GFX Q2 goals status
Joe Drew
The graphics team has, over the last quarter, been cranking mostly on
accelerating Cairo using Direct2D, and on accelerating layers using
OpenGL, OpenGL ES, and (something we started only partway through the
quarter) Direct3D 9. (If you aren't clear on what the different types of
acceleration are for, please see my blog post[1] on the subject.) We
added the Direct3D 9 task because of work that the frontend team was
doing, particularly TabCandy; around 57% of our daily users are on
Windows XP, which doesn't support Direct2D, so we need some form of
XP-compatible acceleration, and we need it sooner rather than later.
This addition caused some goals-related issues. Our goals for the
quarter were always stretch goals, and adding more work doesn't help
that situation. This far into the quarter, we are certain to miss our
OpenGL and OpenGL ES goals, as we have decided to double down on our
Direct2D and Direct3D 9 work. This doesn't mean that we've dropped
OpenGL and OpenGL ES, just that they won't get done this quarter.
However, it does mean that the graphics group will have more work to do,
particularly getting the OpenGL (desktop) layers backend into a
releasable state for Firefox 4. This might mean that other things slip
from Firefox 4; you will know when we do what those things are.
If you would like to help the graphics group with its hardware
acceleration work, or with other work we have (like Cairo updates,
imagelib bugs, etc), please let me know, or visit #gfx on irc.mozilla.org.
Thanks lots,
Joe
Robert Kaiser
> This far into the quarter, we are certain to miss our
> OpenGL and OpenGL ES goals, as we have decided to double down on our
> Direct2D and Direct3D 9 work. This doesn't mean that we've dropped
> OpenGL and OpenGL ES, just that they won't get done this quarter.
Too bad that this means a huge blow for Free Software, as we're only
accelerating Windows and therefore showing people how much better
everything runs on that proprietary system compared to the ugly sucky
Linux stuff. I still dream of a world where we advocate open software,
but either it's far in the future or it has passed already.
Robert Kaiser
Boris Zbarsky
> Too bad that this means a huge blow for Free Software, as we're only
> accelerating Windows and therefore showing people how much better
> everything runs on that proprietary system compared to the ugly sucky
> Linux stuff. I still dream of a world where we advocate open software,
> but either it's far in the future or it has passed already.
I think the scheduling has more to do with the facts that:
1) Most of our users are on Windows.
2) Browser performance comparisons are done on Windows.
Of course I also don't see how getting the GL stuff done in July as
opposed to in the next two weeks is "a huge blow for Free Software"...
Did I miss something?
-Boris
Rob Arnold
Why so negative? I think you forget that Firefox itself is open source and
that shipping a quality open source browser supports open software. We can
either choose to show how awesome an open source browser is to Linux users
who presumably already know, or we can deliver the high quality drawing to
Windows users who most likely do not know. There are far more Windows users
than Linux users so there would far more (hopefully positive) impressions.
This also makes sense for the reasons Boris mentioned - OpenGL support is
coming it's just a question of when.
-Rob
Asa Dotzler
How is slipping the linux side of things a few weeks "a huge blow for
Free Software"?
And how does "building the most popular OSS consumer application in the
world" anything but advocating open software?
Your POV continues to confuse me.
- A
Robert Kaiser
> I think the scheduling has more to do with the facts that:
>
> 1) Most of our users are on Windows.
> 2) Browser performance comparisons are done on Windows.
I fully understand that, but it doesn't change the outcome.
> Of course I also don't see how getting the GL stuff done in July as
> opposed to in the next two weeks is "a huge blow for Free Software"...
> Did I miss something?
Probably that whatever is not finished in July will not be shipping in a
stable release for 12-18 months.
In any case, some powers in Mozilla are driven by fear that we run into
oblivion by being overrolled by another Silicion-Valley-based browser if
we don't take a more than major step for the mass market within 6
months, and so sacrificing anything for not having that happen is in order.
Robert Kaiser
Robert Kaiser
> Your POV continues to confuse me.
You and others at Mozilla continue to confuse me and others, but we are
not given a chance to even discuss such things in person. Too bad I can
only voice my fears about where Mozilla is going and the potentially
destructive ways in this path online, as I'm closed out of social
activities.
Robert Kaiser
Axel Hecht
the linux hardware accell in Q2 was a good argument to have.
I'm obviously not bound to Q2, but I do think it's really important to
get those features into fx4.
I'm wondering, are any of those bugs feasible for linux-contributors? As
in, would it make sense to figure out if we can poke our contacts to
twitter a few bug numbers or a query? Judging by my own hairy bugs, I
never know if coding or explaining would be more work, thus I'm asking.
Axel
Robert Kaiser
> I'm obviously not bound to Q2, but I do think it's really important to
> get those features into fx4.
I think given the current plans, nothing that can't be largely completed
in Q2 can reasonably make Firefox 4 - unless we don't want to ship it in
2010.
Robert Kaiser
Asa Dotzler
> In any case, some powers in Mozilla are driven by fear that we run into
> oblivion by being overrolled by another Silicion-Valley-based browser if
> we don't take a more than major step for the mass market within 6
> months, and so sacrificing anything for not having that happen is in order.
Robert, this really isn't helpful.
Your attributing incorrect and insulting motives to unnamed Mozilla
people doesn't help your advocacy for Linux one bit.
- A
Joe Drew
> I'm wondering, are any of those bugs feasible for linux-contributors?
> As in, would it make sense to figure out if we can poke our contacts
> to twitter a few bug numbers or a query? Judging by my own hairy bugs,
> I never know if coding or explaining would be more work, thus I'm asking.
I would absolutely love for people to come in and help us out with our
Linux OpenGL support. It's what we're having the most trouble with.
Those interested can see Matt Woodrow's repeated efforts to get OpenGL
working nicely under X on bug 565833.
<OpenGL/GLX tech speak>
Right now we only support PBuffers, because we are having trouble
getting a context out of GLX that's compatible with the visual we have
in our X Window. This manifests as GLX errors and a black window when we
switch to full-screen accelerated <video>.
</OpenGL/GLx tech speak>
If you can help, or know someone who can, please point them to bug
565833. The GFX group is resource-limited, and so we can only focus on
one thing at a time.
Thanks,
Joe
Al Billings
Perhaps you are closed out of "social activities" because of your incessant negativity and lack of constructiveness in communication? Personally, it isn't clear what you would add to the conversations with the chip on your shoulder.
Al
Robert Kaiser
The people who are destructing my world never named themselves, so I
can't name them.
But I admit I became a bit too emotional in here. I'm sorry for that, I
may be getting too bitter after being in defense for too long against
lots of "Mozilla sucks", "SeaMonkey is doomed" and implied "you are
unwelcome" comments from many sources all around me.
I stand by the notion that that the revising of those Q2 GFX goals is
not helpful to free software, but I understand this strategy might be
necessary to deliver to the masses, which seems to be our prime interest
these days.
Robert Kaiser
Johnathan Nightingale
> On Jun 15, 2010, at 9:18 AM, Robert Kaiser wrote:
>
> Perhaps you are closed out of "social activities" because of your
> incessant negativity and lack of constructiveness in communication?
> Personally, it isn't clear what you would add to the conversations
> with the chip on your shoulder.
Above the belt please, ladies and gentlemen.
Joe's making sure the community understands the state of some GFX work
as related to the quarterly goals they took to the same community a
few months ago. Talking about how we can get more people working on
those pieces, and how they prioritize against others is fair game.
Flushing out central assumptions that we think are misunderstood is
fair, too. Innuendo about Mozilla employees or community members
doesn't feel like it helps the discussion here, from either direction.
Do you disagree?
J
---
Johnathan Nightingale
Director of Firefox Development
joh...@mozilla.com
Robert Kaiser
> Perhaps you are closed out of "social activities" because of your incessant negativity and lack of constructiveness in communication? Personally, it isn't clear what you would add to the conversations with the chip on your shoulder.
Thanks for confirming that every single word I say is only analyzed
through the filter of being potentially destructive. But by not
listening to me or talking to me personally, this will just increase. In
that case, I might as well play along and intentionally play the role of
the troublemaker everyone seems to want to see in me.
Robert Kaiser
Robert Kaiser
> Above the belt please, ladies and gentlemen.
Sorry.
> Joe's making sure the community understands the state of some GFX work
> as related to the quarterly goals they took to the same community a few
> months ago.
That's appreciated, I don't even disagree that it's being done, I only
wanted to point out that this probably means not shipping acceleration
on anything else but Windows in Firefox 4, which is a pity - even if it
is probably unavoidable.
> Innuendo about Mozilla employees or community members doesn't feel like
> it helps the discussion here, from either direction.
I agree - it's just hard when every comment one makes is interpreted as
being offensive and destructive, and being on the defense all the time
and needing to take care to not say any wrong word is quite tiresome.
Sorry I couldn't hold it in this instance, and thanks for calling us all
back.
Robert Kaiser
Axel Hecht
> On 6/15/2010 9:48 AM, Joe Drew wrote:
>> I would absolutely love for people to come in and help us out with our
>> Linux OpenGL support. It's what we're having the most trouble with.
>
> haven't got much of a response. The situation, as I understand it, is
> that the driver support on Linux isn't great and even though we've spent
> quite a bit of time on it we haven't had much luck in getting consistent
> results.
>
Tried my tuxradio contact, fwiw.
Axel
Zack Weinberg
I've only been around for two years and am not party to a lot of
discussions, but I have never seen you as a troublemaker.
I presume that your present level of upset is over having been
disinvited to the Summit? I have to say, that baffles me, it seems
like the SeaMonkey lead should get an automatic invite *even if* not
everyone can work well with you. (Of this I know only what I read on
your blog, for the record.)
Regarding OpenGL versus DirectX, and more generally our level of
support for Windows bling versus other platform bling, I personally
consider both Windows and OSX to be uninteresting legacy platforms and
would like us to put a LOT more effort into working with the X11 and
GNOME people, and into initiatives that help our users migrate off
Windows altogether. But that would be a three-to-five-year change of
overall Foundation strategy, and *right now* I think the GFX team's
call is the right call.
Also I don't think it would be the end of the world if FF4/Gecko2
was delayed a few months, especially if it meant we could start
chainsawing no-longer-frozen XPCOM interfaces.
zw
Zack Weinberg
> On 6/15/2010 9:48 AM, Joe Drew wrote:
> > I would absolutely love for people to come in and help us out with
> > our Linux OpenGL support. It's what we're having the most trouble
> > with.
>
> I've reached out to the Linux folks that I know once or twice and
> haven't got much of a response. The situation, as I understand it,
> is that the driver support on Linux isn't great and even though we've
> spent quite a bit of time on it we haven't had much luck in getting
> consistent results.
Have we talked specifically to the people working on Linux GL drivers?
For instance, the Nouveau folks seem very active and responsive to
their users, I think they'd be delighted to hear from us.
zw
Christopher Blizzard
>>
>
> The people who are destructing my world never named themselves, so I
> can't name them.
>
> But I admit I became a bit too emotional in here. I'm sorry for that,
> I may be getting too bitter after being in defense for too long
> against lots of "Mozilla sucks", "SeaMonkey is doomed" and implied
> "you are unwelcome" comments from many sources all around me.
>
> I stand by the notion that that the revising of those Q2 GFX goals is
> not helpful to free software, but I understand this strategy might be
> necessary to deliver to the masses, which seems to be our prime
> interest these days.
Robert -
As a project we don't have infinite resource and that means making
choices. That means sometimes we have to choose to work on Firefox
instead of SeaMonkey-based concerns and sometimes it means that we have
to choose to work on one set of graphics systems instead of another.
Choices are really hard and often enough someone feels left behind when
a choice is made.
But this is another one of those. We've put quite a bit of time into
making Linux work, and it hasn't so far. The drivers there aren't great
and the matrix of driver bugs matched to random distributions make it
pretty difficult to test. That's why we need to reach out and ask for
help on this.
Linux is a small but very influential part of our userbase, and they are
important, and they have been a 1st tier platform forever. But it
doesn't mean that we can't make everything work everywhere the same
because we don't have infinite resources. (We would also like to be
able to draw into the title bar and integrate well with native themes
but that's kind of hard due to a lack of native interfaces to do so.)
This isn't a conspiracy - it's just a difficult choice that has upsides
and downsides.
--Chris
Christopher Blizzard
> Have we talked specifically to the people working on Linux GL drivers?
Yes, I have.
--Chris
Robert Kaiser
> This isn't a conspiracy - it's just a difficult choice that has upsides
> and downsides.
I never talked about a conspiracy, but it looks like everyone thinks I
would see them everywhere. I wonder where that comes from.
Robert Kaiser
Robert Kaiser
> I've only been around for two years and am not party to a lot of
> discussions, but I have never seen you as a troublemaker.
Thanks, I was starting to think it could be actually just me.
> I presume that your present level of upset is over having been
> disinvited to the Summit? I have to say, that baffles me, it seems
> like the SeaMonkey lead should get an automatic invite *even if* not
> everyone can work well with you. (Of this I know only what I read on
> your blog, for the record.)
This is just another instance of a few things I don't understand, and I
meanwhile have learned that there are cases of other people whose not
being invited in the first place I also don't understand. Still, this is
only the newest instance of a row in which I feel being set up as the
destructive character that needs to be overcome on the road to success.
I start to wonder how I ended up with that image and how I can come out
of having that filter applied to every word I say.
> Regarding OpenGL versus DirectX, [...] *right now* I think the GFX team's
> call is the right call.
It probably is, even if it's unfortunate (not that I agree with you on
the GNOME side of things, as I'm a big fan of KDE, but that shouldn't
change much in the general view).
> Also I don't think it would be the end of the world if FF4/Gecko2
> was delayed a few months, especially if it meant we could start
> chainsawing no-longer-frozen XPCOM interfaces.
I don't think taking that delay would be too good an idea, but I'd be
very very much in favor of the latter! :)
Robert Kaiser
Robert Kaiser
Gah, I overstate things and am dumb enough to remove this signature I
created just for not having those statements taken the wrong way. Shame
on me! ;-)
Robert Kaiser
--
Note that any statements of mine - no matter how passionate - are never
meant to be offensive but very often as food for thought or possible
arguments that we as a community needs answers to. And most of the time,
I even appreciate irony and fun! :)
Phillip Jones
Robert you leaving out as well UNIX and Macintosh as well. All
platforms should progress at the same rate.
--
Phillip M. Jones, C.E.T. "If it's Fixed, Don't Break it"
http://www.phillipmjones.net mailto:pjo...@kimbanet.com
Asa Dotzler
>
> Robert you leaving out as well UNIX and Macintosh as well. All platforms
> should progress at the same rate.
>
If all platforms were equal in their capabilities, and we had all the
developer resources we could want, neither of which are true, then maybe
so.
Until then, we have to deal with differing platform capabilities and
limited resources. That means making trade-offs.
- A
Karl Tomlinson
> Joe Drew schrieb:
>> This far into the quarter, we are certain to miss our
>> OpenGL and OpenGL ES goals, as we have decided to double down on our
>> Direct2D and Direct3D 9 work. This doesn't mean that we've dropped
>> OpenGL and OpenGL ES, just that they won't get done this quarter.
>
> Too bad that this means a huge blow for Free Software, as we're
> only accelerating Windows and therefore showing people how much
> better everything runs on that proprietary system compared to the
> ugly sucky Linux stuff.
Bear in mind that on X11 systems with RENDER acceleration support,
even though YUV to RGB conversion is not accelerated, much more
has been accelerated than on other platforms that were still
blitting in software.
Robert Kaiser
> Robert you leaving out as well UNIX and Macintosh as well. All platforms
> should progress at the same rate.
Those are not systems used to show friends how cool a complete Free
Software stack is - and philosohically, I don't care if they lack
something we support on Windows, as they're no better philosophically
than Windows.
Asa Dotzler
> Phillip Jones schrieb:
>> Robert you leaving out as well UNIX and Macintosh as well. All platforms
>> should progress at the same rate.
>
> Those are not systems used to show friends how cool a complete Free
> Software stack is - and philosohically, I don't care if they lack
> something we support on Windows, as they're no better philosophically
> than Windows.
>
> Robert Kaiser
>
OK. I'm wandering way off topic here. Sorry. I'll wrap after this.
I personally love showing off the amazing Free Software product called
Firefox on my Windows machine where Firefox really screams and looks
awesome and shows how kick-ass Free Software can really be without all
the pitfalls of other Free Software (like the Linux desktop) obscuring
Firefox's amazingness.
I like to think of Firefox on Windows as the Free Software gateway drug.
;-)
- A
Henri Sivonen
> I like to think of Firefox on Windows as the Free Software gateway drug.
For it to be a good kind of gateway drug, though, Firefox itself should stay as good as it was on Windows or become better if you swap the system underneath, so in that sense, making sure everything rocks on Linux, too, is important.
FWIW, I'm generally pretty happy about how Firefox works on Linux, but I think we should really watch out for stuff like https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=422179 happening again. (Small bug that makes a huge perceived difference by making all graphics hideous when zooming.) Fortunately, that particular bug is now treated as a blocker. It seems to me that gfx is a critical area for the Linux perception. When upgrading to Lucid, it really impressed me how well the theme integration works, since the default theme on Lucid sucks, so you actually have to change it and apps need to obey the theme you choose. I think OpenGL landing after Direct3D isn't a huge blow to Free Software, but it would sure look pretty bad if Firefox 4 didn't have OpenGL-accelerated layers on Linux when it ships. (When I purchased my current main work computer, I made sure to buy an OpenGL 3 GPU in order to maximize the chances of retained working even if support for older OpenGL versions doesn't make it.)
--
Henri Sivonen
hsiv...@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/
Henri Sivonen
> The drivers there aren't great
> and the matrix of driver bugs matched to random distributions make it
> pretty difficult to test. That's why we need to reach out and ask for
> help on this.
If the argument can be made that Mozilla puts more effort into Windows builds than Linux builds because more people are reached on Windows, wouldn't the same argument apply in the domain of Linux distributions, too? That is, shouldn't Mozilla be making sure that MoCo-provided Linux builds rock on the latest versions of top-tier* distributions (which can have an inconvenient number of buggy drivers, sure) and not let potentially even buggier driver versions on random distributions or old versions of top-tier distributions hold things back?
* Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian and openSuSE by looking at what Google and Skype do.
Christopher Blizzard
That's what we do. Although those distributions usually handle the
actual distribution.
--Chris
Asa Dotzler
> "Asa Dotzler"<a...@mozilla.com> wrote:
>
>> I like to think of Firefox on Windows as the Free Software gateway drug.
>
> For it to be a good kind of gateway drug, though, Firefox itself should stay as good as it was on Windows or become better if you swap the system underneath
Do you believe that unless a user is going to move to Linux or a
completely Free stack, then Free Software advocacy and use aren't
valuable? (I know some people do, but I don't want to attribute that to
you without asking.)
The way I see it, Free Software is hugely great without Linux anywhere
in the picture, and is often times perceived as less great when the
topic of Linux comes up because Linux isn't as good as Windows or Mac
for many people.
Having had a great experience with Firefox on Windows, people might
decide that other Free Software on Windows was worth trying. They could
replace AIM with Pidgin or WMP with VLC. The might give Open Office a
try or Miro or Handbrake. They might find some of those apps to be
better than their proprietary defaults. That's what I meant by "gateway
drug" and I think that's a fine thing.
Trying to return this to topic some:
None of this is to say that we shouldn't kick as much ass as is possible
on Linux, but sometimes Firefox parity across systems is really hard or
even impossible because not all OSes have the necessary parity. Where we
have the time and resources, we should try to overcome those
shortcomings, but I strongly believe that we shouldn't be designing for
the lowest common denominator or failing to take wins today where those
wins are easier because we can't get those same wins today where they're
harder. There's always tomorrow for the harder ones :-)
- A
Karl Tomlinson
> It seems to me that gfx is a critical area for the Linux
> perception.
Yes, graphics (including widget) is where much of our
platform-specific code is needed, and so this is where people will
notice differences between systems.
I'll also comment that the graphics team has a difficult job
because of this. They essentially need to do most things 3 times,
sometimes in 3 different ways (and sometimes more to handle
variations amongst these).
Often it is easier to essentially prototype by solving the problem
on one system before extending to the others.
Henri Sivonen
> On 6/17/2010 12:06 AM, Henri Sivonen wrote:
> > "Asa Dotzler"<a...@mozilla.com> wrote:
> >
> >> I like to think of Firefox on Windows as the Free Software gateway
> drug.
> >
> > For it to be a good kind of gateway drug, though, Firefox itself
> should stay as good as it was on Windows or become better if you swap
> the system underneath
>
>
> Do you believe that unless a user is going to move to Linux or a
> completely Free stack, then Free Software advocacy and use aren't
> valuable? (I know some people do, but I don't want to attribute that
> to you without asking.)
I don't, but I understood "gateway drug" to be related to a different gateway than the one you meant.
Robert O'Callahan
> But this is another one of those. We've put quite a bit of time into
> making Linux work
In fact, we have put *far more* work into making Linux GL work than on
any other platform, because the X and driver situation on Linux is such
a disaster.
Thanks to the efforts of Matt Woodrow, Benoit Jacob, Tim Terriberry,
Chris Jones and many others, GL is moving along just fine. We have
hardware accelerated fullscreen video on Linux on trunk as of today.
Rob
Robert O'Callahan
> Regarding OpenGL versus DirectX, and more generally our level of
> support for Windows bling versus other platform bling, I personally
> consider both Windows and OSX to be uninteresting legacy platforms and
> would like us to put a LOT more effort into working with the X11 and
> GNOME people, and into initiatives that help our users migrate off
> Windows altogether.
X11 is a disaster. It's technically broken at every level.
The best thing anyone could do for Linux is replace it with something else.
Rob
Zack Weinberg
I don't necessarily disagree with that (or agree with it, either) but I
insist on a distinction between X11-the-software and X11-the-project.
Cooperating with X11-the-project is IMO the best and quickest way to
get X11-the-software replaced with something that better suits our
needs.
zw
Robert Kaiser
> Thanks to the efforts of Matt Woodrow, Benoit Jacob, Tim Terriberry,
> Chris Jones and many others, GL is moving along just fine. We have
> hardware accelerated fullscreen video on Linux on trunk as of today.
Woo-hoo! :)
Gervase Markham
> But I admit I became a bit too emotional in here. I'm sorry for that, I
> may be getting too bitter after being in defense for too long against
> lots of "Mozilla sucks", "SeaMonkey is doomed" and implied "you are
> unwelcome" comments from many sources all around me.
You need to dissociate your words from your person. I suspect you are
reading "that comment was really unhelpful" and interpreting it as "you
are unwelcome". That is bad logic.
No-one thinks you are a bad person. But sometimes you make unhelpful
contributions. Suggesting that the entire upper management of Mozilla
has put their fingers into their ears and is shouting "must beat Chrome!
must beat Chrome!" at everyone is both ridiculous and unhelpful.
> I stand by the notion that that the revising of those Q2 GFX goals is
> not helpful to free software, but I understand this strategy might be
> necessary to deliver to the masses, which seems to be our prime interest
> these days.
Our prime interest, which I hope you share, is the promotion and
preservation of the open web. To do that, we need to compete on Windows.
This is not an endorsement of Windows any more than Seamonkey running on
Windows is an endorsement of Windows.
Gerv
Gervase Markham
> You need to dissociate your words from your person. I suspect you are
> reading "that comment was really unhelpful" and interpreting it as "you
> are unwelcome". That is bad logic.
I've just realised this thread is a week old, and therefore my previous
message would have been better sent privately. My apologies.
Gerv
Philip Chee
> On 15/06/10 18:14, Robert Kaiser wrote:
>> But I admit I became a bit too emotional in here. I'm sorry for that, I
>> may be getting too bitter after being in defense for too long against
>> lots of "Mozilla sucks", "SeaMonkey is doomed" and implied "you are
>> unwelcome" comments from many sources all around me.
>
> You need to dissociate your words from your person. I suspect you are
> reading "that comment was really unhelpful" and interpreting it as "you
> are unwelcome". That is bad logic.
>
> No-one thinks you are a bad person. But sometimes you make unhelpful
> contributions. Suggesting that the entire upper management of Mozilla
> has put their fingers into their ears and is shouting "must beat Chrome!
> must beat Chrome!" at everyone is both ridiculous and unhelpful.
Well that's the impression I sometimes get. And perhaps other people
outside the inner circle. For example stuff like rushing OOPP into 3.6.4
(Personally as Flashblock maintainer I'm all for this, but it might give
other people an idea that Mozilla is panicking), The chrome UI
simplification is on the surface a direct response to the existence to
Google Chrome. Yes for those of us who follow UX, we know this is just a
case of UI convergence on industry best practices, but then not
everybody reads p.m.o. daily.
Mozilla certainly has a Marketing Department. Perhaps they could be a
bit more PR proactive in dispelling the notion that "fuddly duddly
Mozilla" is in reactive mode to the new superstar on the block?
How about emphasizing the areas where we are ahead of the pack? And I
mean not just to people inside the Mozilla community, but to the tech
journalists and influential bloggers.
Phil
--
Philip Chee <phi...@aleytys.pc.my>, <phili...@gmail.com>
http://flashblock.mozdev.org/ http://xsidebar.mozdev.org
Guard us from the she-wolf and the wolf, and guard us from the thief,
oh Night, and so be good for us to pass.
[ ]IF 1 + 2 = 3 THEN 4 + 5 = 6
* TagZilla 0.066.6
Phillip Jones
And as well as I and many of the unsung users also believe as a Robert
as well.
We all feel the developers are going to do, what they are going to do,
and the user be dxxxed.
Ron Hunter
just an excuse to not innovate, and if all the browsers look, and work,
the same, what's the difference? Is this all an excuse for mediocrity?
Daniel
> On 6/24/2010 9:25 PM, Phillip Jones wrote:
>> Philip Chee wrote:
>>> On Thu, 24 Jun 2010 17:52:15 +0100, Gervase Markham wrote:
>>>> On 15/06/10 18:14, Robert Kaiser wrote:
<snip>
> I am concerned that with 'UI convergence on industry best practices' is
> just an excuse to not innovate, and if all the browsers look, and work,
> the same, what's the difference? Is this all an excuse for mediocrity?
>
Yes, Ron, and you would think that after a hundred years or more, Benz,
Ford and General Motors, would have gotten those pesky car thingies
sorted out as well.
Daniel
Robert Kaiser
> On 15/06/10 18:14, Robert Kaiser wrote:
>> But I admit I became a bit too emotional in here. I'm sorry for that, I
>> may be getting too bitter after being in defense for too long against
>> lots of "Mozilla sucks", "SeaMonkey is doomed" and implied "you are
>> unwelcome" comments from many sources all around me.
>
> You need to dissociate your words from your person. I suspect you are
> reading "that comment was really unhelpful" and interpreting it as "you
> are unwelcome". That is bad logic.
Well, I've recently learned that there are (unfortunately unnamed)
powerful individuals in the Mozilla project that actually think of me as
unwelcome, so I'm more inclined to react that way.
> Our prime interest, which I hope you share, is the promotion and
> preservation of the open web.
I surely share that, though I disagree with the "web" portion of that
note somewhat as I still look at it at a wider angle and take it for
"freedom on/of the Internet", and actually, even if overdone, my
original statement was completely in that train of thought.
Boris Zbarsky
> to laws of physics. Browsers don't have that excuse.
Do they not? Usability is a pretty well-developed field nowadays; it
may not be "physics", but it will nevertheless force you into certain
design decisions that will only change if the problem parameters change.
-Boris
Daniel
> On 6/25/2010 5:27 AM, Daniel wrote:
>> Ron Hunter wrote:
>>> On 6/24/2010 9:25 PM, Phillip Jones wrote:
>>>> Philip Chee wrote:
>>>>> On Thu, 24 Jun 2010 17:52:15 +0100, Gervase Markham wrote:
>>>>>> On 15/06/10 18:14, Robert Kaiser wrote:
>>
>> <snip>
>
No, browsers don't have that excuse. Browsers are only a means of
displaying what someone wants you to see, even if they what you to see
their page in a particular way.
What you look at a page with should have absolutely zero impact on what
you see (screen size excepted, maybe).
Daniel
Ron Hunter
I suppose that would be possible in a perfect world, where all code was
written to specs., and all browsers complied with specs. Alas, that is
not, and probably never will be, the case. I believe what we were
discussing was the user interface by which the user gets to that
display, what it looks like, and how easy it is to use.