Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss

Firefox Support for Windows 2000 Coming to an End

312 views
Skip to first unread message

Asa Dotzler

unread,
Jan 27, 2012, 6:45:23 PM1/27/12
to
For a number of years we've held off on updating our Windows toolchain
to a newer version of Visual Studio, and in so doing preserved support
for Windows 2000 and Windows XP RTM and SP1. Firefox developers and the
99.6% of our Windows users have paid a price for this support, though.
Our developers have not been able to take advantage of new compiler
features and have had to struggle to keep valuable optimizations from
breaking -- including having had to back out and ultimately delay
important new some features like SPDY. Our users have have suffered a
slower Firefox than would be possible as both direct and indirect
results of moving to a more modern compiler.

So this week, after a few months of discussion and evaluation of the
latest Firefox user numbers and the pros and cons of moving our tools
forward, I've called for Mozilla to begin the process for ending support
on those older Windows version. Next Tuesday or Wednesday, after Firefox
12 moves to Aurora, the Mozilla Release Engineering team will begin
upgrading our Windows build systems to Visual Studio 2010. With VS2010,
we will no longer be able to build a Firefox that runs on Windows 2000,
Windows XP RTM, and Windows Service Pack 1.

It's always a difficult decision to leave some users behind. The number
of Firefox users on those OS versions -- less than one half of one
percent of our Windows Firefox users, and the benefits to our
development process and the hundreds of millions of Firefox users on XP
SP2 and above, however, compel us to look forward rather than back.

If you are a Windows 2000 user, Firefox 12, released on June 5th, will
be the final supported Firefox release. After that, your options are
limited. Switching to Opera[1] is probably the best path forward.

If you're a Windows XP user still on RTM or Service Pack 1, I strongly
urge you to install the free Windows Service Pack updates[2].

And finally, for Enterprises adopting the ESR[3], these older Windows
versions will be supported for the length of the first ESR of Firefox.
That works out to an extra 6 months or so before these Windows versions
become unsupported.

- A

[1] http://www.opera.com/browser/download/requirements/
[2] http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/downloads/service-packs
[3]
http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2012/01/10/delivering-a-mozilla-firefox-extended-support-release/

David H. Lipman

unread,
Jan 28, 2012, 7:25:23 PM1/28/12
to
From: "Asa Dotzler" <a...@mozilla.org>
A post that *SHOULD* have been made in; mozilla.announce or at Cross-Posted.
http://multi-av.thespykiller.co.uk/GIF/doh.gif

--
Dave
Multi-AV Scanning Tool - http://multi-av.thespykiller.co.uk
http://www.pctipp.ch/downloads/dl/35905.asp


Gervase Markham

unread,
Jan 30, 2012, 5:53:13 AM1/30/12
to
On 29/01/12 00:25, David H. Lipman wrote:
> From: "Asa Dotzler"<a...@mozilla.org>
>
>> For a number of years we've held off on updating our Windows toolchain to a newer
<snip>

Hi Asa,

Can I ask the same question in a more polite way? :-)

What are we doing to make sure this decision is well-communicated to
those it affects?

Gerv

EE

unread,
Jan 30, 2012, 3:30:50 PM1/30/12
to
You have not made much effort to support Mac OS, though, have you? Mac
OS Tiger (10.4) is much newer than Windows 2000, yet support for it was
dropped with Firefox 4.

Boris Zbarsky

unread,
Jan 30, 2012, 3:49:33 PM1/30/12
to
On 1/30/12 3:30 PM, EE wrote:
> You have not made much effort to support Mac OS, though, have you? Mac
> OS Tiger (10.4) is much newer than Windows 2000, yet support for it was
> dropped with Firefox 4.

If Apple were still supporting Tiger, we might be too. If Apple made it
easier to support Lion while still supporting Tiger, we would be more
likely to support Tiger.

From what I can see, we've put _more_ effort into supporting Tiger
specifically (up through when we EOLed it) than we have into supporting
Win2k specifically.

-Boris

Asa Dotzler

unread,
Jan 31, 2012, 1:46:10 AM1/31/12
to
On 1/30/2012 12:30 PM, EE wrote:
> You have not made much effort to support Mac OS, though, have you? Mac
> OS Tiger (10.4) is much newer than Windows 2000, yet support for it was
> dropped with Firefox 4.

EE, you've been around long enough that I don't think you get a pass for
intentionally inflammatory posts like this.

Not only is your comment off-topic for this thread, it's also dead
wrong. We've invested *more effort* in supporting unsupported Mac OS
versions than we have in supporting unsupported Windows versions.

Apple just happens to care less about long term support and backward
compatibility and so it's more difficult for Mozilla to maintain support
for older Mac versions. If you don't like that, instead of insulting
Mozilla's efforts, go complain to Apple.

- A









Asa Dotzler

unread,
Jan 31, 2012, 12:14:56 PM1/31/12
to
I don't know how make sure this is well-communicated to those it affects
without disproportionate effort. What do you propose we do? What have we
done for unsupported Mac versions?

- A

David H. Lipman

unread,
Jan 31, 2012, 4:25:22 PM1/31/12
to
From: "Asa Dotzler" <a...@mozilla.org>
Its about communication of announcements. End of Life, End of Support,
Vulnerability disclosures, etc.

FireFox v10.0 was announced in; mozilla.announce but FireFox v3.6.26 and
T-Bird v10.0 were not.

Gavin Sharp

unread,
Jan 31, 2012, 7:55:20 PM1/31/12
to Asa Dotzler, dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 9:14 AM, Asa Dotzler <a...@mozilla.org> wrote:
> I don't know how make sure this is well-communicated to those it affects
> without disproportionate effort. What do you propose we do? What have we
> done for unsupported Mac versions?

Henri suggested posting on the Mozilla blog. That seems like a good idea to me.

Gavin

Asa Dotzler

unread,
Jan 31, 2012, 8:27:05 PM1/31/12
to
That might get us one or two more informed Windows 2000 users. That's
not really "well-communicated". Even if the press picks it up, we're
still talking about a very tiny subset of those people hearing about it.

A Better strategy, though I'll bet it wouldn't be as simple as I imagine
it to be, would be to message them in-product somehow. That being said,
it is a small group and I don't know how much effort it's worth to make
product changes -- if those were required.

- A

David H. Lipman

unread,
Jan 31, 2012, 10:28:02 PM1/31/12
to
From: "Gavin Sharp" <ga...@gavinsharp.com>
Blogs contain fluff and non-important propaganda and marketing information.
One has to separate the wheat from the chaff. The IT professional who does
Information Assurance and threat management who deals with his/her
environment's personnel need to get their data from a technical, succinct,
place. No fluff, no marketing just communication of the technical facts.
That is the purpose of "announce" groups on NNTP supports systems and that
what needs to be posted on; mozilla.announce .

I remember the watching the video of a State Department's Town Hall Meeting
with Ms. Hilliray Clinton. Se was asked why Firefox was not on the State
Department's network. Ms. Clinton passed the microphone to her CIO and who
said its due to the costs. The audience jeered him indicating the software
is free. Yeah, to the layperson the software is free. To the experienced
IT professional we know the true costs of pushing the software, maintaining
the software and supporting the software know there are costs involved. The
layperson is the target of the Blog. The experienced IT professional needs
to see the announcements in announce groups. A place specifically for the
dissemination of important product concerns and information. The data on
End of Life, End of Support, Vulnerability disclosures, etc.

Mozilla just isn't "in touch". Mozilla has no idea about software
requirements and IA regulations and getting a Certificate of Networthiness
(CoN) just to ALLOW the software on the network of an enterprise. Mozilla
has a broad spectrum of users. The home user to the corporate CEO to the
SES of a PEO. When was the last time Mozilla personnel used Firefox with a
PIV, Smart Card or CAC and did you forget the ones who do ?

By thinking Blog is sufficinet, you ignore an important group who has to
support dozens to thousands of users.

As I posted in another group as an exmaple, gmane.network.wireshark.announce
Which is used in such regards in support of Wireshark.

Asa Dotzler

unread,
Jan 31, 2012, 10:36:12 PM1/31/12
to
David, you seem quite passionate about this. I applaud your devotion to
Windows 2000 users and encourage you to take what ever measures you can
to alert them to this change. Thanks for your contributions to the open
source Mozilla project. We all appreciate your knowledge and commitment
to helping these users. I'm sure they will appreciate your efforts as well.

- A

Gavin Sharp

unread,
Jan 31, 2012, 10:50:03 PM1/31/12
to Asa Dotzler, dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 5:27 PM, Asa Dotzler <a...@mozilla.org> wrote:
> That might get us one or two more informed Windows 2000 users. That's not
> really "well-communicated". Even if the press picks it up, we're still
> talking about a very tiny subset of those people hearing about it.

I'm pretty confident it would result in more people finding out ahead
of time than would have otherwise. Is there a downside that I'm
missing?

Gavin

David H. Lipman

unread,
Jan 31, 2012, 11:26:50 PM1/31/12
to
From: "Asa Dotzler" <a...@mozilla.org>

>
>
> David, you seem quite passionate about this. I applaud your devotion to Windows 2000
> users and encourage you to take what ever measures you can to alert them to this change.
> Thanks for your contributions to the open source Mozilla project. We all appreciate your
> knowledge and commitment to helping these users. I'm sure they will appreciate your
> efforts as well.
>

If this was an airplane, you missed the flight.

You just don't get it. You don't see the forest through the trees.
Hint - It isn't about Win2K support.

Asa Dotzler

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 12:26:15 AM2/1/12
to
Yes. If it creates a distraction, or costs PR or others effort to deal
with, and it doesn't actually help a significant number of affected
users, that's the downside.

- A

gavin

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 1:15:27 AM2/1/12
to
On Jan 31, 9:26 pm, Asa Dotzler <a...@mozilla.org> wrote:
> Yes. If it creates a distraction, or costs PR or others effort to deal
> with, and it doesn't actually help a significant number of affected
> users, that's the downside.

I guess we disagree about the prospective cost vs. reward. I think the
reactions to "we're dropping platform X" announcements in these
newsgroups are a skewed sample that aren't really reflective of the
reaction we'd get with the broader public. With that audience the
information is less noteworthy (as you point out, affected users are a
small minority), but the odds of reaching affected parties is higher,
and I see that as outweighing any possible "distraction" costs.

Gavin

Asa Dotzler

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 2:25:56 AM2/1/12
to
I don't think the delta between the odds of reaching win2K Firefox users
with a newsgroup post and reaching them with a Mozilla blog post is
statistically significant. There are just not enough of them out there
to expect any communication (outside of in-product notification) to have
a material impact.

- A

Alexander Skwar

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 3:20:10 AM2/1/12
to dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
I've said it before - but, actually, how dificult would've been to post
exactly the mail you've send to the list, to post that mail also to the
announce newsgroup and maybe even the propaganda blog? At least as far
as the newsgroup post is concerned, it seems to be a very cheap and easy
way to go.

In the end, it would've cost you a LOT LESS, then it costs you now,
because that missed post stirred up a lengthy communication on this
list. And this thread did not just cost you time, but also credibility,
because it "might" lead to the impression, that you don't care much for
(some?) users, by the lack of communication.

Especially because this "issue" (lack of newsgroup posts) has been
brought up not so long ago already… With someone concluding, that in the
future, posts ought to be made, IIRC.

Alexander
--
↯ Lifestream (Twitter, Blog, …) ↣ http://sup.skwar.me/
↯ Chat (Jabber/Google Talk) ↣ a...@skwar.me ; Twitter: @alexs77 ↯

JP Rosevear

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 6:04:15 AM2/1/12
to Asa Dotzler, dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
I think we could take advantage of the hotfix extension here to message
those users. I also think that putting them on the ESR in the next
update round is a reasonable idea, at least for Win2K where there is no
free upgrade option. I understand there is a little conflict with our
marketing message, but its a reasonable outcome for the user.


-JP
--
JP Rosevear <j...@mozilla.com>
Mozilla

Asa Dotzler

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 3:26:54 PM2/1/12
to
On 2/1/2012 12:20 AM, Alexander Skwar wrote:
> announce newsgroup and maybe even the propaganda blog?

"Propaganda blog"? I get the feeling you're actually not interested in a
discussion here.

- A

JP Rosevear

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 3:37:24 PM2/1/12
to Asa Dotzler, dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
On Wed, 2012-02-01 at 12:04 +0100, JP Rosevear wrote:
> On Tue, 2012-01-31 at 17:27 -0800, Asa Dotzler wrote:
> I think we could take advantage of the hotfix extension here to message
> those users. I also think that putting them on the ESR in the next
> update round is a reasonable idea, at least for Win2K where there is no
> free upgrade option. I understand there is a little conflict with our
> marketing message, but its a reasonable outcome for the user.

Filed:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=723155
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=723158

Alexander Skwar

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 3:42:52 PM2/1/12
to dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
Interesting to see, that you are only quoting this.

Well, replace "propaganda" with "PR", if it makes you feel better. Doesn't
change anything, though.

This strawman raises the question, if you are actually interested in a
discussion.

Anyway, to me it seems, that you indeed do not want to understand the other
side of the argument. To me, it boils down to this: the cost of a newsgroup
post is very minimal. There is a gain. Not a huge one, but there is one.
Users over and over bring it up. Its always ignored.

Why?

Alexander

Matt Brubeck

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 3:44:19 PM2/1/12
to
Let's remember that not everyone is a native English speaker, and may
not be aware of words' connotations for different readers. In many
times/places/languages, "propaganda" is just a neutral synonym for
"advertising" or "publicity." (In U.S. English it is strongly
associated with wartime political messages.)

David H. Lipman

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 4:48:51 PM2/1/12
to
From: "Asa Dotzler" <a...@mozilla.org>
"Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the
attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit
oneself or one's group."

Like this is NOT propaganda
http://blog.mozilla.com/files/2011/12/firefox2011.jpg

"Propaganda is generally an appeal to emotion, not intellect. It shares
techniques with advertising and public relations, each of which can be
thought of as propaganda that promotes a commercial product or shapes the
perception of an organization, person, or brand. In post–World War II usage,
the word "propaganda" more typically refers to political or nationalist uses
of these techniques or to the promotion of a set of ideas, since the term
had gained a pejorative meaning. The refusal phenomenon was eventually to be
seen in politics itself by the substitution of "political marketing" and
other designations for "political propaganda"."

Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda

BTW: The American dialect of the English language is my native tongue and I
use the word "propaganda" in true-form context.

Justin Wood (Callek)

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 5:07:16 PM2/1/12
to JP Rosevear
JP Rosevear wrote:
> On Tue, 2012-01-31 at 17:27 -0800, Asa Dotzler wrote:
>> On 1/31/2012 4:55 PM, Gavin Sharp wrote:
>>> On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 9:14 AM, Asa Dotzler<a...@mozilla.org> wrote:
>>>> I don't know how make sure this is well-communicated to those it affects
>>>> without disproportionate effort. What do you propose we do? What have we
>>>> done for unsupported Mac versions?
>>>
>>> Henri suggested posting on the Mozilla blog. That seems like a good idea to me.
>>>
>>> Gavin
>>
>> That might get us one or two more informed Windows 2000 users. That's
>> not really "well-communicated". Even if the press picks it up, we're
>> still talking about a very tiny subset of those people hearing about it.
>>
>> A Better strategy, though I'll bet it wouldn't be as simple as I imagine
>> it to be, would be to message them in-product somehow. That being said,
>> it is a small group and I don't know how much effort it's worth to make
>> product changes -- if those were required.
>
> I think we could take advantage of the hotfix extension here to message
> those users.

We can ONLY for those users on 10 or above, we cannot for users on
3.6.x, etc.

> I also think that putting them on the ESR in the next
> update round is a reasonable idea, at least for Win2K where there is no
> free upgrade option. I understand there is a little conflict with our
> marketing message, but its a reasonable outcome for the user.

Reasonable to expect absolutely no direct support of the ESR? reasonable
to expect that we're blurring our stated goal of the ESR?
Reasonable to confuse the public/user message of "What and Why do we
have an ESR"?

I disagree, (as do some in at least one of the bugs you filed) but would
be interested in dialog on specifically why you feel these benefits
outweigh the downsides.

--
~Justin Wood (Callek)

JP Rosevear

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 5:37:29 PM2/1/12
to Justin Wood (Callek), dev-apps-firefox
On Wed, 2012-02-01 at 17:07 -0500, Justin Wood (Callek) wrote:
> JP Rosevear wrote:
> > On Tue, 2012-01-31 at 17:27 -0800, Asa Dotzler wrote:
> >> On 1/31/2012 4:55 PM, Gavin Sharp wrote:
> >>> On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 9:14 AM, Asa Dotzler<a...@mozilla.org> wrote:
> >>>> I don't know how make sure this is well-communicated to those it affects
> >>>> without disproportionate effort. What do you propose we do? What have we
> >>>> done for unsupported Mac versions?
> >>>
> >>> Henri suggested posting on the Mozilla blog. That seems like a good idea to me.
> >>>
> >>> Gavin
> >>
> >> That might get us one or two more informed Windows 2000 users. That's
> >> not really "well-communicated". Even if the press picks it up, we're
> >> still talking about a very tiny subset of those people hearing about it.
> >>
> >> A Better strategy, though I'll bet it wouldn't be as simple as I imagine
> >> it to be, would be to message them in-product somehow. That being said,
> >> it is a small group and I don't know how much effort it's worth to make
> >> product changes -- if those were required.
> >
> > I think we could take advantage of the hotfix extension here to message
> > those users.
>
> We can ONLY for those users on 10 or above, we cannot for users on
> 3.6.x, etc.

Correct, the bug says FF4, but I should have said latest.

> > I also think that putting them on the ESR in the next
> > update round is a reasonable idea, at least for Win2K where there is no
> > free upgrade option. I understand there is a little conflict with our
> > marketing message, but its a reasonable outcome for the user.
>
> Reasonable to expect absolutely no direct support of the ESR?

I think this means SUMO and related user support? They will not get it
either way.

> reasonable
> to expect that we're blurring our stated goal of the ESR?
> Reasonable to confuse the public/user message of "What and Why do we
> have an ESR"?

This is a concern. I think it can be weighed with how many people we
can help and doing the right thing in terms of notice (I worry 18 weeks
is not enough).

Thanks,

Asa Dotzler

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 5:57:10 PM2/1/12
to
On 2/1/2012 2:37 PM, JP Rosevear wrote:

> This is a concern. I think it can be weighed with how many people we
> can help and doing the right thing in terms of notice (I worry 18 weeks
> is not enough).

My preference would be a simple in-product notification to win2K users
with a link to Opera's download page and an in-product notification to
XP RTM and SP1 users with a link to the MS SP download page is the best
we can do and it doesn't require much lead time.

- A

Asa Dotzler

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 6:07:44 PM2/1/12
to
I want to again emphasize how small an audience this is.

We have more Windows users on Firefox 2.0 than we have using win2K and
XP RTM+SP1 across all of our releases.

We have 10 times that many Windows users on Firefox 3.0 and 3.5.

If our goal is to try to help our users stay safe and secure, we'd be
better off trying to message and migrate the millions of users who are
stuck on older versions (who can move forward because their OS is still
supported) than trying to get Win2K users some extra months of support.

Letting go of a platform is never easy, but we should also not
over-rotate here. It's a very very small audience and our time and
effort in messaging and migration would be much better spent looking at
the large numbers of left-behind users who could move forward.

- A

Asa Dotzler

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 6:17:43 PM2/1/12
to
On 2/1/2012 12:20 AM, Alexander Skwar wrote:
It would be a way to go for little or no gain and the potential for
confusion and further time wasted.

I think there's some confusion because you don't understand the big
picture here. This is a tiny group of users (hundreds of thousands) that
will not easily be reached and if we did reach them, there's little we
can do for them. If we're going to expend effort to reach left-behind
users, we should be putting that effort towards the tens of millions of
users who are on unsupported versions of Firefox and urging them to move
forward to a new release. There's no free lunch and we should be
spending our messaging capital on efforts that can actually make a
difference for our users, not on things that will make us feel better
about ourselves but not actually help Firefox users.

> In the end, it would've cost you a LOT LESS, then it costs you now,
> because that missed post stirred up a lengthy communication on this
> list. And this thread did not just cost you time, but also credibility,
> because it "might" lead to the impression, that you don't care much for
> (some?) users, by the lack of communication.

I disagree. Posting here is of little or not cost but it's also of
little or no benefit to our Firefox users. You see costs very
differently than I do. I realize, where you seem not to, that we have
limited bandwidth (time, money, capacity to achieve good press coverage,
etc.) to do widespread messaging to Firefox users and that the more we
use that for campaigns that cannot have a big impact, the less we have
for the efforts that can make a real differences. If we're going to try
to get publicity around upgrades or moving users from one browser to
another (the best we can do for Win2K users) we could spend that same
effort to reach a much larger and more likely to respond audience of
Firefox users who are left behind on old and insecure versions who can
move forward to newer versions.

> Especially because this "issue" (lack of newsgroup posts) has been
> brought up not so long ago already… With someone concluding, that in the
> future, posts ought to be made, IIRC.

I posted to the newsgroup. Posting to .announce would have zero effect
on helping the relatively tiny group of Firefox users on win2K and XP
RTM+SP1. They simply don't read newsgroups. The only way to reach that
audience is with a serious messaging campaign or an in-product
notification. I'm sorry that I've been unable to explain that to you in
a way you'll understand, but that's the way it is.

- A

Zack Weinberg

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 6:51:56 PM2/1/12
to
On 2012-02-01 3:17 PM, Asa Dotzler wrote:
>> Especially because this "issue" (lack of newsgroup posts) has been
>> brought up not so long ago already… With someone concluding, that in the
>> future, posts ought to be made, IIRC.
>
> I posted to the newsgroup. Posting to .announce would have zero effect
> on helping the relatively tiny group of Firefox users on win2K and XP
> RTM+SP1. They simply don't read newsgroups. The only way to reach that
> audience is with a serious messaging campaign or an in-product
> notification. I'm sorry that I've been unable to explain that to you in
> a way you'll understand, but that's the way it is.

EVEN THOUGH THIS IS TRUE, all announcements should *still* be posted to
mozilla.announce and the official Mozilla blog.

Regardless of how may people are affected by any particular
announcement, there is value-in-itself in the existence of a venue (or
venues) to which *all* announcements are posted. This allows people to
be *certain* that they will see all announcements of relevance to them
if they subscribe to one of those venues.

But we only gain that value if ALL announcements are posted to those venues.

(I do not wish to quibble about what qualifies as an "announcement." No,
we shouldn't post every nightly build to the official blog. Yes, we
should post all platform drops (and adds!) to the official blog. I am
confident that it will be obvious to everyone who isn't trolling which
side of the line any given possible announcement falls.)

zw

Asa Dotzler

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 7:26:29 PM2/1/12
to
On 2/1/2012 3:51 PM, Zack Weinberg wrote:
> On 2012-02-01 3:17 PM, Asa Dotzler wrote:
>>> Especially because this "issue" (lack of newsgroup posts) has been
>>> brought up not so long ago already… With someone concluding, that in the
>>> future, posts ought to be made, IIRC.
>>
>> I posted to the newsgroup. Posting to .announce would have zero effect
>> on helping the relatively tiny group of Firefox users on win2K and XP
>> RTM+SP1. They simply don't read newsgroups. The only way to reach that
>> audience is with a serious messaging campaign or an in-product
>> notification. I'm sorry that I've been unable to explain that to you in
>> a way you'll understand, but that's the way it is.
>
> EVEN THOUGH THIS IS TRUE, all announcements should *still* be posted to
> mozilla.announce and the official Mozilla blog.

I don't care about mozilla.announce. I spent years posting there to
little or no effect. It's difficult to post to a moderated grou and just
not worth my time. If you or others want to post announcements there, go
for it.

I do care about the official Mozilla blog and I don't think that it's a
good idea to demand that they post all announcements. That blog was
chartered for "Mozilla-related news, opinions, events and more" and
there is an editorial staff that makes decisions about what's
appropriate and not for that venue. They have an audience to think about
and it should be up to their sole discretion what to publish and what
not to publish to that audience.

- A

Zack Weinberg

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 7:58:54 PM2/1/12
to
On 2012-02-01 4:26 PM, Asa Dotzler wrote:
> On 2/1/2012 3:51 PM, Zack Weinberg wrote:
>>
>> EVEN THOUGH THIS IS TRUE, all announcements should *still* be posted to
>> mozilla.announce and the official Mozilla blog.
>
> I don't care about mozilla.announce. I spent years posting there to
> little or no effect. It's difficult to post to a moderated grou and just
> not worth my time. If you or others want to post announcements there, go
> for it.

The person who posts announcements ought to be an actual Mozilla
employee. Perhaps it is not the best use of *your* time. I am under
the impression that the Corporation has PR staff nowadays.

> I do care about the official Mozilla blog and I don't think that it's a
> good idea to demand that they post all announcements.

I am open to the possibility that there should be another official
Mozilla blog that carries all, and only, announcements. Shall I file a bug?

zw

Asa Dotzler

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 8:08:52 PM2/1/12
to
On 2/1/2012 4:58 PM, Zack Weinberg wrote:
> On 2012-02-01 4:26 PM, Asa Dotzler wrote:
>> On 2/1/2012 3:51 PM, Zack Weinberg wrote:
>>>
>>> EVEN THOUGH THIS IS TRUE, all announcements should *still* be posted to
>>> mozilla.announce and the official Mozilla blog.
>>
>> I don't care about mozilla.announce. I spent years posting there to
>> little or no effect. It's difficult to post to a moderated grou and just
>> not worth my time. If you or others want to post announcements there, go
>> for it.
>
> The person who posts announcements ought to be an actual Mozilla
> employee. Perhaps it is not the best use of *your* time. I am under the
> impression that the Corporation has PR staff nowadays.

I posted there long before I was a Mozilla employee (before there was
such a thing as "an actual Mozilla employee", even :-)

I don't expect one to materialize, but if there was a dedicated
volunteer who believed that newsgroups were the wave of the future and
wanted to keep that one up to date, we should probably be open to that.

- A

Zack Weinberg

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 8:44:45 PM2/1/12
to
On 2012-02-01 5:08 PM, Asa Dotzler wrote:
> On 2/1/2012 4:58 PM, Zack Weinberg wrote:
>> The person who posts announcements ought to be an actual Mozilla
>> employee. Perhaps it is not the best use of *your* time. I am under the
>> impression that the Corporation has PR staff nowadays.
>
> I posted there long before I was a Mozilla employee (before there was
> such a thing as "an actual Mozilla employee", even :-)

The project culture is different now. It is not fair to expect someone
to do that job for free when there are on-staff PR people who could be
doing it.

> I don't expect one to materialize, but if there was a dedicated
> volunteer who believed that newsgroups were the wave of the future and
> wanted to keep that one up to date, we should probably be open to that.

I don't care about preserving mozilla.announce in the long term,
although I do think that all announcements should continue to go there
until there is a replacement venue for announcements, and we go through
a formal, announced discontinuation of the old newsgroup.

I do care that there be a replacement venue.

You say that mozilla.com/blog is not the replacement; fine. That means
we need to *make* a replacement. I reiterate: shall I file a bug?

zw

Chris Ilias

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 8:47:29 PM2/1/12
to
On 12-02-01 7:58 PM, _Zack Weinberg_ spoke thusly:
> On 2012-02-01 4:26 PM, Asa Dotzler wrote:
>> On 2/1/2012 3:51 PM, Zack Weinberg wrote:
>>>
>>> EVEN THOUGH THIS IS TRUE, all announcements should *still* be posted to
>>> mozilla.announce and the official Mozilla blog.
>>
>> I don't care about mozilla.announce. I spent years posting there to
>> little or no effect. It's difficult to post to a moderated grou and just
>> not worth my time. If you or others want to post announcements there, go
>> for it.
>
> The person who posts announcements ought to be an actual Mozilla
> employee.

Maybe, but it doesn't have to be. In 2006, I used to post Thunderbird
announcements with the permission mscott, and a Firefox announcement
with the permission of Basil Hashem.

> I am open to the possibility that there should be another official
> Mozilla blog that carries all, and only, announcements. Shall I file a bug?

What about the about:mozilla blog?
It would be nice to have a community-owned Mozilla news blog.
Originally, there was <http://mozillanews.org/>, then
<http://mozillazine.org/>, and more recently <http://mozillalinks.org/>
(is Percy okay?). Or maybe a social news website dedicated to Mozilla news.

I've set the follow-up on this post to mozilla.marketing.


JoeS

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 8:57:01 PM2/1/12
to
Well back in the 50's we used to call this "slipping" but at least you
didn't say anything about his Mamma. You did however completely discount
his point.

I guess nobody will be nominating you to this group:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Conductors
I wonder if those folks shouldn't be looking in here.

BTW, this decision will eventually affect Thunderbird, I'm sure. And
those users definitely read Newsgroups to keep up to date. And not
necessarily the Firefox group.

No need for a reply here.

--
JoeS Using TB 12.0..On win2k

Asa Dotzler

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 11:16:28 PM2/1/12
to
Filing a bug and creating a venue is the easy part. Feel free. The hard
part will be getting people to share content to that venue.

We communicate the heck our of our doings with extensive meeting notes
and status updates across blogs, wikis, newsletters, and newsgroups.
Rolling that up into a single location has never been well done and
consistently done. I don't see a bug report changing that.

For a while I tried to roll those all up into a single newsletter but no
one seemed to give a shit about it and all I got was criticism for
leaving out something someone thought should be in, including something
someone thought shouldn't be in, or being too partisan in celebrating
Mozilla advances so I quit.

It's basically a thankless role and so I've opted out. If you can find
some other sucker, great, but it's not gonna be me (and probably not any
of the other people who have filled that role in the past.)

- A

Gen Kanai

unread,
Feb 2, 2012, 2:09:53 AM2/2/12
to dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
In the time that we have been discussing how to communicate this
message, the communication has already been done for us by multiple sources:

http://goo.gl/8TJFr

(That is a Google News search for "Firefox Windows 2000" which returns
multiple news sources already reporting this news.)

I'm in the camp of over-communicating on channels we control. So I would
choose to use the Mozilla Blog (with the support of the PR team of
course), the about:mozilla newsletter, and a post to mozilla.announce.
I'd also make sure the SuMo team has documentation in place as well.

If we're not going to use mozilla.announce for this kind of (relatively
rare) announcement, what is it for?

Gen
https://blog.mozilla.com/gen/

--
Gen Kanai

Justin Wood (Callek)

unread,
Feb 2, 2012, 3:42:13 AM2/2/12
to Asa Dotzler
Asa Dotzler wrote:
> On 2/1/2012 3:51 PM, Zack Weinberg wrote:
>> On 2012-02-01 3:17 PM, Asa Dotzler wrote:
>>>> Especially because this "issue" (lack of newsgroup posts) has been
>>>> brought up not so long ago already… With someone concluding, that in
>>>> the
>>>> future, posts ought to be made, IIRC.
>>>
>>> I posted to the newsgroup. Posting to .announce would have zero effect
>>> on helping the relatively tiny group of Firefox users on win2K and XP
>>> RTM+SP1. They simply don't read newsgroups. The only way to reach that
>>> audience is with a serious messaging campaign or an in-product
>>> notification. I'm sorry that I've been unable to explain that to you in
>>> a way you'll understand, but that's the way it is.
>>
>> EVEN THOUGH THIS IS TRUE, all announcements should *still* be posted to
>> mozilla.announce and the official Mozilla blog.
>
> I don't care about mozilla.announce. I spent years posting there to
> little or no effect. It's difficult to post to a moderated grou and just
> not worth my time. If you or others want to post announcements there, go
> for it.

For the record, I am a mod there -- because of my need to post SeaMonkey
release announcements and, in the past, difficulty of getting MoCo
people to timely approve those.

I'll happily skim that mod queue once and a while and approve ones that
are quasi-official announcements of this sort, since Asa just gave his
blessing.

If no-one beats me to it, give Asa's ok with non-release announcements
going there I'll likely also write up one about this EOL within the next
week or two, and approve it.

Asa, please correct yourself if this is *not* an ok thing. (I assume you
are not doing straw-man suggesting here, which I feel is a fair assumption)

--
~Justin Wood (Callek)

Henri Sivonen

unread,
Feb 2, 2012, 7:52:42 AM2/2/12
to dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 3:27 AM, Asa Dotzler <a...@mozilla.org> wrote:
> On 1/31/2012 4:55 PM, Gavin Sharp wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 9:14 AM, Asa Dotzler<a...@mozilla.org>  wrote:
>>>
>>> I don't know how make sure this is well-communicated to those it affects
>>>
>>> without disproportionate effort. What do you propose we do? What have we
>>> done for unsupported Mac versions?
>>
>> Henri suggested posting on the Mozilla blog. That seems like a good idea
>> to me.
>>
> That might get us one or two more informed Windows 2000 users. That's not
> really "well-communicated". Even if the press picks it up, we're still
> talking about a very tiny subset of those people hearing about it.

Reaching the Windows 2000 this time about this particular thing isn't
the only point.

Whenever Mozilla EOLs an OS and does so in a reasonable stage when the
OS being EOLed has few remaining users, you can make the argument that
it's not worth communicating it, because it affect only a few people.
However, if EOL is communicated in a way that causes people who aren't
affected by this particular EOL see the EOL announcement, they will
know that they are following an announcement channel that covers EOL
notices so they know they are following the right channel in case an
EOL some day affects them.

As for putting happy and unhappy announcements on the same channel,
putting them on the same channel tends to make the channel more
trusted.

> A Better strategy, though I'll bet it wouldn't be as simple as I imagine it
> to be, would be to message them in-product somehow.

I think it makes sense to do in-product messaging (in advance preferably) also.

--
Henri Sivonen
hsiv...@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/

Gervase Markham

unread,
Feb 2, 2012, 11:16:25 AM2/2/12
to Asa Dotzler
On 01/02/12 01:27, Asa Dotzler wrote:
> A Better strategy, though I'll bet it wouldn't be as simple as I imagine
> it to be, would be to message them in-product somehow. That being said,
> it is a small group and I don't know how much effort it's worth to make
> product changes -- if those were required.

The benefit would not be restricted to just this group, because this
situation occurs with one platform or another on a regular basis.

The update service needs a way of telling a client "there are updates,
but not for you, old timer", and then giving some more detailed
(localized) advice.

Gerv

Gervase Markham

unread,
Feb 2, 2012, 11:21:20 AM2/2/12
to Asa Dotzler
On 01/02/12 22:57, Asa Dotzler wrote:
> My preference would be a simple in-product notification to win2K users
> with a link to Opera's download page and an in-product notification to
> XP RTM and SP1 users with a link to the MS SP download page is the best
> we can do and it doesn't require much lead time.

That, for me, would be a fantastic outcome.

Also, the fact that we are promoting Opera in this way would be
newsworthy. We should make sure we are in control of that message too
("Mozilla cares about the security of its users enough to recommend a
competing product in some circumstances.")

Gerv

Gervase Markham

unread,
Feb 2, 2012, 11:22:50 AM2/2/12
to Asa Dotzler
On 01/02/12 23:07, Asa Dotzler wrote:
> Letting go of a platform is never easy, but we should also not
> over-rotate here. It's a very very small audience and our time and
> effort in messaging and migration would be much better spent looking at
> the large numbers of left-behind users who could move forward.

Every time we let go of a platform, it's a small audience (that's the
point). But what is the total headcount of all the people who've ever
been on a platform we've let go? And how many will be added in the
future, particularly when we have to take the difficult decision to
discontinue support for XP?

We need a mechanism for this.

Gerv


Jared Wein

unread,
Feb 2, 2012, 11:27:32 AM2/2/12
to Gervase Markham, dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
Is it really just a small audience? Doesn't the rest of the Windows user base benefit from this?

I think that there can be messaging about how we can now use some more performant compilers along with other tools, making Firefox even faster.

- Jared

Henri Sivonen

unread,
Feb 2, 2012, 11:40:45 AM2/2/12
to dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 6:21 PM, Gervase Markham <ge...@mozilla.org> wrote:
> Also, the fact that we are promoting Opera in this way would be newsworthy.
> We should make sure we are in control of that message too ("Mozilla cares
> about the security of its users enough to recommend a competing product in
> some circumstances.")

FWIW, there's a possibility that this gets spun another way: "Mozilla
hates its ESR so much that it rather recommends a competitor's
product." :-(

(Note that I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't let people know about
Opera. However, it would be odd not to mention ESR, too--especially if
we believe that a bunch of W2K users are in enterprise settings.)

Dao

unread,
Feb 2, 2012, 11:53:11 AM2/2/12
to
ESR will only get them some months. Chances are that Opera will be able
to support them longer.

Henri Sivonen

unread,
Feb 2, 2012, 12:01:57 PM2/2/12
to dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 6:53 PM, Dao <d...@design-noir.de> wrote:
> ESR will only get them some months.

Well, we could point to both and then point to Opera only at time of
ESR EOL if Opera still support W2K at that time.

> Chances are that Opera will be able to support them longer.

Do we know that? Once Firefox dropped Mac PPC, Opera followed soon after.

Ehsan Akhgari

unread,
Feb 2, 2012, 12:58:42 PM2/2/12
to Henri Sivonen, dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
About the viability of promoting the ESR as an update to Win2k users, we
should note that the last Win2k release will be Firefox 12, and the ESR is
based on Firefox 10. Therefore if we're going to do that, we at least need
to make sure that the downgrade path from Firefox 12 to Firefox 10 is
tested, and won't break anything for those users. As I understand our
release QA process, it currently does not include any kind of downgrade
testing. So we need to make sure to have QA resources for this kind of
testing if we decide to offer ESR to Windows 2000 users.

Cheers,
--
Ehsan
<http://ehsanakhgari.org/>


On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 11:40 AM, Henri Sivonen <hsiv...@iki.fi> wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 6:21 PM, Gervase Markham <ge...@mozilla.org> wrote:
> > Also, the fact that we are promoting Opera in this way would be
> newsworthy.
> > We should make sure we are in control of that message too ("Mozilla cares
> > about the security of its users enough to recommend a competing product
> in
> > some circumstances.")
>
> FWIW, there's a possibility that this gets spun another way: "Mozilla
> hates its ESR so much that it rather recommends a competitor's
> product." :-(
>
> (Note that I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't let people know about
> Opera. However, it would be odd not to mention ESR, too--especially if
> we believe that a bunch of W2K users are in enterprise settings.)
>
> --
> Henri Sivonen
> hsiv...@iki.fi
> http://hsivonen.iki.fi/
> _______________________________________________
> dev-apps-firefox mailing list
> dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-apps-firefox
>

Asa Dotzler

unread,
Feb 2, 2012, 2:46:47 PM2/2/12
to
On 2/1/2012 11:09 PM, Gen Kanai wrote:
> If we're not going to use mozilla.announce for this kind of (relatively
> rare) announcement, what is it for?

Gen, i'll bet every tweet you make on Twitter gets more reads than a
.announce post.

I don't think mozilla.announce serves much of a purpose at all.
Newsgroups are sort of an acceptable (least bad) solution for
communication within a project where we all understand that we have to
use them but they're just plain awful for communicating outside of the
project.

- A

Asa Dotzler

unread,
Feb 2, 2012, 2:47:01 PM2/2/12
to
Go for it.

- A

Asa Dotzler

unread,
Feb 2, 2012, 2:48:46 PM2/2/12
to
On 2/2/2012 9:58 AM, Ehsan Akhgari wrote:
> About the viability of promoting the ESR as an update to Win2k users, we
> should note that the last Win2k release will be Firefox 12, and the ESR is
> based on Firefox 10. Therefore if we're going to do that, we at least need
> to make sure that the downgrade path from Firefox 12 to Firefox 10 is
> tested, and won't break anything for those users. As I understand our
> release QA process, it currently does not include any kind of downgrade
> testing. So we need to make sure to have QA resources for this kind of
> testing if we decide to offer ESR to Windows 2000 users.
>
> Cheers,
> --
> Ehsan
> <http://ehsanakhgari.org/>

ESR is not going to be a Mozilla-promoted destination for unsupported
platforms. This was already discussed when ESR was being designed and
nothing's changed.

ESR is for managed deployments. That's it.

- A

Asa Dotzler

unread,
Feb 2, 2012, 2:50:01 PM2/2/12
to
We won't discontinue support for XP until it has few users. We should be
able to do in-product messaging letting people know that they've come to
the end of the line in Firefox and either point them to a path forward
with another browser or an OS upgrade.

- A

Asa Dotzler

unread,
Feb 2, 2012, 2:53:28 PM2/2/12
to
We will get wins. Those wins have already been discussed in these groups
for the people working on Firefox (and played a big role in our decision
to move forward to the new compiler.)

For users, we announce wins on the future of Firefox blog or individual
mozillian blogs when they happen. If someone wants to blog about the big
performance improvement we got this week when we switched over to the
new compiler, that would be great. I'd love to see the graphs.

- A

Justin Wood (Callek)

unread,
Feb 2, 2012, 7:19:01 PM2/2/12
to Asa Dotzler
m.announce *IS* available as a mailing list, and while it doesn't have
all that many current mail-list members, it does have a "good" number, I
suspect part of the problem with its member base is the fact of us not
actually USING it.

1957 members total, 1 shown

it used to have more than that (I remember a time with >5k members
there, fwiw)

As well as the fact that we have newsgroup messages viewable via google
groups (and people can subscribe from google groups outside of us
directly, iirc) and our listserve archives are public, I find this data
not easy to actually grab.

--
~Justin Wood (Callek)

Asa Dotzler

unread,
Feb 2, 2012, 10:49:59 PM2/2/12
to
On 2/2/2012 4:19 PM, Justin Wood (Callek) wrote:
> Asa Dotzler wrote:
>> On 2/1/2012 11:09 PM, Gen Kanai wrote:
>>> If we're not going to use mozilla.announce for this kind of (relatively
>>> rare) announcement, what is it for?
>>
>> Gen, i'll bet every tweet you make on Twitter gets more reads than a
>> .announce post.
>>
>> I don't think mozilla.announce serves much of a purpose at all.
>> Newsgroups are sort of an acceptable (least bad) solution for
>> communication within a project where we all understand that we have to
>> use them but they're just plain awful for communicating outside of the
>> project.
>>
>> - A
>
> m.announce *IS* available as a mailing list, and while it doesn't have
> all that many current mail-list members, it does have a "good" number, I
> suspect part of the problem with its member base is the fact of us not
> actually USING it.

I'm not gonna argue beyond this reply about the relevance of newsgroups.
I think they're completely worthless for general communication. I think
they're almost tolerable for communication within a few parts of the
Mozilla project.

When pretty much any Mozillian can tweet what they ate for breakfast and
get more visibility than a .announce post, I don't think there's much
value in debating this further.

- A

Justin Wood (Callek)

unread,
Feb 3, 2012, 2:41:19 AM2/3/12
to Asa Dotzler
Asa Dotzler wrote:
>>
>> m.announce *IS* available as a mailing list, and while it doesn't have
>> all that many current mail-list members, it does have a "good" number, I
>> suspect part of the problem with its member base is the fact of us not
>> actually USING it.
>
> I'm not gonna argue beyond this reply about the relevance of newsgroups.
> I think they're completely worthless for general communication. I think
> they're almost tolerable for communication within a few parts of the
> Mozilla project.
>
> When pretty much any Mozillian can tweet what they ate for breakfast and
> get more visibility than a .announce post, I don't think there's much
> value in debating this further.

Without meaning to offend, you and I have very different opinions here
overall.

I feel that the existence of mailing lists + newsgroup combo is a great
and I do mean GREAT benefit to our project as a whole. And neglecting
them just because you personally think they are worthless is a huge slap
in the face to the community which grew around these to begin with.

I also acknowledge that no amount of communication, will change your
mind here.

I would also comment that the general reach/goals/userbase of platforms
like twitter/facebook are VERY different than the type of
people/use-cases you get with newsgroups/mailing lists.

Dismissing one because the other "reaches more people" is just plain
wrong. But I agree that either of us spending more time here is a
detriment in and of itself, as I do not feel either of our opinions are
going anywhere except banging more against this brick wall.

--
~Justin Wood (Callek)

Justin Dolske

unread,
Feb 3, 2012, 3:46:11 AM2/3/12
to
On 2/2/12 11:41 PM, Justin Wood (Callek) wrote:

>> When pretty much any Mozillian can tweet what they ate for breakfast and
>> get more visibility than a .announce post, I don't think there's much
>> value in debating this further.
>
> Without meaning to offend, you and I have very different opinions here
> overall.
>
> I feel that the existence of mailing lists + newsgroup combo is a great
> and I do mean GREAT benefit to our project as a whole. And neglecting
> them just because you personally think they are worthless is a huge slap
> in the face to the community which grew around these to begin with.

Just for fun...

There are just under 2000 email subscribers to the .announce email list.
That's a magnitude of order higher than I would have guessed.

I'd expect that newsgroup readership is even lower because it's a rather
obscure medium now. So maybe a total of 2200 people read this stuff. But
I was wrong in my guess above, so just for giggles let's call it 10x the
email readership instead of 0.1x.

That generously gives us 22,000. Let's fudge that up to 50,000 just to
be safe.

Contrasts:

Number of @Firefox followers on Twitter: 678,000
Number of about:home clicks for a snippet asking for _donations_: ~2,300,000
Number of MoFo newsletter subscribers: ~2,500,000
Number of Firefox fans on Facebook: 7,300,000

[http://engagingopenly.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/eoy-2011-wrap-up/]

I think there's significant value in having official communication
channels, preferably targeted to specific interest groups (webdevs,
admins, users, whatever). Folks are already working on improving some of
those channels. But I think it's also pretty clear that the current
.announce email and newsgroups reach only a vanishingly small number of
people.

That doesn't mean we should just press the eject button on .announce
today, but it should be blazingly obvious that it's an ineffective
channel. And if folks are serious about making sure people hear
messages, they should be helping to find ways to help Mozilla connect
with the relevant people.

Justin

Justin Dolske

unread,
Feb 3, 2012, 3:53:48 AM2/3/12
to
On 2/2/12 8:22 AM, Gervase Markham wrote:

> Every time we let go of a platform, it's a small audience (that's the
> point). But what is the total headcount of all the people who've ever
> been on a platform we've let go? And how many will be added in the
> future, particularly when we have to take the difficult decision to
> discontinue support for XP?

I'm not sure how relevant that number is, because it wouldn't account
for people moving to a new platform.

Eventually we'll be dropping support for the platforms used by all of
our current ~1/2 billion users. Certainly not this year, but in 10-15
years, sure. 15 years ago no one was running Windows 2000 or XP or
Ubuntu or OS X. :-)

[OS/2, on the other hand... :-)]

Justin

Alexander Skwar

unread,
Feb 3, 2012, 3:58:40 AM2/3/12
to dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
Hi

On Fri, Feb 3, 2012 at 09:46, Justin Dolske <dol...@mozilla.com> wrote:

>
> I think there's significant value in having official communication
> channels, preferably targeted to specific interest groups (webdevs, admins,
> users, whatever). Folks are already working on improving some of those
> channels. But I think it's also pretty clear that the current .announce
> email and newsgroups reach only a vanishingly small number of people.
>

Yes, that might be so - but why's that so? I'd guess, it's so, because the
list/newsgroup isn't actually used by Mozilla. If it were "full", people
would
actually use it more. But since there's no content, why subscribe to it?

In this light, I find "50.000" users extremely high and clear indication
that
there are A LOT of users and thus it would be the right way to use these
channels more.


>
> That doesn't mean we should just press the eject button on .announce
> today, but it should be blazingly obvious that it's an ineffective channel.
> And if folks are serious


No, it's not obvious.

Alexander
--
↯ Lifestream (Twitter, Blog, …) ↣ http://alexs77.soup.io/
↯ Chat (Jabber/Google Talk) ↣ a.s...@gmail.com , AIM: alexws77 ↯

Axel Grude

unread,
Feb 3, 2012, 10:37:39 AM2/3/12
to
Well I really hope for performance boosts, as currently, in HTML5 chrome runs rings
around gecko!! That is badly needed, so if switching to VS2010 helps with this, it is
high time.

I guess the ESR version (Fx10) is going to remain on VS2008?

Ax

Robert Kaiser

unread,
Feb 3, 2012, 10:54:15 AM2/3/12
to
Gervase Markham schrieb:
> The update service needs a way of telling a client "there are updates,
> but not for you, old timer", and then giving some more detailed
> (localized) advice.

Yes. Right now, the "About Firefox" window even tells them their Firefox
is "up to date" which IMHO is not in the best interest of a user
checking there and wanting to be on a secure browser.

Robert Kaiser

Axel Grude

unread,
Feb 3, 2012, 11:33:45 AM2/3/12
to
On 02/02/12 17:01, Henri Sivonen wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 6:53 PM, Dao<d...@design-noir.de> wrote:
>> ESR will only get them some months.
>
> Well, we could point to both and then point to Opera only at time of
> ESR EOL if Opera still support W2K at that time.
>
>> Chances are that Opera will be able to support them longer.
>
> Do we know that? Once Firefox dropped Mac PPC, Opera followed soon after.
>
tenfour! :)

Axel Grude

unread,
Feb 3, 2012, 11:35:35 AM2/3/12
to
why should Mozilla stop supporting the only current MS operating system that hasn't
got digital restriction management built into its core? That would be completely
counterproductive.

Axel Grude

unread,
Feb 3, 2012, 11:39:00 AM2/3/12
to
Almost as annoying as those IE pages that say you are not running the latest Internet
Explorer, then when you follow the link, say: your OS is out of date (XP). [I am
running IE8, when I have to]

That really reeks of bundling (OS+Browser, this time the other way round)... does
anybody remember the browser wars?

Boris Zbarsky

unread,
Feb 3, 2012, 12:01:48 PM2/3/12
to
On 2/3/12 10:37 AM, Axel Grude wrote:
> Well I really hope for performance boosts, as currently, in HTML5 chrome
> runs rings around gecko!!

Please file bugs as needed with pointers to testcases and cc me.
Performance wins from switching to the new compiler were order of 3-10%
depending on testcase, which is nice but won't change any "runs rings"
scenarios.

-Boris

Axel Grude

unread,
Feb 3, 2012, 12:26:06 PM2/3/12
to
no problem, will do.

I mean particularly pages like these:

http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/ParticleAcceleration/
19fps in chrome, 3fps in Fx10

http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/LetItSnow/
7fps in chrome, 5fps in Fx

http://www.spielzeugz.de/html5/compare/canvas-imgs-resize-rounded-buffer.html
27fps in chrome, 14fps in Fx

http://www.spielzeugz.de/html5/compare/canvas-lines.html
28fps in chrome, 18fps in Fx

I don't know whether these are just edge cases, but they certainly worry me a bit for
the future of Gecko.

Windows XP SP3, 1680*1050px, 3.2 Ghz Phenom IV, ATI Radeon HD 4800


Boris Zbarsky

unread,
Feb 3, 2012, 12:36:17 PM2/3/12
to
On 2/3/12 12:26 PM, Axel Grude wrote:
> http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/ParticleAcceleration/
> 19fps in chrome, 3fps in Fx10
>
> http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/LetItSnow/
> 7fps in chrome, 5fps in Fx
>
> http://www.spielzeugz.de/html5/compare/canvas-imgs-resize-rounded-buffer.html
>
> 27fps in chrome, 14fps in Fx
>
> http://www.spielzeugz.de/html5/compare/canvas-lines.html
> 28fps in chrome, 18fps in Fx

None of those are "HTML5". They're all graphics testcases. And since
you're on an OS where we don't do hardware-accelerated rendering at the
moment, you get software rendering. And then you run into cairo sucking.

The new compiler will help some.
http://blog.mozilla.com/joe/2011/04/26/introducing-the-azure-project/
will help more.

-Boris

Gervase Markham

unread,
Feb 3, 2012, 12:37:07 PM2/3/12
to Axel Grude
On 03/02/12 17:26, Axel Grude wrote:
> I mean particularly pages like these:
>
> http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/ParticleAcceleration/
> 19fps in chrome, 3fps in Fx10

You should check if there are bugs and, if not, as Boris said, please
file them.

Gerv

Axel Grude

unread,
Feb 3, 2012, 2:12:10 PM2/3/12
to
On 03/02/12 17:36, Boris Zbarsky wrote:
> On 2/3/12 12:26 PM, Axel Grude wrote:
>> http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/ParticleAcceleration/
>> 19fps in chrome, 3fps in Fx10
>>
>> http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/LetItSnow/
>> 7fps in chrome, 5fps in Fx
>>
>> http://www.spielzeugz.de/html5/compare/canvas-imgs-resize-rounded-buffer.html
>>
>> 27fps in chrome, 14fps in Fx
>>
>> http://www.spielzeugz.de/html5/compare/canvas-lines.html
>> 28fps in chrome, 18fps in Fx
>
> None of those are "HTML5". They're all graphics testcases. And since you're on an OS
> where we don't do hardware-accelerated rendering at the moment, you get software
> rendering. And then you run into cairo sucking.

So the question is, will hardware acceleration be backported into XP at some stage? Or
are we mirroring the same restriction as IE9 / IE8 does with Win7 vs WinXP?

of course I am interested how these perform in Win7 (even though I won't update
anytime soon)

> The new compiler will help some.
That's what I was hoping for.
Cool article, even more hope. I especially like the proposal to be able to implement
the API on OpenGL or Direct3D. I think that would make the differences much smaller,
heck I'd say on a lot graphics adapters D3D is bound to outperform D2D!

<quote>
3D Backends

The goal of the “3D” backends is to implement Azure’s 2D API on top of the common 3D
APIs (OpenGL and Direct3D) so we can have content acceleration on Windows XP, OS X,
Linux, and mobile. Our intent with these 3D backends is to be fully cross-platform,
including Windows 7. This lets us better control our performance characteristics and
bugs, rather than spending a lot of time and energy working around Direct2D bugs.
</quote>

Very cool project. There is hope after all !

:)

Axel

Axel Grude

unread,
Feb 3, 2012, 2:25:03 PM2/3/12
to
As in, error console? Guess low fps doesn't count as a bug, per se, right?

Ax

Boris Zbarsky

unread,
Feb 3, 2012, 2:38:29 PM2/3/12
to
On 2/3/12 2:12 PM, Axel Grude wrote:
> So the question is, will hardware acceleration be backported into XP at
> some stage?

Did you read the blog post I linked to?

-Boris

Justin Wood (Callek)

unread,
Feb 3, 2012, 2:48:40 PM2/3/12
to Axel Grude
No he means check for bugs in Bugzilla's database. A bug is what we call
all our issues, whether they be enhancement requests, actual "Bugs" in
the software, etc.

--
~Justin Wood (Callek)

Chris Ilias

unread,
Feb 3, 2012, 5:35:13 PM2/3/12
to
On 12-02-03 2:25 PM, _Axel Grude_ spoke thusly:
> On 03/02/12 17:37, Gervase Markham wrote:
>
>> You should check if there are bugs and, if not, as Boris said, please
>> file them.
>
> As in, error console? Guess low fps doesn't count as a bug, per se, right?

I guess you're unfamiliar with how to report Firefox bugs. Bug reporting
and tracking is done via bugzilla.mozilla.org.
The quality assurance website has a page with links to tools (and
people) to help you out at
<https://quality.mozilla.org/teams/desktop-firefox/>.
It includes a link to a tutorial on writing bug reports at
<https://developer.mozilla.org/en/bug_writing_guidelines>.

Axel Grude

unread,
Feb 3, 2012, 6:50:23 PM2/3/12
to
yes, and I even quoted from it :)

"The goal of the “3D” backends is to implement Azure’s 2D API on top of the common 3D
APIs (OpenGL and Direct3D) so we can have content acceleration on Windows XP, OS X,
Linux, and mobile."

The blog was a bit old, hope this is still planned.

Axel

Axel Grude

unread,
Feb 3, 2012, 6:52:42 PM2/3/12
to
No you're alright. I actually track (bugzilla) bugs & feature requests for my own
extensions and have already submitted several bugs for Thunderbird.

I thought he meant just check if there are bugs in Firefox, not whether there are
reported bugs in bugzilla, my bad.

Axel

Boris Zbarsky

unread,
Feb 3, 2012, 9:55:43 PM2/3/12
to
On 2/3/12 6:50 PM, Axel Grude wrote:
> The blog was a bit old, hope this is still planned.

Work's ongoing, yes.

-Boris
0 new messages