Mozilla's Goodger on Firefox's Future

An anonymous reader writes "The New Zealand Herald has an interview with Ben Goodger, lead engineer for Firefox at the Mozilla foundation. In it he describes how he got started, his reasons for Firefox's existence and what the future may hold for the little browser that could."

Firefox v. IE

[dan_sdot]

In terms of features, I don't see why anyone would NOT use firefox. You could call things like tabs, quick searches and easily accesible plugins "innovative features," but its not really that innovative, if you think about it. Its just obvious. Microsoft's IE is just a way to look at web pages. Period. No customization.
Congrats to the Mozilla folks for thinking out of the box and trying to create something that users wanted.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:My Wishlist for FireFox

[lukewarmfusion]

I always wondered about that... in Firefox .10PR (and in previous version I used) Slashdot's main content area overlaps or runs flush with the left nav. No padding, no margin, whatever. I remember reading articles on A List Apart about redoing Slashdot, which made me wonder why this was still happening.

Is this a problem with Firefox or with Slashdot?

As for Firefox taking the #1 spot, I would love to see that. There are a few things I've had difficulty achieving in Firefox that work in IE, but none of them are necessary (collapsing DIV when display set to none, for example).

One day, my boss will choke on his "we should just design for Microsoft IE and if it doesn't work in your Mozilla then maybe you shouldn't use it." Bastard.

Re:My Wishlist for FireFox

[Tumbleweed]

I really think Slashdot updating their HTML would be _much_ harder than what was suggested above. MUUUUUCH harder. I think what was suggested above will happen much sooner.

Slashdot doesn't even need to update to 2001; all they need to do is _correctly_ support any real version of HTML - any one would do; as long as it's valid. I'll hold my breath - I look stunning in blue. :)

Re:Better handling of extensions

[Trillan]

Which plugins do you think should be integrated? I'm opposed to integrating them, really -- leave the bloody thing along, it's going to end up bloated enough as is -- but I wouldn't mind checking them out.

GOOD Improvements

[rueger]

These things are of course a matter of personal preference, but I find that the innovations in Firefox are almost invariably sensible and useful.

All too often software developers add things that seem good to them, but which the end user finds irritating or just confusing. Opera is a good case in point, with lots of gee whiz cool features that I just never got around to using. That has never happened to me with Mozilla or Firefox.

It seems that with every release I'll find some new little feature that suddenly becomes essential, or at least enhances my browsing experience in some nice way, but without detracting from other things.

The latest was the search bar that pops up at the bottom of the screen when searching in the page. How brilliant! After years of search boxes popping up on top of the text that you're reading, someone figured to drop it in a place that wasn't intrusive.

Sure, there are still things that I would like changed - like moving more of the configuration away from the "about:" system, but all in all I just like Firefox and find that its greatest feature is that it doesn't get in my way - it just does the job and lets me concentrate on content.

Re:I suggested to my boss today........

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't lock it down completely for intranet only. Remember that you still need to access Windows update. Damn msft.

mozilla browser was bloated, firefox is not

[geekschmoe]

The main reason I was so interested in firefox to begin with (and the same reason I use it today), was that it focused on trimming out the unnecessary stuff from Mozilla. This makes startup/respopnse time much quicker. It used to take +/- 15 seconds to start mozilla, as opposed to +/- 3 seconds for firefox. Granted, I always run on older hardware, but still.

The other contenders for a fast browser (konqueror and opera) don't render pages correctly a lot of the time. Konqueror's KDE daemons make it slower to start up. Opera's banners make it rather annoying to use.

Defracturing would be nice

[Ars-Fartsica]

It would be good to see the motivations for Epiphany (GNOME integration) and Galeon (simplicity...?) rolled back into Firefox. I am somewhat dubious as to a fractured market of dozens of gecko browsers. OR at the very least I would like to see the alternatives support the Firefox plugin architecture.

perl or python as javascript replacements would be cool (although they would likely not take off)

Other than that I really can't complain - the extension mechanism lets developers scrathc their itches quickly without derailing or sidetracking the main browser effort...the collection of extensions is already incredible.

Re:My Wishlist for FireFox

[el-spectre]

No, you'll get modded down for being an ass. Until you've created something that is read by a coupla million people, perhaps you should calm down, troll.

Re:Firefox v. IE

[rainman_bc]

except it doesn't have a google toolbar. I need my google toolbar!!

yes it does [mozilla.org]

Re:Won't help

[sloanster]

I hate to burst YOUR bubble, but your statement seems to fly in the face of certain hard facts, as underscored by the chronic microsoft ie specific security woes which have buffeted microsoft users for the past few years.

While there's no panacea, and this is no time to relax our security vigilance, there's no question that firefox is a much safer choice of browser than ie - to deny that is just plain silly.

Re:Won't help

[gl4ss]

take two clean computers.

now install firefox on the other and leave the other using ie.

now, put average guys to look for porno on the computers... after couple of hours which one is going to be absolutely infested and which one isn't? which of these computers you can use without getting mysterious popups?

sure even firefox can't help you from getting spyware you intented to install(bonzi and whatever)..

Re:I suggested to my boss today........

[Mateito]

Note to geeks from a PHB in training:

Without knowing the particulars of your boss, this is generally not a good approach to convincing a PHB you want something done.

A suggestion:

Instead of planning "comebacks" for when boss says "no", present your ideas in such a way that he says "yes" the first time. Changing a "no" to a "yes" is a lot harder than extracting a "yes" in the first place.

Write down how many hours a day you spend cleaning spyware off computers (a) then give a half page summary of your proposed solution and the number of hours (b) it would take to install, debug it etc. Be as honest as possible with the time. Show boss that after x=f(a,b) days you will be ahead and have more time to work on projects and thus cut costs (use the word MONEY somewhere) in his department.

Managers are usually goaled on revenue... and thus these are the terms in which you have to express things in order to get that "yes" the first time.

Re:My Wishlist for FireFox

[robbo]

Is this a problem with Firefox or with Slashdot?

Um, you must be new here. I can't remember how many comments I've seen bitching about that. Put simply, it's a FF rendering bug which we've had for ages and can be solved by doing Ctrl-Scroll Wheel Up and then Ctrl-Scroll Wheel Down.

So, wait, it's a bug in slashdot's code, but then firefox changes the way it renders the page if you twiddle a nob? Shouldn't firefox consistently render it the same (broken) way every time?

Oh? Then why do you block wc3 validator?

[rd_syringe]

If Slashdot's HTML is standard, why do you block the wc3 validator? What possible reason could you have for that?

Since an AC here was so informative in posting it, I'll post it to: Coral Cache link of 189 errors in Slashdot HTML [w3.org].

"This page is not Valid HTML 3.2!" says the validator.

Converting the static code to CSS WAS a helpful experiment, because it's an illustration of how much you could save by modifying your code to generate it. The bandwidth savings alone are awesome. But, hey, "it doesn't scale well," right? The excuse for any user-submitted feature suggestion (because heaven forbid Taco implement something he didn't think of).

Grr. The editors of Slashdot are frustrating.

Re:Oh? Then why do you block wc3 validator?

[el-spectre]

It has nothing to do with "scaling well", doing a full conversion of a major dynamic site from old HTML and tables to XHTML/CSS is a lot harder than changing one flat page.

Grr. Armchair web developers are so frustrating.

Re:Won't help

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that bit about FF asking users to blindly install software without even mentioneing what it is or what it is for is very anti-security. I was pretty suprised by that.

Once people get used to just DLing and running programs, plugins etc because a tool bar pops up and asks you too, there goes any hope of a secure system.

Re:What happens to the net when everyone has AdBlo

[TheAwfulTruth]

This has been happening for quite some time. Like years.

Sites (like Yahoo, IGN etc) are already making you step through ad pages before seeing content. Sometimes you can block that too, but sometimes not.

The more we fight against ads, the more annoying and intrusive the ads will become :(

Think AdBlock will always be a niche

[SuperKendall]

I myself know of Adblock - but I choose not to use it. Sites that have ads that are too annoying to use, I just don't use.

I'd rather have sites stay around longer because they are supported by advertising revenue. I don't mind a few ads as a price, and I would mind whatever payment scheme would have to replace them.

But that's just my personal stance. In the larger sense, I think that the populace at large does not care about ads so much that they seek out blocking solutions, or would even go to the effort of using an ad blocker if they could. After all, the US populace is exposed to ads so often we are just about blind to them anyway.

Popups are a differnt matter as they generate constant unpleasant irritation, and people do go to great lengths to eliminate irritations from their lives.

Re:Won't help

[Anonymous Coward]

It's much, much, *much* more likely that you're getting these trojans through a completely different source and just blaming Firefox. You could have some other resident, hidden trojans that are downloading these things; remember that with XP and 2000 (I assume you're using one of them), once you have one trojan or worm, the floodgates are open for more to install themselves. Some will download porn adware, and some will even generate pop-up ads, hoping that you the user will think it's your browser. These trojans could even get through via a different machine on your local network if you have one, or if you have a poorly secured DSL router.

Re:Plugins Don't Work Seamlessly

[Trinition]

Consider how easy it is to install extensions to the browser; click, install, restart browser. (emphasis mine)

There's a problem right there! Yes, it is more difficult to program frameworks that load/unload plugins dynamically, but it certainly is possible.

Re:Oh? Then why do you block wc3 validator?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you don't emit HTML 3.2. You may try, but you're failing. You emit something similar to HTML 3.2 which isn't HTML 3.2.

Are validators all that valid?

[SetiAlphaOne]

I guess I'm just that old. Maybe it's time we write a validator that takes cross-browser code into consideration...

Let's talk about "Valid". Valid in this sense means that it conforms to a printed standard with absolutely no deviations whatsoever. That's bullshit, for starters.

If a browser does not recognize markup, it is disregarded. So, as a browser sees it, this code may be perfectly valid. Maybe not so for a textbook course on grading only the source, but hey... you get what you pay for.

Anyone remember the actual Browser War? You know, when table tags were new? Remember when they came up with background colors for pages, or better yet the background image? What a revolution! ... and then there was a schism in html coding. The big contenders (Netscape & IE) were hurriedly adding features to their browsers before they were included in an HTML standard in order to gain market share. Beyond that, if one camp's method became the standard, the other camp would not adhere to it but would keep their method of markup. Of course, the word "standard" then didn't seem to carry as much weight as now. That's probably why there were so many issues. [Blink tag, hello? Now there's a blink CSS that works in mozilla yet not in IE.]

Look at the first few 3.2 "errors" for starters:

No type allowed when designating an RSS feed? (Isn't that an anachronism?)

No topmargin, leftmargin, marginwidth, marginheight... come on. If you didn't have that back in the day you didn't start rendering at the top left of either IE or NN.

Bgcolor? Face? NOBR? Come on. Maybe this looks like a foreign language to those of you who haven't been in the field forever, but you need to have a drink and loosen up. Browsers don't care. Your bandwidth is not being soaked up with the occasional cross-browser code snippet.

I realize that now we have a legion of designers who believe that if the page doesn't look right the browser needs to be updated to properly implement CSS. Great, I won't be holding my breath. The CSS Level 1 standard has been around forever and it STILL hasn't been 100% implemented across browsers.

Even now, there are ppl in boardrooms who get upset if their multimillion dollar projects don't look and function the same in IE6 and NN4. That's right, NN4, because one of their clients somewhere hasn't upgraded for a while. Go ahead and prance in there to explain degrading gracefully to them. I'm sure they'll be very interested.