Shock as Microsoft Evangelist Robert Scoble Recommends Microsoft TechnologiesMonday May 10th, 2004Much has been made in recent days about Microsoft evangelist Robert Scoble and his comments about how Mozilla can take advantage of the new technologies introduced in Longhorn, the next major version of Windows. Scoble's thoughts on how Mozilla Firefox could be enhanced via features such as Avalon, Longhorn's new graphics layer, and WinFS, the enhanced file storage system, prompted InternetNews to conduct a follow-up interview, sparked a discussion at Slashdot and caused MozillaNews to quote almost enough to stretch the definition of fair use. Which is interesting, as nothing Scoble said was particularly surprising. The fact that a Microsoft employee even mentioned Mozilla was a shock to some but it should be noted that Scoble, who was an established member of the weblogging community long before taking a job at Microsoft, was speaking for himself and not Redmond. Furthermore, Microsoft have recently started encouraging their employees to maintain weblogs, launching initiatives such as blogs.msdn.com and Channel 9. In addition, while some media outlets reported that Scoble was offering advice to Mozilla, in reality he simply was recommending technologies whose widespread adoption would benefit Microsoft. At its core, this is a simply case of a Microsoft evangelist evangelising Microsoft. Nothing particularly surprising about that. So far, the reaction from the Mozilla camp has been cool. While some features like WinFS and Avalon may be embraced in time, any evaluation is unlikely to take place until much closer to Longhorn's release. Meanwhile, technologies such as XAML (which, to be fair, Scoble is not advocating Mozilla adopt), have been met with outright hostility, with leading Mozilla figures viewing the proprietary XML user interface language as a threat to the freedom and interoperability of the Web. >> XAML (which, to be fair, Scoble is not advocating Mozilla adopt), have been met with outright hostility, with leading Mozilla figures viewing the proprietary XML user interface language<< How is XAML proprietary? The specs are available for what is available currently and will be available for when Longhorn ships. It is a "threat to the freedom and interoperability of the Web" just as much as XUL is (also "proprietary" to mozilla). XAML is just a XML wrapper over object libraries making it (potentially) easy for newbies to design applications. For more, see some of Miguel de Icaza's writing - he has a pretty good grasp on it. >>>XAML is just a XML wrapper over object libraries making it (potentially) easy for newbies to design applications. <<< Correct. However, the object model here is that of c#'s. It might make it easier for people who would otherwise write the apps in c#....have nothing to do with people who want to write their apps in standard web technologies and for a bounch of platforms. XUL might not be a standard yet, but it is not controlled by a company with such a bad reputation. And you can extend it using html, javascript, and even svg. With XUL+XBL+XHTML+JS+SVG, I don't see what we will be terribly missing from avalon...if we can just get mozilla deployed more widely. Let's not get distracted. Let's focus on getting firefox the best platform on which people can build rich internet application TODAY. I think that you've already touched on what's missing. While JS is a pretty neat language, it's not as "robust" (for lack of a better word) as c#. "I don't see what we will be terribly missing from avalon" - a single integrate IDE to build and debug the whole lot. i.e. VS.NET. Building for XAML and Avalon will simple be easier. Easier = cheaper (in time and labour skills). Cheaper = more applications built. More apps built = more demand for Longhorn. Has nobody learnerd anything from the whole Win32 & Visual Studio combination of previous years? "Shock as Microsoft Evangelist Robert Scoble Recommends MOZILLA Technologies" ? (after all, who would be shocked at a Microsoft employee recommending Microsoft technologies?) I think you're missing the point. The person who wrote that title knows there's no reason to be shocked if Scoble recommends Microsoft technologies, but he thinks that is exactly what happened: Scoble recommended microsoft (and mentioned Mozilla...) and people were shocked. While Microsoft is evil, I think they are actually helping the refinement of desktop linux. Looking at modern linux distro's like Fedora and Mandrake it reminds me how far linux has come as a desktop alternative. Sure, XUL was very useful in making cross platform compatibility but the development time of XUL was high and costly (remember Netscape?) and I haven't seen too many applications that were useful based on it other than Firefox and OEOne desktop. So, it makes sense to possibly look at incorporating XUL into Gnome and KDE so developers can write cross-platform apps. I know people are working on this right now and it is exciting to see the possibilites for GUI development on linux. Possibly even the long fabled GRE might actually surface and be taken seriously as a run-time engine standard. The competition that Microsoft brings is actually helping push the development of a standard XML based toolkit for Linux. So while we all like to complain how evil Microsoft is embracing and extending current tech., we might actually have them to thank for spurring the open source community on. I am a linux desktop user myself and the linux desktop still needs plenty of help. Ever try and install a palm USB on Redhat Fedora? Create symbolic link to /dev/pilot, run pilot-xfer from a terminal, install Jpilot, etc.; a royal pain in the butt. Eww...wat an ugly site? Every couple mins u're asked to let MS plugins be installed. Maybe it's WMP9 which I've refused to install? Anyhow, I don't like such pushy sites. The only problem I see is using technology that works only on the newest Windows (not even XP) in a browser product that is designed to run on perhaps dozens of OSes. It reminds me of NTLM, something which the Mozilla products included on the Windows version until a Mozilla-based version was coded. If it is possible to use the new features while maintaining compatibility to other OSes, and eventually including these features in other OSes, then it sounds like a fine idea. If not, it should be relegated to the broom closet. >> Microsoft have recently started encouraging their employees to maintain weblogs didn't MS let someone go not too long because he mentioned in his blog how Microsoft had pallets full of Macs in their warehouse? That makes little sense, considering that MS is probably only second to Apple in terms of Mac software development. You'd expect them to have caches of Mac hardware. <p>> [...] that makes little sense</p> <p>Unfortunately, it's true. Look <a href="http://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclecticism/2003/10/even_microsoft_.html">here</a> and <a href="http://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclecticism/2003/10/of_blogging_and.html">here</a>.</p> [...] that makes little sense Unfortunately, it's true: http://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclecticism/2003/10/even_microsoft_.html http://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclecticism/2003/10/of_blogging_and.html (Apologies about the HTML-ized post above. I've used mozillaZine since its inception, and still can't get used to its foras... :-)) Actually, he was let go for publishing a photograph and description of the Microsoft building. The Macs in the picture were coincidental; he probably would have been let go even if they were other types of systems. I'm just missing one thing in this conversation. What is he exactly telling us? OK, I understood that he's telling us to integrate Avalon and WinFS into Mozilla technologies (and connect people to Microsoft platform), but what integrating WinFS, RSS with Mozilla exactly means? I think it is important to start (or still continue) to think about how a browser can be involved? How can it be more handy, what can it give to us beside just bringing web pages to us? The other side of it, that maybe Scoble just want the same to get ideas how MS can improve their system. What features I'm talking about? First of all, integrating semantic web reading capability into Mozilla. Let's try to find ways that a browser can help people browsing. For example a more intelligent non-standard history and bookmark technology. It don't think, the today's add this page to my bookmarks is the end of this technology. What do you think about: add this page into my knowledge base? It would add the current page into a searchable archive and storage place that can help in my daily work. There are sidebars today, that can help developers. Let's create intelligent sidebars, where you can make notices, where the web integrated to, etc. And let the community start giving ideas, what can be included in a browser, after the today's browser technology. I know, that some of these technologies are exists as extensions, or be createable as extensions. I think, some of them should be integrated to the browser. Other technologies I've mentioned, and the others I have no idea must be created and integrated into the browser. My words are just words, and know that it would be better to give exact ideas, and to create them and show you. Unfortunatly I have no time for it. But I hope these sentences can help to make my favourite browsing and mailing technology more better. I think, that Scoble's story tells this for us. One thing I think every web browser should adopt is the Smart Bookmarks feature in Galeon. Mozilla variants already have a box where you can type in something to look up in google, but Galeon offers a toolbar where you can set up the same feature for any site (as long as it uses a url that includes a string you submitted). Now it's just as easy to look up a word in the dictionary, a bible passage, or anything else I use regularly. I guess the implicit assumption is that when (if?) Longhorn is released, everybody will automatically migrate to it. Personally, I'm migrating to Linux and FreeBSD to avoid the MS lock-in implied by Avalon and WinFS. I hear ya man. I did the same a year ago due to financial problems. Linux has saved me a bundle. One in a while a yahoo sends me a windows media file to play and I just tell them I can't play it; send me an mpeg or realmedia file. That is really the only problem I ever run into. microsoft is integrating contacts (for pdas, address book etc.) all into one. It makes sense that Mozilla provide a database in WinFS so that it can provide its address book along side MS's. avalon will I am sure be supported as xp's is now. MS people/Scobe--will you file bugs in Mozilla under rfes so that the community can debate these issues? (I think most of us are open, judging from MozillaNews comments.) --Sam This article has really broken my camel's back, and perfectly illustrates why I have been unhappy with MozillaZine's reporting for the last year or two. Here are my beefs: 1. MozillaZine is 100% biased towards Mozilla. Yes, I realize the site is about Mozilla and its products, but I prefer uneditorialized reporting (otherwise known as unbiased). If one wishes to know what non-mozilla people think of an issue, you have to go read C|Net or slashdot (or, heaven forbid, microsoft.com)...I am not saying that MozillaZine should not report with a favorable editorial slant towards MozillaZine, but the lack of opposing views is blinding (note the use of the term 'slant', not leaning so much that you may as well be laying down) . 2. MozillaZine misses a LOT of mozilla news. This interview with Mr. Scobel is ANCIENT news in the news world, and MozillaZine just barely decided to post something about it. And when they did post, so much of the article is saying "This is not news" that its insulting to the rest of the computing world. Are you just trying to cover up your lateness with lame excuses? Have you ever heard of Google News alerts? I was running a news alert with the term 'mozilla' for a few months, and I saw a lot of what you report days before you reported it, and I saw about 75% more than you EVER report! I want to make 3 things clear. One, I am not a Microsoft appologist (I hate nearly all of what Microsoft stands for, and the fact that I am a Linux/Mozilla user is proof.) Two, I don't have a Mozilla news site of my own, so I am not merely trying to rant about how crappy MozillaZine is compared to my site. Three, I still look at MozillaZine often, because let's face it, this site is the only place to go for a large portion of the mozilla news out there compiled into one place. I just hope that one of the admins of this site reads my comments and tries to improve this service to the Mozilla community (or at least ask for help so that more hands on this site can hopefully make an improvement). 1. See the title of the site. We're here to both report news, and advocate Mozilla and it's technologies. We readily admit that in the title of our site. If you honestly think slashdot, or even C|Net with Festa's coverage is unbiased, I feel sorry for you, as you clearly live in some sort of fantasy world. Why can Scoble editorialize, but we can't? 2. Last I checked we're a community driven news site. Alex and I both work full time jobs, have real lives away from the site, and still find lots of time to dedicate to it. However, we are of course not going to find every news item out there, which is why we rely on our readers to report them. If you're so good at finding news, why don't you submit it? Or are we just supposed to serve you? As far as Scoble's little turd-drop, it wasn't worthy enough to carry until people started making a big stink over it. As far as your three things are concerned, if you hate Microsoft, and use Linux, you should understand advocacy. Second, if you don't have your own site, then you don't know the work that goes into it, do you. Third if we're missing so much news, why bother coming here? It's one thing to post suggestions, it's another to just flame those of us who work hard on the site, so I hope you didn't expect anything more back than what you contributed, which was very little. jason "See the title of the site. " It just says MozillaZine, this doesn't imply a Mozilla bias, just that it covers Mozilla news. "If you honestly think slashdot, or even C|Net with Festa's coverage is unbiased" He wasn't saying they were unbiased, but that these were sites where you can find other opinions about the browser. I agree, and it's often useful to know what non-Mozilla people thinks about the browser, since they can have useful suggestions on how to improve it. "Last I checked we're a community driven news site." Yes, and all respect for that. I also agree with you that people who find lots of Mozilla news that s/he thinks this site should cover, that person should then submit those news. "if you hate Microsoft, and use Linux, you should understand advocacy" Just because he dislike MS, doesn't mean he prefer biased news. That seems to be what he's trying to say at least. "Third if we're missing so much news, why bother coming here?" He told you why. - "See the title of the site" - "It just says MozillaZine" No, the title that appears in the title bar on the home page: "mozillaZine - Your Source for Daily Mozilla News and Advocacy" Personally I don't like some of the "advocacy" stuff either, but it isn't my site. If people want to argue with the mozillaZine articles, that's what these comment sections are here for. And other sites are available - it's not that much effort to keep up with a few different sites and blogs is it? Thanks for responding Jason. First, as Jugular noted AND as I said in my original comment, I don't mind Mozilla slanted news, I'd just prefer to hear the other side of the story too. And yes C|Net and slashdot are biased sometimes, but as I stated and Jugular noted, I don't mind that because they report both sides of the story. Here's an example. Remember the Eolas patent crap? I submitted a news story to you guys about it, and you ignored my item, but if I remember right you eventually did post an item about it a few weeks later. Meanwhile, in the rest of the IT news world, this story is absolutely on fire! Microsoft even went so far as to host a meeting with all the top browser industry companies to deal with the issue. But MozillaZine ignores this issue, even though Eolas had a patent that could potentially bring Mozilla to its knees (thankfully, the patent is now invalidated, as I believe you reported). Was this a case of ignoring bad news? Microsoft, Macromedia, Real, Sun, Opera, and others certainly thought it was an important issue... I used to submit news, all the time. About 1 out of the 10 posts I submitted got posted. I can totally understand that you guys can't post every news item that you receive. But I ask myself, if MozillaZine only posts 0-3 items a day, then why can't they post more items from their readers? "if you don't have your own site, then you don't know the work that goes into it, do you" When did I say I don't have my own site? I do! What I said was I don't have my own Mozilla news site. I am a professional web developer, and have been for over 6 years. That is why I am so passionate about Mozilla. I believe that Mozilla has the potential to bring true standards compliance to the web, and they probably will. Believe me, I do understand the work that goes into a website. However, I also understand how easy it is to run a website after all the work is done and all you have to do is maintain it. Not anywhere near the task of developing an entire E-Commerce website from the ground up, which is the kind of stuff I do for a living. Here is a list of websites I've worked on: http://www.hteh.com/ (I used to be their full time webmaster) http://www.idiclear.com/ (I did a lot of design work here, but I think the company may be out of business now) http://www.pflpowertraining.com/ (I built the entire backend for this site by myself) http://www.techfeed.net/ (my blog) My final word. I'm sorry if I ruffled any feathers, but I think I have a legitimate reason to complain. Like I said in my original post, I do enjoy reading MozillaZine, and do so every day. I just wish it were a little better. If you guys want my help, I'd be willing to do more than just submit stories (putting my money where my mouth is). But if not, that's fine. "And yes C|Net and slashdot are biased sometimes, but as I stated and Jugular noted, I don't mind that because they report both sides of the story." If they report both sides of the story, then how are they biased? "Remember the Eolas patent crap? I submitted a news story to you guys about it, and you ignored my item, but if I remember right you eventually did post an item about it a few weeks later. Meanwhile, in the rest of the IT news world, this story is absolutely on fire! Microsoft even went so far as to host a meeting with all the top browser industry companies to deal with the issue. But MozillaZine ignores this issue, even though Eolas had a patent that could potentially bring Mozilla to its knees (thankfully, the patent is now invalidated, as I believe you reported). Was this a case of ignoring bad news?" We didn't ignore your submission, we evaluated it and decided not to report on it. We're a Mozilla news site and the patent case did not directly affect Mozilla. We ran an article when the Mozilla Foundation issued a statement. I don't recall Micrsoft hosting a meeting with the top browser companies but the W3C did have a discussion. I don't think the patenet has been totally invalidated yet but it looks likely. "I used to submit news, all the time. About 1 out of the 10 posts I submitted got posted. I can totally understand that you guys can't post every news item that you receive. But I ask myself, if MozillaZine only posts 0-3 items a day, then why can't they post more items from their readers?" Not everything submitted is relevant or interesting enough. "However, I also understand how easy it is to run a website after all the work is done and all you have to do is maintain it. Not anywhere near the task of developing an entire E-Commerce website from the ground up, which is the kind of stuff I do for a living." I really think that depends on the site. An ecommerce site may not require much maintainence when it's up and running; a news site, by definition requires a supply of news. The 5,000 or so articles MozillaZine has run in the last five-and-a-half years required much more work than developing the site in the first place. "Here is a list of websites I've worked on: <http://www.hteh.com/ (I used to be their full time webmaster) http://www.idiclear.com/ (I did a lot of design work here, but I think the company may be out of business now) http://www.pflpowertraining.com/ (I built the entire backend for this site by myself) http://www.techfeed.net/ (my blog)" Have a cookie. "My final word. I'm sorry if I ruffled any feathers, but I think I have a legitimate reason to complain." You can complain about whatever you like. We're not in the habit of supressing criticism. Some sites wold have deleted your posts. "Like I said in my original post, I do enjoy reading MozillaZine, and do so every day. I just wish it were a little better." So do I. Working on it. Alex Quote: We're here to both report news, and advocate Mozilla and it's technologies. We readily admit that in the title of our site. If you honestly think slashdot, or even C|Net with Festa's coverage is unbiased, I feel sorry for you, as you clearly live in some sort of fantasy world. EndQuote And to be fair, we at MozillaNews don't really claim to be unbiased either. We're blatantly pro-Mozilla (although we don't shy away from the warts). Everyone has an agenda. MoZine and MozNews both make ours plain, so you can think for yourself, folks. As for fair use, most of our quotes came from the comments in Scoble's blog, from either Scobe, or Mozilla luminaries. We only quoted a small portion of the InternetNews site. You seem to be suffering from the common delusion that there is such a thing as unbiased media. This is simply not the case. All media is biased, one way or another. Sites like MozillaZine, which are open about their bias, are inherently more trustworthy than sites which claim to be unbiased, impartial, or "fair and balanced", because either these sites are too inept or arrogant to see their own biases, or they know their biases all too well and are trying to manipulate you. If you want to get more diverse views, then I suggest you find a site with a strong IE/Windows bias (preferably one which is open about its bias) and draw information from BOTH places. A camera can only see in the direction it's pointed, so if you want multiple angles, use multiple cameras. Take in all of the information, knowing the biases of each piece, and then -horror of horrors- decide for yourself what to believe. "This article has really broken my camel's back, and perfectly illustrates why I have been unhappy with MozillaZine's reporting for the last year or two." I joined the site two years ago (almost to the day). Nice to know I've been responsible for the decline in reporting standards. "MozillaZine is 100% biased towards Mozilla. Yes, I realize the site is about Mozilla and its products, but I prefer uneditorialized reporting (otherwise known as unbiased)." Of course, the site's biased. With a subject area this small, the only people who are willing to to run a site devoted to it are either going to be passionately for or passionately against Mozilla. In any case, I think this particular article was an exception: most of our reports are not particularly editorialised. And while we may be biased, I think it's rare that we are unfair. You won't find us deliberately misrepresenting events and statements to fit our pro-Mozilla worldview. "If one wishes to know what non-mozilla people think of an issue, you have to go read C|Net or slashdot (or, heaven forbid, microsoft.com)..." We linked to a Microsoft employee's comments in this very article. "MozillaZine misses a LOT of mozilla news. This interview with Mr. Scobel is ANCIENT news in the news world, and MozillaZine just barely decided to post something about it." Ancient? The interview was published on Friday, three days before this article (or one working day if you prefer). Ancient generally refers to things that happened over a millennia ago. "And when they did post, so much of the article is saying 'This is not news' that its insulting to the rest of the computing world. Are you just trying to cover up your lateness with lame excuses?" No, just rather surprised that there's such a fuss about a Microsoft evangelist doing his job of evangelising Microsoft. "Have you ever heard of Google News alerts? I was running a news alert with the term 'mozilla' for a few months, and I saw a lot of what you report days before you reported it, and I saw about 75% more than you EVER report!" While I don't have an alert set up, I regularly search Google News for "mozilla". I'm not surprised you see stuff before we do - we can't report on stuff we don't know about. Also, most of the time when I search Google News, at least half the news comes from MozillaZine anyway (though I will admit this is not the case now). A lot of the Mozilla stories Google News just happen to mention Mozilla and we're not going to report on Ximian Connector for Microsoft Exchange Server being GPL'd just because Mitchell Baker is quoted in the press release. "Three, I still look at MozillaZine often, because let's face it, this site is the only place to go for a large portion of the mozilla news out there compiled into one place." So despite the bad job we're doing, our coverage is still better than anyone else's? "I just hope that one of the admins of this site reads my comments and tries to improve this service to the Mozilla community" Thanks, we're always trying to improve. I don't disagree that things have slipped recently: there's a backlog of news to post, I have hundreds of emails to respond to and I can't remember when I last went into the forums. I'm working on it. Happily, I will no longer be employed in mid-August, so maybe I'll get some more time to work on the site then. Alex I was surprised not to see any references to http://www.longhornblogs.com/rdawson/archive/2003/10/23/496.aspx - "Why there hasn't been development of IE - Intro to XUL and predictions about a similar Microsoft effort.", the similar Microsoft effort being of course XAML. Note this page's font sizes are 'unhelpful' in FireFox and Mozilla. Yeah, good point. Here is an example of a Microsoft developer praising a Mozilla technology, XUL. If I were a MozillaZine admin, I'd have a sizable list of google news alerts setup, and every day I'd scour these alerts for little tidbits like this. Blog posts like this are good news to Mozilla, but at the same time, they prove that Microsoft is paying attention to Mozilla and that they are mimicking a lot of our technology (or at least, trying to). We should be doing the same thing to them. Answer me this: Why is it ok to make FireFox propriteary on the Linux platform (we switched from XUL to GTK), but its a huge evil to even think about leveraging some of the Windows code? I for one don't get it. And remember from my previous posts in this thread...I AM NOT A MICROSOFT APPOLOGIST. Please don't flame me and treat me like a Microsoftite. I am a die-hard Linux/Mozilla user (see my blog for proof, http://www.techfeed.net/). I just care enough about Mozilla that I want to try to improve it. > (we switched from XUL to GTK) No, "we" did not. If you think Firefox is any more "switched to gtk" than SeaMonkey, please explain how. Then note that the Windows version is just as "switched" to the Win32 apis. Whoever gave you this choice tidbit of misinformation is either ignorant or malicious (probably the former). > but its a huge evil to even think about leveraging some of the Windows code? Did you see a single actual Mozilla developer say anything like that? Did you read roc's and Ben's comments on that blog? > Please don't flame me and treat me like a Microsoftite It's a sad day when one has to make such a request..... "Then note that the Windows version is just as "switched" to the Win32 apis." Point well taken. But I was referring to the Robert Scobel suggestions, which a lot of people here seem to be mortified about. "It's a sad day when one has to make such a request..." It is a sad day, but a lot of the responses to my posts in this thread seem to assume that I'm in the Microsoft camp, which I am NOT. Yacoubean, No one at any time called you that. In fact, in both of the posts that you have begun a conversation with you have directly stated that you are not a Microsoft apologist. For me, I don't care if one is or is not - what's the point of your message. Stating what you have, has only made me more likely to believe that you in fact use IE on Windows. I am not saying that you do (and I am not attempting to start a flame war), it is just the more you repeat this message of "Everyone hates me because they think I love MS" the more I think that is exactly the case. But that is fine, my parents still use IE and AOL and my girlfriends is still on Windows. Who cares? I love them still. And I would still respect you if that is the case with you but stop this crap when it isn't true. >>Did you see a single actual Mozilla developer say anything like that? Did you read roc's and Ben's comments on that blog? um, no. which blog? that longhorn thing? were the posts erased, or did they use names other than "roc" and "ben" ...?`` yeah, that blog, and they're still there to see. There aren't any tags for direct linking, but follow the comments link, and then Ben's comment ends with "Ben Goodger Lead Engineer, Firefox", so it should be easy to get to with find-as-you-type, and roc's two comments have his name as "Robert O'Callahan", so again, should be findable. Man, I must have had a bad morning. I don't usually get into flame wars. It is true, I was being a little defensive on the Microsoft issue. But I am what I said I am, a Linux/Mozilla user. borggraefe, what is wrong about the "XUL to GTK switch" comment? Is it not true? Please refer to http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/system-requirements.html and notice how the Linux requirements include GTK+. The reason I called it proprietary is because it is different from all the other platforms Mozilla is on. You are right, GTK is open source, like Mozilla. But the point is that the drivers decided to branch off (is that the correct term?) into a completely different technology for Linux. From here on out, all changes that are made in XUL on Windows/Mac/whatever will have to be recreated in Linux because it is not using XUL anymore. Correct me if I am wrong. However, all that said, I have to say that I don't think that the move to GTK+ is a bad move. When I installed 0.8 in linux, I immediately noticed a huge speed increase over older Mozilla/Firebird. I think the decision was made because GTK in Linux is much faster than XUL in Linux. If the developers are willing to support a different platform in exchange for a speed boost, more power to them. This all agrees with my original comments which are saying, what is wrong with leveraging the code of the platform you are developing for? And that includes Windows. > Correct me if I am wrong. You're wrong :) Here's my take on how things actually work. This is off the top of my head and will be slightly inaccurate. Later bz or someone will come along and correct me and make me feel silly. XUL is a language for defining interfaces. In the XUL file, you specify which widgets go where and how they behave. It gets parsed into a DOM tree in memory, the scripts get interpreted and so on. From the DOM tree, (some part of) Mozilla decides which widgets need to be rendered and where they need to go. It then uses the platform-specific APIs to provde the actual rendering (see http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/gfx/ which I think is the relevant code). There's also nsITheme which asks the native toolkit to draw bits of widgets so that we have a nativeish look (e.g. the scrollbars look like the scrollbars in your OS theme). There's a bit more infrmation (out of date of course) here: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xul/theme.html Anyway ignorng the fact that the above isn't quite right, XUL and GTK are /both/ needed on Linux because they do different things. XUL specifes the structure and behavior of the UI and GTK provides the rendering. You need GTK equivalents on other platforms, but they're not listed because they can't be uninsalled like GTK can. As for Longhorn, I imagine that Avalon (if that's the graphics layer) support wll be integrated quite quickly. The more interesting question is whether the /other/ suggestions that Scoble made will be taken up. The only concrete thing I remember him saying is that WinFS would allow a better history. I have more difficulty believing that Mozilla would take advantage of that because it would mean frkng a fairly major chunk of code and of UI that is currently (more or less) cross platform. Thanks. So if I understand it right, the code for all platforms makes these API calls identically. In linux, GTK handles them (some gtk specific code inbetween the calls and the widget is required). The same thing happens in Windows, an API call -> windows specific code -> widget. Sound about right? I can see some huge benefits to using WinFS. Personally, I hate dealing with the Mozilla history. Its anything but convenient to find that one page you just know you saw, but you can't remember much about the title and or URL. If mozilla leveraged WinFS (and open source databases on other platforms), it could be a user preference to store more than just the URL and title in the database. Then I could easily perform a query (with a gui of course, to support the non SQL crowd) and find that page I needed. Or, say you just did a bunch of shopping for your wife, but you need to hide it. You could do an advanced search (like in google) and quickly find delete all those pages. If the drivers are averse to using WinFS, it would be fairly easy to do this kind of thing with their own proprietary database written in code, or to incorporate a small chunk of an open source database. I can think of a lot of other cool things that could be done, i.e. bookmark stuff, web search stuff, etc. > Sound about right? Yep. That's about right. Note that history is already stored in what is effectively a database.... it could easily store more than just URL and title (eg encoding, keywords, etc); it's just a matter of using it. This is not to say that there may not be benefits to using WinFS; I don't know enough about it to judge. Just as you point out that all the things you listed could be done (possibly with less effort, depending on the WinFS apis) without depending WinFS. In the end, once the Longhorn APIs are stable we can look at them and decide what we can get out of them. That time (of API stability for Longhorn) hasn't come yet, as far as I can tell (though again, this is hardly my area of expertise). > Note that history is already stored in what is effectively a database.... it could easily store more than just URL and title (eg encoding, keywords, etc); it's just a matter of using it. Out of interest, is anyone actually working on the history backend? I can't see it on the owners page, so I guess it's just stagnating :( Sorry, that's pretty inaccurate. It's not it's own module clearly but I can't really work out if anyone is 'responsible' for it; the people checking in patches in the 'history' component seem to be prettty random. It looks like Alec Flett once owned it but now I'm not sure. In fact most checkins for the backend sem to be from Boris... > notice how the Linux requirements include GTK+ They include them as far back as, oh... at least M17, which was the first time I compiled Mozilla. > it is different from all the other platforms Mozilla is on Er... the Win32 requirements include the Win32 apis and toolkit and the Mac requirements include Carbon, etc. The only difference is that that there are no Windows/Mac systems without the relevant toolkits installed (since the operating system vendors make that impossible), whereas there _are_ Linux systems without GTK installed. Hence the explicit listing of GTK as a requirement -- because it may not be met. > it is different from all the other platforms Mozilla is on. It is not, insofar as we end up using some underlying widget set that knows something about actual "windows" on every single platform we run on. See the widget/ directory in the Mozilla tree at http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/widget/src/ (I count 9 different toolkits, of which three can all be used on Linux, so GTK is not the only option on Linux... though the xlib version is not as polished as the GTK one). > From here on out, all changes that are made in XUL on Windows/Mac/whatever will have to be recreated > in Linux Wrong. The whole point is that XUL is implemented completely inside and on top of Gecko. Gecko makes API calls to the platform widget impls, but it does not depend on their innards (for the most part). So changes to Gecko can be made once and just work on all platforms that have a valid widget implementation. > because it is not using XUL anymore. Correct me if I am wrong. You're wrong. It's using XUL. I'm not going to bother addressing the rest of your post, since it is based on completely false premises. I'll also note that you carefully ignored my first post which pointed out these same errorrs... I have to wonder why. "what is wrong about the "XUL to GTK switch" comment? Is it not true? Please refer to http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/system-requirements.html and notice how the Linux requirements include GTK+." GTK has been a Mozilla requirement on Linux forever. Except before the rewrite, when I think Motif was required. It's no different to requiring the Windows or Mac OS X widget sets. "However, all that said, I have to say that I don't think that the move to GTK+ is a bad move. When I installed 0.8 in linux, I immediately noticed a huge speed increase over older Mozilla/Firebird. I think the decision was made because GTK in Linux is much faster than XUL in Linux." Well, nothing changed. Which only makes the speed increases seem more impressive. I think the confusion about GTK came about because GTK 2 binaries started to be built, which made some people think that XUL had been dropped altogether in favour of native widgets. Though if you can mistake XUL for native GTK, the developers must be doing a good job with nsITheme and its ilk. Alex You have properly slapped me around, by dropping responses in the middle of the thread (even though you didn't respond to my later applogy for flaming you guys). But I guess I deserve it. <extending an olive branch> The only thing that I wish to respond to is that you claim to be buried, and I have offered to help. If there are only a couple of folks involed in the administration of MozillaZine, you can clearly use some more hands on the project. But if you don't want my help (which is understandable, considering my comments here), then at least ask some of these other fine folks for help. Because you admitted yourself that you've got a huge backlog of news, so why not ask for help? I'm sure there would be plenty of folks that would do it for free (me included). Yacoubean, I think it's nice of you to send this fair excuse at the end of a heated thread. I also didn't know exactly how XUL and GTK work together and now I know a bit more. One thing with respect to the Windows technology (like WinFS) you have proposed to support in Mozilla: How would it be possible to use them on other platforms like Unix, Linux, Mac? I don't think it's a good idea to become even more dependent on APIs that only exist on one platform. And I don't want to rely on Miguel de Icazas crowd to port all Longhorn APIs to Unix. ;°) You know the routine: M$ this, M$ that. All users of Windows are idiots! On, and on and on .... You know, about a year ago I asked if it were possible that someone could make Phoenix/Fire* extension that could just uses my Favorites. Not import them, but use them as is. A simple windows feature that that's been around for a long time. At that, I got called all kinds of 'colorful metaphors'. Okay, I'm finally sick of it. 1) Not every Windows programmer (ASP.net) is an idiot. Yes, I am one. I also have a MS in Anyltical Chemistry. So what. It pays the bills. I personally enjoy the intellectual challenges that programming presents. 2) DO NOT INSULT YOU AUDIENCE! Windows programmers are a part of your audience. Many of us are tired of MS slack on IE. We're looking to Mozilla as a competator. In wanting IE favorites support via extension I am asking for a convenience that would smooth my work flow. "But no! We cannot use 'Favorites' - they're a M$ product." It's like Ghostbusters - 'Cats and dogs - living together. Mass hysteria!'. Good grief. I ask for a convenice and all I get is a pseudo intellectual jihad from the mozilla legalists. 3) Leveraging parts of any platform - where appropraite - is good policy and is actually expected. Would MacOSX users like to see the Windows theme? Are there not parts of the MacOS, such as Quartz, that would allow you to achieve better rendering performance. As time goes on, your customers will demand this anyway. 4) Stop complaining. Seriously. Stop complaining about M$ this or M$ that. Use your skills to take Mozilla to the next level. The browser is nice, but the the your future is in gecko as application platform. And M$ is not your only competator. Macromedia, Sun and others are also in this game. 5) Present a cohesive development plan to us mere mortal developers. Here is what I mean. I use Visual Studio and I have spent the better part of two years learning ASP.net and the BCL. M$ have a cohesive portal for developers and a primary tool. What does Mozilla.org have to offer the user who wants to use Gecko as a platform? Time is money folks. I do have a life outside programming. If you want me to switch, you would have to come up with the beginnings of a Cohesive toolset and comunity. If these exist, why are the not 'In My Face' the way visual studio and MSDN are? You've made a very nice browser, the best one on the planet. If have a long way to go to win mind share on developing platform loyalty. It's not enough to be a 'refuge' from M$. It's about this: how can I make a better enterpise app faster, providing the best user experience. That's the bottom line. I think I agree with 99% of what you are saying lynn. I have noticed this 'hysteria' all over the open source movement. Microsoft calls it religion. What ever it is called, its a fact that a lot of people in the mozilla/linux/<fill in the blank> community hate the idea of working with a Microsoft product. However, you can't throw out the baby with the bathwater here. If you read other parts of the comments to this posting, you will see proof that Mozilla has done a LOT of coding that is specific to Windows/Mac/Linux. Why? Because they realize that you can't expect all users of your product to just be happy with what you give them. Users expect things to look and work the same as their other apps. As far as your Favorites extension idea...I agree with you. That would be a great extension. But as elsewhere in the open source world, people here are going to say "Where's the patch?" In other words, do it yourself. I am not a mozilla developer, not at any level. But I do know Mozilla has put a LOT of effort into making documentation available that will help new developers get involved. Is there a fully integrated development environment like VS? Not that I know of. I do know that in the Windows world, the developers use VC++ (at least, that's what I've heard. Correct me if I'm wrong). But to make an extension, you don't need C++. Its just a matter of XUL/JS/CSS. Poke around on mozilla.org, xulplanet.com, and mozdev.org and I'll bet you can throw an extension together fairly quick. You may also be interested in Nigel McFarlane's book on moz development, located here http://www.informit.com/promotion/1041 (free download) >If you read other parts of the comments to this posting, you will see proof that Mozilla has done a LOT of coding that is specific to Windows/Mac/Linux. I probably wasn't giving enough credit here. I apologize. >What ever it is called, its a fact that a lot of people in the mozilla/linux/<fill in the blank> community hate the idea of working with a Microsoft product. I work with MySQL, just for the record. It's nice. For me it became viable with InnoDB. I'm looking forward to Stored Procedures in 5.0. Version 4.1 cannot come fast enough. >I do know that in the Windows world, the developers use VC++ (at least, that's what I've heard. Correct me if I'm wrong). This is changing. And it's changing fast. C# is becoming the language of choice for many, and .Net for development. Here is what .Net is in a nutshell - .Net is MS's Java. It's application platform with Base Class Library. They are conceptually very similar. >Is there a fully integrated development environment like VS? Not that I know of. Maybe Eclipse would work. http://eclipse.org/ I'm not a purist though. There are many windows developers that still prefer their 'Visual Notepad'. >However, you can't throw out the baby with the bathwater here. Yeah, I came real close to that. I just get tired of the 'M$, and anybody that likes M$, suck mentality.' It doesn't solve problems. Just to clarify. The fanatics, lunatics and hippies do not control Firefox. Absence of one integration point or another is not necessarily because we shun it, but beause we're trying to make the browser stable first before layering on more features. From 0.9 onward Firefox will do comprehensive data import from most Windows browsers including IE, Opera, etc. Mac and Linux at this time only have Seamonkey and 4.x migration but I don't see more comprehensive tools there (e.g. Safari migration) as being that far off. I'm working with folk like Benjamin Smedberg and Darin Fisher on a new system as well to prevent people's browser from crashing or otherwise failing when they upgrade. I consider these critical things to get done before a 1.0 as they help adoption and maintain people's confidence in us as being able to produce reliable software. Once all that's done and we have a 1.0 under our belt, we're definitely going to be looking at ways ot leverage various new platform technologies. Before I begin, I would just like to say I hate the name "Favorites." I find it condescending, like so much of what Microsoft does. Let's look past the name for a moment. First, you're a Windows programmer. Thank you for your interest in Mozilla! We need people like you. As for you being yelled at, every site on the net has creeps. Just ignore them. Second, if you have a patch for Mozilla or Firefox that enables use of IE Favorites, just go to bugzilla.mozilla.org, create a bug, and post the patch to it, seek reviews, and chances are it will be checked in. The people snarling at Mozillazine don't make the call as to whether the patch gets in. The people who make the call are all very intelligent people. Third, even if you do find a roadblock on Bugzilla, just make your patch into an extension, go over to Mozdev.org and put it up there for the world to see and use. Foruth, I agree with you 100% on IE Favorites. As a long-term die-hard Mozillian, I must sadly admit that IE Favorites are light years ahead of Mozilla bookmarks. Let me tell you why. Not only do they just work better, they are less prone to data loss. Our bookmarks.html file has a number of open bugs concerning files that have been totally blown away by bugs in Mozilla. Those bugs still exist. For that reason, I have switched over to 3rd party bookmark managers for all my Mozilla bookmarks. I have found them lacking. Now I'm just using IE Favoties. When I need to get a bookmark, I just drag it over to Mozilla. It works okay. At least my data is safe. A couple of benefits to the IE Favorites implementation. * What you really want in a bookmarks manager is the ability to organize entries into subdirectories and the ability to search. In short, you want a file manager. Our current bookmarks.html makes a rather poor file manager. IE Favorites leverages the system's file manager (NTFS or whatever). Hard drive space is not really the biggest consideration in the era of 80GB drives. * Searching through IE Favorites is easy. You go to the Start menu, Find, Files or Folders, search in c:\windows\favorites , and look for the filename. If you want to search by URL, use "Containing text." This is not rocket science. UNIX had grep eons ago. Our bookmarks.html search function works, too. On this account, we're even. * Organizing IE Favorites is incredibly easy. It's far easier than dealing with the clunky Bookmarks Manager. You can either use IE's interface, or you can just use any file manager, such as Windows Explorer. I would prefer for us to just scrap our bookmarks.html implementation and clone IE Favorites. In fact, I wish somebody would open a bug to do that in Bugzilla. (Post the bug # here!) Just getting Mozilla to use IE's Favorites, though, would be huge. >First, you're a Windows programmer. Thank you for your interest in Mozilla! We need people like you. As for you being yelled at, every site on the net has creeps. Just ignore them. Thanks. Specifically, I'm an ASP.net developer. > Second, if you have a patch for Mozilla or Firefox that enables use of IE Favorites ... I wish I had one. I'm not the most likely candidate the make one. My comments were intended to be more philisophically directed. I only had a Metric day, I might be able to more than I do now. >Foruth, I agree with you 100% on IE Favorites. As a long-term die-hard Mozillian, I must sadly admit that IE Favorites are light years ahead of Mozilla bookmarks. Let me tell you why. Not only do they just work better, they are less prone to data loss. Our bookmarks.html file has a number of open bugs concerning files that have been totally blown away by bugs in Mozilla. Those bugs still exist. When I was a swimming coach, one of the first lessons I learned was to 'implement' someones ideas if they are better than my own. If it's not pattented or copyrighted, go for it. >When I need to get a bookmark, I just drag it over to Mozilla. It works okay. At least my data is safe. Are there any you would recommend?
I could be wrong, but I don't think MS has some kind of patent that would prevent us from cloning IE Favorites. IANAL. 3rd party bookmarks managers are at sites like snapfiles.com. The only one that impressed me much was Netvisualize Favorites Organizer, but even that was just too difficult for me to use. Too much clicking. > Searching through IE Favorites is easy. You go to the Start menu, Find, Files or Folders, search in c:\windows\favorites , and look for the filename. If you want to search by URL, use "Containing text." This is not rocket science To pick up a single point, to most users, this *is* rocket science. The fact that the bookmarks in IE are a set of files is basically an implementation detail, as much as the psudo-html of the netscape bookmarks is. I think the number of people who would think of using 'Find Files of Folders' to search their bookmarks is a small fraction of the IE using population. Which isn't to say Mozilla bookmarks couldn't be improved in numerous ways. The problem, as ever, is finding someone to make the code changes. > * Searching through IE Favorites is easy. You go to the Start menu, Find, Files or Folders, search in c:windowsfavorites , and look for the filename. Searching through Firefox bookmarks is easy. You open the bookmarks pane and type whatever it is that you want to find in the little search input text box > If you want to search by URL, use "Containing text." This is not rocket science. UNIX had grep eons ago. Our bookmarks.html search function works, too. On this account, we're even. If you want to search by URL - open the bookmarks.html located in your profile folder and start typing. I dont see the fantastic uhah effect of IE favorites ? Admittedly the URL search is cumbersome, because you have to locate the bookmarks.html - Mozilla should extend the search field so that it also searched in URLs, but other than that I simply don't get what you're on about here. |