Why Mozilla needs to pick a new fight

Monday, October 25th, 2010

One of my very first gigs when I started at PC Pro in 2007 was to interview Tristan Nitot, the president of Mozilla Europe. He was an affable chap, full of engaging answers to questions he’d no doubt heard a hundred times before. The interview practically wrote itself – though for the sake of appearances I held the pen.

Safari for Windows had just been released and I asked Tristan what he thought of it. “I want Safari to have a significant market share. We want choice, we want innovation, as a company that’s what we stand for,” he told me.

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In defence of Mozilla Firefox

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

Barry Collins just asked me to take a read over his “Mozilla founder is right: Firefox has lost it” blog, and while I’ve pressed the Publish button I absolutely disagree with his views.

It takes 30 seconds to fire up the browser, Barry says. Well perhaps it does, but it’s still much faster than Internet Explorer, and in general my homepages – pcpro.co.uk and google.co.uk – are ready and waiting for me within ten seconds.

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Mozilla founder is right: Firefox has lost it

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

I’ve written in the past about my defection from Firefox to Chrome as my default browser, and was called everything from a “troll” to a “little bitch” for moaning about its increasingly slovenly performance and constant nagging.

Now, it appears even Mozilla’s friends are turning on Firefox. The browser’s co-founder, Blake Ross, was reportedly asked on a web forum whether he felt Firefox could maintain even double-digit market share over the next five years (it currently has around 25% of the worldwide market, according to Net Applications). He replied:

“I’m pretty sceptical. I think the Mozilla Organisation has gradually reverted back to its old ways of being too timid, passive and consensus-driven to release breakthrough products quickly.”

I make him right. It gives me no pleasure to lay into Mozilla – Firefox was my default browser for the best part of the last decade, and Mozilla engineers are among the smartest and nicest people I’ve ever had the pleasure to interview. But Firefox has lost it.

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Thunderbird 3 playing dirty tricks?

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

It’s fair to say I wasn’t over-impressed with Thunderbird 3 after I installed it for the first time yesterday. The email client may think it’s being particularly clever by simply demanding your email address and password, and then ferreting off to find the server settings itself, but when it fails to connect to the SMTP server you’re still left knee-deep in configuration menus. Only more annoyed than you would have been before.

However, that’s far from the worst of its sins. When I went to email a colleague a file on my desktop, I right clicked on the icon and clicked Send To Mail Recipient as usual, only to find that Thunderbird had elbowed Outlook out of the way and installed itself as my default mail client. Without once asking permission to do so (at least, not in any plainly visible way that I can recall).

Come on, Mozilla. We expect these kind of tricks from commercial software vendors, not an open-source foundation. Don’t lower yourselves to their level.

The 10 free programs I can’t live without

Monday, November 30th, 2009

I had the delightful task of rebuilding my working life last Monday, as my hard disk decided that would be the perfect time to die. And I realised I hadn’t actually synchronised my online backup system since I last tested a new service. Clever. With time against me – the magazine went to press on Wednesday night – it quickly became clear which programs I desperately needed to install.

1. Paint.NET

Windows 7 may now include a version of Paint complete with a fancy Ribbon interface, but it still doesn’t offer the features I need to quickly enhance photos and mould screenshots to my whims. Paint.NET does, and it also supports plug-ins for RAW files (and more), making it my top photo-editing choice. (more…)

Porn collection put people off upgrading to Firefox 3

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

Mozilla’s Security team has disclosed a very interesting piece of research which suggests people refused to upgrade to the latest version of Firefox because they were afraid the browser would expose their, ahem, private collection of websites.

In May, the company decided to have one last attempt at persuading the people on Firefox 2 to move up to Firefox 3, by hitting users of the old version with a pop-up that prompted them to upgrade. Those who declined were invited to fill out a questionnaire, asking them to reveal why they didn’t want the latest software.

The number one reason for not upgrading was the new location bar, and the fact that it delved into people’s bookmark collections to suggest sites as they typed. No fewer than 25% of Firefox 3 refuseniks cited this as the reason they wouldn’t upgrade. In fact, almost all of the people who provided feedback had tried Firefox 3, didn’t like what they saw, and headed back to Firefox 2.

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Firefox 4 looks awfully familiar…

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

Firefox 3.5 is still fresh, but Mozilla has been busy mocking up its early concepts for the big move to version 4. Now, these images come with a great big disclaimer that “These are NOT FINAL! THEY ARE ONLY FOR BRAINSTORMING/EXPLORATION!“, but it’s interesting to see which direction Firefox could be taking. Take a look for yourself and form your own opinions, but from where I’m sitting it looks like a certain other browser seems to have had an influence on Mozilla’s designs.

The first design is fairly typical Firefox, with the tabs beneath the address bar (click to enlarge):

The Aero effect looks nice, and it’s a very clean interface, with only minor changes from the Firefox 3.7 concept images which Mozilla recently released. But there’s also a mockup with the tabs – unusually for Firefox – moved above the address bar: (more…)

Firefox 3.5 arrives – but without Google Gears

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

Firefox 3.5 – the browser that’s suffered more delays than an NHS IT project – has finally arrived. You can download a copy from the Get Firefox site.

As Matthew Sparkes noted in his preview of Firefox 3.5, not much has changed on the surface, with the exception of a rather clumsily implemented Private Browsing mode.

However, one issue I’ve noticed after installing the browser this afternoon is that my Google Gears Add-on has been disabled, because it isn’t compatible with this latest build. That’s a significant issue for anyone who uses Firefox to access services such as GMail and Google Reader offline.

Why hasn’t Google got its Gears Add-on ready for the launch of 3.5? Is this the first sign that cracks are beginning to appear in the once harmonious Google/Mozilla relationship, now that Google has its own browser to worry about?

R.I.P Rick Petnel, Adblock Plus pioneer

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

You may never have heard of him – I know I hadn’t – but virtually every Firefox user owes a huge debt of gratitude to Rick Petnel, the man who built the best filter list for the indispensible Adblock Plus extension. He’s recently passed away after a short illness, and I know that I owe thanks to the man for making my browsing easier for the best part of the last decade.

The filter, dubbed EasyList, quickly became the first entry in the list of recommended filters shown after AdblockPlus is installed, and its success at picking up and blocking dozens of types of advertisement – from the simple banner ad to the more complex flash and java creations that now litter the web – is surely part of the reasons why Firefox is both popular and enjoys a far more favourable reputation than its main rival, Internet Explorer.

If you need further clarification as to Adblock Plus’ popularity, then look no further than Mozilla.org: the extension sits in both Mozilla’s list of recommended software and the leaderboard of most popular add-ons. In fact, it’s the most popular extension out there, downloaded more than 620,000 times per week and with over one thousand five-star reviews.

A blog post over at adblockplus.org mentions that Rick’s list ‘helped improve the browsing experience for millions of people’ and that’s no exaggeration – so next time you’re browsing a site and find that all those pesky adverts have disappeared before you’ve even loaded the page, raise your tea or coffee in a salute to the man who made it all possible.

Firefox loses its sugar daddy

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

Google’s shock entry into the browser market might be bad news for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, but it could be terminal for Mozilla and Firefox.

Google is Mozilla’s sugar daddy. In 2006 (the latest figures we have available), a staggering 85% of Mozilla Corp’s revenue came from the homepage and search deal it has with Google. Firefox is almost entirely dependent on the company that’s just launched what could easily become its biggest rival.

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