Category: main

Wow… this is really sweet. I’m writing it in Flock 0.5.

What is Flock? Flock is a new web browser developed by people from Round Two based on Mozilla Firefox 1.4.

It’s a social browsing experiment which is just an expanding of what we did with Google. Adding functionality of some web services into the browser so the user can use the power of social ideas like del.icio.us, Flickr or Technorati within the browser.

Opera released it’s 9.0 Preview 1 at snapshot.opera.com.

What’s new? A lot.

Attention! Spoiler! Don’t click “more” until you’re sure that you want to read about the plans, which may not get into reality…

Today, Ian Hickson joined Gecko Google crew!
Congratulations!

He joined Ben Goodger, Brian Ryner, Darin Fisher, Mike Pinkerton and Fritz Schneider (did I miss someone?) who are other Gecko related guys working for Google.

I won’t believe anyone telling me that they’re not doing anything Gecko-related there 😉

On the other hand I just realized that Anne van Kesteren is another guy working for Gecko and Opera at the same time (well, after Hixie’s move to Google, the only one?).

Thanks to Firefox we were able to receive huge amount of testers and prove that Gecko is a mature engine ready for use in mainstream tools like web browser or mail client.
One interesting fact is that Firefox 1.0 release did not influence our overall bugzilla numbers much.
Another, that this release slowed down our release timeframe a bit.
Look at this table:

The slowdown is a result of Firefox 1.0 release and that MoFo focused much on Firefox code, leaving Gecko a lower on priority list.
The question is if MoFo will want to release 1.9 with Firefox 2.0 (Q4 2006) or release it sooner and get Gecko 2.0 with Fx 2.0.

update: After reading (kudoz to Bablefish) Pascal’s comment, I added Opera’s numbers. There is additional difference that Opera releases minor versions with new features which keeps media on line.

In case anyone would like to test the current state of Lightning I builded this extension.
You can download it from here. It’s not too stable ATM, but according to Simon they’re getting nearer and nearer 😉

Just launch your Thunderbird 1.5 beta and install the extension.

DougT posted a note that Minimo 0.0.9 is there!
Also, the first 3 people who’ll find non-duplicated bugs will get some stuff from MoFo! 🙂

Doug is also gathering the device matrix on which Minimo works or not!

I’m very interested in quiris’s review ;>

Alex just published a big post on what’s going on with ZAP project which aims to develop SIP client in Gecko.

If everything goes well, we’ll have 0.1 release this week!

Finally Opera became free changing it’s state from adware to freeware.
It’s a good day for us all. It’s a (as I said previously) a great motivation for Mozilla folks since it’s
the first Firefox’s competitor on the modern browsers mainstream market.
Unfortunately it still has “MSIE 6.0” in user-agent name – and this is the very last thing that melts the competition. Once this will be fixed, all arguments of low Opera market share will disappear.

Another issue is the money. Opera seems to be pushed by Firefox to make this step, that’s obvious. I’m not too happy to hear some marketing bullshit like “After 10 years we suddenly discovered that users don’t like adverts in their browser! So we took it away. We are so cool! “. Opera is either in great financial condition and browser market is the way they want to advertise themselves, or they’re in bad shape, and realized that it’s ‘now or never’ for them. My bets are on former one, but we’ll see… soon…

Anyway, it’s a great time on the browser market. The web is speeding up, technologies are finally once more being developed, we’re moving toward the new way of creating web applications, and modern web browsers are able to handle those new technologies. The web is free, and users are the winners of this competition.
From my point, as a Mozilla coder I can promise you that we will be working hard to bring you the best tools, easiest to use, with the greatest engine under the hood. Heads up to Firefox 1.5, and, you can just start sniffing what’s for Gecko 1.9, what’s for Mozilla 2.0, what’s for Firefox 2.0, soon to beta-release Lightning, and some plans around Thunderbird (not mentioning pre-1.0 Seamonkey and Camino). Think twice before comparing Mozilla technologies with Opera, Konqueror or Internet Explorer.

Saying that – for users, this day is a good one. Opera – welcome to the free world 🙂

Following marcoos’s post:

Scott Berkun, author of UI in Internet Explorer 1.0 up to 5.0 (and since 6.0 is 99% similar to 5.0, he’s the author of whole IE UI), just switched to Firefox – what a yummy news 🙂
I hardly can find better provements, that what we’re doing is good. Very good.

He also points out a few UI flaws in Firefox – I agree more than less with his notes. (damn! Bring back download sidebar he said!)

Since he was slashdotted – here comes the mirror.