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.'"
Re:No, it's not "losing its way" (Score:3, Informative)
I have been shifting between Firefox and Epiphany [gnome.org], as it looks rather nicer on my GNOME system.
Re:I'm quite happy with 2.0 (Score:1, Informative)
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1122/ [mozilla.org]
Re:No, it's not "losing its way" (Score:3, Informative)
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 Firefox. But if really want something to be fixed, and the source is provided for you, then go and fix it yourself
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
Re:The source is a fucking mess! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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.
Re:Solution (Score:3, Informative)
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:Personally, I wish that they would fix the bug (Score:1, Informative)
If what you say is true, many applications would have a problem shutting down properly when Windows shuts down, but they don't.
All that said, I disagree that Firefox has "lost it's way" but that doesn't mean I don't think 2.0 was rushed out prematurely.
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.
Re:No, it's not "losing its way" (Score:4, Informative)
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. :-)
Re:The source is a fucking mess! (Score:2, Informative)
SeaMonkey, whose repository you linked to. is a continuation of the old Mozilla codebase. It was brought back from the dead after the mozilla project decided to junk it. Part of the reason for that was that a few old fossils like myself have a certain affection for the mozilla suite, but mainly it happened because a ot of corporate players had a significant investment in the old Mozilla package, and since this is open source they don't have to migrate if they don't want to.
The tone you take in your post leads me to suppose that you should have known all this already. I'll just add that if you want people to take you seriously (as opposed to just another AC astroturfing for Microsoft) then you should at least link to the correct repository. Don't you think?
Re:The source is a fucking mess! (Score:1, Informative)
Uhm, although the OP is a troll, he did link to the correct repository. The SeaMonkey specific code is in the /suite and /xpfe directories underneath that starting dir, same as Firefox has it under /browser and thunderbird under /mail (and then both under /toolkit) - pretty much everything else there is core code used by all projects.
Firefox was not "recoded from scratch" - it got a slightly simplified and cleaned up UI-library (toolkit) and lots of general overhaul of the UI - but it's 90% same code.
As for corporate players helping with the revival of SeaMonkey... Heh, if only! At present it's mostly half a dozen volunteer developers, and maybe a dozen people doing QA and general small tasks that's keeping it alive. If any corporate player likes what these people are doing though, they'd be more than welcome to hire someone to work on it fulltime. :)
Re: yes the code will be fixed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Focus on Gecko (Score:3, Informative)
Re:why does it have to be so damn slow under linux (Score:1, Informative)
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?
Re:No, it's not "losing its way" (Score:3, Informative)
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.
False. (Score:3, Informative)
Second, the bug is in fact fixed in Firefox 2. I should know: I fixed it. You're welcome.