MSIE has a track record of leaving critical holes open for a while, but most reported holes are not critical. And MSIE is much more informative about it issues than either Opera, which only recently started publishing advisories, and Firefox (what advisories?) Selling Firefox purely on the safety issue will come back to bite it in the long run.
The people who can't replicate in one or the other browser, are probably not reading the instructions on Secunia's page carefully. Or they are using non-standard settings in their browser.
The issue is real, but not very likely to hit you. But combined with phishing mails it might fool some people.
Firefox is marketed to the general public mostly on security, and issues like this make sure it will not reach it goals if it doesn't emphasize its other strengths as well.
"Why didn't they instead spend the $$$ improving rendering in FireFox so that all these IE only sites render properly?"
As if developing a shell for Gecko/MSIE is a costly endeavor... The big thing is tying it in with your web properties, and persuading people to install it, so you can actually make money. Making money is considered more important than spending money in many corporations:)
Those site controls look nifty: http://gemal.dk/misc/nsb14.png/. I just read in other news that site controls are considered one of the major new features for Firefox 1.5 or 2.0. Wonder if AOL will share the code...
Imagine if one of the things that Google determined when it crawled a site was if the HTML of the site was standards compliant (or even just Gecko compliant.) This could be included as metadata on search results, with some kind of small, nasty looking icon indicating that a site was "irregular" or something like that.
Imagine Google itself using valid, clean code. I guess they don't care about their bandwidth costs, they could save a lot.
"But this year I switched to Firefox, technically, Opera is actually the better browser right now, it feels faster, and more stable, has more built-in features, a nicer interface and is generally just a more mature program. I just saw Firefox as being the way to go though"
I don't see the logic here. Do you assume 7.54 will be the last ever version of Opera, and Firefox will suddenly develop all kind of new features? Nonsense, the new competition (frankly, being better than MSIE isn't very difficult) only means the Opera developers will try even harder to offer more value. If you don't need features and you just browse, an address field and a back button is enough, and Firefox will be fine for you.
But personally I love things like better multi-page browsing, FastForward, Notes, easy customizability, lovely integrated mail client, etc.
Yawn. Just disable the non-browser UI in Opera then. In Opera 7.5x: 'Tools > Preferences > Programs and paths > Enable Mail and Chat'.
Opera 7.6 will be even more geared to users who want to 'just browse'. Without actually sacrificing features though. In Opera there is no need to pray for updates to extensions after you update the browser, or remembering which mouse-gestures extension was the one that actually worked like you wanted etc.
I don't want to bash FF though, it is a fine program. Just different.
So what if Opera is not free? The practical difference is an ad banner. That might be enough to deter some people, but the fact that FF is open source doesn't matter at all IMHO. Not for the target audience of Firefox at least.
You can check all the data behind the graphs, I would think if he did something sneaky it would have been routed out by now. Many other sites are not using *all* available polls, which means they are not swinging as wildly and also not as up-to-date as Tanenbaum's. As he explains in the FAQ now, his graphs have not been significantly different from the pro-bush electionprojection.com site.
This from a magazine that endorsed Dole and Bush on previous US elections...
Re:Why every filter HAS go be done by a proxy?
on
Breaking Google's DRM
·
· Score: 1
I can do that in Opera since about forever. Ctrl+F3 to open the cached source in my preferred editor, make adjustmends, save, then use View > Refresh to let Opera redraw from cache. This makes fast debugging of someone else's site much easier.
It should also be a piece of cake to create an overriding user stylesheet (or edit the browser stylesheet) to get rid of this no-print sillyness, if only I could actually find the Google Print page... I confess I didn't read all the comments for this article:)
Deprecation is not a matter of opinion in the world of webstandards:)
HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 offer exactly the same capabilities, only XHTML offers ease of use inside XSLT based publishing systems. Anyone else might just as well go on writing HTML 4.01.
What matters is that you write valid HTML, and that you separate style and structure, farming out all presentation to the linked style sheet. So I agree with the sentiment to use 'Strict with CSS'.
I see a lot of invalid XHTML on the web, where the use transitional or proprietary markup like 'topmargin' and 'center'. I always wonder, why did they add those slashes? What's the point?
Slashdot Mirror
"Lots of companies pay people to work on Mozilla, including IBM. It doesn't mean they do things only to benefit their employers."
But while Firefox is an open source project, it is not a free-for-all. There are only a few persons that decide on the UI design, and IIANM, one person has the final vote: Ben. That's why Firefox is more usable for most people than Mozilla, its UI hasn't been designed by a committee. Which means that Ben has a real power. The possibility of a fork is mostly theoretical. If Ben would manipulate the UI a bit to be even more Google friendly, but it stays usable, no fork will happen. This wouldn't even have to be a conscious choice to thwart other search engines. Of course there will be no secret hidden code that sends your soul to Mountain View.
I'm not saying Ben is or will ever become corrupt. But it does feel a little bit weird that someone with real power in the browser world is paid for by a search engine.
How would you feel if Linus was being paid (exclusively) by AMD? Would optimization for AMD chips get in the Linux kernel a little bit faster than optimizations for Intel chips?
Actually, Opera's widgets are not from QT. You either get the native widgets for the platform when using a 'native' skin, or the cross-platform widgets defined in the skin file when using a non-native skin. The desktop versions of Opera 7 (for Windows, Linux, Mac, FreeBSD or Solaris) use a cross-platform windowing layer, which makes it possible to develop a single UI. This is a light-weight layer BTW, which contains just enough for what Opera currently needs. As opposed to XUL...
Because of this, the development of the various desktop versions is completely synched. There is only a relatively small portion of platform specific coding.
You don't have to buy. You can also use the ad-supported version, that would not make you a freeloader. You deprive Opera of the occasional click on an interesting ad.
It might not be immoral (which, in the end, each has to define for himself), but it certainly is thievery (you do something you are not allowed to do).
LOL! Firefox is a branched from the same Gecko core as used by Mozilla and Netscape 6 and 7, it is the little nephew of Mozilla. Sure, lots of independent work went into the interface before it became the focus of the orphaned, oops I mean liberated Mozilla project. But AOL paid for the 'ground up' development of the Gecko code for Netscape/Mozilla for several years. But as this is open source software, it doesn't matter much who paid when for what.
Keeping the Netscape brand alive isn't such a bad idea, AOL paid enough for it when they bought Netscape Inc.
I'll bite... Opera has never been bloated bytewise, it is still significantly smaller than Firefox for example. The Opera 7.2 release might be considered to be the culmination of 'feature' bloat. After that, Opera didn't stop adding features, but the interface cleanup in 7.5 and now 8beta show that the package can be streamlined and goodlooking while it still offers lots of features out of the box.
Yes, Opera 4 (June 2000) introduced a 'Windows bar' that works just like the Windows taskbar. Before that, you only had the traditional MDI controls for handling child windows.
In the Opera 8 beta the 'Page bar' will work more like a tabs bar ala Firefox, but you can choose to get the old taskbar-ish behavior.
Read the press release: the licensing will be changed for this new release, and this specific upgrade from 7 will be free. More bang for your back if you happen to use multiple machines and/or OS's. But you are of course welcome to pay for a new license. Or maybe buy some Opera Goodies?
Maybe Opera's mirrors are actually working just fine (use the offical download page, not direct ftp links). Or maybe Opera users are not using Slashdot as their primary notification for new releases...
Yes, Opera does support transparent Flash now. This could already be seen in the 7.6 technical previews that went before this beta release.
The Java download is not mandatory, there has always been a non-Java version available for download. In fact, starting with this beta Opera will offer the big download anymore. You are invited to download the Java JRE when you come upon a page that needs it - if your system doesn't have a JRE. And Firefox needs an installed JRE just as much to show you Java applets, it doesn't pull this out of thin air.
Opera includes the Flash plugin in the download; if you have Opera installed, Firefox will happily use Opera's plugin. If not, you are prompted by Firefox to download it on the first page you see that has embedded Flash.
WTF?
This beta is 3.6 MB, and includes the Flash plugin. Firefox (for Windows) comes in at 4.7MB, and doesn't have the Flash plugin. Neither have the Java JRE.
If you call the
Let's face it, there are no hordes of developers working on Firefox, especially not fulltime.
And trying to give Firefox 2 points for being Open Source *and* free is misleading.
You miss two important items: Opera has lots of tightly integrated productivity features (and no, they don't get in the way) that can make a power user out of anyone interested in doing more with their browser, and it has a nicely integrated mail client (that also doesn't get in the way when you don't use it).
Firefox might render more pages correctly compared to Opera, for the same reason as MSIE renders correctly compared to Firefox: developers test for it.
I want to discourage people (after installing on a school network) to install extensions and in general to prevent drive-by installations (these kids happily click OK everywhere).
But when they come across a site that calls for a legitimate, known plugin, shouldn't that install without fuss?
If Firefox itself can discover which plugin I need and seemlessly install it, why should that fail, silently or with a proper dialog?
Making things hard is a great job? If I want to make an installation 'secure' by disallowing 'install from site' (the only option apart from the whitelist) then I can't install plugins, it fails without any explanation. Just try to install Flash or Java, where Firefox itself fetches the proper plugin files (so what risk?). I click 'install' and nothing happens.
I'm sorry, but that is FUD. Opera will be the first browser to patch the latest, cross-browser, issue.
A fixed 7.54u1 is being distributed at this moment. See the Opera advisory.
And as far as solutions go: why expect perfect safety online, when we don't have it offline either? Software should improve, online systems should be more secure (it is stupid if money can change hands online only secured by a single login), and most people will smarten up in time. Perfection will not be reached.
MSIE has a track record of leaving critical holes open for a while, but most reported holes are not critical. And MSIE is much more informative about it issues than either Opera, which only recently started publishing advisories, and Firefox (what advisories?) Selling Firefox purely on the safety issue will come back to bite it in the long run.
The people who can't replicate in one or the other browser, are probably not reading the instructions on Secunia's page carefully. Or they are using non-standard settings in their browser.
The issue is real, but not very likely to hit you. But combined with phishing mails it might fool some people.
Firefox is marketed to the general public mostly on security, and issues like this make sure it will not reach it goals if it doesn't emphasize its other strengths as well.
"Why didn't they instead spend the $$$ improving rendering in FireFox so that all these IE only sites render properly?"
:)
As if developing a shell for Gecko/MSIE is a costly endeavor... The big thing is tying it in with your web properties, and persuading people to install it, so you can actually make money. Making money is considered more important than spending money in many corporations
Those site controls look nifty: http://gemal.dk/misc/nsb14.png/. I just read in other news that site controls are considered one of the major new features for Firefox 1.5 or 2.0. Wonder if AOL will share the code...
Imagine if one of the things that Google determined when it crawled a site was if the HTML of the site was standards compliant (or even just Gecko compliant.) This could be included as metadata on search results, with some kind of small, nasty looking icon indicating that a site was "irregular" or something like that.
Imagine Google itself using valid, clean code. I guess they don't care about their bandwidth costs, they could save a lot.
Hey, that's been my line for years!
--
Opera
I don't see the logic here. Do you assume 7.54 will be the last ever version of Opera, and Firefox will suddenly develop all kind of new features? Nonsense, the new competition (frankly, being better than MSIE isn't very difficult) only means the Opera developers will try even harder to offer more value. If you don't need features and you just browse, an address field and a back button is enough, and Firefox will be fine for you.
But personally I love things like better multi-page browsing, FastForward, Notes, easy customizability, lovely integrated mail client, etc.
Yawn. Just disable the non-browser UI in Opera then. In Opera 7.5x: 'Tools > Preferences > Programs and paths > Enable Mail and Chat'.
Opera 7.6 will be even more geared to users who want to 'just browse'. Without actually sacrificing features though. In Opera there is no need to pray for updates to extensions after you update the browser, or remembering which mouse-gestures extension was the one that actually worked like you wanted etc.
I don't want to bash FF though, it is a fine program. Just different.
So what if Opera is not free? The practical difference is an ad banner. That might be enough to deter some people, but the fact that FF is open source doesn't matter at all IMHO. Not for the target audience of Firefox at least.
You can check all the data behind the graphs, I would think if he did something sneaky it would have been routed out by now. Many other sites are not using *all* available polls, which means they are not swinging as wildly and also not as up-to-date as Tanenbaum's. As he explains in the FAQ now, his graphs have not been significantly different from the pro-bush electionprojection.com site.
o ry.cfm? story_id=3329802
Also, read this:
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaySt
This from a magazine that endorsed Dole and Bush on previous US elections...
I can do that in Opera since about forever. Ctrl+F3 to open the cached source in my preferred editor, make adjustmends, save, then use View > Refresh to let Opera redraw from cache. This makes fast debugging of someone else's site much easier.
:)
It should also be a piece of cake to create an overriding user stylesheet (or edit the browser stylesheet) to get rid of this no-print sillyness, if only I could actually find the Google Print page... I confess I didn't read all the comments for this article
Deprecation is not a matter of opinion in the world of webstandards
HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 offer exactly the same capabilities, only XHTML offers ease of use inside XSLT based publishing systems. Anyone else might just as well go on writing HTML 4.01.
What matters is that you write valid HTML, and that you separate style and structure, farming out all presentation to the linked style sheet. So I agree with the sentiment to use 'Strict with CSS'.
I see a lot of invalid XHTML on the web, where the use transitional or proprietary markup like 'topmargin' and 'center'. I always wonder, why did they add those slashes? What's the point?