Where should Mozilla go from here?
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Five years into Firefox, the Mozilla Foundation’s plans seem mainly geared to an aggressive release schedule, so that the browser can compete with Google Chrome.
There is irony here, because the bulk of Mozilla’s income comes from Google, in the form of royalties on the Google search box which sits on the upper-right corner of the program’s interface.
Thus we have a browser created to stop the Microsoft monopoly pushing what some say is the next dangerous monopoly, that of Google.
Firefox is not Mozilla’s only project. There is the Thunderbird e-mail client, the Bugzilla bug tracking system, and SeaMonkey, which combines Firefox and Thunderbird with Web development tools and chat.
But Firefox is what Mozilla is known for, and most of its work, and that of its add-on makers, is devoted to Firefox and the technologies that emerged from it.
Firefox has transformed the Web, by creating real competition to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. The question to ask today, however, is where does Mozilla go from here?
- Can Mozilla expand its funding sources to become truly independent of Google?
- Can Mozilla create real market share outside the browser?
- Should Mozilla be focused on browser share, or leave that to Google Chrome and concentrate instead on HTML-related technologies?
- What is Mozilla, in the end? What does the Foundation want to be?
Full Story: http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=5228
Labels: Firefox browser, Firefox News, Mozilla News
Chrome 4.0 vs Opera 10 vs Firefox 3.5
Saturday, September 05, 2009
In a three-way cage match, LifeHacker threw Chrome 4, Firefox 3.5, and Opera 10 into the ring and let the three browsers duke it out to see which would emerge as the fastest app for surfing the web.
Lifehacker conducted the test and said "Like all our previous speed tests, this one is unscientific, but thorough. We install the most current versions of each browser being tested—in this case, Opera 10, Chrome's development channel 4.0 version, and the final Firefox 3.5 with security fixes—in a system with a 2.0 GHz Intel Centrino Duo processor and 2GB of RAM, running Windows XP."
Opera 10 final is out, Chrome just turned one year old, and Firefox 3.5 has settled into stability. It's time once again to break out the timers and speed test today's web browsers.
A number of tests were run, including a "cold start" right after boot, a "warm start" after the browsers have already run once measuring the time it takes 8 tabs to load, a JavaScript testing suite, and memory utilization.
Opera turned in the best cold start time and was slightly slower than Firefox 3.5 with a warm start, while Chrome trailed the competition in both. But once the browsers were open and it came time to load 8 tabs, Chrome whipped both Opera and Firefox by loading up to about 1.5 seconds faster. Chrome also performed best in JavaScript testing, but was far less efficient in memory utilization with 8 tabs open than either of the two other browsers.
See the full results here on Lifehacker
Via:http://www.maximumpc.com/
Lifehacker conducted the test and said "Like all our previous speed tests, this one is unscientific, but thorough. We install the most current versions of each browser being tested—in this case, Opera 10, Chrome's development channel 4.0 version, and the final Firefox 3.5 with security fixes—in a system with a 2.0 GHz Intel Centrino Duo processor and 2GB of RAM, running Windows XP."
Opera 10 final is out, Chrome just turned one year old, and Firefox 3.5 has settled into stability. It's time once again to break out the timers and speed test today's web browsers.
A number of tests were run, including a "cold start" right after boot, a "warm start" after the browsers have already run once measuring the time it takes 8 tabs to load, a JavaScript testing suite, and memory utilization.
Opera turned in the best cold start time and was slightly slower than Firefox 3.5 with a warm start, while Chrome trailed the competition in both. But once the browsers were open and it came time to load 8 tabs, Chrome whipped both Opera and Firefox by loading up to about 1.5 seconds faster. Chrome also performed best in JavaScript testing, but was far less efficient in memory utilization with 8 tabs open than either of the two other browsers.
See the full results here on Lifehacker
Via:http://www.maximumpc.com/
Labels: Firefox 3.5. Firefox browser, Firefox News, Google Chrome, Opera's Web browser
OpenSource success: Firefox approaching 1 billion downloads
Friday, July 31, 2009
Firefox must qualify as the most successful open-source development project, not because it is nearing 1 billion downloads this weekend, but because the numbers of people it has affected.
And there is a thriving community of Firefox add on developers that help add lots of value to the browser. This is an excellent achievement.
But it’s not without potential problems. There are a lot more competitors to Firefox these days. Companies that didn’t offer a browser a few years back do today (Google, Apple.)
Part of the reason is that there is money to be made in browsers, specifically in the search bar. Mozilla, the organization behind Firefox receives more than 85 per cent of its revenues from Google. Total revenues in 2006 were $66.8 million.
Apple also gets money from Google for featuring it in its search box. It has been whispered that GOOG effectively underwrites the Mac OSX development.
It’s no wonder that Google has created its own browser and is now working on its own operating system — why underwrite these type of key product development at organizations you don’t control!?
Here is more info on the one billion downloads which could be reached this weekend: http://www.spreadfirefox.com/news_events
For More stories like this visit:http://blogs.zdnet.com/Foremski/?p=648
Labels: Firefox 3.5. Firefox browser, Firefox News
