4 Years Later, The Mozilla Tide Has Turned

dave writes "In 1999, I editorialized that the browser was the battleground that would win or lose us the whole thing. 4 years later, in light of the excellent Firefox 0.8 release it is time to update the article with a slightly more optimistic view."

Re:Already?

[Minwee]

That doesn't make sense. It means that people would have to be reading the article _before_ commenting.

About FireFox

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Don't get too used to the FireBird's new name, it's already taken by Hollywood [movbuy.com]. Way to avoid copyright infringement... I predict another name change very soon.

Re:Lets help

[Ilgaz]

No! Instead put W3C logo at bottom that it complies to W3C standards completely... at bottom of slashdot..

http://validator.w3.org/

Wait a minute..

The tide has not turned

[Anonymous Coward]

The tide has turned? Hardly... can Mozilla crash and take down the OS? can Mozilla install MSN Messenger and leave no way to uninstall it? do Mozilla users have to update with a new security patch once a week? can Mozilla only run on one system?

We have a long ways to go.

Deep n Chilled

4 years later

[evrybodygonsurfin]

4 years later...it is time to update the article...

4 minutes later...it is time to slashdot this article...

OT, I Know, but...

[Morologous]

As I write this I have 2 tabs in my browser and Firefox is taking 21 mb. It's not 86 mb, but before I even saw your post I was wondering why it needed over 20 mb. Seems pretty resource hungry to me, considering Eclipse is using 56 mb and Websphere(!) is using 76 mb. (my emphasis added).

I believed you up until you said that WebSphere was only using 76M ;o)

Re:The tide is high, but are we rolling on....

[Senior Frac]

yeah, but each time I'm with friends and they surf, and they get popups, I show them fire(bird-fox), and tabbed browsing.

I'm betting that Microsoft is getting customers faster than you're making friends.

Lacking Important features

[Qutec]

I've been using firebird for a few months now and I find it very lacking in features. Users like me need a history feature that we can control. This similar to IE shit isn't good enough.

Say I'm working at home from 8-10 in the evening, then the wife goes to bed, it's porn time baby! Off to the hun I go and have my way with the ladies. I NEED firebird/firefox to help me out here. I don't want to loose the tracks I've made doing my research, but I sure as hell don't want my wife knowing about my addiction to midgets.

If the guys at Mozilla can't fix this feature, they are going to fall flat on their face. Now if they could put in a hidden history for porn time, that would be even better.

firefox icons

[tippergore]

I'm using Firefox right now as a matter of fact, but I don't know where they're going with their icon designs...

the new logo appears to be a gigantic fox humping the earth [mozilla.org]

I wonder if that's the old IE 2 earth icon he's humping?

Re:The tides have changed.. Positive outlook

[npistentis]

My girlfriend voluntarily installed Firefox before I did, and told me afterwards- imagine my swell of first shock, then pride :-]

Re:Three words: automatic popup blocking

[ratamacue]

What's even more impressive, IMO, is tabbed browsing. The demonstration that will have them hooked instantly is to do a search on google and start middle-clicking on the results. Open about 10 tabs, close the original search page, and show them how the first tabs are already downloaded and ready to go. You are guaranteed to get a "WOW" on this from the average clueless IE user.

I work in IT, and I find it's not enough to simply install and configure the browser for them (modern theme is mandatory to catch their attention BTW -- I don't know why this isn't the default). You have to give them a real-world demonstration before it clicks for them.

Re:The tides have changed.. Positive outlook

[cyfer2000]

guess how many average web developer don't know there is something named W3C arround the world?

Life is always funny.

Re:The tides have changed.. Positive outlook

[thelasttemptation]

actually I'd figure this would be great as static pages don't change that often...

Re:The tides have changed.. Positive outlook

[karnal]

Kitty + microwave = boom?

You may just spark the curiousity of a few people out here. And stay away from my kitty!

Re:I disagree

[Anonymous Coward]

Many websites only examine their logs through programs like webtrends and would never notice a stray querystring. It would make a lot more sense to use User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; I AM ACTUALLY USING MOZILLA. FIX YOUR SITE.)

Re:The tides have changed.. Positive outlook

[Anonymous Coward]

The US has the concept of a "reasonable person" for many areas, but sadly, even in those areas, "reasonable people" are often idiots.

What? You mean coffee is hot?

FireBird? FireFox? ThunderFox!

[axxackall]

I guess birds are not flying in the sky anymore and falling down to the ground.

Now they have renamed FireBird to FireFox (I hope they won't rename it again to FireMouse or FireWorm).

What's next? Easy - they are gonna rename ThunderBird to ThunderFox soon too. Well, after its stability will be fixed as well.

By the way, I wonder why Mozilla Calendar is neither a fox or a bird? Its even not a Caledarzilla, like Chatzilla. Personally, I loved all thoze Zillas, and at some point I even expected they would break the suite to Browzilla and Mailzilla, but they have decided to fly with birds. Not for long though.

Re:The tides have changed.. Positive outlook

[Feztaa]

No rich text controls, no pop up ads, no viruses, just pure web browsing bliss. They haven't looked back. :-)

Man, I wish I could get my mom using firefox/thunderbird. She has a burning hatred for the word "mozilla", and I do truly mean the word, because she's been using mozilla for a few months, I just disguised it to look like Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. She loves it, but she's convinced that mozilla is the devil or something.