Firefox Losing Its Way? 494
An anonymous reader writes "NeoSmart Technologies has a recap on Firefox 2.0 and its shortcomings. Aside from the technical aspects, the article raises some good questions about the Firefox 'community,' it's future, and what it's goals are at the end of the day. Their conclusion? Firefox 1.5 was a much better open-source project/community model than 2.0 ever will be, and that 'It seems Firefox has lost its way somewhere along the passage to fame.'"
No, it's not "losing its way" (Score:5, Insightful)
Here, allow me to post a short summary of the article to save you some time:
I think the new theme and start page is ugly, and there are a few weird bugs that haven't been fixed yet, and they haven't implemented a feature I want in a way that I want it. Therefore, it sucks.- Don't like the default theme that comes with Firefox? Go get another [mozilla.org] that you like better. Don't like the first run page? Who cares? You only see it one time!
Last time I checked, Firefox was still open source software. If they're not fixing bugs fast enough for your liking, by all means, download the source and fix them yourself. That's not meant as a smart-ass excuse for not fixing a bug, but the article's author says:
No, the best way to help is to go through the source and fix the bug! Don't talk about it, do it, and solve everyone's problem with having it!
- The feature the author wants implemented better is an RSS feed reader. I have some news for you: it's supposed to be a basic implementation that gives you the bare essentials. If you want one with bells and whistles, go get an extension [mozilla.org] that suits your needs better. This isn't a sign that Firefox has lost its way, its a sign that it's principles haven't changed much at all.
- Last, but not least, I'm not sure what the author of this article is proposing we all do. Switch to IE7 or Opera? Yeah, that will help the open source community.
Point is, while Firefox 2.0 was never pitched as the last version of Firefox that we'll ever need as a result of its attaining perfection. Personally, I wish that they would fix the bug that causes only the first page of web pages with absolutely positioned elements to be printed. I wish I had the skill to fix it myself; I would if I could. But I'm sure they're working on it, it doesn't change the fact that Firefox 2.0 is, in my humble opinion, the best damn browser out there right now, and the last thing I'm going to do is undercut the extraordinary efforts of its developers and contributors by posting a whiny blog entry about how because there are still a few things I don't like about it, it's somehow "lost its way somewhere."
Sheez. Talk about ungrateful.
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I have been shifting between Firefox and Epiphany [gnome.org], as it looks rather nicer on my GNOME system.
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In Multiple Document Interface apps, it closes the app's active subwindow. For instance, in Photoshop it closes the current focused document, not the entire application window. Tabbed Document Interface is a somewhat different paradigm from MDI; tabs in TDI are analogous to windows in MDI. Therefore, Ctrl+W should close the current tab.
'S how I see it, anyway.
The source is a fucking mess! (Score:4, Interesting)
We hear that reasoning a lot from open source advocates. But when it comes to Firefox and Mozilla in general, it just isn't a case. Their code is a mess, regardless of whether it's C++ code, or whether it's JavaScript code. Look for yourself: http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/ [mozilla.org].
I don't follow the project closely enough to know why the quality of their code is so low. It may be due to inexperienced or untalented developers. It may be due to rushed development. It may be due to a lack of refactoring. But the end result is that it's very difficult for most programmers to come up to speed with the code even just to fix a small bug, let alone implement entirely new functionality.
The poor quality of the Firefox and Gecko codebases could be indicative of why we've seen to many quality and security problems with Firefox as of late. Firefox does suffer from pretty horrendous memory leaks, even when not using any non-default extensions. The number of serious 0-day security glitches has increased dramatically, as anyone on any notable security bulletin mailing list can attest to.
Quality software builds upon a quality codebase. And until the Mozilla project can obtain that quality codebase, we will continue to see them produce poor-performing applications that suffer from frequent security flaws.
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But the other reason trying to submit patches is a non-starter is that I've never actually seen them accept a third-party patch. I've seen patches submitted to bug reports plenty of times, but I've never seen one accepted. (I'm sure that after posting this someone will point to bug reports where third-party patches were accepted - but they'
Re:The source is a fucking mess! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The source is a fucking mess! (Score:4, Insightful)
-matthew
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First of all, it is not Mozilla's fault if the patches it receives are crap.
Second, you can always recompile Firefox yourself and run a customized version. Or, better yet, write an extension!
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If the patches received are crap, then the people who are in charge of receiving the patches and committing them should reject them, or pass them on to a 'de-crappifying' team who can look at the patch and rework it in a non-crappy manner.
If crap patches get automatically committed and added to the code base, and no-one at Mozilla thinks this is a bad idea, then I'd agree... Firefox is most definitely losing its way.
Re:The source is a fucking mess! (Score:5, Interesting)
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I would not agree with that at all. A not insignificant amount of the code is a mess, yes, but it's not low-quality. Being a mess never implies low quality, it just means that a decade or so of cruft has built up. There are several ongoing efforts at the moment to clean up Gecko, with the reflow branch [mozilla.org] being a major one.
Re:The source is a fucking mess! (Score:5, Insightful)
Maintainability is an extremely important aspect of development. If the code is a mess, then it is not high-quality code.
"Being a mess never implies low quality, it just means that a decade or so of cruft has built up."
Being a mess implies that it is difficult to maintain, which implies that it is of poor quality. The proper way to develop is to refactor during development, so that you don't accumulate cruft or messiness. I'd say that cruft by definition implies low-quality code.
A very important aspect of development is design. A proper design phase for new features/code will also include looking at the existing design and how the new stuff can fit into it. You don't just go and tack your new feature on the end of what you already have, or you end up with unmaintainable, messy, cruft. You look at what you want to do, and you evolve the existing design to make the new code integrate into it, rather than be tacked on with sticky tape.
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Re:The source is a fucking mess! (Score:5, Interesting)
Then I go into task manager to find firefox consuming 900MB of RAM with tons put in the page file.
NO OTHER application I have ever used does it to this extreme, and while I'm sure IE has some not so good memory leaks, in my years of using IE that has NEVER happened to me.
Re:The source is a fucking mess! (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, I like dumping things in one directory instead of having anal directory structures that take time to navigate. Others prefer having things all in their place. Neither style is particularly right or wrong. My style probably doesn't scale well to projects done by more than one developer. Their style makes it more time-consuming to get to know the code.
But in any event, I can't pass judgement on this source code, since I can't find it. I looked through the source he linked to and I couldn't find a single C file. In fact, I couldn't find anything that seemed to deal with the browser's core funtionality, such as rendering pages or putting up menus or toolbars.
I didn't find anything about what I saw in the JavaScript that seemed too bad. It seemed reasonably straightforward to understand, but of course the numerous options made it more complex than I'd like. That's inevitable in this kind of project, so it's not really a fault.
Is there any kind of guide to the source code, that would explain where the heart of it is?
D
Re:The source is a fucking mess! (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly the problem with the "if you don't like it, fix it yourself" answer.
The particular source code you are looking for (rendering pages or putting up menus or toolbars) is located in some directory whose name makes no sense except to the person who originally created it. You probably looked in the directory called "Browser", but, as someone who used to build my own customized versions of Firefox, I can tell you -- it ain't there.
Unfortunately it's been over a year since I worked with the code so I don't remember where things are anymore and have no desire to go thru the whole process of finding them again.
Re:The source is a fucking mess! (Score:4, Insightful)
Bull. People who write hard to figure out code do so with pretty much equal ease in any language. People who write easy to read and maintain code again do so pretty much equally well in any language. Reason being, the skills used to write maintainable code have nothing at all whatsoever to do with the programming language. "Elegant syntax" of the language? Gimme a break. Elegant code is elegant code, regardless of the language syntax. Elegance has do to with the underlying idea expressed, not the syntax of the language.
Oh, and Python has lousy syntax, but that's just a personal opinion on my part, not in any way an objective fact. My personal preferences on syntax don't apply to anyone but me. Nor do yours.
Big projects need good methodologies (Score:3, Insightful)
That's true for any moderately useful language. If the language locks you in with limitations, the end result is that the code grows up too much, and either the files become too large or there are so many source code files that you cannot find your way in the project.
With the languages people have been creating in the last 20 years or so, the limitations appear outside of their specialization.
Re:The source is a fucking mess! (Score:5, Informative)
If you look in the layout [mozilla.org], view [mozilla.org], xpcom [mozilla.org] and xulrunner [mozilla.org] directories, you'll find a lot of the core code. The browser [mozilla.org] directory is for the JavaScript and XUL files which make up the interface and product-specific parts of Firefox. :-)
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So I glanced through a bit of it and I don't see it as that confusing, but it seems to be all wrappers around wrappers and I'll bet finding a section of it that actually does anything, and tracing through all the layers would be a titanic migraine despite the slick HTML cross-referencing scheme.
On the whole, then, I don't know if I
Re: yes the code will be fixed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The source is a fucking mess! (Score:5, Interesting)
However, if you really want to see a codebase that's an absolute mess, download the source to OpenOffice. Same as with Mozilla, the developers are making progress on cleaning it up, but it's still a total mess.
What Short Memories We Have! (Score:4, Informative)
Hold on a minute! They did do that. They rewrote the whole damn thing starting on October 1998 [wikipedia.org], a mere seven months after the initial release of the source code. One year later, mozilla shipped nothing, and JWZ resigned [jwz.org] citing lack of progress. In 2000 -- two years after the rewrite started -- mozilla released the new layout engine, Gecko. Jaws all around had to be picked up off the floor. It was a horribly buggy. (The most obvious bug to me was the fact that scrolling to the bottom of a page, then back up, then back down a second time, caused TWO copies of the page to appear in the window. Repeat N times, and you got N copies. I discovered that bug within the first five minutes of use.) FOUR years after the rewrite, Mozilla released version 1.0. Now four years after 1.0, 8 years after the rewrite that is widely considered the biggest blunder of mozilla's history. [joelonsoftware.com] A blunder that is made all the worse since it's outcome was immediately forseeable.
Now you're not seriously proposing the repeat their old mistakes are you?
Volunteers are not slaves. (Score:3, Insightful)
So they are your slave? It is not their job. Most open source developers are volunteers. Maybe if you were paying the develper to write code for the project, you'd have an arguement, but it sounds to me like you are not. You just want them to be your slave because they publish a useful program for free.
I suppose if you were homeless and went to a soup kitchen, you would demand they hand feed you and wipe your ass after you use their bathroom too.
Re:Volunteers are not slaves. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Volunteers are not slaves. (Score:4, Insightful)
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"It only took them THREE MONTHS to put a patch out for it." - So how does this stack up with OSS? Let's see - FF leaks memory for many, many months and the community keeps getting told it's not a problem. I've stopped using FF for the most part because I don't want to have to restart my browser on a regular basis. I lose too much work that way.
I'd also be interested to know how any commercial software vendor ranks against vendors of oth
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I went on to explain that point. Since we changed to open source (about 5 years ago) there has been one time the vendor (various linux providers/database providers) didn't already have a patch out by the time we found the issue or didn't respond faster than we could.
"It's a clear recognition that what matters most to the people making th
Re:Volunteers are not slaves. (Score:4, Interesting)
The argument that if something is provided at no cost, it's somehow above reproach is an absurd intellectual cop out. The cost of something is completely irrelevant to its merits. Let's take your soup kitchen analogy. Suppose you walked into a soup kitchen and was served a soup consisting broken glass in a fine urine base. Would you honestly say, "Oh. Well this sucks, but I shouldn't complain. Afterall, it's free." Bullshit. Incompetence is incompetence at any price.
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As for all of your accusations about this or that being "juvenile" - OS has been trying to penetrate to a larger audience for some time now - what seems juvenile to you is considered "user friendly" to others, and there's nothing wrong with that especially when you have the power to modify or disable thes
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Riiight, gotcha. So the repository is named seamonkey after the old codename and not because it's only for the Seamonkey project.
My mistake then. I should know better than to post after I've had a few drinks
Re:No, it's not "losing its way" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:No, it's not "losing its way" (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know exactly what the author was proposing people do since I cannot get the page to load now but as much as I think open source is great I will be damned before I use an open source alternative that is inferior just to "help the open source community.". I will use whatever software I feel works the best for me and if that means I do not have access to the source so be it.
Personally I have used Opera for about the last 5 years and the reason I chose it then was because IE was a POS and Mozilla was slower and neither IE nor Moz supported TABBED BROWSING. Now that both IE and FF support tabbed browsing I have given both a shot and while I will not be using IE for obvious reasons (although it now seems to perform faster than FF) I still won't switch to FF for the simple reason that I have gotten used to Opera and it still is a faster and more stable browser both in my experience and from the comparisons that other people have posted online. The thing I like the best about Opera compared to FF is that if I setup a new computer I just install the latest build of Opera and it includes all the bells and whistles I need where FF requires some extensions to be downloaded and installed to get to the same level. This is just a convenience factor since I am somewhat lazy but I still think it is relevant.
Even some of the diehard FF users I know are considering switching to another browser because they seem to feel FF has started to become bloated and FF's performance is suffering. It is one thing to add a lot of features in the core build but not suffer performance wise like Opera has done but quite another to start adding them and have the user experience suffer. I know the OS zealots will not budge and switch over to Opera but for many FF users I know if it does not cost them any money to switch to a better performing browser then they will in a heartbeat. The main reason many of the FF users I know who are complaining about its performance have not even tried another browser is because they think the only alternative is IE, Opera is just not well known to the masses. It is going to be interesting to see what happens in the next year since the Wii includes Opera and hopefully will get some more exposure out there.
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But then, "I wish I had the skill to fix it myself; I would if I could."
I like that. In one post you state that no one should criticize or complain about it, they should just fix the problems, and at the same time you acknowledge that not everyone has the skill, time, or knowledge needed to do so.
I guess they should just
Re:No, it's not "losing its way" (Score:4, Insightful)
The default theme is the user's introduction to the browser. It should have the look and feel of his native GUI.
the best way to help is to go through the source and fix the bug! Don't talk about it, do it, and solve everyone's problem with having it!
Advice useful only to a programmer and likely only to a programmer on the Firefox team.
I have some news for you: it's supposed to be a basic [RSS] implementation that gives you the bare essentials. If you want one with bells and whistles, go get an extension that suits your needs better.
IE7 has raised the bar a little higher than this.
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OK, which platform's native GUI should they use? A native windows GUI look would look like shit on OS X.
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Are you seriously suggesting to us that Firefox *does not know* what platform it's being installed on? Seriously?
OF COURSE Firefox knows what platform it's being installed on-- THEY COME IN DIFFERENT DOWNLOADS! Your post has to be about the dumbest thing I've ever read. It's like you're trying to make "make it look like the host OS" into some horrible technical process that has to happen when each OS alre
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Re:No, it's not "losing its way" (Score:4, Informative)
False. (Score:3, Informative)
Second, the bug is in fact fixed in Firefox 2. I should know: I fixed i
Re:No, it's not "losing its way" (Score:4, Interesting)
This is such an elitist position and really hurts both opensource in general and Firefox specifically. I am going to go out on a limb here and say that a large marjority of Firefox users, myself included, don't have either the chops nor the time to gain the chops to fix bugs. Also, even if I had the chops to fix bugs, I don't have the time to get familiar with the source tree to be effective. It's not like debuging is a 5 minute deal.
I updated to FF 2.0 and downgraded to 1.5 wihtin a few days because 2.0 kept freezing and crashing and to be honest, I didn't seem any new features that made upgrading compelling.
Now I think FF is a GREAT browser, I use it all the time and only revert to IE when I have to. And I have themed it and added extensions. I reccomend it to friends and spread the word. But, yeah, I have to agree, 2.0 was less than I had hoped for.
However, I also want to sincerly thank for Mozilla Foundation and any volunteers working on the Mozilla projects for all their effort because people like me can't build this stuff.
Thank you (Score:3, Insightful)
"Last time I checked, Firefox was still open source software. If they're not fixing bugs fast enough for your liking, by all means, download the source and fix them yourself."
The fact is, 99.9% of users simply aren't capable of finding and fixing these bug. When Firefox has to compete with Opera and IE which generally don't have such basic bugs (copy & paste bug is still occuring for me in an updated version) and when people moan about problems, they
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How? All the comment was saying was that if you do not like how something works, and the developers gave you every right and convenience of fixing it, then the only thing you have a right to do is to fix it yourself. If you do not know how, then learn. Many programmers out there are self-taught (myself included). Worst case, hire a programmer to do it for you.
No one is forcing you to use
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Right, but the writer of the article implied that these are very important bugs, since they are causing Firefox to lose its way. Since they are not fixed, we can assume that the Firefox development team does not agree. However, they are providing the source to fix it. Therefore, he can either...
None of these are ridiculous, BTW. If it is that important to him, learning how to fix it is not out of the question. If he does not have the tim
Re:No, it's not "losing its way" (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's not. As I posted above, the reason I brought it up is because the author of the article implied that he has the skill to fix at least one of the bugs that he's complaining about. While I agree that he's under no obligation to do so if he doesn't want to, I also think it's extremely bad form to sit around complaining that no one else will.
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In about:config set browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash to false.
Simple.
Solution found with a quick web search. You might like to try using a search engine before you mouth off next time.
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A Few Miss-Steps Maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
The complaints raised here are trivial features. Not the performance or stability problems I had with 1.5 but instead things like RSS & aesthetics which to me aren't too important when it comes to a browser. I'm sure for some other people RSS or theme might make a world of difference but I'm not that person and I don't wager there are many people like that.
The concern that it makes itself the default browser is valid but using the word 'hijacking' is a bit strong. Honestly, I didn't even notice this but I was going from 1.5 to 2.0 on most of my computers so that might explain why this was a non-issue for me. Perhaps they assumed if you were going to 2.0, you were coming from 1.5? Either, I agree with this qualm though I find it to be the most serious offense listed in the article.
So you may ask if Firefox has lost its way but I counter that there have merely been a few miss-steps along the way. I'm keeping an eye on IE 7 & so far it hasn't lured me away from Firefox 2.0 so I guess that's a good sign as I consider my standards to be pretty high.
Re:A Few Miss-Steps Maybe (Score:5, Informative)
I agree. The developer are mostly focusing on Firefox 3.0 anyway, because of the major improvements it will have. The 2.0 was just a small upgrade in the middle, mostly because of the PR. Because the changes in 3.0 require a lot of development and a lot of testing, they didn't want to hurry it. So I wouldn't judge Firefox because of the 2.0. Better wait for 3.0.
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Ugh! I'm a fan of Firefox, but that line pisses me off. Arbitrarily declaring which stable, public releases of a piece of software shouldn't matter is absolutely asinine.
And before that you claim it was merely a PR stunt. What the fuck, man? How did that get modded Interesting and Informative? Seriously. Microsoft gets absolutely blasted for less than what you just implied the Mozilla Foundation did with Firefox 2.
The Mozilla Foundation jud
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When 3.0 comes out will you say not to judge it because of the major changes scheduled for 4.0?
Not trying to troll here, but what we should judge a software by, imho, is the current released stable version. You can't judge a game by what the game will end up looking like when they finally patch the bugs; what they release is what you have.
Especially if they're going to make a huge PR push for people to use 2.0, they really ought to consi
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s/Firefox/Internet Explorer/g
s/3.0/7.0/g
s/2.0/6.0/g
If somebody made THAT argument in public, they'd be strung up. But because it's Firefox, it's ok
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Slashdot losing its way? (Score:4, Insightful)
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As a sidenote, I think we should let firefox call home (as part of the update check) just to be able to keep a count on the number of firefox users to get an exact number... I'm not paranoid.
Re:Slashdot losing its way? (Score:5, Funny)
Focus on Gecko (Score:2, Insightful)
Their bugzilla is so filled with ancient bugs that no one has eve nlooked at, and gecko is falling behind their competitors. They really need to get their priorities straight.
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which means that any reasonably useful configuration of Firefox is likely to crash because of some poorly written extension.
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FF experience (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know, perhaps there's a pattern with very large, popular open-source projects: the more popular they grow, the more developers tend to focus on adding features instead of correcting bugs...
Re:FF experience (Score:4, Interesting)
> version number: things feel somewhat slower and buggier, with more bling that I don't
> really need.
I don't know what you/need expect from a browser but from my point of view Fx 2.0 *is* faster and uses less memory. Also I find that few new features (improved tabbed browsing, closed tab history, more polished interface) simply nice and usefull to me.
What bloat you are reffering to exactly? Since Fx 2.0 comes with very few new visible features and all of them are usefull for some people. And what bling?
> One of the most irritating "features" I keep hitting is whenever I open something with an extension,
> be it a pdf with Acrobat reader, a flash animation, a video with mplayer or a java applet:
These are not extensions but plugins. Plugin is binary platform specific library that you load up into the browser. Extension is multiplatform XUL code running on top of Gecko/Fx engine.
> about 1 out of 10 times, the cpu goes to 100% and FF is dead in the water.
I can not confirm that. Have you tried your Linux (I assume Linux since you've mentioned mplayer) distribution's Bugzilla? I use Linux, I use features you mentioned and Fx does not crash on me. Neither I've seen reports similar to yours so.
(...)
> I don't know, perhaps there's a pattern with very large, popular
> open-source projects: the more popular they grow, the more developers
> tend to focus on adding features instead of correcting bugs...
To cut the bullshit. Have you filled a bug report about your problem?
Re:FF experience (Score:4, Interesting)
For me, this is the only severe issue I encounter with FireFox on a regular basis. If I am loading a video, pdf, or sometimes even a web page that is slow to respond or is unable to contact the server/resolve dns; I need to be able to open a new tab or switch to an already open tab and view something else while I wait.
Re:FF experience (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect that if this had been released as FF 1.6 little of this type of criticism would be appearing, because then the implication would not have been that of releasing a new "blockbuster", but that they're simply adding improvements and features at a smooth, steady pace.
I'm quite happy with 2.0 (Score:2, Insightful)
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Re:I'm quite happy with 2.0 (Score:4, Informative)
For the issue of tab size and overflow managing, you can edit the browser.tabs.tabClipWidth and
Let me break it down for you (Score:5, Insightful)
Hopelessly misleading blurb. Here's the edited-for-truth version. The italics indicate the original text:
An anonymous reader A NeoSmart staffer writes:
"NeoSmart Technologies has a recap an attack article on Firefox 2.0 and it's shortcomings we say some things that we thought would get some traffic.
Aside from the technical aspects the things we don't understand but will criticize anyway, the article raises some good questions ridiculous mischaracterizations about the Firefox "community," [Editor's Note: Why the "sarcasm quotes"? Are you saying it isn't a community?] it's future, and what it's goals are at the end of the day we inserted a meaningless sports metaphor here.
Their conclusion sophomoric trolling you can safely ignore? Who cares!
There. Now what was so hard about that, Slashdot eds? Oh, and while you're at it, "its" was incorrectly spelled three times out of three.
Where did all the Mozilla/Firefox enthusiasim go? (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess the community has just gotten board and went home. Specifically I have noticed:
* Mozillazine almost never seems to have any news anymore.
* The SpreadFirefox image galleries have been screwed up for ages now and people keep posting crap that never never gets cleaned up.
* The Mozilla store seems to have been having problems lately (it would hang and timeout when placing an order) and there Firefox CDs are still at old 1.5.0.4 version. (A physical factory pressed CD you can hold in your hand can go a long way convincing a PHB that this is real software!)
* And where is Thunderbird 2.0 anyway?
Come on folks! We still have an evil browser from Microsoft to crush!
Maybe they already accomplished what they needed t (Score:2, Insightful)
It's still worth working on, sure, but it's not nearly as crucial as before. IE7 is not
Firefox 200, Konqueror 50 (Score:2)
Re:Where did all the Mozilla/Firefox enthusiasim g (Score:3)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! You really ought to consider a career as a stand up comic. I haven't heard anything that funny in years. I can't even begin to express how far from perfection Firefox is. Perhaps it'd be closer to perfection if it handled cookies properly, handled unknown content types in a sane manner, and most importantly, had a rendering engine that didn't suck (or at least, a development team that was interested in f
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I doubt very many find Firefox perfect. But I do think that most people have got what they wanted - an alternative browser which is usable on mainstream pages and that runs on Linux and Mac. By mainstream sites I mean market share, Opera was standards compilant for years and never got the market share to make sites standard compliant. For many people that's probably "good enough" that they'd rath
It's got no apostrophe when its is a pronoun. (Score:3, Insightful)
Attention Slashdot editors: Edit is a verb. Possessive pronouns in English (save one's) do not have apostrophes.
Gnome users; give epiphany a chance (Score:2)
Don't forget to enable the ad-blocker and page-info under Tools->Extensions.
One thing I am missing though is the CTRL+K for google-search.
While you are at it; try abiword whenever you don't really need OOo.
noticed out library is not using it (Score:4, Interesting)
This is one of the reasons I switched back to the Mozilla Seamonkey Suite. It uses less memory when you run Mail and the Browser together than Firefox and Thunderbird. I like the more community orientation of the development also. All you need to do is throw on a good theme like SeaFox http://markbokil.org/index.php?section=tech&conte
why does it have to be so damn slow under linux? (Score:2, Interesting)
I am an almost 100% Linux user simply because its the OS which works best for me. I keep a spare windows partition only for playing
games. Also I try to suggest OSS solutions in my dayjob and have so far succeeded in getting my company dependent on Apache/MySQL, Imagemagick, Ghostscript, PHP etc (unfortunately all on windows servers, which I loathe).
Anyway allow me to get to the point:
Can an
Firefox's future problems (Score:2, Insightful)
The regular user when he installs firefox, versions 1.5 or 2, don't really see why Firefox is better then Explorer.
He doesn't see the extensions, add-ons, etc
And to be honest vanilla Explorer > vanilla Firefox, though "hacked"
Changing existing behavior for no good reason. (Score:3, Interesting)
mirror (Score:2)
If Developer Support Means Anything (Score:3, Insightful)
According to the site Bill's Big List of Firefox 2.0 Extensions [extensionhunter.com], in only 40 days, the number of Firefox 2.0 compatible extensions has jumped from 677 extensions to 1449 extensions.
If this is in any way a reflection of the Firefox development community, it looks like the community is thriving pretty well.
What security flaws? (Score:4, Informative)
There haven't exactly been a lot vulnerabilities found either. The only one I know of found in Firefox 2 since its release is marked as less critical by Secunia. I'm sure that if you can find critical errors in Firefox, they will be fixed quickly.
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Hmm, so here's a question: what about IE7 is so great?
I myself use both GNU/Linux and FF2, but I will try to be as unbiased as possible. What don't you like about FF2 and what do you like about IE?
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(I had a friend who used Safari for like a year and a half, and one day he complained to me that he wished it had a status bar. It never occurred to him, apparently, to check the View menu for an option to turn on the status bar, the same way you would with any other toolbar. So maybe you do have a point about IE7... either way, get used to it, because Windows Live Messenger and some other Vista apps are the same way.)
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And how, pray ask, is Konqueror better? Not only does it require KDE, which I don't want to use, it does not have an extension system, is not compatible with other operating systems and in some cases, websites.
Re:Good software can't lose its way (Score:4, Informative)
Let's look at the facts for Opera:
CHECK 1. Stops popups automatically
CHECK 2. constant updates and improvements every x months
CHECK 3. better security than IE
CHECK 4. the option to easily clear cookies, history, temp files, etc on close
5. Is faster, more standards compliant, and more stable than FF or IE.
6. Includes nearly everything needed for the average user in the core build so no downloading and installing of extensions is needed.
IMHO The Opera browser is the best browser available and I wish more people knew it existed because the majority of people I know think the only choices available are IE and FF, many of them have never even heard of Opera.
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I honestly cannot say if firefox is better once it is setup with the right extensions, Opera just has everything I need already built in. I also know that the cold startup time for Opera is WAY less. According to:
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html#win speed [howtocreate.co.uk]
Opera 9 takes only 2.74 seconds to startup compared to FF 2.0's time of 11.64 seconds. That alone will keep me from seriously testing out FF, when I start up a browser I want it work
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What kind of analogy is this? Did you blow a tire on your Skoda? Wanna trade it in for Lada with broken drivers seat?
Not popups anymore (Score:3, Interesting)