Today Mozilla, Tomorrow Maybe Firefox by Lisa Winterstien As a Mozilla user attempting to migrate to Firefox, I became interested in the future of the Mozilla browser. Firefox migration on Linux/KDE has been a success for the most part. However, I have discontinued using Firefox on Microsoft Windows and went back to the Mozilla browser. Without explanation I submit that Mozilla 1.7.8 functions better than Firefox 1.0.3 on the three Microsoft Windows XP Professional workstations I used. These are pristine systems and on each of them Firefox exhibited undesirable behaviors. The download manager, when left open, leaks memory. Firefox is unable to "Save Web Page Complete" on one of the machines, and has performance issues on all three machines. The Mozilla browser does not seem to exhibit any of these negative behaviors. The Future of the Mozilla Browser The following text is an excerpt taken from "Andrew Turnbull" which also quotes a blurb from the Mozilla Foundation. * * * After quite a bit of speculation, a formal announcement has been made on the future status of the Mozilla application suite. Essentially, there will be no official final Mozilla 1.8 release. Mozilla 1.7.x will be the final official application suite release, and any future updates will likely be limited to 1.7.x maintenance updates. Previous 1.8 alpha and beta releases had been released primarily as a means of testing the Gecko 1.8 back end also used by other products, and had been released before this final decision was made. An apologetic transition plan has been published giving specific information regarding this decision. Here are some highlights from it: Quote: Our plan for the Seamonkey suite is as follows: 1. The 1.7.x line will be the last set of Seamonkey products released and maintained by the Mozilla Foundation. The Mozilla Foundation will provide infrastructure for those interested in working on the 1.7.x releases, which we expect will include a number of vendors who provide these products to their customers. We've committed to support the 1.7 branch some time ago. If we ship 1.8 we'll need to support that as well, and we just can't manage supporting that many versions as well as Firefox and Thunderbird releases. 2. The Mozilla Foundation will provide infrastructure support (CVS access, bugzilla, development tools, etc) for community members who wish to continue to develop Seamonkey. This community group may wish to do formal releases of Seamonkey, much as the Sunbird and Minimo developers do. We support this. We probably won't use the same naming conventions, as we need to be clear that this is not a Mozilla Foundation product release. 3. Boris Zbarsky has posted an open letter to the Mozilla Foundation signed by a set of interested parties, laying out a community transition plan. We support this plan and will work with interested parties to figure out strategy. There will undoubtedly be some implementation details to be worked out (e.g., can we actually use Seamonkey as a formal trademark, how do we work the tinderbox machines, etc.). * * * For me the news is not good. At this juncture I do not like Firefox. It is slow to load and has memory management issues as well as inconsistent behaviors from one machine to the next. Indications are that it may actually run better on Macintosh than on Microsoft Windows based on conversations with my Mac using mate that can only praise the browser. In regards to other browsers, you should _never_ consider using Microsoft Internet Explorer under any circumstance. Security is atrocious on the browser and for that reason alone it should never be used. I don't know what is going on with Netscape. When tested, it prevented me from navigating to www.ebay.com. Apparently, settings in the default installation cause www.ebay.com to redirect to search.netscape.com for no apparent functionally justified reason. When on Microsoft Windows I will continue to use the Mozilla browser for the present. My conclusion is, Firefox for the future, when fixed, and Mozilla makes a great browser for the present. I remain hopeful that excessive hype will not prevent Firefox issues from eventually being fixed. -Lisa Winterstien Tue May 17 11:18:51 CDT 2005