From rssfeeds@jmason.org Thu Sep 26 16:43:15 2002 Return-Path: Delivered-To: yyyy@localhost.spamassassin.taint.org Received: from localhost (jalapeno [127.0.0.1]) by jmason.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E543516F69 for ; Thu, 26 Sep 2002 16:42:08 +0100 (IST) Received: from jalapeno [127.0.0.1] by localhost with IMAP (fetchmail-5.9.0) for jm@localhost (single-drop); Thu, 26 Sep 2002 16:42:08 +0100 (IST) Received: from dogma.slashnull.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by dogma.slashnull.org (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id g8QFRgg24226 for ; Thu, 26 Sep 2002 16:27:42 +0100 Message-Id: <200209261527.g8QFRgg24226@dogma.slashnull.org> To: yyyy@spamassassin.taint.org From: "hyatt@mozilla" Subject: Priceless Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 15:27:41 -0000 Content-Type: text/plain; encoding=utf-8 URL: http://www.mozillazine.org/weblogs/hyatt/#85443744 Date: Not supplied I just finished reading an article about Mozilla[1] for Salon.com[2]. This excerpt was rather amusing. _It is a good question, because in almost every way, Mozilla is a better browser than Navigator. For example, Netscape's best new feature, tabbed browsing -- which lets you have several Web pages open in the same browser window, and allows you to bookmark all the pages under one name -- was in Mozilla many months ago, and the Mozilla project that created it (called MultiZilla) already has an improved version available. When asked about this, Yecies, of Netscape, said, "That's true, but the engineer who's working on it [for Mozilla] is a Netscape employee. It was always done with the intention of fostering general browsing usability for Netscape." _ Yes, ok, I suppose that's true if by "Netscape employee" you really meant "Apple employee." and by "always done with the intention of fostering general browsing usability for Netscape" you meant "was done in a weekend for Mozilla because I thought MultiZilla was cool." Here's how the whole tabbed browsing thing happened. One night I finally downloaded an extension called MultiZilla (go check it out on mozdev.org[3]. I was particularly impressed with a feature contained in MultiZilla called tabbed browsing. I started doing research and discovered NetCaptor[4], a tabbed browser that embedded WinIE. MultiZilla was cool but at the time suffered from two fundamental flaws that prevented the code from being incorporated into the Mozilla tree. The first was a UI flaw, namely that at the time it had ripped off NetCaptor down to the last context menu item. The GUI was similar enough that there would have been definite concerns about so obviously copying some of NetCaptor's more obscure capabilities (like sticky names and tab locking). The second concern was that the tab behavior wasn't encapsulated cleanly into a widget. I produced a simplified version of tabbed browsing on my own time (did it in a weekend) that removed some of the geekier NetCaptor features and that encapsulated the tab behavior so that the changes to other Navigator files would be minimal. Once I established that it didn't degrade performance in the single tab case, I checked it in as an experiment. The response was overwhelming, as were the bugs that started being filed. So much so that at first I wanted to back tabbed browsing out of the tree. I was overruled by Mozilla, which turned out to be a good thing for all I think. :) Even with all the excitement and hoopla surrounding the advent of tabbed browsing on the engineering side (and in the Mozilla community), Netscape still didn't get it. Netscape marketing prioritized all sorts of useless work that nobody had even started above tabbed browsing in their marketing document. They continued to do so for months, simply not getting it. It was this odd curiosity that one of their engineers had checked in, and they didn't know what to make of it. Only after the press raved about it did Netscape really jump on board. I'm sure Netscape is doing the same thing now with popup blocking. Can't you just see it now? We'll have a Popup Manager, and a Manager to manage the Popup Manager, and twenty-seven preferences for fine-grained control of all aspects of popups. Can you believe how disfunctional Netscape is? When their engineers say "you should do this" or "you should do that", they get completely ignored (or blown off), but when CNet says "We didn't like this, or we didn't like that.", Netscape scurries to meet their demands. That is simply pathetic. [1] http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/09/10/browser_wars/ [2] http://www.salon.com [3] http://www.mozdev.org [4] http://www.netcaptor.com