Forum: Weblog comments

Personally, I think Jetpack is the key for it all. That and extensions that don't require a browser restart to install. Mozilla Labs is looking mighty, and has been looking mighty for a while, but Jetpack, above all others, seems the key to me. If it receives proper publicity, it will be a huge boost to Firefox.

Other than that, I can't really see where Firefox needs to change. I think it only needs to improve, keep on improving, keep on getting more awesome into it, and don't change into some Chrome-like closed source crap. Firefox is the community, and it doesn't really matter if the community is big or small. What matters is how much that community loves Firefox and itself. Some Firefox users are using Chrome now? In my experience, those users were never really part of the community. They don't develop extensions, they don't help out at SUMO, they don't test, they don't patch... Because if they did, they'd know that Chrome has nothing relevant to offer over Firefox. That is my firm belief, and I'm not worried in the slightest about users leaving Firefox, and I really hope Mozilla isn't either. If anything, it's a good thing, since we'll have an easier time dealing with security issues (which are always harder to deal with on widely used software). But Firefox is far from recessing, anyway, so this isn't even relevant right now. We're into the summer where it's usual for Fx to loose market share (for whatever reason, I haven't the slightest clue why), but when Firefox 4 is release, it will absolutely smash the competition. Chrome is standing still, and has stood still since two years ago, when it was released. Safari is standing still too, for the most part, and I really doubt they'll get any kind of relevant market share with those blurry fonts... Opera... Opera is awesome, but I really doubt they'll ever grow in market share, whatever they do... IE is really the main competitor for Firefox, as it always was, but if IE9 doesn't deliver a great user experience, it's going down as always! I'm really hoping that IE9 is a brilliant browser, I really am. Just imagine, everyone that is too stubborn (or less polite adjectives) to change from IE getting a proper, decent, fantastic experience in their browser! THAT would wake hem up for the reality that is browsing the web in a fantastic browser

Hopefully Microsoft won't drop the ball... User experience is key.

That's funny. Personally I think Jetpack could be an important player in the downfall of it all. Jetpack has no support for XUL, no support for XBL, no support for SVG, no support for XUL Templates, no support for XML and XSLT, no support for ANY kind of markup language, nor for the CSS we use to style it. In fact, Jetpack seems to abandon the whole idea of developing application interfaces using declarative web technologies, expecting you instead to emulate all this in Javascript; apparently the only web technology that Jetpack really supports. Reminds me in an eerie way about colleagues who think that websites are developed using only C#. I am not saying that Jetpack is a bad career move for Mozilla, just that aspiring young developers will have no idea what I'm talking about in just a few years from now. So thanks for blogging about Mozilla the Platform!

I've been a "XUL dark matter" developer using Mozilla the platform for several years now - currently I'm earning a living as such. The platform is flexible, powerful and generally easy for an existing HTML developer to pick up (at least the basics). But there is one thing that is holding it back as a more versatile and widespread platform:

Mozilla themselves.

A few years ago there was much talk about the platform, verging almost on encouragement for other companies to build things with it. These days it seems that Mozilla only really cares about the platform to the extent that it supports what they want to do with Firefox. Obvious usability bugs go unaddressed, and new features and widgets arrive only sporadically - and usually only when they're needed for the latest Firefox fanciness.

I'd love to see more support for the platform as a whole. Ultimately it could bring more (and more disparate) developers to the table, which would help to make it a more robust and more versatile system for software development. Platform development _should_ be a case of "a rising tide raises all boats". Instead it's more of a case of the good ship Firefox steaming ahead while the rest of us get tossed around in its wake.

I am also puzzled and frustrated by the changes at Mozilla.
jjb

I agree with MarkC, that Mozilla, the platform, gets too little attention these days. But I also understand why this is: limited resources.

JetPacks create, in my eyes, indeed a problem, but not because they exist, but because they get all the focus. The "regular" extensions fall short.
JetPacks might be indeed a good alternative for more or less "simple" addons, but as they gonna be limited in the same way Safari and Chrome extensions are, and hence cannot replace XUL extensions. But this seems to be the long term goal.
See the discussion about rehousing the statusbar in Firefox for example. There is some talk about implementing a "balloon" widget... in JetPack. So "regular" extensions cannot really use it without copying/reimplementing the code, which will ultimately lead to fragmentation. (I still hope this will be a toolkit widget with a nice API for JetPacks)

John J. Barton, could you say more?

MarkC said:
"A few years ago there was much talk about the platform, verging almost on encouragement for other companies to build things with it. These days it seems that Mozilla only really cares about the platform to the extent that it supports what they want to do with Firefox."

Really? You think Mozilla is less focused on the platform now than they were a few years ago? Remember that the Camino guys got pretty bitter about Mozilla back then. You think it's worse now, even with stuff like decent standalone XULRunner?

Yeah, Mozilla is an awesome architecture (from a user's point of view). Now, if only someone would write "Mozilla Add-Ons for Dummies," I might be able to create a cool add-on myself.

I never meant that they were particularly good in the past - just that they were making the sort of noises that implied that they _wanted_ other people to use the XUL platform for other applications. These days you don't even get that: Mozilla has only one product, and anything else is just a side-effect of that. The platform doesn't figure at all, other than as a means to create Firefox.

I'm delighted that there's a decent standalone XULRunner, and Prism makes it much easier for us to sell our remote-XUL solution to corporate customers who flinch at the suggestion that they'll have to install Firefox. But they both strike me as being a historical side-effect of the build process, rather than something which Mozilla actively promote and encourage the use of.


What I think it needs - at least to start with - is for someone to be employed within Mozilla whose role is to support platform users. By that I mean helping to foster a community, but also providing some internal pressure to fix some of the more obvious platform issues, even if they don't directly affect Firefox. Hopefully a little more attention to the platform might encourage some of the third-party platform consumers to start contributing a bit more themselves.

"IE is really the main competitor for Firefox, as it always was, but if IE9 doesn't deliver a great user experience, it's going down as always! I'm really hoping that IE9 is a brilliant browser, I really am. Just imagine, everyone that is too stubborn (or less polite adjectives) to change from IE getting a proper, decent, fantastic experience in their browser! THAT would wake hem up for the reality that is browsing the web in a fantastic browser"

Are you sure about IE being the "main" competitor for Firefox, Tiago?
some other people think that Opera and Google Chrome are the main competitors for Firefox.

AND remember, Tiago, IE9 (when the final release comes out) requires either Windows Vista SP2 or Windows 7 to use. You can NOT install nor run IE9 under WinXP and Server 2003. AND current versions of IE are Windows only browsers and can't work on other platforms like Linux and Mac (though a long time ago Microsoft did make a Mac version of Internet Explorer but gave up doing so).