Firefox's Effect On Other Browsers 475
An anonymous reader points out an interview with Mozilla's "evangelist," Christopher Blizzard, regarding the future of Firefox and how it affects other browsers. It's an Austrian site, so forgive the comma abuse. From derStandard:
"It's sort of interesting though, part of our strategy is to make sure, that we continue making change and the indirect effect of this is that Microsoft continues to have to do releases, because if we get so far ahead that we're able to drive the platform they are not able to keep up and keep their users. I mean, we have this joke which says 'Internet Explorer 7 is the best release we ever did,' because they would not have done it, if we would have not built Firefox. And the same is true for Apple, they are doing a lot to keep up with us. Safari 3.1 is a good example, as far as we see it, the only reason they did this release was that Firefox 3 would come out and have Javascript speed which would be twice as fast as theirs, cause that's how it was before. So by pushing other people to make releases we can go on our mission to make sure the web stays healthy."
country of origin (Score:1, Informative)
Safari not trailing Firefox (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Way to go FF! (Score:2, Informative)
http://trac.webkit.org/ [webkit.org]
Re:Safari not trailing Firefox (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What astonishes me... (Score:5, Informative)
It's gotten a lot better for non-techie users due to more websites testing against them though. I remember using Firebird 0.7 and about 1 out of every 20 sites would not render very well. For non-techie users, having to then start IE for more than 2 sites is a reason to not even try anything but IE.
That's absolutely true. About a year and a half ago I started using my mac exclusively, and with that I lost the IE Tab extension for Firefox. Initially I missed it every day, having to use Safari to try to render pages correctly. Now it is a complete non-issue.
Re:And what he's not saying... (Score:5, Informative)
Opera, although it is excellent, has never had enough market share to look like a threat. Competition from Safari, and of course IE, is the major competitive driver for us.
Re:Way to go FF! (Score:5, Informative)
Apple does very little of the core work for Safari. They just take the open-source WebKit engine and slap their own UI over it
You are incredibly misinformed. A quick glance at recent WebKit changes [webkit.org] readily shows how blatantly false your claim is.
Re:What astonishes me... (Score:5, Informative)
And what annoys me the most is that WHEN Safari crashes (which are within a day more often, ranging from an hour to 2 days.) all my tabs are lost for all eternity with all the information I was waiting to look at.
Select History -> Reopen All Windows From Last Session after relaunching Safari. If you'd like to see that mechanism improved, head over to http://bugreport.apple.com/ [apple.com] and provide your feedback.
Re:wow; Big pair on him. (Score:3, Informative)
Otherwise, Firefox would look and work like it did 5 years ago, with great support for Web standards, but terrible usability.
Yes [flexbeta.net], OMG [flexbeta.net] so [mozillazine.org] unusable! [mozillazine.org]
I'm guessing you didn't use Firebird 5 years ago.
Hell, the Firefox prefs on MacOS X looks damn similar to the preferences layout in Safari, or is FireFox also claiming to be driving UI standards on MacOS X as well...
It looks better now, and does match the style of System Preferences panes of OS X. But it's actually less usable to me in that they moved connection settings (the only setting I ever have to change, to use proxies) off the main "tab". Fortunately it remembers the last tab you had open, so only a minor hindrance.
Re:Way to go FF! (Score:5, Informative)
They just take the open-source WebKit engine and slap their own UI over it
WebKit was developed by Apple, originally as a fork of KHTML for their Safari browser. Apple open-sourced WebKit and it was so good that many of its improvements were copied back into KHTML. It's also being used by a number of mobile phones because of its strengths relative to e.g, Gecko, including Android.
Without Apple, there would be no WebKit. But don't let reality get in your way.
Re:What astonishes me... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:wow; Big pair on him. (Score:3, Informative)
Virtually all of the improvements in Safari 3.1 [apple.com] are in the WebKit engine rather than at the browser application level.
WebKit has/had an open development process. Test builds of WebKit have been available to anyone who wishes to try them, basically since the day after Safari 3.0. Firefox developers, like the rest of us, would have had a very clear and unhindered access to the new WebKit features in Safari 3.1 as it was being developed. I guess this shows that Safari development can improve other browsers even before it releases its own browser.
It works both ways.
Re:Way to go FF! (Score:4, Informative)
Apple open-sourced WebKit and it was so good that many of its improvements were copied back into KHTML.
Umm, KHTML was licensed as LGPL, which means Apple had to open source their fork if they distributed it. As for improvements being copied back, well that happened to some extent, but the Konquerer team seems to have pretty much given up on KHTML and are contributing to Webkit now.
Re:country of origin (Score:1, Informative)
Which is where they speak German.
Re:Way to go FF! (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, because holding two fingers on the trackpad and then clicking is so much easier than just clicking the other button...err, wait...
Actually it is. According to the usability tests I've seen, it is faster and has a lower failure rate because to hit the second button you have to either stretch your hand over or use your other hand, neither of which is ideal. For mice, where one hand is already off the keyboard, multiple buttons are a usability win for experts, but for trackpad users it is a loss for novice users and expert users and more usable but less learnable for middle of the road users.
Re:Way to go FF! (Score:5, Informative)
No, you're thinking of GPL. The LGPL would have allowed them to use KHTML libraries without giving anything back.
They can link to it without giving anything back, but the LGPL does not allow them to make changes to it and distribute them without giving the source back. Since Apple had to make significant changes to make it work modularly and the way they wanted, they had to give all those changes back. They don't have to open source the code for Safari, which links to Webkit, and in fact they don't.
WebCore's "improvements" are largely Apple's own doing, apart from those changes which were shared upstream before KDE developers abandoned KHTML.
Apple has done significant work to make Webkit better than KHTML was, but they are certainly building on a lot of work that was done before they entered the game. Apple has played nice with the Konqueror folks and gone out of their way to help them integrate changes and revise the way the shared code base was developed such that improvements from multiple groups including Konqueror, Apple, and Nokia can all be included. That said, to claim Apple had a choice about how Webkit would be licensed or if their changes to it would be open source is simply not true.
SVG (Score:1, Informative)
Firefox is behind on implementing SVG when compared with Opera
Re:Way to go FF! (Score:3, Informative)
KDE open-sourced KHTML. Apple didn't have a choice in the matter.
Nonsense. KHTML is LGPL. Apple could have used the libraries without contributing anything back.
Well, I can't claim to be an expert on the LGPL, but Wikipedia would seem to be in contradiction with you, and while I don't trust Wikipedia implicitly, I trust it more than random internet guy.
Further...
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Lesser_General_Public_License [wikipedia.org]
So it looks like the LGPL forces them to release the changes made to KHTML, but allows them to link to it from non-free applications (Safari)
As for why other platforms adopted it, perhaps its the fact that one of the big changes that apple made was to abstract the use of widget a bit, to allow for more toolkits than just QT to be used (like, say, theirs?), making it more viable on other platforms.
Re:Way to go FF! (Score:4, Informative)
the LGPL does not allow them to make changes to it and distribute them without giving the source back. Since Apple had to make significant changes to make it work modularly and the way they wanted, they had to give all those changes back.
You are still being imprecise. The LGPL does allow them to make whatever changes they like, so long as the KHTML libraries they are using are used intact. I do not disagree that any modified libraries had to be shared back upstream, but those changes are portions of WebCore, itself a portion of WebKit. There was no requirement that compartmentalized changes, improvements, and additions be shared if they extended beyond the four corners of the KHTML libraries.
WebCore is much more than rewritten KHTML libraries. WebKit is much more than WebCore.
That said, to claim Apple had a choice about how Webkit would be licensed or if their changes to it would be open source is simply not true.
It absolutely is true. There was no obligation to open-source WebKit. There wasn't even an obligation to open-source the entirety of WebCore and JSCore. There was an obligation to share changes to modified libraries.
What's simply not true is that Apple had no alternative. Apple provided WebKit tactically, not out of obligation to disclose it in its entirety and certainly not out of the goodness of their "hearts".
Re:Way to go FF! (Score:3, Informative)
That's incorrect. Changes made internal to LGPL software must be released, it's only external software that links to LGPL that has the right to stay closed.
For what you're saying to be true KHTML would need to be generic enough to be modified by Apple via linking rather than changing any of the internal KHTML code. The changes Apple have made did involve digging into and changing the guts of KHTML. Again, for what you're saying to be true then KHTML would have to be little more than a canvas for Apple to draw upon.
However we know it's not, and that the changes for progress were internal to the software and therefore Apple did not choose to open source it -- it was open source due to the KHTML license.
This is true, other than that Apple approached it as a fork. They didn't take the time to join the KHTML team and win over the developers with strong arguments and robust debate. It certainly wasn't that kind of software development.
Instead what Apple did was divergent, it was effectively a fork, and KDE chose to go with the fork (probably due to the quality of the code). I personally think that what Apple did was acceptable -- it's permitted by the licence. They could have managed the community in a smarter way but then they like being secretive. It's resulted in some great contributions. Overall I think it was a positive thing.
Meanwhile, you're keeping up with Opera. :-) (Score:4, Informative)
Tabbed browsing, clean mouse gestures, two-handed browsing, single-click image disabling, single-click user CSS mode.. heck, most of the user-friendly advances have been standard features on Opera for many, many years. And half of the really good stuff *still* isn't stock and standard on any other browser.
But, Opera did open its doors to the free download hype as a result of Firefox. So I owe you that much. :)
But.. catch up already would you?
Re:What astonishes me...FF 3-4 times/day crash? (Score:3, Informative)
A workaround for this is to run Flash inside nspluginwrapper, even if you're on a 32-bit system.
This way, when Flash crashes, it won't bring down the whole browser with it, and all you have to do it reload the page.
This bug is on Ubuntu's bugtracker [launchpad.net].
Re:What astonishes me... (Score:3, Informative)
If everything you use renders ok in IE, why not just use IE? Especially as it now has tabs, which was the main feature where Firefox was beating it.
Ummm, "tabs" was not the "main feature where Firefox was beating [IE]"
As a non-inclusive list, it is more efficient, is essentially more secure, it's OpenSource (which is a big deal for a lot of people), and allows for more customization.
*I* moved to Firefox (on something like version 0.6) primarily because of extensions.
I use IE 7 at work because I'm forced to do so, and I'm regularly running into situations where I get all irritated because something I do within Firefox simply cannot be done in IE. IE also crashes on me fairly regularly at work. (To be fair, the crash factor on Firefox isn't stellar, but it has improved, for me, with 3.0.)
Opera had tabs before this. The tabs weren't enough to make me want to switch. It's not just the tabs. Never has been.
Re:What astonishes me... (Score:4, Informative)
Tons of reasons:
-IE actually DOESN'T render things quite right, IE 8 (beta) is the closest thing they have now that's anywhere close to "standard compliant", at least in terms of CSS support. In a LOT of cases, pages only render OK in IE because of numerous CSS hacks used to make it display like every other browser, or a IE-only stylesheet is fed to it
-IE is a great way to load your system full of spyware (ActiveX junk, BHO's, toolbars and what not)
-Firefox has tons of very useful addons, like Adblock Plus, DownThemAll, Firebug, etc
-Far better standard support using other browsers, see this page [webdevout.net] for a quick overview
-IE7 is the worst memory hog of them all, look here [lifehacker.com] and from what I've seen IE8 is only worse
-IE7 has the worst interface of them all, with the home button to the extreme right, the standard "toolbar" hidden by default (File/Edit/View/...), and everything else
-No session saver (when IE crashes, kiss all your tabs goodbye)
etc
There's NOTHING good to be said about IE. It's the worst POS to ever come out of Redmond (worse than WinME + Bob + Clippy combined). The only reason to still use it is for apps (like some banks) that require it, because they use ActiveX components or such.
Re:What astonishes me... (Score:5, Informative)
And the memory leaks are ridiculous, even as system with lots of Ram will be brought to its knees by FF given enough time.
Except IE7 does "leak" memory like sieve, (it's hard to tell exactly what it's doing) at least in comparison to Firefox.
Consider the following link. It is by a well-known Mozilla developer, so while he may be biased you can be sure that a result that cannot be reproduced would set the tubes on fire some time ago.
http://blog.pavlov.net/2008/03/11/firefox-3-memory-usage/ [pavlov.net]
I'm not saying that Firefox is the leanest application ever, but some of the charges against it here are incredibly overblown and of dubious veracity.
Re:Piling on... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What astonishes me... (Score:5, Informative)
FF loads pages faster than opera or IE. And it doesnt have a memory leak. Some addons might i dont know. Take this, I leave my computer on for several months at a time including FF open. I often use multiple windows (currently have 2FF windows up) and always a decent number of tabs (8 and 4). This computer has 256MB of ram and has never brought the system to its knees. Also I use 6 addons. If there were a memory leak i'd have noticed. That and a nice variety of tests, in speed and ram usage have shown FF to beat Opera and IE (last i checked, opera has likely improved lately to keep up). Please don't slander without showing your information.
http://avencius.nl/content/firefox-3-vs-opera-950-memory-usage [avencius.nl]
http://www.zdnet.com.au/reviews/software/internet/soa/Browser-faceoff-IE-vs-Firefox-vs-Opera-vs-Safari/0,139023437,339289417-1,00.htm [zdnet.com.au]
http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-13626-0.html?forumID=102&threadID=266786&messageID=2542057 [com.com]
Re:What astonishes me... (Score:5, Informative)
For the love of fuck.... the memory leak that most people seem to think plagues Firefox is in fact a caching feature and not a memory leak.
Firefox stores a cache of pages in memory. This can be turned of in about:config if it's that much of a problem for you, but will dramatically reduce the speed that you can click back and forwards through pages.
Re:What astonishes me... (Score:5, Informative)
You've clearly never used IE before.
False as well.
While it's true that FF2 leaked memory (a lot more than any other browser), the team has overhauled that in FF3 and it now uses less memory per loaded page than any of the other browsers. The remaining memory holes are still mostly in the plugins (Flash is a good example, google browser sync does a nasty job of it too). However, "quicker than firefox" is an outright lie. Firefox process HTML faster than IE, runs Javascript faster, cleaner, and better than IE, and loads images faster, cleaner, and closer to the standard than IE.
Furthermore I don't call the gaping activex holes in IE "Security and reliability", unless getting hit with loads of spyware and having the odd practice of locking up all the freaking time is your definition of "reliability"
Sorry if your troll wooshed over my head, you seem wrong enough that it may very well have been such.
Re:What astonishes me... (Score:2, Informative)
E: Couldn't find package internet-explorer
Erm, well I guess I have to use Firefox then! ;-)
Nope; use the "ies4linux" package; runs just fine under Wine, no configuration or fiddling about.
Very occasionally, I come across a website that's broken under Firefox; I try in in IE to see if that works (so far all the sites I've come across were actually broken with both).
Re:F*** Firefox (Score:4, Informative)
The biggest reason why Opera never got "traction" among Windows and MacOS users was that up until 2005, you couldn't get a full-featured version that was truly "free" (and that meant no ads either!). Meanwhile, IE came as part of Windows since Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2, and of course Firefox has always been free to download (the "free as bheer" thing is really enticing in this case).
Sure, Opera invented a lot of the features we take on IE 7.0 and Firefox 3.0.x for granted, but because of the price issue Opera was never really taken seriously as a competitor to IE and Firefox.
Re:Piling on... (Score:3, Informative)
ln -s /etc /configuration
Doesn't help with all the files in ~, but now you can use /configuration all you want instead of /etc. Programs will still use /etc, but for the most part you don't have to see that.
Fixed native resolution (Score:3, Informative)
The problem is that LCDs have a fixed native resolution.
When viewing an image which is another resolution which isn't an integer divisor of the native one,
- either you get the whole display completely blurry (if the LCD attempts to fit the image using interpolation)
- or you get funny irregularly sized pixel (which is ugly too)
(This is also one of the reasons why games look nicer on CRTs - the other is higher refresh rates)
I suppose KiloByte is having problems because he can't set the resolution of the console to match the resolution of the LCD and everythings looks blurry and ugly.
The problem is a combination of :
- less and less graphic card having good console support (my previous 3DFx Voodoo had a nice accelerated framebuffer device, my current Readeon HD is only usable using the VESA framebuffer - and svgatextmode hasn't been kept up to date with modern chipsets)
- nobody bothers to write framebuffer drivers for newer gpus, because writing X+Mesa drivers is hard enough and there's no point in losing time and diluting efforts in writing additional drivers for things that are only used to draw a bootsplash for most users and that can approximately be handled by the vesa driver anyway
- fewer video modes are available in VESA most of the exotic resolutions require hardware specific drivers
- modern LCDs are 16:9 or 16:10 and don't fit the default 4:3 aspect ratio of the few resolutions available in VESA video modes
thus there's currently no way to get a nice console resolution which fits your LCD's native resolution using the "vga=###" or "video=###" flags of the kernel.
Hopefully, with DRI2, as mode settings is moved into the kernel, framebuffer drivers or svga text tools/drivers could use this functionality to setup either the console frame buffer or high resolution svga text modes, thus a single efforts (the main X/Gallium3D/kernel-dri2 driver) can benefit the console too.
Re:Piling on... (Score:3, Informative)
However I'd also like to see all the user level config files that currently go into the various "~/.prog_name" folders collected into something like a "~/etc" directory.
This is exactly what the XDG Base Directory Specification [freedesktop.org] specifies; by default user configs are expected to live in ~/.config/progname/
Re:Opera (Score:3, Informative)
Using Opera was like having a window on your destop, running it's own little session of Windows 3.11 in a VM...
Last time I checked, Windows 3.11 used a "program manager" window with groups and icons. Opera uses a taskbar and taskbar buttons. If anything, its window manager looks (and behaves) exactly like the window manager on virtually all modern operating systems, which every user is accustomed to. I see how this can be confusing... (not)
You're absolutely right that Opera, since the start, styled itself to be like "the internet running on a VM" (or "the browser as a platform"). A design that has since proven to be visionary (and which has been copied by every other major browser).
Mozilla, from the start, implemented tabs linearly... Close one, and you go to the next one to the left (later, the right). [...] Opera had tabs, [...] the cycle based on when they were last viewed.
Yes, when you close a tab in Opera, the one "under" it is the last one you used. Just like pretty much every window manager does when you close an application, or like any MDI application does when you close a document.
Your example is actually a pretty good one of how Opera does things right (by applying the same paradigm already in use by the vast majority of applications) instead of coming up with some arbitrary new rule ("always switch to the tab whose icon is on the right" or "always switch to the tab whose icon is on the left" - as you pointed out, FF and Mozilla don't even agree on which "side" to pick).
But hey, if you like non-standard, non-intuitive MDIs, Opera has you covered, too. You can make it behave "linearly", based on what taksbar icon happens to be to the left or to the right. So why exactly are you complaining? Because Opera has had MDI since 1998 and they "didn't copy Firefox", which didn't even exist at the time (and, instead, implemented MDI as it was and is implemented by all other applications and by the OS window manager)?
Seriously, I never throught I'd see someone complain that a window manager is "complex and unintuitive" because it behaves like the vast majority of existing window managers.
Re:Piling on... (Score:2, Informative)