Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by IMSoP (talk | contribs) at 23:29, 27 March 2004 (additional notes re: Firesomething mention). 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)

Although this discussion has gone quiet, I've gone ahead and created Misplaced Pages:Software screenshots to centralise discussion on this, as well as the currently hot-topic of copyright issues. Please read and comment there. - IMSoP 15:41, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

IE, cross-platform, etc

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)

I'm not sure I follow you there, Scott: if you're talking about this change, it is saying nothing about XML, only that Firefox is unusual in being cross-platform. I can see reasons for and against citing IE as an example, but the current text certainly doesn't imply that IE is cross-platform. - IMSoP 18:20, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

After looking again, I agree; the text specifically mentions Mozilla-based platforms, so in that context, it would not be proper to mention IE.

I was also looking at the mention of XUL (I meant that instead of XML), and apparently didn't realize that it was modifying cross-platform.

Scott McNay 20:49, 2004 Feb 15 (UTC)

I wasn't referring to previous versions from the history; just tuning the paragraph as it stood. Though possibly it could do with further tuning. IE gets what cross-platform nature it has from the Unix versions porting chunks of Windows infrastructure with them. (IE for Mac is a completely different browser of the same name.) Opera uses Qt on Linux/BSD, not sure if it uses Qt on Windows. Possibly everything past the first sentence of the paragraph as it stands should be removed - David Gerard 23:28, Feb 15, 2004 (UTC)

Screenshots, again

I reverted from the version by Cgs to my last version because his screenshot does not have the default settings, and there was no need to change the image I posted. The current image is OS independent and Misplaced Pages:Software screenshots says thats ok. Perl 17:06, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Well, as the Misplaced Pages:Software screenshots page clearly states, it is not an existing consensus - I set it up more as a request for comments than anything else. I suggest that people don't waste time, bandwidth, and disk-space creating more and more screenshots until some conclusions have been reached. - IMSoP 17:12, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, I thought those were the conclusions reached from discussion. CGS 02:02, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC).

I have a better idea: let's stop beating the dead horses. The picture may not be perfect, but I think that only someone looking for something to nitpick about will find a flaw. Let's drop the subject and find something productive to do.

I'd say that unless a picture is WRONG somehow, it should be left alone. Scott McNay 08:17, 2004 Feb 23 (UTC)

Well in general, I agree, but over the last few months about half a dozen different people have decided that this picture was indeed "wrong" in some way - so I figured it would be a good idea to define what "right" was. Hopefully then we can all spend our time on something more productive. - IMSoP 11:18, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Codenames

The article says "This release was also the first after 0.7.1 to have no codename." but it says "Mozilla Firefox 0.8 (Royal Oak)" Seems like an inconsistency. Its also ambiguos. Perl 20:29, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I think they didn't have a codename for it straight away / before release, but the current roadmap revision labels all past and future releases. I've got rid of the erroneous statement now (and yes, it was rather badly written anyway). - IMSoP 20:43, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

History

What do you think about put the history in a table like Mozilla?

• - Firebird 0.7.1 is MacOS only.

- Seems reasonable. ―Itai 19:57, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Just make sure the last column of the table is in fact filled in! - David Gerard 22:09, Mar 3, 2004 (UTC)

- New table. - Martani 23:18, Mar 7, 2004 (UTC)

Firesomething

The Firesomething extension isn't just some personal extension, so I don't see why it was removed. I know that not every extension needs to be listed, but this one is getting some attention recently . -- LGagnon

You'll also note that I tried to edit the mention in such a way that its relationship to the official product, and the official changes of name, was clearer - I only didn't go further, because I didn't want to use up a disproportionate amount of the article explaining who'd written it and why. - IMSoP 23:29, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)