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.
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.
Slashdot losing its way? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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...
I'm quite happy with 2.0 (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No, it's not "losing its way" (Score:1, Insightful)
You know, not everyone on the planet is a programmer. I know you find this hard to believe, but it is true. Your comment is arrogant and typical of a lot of programmers that don't feel someone has worth unless they can code.
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.
Re:The source is a fucking mess! (Score:1, Insightful)
*shrugs*
Looks pretty good to me, and it seems to work pretty well. Is there anything in particular that you find messy?
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.
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.
Re:No, it's not "losing its way" (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
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.
Re:The source is a fucking mess! (Score:3, Insightful)
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!
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.
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.
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.
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 nearly as much an embarrassment as IE6 is.
Re:Where did all the Mozilla/Firefox enthusiasim g (Score:0, Insightful)
To me, this is exactly why open source software has yet to make the same inroads into large corporations as proprietary software (at least in the in United States).
It's amazing how people have much more enthusiasm and creativity when an actual paycheck is involved. Otherwise, it's just a hobby. Microsoft, Sun, IBM, etc will always have an upper hand because they have paid resources to create and innovate (MS at least - Sun seems to be shooting themselves in the foot!).
Re:The source is a fucking mess! (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
As has been discussed on Slashdot before, I'm sure you know that any large and complex project will suffer memory leaks and security holes until they're all plugged. (That's not to say this is good, though. :-P ) If you try to abstract away all the possible causes of such annoyances so that they cannot happen, you just end up with bloated and slow code, which nobody wants. I would agree that the messier parts of Gecko's codebase may contribute more to memory leaks and security holes, but they're also (coincidentally) the bits which are the oldest, and therefore have had the most time to be hacked into shape.
Re:Focus on Gecko (Score:3, Insightful)
which means that any reasonably useful configuration of Firefox is likely to crash because of some poorly written extension.
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
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" firefox (jesus, I'm using too many linux terms) is much better then Explorer.
So the other 85% need guide to show them how and why firefox > explorer.
About firefox source, I think that it's too much a mess like someone already commented on from a few minutes of looking on it.
What we shall do now, is continuing helping people to see why Open Source is good! I've traveled through schools and showed them linux, Firefox, etc. I'm talk backing on ynet.co.il the local news site, and offering help to move to linux (till now helped 56 people to move to linux!). I hope you're doing as much as you can to help the open source community.!
GOODLUCK
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.
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.
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. For instance, Perl is an excellent language for what it does best, which is processing text through regular expressions, and a mess for many other uses. PHP is wonderful for doing its own specialty, accessing databases from websites. Also, I particularly like the way PHP handles arrays, making them functionally equal to dictionaries. And Python is excellent for small scientific/engineering apps. I think the only "modern" language I absolutely hate is Ruby, because of its ugly syntax. It seems like the Ruby designers did their best effort to create syntax rules that are even more irregular than FORTRAN's...
But when a project grows big, one needs more than syntax, one needs to look at an upper level of organization. The project needs to be well structured in the API, it needs a well-layered set of libraries, it needs a clearly mapped directory structure, etc.
When I manage a large project, I usually start by designing an overall structure for the API that will handle the most computation intensive tasks. These are coded in a library, normally written in C/C++. I make an effort to consolidate and freeze the core API as early as possible, new functions may be added later, but I make an effort to have the most basic functions unchanged. Around this core library one can use different languages, I often do prototypes in either Python or Perl and rewrite them in C/C++ if necessary. The language itself is relatively unimportant for me, I think good coding practices are more important. Use short functions (<150 lines), mnemonic names, well indented code, plenty of comments (but avoid unnecessary ones, like int counter
With these practices, one can write code that stays readable as the system grows, regardless of the language. The big problem is with projects that started small and grew up over the years. With these, it's often easier to start over than to try to keep adding functions to the old code, but of course, with a project the size of Firefox, it would take a manager with adamantium balls to decide to rewrite it from scratch.
Re:Life is too short! (Score:0, Insightful)
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 tend to (eventually) get fixed. A sluggish response is always better than "fix it yourself" responses that result in long term bugs that plague firefox.
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:4, Insightful)
Re:Volunteers are not slaves. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, I definitely agree, it sure is nice to not be able to fix a problem yourself when the vendor goes so damn slowly that we'd have been out of business before they fixed the problem... why there are so many selections of better vendors in commercial software that
There are occasionally major bugs in open source software too. Generally, if we notify the developer (Redhat->SUSE->Gentoo->Debian & PostgreSQL->MySQL was our progression of developer groups) and they don't fix it fairly rapidly, one of our programmers goes in and patches it himself and we knock a patch to the developer who is responsible for the application/operating system in question... longest turnaround on a single bug so far? 11 hours. How often we've had to knock a patch out ourselves? 1 time... in 5 years. Most of the time by the time we discover a problem exists there is a newer version of the software out already fixing the problem (we run a few versions behind the most recent version usually.)
I wish most commercial companies supported us as well as the developers of most open source projects.
Re:No, it's not "losing its way" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Life is too short! (Score:2, Insightful)
If people want eye candy inside of a wm which is still sane and doesn't attempt to take over your system why aren't more people looking at Enlightenment [get-e.org]?
Re:No, it's not "losing its way" (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course, most tabs I close are done so with a Ctrl-F4. I do see your point though for people who would prefer to keep the right hand tab closer, but I see the button per tab as a blessing personally.
Re:The source is a fucking mess! (Score:2, Insightful)
Even if it is better than IE, is it really enough to simply not be as bad as your competitor? Not writing professional code just because the other guy doesn't bother is silly. Proper code is easier to maintain and makes a better platform for future development. Further, it's easier to add new developers and include third party patches.
Re:Volunteers are not slaves. (Score:3, Insightful)
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 the decisions is stability, not features."
Funny, availability is our primary concern, that's one of the reasons why we use Linux instead of Windows.
"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."
My firefox2 has been running for ~5 days now... firing firefox up on my other computer says there is a difference of ~7m from startup to ~5 days of memory use between them and it's presently ~12m under it's peak use. If that isn't the most pressing issue with firefox I don't know what is, good god make all of the devs drop what they're doing and jump on those massive memory leaks right the hell away, the world is ending, the sky is falling... and let me tell you, you lose so much in firefox after closing it since it can remember state... *rolls eyes*. Good thing most sites work well with having them open all day, you know cookies typically last forever... they don't expire... oh wait. Never mind. Gotta re-login anyways at many sites about once a day.
Never mind that two different versions of windows have had memory leaks at the login screen that would make the server run so slow after sitting at the login screen for a week that you had to hard boot it. That is a serious memory leak... of course it "only" took microsoft a month or two to fix that. You're comparing two different kinds of problems, one is SERIOUS (FATAL, KILLS THE SYSTEM) compared to one that "inconveniences" *you* and that i've never even noticed. What are you running on a pentium 1 with 32mb of ram, if you are the memory leak you're probably experiencing is the windows 95 operating system, you generally needed to reboot it once a day to maintain any semblance of performance.
Re:The source is a fucking mess! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The source is a fucking mess! (Score:4, Insightful)
-matthew