The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 3 (of 5)

Mozilla Firebird

Hey, anyone else getting great performance out of this?

It runs a LOT faster on every website I've visited, compared to fully updated IE. Only things I've been unable to do are www.windowsupdate.com and a few applets at www.msnbc.com (the interactive audio applets won't run). I'm guessing it doesn't run all of the .net stuff, but for general browsing it seems to be quite superior.

Found it interesting just how good it's performance is after everything Joel has pointed out about what to learn from Netscape.

Fred M. Napier
Tuesday, January 20, 2004

"I'm guessing it doesn't run all of the .net stuff"
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Can you explain to me a scenario in which a browser would be running ".net stuff"?

Otherwise, yes- I love Firebird. Great privacy and security, love the tabbed browsing, great standards compliance, very stable, no ActiveX security worries. I can disable pop-ups if I want, and get rid of other Javascripted annoyances. Great mouse gesture support. It does everything I want.

www.texturizer.net/firebird

There's a site with lots of Firebird info and links to extensions. Happy browsing! :D

John Rose
Tuesday, January 20, 2004

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firebird/

Look whose comments they have put up on the website:-)

Prakash S
Tuesday, January 20, 2004

I worked on a few projects that used the .NET framework to build rather complex applications.... Mainly of the intranet variety. Since many of those get intimately tied in with IE and windows, I figured there might be some compatability problems.

Too bad I don't have access to any of them anymore to see if they'd run under Firebird.

Fred M. Napier
Tuesday, January 20, 2004

lol, must have missed that one bit from Joel. Guess I need to drop in here more often. (I have the last few months, but had a dry spell there for a while.)

Fred M. Napier
Tuesday, January 20, 2004

I just had a problem with latest flash update from Linksys for the 54g router configuration. It doesn't seem to post updates correctly. I blame Cisco for messing it up and making it only work under IE.

christopher baus (www.baus.net)
Tuesday, January 20, 2004

My only problem with Firebird has been trying to get videos to play, and the lack of support for my Logitech mouse's thumb button (which maps to the back bottom in IE). the latter one is my show stopper, unfortunately.

anon
Tuesday, January 20, 2004

Don't forget to try MyIE2 when you're in the browser-switching business. It has everything Firebird has and many extra tricks (like Ctrl+Tab to switch between tabs, on steroids!)

http://www.myie2.com/

olsson
Tuesday, January 20, 2004

But it still takes two whole seconds to load.... ages.....

Alex.ro
Tuesday, January 20, 2004

"Can you explain to me a scenario in which a browser would be running ".net stuff"?"

When running on a machine with the .NET Framework installed, IE offers two modes of execution for .NET code.

The first is "HREF EXEs", which means launching a .NET executable from a link. The executable is launched into a really tight sandbox (by default), but does not require the user to download the EXE nor answer "yes/no" to any dialog boxes.

The second is "Windows Forms Control hosting", which means that IE can host a Windows Forms control inside the browser. It works basically like ActiveX control hosting, except that again, the control is downloaded (no installation required), there are no security dialog boxes, and the control is limited to a very tight sandbox (by default).

Brad Wilson (dotnetguy.techieswithcats.com)
Tuesday, January 20, 2004

"But it still takes two whole seconds to load.... ages....."

Minimize instead of exit. Problem solved. :)

Brad Wilson (dotnetguy.techieswithcats.com)
Tuesday, January 20, 2004

>> Minimize instead of exit. Problem solved. :)

Interesting :) But really, it used to take 8 seconds on my 500mhz AMD, now I have this screaming new computer, and it still takes two seconds.

I mean, do I really need SATA RAID and dual-channel memory to start things fast?

Alex.ro
Tuesday, January 20, 2004

Brad I think he was referring to .aspx pages, which shouldn't have a problem in Mozilla/Firebird (I haven't come across anything serious)

HTA's wont work though.

Dan G
Tuesday, January 20, 2004

The only problem with ASP.NET and Mozilla is that the ASP.NET browser detection code says Mozilla is an old Netscape, and you end up getting NN4-style output.

That can be easily rectified by upgrading to ASP.NET 1.1, or by modifying the Web.config to include proper browser detection for Gecko browsers. There's lots of examples on the web.

You're right that HTAs won't work. Of course, they have nothing to do with .NET, so I'm not sure why you brought them up. *shrug*

Brad Wilson (dotnetguy.techieswithcats.com)
Tuesday, January 20, 2004

http://chrispederick.myacen.com/work/firebird/useragentswitcher/

ME
Wednesday, January 21, 2004

"My only problem with Firebird has been trying to get videos to play, and the lack of support for my Logitech mouse's thumb button (which maps to the back bottom in IE). the latter one is my show stopper, unfortunately."
------
Wow, that's weird- when I bought my new Logitech mouse, I was shocked to find that the thumb button *worked* as a back button in Firebird! The unfair thing is that I don't even want that functionality- I use mouse gestures for that.

As far as getting it working goes- I didn't do anything special. I'm using a stock 0.7 install (not a post-0.7 build or anything) and whatever version of Mouseware was on Logitech's site a few months ago. Weird. :-)

John Rose
Wednesday, January 21, 2004

>>"whatever version of Mouseware was on Logitech's site a few months ago"

Doh! I downloaded the latest driver, and the back button works! I hate to think of all the other devices on my PC that have updated drivers out there.

Now if only I could get WMV files to play.

anon
Wednesday, January 21, 2004

I got immediately very interested in FireBird, downloaded and tried it - took me almost two minutes to find the first stupid bug because of which I am not dumping my IE:

If you make the Bookmarks -sidebar visible, then select Print Preview from the File menu to print something, and decide not to print it after all and click Close (on the print preview), poof - the sidebar is gone. Snappy.

I wish the developers would actually use their own software, so that they wouldn't get caught this easily on the simplest of things. Or, if that's too much to ask, then don't release it until it's in 1.0, because now I'm under the impression that their software just sucks and will most likely not try it again for at least ten years.

Maybe I'm just nit-picking, but nevertheless I am disappointed.

Antti Kurenniemi
Wednesday, January 21, 2004

Is "Mozilla" a company? Who is paying the "coordinators" of this Mozilla/Firebird project?

Mozilla has been at 0.7 for months now? When will 1.0 be out?

Or am I wrong and it is actually one of those "Open Source" projects I have been hearing about? I suppose they can work out - if not slowly.

Chris Ormerod
Wednesday, January 21, 2004

It's open source. Mozilla is a foundation, more details at mozilla.org/foundation. It's at 0.7, and yes, it develops slowly. Mozilla itself tooks years to get to 1.0 (it's now at 1.6). It'll be at 1.0 when it's worthy of that number, though it isn't far off. I find it perfectly useable at 0.7.

.
Wednesday, January 21, 2004

Antti,

You are nit picking, as you suggested. The developers probably do use the software, since if they were perfectly happy with IE and Mozilla there wouldn't be a real need to develop a new browser. There's a good chance that they just don't happen to ever perform the specific series of mouse clicks that you did.

On the list of show stopping bugs, having your bookmarks sidebar disappear seems like a pretty small one. I've dealt with show stopping bugs that were a lot worse.

Clay Dowling
Wednesday, January 21, 2004

I quick check on bugzilla showed that the sidebar + printpreview bug is a known one.
( http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=206113 ).

Mozilla has a feature where you can vote for bugs - with an aim for the most "popular" to be given priority. So far this one has 2 votes so if it is important to you then I suggest you get voting.

Also a roadmap is available, and it look like they've 2 things to deal with for 0.8, with a target date of late April 2004 for 1.0

( http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firebird/roadmap.html )

A cynic writes
Wednesday, January 21, 2004

If you need IE behaviors in Mozilla/Firebird:

http://dean.edwards.name/moz-behaviors/

It uses xbl to emulate IE behaviors. No sniffing required.

fool for python
Wednesday, January 21, 2004

I'm not sure about the WMV problem. I play embedded Windows Media videos all the time.

Brad Wilson (dotnetguy.techieswithcats.com)
Wednesday, January 21, 2004

"You are nit picking, as you suggested"

Ok, I probably was. I just don't like it when I encounter a bug that is this obvious. It makes me feel like the developers simply don't care to do even the most basic testing.

Sad thing is, it did look like a good browser otherwise.

Antti Kurenniemi
Thursday, January 22, 2004

Basic? Obvious?

It is a trivial bug -- both in the sense that it is easily worked around (hit ctrl-b after you close preview), and that there's a pretty good chance that the fix would be no more than a dozen lines of Javascript -- and it's only likely to occur in an unusual configuration (most people aren't willing to sacrifice the horizontal space that leaving the sidebar open full-time requires).

I'm quite sure they have dozens of things which are more likely to upset more users than your obscure issue. But if you report it in Bugzilla (sticking to the facts, and leaving out your opinions on their enthusiasm and competence), I bet it'll get fixed.

http://www.mozilla.org/bugs/

Daryl Oidy
Thursday, January 22, 2004