Impressive how the most voted comments are rants about the browser.
If that's insightful or useful comments hit me...
I really don't understand this hate towards Mozilla that has been going around lately.
Edit: Why am I being downvoted? It's a sincere opinion of a person who doesn't see a relation in critizising a project of an organisation in an article that talks about other projects.
If you dont like Firefox its fine, but it's a wonderful project with millions of users and that cannot be denied.
Sending my opinion to oblivion because of pointing how unrelated the firefox rant comments are to the article makes no sense.
I think it's more like "tough love" than hate. If I bitch about Firefox, it's because I want to love Firefox, but I can't. That pisses me off. If I didn't care about it, like the way I don't care about Safari or Konqueror, or Opera, I wouldn't talk about it, like I never talk about Safari or Konqueror, or Opera.
Building an os is hard stuff, and if you can't produce a browser without memory leaks (or a caching strategy I can't possibly start to fathom), you're not headed in the right direction.
I am in complete agreement. And quite honestly it grows tiring actually refuting the various anti-Firefox rants with actual fact -- it is a bit of a hobbyhorse of some people while they cheer on whatever team they're waving the flag of.
It honestly must be emotionally exhausting to work for Mozilla projects. For all of the incredible work they have done (Firefox is the reason Apple still exists...I'll argue that point if anyone would like), there are so many anti-Firefox fanboys who appear in every single Mozilla discussion to express their ridiculous anecdotes or to make uninformed, naive performance observations.
I wish they'd concentrate on making a browser that does not need to be restarted after every hour or 2 of browsing lest it become more and more unresponsive.
I wish they'd concentrate on making a browser that can start scrolling before all the Javascript on the page has finished running.
(I'm using FF 7 on Snow Leopard with 1 gig of RAM. Would I have to restart FF less often if I had more RAM?)
I wish they'd concentrate on making a browser that does not need to be restarted after every hour or 2 of browsing lest it become more and more unresponsive.
Amen, brother. I have been a Mozilla / Firefox / Seamonkey / etc. fanboy for years, but even I finally gave up and moved to using Chrome primarily, and it was mainly due to that very problem. For years now they've battled memory issues (I say "issues" since they continue to insist that there aren't any "leaks" per-se) that kill performance... one release will work great, then the next release, it's back to more of the same... next release, things get better... another release, and it's time for a RAM upgrade again... it's like they seem to be totally incapable of truly, finally, getting a handle on the memory usage situation. :-(
To me, it's clear that they have spent more time making a rendering engine that is more compatible with CSS and Javascript. Every other popular browser(including Opera) has some serious Javascript and CSS rendering issues where it counts. From my development experience Firefox is the most developer friendly browser, by miles.
Well, as a user you have the option of using another browser. Though, admittedly, with 1 gig of RAM I can't think of any decent one that wont give you problems after a few hours of browsing -- maybe chrome?
As a web developer, I wish they'd concentrate on making a browser that lets you change the line-height of a button/input element. Such a simple change, yet the problem has been around since 2006, if I recall correctly.
I am not on snow leopard yet so I dont know how much 1gig of RAM is by Snow Leopard standards but for reference how does Chrome / Safari do in comparison?
My first question is why? Do they have a real vision other than "me too"?
Does anyone else remember when Phoenix was first released to fight bloated browsers? Now it is that bloated browser and running an OS developed around its technologies isn't too appealing to me.
Find your roots before you start off on some other project if you hope to have any significant success.
The vision is "users, not the device phone vendor, should be able to control what apps they can install and run".
Note that's what being built is not an OS. What's being built is a set of APIs to allow web apps to do more of the things that only native apps can do right now, so that you're not stuck using native apps that the device vendor has a stranglehold on.
What is your definition of bloat - size of download, application startup times, number of features, speed while being used, memory usage?
Firefox 5 without addons does not seem to be bloated to me by any of the above definitions. In terms of featuresets just for reference - Netscape communicator used to ship with a mail client, browser, news client, html editor and a calendar.
Boot To Gecko is not a project to build an operation system.
IIUC, Mozilla is planning to reuse Linux and core components of Android. If anything, I would think Boot To Gecko would be better thought of as a shell around the OS. Using process separation (underway for a while now in the Electrolysis project) bugs/leaks/crashes in Gecko should be isolated and not significantly more disruptive than in normal Firefox.
I think the major value provided by (and work required for) Boot To Gecko will be on creating open standards (in the open) for access to the device so that web platform can be a first class citizen of the device.
How well is it going to be received compared with the level of effort required? ChromeOS is pretty bad and Google has been working on it for a long time.
The point here is not to build an OS. The point is to improve web APIs so that web apps can compete with native ones, and do it in an open fashion so that all web browsers can implement the new APIs. ChromeOS has done some of this, but neither far enough nor openly enough (what ChromeOS extensions are working on becoming cross-browser standards?).
You sir have hit the nail on the head. The article reads as is they invented something revolutionary. I do think there is great potential in browser os market and a little competition is all that's required to pave the way for the 'next big thing'! This might just do good for the ChromeOS.
I wonder if they're planning to write it in Rust? It would be interesting to see how an OS written in a more modern language than C would turn out - especially since other attempts like Microsoft's Singularity seem to have gone quiet.
Wouldn't it make more sense to replace gnome/kde with gecko? Isn't that essentially what the win8 demo was all about? So many questions, so little cloud...
The wiki page doesn't do a good job explaining it, but what they're aiming at is mobile devices. Essentially they want a phone that replaces every native functionality with html/javascript. So a web application would be your phone dialer, a web application could access your NFC chip. All of the capabilities they're going for is stuff that's in the pipeline in W3C, they want to create an OS to accelerate the process (and create new standards as well).
I realize they can do more than one thing at once but how about getting threaded tabs into a current build of Firefox first. Coders talented enough to make an O/S certainly should be able to make threaded tabs happen.
[+] [-] joakin|14 years ago|reply
If that's insightful or useful comments hit me...
I really don't understand this hate towards Mozilla that has been going around lately.
Edit: Why am I being downvoted? It's a sincere opinion of a person who doesn't see a relation in critizising a project of an organisation in an article that talks about other projects.
If you dont like Firefox its fine, but it's a wonderful project with millions of users and that cannot be denied.
Sending my opinion to oblivion because of pointing how unrelated the firefox rant comments are to the article makes no sense.
[+] [-] mindcrime|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] norswap|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] f7u12|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pnathan|14 years ago|reply
Because Firefox performance is atrocious, and that is the single most salient point from the Mozilla project.
[+] [-] hn_decay|14 years ago|reply
It honestly must be emotionally exhausting to work for Mozilla projects. For all of the incredible work they have done (Firefox is the reason Apple still exists...I'll argue that point if anyone would like), there are so many anti-Firefox fanboys who appear in every single Mozilla discussion to express their ridiculous anecdotes or to make uninformed, naive performance observations.
[+] [-] hollerith|14 years ago|reply
I wish they'd concentrate on making a browser that can start scrolling before all the Javascript on the page has finished running.
(I'm using FF 7 on Snow Leopard with 1 gig of RAM. Would I have to restart FF less often if I had more RAM?)
[+] [-] mindcrime|14 years ago|reply
Amen, brother. I have been a Mozilla / Firefox / Seamonkey / etc. fanboy for years, but even I finally gave up and moved to using Chrome primarily, and it was mainly due to that very problem. For years now they've battled memory issues (I say "issues" since they continue to insist that there aren't any "leaks" per-se) that kill performance... one release will work great, then the next release, it's back to more of the same... next release, things get better... another release, and it's time for a RAM upgrade again... it's like they seem to be totally incapable of truly, finally, getting a handle on the memory usage situation. :-(
[+] [-] gage|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] owenmarshall|14 years ago|reply
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=666058#c31
[+] [-] Ronkdar|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sushrutbidwai|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nxn|14 years ago|reply
As a web developer, I wish they'd concentrate on making a browser that lets you change the line-height of a button/input element. Such a simple change, yet the problem has been around since 2006, if I recall correctly.
[+] [-] experimental|14 years ago|reply
That's weird, that's what happens to me in Chrome, not Firefox.
[+] [-] digitalnalogika|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dman|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] runjake|14 years ago|reply
Does anyone else remember when Phoenix was first released to fight bloated browsers? Now it is that bloated browser and running an OS developed around its technologies isn't too appealing to me.
Find your roots before you start off on some other project if you hope to have any significant success.
[+] [-] bzbarsky|14 years ago|reply
The vision is "users, not the device phone vendor, should be able to control what apps they can install and run".
Note that's what being built is not an OS. What's being built is a set of APIs to allow web apps to do more of the things that only native apps can do right now, so that you're not stuck using native apps that the device vendor has a stranglehold on.
[+] [-] dman|14 years ago|reply
Firefox 5 without addons does not seem to be bloated to me by any of the above definitions. In terms of featuresets just for reference - Netscape communicator used to ship with a mail client, browser, news client, html editor and a calendar.
[+] [-] Zumzoa|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andhow|14 years ago|reply
IIUC, Mozilla is planning to reuse Linux and core components of Android. If anything, I would think Boot To Gecko would be better thought of as a shell around the OS. Using process separation (underway for a while now in the Electrolysis project) bugs/leaks/crashes in Gecko should be isolated and not significantly more disruptive than in normal Firefox.
I think the major value provided by (and work required for) Boot To Gecko will be on creating open standards (in the open) for access to the device so that web platform can be a first class citizen of the device.
[+] [-] dstein|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cosgroveb|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bzbarsky|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paran|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vilya|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yid|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MatthewPhillips|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xiaoqmayiii|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ck2|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] starwed|14 years ago|reply
http://felipe.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/initial-electrolysis-...
[+] [-] nextparadigms|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] suyash|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MatthewPhillips|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matmann2001|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bluelu|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jerhewet|14 years ago|reply