First of all, extensions such as Stylish and Firebug are invaluable.  In fact, scratch Firebug, the default Firefox error console alone is aces to me.

Is there anyone who can tell me why no browser besides Firefox has a “View Background Image” link even as an option? How come no other browser has developer friendly stuff? I know that the Web Inspector in Webkit browsers is really cool – I love Webkit – but ultimately, it’s Firefox I often resort to when I’m doing real work.

Opera Browser

I’ve had a long and painful war with which browser to use on my Windows machine at work. Firefox has let me down many times before, and the Mozilla Firefox developers have disappointed me. So I switched to Opera, and it’s made me very happy. I have really learned to love Speed Dial, and user javascript is nice. I enjoy the built-in BitTorrent client, the fact that it runs all day without consuming a terabyte of virtual memory, and the fact that it’s about as standards compliant as it gets. But, I’ve had my share of problems with it — small problems that, for the most part, are tiny nitpicks that on most days wouldn’t bug me too much. But today, they got me.

First of all, sometime in the last few months, Gmail version 2 starting working in Opera. It’s frustrating enough that Google rarely support Opera, but in this case, by shooting Gmail the ?nobrowsercheck query string, things were functioning. In the last few weeks, though, that ceased working after about 5 minutes. Things would get stuck on “Still loading…” and I’d have to revert to the “old version.” Easy enough, albeit frustrating losing my “Quick Links.”

I’ve also noticed that the Flashblock component I have installed works so aggressively that about 50% of the time, I can’t actually properly authorize Flash I want to play. I will sit there clicking on the “Play” button over and over to no avail. This one has annoyed me time and again.

Somehow, over the last 30 days, something happened that made Opera crash on a semi-daily basis. At least twice a week, I get the Vista grey-out “This application is no longer responsive. Would you like to Close the App and check online for a solution, or just close the app?” Yeah, thanks. Except, it’s just Opera that’s been doing this.

Firefox: Like an old shoe

As a web developer, this was maybe the killer item for me: for the last month, the “View Source” menu on any web page doesn’t work, or if it does, it’s once in 50 tries. I’ve adjusted the “view source” menu to point to the built in viewer, Programmer’s Notepad, and Windows Notepad. None work. Most of the time, I simply have to open Firefox.

Therefore, I find myself, today, back on Firefox. Like an old shoe, it just fits. Once I slapped on the CamiFox theme, I felt right at home. I imported my Opera bookmarks, updated my extensions, and it was very nice. Now I have a very capable Javascript console, Firebug, Stylish, and a host of other useful tools at my fingers. I’m very happy here 5 hours into the day and feeling comfortable with the choice. Yes, I’m still pissed that I can’t style my RSS, but then, I haven’t gotten around to tinkering with that via WordPress anyway. I’ll let you know how life in Firefox 3 turns out.

I’ve seen a project take this path before, but project was Mozilla Firefox. The Firefox devs suddenly turned their back on their userbase in favor of catering to a wider audience. As a result, I – an obsessively dedicated Firefox user since at least Phoenix 0.2 – have sworn off the software completely.

Enter the “equal accessibility paradox.” I see this often with software projects especially, but it exists in all sorts of arenas, from websites to cell phones, cameras to iPods, from cars to TVs, even in restaurants and stores. The problem exists as such: you have two distinct groups of customers, one who prefers additional options or features even if it introduces complexity; and another, possibly larger, audience who prefers elegant simplicity at the expense of features. The goal is to provide everyone with the options and abilities they expect without overwhelming them. Can a new, non-savvy user control the product to do what they want equally as well as an advanced user can configure the product to do what he wants?

The problem comes from the fact that all too often, like with both Ubuntu and Firefox, you begin to favor one community over the other. I believe the Mozilla Foundation, at least in the provided example, unfortunately decided to cater to a wider audience by making decisions at the expense of its current users. They have made decisions that have cost them at least one user. Ubuntu, if the article is to be believed, has provided plenty of advanced options but over-simplified the non-advanced procedures. In short, if you aren’t a complete novice, you’re an expert. Thus the paradox takes shape: the gap between your two user groups becomes greater. Hopefully, along the way, you don’t so aggravate your most vigilant supporters so that they abandon you.

I’m positive I haven’t best expressed what I intended to say, but I think there’s a theory in there. As your userbase grows, the gap between your two user-types widens, and your target generally becomes one or the other.

As Apple grows and branches out from the Macintosh computer line, I can only hope they don’t cater to new users to a degree that forsakes the current users who kept them afloat for so long. As Microsoft has grown, they have taken more and more steps to frustrate the people who best support their products, so much so that my business now uses Linux on web servers and PHP for programming and I always recommend Macs and Linux to my friends and colleagues. As Firefox grew, I felt they left users like me behind. As Ubuntu grows, I hope they can control the divide before they find themselves head-to-head with the “equal accessibility paradox.”

I’m not sure exactly what’s to blame for the specific problems I have: other programs on the computer? a single bad extension? I don’t know, but whatever it was, it was present in FF1.5, FF2, and Flock. And each had their own set of extensions installed. It’s not a core Gecko problem, because, as I showed before, Camino doesn’t have the same problem.

So, at the urging of Nate, who, I guess, also spends some time at his computer, I decided to go for a full time ride at Opera.

I don’t require THAT much from a computer: mainly, it has to be able to sustain my browser requirements. And those are tough, because I expect to be able to open 10-15 tabs and still have the browser function without (a) eating up greater than 200MB of RAM, (2) eating up > 10% of the CPU for more than a few seconds, and (third) locking up the browser or worse, the entire system. Enough use of Gmail, Flickr, or other AJAX apps and my Windows Gecko/XUL browsers toast themselves and everything around them. So I’m giving Opera a go.

The only crappy thing is that there’s no way to import form cookies, form history, cookie block list, ad-block filters, or history. And that sucks, because it’s going to take me a long time to rebuild that.

However – this is after a day’s work. Know what else slowly swallowed my RAM? Firefox.

Yes, Flock still doesn’t respect my xml-stylesheet in my RSS feed, which — along with the developers attitudes towards users requesting a “fix” – was the biggest turn-off and ultimately, the reason I left Firefox behind (and no longer recommend it to general users), but, like IE and Safari, it aims to be a *full featured* RSS reader and therefore, is forgivable. No one is asking for RSS readers to respect styles – just the ones that offer nothing but a subscribe button and, in the meantime, make the entire thing butt ugly.

So, I’ll be reporting back over the next few days on how my Flock conversion is going.

We are going to bring the XML/RSS easy-subscribe feature to a new, wider group who isn’t demanding it yet, with no planned course of action for the people who are currently using it and came to rely upon it. Furthermore, we will leave them with no official way to reproduce the behavior which has been present now in our brower for years.

In short, when the Mozilla team mankes a decison, it’s final, and it appears that they are looking to expand their userbase, even at the expense of the most dedicated users now. So if you choose to have the search engine of your website return RSS for external apps but styled XML for a browser, turns out — you can’t.

It’s been days since I posted on this site about this; the goal was to make sure my new post was not overly dramatic. But here goes: I am now going to be suggesting that Windows users I support use IE7.

Why? Because IE7 is a nice upgrade. It supports most of the features that I think are necessary in a browser. Most people will never use AdBlock or any extensions at all, so that who construct is a non-starter. And it’s much more secure. Firefox, however, has notable memory leaks. IE7 uses far less memory when open for a long period. This is a FIREFOX issue, as you can see, Camino doesn’t have the same problems:

Firefox, open for ~8 hours

Camino, open for ~38 hours

Lastly, the IE team has done an AMAZING job at responding to their users. I’ve watched the IE blog, and I am really impressed with the level of communication and immersion the devs have. They are patient and appear to take an interested in their users.

The Firefox team, while mostly even tempered and polite, has pretty much given me the push off by suggesting that they know better than I do about how RSS is used in the real world, and therefore, decided that my website should work the way that /they/ want. In fact, they are SO sure of themselves, they won’t even provide me — the webmaster — a way to do what I used to do, even with extra steps. No, consistency is key – my wishes are second to a consistent web experience for someone who is new to the web (and likely won’t even know the term “RSS” until about 2009). Furthermore, the leader of the project himself, Asa Dotzler, posted a “slam” against me in the Firefox newsgroup that perfectly illustrates the point – the developers are missing the idea completely.

They are so focused on catering to the end user that they have decided that that the tech-savvy people, people who made Firefox successful in the first place, are no longer important. So unimportant that when they complain that the browser has changed its behaviors and things no longer work as they have for years, their only responses are “we aim for consistency and ease of use for the end user.”

If Firefox devs can *decide* one day that the trends of use are different than current use or even different than intended when a standard was written, and will make decisions that change the ways the browser behaves with very little notice or upgrade path, how can we invest ourselves in them by using the browser full time? Knowing they could pull the rug out from under us?

To address those who say that IE7 does the same thing, I have two responses:

1. IE /adds/ functionality to RSS. It’s less insulting when I can do things manipulate the data I couldn’t do before. It’s not my preference, but it’s at least a decent response.
2. Much more importantly, IE7 *IS* an aggregator. It will save posts, mark them read, allow you to filter them, track multiple feeds, etc. IE7 is a full feature RSS reader, and a full featured RSS reader can remove style. Firefox just wants to style a feed its own way.

So, am I blowing off Firefox completely? I’m not sure. No doubt I am invested in FF, from both a data standpoint (all my cookies, usernames, passwords, etc) , but also from a user standpoint. I’ve been using it for over 5 years, and it’s home to me. But it certainly looks like the day of switching (probably to Opera) is coming soon.

Here’s the thread. I got a fairly nice response from one of the devs, and then two slightly shorter responses, including one that appears to do nothing more than suggest that since the way I style my feed sucks, it’s pointless to allow people to style threads.

One guy has a great point – if Firefox’s default style didn’t suck, would everyone be happier? Sheesh, hadn’t though about that, but you know what?? I admit, maybe I would be less upset.

I still think the browser behavior is bad, but if they’re going to intercept, at least do it with the same style Microsoft does with IE7.

I have to say, I’m fairly pleased with the Firefox guys’ responses. For a group that probably has to put up with plenty of people bitching about their bugs of choice, they have been pretty civil and well thought out in their responses.

As I’ve also detailed before, I have some problems with Firefox. In particular, a certain Firefox bug has pissed me off so much, not because of the bug, but rather, the fact that the Mozilla devs appear/appeared to be perfectly content with their decision, despite the arguments. I have blown off Firefox at home for the also-Gecko-based Camino. I am seriously considering blowing off Firefox at work for Opera.

But this is the real reason. It’s not just their XML arrogance. It’s this: Firefox is a mess when it comes to memory.

Click on the image for a full size view

Let’s break it down: Firefox allows developers to write extensions that utilize XUL, which means memory leaks could come from poorly written extensions. But as a user, my response is: I don’t care. If writing extensions can cause a WEB BROWSER to eat up over 1/2GB of memory, you’ve got a problem! Fix chrome! Fix XUL! Limit what the extensions can do! Otherwise, someone is going to release “Trusted Firefox,” or worse, offshoot Firefox to something simpler, something that is to Firefox what Firefox was to Seamonkey.

Camino, which doesn’t use XUL by the way, is much less featureful – sometimes annoyingly so, but guess what – it can runs for weeks without so much as a burp. This is Firefox after less than 24 hours with 6 tabs open, and the last 15 hours were of complete inactivity (overnight, while I was home).

I suspect this could be AJAX related (Gmail is always one tab). But since Firefox is my gateway to the web, it’s responsible for making sure the web plays nice through that window and correcting any behavior that makes it unhappy. And frankly, lately, it’s letting me down.

This is the bug, check it out and please vote for it.

Update: 17 minutes after I added my comment, the bug was re-opened. Thanks, Jake Olefsky!

Here’s a brief synopsis of the issue:

Awhile back, someone Mozilla said, “we had to change our name from Phoenix, and we had to change our name from Firebird, so dammit, this time, we’re going to trademark our name. So they did. And along with that trademark came some rules, which included restricting the use of the icon and the name. In other words – “if you modify our code, it’s no longer really ‘Firefox,’ so you can’t call it Firefox, and you can’t use the logo.”

Fair enough. If you download code, add a bunch of buggy crap that opens security holes, I’m sure the developer doesn’t want to you to distribute your product using (and potentially soiling) their name. So Mozilla says, “Feel free to distribute Firefox, but once you change it, it’s no longer Firefox.” And I get that. And I’m cool with it.

Debian, being the arrow straight guys that they are, said, “Whoa Nelly! Now that you’ve put some restrictions on our use, this isn’t free software. I can’t do what I want with it without limit.”

So Mozilla said “Ok, you can use the name Firefox.”

And Debian said, “But your logo’s trademark violates the Debian free software guidelines in our social contract.”

So Mozilla said, “Ok, fine, you get two choices: one, you but you can run all patches by us, so that we approve what is called ‘Firefox.’ Two, you can change the name of your project.”

Thus, after some whippersnapper came up with the awful pun IceWeasel (Fire/Ice, Fox/Weasel), even thought WaterWeasel would have maintained the alliterative name and been much better, they decided to add their own patches too. And the crappy thing is, I kinda like the patches.

So the question is – is it THAT important to be completely free? Is there anyone besides Richard Stallman and a few weird beards who are this passionate about using free software with a slightly restricted logo, restricted mainly so the project doesn’t find themselves in trouble later?

On top of this, they now will damage Firefox prevalence by adding yet ANOTHER browser to the mix.

Because this is a big issue! I see more and more open source projects having to get trademarks and restricting their use if this nonsense with IP law continues.

I tend to blame Debian here. I wish their rules weren’t so black and white. Sometimes computer users tend to be really overly critical and very matter of fact about things. The real world is gray. There are very few absolutes, and I usually find that people who think in absolutes are hard-headed, inflexible, and rarely fun to be around.

This reminds me of a podcast I recorded for OSNews. We are so preoccupied with fighting we rarely face the real issues. Debian can’t be bothered to rally hardware manufacturers for better Linux drivers, but rather, set their sights on taking down Mozilla, who has produced Buzilla, Thunderbird, Seamonkey, Lightning, and Firefox. Makes sense… not.

IceWeasel is going to get a bunch of users right away. I think Ubuntu has considerably large userbase for popular Linux users, and IceWeasel sounds really cutting edge. On top of that, Firefox 2 was just released and it’s pretty underwhelming from a user standpoint. Other than close buttons on each tab, it’s barely different, and IceWeasel will boast some neat new features, which will interest people. I predict we’ll see it on Windows in the next few months too.

The question is – is this the best use of our time??

If I’ve gotten any of this wrong or misunderstood any of this story, feel free to post any corrections or notations in the comments and I will gladly update this piece.

First, let’s take a peek at IE7′s often-underbilled featureset. First and foremost, IE7 has dramatically improved CSS support. No, it doesn’t pass the stupid ACID2 test, which is mostly pointless for the real world anyway, because as cool as it is, it doesn’t necessarily mean it works well on the internet, just that it fails and degrades properly. ACID2 is a discussion for another time. In the meantime, IE7 supports a lot of CSS2, even if it’s still lacking, it’s still a major improvement. You can view a list from a few months ago that includes a list of the popular bugs that have been quashed.

Secondly, and this is HUGE for me and anyone who uses Web 2.0 sites – IE7 has a native javascript XMLHttpRequest object. That means no more instanciating an ActiveX control to do AJAX programming. Now, as great as this is, a competent developer will need to write those ActiveX bits in for some time to support all the legacy browsers, and they will be around for a LONG time, since IE7 requires XPSP2, which means no non-genuine (aka “pirated”) XP machines can run it, nor can Windows 2000 machines, nor can Windows 9x/Me. So you don’t ditch your try {…} catch (e) {…} catch (E) {…} code just yet. But IE7 can run AJAX natively.

Of course there’s PNG alpha support. So instead of having to use GIFs or funky javascript to make IE display .PNG files with transparency, IE7 can view them just fine. This was a huge problem – GIF files were, until recently, tied up with patents, not to mention shitty quality, and JPG files don’t support transparency, which made web developers’ lives tough. So this is a very very welcome and long overdue feature. But mostly welcome.

Tabbed browsing is not really innovative, and it’s certainly not new (I’ve been on tabs for about 5 years now), but it’s nice to FINALLY see it in IE proper. I really hope it doesn’t confuse users. There’s simply no denying that tabbed browsing makes a user significantly more productive. Same goes for built-in search. Great news for IE users, nothing new for Firefox, Camino, Safari, and Opera users.

The printing subsystem has been rewritten, and finally finally finally when you print a webpage from IE it won’t wrap the last 20 pixels over to a second page. As far as I’m concerned, this is one of the biggest boons of IE7, since at work, we have web apps on our intranet that require PDF reports just to fit onto one page. You can also drag the margins in print preview, which is just awesome. So this is great news.

The new phishing protection is also very cool. I don’t fall for these things, but someone, somewhere obviously does. I like that the browser will now warn you if things look suspicious. Unfortunately, since people are generally stupid, I think they will still fall for it some percentage of the time, even with warning. There are LOTS of other security improvements: better ActiveX warnings, cross-site scripting prevention, “protected mode,” a “clear my settings” area, and IE reset function, international domain name anti-spoofing, and better parental controls are just some of the many security improvements in IE7, which is good news for everyone.

The RSS mechanism built into IE7 is really cool, and frankly, makes the default Firefox stylesheet look cartoonish. It filters by category and lets you narrow your view by topic, by date, sort and reverse sort – it’s very cool, in fact, to be honest, it’s cooler than many web pages I visit. I can actually picture visiting the RSS feed of some sites rather than their obnoxious index counterparts. It’s the trends to have a built-in subscribe function now, so that is pretty standard, although, since FF2 is still in RC stage, it’s the first to market with the subscribe with a third-party feed reader (Safari and Opera use internal engines, FF uses “Live Bookmarks,” which, while cool, are pretty useless.)

Lastly, although I have not tested this, IE7 apparently has incredibly granular control via Group Policy. If you are a network administrator, it will be nice to be able to secure and control IE via a centralized console, and this is one of the largest reasons I don’t deploy Firefox system-wise. IE7 is suitable for our users for full time use and is a decent enough replacement for Firefox feature-wise.

Now, let’s not let Microsoft off the hook just yet. IE7 guys, you did your job and you did it well, but you’re not all the way there yet. First off, the UI, which is aimed at “increasing screen real estate” is just ugly. Yes, I know it mimics the Vista UI better and will fit in better there. However, the Vista UI also sucks, so that’s no excuse. Why is the refresh button on the right of the address bar, and for God’s sakes, why the hell is it pinned there!? Are you conceding that I shouldn’t be refresing except with F5? Or are you telling me it’s somehow better to drag my mouse across a 20″ monitor to that button than to keep it right next to the back button where it was – and has been – for the last 10+ years?

Next up – CSS. You’ve come a long way, baby. But you got a ways to go. You’re going back to the block, why NOT pass ACID2 and shut up the fanboys? You know who’s complaining about your browser not passing it? The people who design webpages and upgrade their parents’ and friends’ PCs. Please the influencers, I say. If they want ACID2, well, more compliance can’t be a bad thing. Also, how about supporting some CSS3 and get the ball rolling? Or the rest of the selectors? This convention doesn’t work in IE7 but does work in Firefox 1.5.x:

input[type$="button"]
input[type$="submit"]
input[type$="text"]

Why leave it to the open source guys – or worse – the Apple guys to ALWAYS burn you on supporting the newest technology. Why intentionally design your app so web developers always have to add hacks to their code to get IE to not behave like a retarded cat? Seriously, when you’re behind in the market, why release something that just matches it? CSS was one area you could’ve eclipsed the rest of the market. But ya fell short by going with “good enough.” That’s what it is – plenty good enough, but nothing to get us to write home about.

Lastly, one I cannot explain, that Mr. Holwerda noted, why is the toolbar beneath the address bar? Whose idea was that? FIRE THEM AT ONCE! It looks ridiculous, it doesn’t fit in with the UI of any system available for production use today, and even if it did fit in, it’s awkward.

Anyway, I’ve seen so much misinformation about IE7 I had to write this. I’m not an IE person, I will continue to use Firefox for the foreseeable future at work and Camino (also based on Gecko) at home – both unless something better comes along. IE7 is not that “better” thing, but it’s close, and it’s a HUGE improvement over IE6. Those who stand against it, in all likelihood, stand more against Microsoft than this browser, and that’s just lame, to be a bit informal. This browser is a step up and a valiant effort from a company whose innovation pipeline has been exhausted for some time.

I am recommending that my family and friends immediately upgrade – I’ve been on RC1 for close to a month and I’ve never regretted it. I have only found ONE website (um… this very site… firsttube.com) that has a CSS rendering problem, and it’s only the admin page, and I haven’t tried to fix it yet, but I think it’s because I tried to set it to XHTML strict. Every other site has worked without any problem whatsoever. If you run Windows, there’s no good reason not to upgrade right away, particularly when you can run IE6 in standalone mode anyway.

Now, I’m still a bit ticked about RSS. For some reason, the Firefox devs feel as though RSS is meant to be handled by a reader, so they have Firefox COMPLETELY IGNORE the <?xml stylesheet?> declaration. I filed a bug report, and it was promptly closed with WONTFIX, although they suggest it might make for interesting discussion – I’m still pissed about it. Why do they get to completely ignore a standard? Microsoft would be GRILLED if they treated users this way (and they do – IE7 also ignores xml stylesheets.)

Anyway, I’ll end up using FF2 probably, but at home I blew off Firefox for Camino, and I’m seriously thinking about moving to Opera at work. In the meantime, my user agent:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0