I was saddened today to hear about the end of a dear old friend.
We don't talk much anymore, and upon reflection, my friend wasn't very cool, or very well organized...
Buy my friend was more capable than anyone - more solid, more reliable, more... Just more.
A little on the heavy side, but really - a little meat is good sometimes, right?
Today, The Mozilla Organization announced it's no longer going to develop the Mozilla Suite - one of the most functional, polished web browsing suites available from any vendor.
As far as maturity, it's head an shoulders above anything else they've done - and I think they've made a mistake walking away mid-beta... Locking into a product that, while it has a large user base, doesn't have near the history or capability.
Just to see for myself what everyone was complaining about (It had been a while, like I said), I downloaded Mozilla one last time, just to see for myself what was going on there... And they're right. It IS a much higher quality product than the one they espouse. It can do a lot more (I'm just talking about the actual web browser here), and it's actually got a much more polished and snappy interface.
What hooked me into Firefox wasn't the quality (which is quite good), it was the combination of simplicity, and customization (easy to add features, change the look, and so forth)... But really, is it a better product? No... It's a shadow of what it replaces, designed to appear as close to IE as possible, so users who download it will feel more at home. It's a wimpy younger brother - the Cavalier to the Corvette... Maybe the Chevette to the Corvette would be a more apt description... Regardless, I'm a Firefox user, so it's not a big blow to me personally - but I know many who are Mozilla users who hate Firefox, for all the reasons the makers consider it the best.
It's all about choice, right?
I'm torn. After watching the Mozilla Suite grow up from a poorly coded mess, when it was named things's like "M2", to the version that became Netscape 6 (wow, was THAT a mistake - AOL really knows how to shit the bed, and if there was any doubt at all, they dispelled it there), to the more useable, but tarnished Netscape 7... and it's Open Source brethrin Mozilla 1.7, it's more refined older brother of sorts...
I installed 1.8b1
Now, the fact they've made it through several Alphas and a Beta show a commitment to ship a product - this is what Alpha (pre-beta, early test code) and Beta (second phase development, buggy but stable enough to use) denote - early versions of a product. They've incurred countless hours of developer contribution, and untold countless hours of volunteer contribution, aiming to make this the best Mozilla release ever, and then they go into a meeting and come out offering their community and volunteers who've been slaving away a big, apologetic... fuck you. They slapped their own upside the head and stopped before they were finished.
They left the work of many countless years useless, unwanted. Many of the features, fixes, and polish were to be included in features Firefox and it's simblings simply don't have, nor will they ever.
And old friend - I'll miss you. It's a shame you left on the middle finger to all those who worked so hard to make you the amazing creature you are, rather than in an honorable way, as would have been fitting.
We don't talk much anymore, and upon reflection, my friend wasn't very cool, or very well organized...
Buy my friend was more capable than anyone - more solid, more reliable, more... Just more.
A little on the heavy side, but really - a little meat is good sometimes, right?
Today, The Mozilla Organization announced it's no longer going to develop the Mozilla Suite - one of the most functional, polished web browsing suites available from any vendor.
As far as maturity, it's head an shoulders above anything else they've done - and I think they've made a mistake walking away mid-beta... Locking into a product that, while it has a large user base, doesn't have near the history or capability.
Just to see for myself what everyone was complaining about (It had been a while, like I said), I downloaded Mozilla one last time, just to see for myself what was going on there... And they're right. It IS a much higher quality product than the one they espouse. It can do a lot more (I'm just talking about the actual web browser here), and it's actually got a much more polished and snappy interface.
What hooked me into Firefox wasn't the quality (which is quite good), it was the combination of simplicity, and customization (easy to add features, change the look, and so forth)... But really, is it a better product? No... It's a shadow of what it replaces, designed to appear as close to IE as possible, so users who download it will feel more at home. It's a wimpy younger brother - the Cavalier to the Corvette... Maybe the Chevette to the Corvette would be a more apt description... Regardless, I'm a Firefox user, so it's not a big blow to me personally - but I know many who are Mozilla users who hate Firefox, for all the reasons the makers consider it the best.
It's all about choice, right?
I'm torn. After watching the Mozilla Suite grow up from a poorly coded mess, when it was named things's like "M2", to the version that became Netscape 6 (wow, was THAT a mistake - AOL really knows how to shit the bed, and if there was any doubt at all, they dispelled it there), to the more useable, but tarnished Netscape 7... and it's Open Source brethrin Mozilla 1.7, it's more refined older brother of sorts...
I installed 1.8b1
Now, the fact they've made it through several Alphas and a Beta show a commitment to ship a product - this is what Alpha (pre-beta, early test code) and Beta (second phase development, buggy but stable enough to use) denote - early versions of a product. They've incurred countless hours of developer contribution, and untold countless hours of volunteer contribution, aiming to make this the best Mozilla release ever, and then they go into a meeting and come out offering their community and volunteers who've been slaving away a big, apologetic... fuck you. They slapped their own upside the head and stopped before they were finished.
They left the work of many countless years useless, unwanted. Many of the features, fixes, and polish were to be included in features Firefox and it's simblings simply don't have, nor will they ever.
And old friend - I'll miss you. It's a shame you left on the middle finger to all those who worked so hard to make you the amazing creature you are, rather than in an honorable way, as would have been fitting.
rin:
haha, you're telling me.
malloreigh:
I tried not to convert my friends just because it was easier that way... the first friend I told about my new religious unbeliefs decided I was an idiot and I was going to hell and she hated me because she was a 'Wiccan-Catholic'. oO