Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Scott McNay (talk | contribs) at 18:07, 15 February 2004 (rm of "IE" implies it supports XML; true?). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Looks to me like this page needs to be updated to be brought into line with the current Mozilla Roadmap. Version 1.6 of the Mozilla Application Suite is currently out, and obviously the transition to Firebird has not yet been made. Unfortunately, I don't know enough of the specifics to update this myself, especially since the status of both products is in a state of somewhat constant flux. Anyone want to update this? --Adam Conover

Shouldn't this have been made by moving Phoenix (browser) rather than by a cut-and-paste? There's a fair amount of history at Phoenix (browser) that is now harder to get at. --rbrwr

Thinking about it, you are right. I remember when Chimera became Camino, I kept articles for the both the older and newer names. Rbrwr, If you want, feel free to go back to the last (Phoenix_(Browser) article and work from there. --hoshie

This probably is the least useful place to discuss this, but I feel that the incorporation of non-platform native UI is what will forever doom Mozilla/Firebird to geekdom, rather than mainstream acceptance. Mac users (for example) simply don't want Windowsy UI on their systems! They want what the OS provides. Anything that looks wrong will be forever branded a second-class citizen, no matter how great the functionality. Call it shallow, but there it is. Why the XUL stuff can't simply call up native widgets on each platform I don't know. GRAHAMUK 11:37, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Three things:

1. Yes this is probably the least useful place to discuss this - discussion on Misplaced Pages which won't lead to an improvement in content is discouraged.
2. That aside, the first mistake I'd like to point out is that Mozilla doesn't have a "Windowsy UI". XUL is, by its very nature, highly skinnable, and many of the skins out there bear little resemblance to any OS I've seen.
3. Furthermore, the idea of calling up native widgets on each platform is exactly the purpose of projects like Camino, K-Meleon and Galeon. But obviously, once you start doing that (to a worthwhile extent), the program's not cross-platform anymore (in quite the same way - you can't just add support for a new platform with a few bindings).

- IMSoP 12:44, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

"Others, however, have posited that Mozilla Firebird is not yet ready for mission-critical tasks."

Which others are these? The Mozilla.org page on Firebird says it, but that's different to unspecified third parties. - David Gerard 21:20, Feb 8, 2004 (UTC)

What a pompous sentence. And anyway, what "mission" is any webs browser "critical" to? Seems to me the writer doesn't understand what mission critical means. Unless he happens to be trying to operate his nuclear powerplant via a java applet ;-) I think I'll just edit it out again, if nobody objects. Graham 02:37, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

What is the background for the rename of this browser? The article just says "due to strong pressure from the Open Source community". Bevo 12:38, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

There's some obscure open source database called "firebird", apparently. --Delirium 12:54, Feb 9, 2004 (UTC)

Could we get a screenshot with the default Misplaced Pages theme instead? Using the non-default theme is a bit confusing, as it implies something about Firefox's rendering being different, when it's really just that the person taking the screenshot had a different Misplaced Pages theme set. =] --Delirium 12:54, Feb 9, 2004 (UTC)

Okay, I'll try and get another with the default soon. Dysprosia 13:08, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Might want to reduce screen size to 640x480 or reduce window size, so that the Firefox menu/toolbar is fully visible, yet image is small enough to view easily w/out scrolling. Looks like you have your screen set to 1024x768. You're not really needing to show off Wiki, just Firefox. --Scott. 01:39, 2004 Feb 10 (UTC)

Darn, shoulda read this before. Hang on :) Dysprosia 04:01, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I hate to be picky, but that's still a pretty weird screenshot - I mean, it shows off the customisability of Firefox nicely, but actually hides most of the things that are visible to the "average" user. How about using this instead? (Oops, should have compressed that a bit more, but never mind, someone else can if they like) - IMSoP 14:13, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Well I would have put my bookmark toolbar in as well, but I thought I best not since you'd all be able to peek at it :) anyway the issue seems to be moot now... see below Dysprosia 01:46, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Reference removed, but the citation remains

In the article, there is a reference to Keating (2004), but someone removed the reference itself! It's beyond me why anyone would do that; someone should bring it back.

—Vespristiano 04:12, 2004 Feb 11 (UTC)

Well, I've got good news and I've got bad news. The good news is that it's easy to find out who did it. The bad news is that apparently you'll have to look in a mirror.  :) Go to the page history and look at your two changes on the 8th. Scott McNay 06:39, 2004 Feb 12 (UTC)

Screenshot

I honestly can't believe someone went for the trouble of changing the screenshot from one of Firefox running under Windows to one of Firefox running under Gnome. I mean, seriously. -- Timwi 01:41, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The other thing being, that we must be gradually filling up the wikipedia server with unused images, all under seperate names, which seems rather a waste (and yes, I'm guilty of this too, see above). I must say, I don't like the current one, though, since neither Firefox nor Misplaced Pages are shown in their default state. Perhaps we could come up with a set of criteria that we would all agree on, and upload a carefully contrived shot once and for all. How about:

• Firefox in its default configuration (i.e. no toolbar customisation, default theme, default set of toolbars visible)
• Misplaced Pages in its default configuration (i.e. skin, link colours)
• Seemingly, we need a decision on what OS - I see nothing against Windows, but GNOME or KDE if people insist on Free-ness.
• taken at a screen resolution of 800x600, and then scaled down (?)

Listing this all out seems a bit over the top, I know, but otherwise it's just going to change every other day when somebody disagrees with the current picture. Hmm, maybe we need a Misplaced Pages:Using software screenshots policy page? - IMSoP 02:11, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

In this case, the OS thing is basically irrelevant; just use your favorite picture editor to crop off the window border. If you redid the current pic with default toolbars, and cropped the window border, I suspect that only a masochist would be able to tell the difference between it and the previous picture sans border, and even then, considering that FireFox is supposed to be platform independent, you'd probably have to report it as a bug.

My opinion is that the previous picture was just fine; it met all of the requirements; just crop the OS's window border off in order to keep the OS bigots quiet (and if you don't like being called an OS bigot, then don't replace one biased pisture with a MORE-biased picture).

As for newer versions of Firefox, I'd say don't change the pic unless there's a noticeable difference... and I don't mean merely a different default skin. Just document what skin is used, and note that it's basically the same for version 0.8, 0.9, etc. Scott McNay 05:47, 2004 Feb 15 (UTC)

Ok, I took the previous pic and cropped the title bar off, so that you really can't tell what OS it is. It's probably about as close to generic as it's going to get. And if it isn't, well, at least it was originally rendered on the OS used by the large majority of the population and the rest of the population almost certaintly is halfway familiar with, so it still satisfies NPOV reasonably well. Scott McNay 06:43, 2004 Feb 15 (UTC)

David Gerard, the change that you made implies, to those of us who have seen the prior text, that IE does support XML, which I don't think is correct. Since it is the most widely-used browser, I think it's appropriate to specifically mention it. Scott McNay 18:07, 2004 Feb 15 (UTC)