You claim the functionality XUL provides to application and web developers is worth the trade off to the performance of the web browser. For a developer this tradeoff may be worthwhile. However you are failing to consider the average web browser user. Mr & Mrs Joe Blogs doesn't want or need XUL framework which competes with.NET if as a result they get a fat & slow XUL based web browser which does not conform to the native user interface of their operating system. While the Mozilla developers fail to understand this point Mozilla will never become a mainsteam web browser - it will be doomed to be a niche web browser for advanced users.
What is the point of developing another nerdy XUL based Mozilla browser? Have the lessons of the Mozilla project not yet been understood? Some of the biggest weaknesses of the Mozilla browser can be attributed back to XUL. XUL enables cross platform applications to be quickly built, but for this developer convenience the biggest trade off for your end users is that your application will never fully conform to the native user interface of the operating system it is run on. A secondary concern is the memory and processor cost of the XUL layer - no one wants a fat and slow browser, caused by having to compile and run a Java Script based user interface at runtime.
Why doesn't the Mozilla project develop fully native user interfaces around the Gecko HTML rendering engine instead of wasting precious time and development resources on another dead-end XUL based browser. A number of separate teams have already started such projects independently (Chimera, K-Meleon & Galeon). The Mozilla team need to refocus their efforts from developing half-caste XUL based browsers toward building native front-ends for each operating system that can complete head-on with the more popular commercial browsers. An XUL based application will just never cut it for the masses.
ZDNet uses some non-standard HTML which will never work in Mozilla. If you want ZDNet to fix their site so it will work with Mozilla, use this link to send a message to webmaster@zd.com
Having said all that - currently I find Mozilla slow. Real slow.
There are currently some major performance issues that are being working on. They will be fixed before final release. One of the biggest is this bug here. If you want a faster and more responsive browser whilst downloading pages, go and vote for this bug now.
You don't need to be a developer to make a contribution to the Mozilla project! You can see the list of bugs most voted for her e. If you want to help the developers know which bugs you most want fixed, choose a bug or two from this list or another Bugzilla list and go vote for it!
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You claim the functionality XUL provides to application and web developers is worth the trade off to the performance of the web browser. For a developer this tradeoff may be worthwhile. However you are failing to consider the average web browser user. Mr & Mrs Joe Blogs doesn't want or need XUL framework which competes with .NET if as a result they get a fat & slow XUL based web browser which does not conform to the native user interface of their operating system. While the Mozilla developers fail to understand this point Mozilla will never become a mainsteam web browser - it will be doomed to be a niche web browser for advanced users.
What is the point of developing another nerdy XUL based Mozilla browser? Have the lessons of the Mozilla project not yet been understood? Some of the biggest weaknesses of the Mozilla browser can be attributed back to XUL. XUL enables cross platform applications to be quickly built, but for this developer convenience the biggest trade off for your end users is that your application will never fully conform to the native user interface of the operating system it is run on. A secondary concern is the memory and processor cost of the XUL layer - no one wants a fat and slow browser, caused by having to compile and run a Java Script based user interface at runtime.
Why doesn't the Mozilla project develop fully native user interfaces around the Gecko HTML rendering engine instead of wasting precious time and development resources on another dead-end XUL based browser. A number of separate teams have already started such projects independently (Chimera, K-Meleon & Galeon). The Mozilla team need to refocus their efforts from developing half-caste XUL based browsers toward building native front-ends for each operating system that can complete head-on with the more popular commercial browsers. An XUL based application will just never cut it for the masses.
Have a look at this page for why it probably doesn't work.
ZDNet uses some non-standard HTML which will never work in Mozilla. If you want ZDNet to fix their site so it will work with Mozilla, use this link to send a message to webmaster@zd.com
Go and post a bug report in http://bugzilla.mozilla.org and it will be fixed if it turns out to be a true bug.
Having said all that - currently I find Mozilla slow. Real slow.
There are currently some major performance issues that are being working on. They will be fixed before final release. One of the biggest is this bug here. If you want a faster and more responsive browser whilst downloading pages, go and vote for this bug now.
Do you have Java 1.3 installed. If so, read the release notes for a fix.
You don't need to be a developer to make a contribution to the Mozilla project! You can see the list of bugs most voted for her e. If you want to help the developers know which bugs you most want fixed, choose a bug or two from this list or another Bugzilla list and go vote for it!