I have a difficult time calling Firefox a truly open source project. Sure, the source code is available, and you can redistribute and modify it, and all that. But when you truly look at it, it's a mess. Somebody could easily sneak malicious code in there, and to be honest, most programmers wouldn't be able to tell if it was malicious, or if it was part of the software.
While it's less likely that an open source program includes malicious code, it isn't something we should rule out completely. That holds especially true for overly complex codebases like Mozilla, where it'd take years for one person to completely audit the source code. The source code is available, but it's not truly accessible.
You must not have used Opera to make such patently incorrect claims. They do not cut corners with their engine. It supports the various standards just fine, if not far better than its competitors.
When compared to Firefox, its performance is superb. I know a number of people who used to use Firefox, but ended up switching to Opera 8.51. They just got tired of the memory leaks of Firefox, and were especially disappointed by the very poor 1.5 release.
Opera has become to Firefox what Firefox became to Internet Explorer. Put simply, it is a superior browser. Trying it out for a day is often enough to make one switch.
This release of Opera offers excellent support for CSS, CSS2, and even CSS3. Many have suggested that it is, at this point, superior to that offered by any existing browser on the market. Of course, this is the cutting edge of their product line, so one would expect it to be at the top of its game.
I'm glad that it uses Qt. I have found Qt-based applications to perform far superior to GTK+ based ones, for instance. Qt is an extremely well written toolkit, and its performance is superb. The Opera themes support works wonders, too.
As for the matter of extensibility, it's just not necessary! Opera includes by default all the capabilities you'll likely need. While Firefox users must resort to a myriad of extensions, Opera users just enable the features they want, and off they go! No downloads or nonsense like that.
Firefox has a huge amount of marketing and hype behind it. That's why it's more popular that Opera. Now, these days many people are beginning to run into problems with Firefox, namely due to its poor memory management. People are beginning to question the validity of the hype, and many are switching to alternative browsers like Opera, Konqueror, Safari and OmniWeb. As long as these alternative browsers keep innovating at the pace they have been lately, Firefox may not be able to keep up.
As for others replicating the fantastic capabilities of the engine of Opera, it has been done. Konqueror is a prime example. Often times it feels far more slick than even Opera. Unfortunately, it is limited to Unix platforms these days. That may change in the future, however, with the release of KDE 4. A native version of Konqueror for Windows may be just the thing necessary to get more people to switch away from IE.
I understand where you're coming from. Indeed, it often is difficult to change one's browser on a whim. But this time it's actually worth it, and this is only a beta-quality release!
Do you remember that feeling you got when you first used Firefox? Indeed, it often gave people that rush of "I'm trying something new, and by jove, I love it!" Well, you'll likely get the same feeling if you give this release of Opera a try.
Indeed. The download for FreeBSD was 6 MB, with a statically-linked version of Qt. It's quite fantastic how much they manage to pack into such a small package.
We often hear how Firefox's greatest strength is its extensions. Well, to be honest, when you're using Opera you don't need to delve into extensions. Opera includes all the functionality you want by default.
I don't doubt that you have problems comprehending the material you're covering during your academic studies. After all, you were unable to notice that Republicans and Democrats are the very same these days. So it doesn't strike me as odd that you lack basic analytical skills, in addition to your inability to read.
I've been using the FreeBSD release today, and my gosh, does it ever fly! It doesn't feel as responsive as Konqueror, but it still is a fantastic browser.
The email client is vastly improved, and it feels much quicker than in previous releases. It was quite quick at listing my 1800 MB mailbox, and it's now possible to scroll through the entries at a rapid pace without delay.
The opera:config feature is quite nice, and presented very well. It's far nicer to view than the comparable about:config capabilities of Firefox, yet just as easy to locate and modify preferences.
Overall, this release is an improvement over the last, while still retaining the small size and high responsiveness that Opera is known for. I give it an A+.
Now that Opera has removed the ads from their browser, and added these other features, it has become a real competitor to Firefox.
The Firefox developers will really have to step up to the plate with the upcoming Firefox 2.0 release if they want to retain the marketshare they currently have. Firefox will have to show some pretty serious speed improvements, and far better memory management. It can't leak memory at the rate which the current 1.5 releases do.
Indeed. It is often said that one becomes what he fights against. In this case Firefox decided to take on Internet Explorer, and hence has started to become much more like it.
Firefox is indeed starting to show the same poor planning, poor implementation, numerous security issues, and poor resource usage that Internet Explorer is well known for.
I'm well aware that Mozilla supports the Boehm garbage collector, in addition to various other memory allocators. The fact remains that none work as well as the garbage collectors offered by most production-quality LISP and Smalltalk implementations. Then again, that's partially because of C++ being so fundamentally different from other languages, to the extent where it isn't an easy task to write a solid garbage collector for it.
It was well-known in the late 1960s that it was not a good idea to use unbounded copying. Indeed, that is before C, let alone strcpy(), was first implemented.
Memory-related exploits should never be an issue. A proper garbage collection system, like that offered by most implementations of LISP, Smalltalk and OCaml, for instance, eliminates memory leaks. It lets the developer focus on writing solid code, without having to worry about mundane issues, without affecting performance to any extent.
And no, don't use a GC'ed language like Java or the various.NET languages. Their use of a virtual machine often brings in more problems than it solves, in addition to using poor garbage collection policies and schemes.
Remember, there are many, many user out there who have systems with only 512 MB of RAM, if not far less. They will quickly notice their system performance tank when they start using Firefox, especially if along with other heavy software such as Microsoft Office and Photoshop.
Even if they don't care about the numerical values in question, they still do care about getting work done. And when Firefox (or any other piece of software) is directly responsible for such slowdowns, it will be remembered.
Recall, excessive memory consumption is one of the most difficult reputations for a piece of software to break. People will come to associate Mozilla and Firefox with slow, bloated software. That won't bode well for future adoption of their products by the masses.
Please don't mislead yourself. Neither program's memory consumption is reasonable, especially when you consider what each program does. Either way, the cause is the same: poorly architectured software. Java and Mozilla both involve far too much bloat.
Many of us who were developing software in the 1970s, and even up until the mid-1990s, are quite horrified at how poorly software today manages memory. Whatever gains have been made in terms of increased memory capacity are quickly lost due to a subsequent decrease in the quality of software.
It's especially sickening to those of us who have been using languages like LISP and Smalltalk for decades. Garbage collection easily deals with many of the memory leaks exhibited by Firefox, for instance, without an overly significant performance penalty.
Regardless, there is no excuse for a program like a BitTorrent client or a web browser to consume 80 MB of RAM for normal usage.
While some Mozilla developers may suggest otherwise, I doubt there is much that can be done to deal with such issues. The general architecture and code quality of Mozilla is so bad that fixing such issues would be a massive undertaking.
One of the main indicators of over-engineering in the software world is a high level of memory consumption. Even without using an in-RAM cache, the memory usage of Mozilla is still excessive. A quick glance at the code or developers documentation will show you why: it's a poorly architectured beast. What could be achieved simply and effectively using a cross-platform toolkit (such as wxWidgets or Qt, depending on licensing requirements) has been bungled up by the Mozilla developers.
Thankfully, you do have alternatives. There are Opera, Konqueror, Safari, and OmniWeb availabe to you, depending on your platform(s). They're just as featureful as Firefox, if not more so. And they often have nowhere near the memory consumption of Firefox, even after prolonged use.
What we're seeing these days is an exodus from Firefox towards Opera, Konqueror, Safari, and other alternative browsers.
The Firefox 1.5 release didn't go nearly as well as it should have. Touted as being a breakthrough release, numerous people upgraded only to find that it was buggy, consumed far too many system resources, or just plain didn't work. Thus many people moved towards the other browsers that are available.
I used to recommend Firefox to my relatives, non-technical friends, and others. But I won't do it any more. Firefox has started to get a bad reputation, and I won't let their reputation affect my reputation. Thus I recommend Konqueror most times, but for people who can't switch to Linux or BSD I often suggest the use of Opera. Opera has shown for years now that they can write solid, secure, portable, performant browser. Thus they get recommendations from me.
There was a very interesting post here earlier regarding the attitude of the Firefox developers towards memory consumption. I invite you to read it for yourself:
The last paragraph is perhaps the most telling. It is apparently felt that issues such as memory consumption just don't matter to the average user. Of course, that's a very incorrect assertion to make. When even a normal user finds that Firefox has consumed 400+ MB of their 512 MB of RAM, and thus severely degraded their system's performance, they won't be too pleased.
Such a carelessness towards memory consumption would also suggest a similar lack of interest in writing code that is secure. When it comes to an Internet-enabled product, especially a web browser, security is paramount.
Has anyone collected similar data regarding Opera, OmniWeb, Safari, and other alternative browsers?
If so, how do they compare to Mozilla and Internet Explorer in not only the time it takes to address security problems, but also in terms of the number of incidents per release?
While it's important to fix bugs quickly and correctly, perhaps the Mozilla project should take some initiative within the open source community to work on preventing security issues in the first place. They could partner with the OpenBSD project on such an initiative, for instance.
Together they could come up with a development system that focuses on writing solid code. Such a methodology won't prevent all security bugs by any means, but it could go a long way towards vastly increasing the quality of the Mozilla project's software.
Openness and accuracy are not mutually exclusive. Often times when we have increased openness and a greater availability of information, we end up having more accurate information.
The ongoing war in Iraq is a perfect example. Those who had access to only the limited information provided by the American media, for instance, would not have gotten a very accurate picture of what was going on. Those of us in Europe, on the other hand, had a far wider variety of news sources to choose from, and hence were able to get a far more accurate view of the situation.
In fact, most of what we now know (that there were no such weapons, that the claims made by the various governments were complete lies, and so forth) for sure was known by the vast majority of the European public before the war even began. That is because we have a far more open media, and hence are able to better discern what information is accurate from that which is not.
Now that Web development frameworks have come a long way since the Wikipedia infrastructure was first implemented, do you think a switch away from PHP would be a good idea?
Do you think that it would be possible to effectively reimplement the system around Ruby on Rails, Django, Seaside, or some of the other Web frameworks that are popular today? Also, do you think such a reimplementation would decrease the server requirements, thus potentially bringing financial benefits, in addition to an improved level of security?
I know that you feel strongly about freedom of expression, and freedom of speech. Hence I ask you, how do you feel about the so-called "hate crime" laws that are present in many supposedly free Western nations?
How does such legislation impact on the ability of Wikipedia to provide accurate, truthful information, even if that information may be deemed to be "hate literature" by certain groups?
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I have a difficult time calling Firefox a truly open source project. Sure, the source code is available, and you can redistribute and modify it, and all that. But when you truly look at it, it's a mess. Somebody could easily sneak malicious code in there, and to be honest, most programmers wouldn't be able to tell if it was malicious, or if it was part of the software.
While it's less likely that an open source program includes malicious code, it isn't something we should rule out completely. That holds especially true for overly complex codebases like Mozilla, where it'd take years for one person to completely audit the source code. The source code is available, but it's not truly accessible.
You must not have used Opera to make such patently incorrect claims. They do not cut corners with their engine. It supports the various standards just fine, if not far better than its competitors.
When compared to Firefox, its performance is superb. I know a number of people who used to use Firefox, but ended up switching to Opera 8.51. They just got tired of the memory leaks of Firefox, and were especially disappointed by the very poor 1.5 release.
Opera has become to Firefox what Firefox became to Internet Explorer. Put simply, it is a superior browser. Trying it out for a day is often enough to make one switch.
This release of Opera offers excellent support for CSS, CSS2, and even CSS3. Many have suggested that it is, at this point, superior to that offered by any existing browser on the market. Of course, this is the cutting edge of their product line, so one would expect it to be at the top of its game.
I'm glad that it uses Qt. I have found Qt-based applications to perform far superior to GTK+ based ones, for instance. Qt is an extremely well written toolkit, and its performance is superb. The Opera themes support works wonders, too.
As for the matter of extensibility, it's just not necessary! Opera includes by default all the capabilities you'll likely need. While Firefox users must resort to a myriad of extensions, Opera users just enable the features they want, and off they go! No downloads or nonsense like that.
Firefox has a huge amount of marketing and hype behind it. That's why it's more popular that Opera. Now, these days many people are beginning to run into problems with Firefox, namely due to its poor memory management. People are beginning to question the validity of the hype, and many are switching to alternative browsers like Opera, Konqueror, Safari and OmniWeb. As long as these alternative browsers keep innovating at the pace they have been lately, Firefox may not be able to keep up.
As for others replicating the fantastic capabilities of the engine of Opera, it has been done. Konqueror is a prime example. Often times it feels far more slick than even Opera. Unfortunately, it is limited to Unix platforms these days. That may change in the future, however, with the release of KDE 4. A native version of Konqueror for Windows may be just the thing necessary to get more people to switch away from IE.
I understand where you're coming from. Indeed, it often is difficult to change one's browser on a whim. But this time it's actually worth it, and this is only a beta-quality release!
Do you remember that feeling you got when you first used Firefox? Indeed, it often gave people that rush of "I'm trying something new, and by jove, I love it!" Well, you'll likely get the same feeling if you give this release of Opera a try.
Indeed. The download for FreeBSD was 6 MB, with a statically-linked version of Qt. It's quite fantastic how much they manage to pack into such a small package.
We often hear how Firefox's greatest strength is its extensions. Well, to be honest, when you're using Opera you don't need to delve into extensions. Opera includes all the functionality you want by default.
I don't doubt that you have problems comprehending the material you're covering during your academic studies. After all, you were unable to notice that Republicans and Democrats are the very same these days. So it doesn't strike me as odd that you lack basic analytical skills, in addition to your inability to read.
I've been using the FreeBSD release today, and my gosh, does it ever fly! It doesn't feel as responsive as Konqueror, but it still is a fantastic browser.
The email client is vastly improved, and it feels much quicker than in previous releases. It was quite quick at listing my 1800 MB mailbox, and it's now possible to scroll through the entries at a rapid pace without delay.
The opera:config feature is quite nice, and presented very well. It's far nicer to view than the comparable about:config capabilities of Firefox, yet just as easy to locate and modify preferences.
Overall, this release is an improvement over the last, while still retaining the small size and high responsiveness that Opera is known for. I give it an A+.
Now that Opera has removed the ads from their browser, and added these other features, it has become a real competitor to Firefox.
The Firefox developers will really have to step up to the plate with the upcoming Firefox 2.0 release if they want to retain the marketshare they currently have. Firefox will have to show some pretty serious speed improvements, and far better memory management. It can't leak memory at the rate which the current 1.5 releases do.
Indeed. It is often said that one becomes what he fights against. In this case Firefox decided to take on Internet Explorer, and hence has started to become much more like it.
Firefox is indeed starting to show the same poor planning, poor implementation, numerous security issues, and poor resource usage that Internet Explorer is well known for.
I'm well aware that Mozilla supports the Boehm garbage collector, in addition to various other memory allocators. The fact remains that none work as well as the garbage collectors offered by most production-quality LISP and Smalltalk implementations. Then again, that's partially because of C++ being so fundamentally different from other languages, to the extent where it isn't an easy task to write a solid garbage collector for it.
It was well-known in the late 1960s that it was not a good idea to use unbounded copying. Indeed, that is before C, let alone strcpy(), was first implemented.
.NET languages. Their use of a virtual machine often brings in more problems than it solves, in addition to using poor garbage collection policies and schemes.
Memory-related exploits should never be an issue. A proper garbage collection system, like that offered by most implementations of LISP, Smalltalk and OCaml, for instance, eliminates memory leaks. It lets the developer focus on writing solid code, without having to worry about mundane issues, without affecting performance to any extent.
And no, don't use a GC'ed language like Java or the various
Remember, there are many, many user out there who have systems with only 512 MB of RAM, if not far less. They will quickly notice their system performance tank when they start using Firefox, especially if along with other heavy software such as Microsoft Office and Photoshop.
Even if they don't care about the numerical values in question, they still do care about getting work done. And when Firefox (or any other piece of software) is directly responsible for such slowdowns, it will be remembered.
Recall, excessive memory consumption is one of the most difficult reputations for a piece of software to break. People will come to associate Mozilla and Firefox with slow, bloated software. That won't bode well for future adoption of their products by the masses.
Please don't mislead yourself. Neither program's memory consumption is reasonable, especially when you consider what each program does. Either way, the cause is the same: poorly architectured software. Java and Mozilla both involve far too much bloat.
Many of us who were developing software in the 1970s, and even up until the mid-1990s, are quite horrified at how poorly software today manages memory. Whatever gains have been made in terms of increased memory capacity are quickly lost due to a subsequent decrease in the quality of software.
It's especially sickening to those of us who have been using languages like LISP and Smalltalk for decades. Garbage collection easily deals with many of the memory leaks exhibited by Firefox, for instance, without an overly significant performance penalty.
Regardless, there is no excuse for a program like a BitTorrent client or a web browser to consume 80 MB of RAM for normal usage.
While some Mozilla developers may suggest otherwise, I doubt there is much that can be done to deal with such issues. The general architecture and code quality of Mozilla is so bad that fixing such issues would be a massive undertaking.
One of the main indicators of over-engineering in the software world is a high level of memory consumption. Even without using an in-RAM cache, the memory usage of Mozilla is still excessive. A quick glance at the code or developers documentation will show you why: it's a poorly architectured beast. What could be achieved simply and effectively using a cross-platform toolkit (such as wxWidgets or Qt, depending on licensing requirements) has been bungled up by the Mozilla developers.
Thankfully, you do have alternatives. There are Opera, Konqueror, Safari, and OmniWeb availabe to you, depending on your platform(s). They're just as featureful as Firefox, if not more so. And they often have nowhere near the memory consumption of Firefox, even after prolonged use.
What we're seeing these days is an exodus from Firefox towards Opera, Konqueror, Safari, and other alternative browsers.
The Firefox 1.5 release didn't go nearly as well as it should have. Touted as being a breakthrough release, numerous people upgraded only to find that it was buggy, consumed far too many system resources, or just plain didn't work. Thus many people moved towards the other browsers that are available.
I used to recommend Firefox to my relatives, non-technical friends, and others. But I won't do it any more. Firefox has started to get a bad reputation, and I won't let their reputation affect my reputation. Thus I recommend Konqueror most times, but for people who can't switch to Linux or BSD I often suggest the use of Opera. Opera has shown for years now that they can write solid, secure, portable, performant browser. Thus they get recommendations from me.
There was a very interesting post here earlier regarding the attitude of the Firefox developers towards memory consumption. I invite you to read it for yourself:
= 14655214
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=176459&cid
The last paragraph is perhaps the most telling. It is apparently felt that issues such as memory consumption just don't matter to the average user. Of course, that's a very incorrect assertion to make. When even a normal user finds that Firefox has consumed 400+ MB of their 512 MB of RAM, and thus severely degraded their system's performance, they won't be too pleased.
Such a carelessness towards memory consumption would also suggest a similar lack of interest in writing code that is secure. When it comes to an Internet-enabled product, especially a web browser, security is paramount.
Has anyone collected similar data regarding Opera, OmniWeb, Safari, and other alternative browsers?
If so, how do they compare to Mozilla and Internet Explorer in not only the time it takes to address security problems, but also in terms of the number of incidents per release?
While it's important to fix bugs quickly and correctly, perhaps the Mozilla project should take some initiative within the open source community to work on preventing security issues in the first place. They could partner with the OpenBSD project on such an initiative, for instance.
Together they could come up with a development system that focuses on writing solid code. Such a methodology won't prevent all security bugs by any means, but it could go a long way towards vastly increasing the quality of the Mozilla project's software.
Openness and accuracy are not mutually exclusive. Often times when we have increased openness and a greater availability of information, we end up having more accurate information.
The ongoing war in Iraq is a perfect example. Those who had access to only the limited information provided by the American media, for instance, would not have gotten a very accurate picture of what was going on. Those of us in Europe, on the other hand, had a far wider variety of news sources to choose from, and hence were able to get a far more accurate view of the situation.
In fact, most of what we now know (that there were no such weapons, that the claims made by the various governments were complete lies, and so forth) for sure was known by the vast majority of the European public before the war even began. That is because we have a far more open media, and hence are able to better discern what information is accurate from that which is not.
Now that Web development frameworks have come a long way since the Wikipedia infrastructure was first implemented, do you think a switch away from PHP would be a good idea?
Do you think that it would be possible to effectively reimplement the system around Ruby on Rails, Django, Seaside, or some of the other Web frameworks that are popular today? Also, do you think such a reimplementation would decrease the server requirements, thus potentially bringing financial benefits, in addition to an improved level of security?
I know that you feel strongly about freedom of expression, and freedom of speech. Hence I ask you, how do you feel about the so-called "hate crime" laws that are present in many supposedly free Western nations?
How does such legislation impact on the ability of Wikipedia to provide accurate, truthful information, even if that information may be deemed to be "hate literature" by certain groups?
You're only suffering from arthritis?! Wait until impotency sets in, and then you'll really wish you were 35 again, let alone 18.
I'm not arrogant. I'm just always correct.