Firefox 1.5 ought to have been wonderful and it certainly is anything but.
What qualifies me to say such a thing? I'm not a programmer and the HTML skills of most 16-year-old bloggers are above mine. But, I live on the web and I've used nearly 2,000 builds of various Mozilla/Gecko browsers over the last five years. In particular, I have vast experience in the creation and maintenance of "profiles" for the browsers. Indeed, I think profiles are one of the greatest benefits of these browsers because they always allow one to get a fresh start. And, I guess the firstmost tip to any Moz user is to get the MozBackup program and run it regularly.
Firefox 1.5 leaks and crashes when it does the things its natural constituency wants most to do. That natural constituency consists of bright young people who mingle through web social networks and professionals with an interest in the cutting edge of technology, currently implying Web 2.0 apps. The former is best known as the MySpace crowd, who like to look at one anothers' pages of pictures and dog's dinner pages of plugins and effects. Let's not argue about whether it's good but just accept that this is an important part of growing up in the 21st Century.
The testers for Firefox daily report in to forums at Mozillazine about problems when they visit sites like CSS Zen Garden. Never have I seen a posting: "Firefox crashed when I visited Samantha's MySpace page!" Regardless of how poorly Samantha's page is created, Firefox should not crash. And can we reasonably expect Samantha's friend to go through the incredibly bureaucratic ordeal of creating a Bugzilla report?
The Bugzilla system was created to keep developers in an ivory tower protected from the scruffy masses of users. I recall once in the forums complaining about difficulties uninstalling a prior version of (what was then called) Phoenix and Blake Ross asked what my problems were. He was immediately chided by a couple of other developers not to respond to queries from the public. And a fine irony in all this is that most of Blake's career as a Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox developer has been as a teenager.
So, here's where something can be done: create forums especially geared to young, non-technical users where they can also socialize but be listened to by developers. Perhaps there could be developed a streamlined form for reporting bugs and crashes frequently encountered. Let's not get bogged down in details, simply think about how to get a community of younger people involved with reporting the bugs in Firefox.
I've got plenty more to say, but looking back over this, I'm quite pleased with how I articulated the problem while offering the glimmerings of a solution. So, I'll just say...
....................................................................To be continued..............................
What qualifies me to say such a thing? I'm not a programmer and the HTML skills of most 16-year-old bloggers are above mine. But, I live on the web and I've used nearly 2,000 builds of various Mozilla/Gecko browsers over the last five years. In particular, I have vast experience in the creation and maintenance of "profiles" for the browsers. Indeed, I think profiles are one of the greatest benefits of these browsers because they always allow one to get a fresh start. And, I guess the firstmost tip to any Moz user is to get the MozBackup program and run it regularly.
Firefox 1.5 leaks and crashes when it does the things its natural constituency wants most to do. That natural constituency consists of bright young people who mingle through web social networks and professionals with an interest in the cutting edge of technology, currently implying Web 2.0 apps. The former is best known as the MySpace crowd, who like to look at one anothers' pages of pictures and dog's dinner pages of plugins and effects. Let's not argue about whether it's good but just accept that this is an important part of growing up in the 21st Century.
The testers for Firefox daily report in to forums at Mozillazine about problems when they visit sites like CSS Zen Garden. Never have I seen a posting: "Firefox crashed when I visited Samantha's MySpace page!" Regardless of how poorly Samantha's page is created, Firefox should not crash. And can we reasonably expect Samantha's friend to go through the incredibly bureaucratic ordeal of creating a Bugzilla report?
The Bugzilla system was created to keep developers in an ivory tower protected from the scruffy masses of users. I recall once in the forums complaining about difficulties uninstalling a prior version of (what was then called) Phoenix and Blake Ross asked what my problems were. He was immediately chided by a couple of other developers not to respond to queries from the public. And a fine irony in all this is that most of Blake's career as a Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox developer has been as a teenager.
So, here's where something can be done: create forums especially geared to young, non-technical users where they can also socialize but be listened to by developers. Perhaps there could be developed a streamlined form for reporting bugs and crashes frequently encountered. Let's not get bogged down in details, simply think about how to get a community of younger people involved with reporting the bugs in Firefox.
I've got plenty more to say, but looking back over this, I'm quite pleased with how I articulated the problem while offering the glimmerings of a solution. So, I'll just say...
....................................................................To be continued..............................
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