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Mozilla The Internet Programming IT Technology

Mozilla's Major New Roadmap 481

Posted by timothy from the adventures-in-browsing dept.
kerz writes "mozilla.org today released a new version of it's famed roadmap, this time with some pretty major changes. First and foremost, they plan on ditching the large Mozilla suite in favor of Phoenix and Minotaur. Secondly, they have plans to change the milestone cycle to allow for more time to fix the Gecko layout engine to be smaller and more efficient. MozillaZine has the scoop..."
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Mozilla's Major New Roadmap More

Mozilla's Major New Roadmap

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  • Makes Sense (Score:4, Insightful)

    by zeoslap ( 190553 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @04:42PM (#5647021) Homepage
    Nice to see a focus on keeping the engine and the codebase lean and mean. Good luck to em.
    • my words exactly
      I have not used mozilla browser ever since phoenix 0.5. And I have been using the phoenix nightly builds.
      I use phoenix on linux/windows/solaris, I haven't restarted phoenix on my solaris box for days/weeks. Its fast, sleek, and has a very small memory foot print as compared to the lizzard.
      Some of my concerns with phoenix though are
      • Can't easily set the Master Password for encrypting the stored form/passwords.
      • Can't change setting of any extension that i install. There is a settings butt
      • My major concern is that it doesn't support external mail programs like kmail - when you click on a mailto: link, nothing happens in Phoenix.

        I saw Phoenix as a very interesting and promising fork until development has essentially stopped. To see the Mozilla folk pick it up again is a relief.

        • Re:Makes Sense (Score:5, Informative)

          by Bonker ( 243350 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @05:25PM (#5647410)
          Development in Phoenix has hardly stopped. They just haven't released a milestone in a while. Pick up one of the nightly builds and you will be *Amazed* at the advances over the .5 release. Not only is it quicker and lighter, it's vastly prettier and has some really good end-user functionality features such as collapsable preferences.

          I've been using the April 1 build all day today... heavily... and it's been holding up like a champ. If I were going to compare this in terms of version numbers, I'd call it the .68 build. Damn, there's a lot of reasons to use Phoenix instead of Moz right now.
          • There are LOADS of new things in the new preferences menu. It's as different as night and day. It's very stable too... Never crashes on me at all. It's fast and even uses some of the new fast rendering modes. This is the way Mozilla should be.
          • I also like the newer Phoenix nightlies (using 3-9-3 at work now) but I have one big complaint, and this showed up in Mozilla 1.3, too: I frequently click and drag a link to another tab, but the recent Phoenix nightlies and Mozilla 1.3 seem to frequently not pick up the link and I have to try two or three times to drag the link and it's driving me nuts.

            Does this have anything to do with mouse gestures? Can I fix it? Lately I seem to have better luck if I drag the link to the right before dragging it up to

    • I agree.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by elemur ( 7613 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @05:01PM (#5647238)
      Mozilla originally took too much of its Netscape roots to heart. That is understandable, but its a very good thing that people were finally able to break from that past. Netscape Communicator was supposed to be all things.. Mozilla continued that track, but with a nicer rendering engine and snazzy features.

      I don't personally I have a problem with the size of mozilla, but since I only use it for browsing, it will be really nice to get rid of the rest of this monolithic application.. but to have it available for when I want it.

      The path it has set now reminds me of the KDE applications. The PIM/Mail suite has a great deal of functionality.. but you don't have to load it just to browse a web page. (Though many would argue that Konqueror also tries to be all things to all people..)

      On Linux.. Mozilla and Phoenix are the way to go.. though on OS X, Safari is a really nice browser.

      • Re:I agree.. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by evilviper ( 135110 )

        Mozilla originally took too much of its Netscape roots to heart.

        I disagree. They took some of the ideas from Communicator, but dropped some of the others which I found important. For instance, communicator was very fast in it's own right, communicator's editor is better than Mozilla's, etc, and the interface was quite clean and elegant.

        The path it has set now reminds me of the KDE applications.

        You've got to be kidding. KDE is farther gone than Mozilla. The bloat and lack of performance in KDE is i

    • Re:Makes Sense (Score:5, Interesting)

      by commodoresloat ( 172735 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @05:05PM (#5647266)
      I just wish they'd also separate out Mozilla Composer and make the basic no frills standalone HTML editor the world needs.

      • Re:Makes Sense (Score:3, Funny)

        by gspira ( 654441 )
        I just wish they'd also separate out Mozilla Composer and make the basic no frills standalone HTML editor the world needs.

        Like Notepad?

      • The basic no frills standalone HTML editor (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Confused ( 34234 ) on Thursday April 03, 2003 @04:27AM (#5651123) Homepage
        The basic no frills standalone HTML editor the world needs is vi.

        And if people would stay away from Frontpage and the like, the world would be a better place too.

    • Re:Makes Sense (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mixmasta ( 36673 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @05:49PM (#5647642) Homepage Journal
      Sorry to go against the grain here but I love mozilla, it does everything I want, and fast.

      I installed the browser and mail on my machine that I use for mail, and just the browser on my machine at work. After years of waiting, all the functionality I need is complete, close to perfect even. I've got tabs, popup, image, and spam blocking too!

      If you don't want one of the other components, don't #@$#%ing install them! (And quit yer whining.)

      Why would I want to go back to another half finished browser?? I think this decision is a mistake, and just serves to lose momentum.

      I think a better idea would be to work on making mozilla more modular and making other performance tweaks. Why reinvent the wheel again?

  • A day late (Score:5, Funny)

    by jd142 ( 129673 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @04:42PM (#5647026) Homepage
    Good thing this was posted on April 2.

  • Mozilla?? (Score:4, Funny)

    by FortKnox ( 169099 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @04:43PM (#5647033) Homepage Journal
    What's this 'Mozilla' everyone is talking about?

  • here ya go (Score:5, Informative)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @04:43PM (#5647039) Homepage Journal


    1.Switch Mozilla's default browser component from the XPFE-based Navigator to the standalone Phoenix browser.

    2.Develop further the standalone mail companion application to Phoenix already begun as Minotaur, but based on the new toolkit used by Phoenix (this variant has been codenamed Thunderbird).

    3.Deliver a Mozilla 1.4 milestone that can replace the 1.0 branch as the stable development path, then move on to make riskier changes during 1.5 and 1.6. The major changes after 1.4 involve switching to Phoenix and Thunderbird, and working aggressively on the next two items.

    4.Fix crucial Gecko layout architecture bugs, paving the way for a more maintainable, performant, and extensible future.

    5.Continue the move away from an ownership model involving a large cloud of hackers with unlimited CVS access, to a model, more common in the open source world, of vigorously defended modules with strong leadership and clear delegation, a la NSPR, JavaScript, Gecko in recent major milestones, and Phoenix.

    6. ???

    7. Profit!

    Ok, I admit to adding 6 and 7.

    • Re:here ya go (Score:5, Funny)

      by Dolly_Llama ( 267016 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @05:16PM (#5647347) Homepage
      6. ???

      7. Profit!

      Ok, I admit to adding 6 and 7.

      As digitally altering media contravenes the stated principles of this medium, the above poster has been sacked...

    • Re:here ya go (Score:3, Interesting)

      by trentfoley ( 226635 )
      ...maintainable, performant, and extensible...
      I have to wonder what "performant" means. It is proof that marketing types were involved in the writing of this roadmap document.

  • First 404!!! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ksuMacGyver ( 562019 )
    Wonder if this will help mozilla's memory footprint? Even for people like me who like to have the mail and browser open at the same time (hopefully they won't each take up X-ram)

  • Finally! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Blaine Hilton ( 626259 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @04:44PM (#5647064) Homepage
    It's good to hear they are redefining their goals here. I think the majority of people would rather have a more stable Phoenix like browser.
    • I hear that! I love Moz browser functionality but use nothing else that comes with the package.

      I had Pheonix for a while but couldn't put up with the lack of certain features (image/cookie blocking, etc etc etc).

      Here's to a full-featured, stand alone browser!
  • Switching to this model will mean Pheonix is directly competing with Camino on Mac OS X, how could they possibly beat a Mac OS X native attempt?

    • Re:competing with camino (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SweetAndSourJesus ( 555410 ) <.moc.oohay. .ta. .toboRehTdnAsuseJ.> on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @05:07PM (#5647288)
      Well, they aren't competing any more than Mozilla and Camino compete. When you're dealing with open, free projects, there really isn't such a thing as "competition".

      I imagine that people would use Phoenix on the Mac if they wanted to have that nice "one browser on every platform" feeling. I know that's why I sometimes use Mozilla on my Mac.

      All this means is that Mac users have even more choice when it comes to browsers, and to me that's a good thing(tm).

      By the way, Phoenix already exists [kmgerich.com] for the mac (sorta).

  • This is a Good Thing, IMHO. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RatBastard ( 949 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @04:47PM (#5647087) Homepage
    This is a Good Thing, IMHO, as Mozilla itself was getting fat and bloated. Of the Mozilla step-children I like Pheonix the best and I'm glad to see that the Mozilla team has the self-honesty to realize the better way to go and ditch major portions of their established work.

    • Re:This is a Good Thing, IMHO. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @04:57PM (#5647192)
      14Mb isn't particularly fat or bloated when you consider that you're getting a mail/news client, a browser, a JS debugger, a DOM inspector, an IRC chat client and an HTML editor in all that.


      And if you don't want all that 'bloat', then use the use the net installer and install only the browser portion.

      • 14Mb is relatively bloated for a browser that includes 5 other programs you don't want, though. It makes sense to have the core engine, and then each of the pieces you want to add.

        Plus, it would be nice to be able to get fixes for the mail/news client without changing the browser portion at all. What really makes Mozilla bloated is that there's no reason for all of it to be one program, rather than a set of independant programs that can invoke each other.
        • But if you don't want those other programmes, why are you downloading them? What I mean is that Linux and Win32 both have net installers, so if you don't want Chatzilla or Mail/News or Composer you don't have to. The installer asks you what you want to install and if you check all the things then naturally you get them all....

          As for upgrading things seperately. Yes, you could do this already assuming anyone had the time to maintain the mail/news and browser components seperately. Unfortunately they don't

    • Re:This is a Good Thing, IMHO. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sphealey ( 2855 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @05:40PM (#5647531)
      This is a Good Thing, IMHO, as Mozilla itself was getting fat and bloated. Of the Mozilla step-children I like Pheonix the best and I'm glad to see that the Mozilla team has the self-honesty to realize the better way to go and ditch major portions of their established work.
      Perhaps. But in the corporate environment, you cannot afford to have rugs pulled out from under you like this. Consider a technology director who just finished convincing the powers-that-be that Mozilla was preferable for an enterprise-wide, mission-critical app (perhaps due to security concerns). Now comes this announcment, and that guy is looking for a new job while Internet Explorer is made mandatory at that site. Oops.

      The corporate market is where 80% of the world's PC installs occur, and Mozilla.org has never shown the maturity to support that market.

      sPh

  • Phoenix for Mac OSX! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RalphBNumbers ( 655475 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @04:47PM (#5647092)
    Therefore, in switching browsers, we are not dropping XUL on the Mac. We aim to ensure that Mozilla's cross-platform applications and toolkit remain both cross-platform and viable as applications that people actually use. And we need the same kind of embedded Gecko test coverage on the Mac that we get on other platforms. So, when we switch the default-built browser to Phoenix, we will provide daily and milestone builds of it for OS X.


    They're finally going to support Phoenix on OSX!
    This is a big win for the Mac community imho. Camino is great, but there are barely enough developers to cover the front end, the main body of the Mozilla project being behind a cross platform Phoenix project is a Good Thing?.

    • Re:Phoenix for Mac OSX! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by funkhauser ( 537592 ) <zmmay2@u[ ]edu ['ky.' in gap]> on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @05:11PM (#5647309) Homepage Journal
      The problem with bringing Phoenix over to the Mac is that it will have some of the same problems as Mozilla for the Mac: particularly, non-native widgets and lack of real integration with the system.

      It might also be detrimental to Mozilla on the Mac. Right now, it's basically Camino vs. Safari. If it becomes Phoenix vs. Camino vs. Safari, the Mozilla camp becomes split.

    • Camino is great, but there are barely enough developers to cover the front end, the main body of the Mozilla project being behind a cross platform Phoenix project is a Good Thing?.
      I don't have a Mac, but what about Safari? All I hear are good things about it, plus I would think Mozilla doesn't really "mesh" in with the OSX UI.

  • Happy to hear it (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hawkbug ( 94280 ) <psxNO@SPAMfimble.com> on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @04:48PM (#5647096) Homepage
    I love Mozilla - it's my primary browser, gotta love pop-up-blocking! What I wish they would focus more energy on though is the mail client. I primarily use Netscape Messenger (netscape 4.79) for mail, and I know a lot of other people that do as well. The reason I can't/won't use Mozilla for mail yet is bugs. Basic bugs too - things I reported over 2 years ago, and they still aren't fixed yet. What kind of bugs am I talking about? For example, when you switch between IMAP mail servers, netscape messenger used to remember the last selected message from one mailbox to the other. Mozilla has never done this, but I keep getting updates that this bug is being worked on, or passed on to the next person. The other major bug I notice is that when I type in nicknames in the To and CC fields - 50% of the time, they get translated into the right email addresses, but other times they don't. My other major gripe about mozilla mail is the lack of an option to send just plain old plain text messages again. I don't want the headers of replies and forwards being turned into little graphics. I don't want symbols like ;) being turned into little smiley faces. I want to type in courier just like I can in Pine, or netscape messenger. I think more options with mozilla mail would make a lot of people happy...

    • Re:Happy to hear it (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Fnkmaster ( 89084 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @05:02PM (#5647251)
      Exactly. And that's part of the point of this move. Rather than have a bunch of components that are part of a big nebulous project with versioning, releasing and other kinds of dependencies, where the mail/news component is the neglected step-brother of the browser component part of a big monolithic mass, roll it out into a separate standalone application, with its own user community, using a lighter-weight Phoenix-style GUI. This should combine the efforts of the Mozilla Mail/News developers, the Thunderbird project and the Minotaur project under one roof, working on a standalone mail/news component that should, if Phoenix is a useful model) be much faster and less buggy than its predecessor.


      Honestly, the change is mostly cultural and social - a separate development community and process, and a dedicated user community were integral to Phoenix's success. Mozilla has been too large and faceless to really bring the user community in close touch with the developer community in the same way that happens in the Mozillazine Phoenix forums. And the development process seems less nebulous, less roadmap and process driven, and more feature and stability driven.


      My only hope is that integration of Phoenix into the Mozilla main project effort doesn't kill exactly those things we love about the project, but it's good to see all those thoughts on changing cultural elements of the Mozilla.org process up in their new roadmap - a breath of fresh air indeed.

    • Re:Happy to hear it (Score:3, Informative)

      by mykmelez ( 6506 )

      Two of your three problems are solved. Mozilla's mail client now remembers the last selected message in each IMAP (and POP too, I presume) mailbox, and you can configure it to send plain old text messages.

      The latter feature has been around for a while; the former feature is relatively new but is definitely in 1.3.

    • So use Pine. Seriously. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gosand ( 234100 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @05:44PM (#5647579)
      I want to type in courier just like I can in Pine, or netscape messenger.

      So use Pine.

      Don't laugh! I still use it as my email of choice. I used to use Netscape, but when I got DSL and my Linux machine fully running, I just stuck with Pine. (I tried Kmail for a while, and Opera mail). People laugh at me, but when I am at home, I can view attachments fine with it. When I am away from home, it is a bit harder. But I don't have to download my email either. I can download PuTTY wherever I am, ssh into my box, and read my mail in about a minute. I did this recently while traveling in France. I also use fetchmail to gather my various accounts into one on my machine at home. Even on dialup I can check my mail pretty quickly.

      People can't believe that I still use Pine, but it is light, fast, and easy. Of course, if access to my home machine is cut off for some reason, I have to use my ISPs webmail, but I LOATHE webmail. I don't have a compelling reason to use a GUI mail client.

  • Interesting... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Kircle ( 564389 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @04:48PM (#5647100)
    I find it facinating that it at least appears that Mozilla is leading Netscape rather than the other way around. But I am left wondering how this will fit in with Netscape's future strategy. Will they continue with tradition and continue to release an all in one Internet suite, or will they begin to follow Mozila's path?

  • Sounds like a good idea... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by guacamolefoo ( 577448 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @04:51PM (#5647132) Homepage Journal
    1. Smaller
    2. Faster
    3. Less bloated

    Less is more, in many, many things. Including software.

    GF.

  • translation: they're spinning off mail/news (Score:5, Informative)

    by doom ( 14564 ) <doom@kzsu.stanford.edu> on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @04:53PM (#5647150) Homepage Journal
    Just in case you're not up on the latest Mozilla jargon, the scheme here is just to split it up into a browser and a separate mail/news client. Some already existing side-projects are going to become the main development line.

    (Took me a minute to figure this out... Minotaur? Thunderbird? What?)

  • I already use Mozilla, and I'd love to see them toss out the suite thing, and create individual apps! Plus, anything that makes the engine quicker is good.

  • Death of Mozilla? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by sphealey ( 2855 )
    I have a hard time interpreting this as anything except the death of Mozilla. Particularly given the buzzword density of the mozilla.org roadmap announcement. Phrases such as "reset ... around", "rich", "strawmen" - has Mozilla been invaded by refugees from Arthur Andersen?

    Or perhaps this is just a way of disposing of the outstanding Mozilla bugs that no one is willing to fix? Just start a new product instead?

    sPh

    • has Mozilla been invaded by refugees from Arthur Andersen?

      Unlikely... Uncle Arthur's firm was a tax/audit/accounting firm. You're probably thinking of it's old sister firm, Andersen Consulting (now Accenture [accenture.com] -- for whose consultants this kind of language is second nature :)

      In reality, this kind of talk is great when you're trying to sell change to someone, but when you've giving your product away you don't need to worry about your customer!

    • Its not so much a new product as it is breaking some of the bonds between different parts of the program so they can be separate applications.

      I think its a great idea as long as I can upgrade to it without loosing my bookmarks, email, cookies, passwords etc.
    • Good riddance! We should all go back to surfing the web with Lynx, and typing up e-mail with mutt.

      In all seriousness though, I'm glad to see this new road map. IMO, this shows a lot of maturity and foresight on the part of the Mozilla team, and I applaud them for it. They realize the shortcomings of the approach they've taken during the last 5 years, and they have put together a solid plan for where they want to go from here. While this will undoubtedly cause some instability and uproar within the communit

  • wow (Score:4, Funny)

    by Enrico Pulatzo ( 536675 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @04:55PM (#5647176)
    I was wondering how they would justify taking 5 years before reaching 2.0. Now we know :)

    Seriously though, good idea. I'd love to see the whole Mozilla project turned into a Gecko app and everything else be plugins! Now that'd be cool!
  • This is lame. I *LIKE* the existing XPFE browser / application suite.

    Phoenix is nice, the new standalone mail/news client will probably be nice as well, but I see no good reason for them to drop the application suite.

    All this talk about how Mozilla is too big, too bloated, has too many features, etc., is a load of shit, IMHO. Unless you're trying to run Mozilla on a freaking Pentium 100 with 64 megs of RAM or something else antiquated like that, performance is fine. And if anything, there are still plenty of features that *should* be put into Mozilla, that the Mozilla.org folks refuse to implement, despite how many votes the RFE has, or how many people want it.

    I say they should just keep developing Mozilla as it is, keep improving it, keep adding features, and let the people who want to work on Minotaur, Phoenix, whatever, do so.

    • Re:Please tell me this is a late April Fools joke. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Fnkmaster ( 89084 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @05:09PM (#5647298)
      There will still be an "integrated" approach possible, since the standalone mail/news client will also be semi-embeddable through the extension mechanism or some other plug-in mechanism. So for those who want their browser and mail/news reader to feel tightly integrated, that will still be a possibility. This change has more to do with changing the culture of the organization and the development process/versioning process and so on. Yes, the XPFE browser will go away, but the lighter faster components that replace it will provide as much functionality with a more modular approach. I'm sure you'll still be able to download a monolithic package with Phoenix/Minotaur/etc. all together with all the Phoenix extensions you know and love, giving you just as much breadth of functionality in one package if you want it. The key is that for those who want smaller, faster and lighter, they can have it their way too, and peaceful coexistance will be possible. And yes, the Phoenix UI is faster and more responsive than Mozilla's, and this is quite noticeable even on my older PIII 600 desktop.


      The RFEs you mention, will hopefully be things that are implementable as extensions to Phoenix - this will take some of the burden of feature enhancement requests off of the Mozilla.org folks and let others develop them independently.

    • Re:Please tell me this is a late April Fools joke. (Score:5, Informative)

      by leoboiko ( 462141 ) <leoboiko@gmail . c om> on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @05:22PM (#5647383) Homepage
      I agree with you, but did you RTFA?

      Deliver a Mozilla 1.4 milestone that can replace the 1.0 branch as the stable development path, then move on to make riskier changes during 1.5 and 1.6.
      (...)

      the reasons for this new plan are:

      1. Phoenix is simply smaller, faster, and better -- especially better not because it has every conflicting feature wanted by each segment of the Mozilla community, but because it has a strong "add-on" extension mechanism.       (emphasis mine).

      The idea is not to "drop" the suite, but to make it modular instead of hardwired.

    • I think it's lame to have them so intertwined... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Akardam ( 186995 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @05:31PM (#5647456)
      ... in the first place.

      I know I'll loose points for this, but heck, even IE and OE/Outlook are seperate applications even though they mostly use the same core (MSHTML, Outlook uses the base OE libraries). Why can't Phoenix and Minotaur be like this? I love Phoenix. I use it almost exclusively at work, and pretty often at home. And, for the record, Mozilla is a dog on my home laptop, but Phoenix runs quite snappily. Modularity (more than just selecting components from the 'net install) is the way I think the Moz project should go, and I'm glad that they're heading down that path.

    • Re:Please tell me this is a late April Fools joke. (Score:5, Informative)

      by freeweed ( 309734 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @07:20PM (#5648567)
      Unless you're trying to run Mozilla on a freaking Pentium 100 with 64 megs of RAM or something else antiquated like that, performance is fine

      I beg to differ. On my other system, a 433 with 256MB of RAM, Mozilla is a pig. Pure and simple. It takes close to 30 seconds to load sometimes, and page rendering makes me feel like I'm back on 14.4 dialup. Contrast this with Opera, which loads in a second or 2, and renders pages as soon as they're downloaded (in fairness, I won't mention how fast IE is, because they cheat and preload most of the browser when the system boots :).

      Now that I have an 1800XP, you're right, Moz is pretty zippy. But it's pretty sad that I'd need almost 2ghz of effective performance just to render some html.

      I won't even talk about how long Moz takes to load on the Redhat box (p2-266, 256 RAM). Let's just say Galeon beats it by an order of Magnitude. Same renderer too, so just what's causing the delay? Oh yeah. Bloat.

      • Re:Please tell me this is a late April Fools joke. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Drakonian ( 518722 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @10:57PM (#5649892) Homepage
        A lot of people talk about Phoenix being so snappy compared to Moz, and using less memory. Now I don't know if this is a accurate measure of anything, and I KNOW it isn't directly comparable to IE, but in Task Manager, on this XP box, Phoenix currently has a Mem Usage of 35816 K. Is that supposed to be GOOD /lightweight?? I'm seriously wondering. It takes more memory than anything else on my machine right now. (FB: I have 5 tabs open).

  • Safari jab? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Fammy2000 ( 612663 )
    Is this an attempt to battle the smaller, faster KHTML engine that Apple picked? Sounds like the Mozilla gang is a more miffed than previously believed.
  • All they need to do is get rid of that XUL crap, and we'll be all set!

  • They need to do this (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @05:07PM (#5647277) Homepage Journal
    The Mozilla team really need to break Mozilla up into smaller, more focused parts. That is one area I will give Microsoft credit for - they made IE and Outlook seperate programs.

    The ideal for Mozilla would be (IMHO) a browser, a mail client, a download client, an IM client, and a composer. Each should be replacable - I should be able to tie the browser into whatever download agent I want, have whatever email client I want be pulled up when I click on a mailto: link, etc.

    I'd even go so far as to have a caching program that the browser and downloader could talk to (to unify the disk cache system), but then I already run Squid on my systems.

    Of course, all the Moz bits could and should access the same DLLs (.so's) to keep the disk and memory footprint down.

  • Bloat is good... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by sisukapalli1 ( 471175 )
    Especially when the system (Mozilla here) is completely customizable, and side projects are indeed developing quickly.

    Why bloat is good, you may ask? The machines are reasonably fast these days, and users (ahem, let me say, just I) tend to spend significant time on the browser window, and mail window (and calendar, may be composer, etc). There is a common interface, one can upgrade everything at one shot (kinda like Redhat 8 and 9... you get everything updated). Makes life a little easier.

    I would have com

  • ditch Mozilla suite? not what the document says! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @05:10PM (#5647301)
    That's not what it says. It does say one of its goals is :

    Deliver a Mozilla 1.4 milestone that can replace the 1.0 branch as the stable development path, then move on to make riskier changes during 1.5 and 1.6. The major changes after 1.4 involve switching to Phoenix and Thunderbird, and working aggressively on the next two items.

    Make risky changes to 1.5 and 1.6 Mozilla. That doesn't sound like ditching to me. The post and the Mozillazine blurb miss the jist of the document.

  • Reaction to Safari? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Larne ( 9283 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @05:24PM (#5647403)
    Hm, I wonder to what extent this new roadmap is a reaction to Apple's decision to use khtml [konqueror.org] instead of mozilla as the basis for safari [apple.com].

  • Some semi-random thoughts... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sjbe ( 173966 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @05:26PM (#5647421)
    I know there has been a lot of kvetching on /. about the integration of the browser, mail, etc thinking it is "bloated" and "slow". As long as they communicate well (and I do mean well), I don't really care if they are developed in a more modular fashion. That is not bad and is potentially very good.

    What I'm most concerned about in the roadmap is the seeming focus on just the browser and the mail app. (Yes I realize the purpose of mozilla.org is not strictly to produce those apps but realistically, those apps are the main reason anyone cares about Mozilla) I use those heavily and anything that improves them is just ducky as far as I'm concerned. But just as important, and much more ignored IMO, are the address book and calendar. These are applications that almost everyone uses in some form. Obviously people choose other options (Outlook, etc) frequently but that's in part because the ones built into Mozilla are fairly bad. I use them because they are the only transparently cross platform option which is important to me. I use them all and if they were better I think many others might too.

    Anyway , I see the browser, mail, address book and calendar as the four major applications that most users really need. The Mozilla browser (and I include Phoenix and Camino here) is great and is arguably the best on the market. But the other three apps have largely been ignored for some time. They have a basic level of capability but haven't been refined significantly in some time. I still have trouble sharing information with co-workers on different systems. I still cannot easily share data with the PDA of my choice. Mozilla could really make a lot of this stuff really transparent for users. I'd love to be able to not worry about OS for these four apps. Mozilla is better than halfway there but I'm not quite sure what this change in direction means.

  • Sweet! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 13Echo ( 209846 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @05:27PM (#5647433) Homepage Journal
    Phoenix is a fabulous browser component. I like Mozilla, but I think that this is just what they need. They can start by skimming off each peice and the users can integrate each part of the suite at their own discretion. Mail programs can be built off of Mozilla's XUL interface, as can chat programs, etc. It's ideal for UNIX machines where libraries are most often shared. Phoenix is fast and stable. It's the future of the Mozilla browser, and I'm glad that they've made this decision. Why reinvent the wheel when you can just improve it. Mozilla is getting to be pretty good on its own, but still isn't nearly as practical as it *could* potentially be. Phoenix takes Mozilla and really strips down the crud; It even implements cool, new features along the way.

  • Why Phoenix is better (Score:3, Interesting)

    by NamShubCMX ( 595740 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @05:34PM (#5647485)
    After using Phoenix only (and sometimes konq since kde 3.1) I kind of forgot why its better than mozilla.

    Here's why [mozilla.org], according to the mozilla people.

    This decision totally makes sense. At first I thought this wouldnt affect me, since I already use phoenix but of course this means phoenix gets the focus, which means faster development/bugfixes/features/etc...

    Great news!

  • Resitance to change? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mu_wtfo ( 224511 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @05:40PM (#5647530) Homepage
    This is completely freaking me out.
    I can only wonder at how a radical re-design this is going to turn out to be, from both a developer's and end-user's standpoint. The Mozilla project has, by all accounts, been an incredible success, and has been adopted by some major entities, eg. Sun, HP, IBM, Red Hat. By making this radical a change this soon after 1.0, do we risk alienating users and developers? I mean, now that people have gotten used to Mozilla, we turn around and dump something hugely different in their laps?
    My fear is that commercial entities, along with the pro-Mozilla-the suite camp, will continue development on Mozilla Classic (the 1.4 branch), while the Phoenix folks work on NGMozilla...a fork.
    Hold onto your hats, folks.

  • How to start a Mozilla spinoff project (Score:3, Funny)

    by Laplace ( 143876 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @05:43PM (#5647565)
    Step 1: Proclaim that Mozilla is a bloated mess.
    Step 2: Find a name.
    Step 3: Reach the 0.5 release, and develop a loyal following.
    Step 4: Start to reach more users and get some name recognition.
    Step 5: Come up with some sort of roadmap.
    Step 6: Change the name due to legal issues.
    Step 7: Declare 1.0 victory, and add yourself to the junkheap of other spinoff projects. Don't worry, though, there are more to join!

  • The name for Phoenix... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @05:43PM (#5647575)
    Now we know the new name for Phoenix... Mozilla!

  • Not a smart move and here's why (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tds ( 128757 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @06:34PM (#5648147) Homepage
    Mozilla for all it failing is starting to get real recognition as a product in the market, it is being seen a real alternative to IE and now just as it starting to get traction it gets KIA.

    I find it hard to believe that that a Phoenix based browser is going to reach a level of stability and adoption, any time soon.

    (Someone has to say this)
    This smack of developers looking at the technology and saying you know I could do better (yeah I'm guilt here as well). You know lets rebuild this and provide no migration path for existing applications and users. There must be a better way to do this with less risk and disruption.

    Remember it's not always the product with the most technical merit that wins it the wins just look at IE.

    Otherwise Microsoft is going to be very happy they will not have to worry about Mozilla any more.

    • Re:Not a smart move and here's why (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mu_wtfo ( 224511 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @07:50PM (#5648786) Homepage
      I think you're wrong, and here's why:
      First, I'd like to address your "stability and adoption" comments. Stability - Phoenix is, at the very least, as stable as Mozilla, and anecdotal evidence I've seen suggests that it may, in fact, be far more stable. Adoption is certainly not an issue - it's not like mozlla.org is saying "Hey, our previous product sucked, try this new one!" - they're merely integrating similar, better technology into an existing product, and removing some of the not-so-great parts.
      As for the lack of a migration path - remember, Phoenix is based on the same technologies (Gecko, XUL, XBL) as Mozilla, so development-wise, that all stays pretty much the same. The main difference for developers will be the new code ownershp model, about which I can only say "It's about time!"
      So, while the "resistant-to-change, mozilla-loving" part of me agrees with you, the logical, wants-the-best-for-Mozilla part knows that this is the rigt path for the project.

  • Gecko, you can thank Safari (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mactari ( 220786 ) <rufwork AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @07:53PM (#5648805) Homepage
    Secondly, they have plans to change the milestone cycle to allow for more time to fix the Gecko layout engine to be smaller and more efficient.

    Why is Gecko allowed to undergo fairly hefty changes? Easy. Apple's release of Safari brought attention to KHTML. Heck, Mac rumor sites had all but crowned Chimera (now Camino), based on Gecko, into the OS as the default browser. Then wham, out of left field, here's Safari.

    Why did such a large company go away from what the open source community considered the gold standard, Mozilla and its technologies? KHTML was a smaller codebase than Gecko, and easier for a new project to make completely their own. That's right, there was a better open source alternative out there most people had never really thought about.

    People started talking [dbaron.org] about KHTML, Safari, Mozilla, and Gecko. Apple managed to shine a new light on what had been seen as acceptable without question because of, get this, a lack of competition (!) in the open source browser community. Until the little man came on the scene, Mozilla and its Gecko brethren had a near monopoly on the "not-IE" browser market.

    So the next time someone wants to know what Apple's given the open source community after taking BSD for the core of its new OS, you'll know what to tell them. Not only has Apple open sourced Darwin and checked their improvements back into KHTML, they've also provided a competitive peer for Mozilla and other open source projects.

  • A Good Move (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jefu ( 53450 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @09:45PM (#5649474) Homepage Journal
    This is an excellent move for Mozilla.

    I think that mozilla had become a monster - a friendly one, perhaps (just look at the endearing pointy toothed grin on that red monster), but a monster all the same. And that kind of "lets pile everything together into a heap" integration is a pain for users who want to be able to pick and choose. There are lots of examples - both in the windows world and in the unix/linux... worlds.

    In the windows world this is to be expected - one company wants to build one product - make you buy a new one every time any of the components changes. Given that most windows users are going to put about as much thought into selecting the products they buy/use as they do when they drive to macdonalds and have to choose between a "large" and "super size" fries, thats not unreasonable. (I'm not saying they're stupid - just that they're not putting any intellectual effort into their computing systems.)

    But in the unix world, this grates on me Both KDE and Gnome seem to want to build bigger and burlier integrated thing-a-ma-bobs. Consider, for example, the rise of the desktop managers vs window managers. Or evolution - quite a nice mail client, an address book, a calendar and who knows what else - and I always managed to click on the wrong button and lose things. Or open office - nice spreadsheet - absolutely crappy word processor - but they come as a unit.

    I would like to see XUL continued, and the roadmap looked like it was not being dropped - I think it offers lots of potential.

    I'd also like to say in response to the person who asked "why chatzilla" that chatzilla might not be a requirement for most users - but it was probably a very good thing for mozilla - as chat has different requirements (in user interaction, display and in performance) than a browser does. As such, it has probably helped to shape the way mozilla has developed. Then too, I'm kind of tired of everyone saying that MIRC is IRC as though the only things allowed to exist on the network are windows applications.

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