The Mozilla Firebird 0.6 web browser has been out for nearly two full days now and I've taken a minute out of my Sunday afternoon to check the reactions across the searchable blogosphere. It's still early but there are definitely some positive comments out there. Rather than quote a few of them I'm just dumping the links to all the posts I found which had any commentary (there were a few dozen more that basically said "Firebird 0.6 released. Go get it." and I'm not including those).
Jason Key at PNukeComm
Kristine at KADYELLEBEE
Hypermind
Julian Bond at Ecademy
Chris at TechnoBlog
mpary at Mikes Weblogs
kopa at Kaffeesud: Mozilla Firebird
allankintz.com
jbond at Voidstar
Jason Lefkowitz at Just Well Mixed
algorhythm
Kenneth Hunt at Tech Observer
kyte at Hamarana
vince at vincemease.com
Anil at Six Log
MXN at Punclox
blytt at Brian Lyttle Online
Marcus at Random Thoughts...
blogipity
V. Satheesh Babu at vsbabu.org
milbertus at Ramblings of a Code Monkey
lkieksi at Nickel And Chromium
Haiko Hebig at hebig.org
Neil at Neil's World
Binary Bonsai
Stefan Tilkov at Random Stuff
Sean 'Early' Campbell & Scott 'Adopter' Swigart's Radio Weblog
Tools . Komlenic . Com
One of the common threads running through a lot of those posts was "If you're still using IE, you need to switch." Let's hope that meme continues to grow.
update: more links:
steven at Acts of Volition
Bruno Raoult
http://www.phaedo.cx/archives/computers/firebird_06_is_out.php
Posted by: phaedo on May 18, 2003 09:19 PMAnd of course this will reignite the eternal debate:
Is Firebird *really* for end-users?
To bad Mozilla Firebird is being ripped apart over on MacSlash. :( Some people are so short sighted.
Posted by: Just Me on May 19, 2003 12:59 PMDo the people at MacSlash realize that this is the first release ever for Mozilla Firebird on MacOS? And with that there will inevitably be problems?
Posted by: milbertus on May 19, 2003 02:16 PMYou know, as a die hard Mac OS X fan and user I feel dirtied by some of the views expressed in the replys... not to mention I can no longer safely say Mac user are smarter. People just can't get beyond the idea of the awful scrolling speeds, the lack of a scroll widgets (other than a gray bar with a big black box) and some UI inconsistencies.
They neglect to notice that the main point of this release on OS X was for testing, to flush these problems out. In hindsight, maybe it would have been a better idea for Mozilla not to release a Mozilla Firebird 0.6 release but instead mention that nightly builds for Mac OS X is available. That might cut down on this is crap type of comments by uneducated users. Or maybe it should have a splash screen that reads: 'Mozilla Firebird 0.6 is not indented for use. Mozilla Firebird 0.6 for Mac OS X is intended for a reference in testing."
Anyway it is very sad.
Two points:
One. MacSlash is hardly a good cross-section of the Mac-using populace.
Two. People generally only open their mouths to either eat or to complain. Their mouths stay shut when they don't feel there's a need to complain. For all we know, for each unhappy MacSlasher there could be two that appreciate the effort on Mozilla Firebird.
My personal attempt at providing an exception to point number two:
http://www.pixelcentric.net/x-shame/mozfb.html
The Web Standards Project states that Firebird "never crashes." ;-)
Posted by: Seamus on May 20, 2003 05:21 PM