SVG Fonts is an optional part of the SVG 2.0 spec, FWIW. Frankly, I wouldn't call the other browsers' half-baked, supported-enough-to-pass-the-test-but-not-much-more support to be that much better than not supporting it at all.
Question: What's this Black Hat version of Firefox? From the sound of it, I'm assuming it's a version that's tested for security by the...darker-helmed of the userbase.
Mozilla is operating under the assumption that Black Hat will turn up a major (or at least well-publicized) new security vulnerability in Firefox. With that in mind, they're basically aligning their release schedule in preparation for an immediate "chem spill" release if needed.
For what it's worth, there was a session on enterprise deployment at the 2010 Mozilla Summit last week. Official MSI support is coming (there are patches posted to the relevant bug), hopefully for Firefox 4. GPO support is more difficult due to the wide number of settings supported by Firefox and complications with their version numbering and update settings. That said, there are extensions for it at least. Basically, that segment is getting more attention, even if it isn't moving at lightning speed.
Yeah, definitely an interesting question. Which is also why Mozilla hasn't blown the bank with the money they've brought in so far (though some commenters seem to think they should based on all the "Mozilla makes $X each year so they should do Y"). They're smartly putting a large chunk away as a more long-term endowment, which makes a lot of sense from a sustainability standpoint.
And? The point is that with plugins running in the main process, bloated plugins can lead to runaway memory usage in the browser. With plugins running out of process, that's avoided.
There seems to be a lot of momentum heading in that general direction nowadays, though. IE has released a massive CSS test suite, Google and Apple both have published JS test suites, etc. etc. Especially with the general push towards HTML5 compliance in all the major browsers. Maybe just maybe interoperability is closer to reality than we think.
Google has already extended the contract once since the release of Chrome. Google also has a similar search arrangement with Opera. Google isn't doing it out of charity. They're doing it because they're getting search hits (and by extension, ad revenue) out of it. If Firefox is still generating ad revenue for them, why in the world would they want to end that relationship? Has there been any evidence of Google acting in bad faith with respect to this?
Google has the same search revenue agreement with Opera. What makes you think that perceived weakness would have anything to do with Google's continued support? If they're still getting hits and by extension ad revenue from Firefox users, why wouldn't they continue the agreement?
Mozilla is working on hardware acceleration for Linux and OSX, yes. Recently, they landed support for limited OpenGL acceleration on the Windows side which will be working across all OSes eventually. http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2010/04/layers.html
I'm pretty sure you've got that backwards. The primary fat storage mechanism the body uses is the release of insulin to drive excess glucose out of the blood to be stored as fat. Your body likes to burn fat as fuel and is very well-evolved to do so.
In my experience, Win2K and XPSP2 are unsupported in a "use at your own risk" way, not a "don't waste your time, it's not going to run" way. Apart from not getting security updates anymore, software that runs on XPSP3 will likely run on Win2K and XPSP2 just fine. That's not necessarily the case between 10.4 and 10.6. As BZ pointed out in one of his comments, Apple removed ATSUI support from 10.6. 10.4 doesn't support Core Text. So in that case, it's essentially impossible to compile an app that can run on both out of the box. Safari gets around it by maintaining two code paths and using compile-time switches to pick one or the other.
You're absolutely right that XP->Vista was a big jump. But XP still has a huge market share, so supporting it remains a given. Windows 2000 support is basically free if XP is being supported anyway, but I'm willing to bet that Mozilla would be willing consider killing Windows 2000 support if circumstances were to change and 2000 became more burdensome to support.
Firefox 3.6.x, which supports 10.4 just fine, will be getting updates at least until mid-2011. Keep in mind that this entire discussion is about the next release of Firefox, which won't be until the end of the year at the earliest.
As I understand it, Windows 2000 support comes basically for free with XP support. I would assume that Windows 2000 support will be dropped with XP support, though I'm willing to bet that dropping Windows 2000 support earlier would be considered if a compelling reason were to arise.
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SVG Fonts is an optional part of the SVG 2.0 spec, FWIW. Frankly, I wouldn't call the other browsers' half-baked, supported-enough-to-pass-the-test-but-not-much-more support to be that much better than not supporting it at all.
I would say that "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" would be appropriate in this situation.
Question: What's this Black Hat version of Firefox? From the sound of it, I'm assuming it's a version that's tested for security by the...darker-helmed of the userbase.
Mozilla is operating under the assumption that Black Hat will turn up a major (or at least well-publicized) new security vulnerability in Firefox. With that in mind, they're basically aligning their release schedule in preparation for an immediate "chem spill" release if needed.
Continual decline? Their market share seems to have leveled off, but it hasn't really been dropping appreciably.
For what it's worth, there was a session on enterprise deployment at the 2010 Mozilla Summit last week. Official MSI support is coming (there are patches posted to the relevant bug), hopefully for Firefox 4. GPO support is more difficult due to the wide number of settings supported by Firefox and complications with their version numbering and update settings. That said, there are extensions for it at least. Basically, that segment is getting more attention, even if it isn't moving at lightning speed.
From what I understand, moving HTML parsing off the main thread with the new HTML5 parser will make a big difference in that respect for Firefox 4.0.
A friend of mine's Droid got updated to 2.1 a week ago. Meanwhile, I continue to wait for my Eris to get the update...
They used to use the system spell checker. It was disabled due to dictionary issues. More information in bug 422760 if you're interested.
Yeah, definitely an interesting question. Which is also why Mozilla hasn't blown the bank with the money they've brought in so far (though some commenters seem to think they should based on all the "Mozilla makes $X each year so they should do Y"). They're smartly putting a large chunk away as a more long-term endowment, which makes a lot of sense from a sustainability standpoint.
And? The point is that with plugins running in the main process, bloated plugins can lead to runaway memory usage in the browser. With plugins running out of process, that's avoided.
There seems to be a lot of momentum heading in that general direction nowadays, though. IE has released a massive CSS test suite, Google and Apple both have published JS test suites, etc. etc. Especially with the general push towards HTML5 compliance in all the major browsers. Maybe just maybe interoperability is closer to reality than we think.
Google has already extended the contract once since the release of Chrome. Google also has a similar search arrangement with Opera. Google isn't doing it out of charity. They're doing it because they're getting search hits (and by extension, ad revenue) out of it. If Firefox is still generating ad revenue for them, why in the world would they want to end that relationship? Has there been any evidence of Google acting in bad faith with respect to this?
It's interesting to see that Firefox MSI support has been getting more attention lately. With any luck, group policy support will follow.
It'll be interesting to see what happens in that regard when Firefox is running plugins out of the main process with next month's 3.6.4 release.
Google has the same search revenue agreement with Opera. What makes you think that perceived weakness would have anything to do with Google's continued support? If they're still getting hits and by extension ad revenue from Firefox users, why wouldn't they continue the agreement?
Mozilla is working on hardware acceleration for Linux and OSX, yes. Recently, they landed support for limited OpenGL acceleration on the Windows side which will be working across all OSes eventually.
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2010/04/layers.html
Windows ME was a descendant of Win95/Win98. Windows XP was a descendant of NT4/Win2K.
I'm pretty sure you've got that backwards. The primary fat storage mechanism the body uses is the release of insulin to drive excess glucose out of the blood to be stored as fat. Your body likes to burn fat as fuel and is very well-evolved to do so.
The qualifier was put in by the submitter, not TFA.
In my experience, Win2K and XPSP2 are unsupported in a "use at your own risk" way, not a "don't waste your time, it's not going to run" way. Apart from not getting security updates anymore, software that runs on XPSP3 will likely run on Win2K and XPSP2 just fine. That's not necessarily the case between 10.4 and 10.6. As BZ pointed out in one of his comments, Apple removed ATSUI support from 10.6. 10.4 doesn't support Core Text. So in that case, it's essentially impossible to compile an app that can run on both out of the box. Safari gets around it by maintaining two code paths and using compile-time switches to pick one or the other.
You're absolutely right that XP->Vista was a big jump. But XP still has a huge market share, so supporting it remains a given. Windows 2000 support is basically free if XP is being supported anyway, but I'm willing to bet that Mozilla would be willing consider killing Windows 2000 support if circumstances were to change and 2000 became more burdensome to support.
Why are browser security updates such a big deal to you when you're running an OS that hasn't gotten any in ages?
Except Camino is based off Gecko as well, making it equally prone to being left out of future security/stability updates.
Firefox 3.6.x, which supports 10.4 just fine, will be getting updates at least until mid-2011. Keep in mind that this entire discussion is about the next release of Firefox, which won't be until the end of the year at the earliest.
As I understand it, Windows 2000 support comes basically for free with XP support. I would assume that Windows 2000 support will be dropped with XP support, though I'm willing to bet that dropping Windows 2000 support earlier would be considered if a compelling reason were to arise.