I have 4 computers that have Firefox installed on them. All those computers use Linux, so those installations are not counted at all. There are also loads of websites which offer Firefox downloads for their users, those are not counted either. And then we have companies that might have thousands of users and the it-staff propably downloads Firefox once and then copies that to all the computers. That is propably 199 million more downloads.
It will tell you how to recude memory usage and also points you to an extension which you can use to track down extensions that leak memory: http://dbaron.org/mozilla/leak-monitor/
Real Player is bundled with Firefox, not the other way around.
This just means that Firefox will get users from Real Player user base, from those who don't already use it. It doesn't mean that Firefox will from now on delivered with Real Player. It might get some bad reputation for Firefox, but on the other hand it will get some reputation for Firefox and marketing is what OSS projects are usually missing badly. All the techies should know that this doesn't affect the Firefox product quality at all and other than techies.. don't really care about it.
> Not all sites work yet with Firefox, my bank included.
If I were you, I would go to the bank and tell them that I won't be a customer there anymore. When they ask for a reason, I would say that their site doesn't work with Firefox. Yeah, that might be radical, but it works. Customers don't usually understand how important they are.
Why can't users just install Firefox and NoScript extension for it. Then Javascript will be disabled by default, but user can whitelist the sites where Javascript should be enabled. Problem solved.
> I assume other OSS projects are this way too, where one person does most of the work, posts it publicly, the public doesn't add anything to the project
This could be true for many OSS projects, not for all. Usually the most popular projects do also get most of the contributions from the community. I have for example send patches to several open source projects. If people are not interested about your project, they won't propably do any developing for it either.
It also matters how easy it is to get into the code and how easy it is to find out what part of the code does what etc. Documentation (or lack of it) and support (answering questions) matters a lot.
I would recommend that no-one starting an open source project would assume that they can just start the project and community will then take over and finish it. Usually it takes a lot of hard work and the person starting the project needs to make the software at least to the level where it is so good that people would actually use it. First you need to get a large user base, after that, people might start sending patches if it is easy enough. After that, someone submitting several patches might be interested in joining as a developer, after a while that person could become one of the main developers and then you won't be alone anymore.
But best practice I have seen is to team up with people you already know and start a project with them. That way the project might have progress, even when one or more of you don't have time or motivation to continue. But again, don't assume that others would help you. They might and propably do at the start, but it is very common that they stop eventually.
But then again, we have projects that have been abandoned by the developer, and someone has forged the project and started maintaining it. So all isn't lost when the project is open source, if it just is good enough for someone to take over.
> If you publish the specifications of your latest graphics chip for all to see
Ok, but would it be possible to publish specifications for older chips?
What part of the interface you didn't like? Part which allows you to customize toolbars within it, or the part that allows you to install themes to get complitely different look for it?
Re:This 'problem' started in the mid-90s
on
Problems at the W3C
·
· Score: 1
Developers need the standard. Imagine that you would need to make a webpage for a single browser and make sure it is valid html and css and that's it. It would save a lot of work. That is why I make my pages first standard, then I make sure they look good with Firefox (as it does pretty good work with the standards) and then fix problems what IE might have.
It is a lot easier to make web pages for Firefox than it is to make them for IE. And if you write valid code, it is a lot easier to find simple typos and errors from it with a validator. There are still bugs in Firefox and it doesn't fully understand the standards, but they are fixing those bugs as fast as they can. That is one of their main goals.
> As Microsoft, do you really want to re-code your thing because someone came with a standard too late?
If Firefox gains enough market share, it doesn't matter what Microsoft does with IE. After that web pages could be written so that it doesn't matter what they look a like with IE. That is why I like Firefox also. It has potential to be IE killer.
If Firefox would have the monopoly in the browser market, it would still be better than IE having it, because
- It is open source (with obvious advantages)
- It is available for multiple platforms and doesn't tie you on single commercial platform.
> If it's a plug-in, and it reads and writes to the ODF standard, where is the problem?
Read this comment, which describes what you actually need to do, to use the plugin. Perhaps you will then see the problem:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=190432&cid= 15666507
Firefox, Opera and many other browsers are trying to make a browser that follows the standards. IE is said to do this also, but very very slowly. I bulieve the world would be a better place for web developers if IE would lose it's market share.
Slashdot Mirror
Here is a pretty good resource for solving issues with Firefox:x )
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Category:Issues_(Firefo
I have 4 computers that have Firefox installed on them. All those computers use Linux, so those installations are not counted at all. There are also loads of websites which offer Firefox downloads for their users, those are not counted either. And then we have companies that might have thousands of users and the it-staff propably downloads Firefox once and then copies that to all the computers. That is propably 199 million more downloads.
> Firefox also seems to be a huge memory hog,
_ Firefox
See this article:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Reducing_memory_usage_-
It will tell you how to recude memory usage and also points you to an extension which you can use to track down extensions that leak memory: http://dbaron.org/mozilla/leak-monitor/
> we not even know for certainty that Firefox 3.0 is in the works
g htly/latest-trunk/
Eh? You can download the nightly version of it from here:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/ni
Real Player is bundled with Firefox, not the other way around.
This just means that Firefox will get users from Real Player user base, from those who don't already use it. It doesn't mean that Firefox will from now on delivered with Real Player. It might get some bad reputation for Firefox, but on the other hand it will get some reputation for Firefox and marketing is what OSS projects are usually missing badly. All the techies should know that this doesn't affect the Firefox product quality at all and other than techies.. don't really care about it.
> Not all sites work yet with Firefox, my bank included.
If I were you, I would go to the bank and tell them that I won't be a customer there anymore. When they ask for a reason, I would say that their site doesn't work with Firefox. Yeah, that might be radical, but it works. Customers don't usually understand how important they are.
> Something that can run Vista.
Yes, but how many of these do we need to run one Vista?
Why can't users just install Firefox and NoScript extension for it. Then Javascript will be disabled by default, but user can whitelist the sites where Javascript should be enabled. Problem solved.
> I assume other OSS projects are this way too, where one person does most of the work, posts it publicly, the public doesn't add anything to the project
This could be true for many OSS projects, not for all. Usually the most popular projects do also get most of the contributions from the community. I have for example send patches to several open source projects. If people are not interested about your project, they won't propably do any developing for it either.
It also matters how easy it is to get into the code and how easy it is to find out what part of the code does what etc. Documentation (or lack of it) and support (answering questions) matters a lot.
I would recommend that no-one starting an open source project would assume that they can just start the project and community will then take over and finish it. Usually it takes a lot of hard work and the person starting the project needs to make the software at least to the level where it is so good that people would actually use it. First you need to get a large user base, after that, people might start sending patches if it is easy enough. After that, someone submitting several patches might be interested in joining as a developer, after a while that person could become one of the main developers and then you won't be alone anymore.
But best practice I have seen is to team up with people you already know and start a project with them. That way the project might have progress, even when one or more of you don't have time or motivation to continue. But again, don't assume that others would help you. They might and propably do at the start, but it is very common that they stop eventually.
But then again, we have projects that have been abandoned by the developer, and someone has forged the project and started maintaining it. So all isn't lost when the project is open source, if it just is good enough for someone to take over.
The first two I thought were real books ( I think I have seen those in local bookstore), but the Anger Management was too much to bulieve.
> If you publish the specifications of your latest graphics chip for all to see Ok, but would it be possible to publish specifications for older chips?
What part of the interface you didn't like? Part which allows you to customize toolbars within it, or the part that allows you to install themes to get complitely different look for it?
Developers need the standard. Imagine that you would need to make a webpage for a single browser and make sure it is valid html and css and that's it. It would save a lot of work. That is why I make my pages first standard, then I make sure they look good with Firefox (as it does pretty good work with the standards) and then fix problems what IE might have.
It is a lot easier to make web pages for Firefox than it is to make them for IE. And if you write valid code, it is a lot easier to find simple typos and errors from it with a validator. There are still bugs in Firefox and it doesn't fully understand the standards, but they are fixing those bugs as fast as they can. That is one of their main goals.
> As Microsoft, do you really want to re-code your thing because someone came with a standard too late?
If Firefox gains enough market share, it doesn't matter what Microsoft does with IE. After that web pages could be written so that it doesn't matter what they look a like with IE. That is why I like Firefox also. It has potential to be IE killer.
If Firefox would have the monopoly in the browser market, it would still be better than IE having it, because
- It is open source (with obvious advantages)
- It is available for multiple platforms and doesn't tie you on single commercial platform.
What word in the sentence "monopoly" you don't understand?
It should be funny next January when people realize that this is not the first "January" prophesy made by Bill Gates (that has failed): End of Spam: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.j html?articleID=17500979
Feather Linux requires 24 MB ram and a 486 prosessor. And if you don't need an actual GUI, there are also distributions that require less than that.
> If it's a plug-in, and it reads and writes to the ODF standard, where is the problem? Read this comment, which describes what you actually need to do, to use the plugin. Perhaps you will then see the problem: http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=190432&cid= 15666507
> Really, and just how would you know? It was a joke.
You wouldn't last there a day.
Safety not guaranteed?! Count me in!
Firefox, Opera and many other browsers are trying to make a browser that follows the standards. IE is said to do this also, but very very slowly. I bulieve the world would be a better place for web developers if IE would lose it's market share.
We could start with Capacitors enchanted with nanotubes: http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/ 09/073216
Not you perhaps, but the companies that make and sell the cellphones will propably save... a lot. So for them it is a big deal.
I'm writing this message from Ubuntu 6.06. Now, what was the question again?
I'm a programmer and I drink pretty much only water. Except in special events I might drink juice or limonade.