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Firefox 1.0 Targeted for September

By Nate Mook, BetaNews

July 13, 2004, 7:34 AM

The Mozilla Organization has updated the roadmap for Firefox, placing the major 1.0 milestone release on September 14. Three release candidates are scheduled, with RC1 set for August 10. Mozilla's Ben Goodger notes that the final release may slip, but says "it gives us a near term goal to target and then slip from, rather than wait for things to fall into place." Firefox 0.9 was issued last month, being billed as a faster and more secure alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

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By utomo

posted Aug 31, 2004 - 4:25 AM

Suggestions for firefox:
- Better Download manager. so we can easily download, pause, resume, etc.
- when we save a page, no need to list on the download list.
- New tab icon
- when we save a page, better if we can have options to save using the filename or using the title as default.
- and many other improvements

Score: 0

By roj

edited Jul 13, 2004 - 10:09 AM

It can slip as much as it likes - just get it right the first time. That means no silly memory leaks in the Gecko core that then spawn runaway threads and eat RAM. Once they've got that down pat for the first release, they can work on making the browser actually support the majority of sites out there instead of the "open standards" rhetoric. What does that mean in practical terms? It means that they can move on to the next stage and work on Microsoft extension compatibility because whether they like to admit it or not (oh the PAIN and ANGUISH they must have facing this simple fact!!), it's a major force out there and Will Not Go Away No Matter How Hard They Wish Upon A Star.

Score: 0

By wormeyman

posted Jul 13, 2004 - 11:49 AM

"open standards" is something that Microsoft is a part of deciding and implementing Microsoft still supports depreciated elements and non industry standards.

The reason mozilla only supports industry standards is because one someone needs to do it and two you can't really support proprietary elements if they don't have an sdk it will just create more headaches and bugs.

http://www.w3.org

Score: 0

By roj

edited Jul 13, 2004 - 12:40 PM

When the "proprietary" stuff becomes prevalent enough that it becomes a de facto standard, you support it - period. If you don't, you don't get adopted by the majority of users (which is the position the Zillas are currently in). The "someone has to do it" statement holds little water if the majority are already happily using the alternative (and they are). In short, disagree as much as you like that the Zillas should support extensions - it has precious little bearing on actual physical reality. Note also that I didn't say that the Zillas should ignore the so-called "open standards". I do say that if they wish any form of widespread acceptance and popularity beyond being an academic exercise, they should instead just use them as a jumping -off point to real utility. In short, they should tear a page from Opera's book.

Score: 0

By rauckr

posted Jul 18, 2004 - 1:48 PM

I find only occasional sites that are not supported. I revert to Internet Explorer at those times. Tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking are the most important browser features for me. Microsoft makes sure we have Internet Explorer at our fingertips when there is no other way to view a site but why use it when you are not forced to?

Score: 0

By speedmeister

posted Jul 13, 2004 - 2:12 PM

Your statements would seem to imply that you haven't used mozilla very much recently. For example the Marquee tag isn't in any W3C standard but the most recent versions of mozilla support it. I don't remember when they added support for this tag but I know that they didn't support it 2-3 years ago. This is just one example of a case where the Mozilla Foundation and their predecessors at Netscape have sought to make Mozilla into more than just an academic project and something that people can you for their everyday web browsing. Between the Mozilla Foundation's "tech evangelism" efforts and changes to make the quirks mode slightly more forgiving the number of cases of problem sites are starting to become rare.

Especially in light of the growing number of people that are downloading the mozilla suite or Firefox or even Opera I think you are going to see more webmasters getting away from designing sites that don't work well in browsers other than Internet Explorer. When you have millions of people that are paranoid about Internet Explorer I think that few webmasters are going to be able to ignore other browser anymore. With better support of the W3C standards by the design community it's just matter of time before rendering problems become unheard of. Even today you will find very sites have real issues with mozilla.
If you haven't used mozilla extensively in the last six months you really should look again. I think you will find that most sites other than Microsoft and their affiliate render just fine.

Score: 0

By roj

edited Jul 13, 2004 - 3:40 PM

On the "reason Mozilla doesn't support those extensions is security" comment: Rubbish. For example, Java is just as full of holes as the extensions that plague IE but then again, if you do believe what you say, I think I may have some beachfront property in the High Arctic that you might be interested in. :) The difference is that MS is the high profile target everyone loves to hate, disparage and take pot shots at and Java is much more of a darling to those types of folks so few of it's "issues" are targeted. Also, I have used Mozilla over the last few months - right up to version 1.7. Things like the Quintessential Player site and even BetaNews don't display quite as well as they do in IE. Yahoo Launch still cannot play videos through either Mozilla or Firefox. And no, developers won't be switching any time soon. There's the inertia of the installed user base, there's the convenience of having the browser built into the OS so no need to go looking for alternatives and there's the bundling of IIS with just about every flavor of the Windows OS with no-brainer setup and configuration. Mozilla has none of those advantages and never will. As far as the paranoia of millions goes, hysterical anticapation may feed the fondest dream wishes of those in the anti-MS camp, but again will have little expression in terms of actual events and the majority of users. I've been hearing foolishness like this for ten years - no graveyards yet. Have a look: http://www.eweek.com/art...2/0,1759,1622837,00.asp

Score: 0

By war593122

posted Jul 13, 2004 - 11:20 AM

I agree. :)

Score: 0

By BetaNewsGuy

posted Jul 13, 2004 - 12:50 PM

The reason Firefox doesn't support the "non-standard" pages and microsoft plugins is that the biggest security flaws associated with Internet Explorer can be directly attributed to those enhancements. I am glad Firefox doesn't support them because I already have IE for that. I switched away to AVOID those features entirely and not be annoyed by dialog boxes that pop up to tell me the feature is disabled. IE has a long way to go to catch up to other browsers, not the other way around!

Score: 0

By lemonlovr

posted Jul 13, 2004 - 5:17 PM

Allow me to join this debate... Standards exist for a reason. Why build a website that is only tailored to IE (which has a 92% share, not 100%)when, by simply following standards, it will work in almost any browser from the Gecko derivatives (Mozilla, Firefox, etc.) to Opera to Safari on a Mac? And, while I'm not a regular Firefox user, I can say with absolut certainty that the BetaNews website is just as functional when viewed with Opera as it is with IE.

Score: 0

By linkdup

edited Jul 14, 2004 - 1:12 AM

(which has a 92% share, not 100%)
if you were playing poker and you knew for a FACT that the odds of you wining are 92%, how much of your money would you throw down? i'd throw it all baby.

Score: 0

By roj

edited Jul 13, 2004 - 6:41 PM

Why waste resources to satisfy an insignificant 8%?

Not hard to do the math here...

Also, I never said the site was functional - I did say it displayed differently.

For my taste, Ladas are functional. A Golf GTI is optimal.

Score: 0

By iravick

posted Jul 13, 2004 - 8:31 PM

You have to take scale into account here. Assuming a conservative estimate of 500,000,000 Internet users, 8% is 40,000,000 people. Hardly insignificant.

Score: 0

By coch

posted Jul 13, 2004 - 9:31 PM

Yes, and watch that 8%, I foresee an significant increase in the next weeks/months given the recent IE security issues, and the upcoming 1.0 version for Firefox. For me, firefox is already great, and have been for quite some time, but for some users, a 1.0 version is more appealing.

Score: 0

By roj

posted Jul 13, 2004 - 9:42 PM

Economics of scale indeed. I remember the same hackneyed arguments when OS/2 was "the next big thing" and Windows an upstart grabbing market share left right and center. "Yes Windows owns major market share but wouldn't you rather own ALL of a niche where you could dominate? That's still a LOT of people!" Sure Jim. We all know what happened. I've also been seeing naysayers on IE since 3.0 - and again I haven't seen any graveyards yet.

Face it people: Microsoft would have to screw up biblically for there to be any meaningful change in the current state of affairs and there is about as much chance of that as the Zillas supporting anything remotely Microsoft (actually there's a better chance of MS screwing up biblically).

In short, they are a niche product that may appeal to a minority (yes, that many users is a minority to a CFO who sees things in terms of percentages so don't expect any magic bullets in terms of developement) but challenge the big gun? You're kidding, right? I'm no industry pundit making lofty pronouncements to excite the readership or the lunatic fringe; I'm a stone-cold realist.

Score: 0

By speedmeister

edited Jul 14, 2004 - 1:30 PM

I don't think your comparisons between OS/2 and mozilla are quite apt. After Windows 95 IBM had a difficult time with compatibility. Many programs designed for 95 never really worked properly in OS/2. IBM stopped all active development of OS/2 a few years later. OS/2 largely died because Lou Gerstner felt that it wasn't worthwhile to keep developing it. While I am not too familiar with programming for OS/2 given the dearth of programs that were designed for it I would imagine that porting apps from other platforms probably wasn't that simple. With websites you can roll out a page with minimal changes if the code isn't identical and have it be compatible with Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Opera, and Safari/Konqueror. The cost of rewriting pages to be compatible with multiple browser isn't anywhere near what it would take to port a Windows app to Linux or some other platform.

In the case of web browsers development Mozilla has continued despite their small market share. Microsoft in the last several years has largely rested on their laurels. When is the last time a new version of Internet Explorer for Windows was released? In the last two years most of what we have seen is patches for security bugs. And for folks that are using older products in the "extended support" phase aren't really getting that. Unless Microsoft deems a bug critical it won't get fixed. According to Microsoft's site a security bug can compromise your privacy and the integrity of your data and without being deemed "critical." For people still using Windows 98 the old real workaround for some of these bugs is to move up to Windows XP/2000/2003 or use another browser. For someone with an older computer there really isn't any choice but to abandon Internet Explorer.

The handling of security by Microsoft as a of late has been very poor. The Windows Shell vulnerability that Mozilla fixed last week also impacts Internet Explorer. http://www.microsoft.com.../bulletin/MS04-024.mspx
Ofcourse since Windows 98/Me are in extended support and this isn't considered "critical" there is no patch for those still using 98/Me. Never mind that they admit in the bulletin that an exploit of this bug could allow someone to take control of your computer. According to Google's June Zeitgeist these users amount to approximately 20% of all their users. That's a pretty significant number of users to leave in the cold.

Score: 0

By Baggio

posted Jul 22, 2004 - 5:00 AM

If you have an old computer and can't run XP, you should abandon that computer anyway. How are you going to play Doom 3 on it? 0_o

Score: 0

By VicRattleHeD

edited Jul 15, 2004 - 11:49 AM

By the point of view expressed by the first post, we should all just give up on making a secure browser, right? Is that what you are saying? Cause it sounds to me like you just want us to give up and accept our fate in Microsoft Internet Explorer.

This is not meant as a personal attack, I am just not clear on what you are saying. Please clarify.

Thanks.

By the Bye, I have been using Firefox since it was Firebird. Since the .8 beta release, I have only had one compatibility issue on the net. It was Windows Update.

Score: 0

By ambitiousdevil

posted Sep 26, 2004 - 11:57 AM

Ah guys?

Firefox has almost a 17% market share (16.6% to be exact).

I refer you to this link.

http://www.w3schools.com...sers/browsers_stats.asp

Score: 0

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