Ben Goodger is the lead engineer for the open-source browser Firefox, which has been gaining in popularity in a market overwhelmingly dominated by Microsoft. He talks about Firefox’s history, and how he sees it competing with Longhorn in this interview.
The Kiwi behind Firefox
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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It’s time for open-source software — good open-source software — to be proud of itself, set its sights on the big leagues and get out there and try and get as much out of it as possible. You don’t get there by aiming for 5 percent or 10 percent.
I wouldn’t give open source (at least on the desktop) too much credit. The only reason you’ve been able to pull ahead of IE is because IE hasn’t had a significant update in the last 5 years, and still has a lion’s share of the market. If IE had been developed at the same rate it was in the mid-90’s, I doubt anyone outside of Unix OS’s would’ve ever heard of Mozilla.
I personally use and love Firefox and think that the competition is great, but the only reason they have as much marketshare as they do now is because MS stopped caring about the browser wars long ago.
Thats the same article that was posted on news.com.com about firefox last week.
Was the longhorn question, where he basically said, “We integrate with Gnome very well.” in reply to wheither Mozilla would compete with Longhorn. =D
Eh, good to see a kiwi going hard at something. Hope Ben Keeps up the good work
Looking forward to 1.0 final
That’s a pretty lame argument. Essentially, if their competitors had done better they wouldn’t be doing so much better than their competitors. MS dropped the ball. They should be blamed for it, and the Mozilla devs should be praised for developing an app so good that it could topple a monopoly.
Except it hasn’t toppled a monopoly. The original poster’s main point is still there; Mozilla and Firefox are only especially relevant because Microsoft decided against maintaining their development of Internet Explorer, and as such while there is credit to be given to the Mozilla developers (and some amount to AOL), it should be praise tempered by reality.
However I have a suspicion that the original poster was
1. Ignoring that the author suggests that open source projects shouldn’t aim low
2. Attempting to troll open source software advocates by belittling the accomplishment of the Mozilla project. While Mozilla’s relevance on Windows has been increased by Microsoft’s strategies, its quality is unrelated to it and undeniable.
Internet Explorer was developed to counter a threat to the Microsoft platform – Netscape. If people started developing web apps then the market’s dependance on Windows would be dominished (because you can access a web app from anywhere, the browser becomes the platform). IE was developed to kill web apps. It didn’t work. Now there is no reason to continue developing IE – in fact, continuing to develop IE will only increase the number of web apps. Microsoft’s new baby in the quest to secure their platform dominance is dot net.
“Microsoft’s new baby in the quest to secure their platform dominance is dot net.”
You wish. 🙂
They want to secure their platform by:
1- Making the development of scalable software comparable to the webapps, but that only run on Windows.
2- Patenting all the technology that they can. It serves in the short-term by producing fear. And in the long-term, it could be used actively.
What part of it coincides with .Net, in general?
The integrated Firefox with GNOME works great. I’ve been using it for a week already, and no sign of getting tired of it.
There is one unresolved issue, still. Java Tiger (5) crashes the entire browser sometimes.
MS dropped the ball. They should be blamed for it, and the Mozilla devs should be praised for developing an app so good that it could topple a monopoly
Haha, that’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever read.
i believe he is referring to XAML. im not sure if it will be part of the .net api or not (im sure a bit of googling will find the answer)
you are right though, its the palladium bs that will be in longhorn that is their new baby for keeping their monopoly, not specifically .net.
You mean as ugly as this.
http://www.deviantart.com/view/11523653/
Looks okay to me.
Go the kiwi’s!!!
😀
Could you not have warned me that an completely white screenshot was about to come my way? Now I’ll have a headache for the rest of the day.
How can anyone stare are a desktop with white widgets and barely no contrast. It’s insane.
I wanted to say “an almost completely white”… We need edit!
Get sunshades or something.
Tell me how Microsoft’s decision not to release any more standalone IE versions affects Mozilla.
It makes it clear to people that if they want to see their online experience improved in significant ways, they’re not going to get them from Microsoft. We’re one of the alternatives — and it helps that we’re free.
How will it be improved in significant ways? I need examples. Okay standalone IE version will no longer exist. I understand many years will pass before an upgrade occurs.
But how much better will Firefox be? I understand extension extend functionality. So what?
By John Blink (IP: —.smelb1.vic.optusnet.com.au) – Posted on 2004-10-18 08:45:05
How will it be improved in significant ways? I need examples. Okay standalone IE version will no longer exist. I understand many years will pass before an upgrade occurs.
But how much better will Firefox be? I understand extension extend functionality. So what?
———
Firefox already is far better. No need to wait.
Higher security with quick patches if needed (and a cash reward for security exploits discovered). Integrated ad-banning. Not prone to spyware exploits (no activex BS). If that isn’t enough…
Fast rendering. Integrated tabs. Integrated RSS, pop-up blocker for every platform (IE only has it for xp now) and Themes.
The best web development platform (Venkman Javascript Debugger extension, integrated DOM Inspector & heaps of other useful web development extensions). Modern standards support. If you’ve ever tried grappling with CSS2 support and the broken box model in IE, you’ll know what I mean. The browser is a joy to develop for because it actually follows W3C web standards, standards which are sorely missing from IE, which hasn’t been significantly upgraded in 3 years. Great user configurability and ease-of-use. Active user community…
If they want to increase the uptake of Firefox (or Mozilla) in business, they need to make it easier to centrally manage. Heck, even just configuring it to use the system-wide settings for proxies, homepages, etc would be a great first step.
In many ways, Mozilla’s vision today of the browser is similar to the original Netscape goals of creating a useful browser, and our vision moving forward is based on that — a useful browser application, a useful mail application and so on, rather than an all-in-one suite, which is more of a carryover from Netscape’s later days.
Netscape’s vision with the browser was to create proprietry extensions than only their webserver would support (undoubtedly leverage copyrights and/or patents, as Microsoft are doing with XML in Office), thus tying the majority of the web to their OS-independent client-server platform and making them a fortune by being able to sell it to *anyone*. That’s what drove the next-greatest-proprietry-tag part of the browser wars.
What Netscape did not know in 1994 was the direction the Web was going to take.
Of course not, but they knew what direction they _wanted_ it to take – which it eventually did, albeit with the fairly important problem of them being a passenger and not a driver.
Firefox is easy to centrally manage. It’s just not quite the same as Internet Explorer, because it actually isn’t Internet Explorer. In terms of internal design, it’s much more like a Unix application than a Windows application, and as such keeps all the configuration inside files, stored in the user’s home directory.
Want to centrally manage it? Just make changes to the global config files, and copy those over. Piece of cake.
You mean as ugly as this.
http://www.deviantart.com/view/11523653/
Looks okay to me.
Sure, but that’s not Firefox. But obviously, since my comment was modded down and all, I’m imagining things.
But obviously, since my comment was modded down and all, I’m imagining things.
I’d like to respond to your modded down comment, since it was mostly directed towards me:
Finally to put a nail in your little Trollbait of a coffin… Microsoft has poured Millions into IIS and never stopped doing R&D for web services, yet somehow the opensource solution (Apache) continues till this day to kick MS’s butt.
Yeah, and you also notice that I made a point to specify open source on the desktop. Apache is server software and server != desktop.
I’m sorry but your just flat out wrong. Pick ANY subject where there is a winner and a loser be it in politics, sports etc etc. You don’t hear rational people refer to leaders in whatever field saying “well yea he/she/its the best, but come on that ONLY because of X, and you shouldn’t give them TOO much credit because afterall they didn’t REALLY earn it…”
First, I would hardly call MS a ‘loser’ – not as feature-rich as Firefox by any stretch of the imagination, and still kicking FF’s ass.
All I’m saying is that Firefox is without a doubt the best piece of desktop software I’ve ever seen come from the open source community, and think about how long it’s taken the Mozilla team to get this far. I’m not sure why anyone expects much from the rest of the open source community, because their competition is not going to lay down and go to sleep for 5 years like IE did. MS stopped competing in the browser market years ago, and the Mozilla browsers still don’t even have 10% marketshare yet, so even if you declare Firefox the winner, it’s not exactly impressive when your opponent basically throws down their gloves and refuses to fight. If the IE version number truly reflected the pace of development since IE5, it would probably be up to v5.21 right now instead of v6.
I don’t expect Moz to become mainstream, pervasive yes, but mostly invisible in the mass-market. Longhorn will produce another round of mainboard cost cuts, and users/developers won’t have any hesitation about buying new desktop hardware. It looks like Moz will cater to the *nix power user/developer and for them it probably will be a good usable product. What I see in this article is GNOME with respect to Moz becomming the stardard for enterprise OSS desktops. I can’t see Moz/XUL and whatever MS is doing competing against each other.
The browser wars are indeed over. IE5.5/6 page rendering and script speed are at least 2x over the current competition. Netscape in hindsight looks like little more than a classical “set-up” job to jumpstart the commercialization of the internet, the media created “battle” with MS was pure “snow”.
By Donny_P (IP: —.dialup.mindspring.com) – Posted on 2004-10-18 15:32:15
The browser wars are indeed over. IE5.5/6 page rendering and script speed are at least 2x over the current competition.
—–
Examples?
Sure, but that’s not Firefox. But obviously, since my comment was modded down and all, I’m imagining things.
Fine, here you go:
http://www.deviantart.com/view/11530832/
Obligatory warning: Wear your sunshades.
“IE5.5/6 page rendering and script speed are at least 2x over the current competition.”
Without backup data, that’s an arbitrary statement. And with regards to the “script speed”, my personal experience is that IE’s DOM implementation *crawls*.
What’s wrong with that screenshot, that’s how I like it. Maybe it’s because of M$, but I just can’t stand grey anymore…
What’s wrong with that screenshot, that’s how I like it. Maybe it’s because of M$, but I just can’t stand grey anymore…
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I don’t particularly like the controls (eg – the buttons and status bar) being completely flat and the same color as the background. Reminds me too much of Windows 3.x look.
The point is that the Gecko widgets can inherit your GTK+ themes, just like in Windows or Mac OS X. It doesn’t matter whether or not you like the screenshot or the theme in the screenshot.
I was just trying to dispell the myth that Firefox generally works and looks ugly on Linux. Otherwise this threads would have degenerated into another “Firefox looks and works ugly because of GTK+, thus it is not ready for the desktop” and other assorted nonsense.
I wasn’t attempting to make an argument about FIrefox being ugly … somebody asked what was wrong with the screenshot (as in the particular theme), and I answered.
As for GTK in Windows, I’ve tried two apps (Pan and Gaim) and neither one of them were very stable (Gaim would tank everytime I tried to view somebody’s bio on AIM), so I think GTK in Windows has other issues besides just asthetics.
I wasn’t attempting to make an argument about FIrefox being ugly … somebody asked what was wrong with the screenshot (as in the particular theme), and I answered.
If you have a favorite gnome/gtk+ theme that appeals to you (that isn’t pixmap based), let me know. I’ll post my last screenshot using that theme.
As for GTK in Windows, I’ve tried two apps (Pan and Gaim) and neither one of them were very stable (Gaim would tank everytime I tried to view somebody’s bio on AIM), so I think GTK in Windows has other issues besides just asthetics.
That’s unfortunate. My experience has been the opposite. I use Abiword, Xchat and Gaim on Windows XP. They work great. I haven’t encountered any show stopping bug.
“That’s a pretty lame argument.” Of course it is. Look who its coming from. Our old friend, Darius.
“That’s a pretty lame argument.” Of course it is. Look who its coming from. Our old friend, Darius.
So you honestly think that if IE had been developed at the same rate over the past 5 years as it had been from version 3 to version 5, that Firefox would be as popular as it is now?