List of Mozilla advantages over Firebird

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jgraham
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List of Mozilla advantages over Firebird

Post by jgraham »

Since we're moving to the Phoenix codebase, it seems reasonable to identify features that people have previously found lacking in Phoenix that have kept them using the Mozilla browser. Asa has specifically requested this in <a href="http://www.mozillazine.org/weblogs/asa/archives/002976.html" title="adot's notblog*">his weblog</a> and this seems like as good as any a place to look for feedback.

For reference, the latest Phoenix is found at http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/phoenix/nigh ... est-trunk/ and there have been significant changes since 0.5 (in case anyone last tried the previous milestone).

For my part, I will mention:
<ul>
<li>View - Use Style (allows simple switching for author defined stylesheets) - an accessibility and standards compliance issue, as well as a cool feature in its own right</li>
<li>Sidebar addons - although the Mozilla interface for this sucks at present, since having several tabs prevents the actual sidebar content from being seen</li>
<li>Large icons by default. Large icons are better for a webbrowser for most people. A <em>lot</em> of browsing is about navigation of pages and the toolbar is the primary interface for <em>most people</em> to do this. Large icons are a bigger target and so make clicking easier. Most people who never customise will benefit from large icons, most people who want small icons acn customise</li>
<li>A bookmarks 'root folder'. I quite like the personal toolbar with a bookmarks folder sitting on it holding <em>all</em> my bookmarks. Phoenix could be ultra flexiable in this respect if a root folder was defined that could be set as the persoanl toolbar folder</li>
<li>I have never liked tools - options as opposed to edit - preferences in any application, although that's hardly a showstopper</li>
</ul>


Note that I haven't used phoenix much, so maybe some of the above features are avaliable, but I've missed them. Before anyone gets the wrong idea, I think that the move over to seperate applications as the primary development focus is a very positive one.
Last edited by jgraham on April 15th, 2003, 2:22 am, edited 1 time in total.
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nicubunu
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Post by nicubunu »

to moderators: please make this threaf sticky for a few days, in the same spirit as Phoenix counterpart.

i also used only the Phoenix milestones and don't know much about the latest redesign:
- contrary to jgraham i prefer icons as small as possible;
- i also hate Tools->Options and other IE like features, Phoenix seems to copy IE behavior and is more friendly for previous IE users but unfriendly for previous Netscape/Mozilla users (keyboard shortcuts);
- i use Composer, not heavy but is good to have at hand;
- i like to have as many options as possible in Preferences, i'm not scared by that.
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old Harry Waldron
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Post by old Harry Waldron »

I'm more of a generalist and have used both quite a bit. I use Phoenix more than any browser (except IE 6 at work, where it's really the only choice to work with Sharepoint Team Services and MS's thin client technologies -- although for browsing the Internet, I'm back on Phoenix and Mozilla 1.4a).

I'll do both and I might be wrong on some points, as I'm still learning quite a bit here in the forums:


ADVANTAGES OF MOZILLA

1. Suite of integrated Tools (EMAIL, Composer, Newsgroups, IM, etc...)

2. More advanced JAVA Script development toolkit

3. Provides a better path for Netscape users to migrate to with the suite of tools noted in #1.


ADVANTAGES OF PHOENIX

1. If you don't want the full Mozilla suite, it's leaner and meaner

2. The one button security feature to CLEAR ALL -- (cookies, passwords, history, cache, etc). As an Information Security specialists, this is my favorite feature. I'm not aware of any browser offers this neat one button "zapper".

3. The interface and configuration options are simple and straightforward -- the easiest of all browsers to configure, (e.g., MS could learn a thing or two there - lol)

4. In dialup, where you can distinctly see processing speed, Phoenix is a little faster (right up there with Opera 7.03).
Last edited by old Harry Waldron on April 3rd, 2003, 6:29 am, edited 2 times in total.
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nicubunu
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Post by nicubunu »

harrywaldron wrote:2. More advanced JAVA development toolkit

i'm sure you wanted to put here JavaScript
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old Harry Waldron
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Post by old Harry Waldron »

nicubunu wrote:i'm sure you wanted to put here JavaScript


Thanks -- correction made as I'm just waking up ...
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Post by bob_seb »

What I prefer in Mozilla :
  • edit -> preferences is more logical
  • some preferences that I find useful (like languages for Web Pages)
  • sidebars : do not react to F9, can't add new, cumbersome to switch from one to another
  • I like to always show the tab bar
  • ONE field for url and search, why separate ? I don't understand...
  • ctrl+enter in url field to open a new tab. If I want to go to "truc.com", "truc" + enter already works, we don't need ctrl+enter for that.
  • text zoom submenu (for quickly going back to 100%)
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Post by old jasonb »

Okay, I just looked at the latest nightly of Phoenix.

I didn't spend much time with it, but the thing that (again) annoyed me about it was it's poor support for tabbed browsing. Yes, it does have tabbed browsing, but it's not nearly as "nice" an experience as is tabbed browing with Mozilla. (And even Mozilla has several issues.)

More specifically are things like bookmark groups, context menu items that Mozilla has, and (in my mind) a lack of support for exposed preference settings. I realise that Phoenix is all about not having visible preferences and just "doing it right" - except that almost all of the default behaviour I see with its tabbed browsing is contrary to how I have Mozilla configured in terms of the UI. I think that tabbed browsing is a visible enough feature that it should be treated more seriously in terms of front-end preference exposure.

My biggest peeve: It's not possible to get a new tab icon on the tab bar itself. Yet the close tab icon is on it. That's not consistent at all. Either both should be there or neither. (I'd prefer both, but would rather neither as opposed to a "half" implemented UI.) Further, since toolbar customizabilty is such a big thing with Phoenix, the tab bar itself should be customizable (so such buttons can be added or removed) and/or treated just like another toolbar. (I didn't check the back-end prefs, but I would hope that it's possible to always have the tab bar visible, even with just a single tab, so that a new tab button on the tab bar would always make sense.)

My biggest positive surprise: Phoenix isn't victim to bug 196438 that plagues Mozilla - this is where, at overflow, the right-most tab is partially covered by the close tab button because the right margin (for tabs) is not being properly recalculated at overflow. In Phoenix, there's very clear UI separation between the right-most tab and the close button.
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Post by dacovale »

@JBassford

All the features you describe are present in TBE (Tabbed Browser Extensions).
It's all part of the philosophy to not include every single option from the start.

(although, you can open a new tab from the tab-bar w/out TBE, just doubleclick on the bar)
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old jasonb
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Post by old jasonb »

dacovale wrote:All the features you describe are present in TBE (Tabbed Browser Extensions).

Okay, I feel like a broken record here (I can't count the number of times I've replied to this kind of comment). I know about TBE and Multzilla. However, until an upgrade can be performed without overwriting an extension (requiring it to be reinstalled) it's simply not workable. Does Phoenix let you upgrade while keeping XPIs in place? (Mozilla already does all of the above and it's all native to the browser.)
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Post by warenhaus »

bob_seb wrote:What I prefer in Mozilla :
  • I like to always show the tab bar
  • ONE field for url and search, why separate ? I don't understand...

you can set the tabbar to be always there in Px (maybe you need TBE or Tabprefs)
you can search in the URL bar in PX (f.ex., with google)
you can have lotsoflotsof search plugins to be selected in the search bar. that's why
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Post by dacovale »

JBassford wrote:Does Phoenix let you upgrade while keeping XPIs in place?


Not at the moment. The plan is to let the user have a choice of extensions to install w/ every upgrade.
(This is all in the new roadmap btw)
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SilentJ
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Post by SilentJ »

JBassford wrote:Does Phoenix let you upgrade while keeping XPIs in place?


YES, you can, both TBE and the All-in-One (AiO) mouse gestures support this

they both install into you profile directory

-J
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Post by MoNkaholic »

bob_seb wrote:What I prefer in Mozilla :
  • ONE field for url and search, why separate ? I don't understand...


The biggest reason I can think of is Mozilla's implementation isn't obvious for most people, and another benefit would be the fact that the seperate search can save previous searches, something I'm not really sure Mozilla can do with it's all in one function.

Also don't forget that you can search in Phoenix's address bar with keywords, just set google as g or something and *poof* you can search in the address bar just as easily as you can with Mozilla. By default I think you have to type out google in it's entirety though.

JBassford wrote:My biggest peeve: It's not possible to get a new tab icon on the tab bar itself. Yet the close tab icon is on it. That's not consistent at all. Either both should be there or neither. (I'd prefer both, but would rather neither as opposed to a "half" implemented UI.) Further, since toolbar customizabilty is such a big thing with Phoenix, the tab bar itself should be customizable (so such buttons can be added or removed) and/or treated just like another toolbar. (I didn't check the back-end prefs, but I would hope that it's possible to always have the tab bar visible, even with just a single tab, so that a new tab button on the tab bar would always make sense.)


I agree with you here, it is definately inconsistant. The always visible tab bar request from what I can see is possible with Phoenix by changing an about:config setting, but I never found it all that useful, mostly redundant since all it does is duplicate the titlebar while taking up more screen real estate.

What nobody has mentioned here so far is the fact that Phoenix lacks a windowed download manager, or history for that matter. I don't know how many people here like sidebars, but to have a bookmark manager sidebar and window yet lack a windowed counterpart for the download manager and history strikes me as terribly inconsistant. Either make windows and sidebars for both, or just have one. Then again maybe I'm bias since I utterly loathe sidebars, so this always ends up urking me.
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Post by old jasonb »

If the new model is going to be Mozilla/Phoenix + default installer extensions, it makes me think that those extensions should work themselves into bugzilla.mozilla.org as components off of the Mozilla/Phoenix product.

It's been one thing up until now to have extensions put together by 3rd parties, but if mozilla.org actually wants to "package" the more common ones as part of an installer option, it would make sense that people should be able to leverage Bugzilla to report on issues that they're having. (Just as they use it currently to report on any issue relating to all current pieces of Mozilla.) While these extension developers may still be only loosely tied with Mozilla, they should still be accessible to users via a common reporting / feedback tool.

For instance, I should be able to file a bug under Product Phoenix (/Mozilla?) and the Component "Extension-TBE", and have my email and the resulting Bugzilla discussion make its way back to Piro automatically. (He would be the assignee and QA for that component obviously.)

If mozilla.org is going to "officially" recognize certain extensions as "part" of their product, they should be more closely tied to the development process.
Last edited by old jasonb on April 3rd, 2003, 9:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
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leoz
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Post by leoz »

JBassford wrote:[...] However, until an upgrade can be performed without overwriting an extension (requiring it to be reinstalled) it's simply not workable. Does Phoenix let you upgrade while keeping XPIs in place? (Mozilla already does all of the above and it's all native to the browser.)


Yes, latest TBE with latest Phoenix will install into the profile folder, so every new nightly automatically keeps it.
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