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Eight Years of Firefox

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Eight Years of Firefox

#31

Post by kwanbis »

mjb wrote: post #28

I think Firefox has to take a lot of credit for the state of the web today. In the early 2000s, it was usual for sites to be IE-only, or to be horribly broken in any alternative browser. It seems to me that the rise of popularity of Firefox correlated strongly with a drop in these IE-only sites, and I don't think that its unfair to label it as a dominant cause of this drop. Even if Firefox dies completely and leaves…

I totally agree with you. People do not realize that it was Firefox that made an open web possible, as well as a viable Chrome.

Re: Eight Years of Firefox

#32

Post by macspoofing »

mjb wrote: post #28

I think Firefox has to take a lot of credit for the state of the web today. In the early 2000s, it was usual for sites to be IE-only, or to be horribly broken in any alternative browser. It seems to me that the rise of popularity of Firefox correlated strongly with a drop in these IE-only sites, and I don't think that its unfair to label it as a dominant cause of this drop. Even if Firefox dies completely and leaves…

>I think Firefox has to take a lot of credit for the state of the web today.

Of course. It was Firefox that broke IE's grip on web-standards.

Re: Eight Years of Firefox

#33

Post by leeoniya »

favorite quote from Mike Shaver (in context) from http://john.jubjubs.net/2011/09/15/mike-shaver-thanks/

"And [Shaver] affected my framing of the problem deeply – I remember one day a couple of years back when we were talking about some market share point, thinking about how incredibly, insanely competitive the browser technology landscape was – and he said to me: 'Look, this is the world we wanted. And this is the world we made.' Wow. Exactly right. He taught me so much about how enormous an impact a group of dedicated people can make."

Re: Eight Years of Firefox

#34

Post by ed_blackburn »

jonnymkramer wrote: post #10
ed_blackburn wrote: post #5

I remember being at uni (UWE Bristol), downloading the zip and exporting to program files. My mates thought I was crazy until they saw tabbed browsing...wow!

hah weird seeing another UWE person on here. What are you doing now?

I couldn't find a decent grad role in Bristol so I ended up in London, where I've since settled. I'm a dev after graduating in 2004 with a Computing and Information Systems degree. Since I graduated I realise that a few my UWE lecturers were really good. I didn't see the point in being asked to read Kent Beck and Martin Fowler or what I'd learn from substituting Slackware Linux's ls for my own shoddy implementation, but now I see that those visiting lecturers from Rolls Royce and Airbus knew what I'd need to know in the real world. Doing a Sandwich course and spending a year writing production code for Pfizer was beneficial too. You?

http://ejb.name

Re: Eight Years of Firefox

#35

Post by riobard »

robinwauters wrote: post #7

I really hope this doesn't get down-voted because it's a little promotional, but I posted a video interview with Mozilla's chairwomen Mitchell Baker today, she said some interesting things I think. http://thenextweb.com/video/2012/11/09/happy-eight-birthday-... Direct YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCWtvtwhFCk

s/chairwomen/chairwoman/

Re: Eight Years of Firefox

#36

Post by sp332 »

navid_dichols wrote: post #17

Firebox's firebug addon makes it worth the price of admission. Thanks for a great 8 years FF! Side note: if you could add support for base64 pngs embedded with the data uri you could really help me out of a jam...

I might have misunderstood, but doesn't this blog post describe doing that already? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4759099

Re: Eight Years of Firefox

#37

Post by T-hawk »

kibwen wrote: post #27
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #18

I remember making the jump from Netscape 4.72 to Mozilla 1.2, modulo a little dalliance with IE when it was still ahead of the curve. I've been on Mozilla/Firefox ever since, and never made the jump to Chrome as my main browser (though I have it installed). Firefox just keeps getting better and better, and I'm delighted at how the friendly competition between Firefox and Chrome is driving faster improvement to both,…

Ah, Netscape! I still have its throbber animation[1] indelibly burnt into my memory. I also still remember being a bit baffled as to all the excitement people were expressing over something as mundane as a web browser . Remember the full-spread two-page launch ad in the New York Times?[2] Firefox was probably the first time I'd ever heard of something "open source" in my entire life. And of course, tabbed browsing wa…

Opera had tabbed browsing way before anyone else, in 2000. And actually even before that by handling pages as MDI document windows in its early versions.

I used Opera all through the long night of IE6 hegemony, although always ready to switch back to IE whenever a site didn't work in Opera. There was a good, actively developed, standards-compliant browser available that whole time. It just never caught on in terms of popularity and mindshare. I hardly even noticed Firefox until around version 3.

Re: Eight Years of Firefox

#38

Post by bergie »

mjb wrote: post #28

I think Firefox has to take a lot of credit for the state of the web today. In the early 2000s, it was usual for sites to be IE-only, or to be horribly broken in any alternative browser. It seems to me that the rise of popularity of Firefox correlated strongly with a drop in these IE-only sites, and I don't think that its unfair to label it as a dominant cause of this drop. Even if Firefox dies completely and leaves…

Yep, and without a standards-based web it would be hard to see such a bright situation for platforms like iOS and Android.

Re: Eight Years of Firefox

#39

Post by mjb »

bergie wrote: post #38
mjb wrote: post #28

I think Firefox has to take a lot of credit for the state of the web today. In the early 2000s, it was usual for sites to be IE-only, or to be horribly broken in any alternative browser. It seems to me that the rise of popularity of Firefox correlated strongly with a drop in these IE-only sites, and I don't think that its unfair to label it as a dominant cause of this drop. Even if Firefox dies completely and leaves…

Yep, and without a standards-based web it would be hard to see such a bright situation for platforms like iOS and Android.

Right. Although it's hard to know if Firefox was the cause, one of many causes, or just something around at the right time to get caught up in an inevitable change. History is hard, even only 8 years later. Still, it seemed to me at the time to be at least partially causal.

Re: Eight Years of Firefox

#40

Post by EnderMB »

jonnymkramer wrote: post #10
ed_blackburn wrote: post #5

I remember being at uni (UWE Bristol), downloading the zip and exporting to program files. My mates thought I was crazy until they saw tabbed browsing...wow!

hah weird seeing another UWE person on here. What are you doing now?

Wow, two fellow UWE people! I had to go back and double check what I was reading!
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