Mozilla's Nightingale: Why Firefox Still Matters

An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla could be heading into an open confrontation with its rivals Google, Apple and Microsoft as browsers evolve into platforms. Mozilla's director of Firefox engineering John Nightingale gave some insight on the past, present, and future of Mozilla and outlined why Firefox still matters. While Mozilla is accused of copying features from other browsers, the company says the opposite is the case. Nightingale says that a future Firefox will give a user much more control over what he does on the Internet and that Mozilla plans on competing with the ideal of an open web against siloed environments." Chrome may have a nice interface and be a bit faster than Firefox's rendering engine, but if Firefox failed as a project I'd miss its Emacs-like extensibility (something all other browsers lack).

Only open source standards compliant browser

[zget]

Firefox matters because it's once again the only open source browser that goes by standards instead of doing whatever they want. Chrome was there for a long time, but now immediately when they started to gain some market share Google decided to do what Microsoft did in the 90's and start implementing their own features and not documenting them good enough for others to implement. Then they went on and created websites that only work with Chrome [thewildern...wntown.com]. I have no idea why and when Google started acting like the new douche bag in town, but it's finally happening. And things were going so well for web designers now that Microsoft picked up their act and made IE9 standards compliant and HTML5 capable..

Education

[i.r.id10t]

It is also usually the only browser many learning management systems like Angel support other than Internet Explorer ..

Platforms

[danbuter]

I don't need my web browser to be a full platform. I need it to be a web browser. I wish these guys would figure that out.

One thing Mozilla has that the others do not

[sl4shd0rk]

It's Open Source. Unimportant to the apathetic, however it is a factor which will become more important as corporations increase their role in governments.

Re:Too many links.

[Yvan256]

Now you know what it feels like to try to choose a Linux distro.

Like it or not, too many choices is bad.

Noscript

[Holammer]

Noscript is the #1 feature why I'm using Firefox. I suspect a lot of medium to advanced users desire its functionality.

What good is extensibility...

[QuietLagoon]

... if Firefox's new and unnecessary rapid development cycle renders plug-ins invalid every three months, and the plug-in developers choose not to participate in Firefox's inane rapid development cycle. I, a Firefox user, am left with an egregious choice of keeping the browser secure by jumping on the rapid development cycle bandwagon, or using the plug-ins I want to use by skipping the security updates embedded in the rapid development cycle.

.
All in the name of inflating the ego of some developers who are in a testosterone-enabled development war with other browser developers.

I'd miss NoScript and shitload of other add-ons

[elrous0]

The closest thing you can get to NoScript on Chrome is NotScripts. And I'm sorry but that sucks ass by comparison.

Re:Platforms

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pretty bizarre what some people are saying is desired. Supposedly we're all going to ditch our desktops for mobiles, and we're going to ditch our applications for browser applications. And yet, so many people simply don't want that, and bitch about how unimaginably it sucks, whenever they try it.

The very idea of leaving a comment on Slashdot without a keyboard is laughable (yes, you can do it, but it's painful compared to "old" tech), as is the idea of seriously editing any sort of text (whether it's code or Google Docs' word processor) in any browser, or (best of all) editing in a mobile browser.

I guess they think that if they keep on repeating these silly ideas, people will get used to how much the future is going to suck compared to 2011, and they'll accept it. The problem with that, is that anyone who doesn't buy into the bullshit, is going to be at such a competitive advantage with those who do, that there will be constant pressure to restore the desktop. How can anyone really think the do-everything-in-browser and do-everything-on-mobile prophecies have what it takes to be self-fulfilling?

Re:Firefox will matter to me again...

[Gordo_1]

Honestly, i don't get this complaint. The belief that Firefox has progressively gotten slower and more bloated over the years is an outright falsehood that keeps getting recycled over and over again on Slashdot and elsewhere. Go ahead and install Firebird 0.7, Firefox 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 and 5.0, then explain to me where you believe the bloat has crept in... Yes Firefox 4.0 is more feature-rich than previous versions, but if you don't want to use things like sync, you don't have to use them. With a clean comparable profile, each successive Ffx release has delivered some combination of:

* greater stability
* better memory management
* faster javascript
* faster DOM rendering
* faster startup time
* support for new standards/technologies

Frankly, I don't think anyone remembers how rough around the edges Firebird was, because it was comparatively so much better than it's only real competition at the time (IE6).

Re:Only open source standards compliant browser

[lennier]

Firefox matters because it's once again the only open source browser that goes by standards instead of doing whatever they want.

ROFL.

Let me know when they have an enterprise story other than "go away you lousy business cretins, we don't like your type and your nasty automated installation ways. No security patches for you! Btw we heard you liked random UI changes, here's all your buttons, foom, now they're gone! Beg for us to put them back! Beg on four legs and bark like a dog! Nope, too late, we'll do something even stranger for the next release."