HOLD IT!

[teoriadetodo]

HOLD IT!: The human aspect

 

My name is Fernando. I'm argentinian, and I'm 40 years old.
And Firefox is about to be wiped out.
Yes, you read correctly.
And this post is a last ditch attempt to stop that.

 

No, this post is not going to be normal.
And no, this post is not going to be easygoing, either.

 

The next thing you need to know about me, is that I'm neither a kid, nor a fool.
And no, I'm not a programmer.
Nor am I looking for a job.
No, I do not want money.
And no, I'm not seeking for 15 minutes of fame.

 

Finally, no,I do not enjoy talking about myself either. I must, this time, least of all anyone here tries to invalidate the tremendously solid and urgent points about to be made in an unfair manner.
We simply do not have the time.

 

Either we do this correctly, of Firefox fades into irrelevance.
Period.

 

HOLD IT: The real message

 

HOLD IT:Firefox's past

 

"Either we do this correctly, of Firefox fades into irrelevance.
Period."

 

How do I know?
Simple.
1) A brutal chunk of the market out there uses IE.
2) People does not change unless there is some good reason for it.
3) There is no good reason for it.

 

Question: How did Firefox ever even managed to exist?
Because when FF started, a couple of good reasons existed.
1) To be open source.
2) To be extensible.
3) To have at least a couple of killer features out of the box. Most notably, standards and tabbeb browsing.

 

Now let me dissect that:
1) To be open source.
That is not a *technical* reason. It is a social one.
For an app to be open source does not mean that has better functionality, better algorithms, better GUI, or anything like it.
It simply means that intelligent people would contribute to it for free.
For instance, showing out of nowhere and writing weird (but valuable) posts before it is too late.
Like this one.
Instead of writing them to Microsoft.

 

2) To be extensible.
This is true advantage. Honest to god one.
However, there is a point to be made.
Some extensions should obviously (by now) be included in the main code. And they are not getting there.
So we keep having to add extensions for features that should NOT be extensions. Heaps and more heaps of extensions.

 

Oh, yeah, yeah, don´t bother, I can hear you already:
"That is a feature, not a bug. You can make firefox as big or small as you want".
And...
"Not everyone would agree with which features should be incorporated and which should not."

 

Em...no, sorry.
There might be some not-so-clear cases. Sure.
But there are some clear ones. And there is not even mention of including them, as far as I can see today.

 

We can discuss extension by extension, or feature by feature. I can make some strong cases for some of them. But I will not here, now.
My point here is that not even the *idea* seems to be considered at this time. Hughe mistake.

 

3) To have at least a couple of killer features out of the box. Most notably, standards and tabbeb browsing.
Let's be clear about this one.
You *could* have tabbed browsing before. But most people did not even know it, So let's count it as a true, valid point.
Today, however, ALL browsers are tabbed. This is no "exciting feature" anymore.
And what do we see when we go to see FF's 2.0 roadmap?
Yes, you guessed: tabbed browsing improvemnts.
let me remind you, we are not talking about FF 1.5, no. We are not talking about a typical "bug fixing in next release" sort of thing, no.
We are talking about FF 2.0.
But wait, it gets worse!
What do we get when we go to see FF's 3.0 roadmap????
Tabbed browsing improvements.
The bleeding thing does not even exist yet, and is more than a year away! And we are still talking tabbed browsing????????????????
Utterly unacceptable.

 

As for standards, they are a truly good feature. No questions about it. However, two observations:
1) People who care about standards are not your regular folk. They are not the bulk of the poeople out there. Most people who care about standards, are geeks, or at least sufficiently tech-savvy. Most of those adopted FF already. But do not expect market share to increase from that.
2) In fact, that bunch of standards aware early adopters, might even diminish.
Why so? Because web standards *per se*, altough good, were not an end in themselves, but a mean.
And a mean for what? For something else. Perhaps it can best expessed as "interoperability", or "machine processability". A second tier. Apps that take advantage from standards. And why diminish? Because there is a problem with that: their appearance rate. Their coming out is taking ages. And I'm talking years. Full years. Hence, some get bored.

 

HOLD IT: Firefox's present

 

FF is about to sink. Why? Because instead of "to boldly go...", it stalled.
And mind you, the word "stalled" might be percieved as "to at least mantain it's market share". Not to gain (which it should), but at least, not to loose.
But that is not even the case.

 

IE7 and Vista are coming.
Microsoft, as usual, is doing as little as it can but just enough to screw all competitors.
1) Example 1: for standards people, iron out the worst, untenable bugs. A crap solution, obviously. But enough to mud the waters, and to take wawy selling points in *bulk people's perception*. A dirty 80/20 move. But it works.
2) Example 2: tabbed browsing, Formerly a complete FF comparative asset, now evened up. Gone. And (again in bulk people's perception) it works.

 

Is that it? Bad, terribly bad as it is, is that it? No, hell, no. There is more. Potentially, *way* more. But I'll discuss it later on.

 

So are there any killer features in FF 2.0? No.
The closest thing would be rss support.New feature, true. True funcionality (assuming it is done correctly). True. Killer feature? Er...no. Very useful, yes. But *comparatively* speaking, no advantage.
Why not? Because by now, all other browsers do it as well.
So no. At most, it is a tie.
And could it get even worst? Yes, it could.
How come? "Embrace, extend, extinguish" comes to mind. It so happens that Microsft saw an ooportunity this time. Not just to apply an 80/20 rule, declare the situation a tie, and screw everyone else by sheer weight (market share). No, it is potentially worst.
It has to do with a couple of things roughly called list extensions. Microsoft saw the obvious: that no matter that rss took full years to get to prime time, the bleeding thing is, programatically peaking, a tremendously basic thing, i.e, "to pull constantly updated content from a url in a half-decent efficient manner". Take the hype out, and the thing is just "a list". Yes, one of the most simple data structures you could possibly get. And Microsft saw the obvious: a list is a very simple dat structure, and heaps of things are lists, so you can dazzle people by programming very little: a lists manipulator. The end user will not just have rss, but also "amazon wishlists", aand blah blah blah. A ton of other instances of "a list".
Given that IE might be ready to handle any of such lists from within the browser, and be "integrated" with the OS...then yes, it can get worse. A coparative *dis*-advantage, unless the lists problem is considered.

 

So no killer feature. At best a tie.

 

Can it get even worst? Oh, yes. Perhaps very. Via something called winFS.
Basically speaking, the OS becomes a sort of (faked, apparently) database. Which means that all manners of interoperability between different data formats, from different sources, becomes possible, but furthermore, perhaps even simple.
So beware of letting this "lists extensions" things pass by. "Forget OPML" *has* been heard already, mind you all, for instance.

 

HOLD IT: Firefox's future

 

Firefox kickstarted more or less decently (market-share wise) because IE was left to the dogs for years. It is no longer the case.
And there are few low-hanging apples left.

 

People poured into it because of it being open source, extensible, and innovative (killer features).
It is still open, or this message would be in Microsft's forum.
It is still extensible, though the extensions situation is A MESS.
There are NO killer features in the horizon, not even one full year away, by which time IE7 and Vista will be out already.

 

Furthermore, due to PR and people's perception, if FF is even *suspected* of being stalled, it is history. It has GOT to innovate. Or perish.

 

Bottom line: FF 2.0 and 3.0 roadmaps have to go. Yes, today. Yes, the whole thing. And we need killer features inmediately.
And yes, some have to make it to 2.0. No, not everything is conveniently kickable to 3.0. Killer features HAVE to make it BEFORE IE7 ships. 3.0 is way too late.

 

Failure to do that = "eternal 10%". Or death.

 

HOLD IT: The solution

 

We have a big problem and we don't have time.
However, I know a way out.

 

A fast way out, and given that most action happen in extensions these days, is to include some extension into the core code.
While this is not a completely honest to god "FF development", it allows at least to be able to say: "FF now has this feature/s" as selling point at release time.
Furthermore, if the extension's code wasn't all too clean, if some side-features were incomplete or lacking, if the UI wasn't to polished...then to work on it and to icorporate a more polished end result, is not quite dishonest either.

 

<disclaimer> I have much more to say in this post, but I'll dive into a particular candidate extension for this for a few paragraphs. You include this extension into the core, then the FF 2.0 critical relesase previous to IE7 and Vista is saved. </disclaimer>

 

Extension to be included: Scrapbook

 

Why so? Beacuse then you can write sentences like this:

 

----"Remember your old "Save As..." functionality? Well, forget it.
Firefox got a massive update and now sports a database-like, taggable, full-text searchable store for web captured content. You can:
1) Save just a page's address (a bookmark)
2) Save just snippets (selected parts of a page, both including all the styles, or none, plus pictures, plus anything else)
3) Save a whole page
4) Save a whole site (up to any number of depth levels from a given adress)

 

You can add tags to any of those types of content. And later you can search the whole store. And we mean full-text search, inluding tags as well.
So that you do not even need to place that content into folders (of course, you can if you want). You can simply search.

 

Later on, you can clean up that saved content (erase whole chunks from the source itself, in the most conmvenient manner, with kindergarden level of usability) via DOM technology.

 

Optionally, you can export any content as html, Or conveniently zipped, Or mail it. or send it to an external editor...for the time being.
Because yes, in future releases, we plan to add capabilities to edit that content, and also to finally publish it to forums, or blogs.
In short, to extend the concept for Firefox to include the whole of the information cycle:
1) View information
2) Store it
3) Edit it
4) (Re)-publish it

 

The web was always intended to be two ways, not just one.

 

A world first. A whole-concept never implemented up to now.
Yes, Firefox did it again."----

 

For those in this list which have not seen scrapbook yet, I seriously recommend you to get it and play with it.
Saving snippets *with* styles is, afaiktoit, a world first.
And please, do not miss the little known feature called DOM eraser.
Both combined, mean the html equivalent of copy, paste and erase.

 

And no, implementing Places, you could NOT write what I wrote above.

 

Neither will you have a clear, logically placed path, in future versions, for another dream: a *clean* code spitting editor, including tidy.

 

Note 1: if you include scrapbook, you do not qwuite need all the bookmarks UI. You can leave it as an options, of course. But given that:

 

    "A "bookmark" is just the special case of web capture in which the information captured is equal to zero (i.e, not a snippet, not a whole page, not a whole site, just the address)."

 

you do not really need it anymore. And you can search and filter results to get only bookmarks, if you so wish, then export them, or whatever.

 

To end this section, people who has seen scrapbook, almost unanimously praised it. plus those who have seen the code, said is quite clean.

 

No, it is not perfect. yes, it has bugs and missing functionality. But the core is already there, up and running.

 

-------------------------------

 

I have yet another idea to offer.

 

And it has two embodiments. One is pretty normal, altough desirable. Already done by other browsers.

 

The second is more radical. And perhaps eyebrow raising.

 

The first scenario, is simply to unify both firefox bars: the address bar, and the search bar.
If you want to see a working example, please see http://www.deepnetexplorer.com . I assume there might be others.
This feature IS desirable cause one saves valuable real state. it is also easier to always have to focus just one place, than two, to type.
If you worry about discoverability, the answer is...you just need to know ONCE that you can search directly from the bar. People is not SO stupid. Fear not, it has been done, and it works perfectly.
ideally, perhaps find and highlight features could be done the same box as well. Further simplification.

 

The second scenario, is more radical.
It involves the following general idea.

 

 "In Firefox, there should not be *any* adress box."
(other than as an option, for those who prefer the old way)

 

Now you think I´m crazy, dont ya?

 

Let me explain...

 

In the whole of my computer, I should have only ONE box.
That box should be accesible system-wide with just one key combination (windows+s works well for windows).
That box should not be in any browser, but in my desk bar (including being able to plug it into useful modifications, such as True Launch Bar).
That box should allow me to:
1) Search in my computer (including interface with indexing apps, such as desktop searchers).
2) Plug a URL.
3) Do a web search (including being able to choose between different engines).
4) Being able to search (and optionally highlight) in currently open documents (aka, search in page...but also perhaps search in *any* open document, even in other apps).
5) Optionally, ability to function as a command line as well.
(Yes, this last point is a bit risky in terms of security, I'm aware. But it could be done, And it should.)

 

Ben works at Google. Google has a desktop search program. Already in the deskbar. Why not to use that and send the inputted strings to firefox?. Google desktop search almost does it all already...

 

If not, a simple standalone little app that puts a text box in the deskbar, and send the text to whomever it may concern (firefox, command line, desktop search app) would do.

 

That way, one computer gets just ONE box, which is always una key away, no matter which app you are in, and allows for both local and web searching, plus command line, by simple rerouting the string to the relevant app.

 

Many people has done such boxes, nothing stops firefox to provide a separately downloadable, generic one, firefox-ready.

 

Added interface simplicity

 

Suprising. Never done. Not too difficult.

 

--------------------

 

This post is way too long already.
I'll stop. But please do take it seriously. The problem is real.
Places is...well, not bad. But it does not compare. And people will both not understand too much from the description, nor be too impacted by it.

 

I know, you guys did some work on Places already. But many things are surprisingly similar, just that scrapbook is way more potent. Perhaps Places could be merged into it.
Since scrapbook is already programmed...there is time.

 

Fernando

[j]

On 2006-03-01, teoriadetodo <teoria...@gmail.com> wrote:
> to unify both firefox bars: the address
> bar, and the search bar.

A good idea. Mozilla does this: to search, you type a word into the
address bar and then click the Search button. Or, if you're a keyboard
user, you scroll down the autocomplete list until "Search <preferred
search engine> for <word>" and press Enter.

Firefox should do this too.

--
Jason

[Chris Thomas]

Or just hit the up arrow key once ;)

Chris

[Matt Nordhoff]

On 03/02/06 23:48, j wrote:
> A good idea. Mozilla does this: to search, you type a word into the
> address bar and then click the Search button. Or, if you're a keyboard
> user, you scroll down the autocomplete list until "Search <preferred
> search engine> for <word>" and press Enter.
>
> Firefox should do this too.

Firefox automatically Googles something you put in the location bar if
it doesn't seem to be a domain (or maybe even if it is a domain but
doesn't resolve).

You can also use the keyword bookmarks it comes with (in the Quick
Searches folder), 'google', 'dict' for Dictionary.com, 'quote' for
Google stocks, 'wp' for Wikipedia and 'slang' for Urban Dictionary. And
you can create others if you want to.

(Does it use Answers.com now instead of Dictionary.com for the bookmark?
It's replaced the search plugin...)
--
Matt Nordhoff

[scratch]

i've been saying this since version 0.1.

-scratch

[Benjy Grogan]

neato.

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