New Mozilla Developer Site Goes Live

bdaehlie writes "After a lot of hard work, Mozilla's new developer site has gone live. It has been available at a test URL for a while but the transition is now complete. This should be a great resource for Mozilla contributors, web developers, and anyone interested in finding out more about Mozilla technologies."

Re:Dear Mozilla Developers

[bdaehlie]

I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the next major version of Firefox, due around the end of the summer. Yeah, nobody likes to hear that "the next version" will fix their problems, but what else can I say... It's no secret that Firefox on the Mac was neglected, but concrete steps have been taken to rectify the situation (including Mozilla Foundation hiring me as their full-time Mac developer). As a result of Mozilla's renewed commitment to the Mac, the Mac Mozilla developer community has been revitalized and is doing some great work. If you want something now, go get a Firefox nightly build for Mac OS X. They are leaps and bounds better than Firefox 1.0.x releases for Mac OS X. Some very general hilights:

- major UI cleanup, more Mac-like than ever
- much better performance with plugins and other cpu-intensive tasks
- more OS-integration features like desktop image support, default browser, etc...
- more and more complete profile migrators from other browsers
- many miscellaneous Mac OS X-specific bug fixes

Unlike the situation 6 months ago, we now have actual work being done to solve bigger long-term issues as well. Some examples are native-looking widgets (like Camino has) and Intel-based Mac support. These are not empty words either - Firefox can actually build and run with native-looking widgets now, and it already runs on Intel Macs. We're also doing work to make the Mac infrastructure more maintainable in the future.

So we are getting better quickly - we hope you give us another chance!

-Josh Aas
Mozilla Foundation Mac Developer

Re:Dear Mozilla Developers

[bersl2]

Making Firefox work well on Mac has been scheduled for 1.1 for many months.

Re:Dear Mozilla Developers

[Seumas]

You have very little to offer the mainstream OS,

Which is why Microsoft tries to emulate Apple as best they can and linux (GNOME/KDE) try to emulate Microsoft as best they can.

since there is a lot of devolpers on this thread

[DanThe1Man]

This is possible a tad off topic, but since there are Mozilla developers on this thread, I was wondering if one of you could program an extension. I want to block all non-porn from reaching FireFox. Maybe even something that redirects normal material to hardcore lesbians or something.

And a diet coke. I want a diet coke too.

That is all, thank you in advance.

Re:since there is a lot of devolpers on this threa

[Anonymous Coward]

It's already here! Check pornzilla [squarefree.com]

Re:Firefox or Mozilla

[AuMatar]

Firefox is a web browser. Mozilla is a web suite (browser, mail, irc client, news, composer). Both use the Gecko HTML renderer. There's a lot of shared code and features between the tweo, but its not 100% shared. Both products are made by the Mozilla foundation, and are 100% open source.

Firefox is in version 1.0.6 currently. Mozilla is in version 1.7.8 currently. So yes, Mozilla 1.4 is a lot worse than Firefox 1.0, as 1.4 has a much older version of Gecko at its heart. A comparison of Mozilla 1.7.8 and Firefox 1.0.6 shows them to be much the same at rendering, with slightly divergent feature sets.

For myself, I prefer Mozilla suite, I use the email client anyway, may as well load both at once. And I think the UI for Mozilla is better than Firefox. But they are pretty similar over all.

Re:Firefox or Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla is a web suite (browser, mail, irc client, news, composer).

Web Browser is web. Mail is not. IRC is not. News is not. Composer is.

40% web, 60% other.

Re:Firefox or Mozilla

[Linus Torvaalds]

Web Browser is web. Mail is not. IRC is not. News is not.

That's a common misconception. According to Tim Berners-Lee, the guy that coined the term "World-Wide Web", anything addressable by a URL (now URI) is part of the WWW. This includes Usenet, as there are nntp: and news: URI schemes.

More info, with cites [google.com].

Re:Firefox or Mozilla

[ross axe]

So, Sendmail is a Web server? Hosts whose names start with www can reasonably be expected to speak NNTP?

Re:Firefox or Mozilla

[Linus Torvaalds]

So, Sendmail is a Web server?

No. "Web server" is actually a common term for an HTTP server (there's the misconception that the WWW==HTTP again), Sendmail is not a web server, because the term "web server", as everybody knows it, refers to software that exclusively deals with the HTTP portion of the web.

But yes, as there is a mailto: URI scheme, email is part of the WWW, and you could call Sendmail part of the WWW infrastructure.

Hosts whose names start with www can reasonably be expected to speak

Re:Firefox or Mozilla

[ross axe]

Are you actually disagreeing with Tim Berners-Lee, or are you saying that he doesn't really mean it when he explains what the WWW is?

I'm saying it's almost universally accepted that 'World Wide Web' means HTTP+HTML. As for the opinions of Mr Berners-Lee, his original proposal [w3.org] describes the WWW as hypertext based. I would not imagine that he considers email to be part of the Web.

Re:Firefox or Mozilla

[Linus Torvaalds]

I'm saying it's almost universally accepted that 'World Wide Web' means HTTP+HTML.

This thread started because an AC felt the need to "correct" somebody's "misuse" of the term 'web'. Obviously it's not that universally accepted, especially as the guy who invented the term doesn't agree with the definition.

I would not imagine that he considers email to be part of the Web.

What's the point in me posting links if you aren't going to read them? The reason URIs are called URIs and not UDIs is because t

Re:Firefox or Mozilla

[ross axe]

I don't deny that URIs are part of the Web. That doesn't make the things they point to part of the Web (hint: email works just fine without URIs).

Re:Firefox or Mozilla

[Linus Torvaalds]

You: I don't deny that URIs are part of the Web. That doesn't make the things they point to part of the Web

Tim Berners-Lee: An information object is "on the web" if it has a URI.

I already pointed you to that quote. Try reading what I link to - it directly contradicts what you are saying. I'm not linking to random documents you know, they actually have relevence.

Re:Firefox or Mozilla

[ross axe]

'On the web' is not the same as 'part of the web', any more than 'on the TV' means 'part of the TV'. Arguably, mailto: URIs do put email 'on the web'. Still, email functions quite happily without URIs. I could put a bus journey to my house 'on the web' by inventing a new URI scheme that allows 'bus://my-house?via=the_chip_shop'. The wouldn't make the bus, my house or the chip shop part of the Web.

Re:Firefox or Mozilla

[Linus Torvaalds]

'On the web' is not the same as 'part of the web'

Sigh. Now you are just trying to weasel out of the argument by playing with semantics.

A web page is on the web. A web page is part of the web. A mailbox is on the web. A mailbox is part of the web. A newsgroup is on the web. A newsgroup is part of the web.

In this context, "on" and "part of" are synonyms. Here's a quote:

The Web is a universe of resources. A resource is defined by [RFC2396] to be anything that has identity. Examples include

Re:Firefox or Mozilla

[ross axe]

Sigh. Now you are just trying to weasel out of the argument by playing with semantics.

Given that we are trying to define 'the Web', I'd say semantics is entirely relevent.

A web page is on the web. A web page is part of the web. A mailbox is on the web. A mailbox is part of the web. A newsgroup is on the web. A newsgroup is part of the web.

A white line is on the road. A white line is part of the road. So far, so good. A car is on the road. A car is, however, not part of the road. Analogies like this j

Re:Firefox or Mozilla

[NanoServ]

The Mozilla Foundation (a group) developed the Mozilla Application Sutie (a web browser). That became too bloated, so they started working on a spin-off called Mozilla Firefox (another web browser). Now that Firefox is mature, the Mozilla Foundation has announced that they will no longer be supporting the Mozilla Application Suite, and it has now been renamed to SeaMonkey and will be developed by a separate group. So basically, the Mozilla Foundation (mozilla.org) created and develops the Firefox web brows

This is great

[hattan]

I'm really glad this site is available. When I tried to write my first extension several months ago I found it to be a daunting task trying to find any documentation that was easy to read. I'm looking forward to reading through some of the other developer tutorials and spending many long hours programming....I guess I'll need more soda now.

Re:This is great

[stevey]

Isn't this what the book / online book Creating applications with Mozilla [mandragor.org] was supposed to help with?

Sure it's about applications rather than interfacing with the core of the browser, but it covers the concepts of XUL, packaging, etc.

Wiki.mozilla.org

[fulldecent]

Your account at developer.mozilla.org does not also work at wiki.mozilla.org. Maybe they should?

Great project!

[GreatBunzinni]

Nice site design, offers tutorials on mozilla and non-mozilla technologies, it's content is completely wikified... This is great news. It seems that this will be the kickstart for some non-mozilla developers to join the project and give the mozilla foundation their 0.02$. Very nice indeed.

Mozilla foundation, keep up the excellent work. The open source comunity (and other users too) are extremely thankfull. Kudos!