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About this siteFor six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul Coming soon: Everything Must GoThe next edition of "Everything Must Go" will be appearing here soon. --Paul Thursday, September 13, 2007Vista App Alert: Mozilla Posts Places Mock-UpLooks like Mozilla has caught Vista fever. In a recent Firefox 3.0 status update, the company posted the following mock-up of Firefox's long-awaited Places feature, which will be used as a unified bookmarks and history manager: You can find the full mock-up, with a lot more info, here. It looks an awful lot like Vista's built-in applications (a style that is described as "really freaking cool" in the mock-up). I hope this is exactly what the whole Firefox 3.0 UI looks like. I can't wait. One question: Why not organize RSS feeds in there too? Labels: Firefox, Mozilla, Vista [ Posted at 11:24 AM | Permalink ]
Monday, August 20, 2007What happened to Firefox? (Updated)I have the same questions and observations:Firefox... what happened to you? Consuming gross amounts of memory, slower and slower as releases go by. You were supposed to be a slim browser usurping Mozilla by virtue of simplicity, shedding the feature creep and lack of engineering that had convoluted the Mozilla suite. Now you have become the very thing you were created to kill: a bloated browser.Here's the thing. I really rely on Firefox now in ways I didn't just a few months ago. I manage email (Gmail), calendaring (Google Calendar), blogging (Blogger), my online photo backup (Picasa Web) and more in Firefox. It's not just a browser, it's my primary interface for much of what I do every day. And sure enough, it's getting bigger and slower. It eats memory until you close it out and restart it, which is hardly elegant. I'd can the thing if I weren't so smitten with its many excellent add-ons, which I now rely on almost as much as the browser itself. Firefox... what the heck happened? Update: Mozilla's Asa Dotzler dropped me a note and suggested that I check into the extensions I'm using to see whether one or more of them are the culprit. And you know... that could be it. I certainly do run a number of Google-related extensions. I'll try running vanilla Firefox via Safe Mode to see whether that's the issue. Labels: Email, Firefox, Internet, Mozilla [ Posted at 3:28 PM | Permalink ]
Thursday, August 09, 2007Firefox is a Public AssetAnother provocative post from Mozilla's Mitchell Baker:Recently a Mozilla observer and contributor asked why Firefox isn't treated as a typical for-profit, commercial effort, and why we are giving up the chance to get rich. This is a great topic for discussion, I'm glad it was raised. I've got a very strong opinion on this, and am quite interested in what others think.Wow. And I mean that in the most positive way imaginable. Can anyone picture Bill Gates writing something like this? And if you really can picture that, let's take a look back at an open letter Mr. Gates actually did write, some many years ago. One might call these two things polar opposites. Labels: Firefox, Microsoft, Mozilla [ Posted at 3:56 PM | Permalink ]
Thursday, July 26, 2007Email Call to ActionMitchell Baker:Mozilla has been supporting Thunderbird as a product since the beginning of the Foundation. The result is a good, solid product that provides an open alternative for desktop mail. However, the Thunderbird effort is dwarfed by the enormous energy and community focused on the web, Firefox and the ecosystem around it. As a result, Mozilla doesn't focus on Thunderbird as much as we do browsing and Firefox and we don't expect this to change in the foreseeable future. We are convinced that our current focus - delivering the web, mostly through browsing and related services - is the correct priority. At the same time, the Thunderbird team is extremely dedicated and competent, and we all want to see them do as much as possible with Thunderbird.The Mozilla CEO is coming around to something I've been wrestling with lately, and I suspect it's a growing issue for a number of users: Email applications just aren't that great. Unfortunately for her and her company, however, the solution most likely isn't a local application but rather a Web-based service like Gmail. I don't see any reason to install and manage a local email application anymore. Increasingly, I suspect that's true for many others as well. So. Her comments about Firefox are correct. Mozilla should focus on the browser, because that application, increasingly, is the front end for most of the time that people spend computing. (Please fix the memory leak issue on Windows while you're at it, Mozilla.) Trying to make a run with Thunderbird, however, is silly: It will just whither and die. Thunderbird, as she notes, is "solid," but ... so what? It's unnecessary. I'd rather see Mozilla contribute some of its email expertise towards making Web mail better. Not another Web mail client, no, we have plenty of those. Instead, they should work with the market leaders to see what they could contribute. Or maybe Google could simply hire the Thunderbird team and just put an end to this silliness. The email application is dead. So, too, is the local calendar application. Look to the Gmail Notifier on the Mac (which provides both Gmail and Google Calendar notifications) as an example of all you really need on the desktop, if that. [ Posted at 8:41 AM | Permalink ]
Thursday, April 19, 2007Mozilla Thunderbird 2 Soars to New HeightsMozilla PR:Mozilla Thunderbird 2, the latest version of the popular, free and open source email client, is available worldwide today. Thunderbird 2 allows users to easily manage and organize email with tags, advanced folder views, and fast inbox and message searches. Users can also customize Thunderbird 2 with add-ons that match individual preferences.Related: Thunderbird 2 I've been testing pre-release versions of Thunderbird 2 since February 1, and I have to say, it's decent. There are enough differences between Thunderbird and Outlook to be annoying, especially since some can't be easily rectified, but it's a good email product and of course you can't beat the price. I'll review this soon on the SuperSite. Labels: Mozilla [ Posted at 11:16 AM | Permalink ]
Wednesday, March 21, 2007For Security Pros, Firefox Goes Head-To-Head With Microsoft's IE7InformationWeek:Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser may have the lion's share of the general market, but when it comes to security professionals, Mozilla's Firefox open source browser is an even contender, according to a security survey released Monday.I've been using and advocating Firefox since it was called Phoenix, which was years ago. I'll never look back, and I've even taken up Firefox on the Mac, after years of holding on, alternatively, with Safari and Camino. What makes Firefox superior to these browsers, frankly, is Inline Find. I can't stand dialog box-based Find tools anymore. You can find out more about the software I use regularly on the What I Use page on the SuperSite. Speaking of which, Firefox 2.0.0.3 is out today. Labels: Firefox, Internet, Mozilla [ Posted at 9:29 AM | Permalink ]
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