Tuesday, November 09, 2004
Bill Palmer's Firefox review: shrug
After what seems like an infinite beta-testing period, the open source web browser Firefox reached version 1.0 today. As far as the product itself, I can sum up my review in one word: shrug. When the built-in browser kicks this much hind quarters, there's little motivation to waste time shopping for an alternate browser unless one is simply trying to stroke ones own elitist ego. And for that matter, according to a user group review that crossed my inbox today, Firefox 1.0 is nearly as buggy as the previous versions. In other words, it's just about what you'd expect out of a free open source project being developed by geeks for geeks in their spare time as a hobby: more emphasis on pushing forward with development, than on ever cranking out a true finished and complete product.
But that doesn't mean that I'm not rooting for the Firefox geeks (and the Camino geeks and any other browser geeks) to keep pushing their developmental efforts forward. And there are two entirely separate reasons for that, both of which are of great benefit not just to Mac users but to all computer users:
1) Innovations such as tabbed browsing generally tend to originate within the bowels of such open source projects. Even though Safari has what I consider to be the best tabbed browsing implementation of any browser, it's probably fairly safe to assume that Safari wouldn't have tabbed browsing at all if not for the open source community. And for that matter, considering that Safari itself was built on top of the open source Konqueror browser, it's probably fair to say that without the open source community, Safari wouldn't even exist.
2) The more prominently the Firefox geeks can push their browser into the Windows world, the better it is for everyone (except Microsoft). Anything that helps Windows users to break their dependence on Microsoft applications is a good thing both because it'll help open the door for getting Windows users to accept non-Microsoft software such as iTunes, and because it will make them feel more free to eventually consider switching to the Mac altogether.
So congratulations goes to the Firefox team for what they're accomplishing. Even though I just don't have enough hours in the day to be one of their permanent beta-testers, and even though I'm so totally not in the market for an alternate Mac web browser, I'm still rooting for those Firefox geeks to keep doing what they're doing.
That is, whatever it is that they're doing.
PS: a note to all you Firefox devotees out there: please do not write in to me with "you should be using Firefox" comments; I'm simply not interested and I'll delete it without reading it. However, if you feel you must spread your gospel, feel free to do so in the forums.
After what seems like an infinite beta-testing period, the open source web browser Firefox reached version 1.0 today. As far as the product itself, I can sum up my review in one word: shrug. When the built-in browser kicks this much hind quarters, there's little motivation to waste time shopping for an alternate browser unless one is simply trying to stroke ones own elitist ego. And for that matter, according to a user group review that crossed my inbox today, Firefox 1.0 is nearly as buggy as the previous versions. In other words, it's just about what you'd expect out of a free open source project being developed by geeks for geeks in their spare time as a hobby: more emphasis on pushing forward with development, than on ever cranking out a true finished and complete product.
But that doesn't mean that I'm not rooting for the Firefox geeks (and the Camino geeks and any other browser geeks) to keep pushing their developmental efforts forward. And there are two entirely separate reasons for that, both of which are of great benefit not just to Mac users but to all computer users:
1) Innovations such as tabbed browsing generally tend to originate within the bowels of such open source projects. Even though Safari has what I consider to be the best tabbed browsing implementation of any browser, it's probably fairly safe to assume that Safari wouldn't have tabbed browsing at all if not for the open source community. And for that matter, considering that Safari itself was built on top of the open source Konqueror browser, it's probably fair to say that without the open source community, Safari wouldn't even exist.
2) The more prominently the Firefox geeks can push their browser into the Windows world, the better it is for everyone (except Microsoft). Anything that helps Windows users to break their dependence on Microsoft applications is a good thing both because it'll help open the door for getting Windows users to accept non-Microsoft software such as iTunes, and because it will make them feel more free to eventually consider switching to the Mac altogether.
So congratulations goes to the Firefox team for what they're accomplishing. Even though I just don't have enough hours in the day to be one of their permanent beta-testers, and even though I'm so totally not in the market for an alternate Mac web browser, I'm still rooting for those Firefox geeks to keep doing what they're doing.
That is, whatever it is that they're doing.
PS: a note to all you Firefox devotees out there: please do not write in to me with "you should be using Firefox" comments; I'm simply not interested and I'll delete it without reading it. However, if you feel you must spread your gospel, feel free to do so in the forums.
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