Time Magazine Article on MozillaWednesday April 24th, 2002Asa Dotzler writes: "Mozilla makes Time magazine, print and web. Seems that this reviewer appreciates 'the clever, stress-saving bells and whistles that come from millions of geek hours of testing.' I guess so called 'geek features' like tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking aren't so geeky afterall. Check out a scan of the print version and read the article over on Time.com." - The text feels slightly misleading for me; it gave me the impression that Mozilla is something completely different than NS6, which of course isn't how the things are. Or maybe it's just my lack of reading skill. Also, Mozilla is hardly a 'new browser'. - The picture of Bill and Mozilla in printed version looked a bit naughty at first sight ;) Then again, maybe it's just my dirty imagination. All in all though, for a quick article of that length, not too bad. "The text feels slightly misleading for me; it gave me the impression that Mozilla is something completely different than NS6, which of course isn't how the things are. Or maybe it's just my lack of reading skill. Also, Mozilla is hardly a 'new browser'." Yeah. There's other inaccuracies too. For example, it suggests that IE came before Netscape. The journalist probably isn't an expert in the world of browsers. Alex I thought the article was ok. It seems like the author is out of his depth a bit. However, he's doing a good thing by making Mozilla available to the masses. I think one of the best things about this article is that it isn't written by someone deeply involved in Mozilla. It probably means he has more objectivity (and less potential bias). Alex On the other hand, he's about as accurate as Mangelo. Inaccuracy is a bad thing, even among your allies. To be fair, he's talking about the user experience. That's something you can ascertain from, er, using the program. Which is what he evidently did. Mangelo, on the other hand, tries to make comments about bugs and project management. You need to have quite an in-depth knowledge of the goings-on of The Mozilla Organization to do that. Unfortunately, Mangelo doesn't. Or if he does, he hides it well. True about the project management. But the guy does try to make comments about browser history that are just plain wrong and that he clearly doesn't have the background to make. E.g., implying that IE came before Netscape; especially given the direct tie between the developer communities for Netscape and Mosaic and the fact that IE incorporated a lot of UIUC/NCSA Mosaic code. So it's nice and all, but it's plain bad journalism that he didn't check his facts. And he does make the association between a large public bug database and lots of bugs, which implies buggy (i.e., inferior) product. I don't mean to be cruel, but it skews the reader's perception of the product. yes, but really, a public misconception that Mozilla 1.0 and Netscape 6.0 are not the same thing is pretty good :) The author also fails to mention that: - Lots of Netscape engineers, on Netscape/AOL payroll, contribute on a daily basis to the Mozilla project. - That the mozilla / "Gecko" rendering engine has been used not only by the Mozilla/Netscape6 browser but also stand-alone in the Gateway internet appliance with "Instant AOL" (aol ported to linux), and that the same Mozilla/Netscape engine is now part of the CS2000 7.0 (r2) software, replacing the IE engine, and that AOL 8.0 will use Gecko too. - That the Netscape 6.x series that he says "crashes when you look at it funny" is simply the same Mozilla source code frozen at regular points with the addition of extra features for the end-user convenience, like the Flash plug-in, Real Player, Sun's Java2 runtime. - That Netscape is going to release another 6.x (6.5 or 7.0?) release after Mozilla hits v1.0, which will be exactly as nice, if not better, than the regular mozilla builds. Just my $0.02 Do not, repeat do NOT flame the author. Thank him; send him compliments. He does get a few things wrong: - no tech support? maybe not an 800 number, but better support than IE - microsoft was convicted of abusing their monopoly; the jury is only out on the sentence - just because Mozilla makes it's bugs public doesn't mean it's buggier than the more secretive competition. Also, many/most of those bugs will be dupes, worksforme, etc. Checkout the scanned image for a funny image. Oh how I wish some things could happen :) > Checkout the scanned image for a funny image. Oh how I wish some things could happen :) I'm sure Bill makes Melinda dress up like SOMETHING and knock him around, probably not a dinosaur though. Why is the scan dated april 29? Is only april 24 over here in the Netherlands, I expect about the same for whole of mainland europe. (Please tell me I didn't oversleep in again) The mag is post-dated so that it will still look "current" after it has been on the store shelves a few days. (no text) I scanned that and he borrowed it...hehe guess its an Open Source Scan :) http://www.setecsecurity.com/mozilla.jpg Move along move along. I know I didn't :-). I didn't remember the URL, just had the file, and wanted to show it to some folks in #mozilla. I never wanted the URL to be published (/xfer/ for transfer, i.e. temporary), and already asked Mozillazine to change the URL. BenB I like the picture in the article. That should be the new logo! This may be a planted article in a friendly publication, but who cares? That picture was beautiful. Go Zilla! We've found our new splash screen! :-) <i>(Since the cute green guy is off limits; 'course, so's the red dino, but whatever...)</i> Keep in mind that Time is part of AOL *Time* Warner, which owns netscape, which is the major contributer to mozilla. Now if there was an article in an independent magazine like... um... hm... ;) We will know they have won when the article appears in Windows magazine. "We will know they have won when the article appears in Windows magazine." From the sounds of this page http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/windowsxp_mw_intro.asp from Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows, Paul Thurrott (a rather arrogant but often surprising neutral journalist who writes for 'Windows & .NET Magazine' http://www.winnetmag.com/ and several of his own eponymous sites) is going to do a review of Mozilla 1.0 soon. In the past he's said good things about Mozilla. Alex #20 Check the article for correctnes by s.o. @Mozilla?by lacostej Thursday April 25th, 2002 3:22 AM If someone at Mozilla (only one person, no need for multiple reviews), such as Asa or other, could ask to pre-review the article before it is published, not on the technical stuff (it has to be an independant review), but on the description of the organization, it would be nice to see an accurate picture of what Mozilla and Mozilla.org are, for once. For example, Paul wrote "freeware successor to Netscape Communicator called Mozilla". This is inexact, as Mozilla is not exactly a 'successor' to Netscape. I don't know if Paul would accept, though, but it seems worth to try. He's correct. Mozilla is indeed a successor to Communicator, since 4.x no longer really exists as a supported product and Mozilla is both code-wise and release-wise next in line. #36 Re: Re: Check the article for correctnes by s.o. @by Willykreim Thursday April 25th, 2002 8:41 PM 4.x no longer exists? Get your facts straight dude. All netscape communicator releases pre-4.76 are no longer supported. But 4.76, 4.77, 4.78, and 4.79 (released November 7, 2001 for win32, linux and MacOS) IS still supported. Last time I heard, maintenance of the 4.x code base was handed to iPlanet (=Sun) programmers. ftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/communicator/english/4.79/ > Keep in mind that Time is part of AOL *Time* Warner, which owns netscape, > which is the major contributer to mozilla. Now if there was an article > in an independent magazine like... um... hm... That's OK, it will serve its purpose when I forward a link to the graphic to the half-dozen newbie volunteers (guinea pigs) I set up with Mozilla as an IE alternative a few days ago. Generally they couldn't care less about "browser wars", but they really like Moz so far, and the fact that Time Magazine carries the article will get their attention, I think. BTS, they think the new SAMBA server is just swell, too :-) It's true that AOL Time Warner owns both Time and Netscape but the mistakes in the article ironically make it seem more genuine. If this article had been planted as a piece of cross-promotion I'm sure that they'd get Netscape Marketing to write it rather than a columnist who isn't an expert in the area (and hence makes mistakes such as implying that IE predated Netscape). Basically, if this an advert, they could have done much better. :-) Alex Please do keep your corporate skepticism filters active, but an article in a cousin publication is not necessarily a paid ad. For one, Time Warner journalists seem to be taking pains to show their "objectivity" about AOL--there have been at least a couple very negative Netscape 6 articles (and this one only mentions it to say it crashes a lot). For another, if it were a marketing-inspired article it wouldn't be about Mozilla, it would be about Netscape's version. The fact that this article was published will make it harder to get Time to cover Netscape's upcoming 1.0-based release -- they have limited space and might decide they've covered browsers enough recently to want to do another any time soon. It's great that major media like Time is noticing Mozilla (even if it *is* owned by AOL), but he got a few things wrong in the history of browsers. As has already been pointed out, he seemed to imply that MSIE preceded Netscape. Also, it was *not* true that Mosaic was the only browser around in its time or even that it was the first Web browser. The first Web browser was Tim Berners-Lee's "WorldWideWeb" for the NEXT machine; a line-mode browser followed, and others such as Lynx and Cello (which was fully graphical) followed. Mosaic was just the first to be noticed by less-geeky types, and to make a big splash in the news media. You forgot about ViolaWWW! Also, I believe Mosaic predated Cello (though Cello was available for Windows first). Alex Well in the trial MS contended the IE existed before Netscape. Its not true, but its funny to read, I'll see if I can find it, and post a link. "Well in the trial MS contended the IE existed before Netscape." Ah, yes. Microsoft said they were developing a browser in about 1976 or something (okay, it was 1993/94). And they decided to integrate it into Windows while they were still developing Windows 95. But for some reason they didn't get round to licensing the Mosaic source code until early 1995. And even then they only assigned about four people to work on it. Got to wonder what they were doing with all those months of development time before then. Shortly after Windows 95 was released, I read an article about Memphis aka Windows 97 (or 98 as it turned out to be). It said that it was going to have a built-in Web browser so they were planning the integration quite early on. And a preview of Nashville (aka Windows 96) - an interim upgrade that never saw the light of day - said it was going to have browser-style Back and Forward buttons in Windows Explorer. Alex Which IE version was codenamed Blackbird? Or was Blackbird never released? From memory, I seem to remember that Blackbird was the content development tool for MSN (the original 95-era MSN, when it was an online service and not an ISP/portal). COuld be wrong though. Alex Viola was the first web browser I used, circa 1991-92. There wasn't much to see though, just a few technical pages at CERN about the www project. Minor inaccuracies and potential bias notwithstanding, read the bit at the end about the importance of diversity and choice. That's a level of cluefulness I don't think I've *ever* seen in the mainstream media. I'm impressed. It's also not bug free: in fact, as I write, the logs on Mozilla.org show that Mozilla's thousands of developers have found 113 bugs today alone, and as Jack Palance would say, the day ain't over yet. Yeah, that's a priceless quote there. =) Should be followed up with. "IE is not bug free: in fact, as I write, thousands of people probably run across bugs in IE every day and can't do a damn thing about it" Time to wake up! Thousands of people that run Mozilla based browsers and run across bugs every day are also not able to do a damn thing about it. It's not about if the source code is out there or not. The MUCH MORE limiting issue is that most people can't code - or don't care about fixing bugs in their software. I present evidence A: Bugzilla. The fact that there are so many open bugs is proof of that even though bugs are reported, people can't do a damn thing about them. um no, filing bugs and having direct feedback with the developers who will fix those bugs _IS_ doing a "damn thing about it" ... you just cannot get this kind of active developer response out of microsoft period. Joe Sixpack doesn't give a shit about why the browser crashes when he clicks on "Print". He just cares that it gets fixed. Guys like us that care enough to actually spend time writing on a discussion board on a Mozilla site are very different from the other 99.99% of the users. right, we are talking about those who DO care... they can't do shit when MS decides not to address thier problems, they can with mozilla, end of story. if mozilla.org doesn't care about my bug, and i care enough, i can contract a programmer to fix it for me. open source = flexability and the ability to do a "damn thing about it" I agree with you, tho it's not always that straight forward. A private person is not going to hire a programmer to fix a bug for them. Companies on the other hand can have quite close cooperations with other companies - closed source ones too. Even with Microsoft. I know this first hand from my own work. Good cooperation with Microsoft is quite possible - at least as long as they don't consider you a threat to their existance anyway. ;) I think part of the problem is that it is just too damn hard to understand the code in Mozilla, so even people who know how to code (like me) don't have a clue where to begin.<p>Mozilla.org or mozillazine.org could do a lot better if they would provide some articles covering the basics of mozilla programming - e.g. what all the different variable types are (why are there so many string types for example); what the flow is in mozilla - starting up, clicking on a link; some examples of changing the code - e.g. this is how we added feature X to mozilla; at least something so people have a clue where to look and how to change things.<p>A few more examples, like how to read/write from a file, how to check a preference setting, how to pop up a dialogue...things that may be obvious to mozilla developers, but not to people trying to help out. I am sure then you would get a lot more developers helping out. http://mozilla.org/catalog/architecture/ http://mozilla.org/catalog/libraries/ ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/presentations/ http://mozilla.org/catalog/development/ How would one find those pages upon vising http://www.mozilla.org ? > How would one find those pages upon vising http://www.mozilla.org ? Click on the 'Developer Docs' link? Alex That article was good. Too bad the scan was awful. #1) Don't use a reflective (white) surface as background if you don't want text on the other side to be "seen thru" #2) Don't save as jpg, use png. But oh well... it was interesting reading nonetheless. Also, why the focus on Mozilla as if it were any different from the Netscape 6 browser. (And no mention of all the (last time I heard, 75) netscape engineers on AOL's payroll contributing to the mozilla project. Did you?!! "What makes Mozilla so special is the highly unorthodox process that produced it." Is that good or bad? Go here: http://newsforge.com/newsforge/02/04/25/1512214.shtml?tid=5 test |
