In the past, I have made a few mockups for a few functions, a few suggestions here and now, in different places and at different times. But it doesn't feel, to me, that doing that made me any more relevant to Firefox development that I was before. Filing a bug that eventually gets worked on and fixed, that makes me feel like part of things, but that only happens when those bugs are already part of the development roadmap (like bug 576960). If I file a feature request, no matter how small and easy to patch it is (like bug 569816), it gets lost. Somehow.
The newsgroups (or whatever they're called), really are the best way to suggest new features, discuss them and propose something new or different to Firefox. At least that's what I was told, and that's what I feel. But I made my suggestion about the options page redesign, and, oh shock, it got lost. How awesome is that? I go through the trouble of making hard to do mockups. More! Of thinking them up, which took me plenty of hours because it wasn't just something I came up with, there are many design issues that arose and that I addressed (although they may not be immediately apparent, obviously). I took the time to make a text that explained my ideas and all that. And in actual fact, it was and IS something very important to the development of Firefox 4.x.
I understand time is a big issue in everyone's lives. It's like these things work. It's irrelevant to say who's at fault here. What I do know is that the way Mike replied to my post was a bit uncalled for, to be honest, and I think it was due to a misunderstanding on his part, but the fact is, I don't want Mozilla Foundation to work *for* me. I'm perfectly happy with whatever, no matter, just anything. As long as it works, as long as it does what I want it to do, I'm ok with it. I'd be perfectly happy, as a user, if Firefox 4.0 was just a rebranded Firefox 3.6. I love Firefox 3.6 and I absolutely cannot use any other browser for any prolonged period of time. But as a Firefox lover, I want Firefox 4.0 to be as awesome as possible, to have as many features as possible, to be as cool, light, fast and fresh as possible. Not for me (because I am perfectly ok with 3.6), but for everyone else. So I want Mozilla Foundation to work for everyone else, rather than for *me*, even if they work *with* me or not.
It's as I said, they work with "us", but that "us" is the community, and the community isn't me. It's a seemingly restrict number of people. Getting into them is, it seems to me, like getting into a normal company, only, of course, you won't get paid in money with the Mozilla Foundation: you'll get paid in awesomeness.
Seems Moz.org has no awesomeness for me.
2010-09-03 22:44