Q&A with Firefox's Blake Ross 145
dotlin writes to tell us the Seattle PI is running a lengthy and interesting interview with Firefox's Blake Ross. In the interview Ross addresses many of the issues surrounding the future of Firefox including their attempt to streamline Firefox in 2.0, the feature comparison between Firefox and IE, different ways of measuring browser market share, and many more.
Pesky users (Score:4, Insightful)
Having wombled around the Firefox support site for awhile looking for answers to memory issues, I came to the conclusion that there was a certain level of disinterest in problems that were less than exicting to fix; more so, than other OSS projects. (I fully accept the subjectiveness)
This snippet sort of ties in with this feeling.
Sure, OSS developers can do what they like - I'm not paying them so I don't have much right to complain, fair enough.
But if you want to compete against MS, who are too customer focused then maybe a balance needs to be found which doesn't involve letting so many go.
Re:Pesky users (Score:5, Insightful)
It looks like the 1.0 release because most of the work that has been going on has been to make it more stable, how do we fix the memory problems that people are complaining about, how do we make everyday tasks easier
I'd say they're heading in the right direction...
Re:Pesky users (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Pesky users (Score:4, Insightful)
Memory leaks? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Memory leaks? (Score:2)
Re:Memory leaks? (Score:5, Informative)
There are lots of extensions with memory leaks and other serious problems [mozillazine.org]. Be sure you're not using an extension on that list if you're having problems.
Plugins, especially Flash, have also been known to cause problems such as high memory use and 100% CPU use after waking up from hiberation. Be sure to get the latest Macromedia [adobe.com], Java [java.com], and Acrobat [adobe.com] plugins.
Control these issues? (Score:3, Interesting)
From the sounds of it, a lot of thes
Re:Control these issues? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Control these issues? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Memory leaks? (Score:2)
Re:Pesky users (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it might not be a memory leak, but I'd argue that it is a bug. If I leave my FireFox pointing at a auto-refreshing page for a couple of days it *will* OOM my machine. Whether or not that's a memory leak, I'd argue that causing the OOM killer to come out and start blowing away applications is a bug. Now I understand that this memory is supposidly used to cache content to speed up the browsing experience but I'd counter that argument by pointing out that if FireFox is so deep into swap space that it causes my machine to go on holiday for 5 minutes every time I do something because it's thrashing the swap then this isn't speeding up anything.
I've had firefox running for days at a time without seeing anywhere over 100 MB. I rarely ever see it go over 75 MB. Then again, I haven't kept it open for months at a time. Maybe if I did, then I may see problems.
I never close my FireFox unless I absolutely have to. Currently it's using about 281MB:
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
1934 steve 15 0 281m 94m 8624 S 0.0 12.5 191:18.84 firefox-bin
(Yes, I know this includes mmap()ed resources, but I doubt FireFox is mmap()ing much huge stuff).
Then again, its a web browser. You can turn it off once in a while.
That's not really an excuse though is it... Hey, no need to fix memory leaks in Windows, it's only an OS, you can reboot it every so often...
Re:Pesky users (Score:2)
Re:Pesky users (Score:2)
That sounds like it is a bug, and a memory leak as well. Next question is whether it's a bug in Firefox, or in a plugin or an extension. If you can do enough diagnosis work to allow a developer to reproduce it or figure out where the code is wrong, then it might actually get fixed.
The fact that you can avoid it by closing the browser occa
Re:Pesky users (Score:1)
Re:Pesky users (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, if you leave FF open for a while without using it, it takes a couple of minutes (really, *minutes*) before you can use it. The UI doesn't update, and the machine is thrashing. This has gotten better over the last few releases, but it still happens, particularly under Windows.
Crashes occur most commonly for me because of Java, Flash, Acrobat,
Re:Pesky users (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Pesky users (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem with closing the browser for some people is that they may have lots of pages open in tabs at a time (one of the reasons for switching to FF in the first place). Now, you are going to argue that there is such-a-such extension that saves your tabs when you close the browser, but that is less practical when you have more than 10 tabs open at a time. I personally have around a do
Re:Pesky users (Score:2)
It means I don't have to bother restarting it when I next want to use it. I use the web frequently enough for it to be worthwhile leaving the browser running on my spare monitor so that it's already there when I next want to use it without having to wait for it to start.
closing your browser every once and a while isn't a kludge.
I'm sorry, that's just plain wrong - requiring the user to work around a bug by frequently shutting down software is
Re:Pesky users (Score:2)
Re:Pesky users (Score:1)
Actually, I think it's safe to say that Jon Hicks (the person you're talking about) is more of a Camino [caminobrowser.org] user than anything right now. He also made http://pimpmycamino.com [pimpmycamino.com].
Re:Pesky users (Score:2)
Re:Pesky users (Score:2)
Re:Pesky users (Score:3, Insightful)
Who knows? Who cares? A user can leave non-buggy apps running for weeks without them misbahaving, whether or not I know the user's reason for doing that. Users are unhappy that Firefox doesn't behave like a non-buggy app.
Re:Pesky users (Score:1)
Re:Pesky users (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Pesky users (Score:3, Interesting)
It might not be the best solution in general, but firefox has several settings to limit it's memory usage if you run it in non-typical situations. The relevant settings [mozillazine.org] are really easy to google (first hit for 'firefox "memory usage"'), surely quicker than writing your post
Re:Pesky users (Score:2)
Re:Pesky users (Score:2)
"make" or "have *never* made".
Your spelling might be correct, but your word-choice needs work.
Re:Pesky users (Score:2)
I thought that saying "I never make mistakes" would mean that I don't make mistakes at all, neither in the past, nor do, nor do I expect i will make any in the future. (Which obviously is not what I tried to express).
And that "I have never made mistakes" would be used to connect the past to the present when the situation described extends
Re:Pesky users (Score:2)
Of course. (Word choice and grammar are essentially the same things.) "Made" is the past-tense of "make." "I never make mistakes", and "I have never made mistakes" are all subtly shades of the exact same meaning.
For common English vernacular, a claim to prefection (such as "I don't make mistakes") tends to come off as rather arrogant.
Re:Pesky users (Score:2)
And I find it rather odd to say that grammar and word choice are essentially the same thing.
Re:Pesky users (Score:2)
Re:Pesky users (Score:2)
You complained about punctuation (actually you complained about spelling when his error was actually punctuation, but I'll skip over that), yet you started your sentence with a lower case letter and it wasn't even a full sentence (unless the first its was meant to be an abreviation of "It is", in which case you should have had an apostrophe in it). What you should have written was You should have used "its", not "it's".
I really should get back to work...
Re:Pesky users (Score:2)
Dude, I complained about my own punctuation.
Re:Pesky users (Score:2)
Re:Pesky users (Score:1)
I agree that Firefox isn't suffering from any memory leaks unless there are poorly programmed extensions involved. A memory leak usually implies an ever-growing usage of memory until the dreaded pagefile is invoked and everything bogs down, while Firefox usually tops out at 100-200MB (depending on number of windows, tabs, and length of history in the individiual tabs). It's hard to deny that Firefox is a memory hog though. Call it a feature if you will, but it's kind of sil
Re:Pesky users (Score:2)
I'm sure that 1.5.0.4 has improved, but this version hasn't been very painful to run. I have to kill it once or twice a day during heavy use, but most of the time it's after using web apps like ASSP (ASSP brings firefox to its knees, whi
Re:Pesky users (Score:2)
There are lots of bugs that cause memory leaks, a huge number of which have been fixed already. There are also extensions that cause leaks, and combinations of extensions that cause leaks, and so on. If a developer can't reliably reproduce the problem y
Re:Pesky users (Score:2, Funny)
Now THAT is comedy gold!
Re:Pesky users (Score:1)
TFA was an interesting read, but nothing on their thoughts on the memory issues and plug-in problems, and certainly nothing on Opera or other browsers, which are trying to leech market share from Firefox like Firefox are from Microsoft.
Firefox 2.0 is going to have to be a lot more efficiently coded in order to keep interest in it. There will always be a hardcore of 'FIREFOX FREE OPEN-SOURCE YAR', but there are also people like me that use the browser that actually works best, and f
Re:Pesky users (Score:2)
From the answer to the first question:
Re:Pesky users (Score:1)
Re:Pesky users (Score:3, Insightful)
If you read TFA you would have read the part about where MS abandoned IE for years. Where it didn't give a flying fuck about what was happening to their customers in terms of security and the features their customers wanted.
Do you really think MS track record with IE is better then firefox? If so you need to get educated. MS abandoned this project while their
Know thy enemy. (Score:5, Insightful)
And quoting The Art of War [wikipedia.org] from Sun Tsu:
I, for one, have pleasure being in the Firefox side of this "war".
And it's relieving to know that Blake seems to have a very clear sight while leading this.
Re:Know thy enemy. (Score:2)
Re:Know thy enemy. (Score:2)
at least (Score:5, Insightful)
You missed Mozilla? (Score:2)
But at that point, the choice was pretty clear. Have the Mozilla quickstarter load on boot, or run Linux and have the sheer speed of Linux vs Win98 trump any advantage IE might have over Mozilla. I almost look back and want to call these the golden days of open source, the time where we co
Blake is really smart... (Score:1, Interesting)
Seriously, it took a teen to turn the Mozilla project into something worthwhile. Imagine how great the world could be if we demote the old guard!
Seamonkey vs. Firefox/Thunderbird (Score:4, Interesting)
But... my experiences with the latest iterations of Firefox (both the 1.5 series as well as the 2 and 3 development series) have left much to desire. The biggest complaint is the incredible amount of memory the browser consumes - even without any extensions (errr.. Add Ons... Change the name only because Microsoft copies the feature under a different name...?) and with a clean profile. If a browser manages to bring a 2 Ghz system with 768 MB to its knees in a mere half hour of browsing there is something wrong. Unfortunately this often-heard complaint does not seem to get the attention it deserves. Firefox' development strategy being what it is there is not that much opportunity - other than by filing bugs - to influence priorities and design criteria.
So... lately I have switched more and more from using Firefox/Thunderbird to using the Seamonkey [mozilla.org] suite - the successor to the Mozilla suite. It still feels a bit more dated than Firefox and Thunderbird but it does offer much more in features while having a much smaller memory footprint. Add the Seafox [markbokil.org] theme and it looks quite a bit like Firefox/Thunderbird.
The way things look now I think Seamonkey will be my browser and mail app of preference. Should Firefox and Thunderbird ever run on top of XULrunner [mozilla.org] I might switch back but for now I have better things to do with my memory...
Re:Seamonkey vs. Firefox/Thunderbird (Score:2)
Re:Seamonkey vs. Firefox/Thunderbird (Score:3, Funny)
How to replicate this bug.
1. Come around to my house.
2. Use Internet for about 30 minutes.
3. Bug will happen!
Re:Seamonkey vs. Firefox/Thunderbird (Score:1)
Re:Seamonkey vs. Firefox/Thunderbird (Score:2)
Re:Seamonkey vs. Firefox/Thunderbird (Score:4, Insightful)
Fortunately, David Baron wrote the Leak Monitor [mozilla.org] extension, that looks for a relatively common type of leak, which you can install, but it doesn't catch everything.
Re:Seamonkey vs. Firefox/Thunderbird (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Seamonkey vs. Firefox/Thunderbird (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe now we need a light weight version of the light weight version of Mozilla
The incredible amount of memory (Score:1)
I have never seen firefox use more than 70 MB of RAM , that is too much but it is not enough to bring down a comp like mine/yours.
Re:Seamonkey vs. Firefox/Thunderbird (Score:1)
I'd say so, yeah. But I'm not going to judge Firefox based upon YOUR experience. I'm going to base it on my own; for example, I've had Firefox open for days on this system, with no fewer than eight taps at any given time, ALL of the frequently navigated, along with about a half dozen extension loaded, and yet FF's mem usage is sitting at about 140MB after all that. Not NEAR en
Re:Seamonkey vs. Firefox/Thunderbird (Score:1)
Re:Seamonkey vs. Firefox/Thunderbird (Score:3, Informative)
Where did you get this one from? They didn't rename extensions to add-ons. Add-ons is just a common name for both extensions and themes and it's nothing new (addons.mozilla.org has existed for quite a while, you know).
Re:Seamonkey vs. Firefox/Thunderbird (Score:1)
No, you did not. The source code that Netscape thrust on the world did not so much as compile for months afterwords. It was missing both third party libraries and the complicated build enviroment required to make it.
A lot of open-source projects ... (Score:2)
Geeks want geeky products, users want usable products. Why can't OpenSource projects break out and make usable products. Live would be much better if at least some could overcome
Re:A lot of open-source projects ... (Score:1)
What is your definition of a 'geeky' product? Is it unusable? I would consider myself a 'geek' an I expect products to be usable and probably expect more from them then a typical user.
Re:A lot of open-source projects ... (Score:1)
Re:A lot of open-source projects ... (Score:1)
I define "regular users" as those who want zero learning curve from a new version or alternate product.
If these "regular users" are going to discover an additional feature, it will be over the course of loading the program dozens of times in the first few weeks when they are putzing around at their own pace.
Microsoft's personalized menu default option for applications and O/S ensure tunnel vision of only showing options and c
Re:A lot of open-source projects ... (Score:2)
A geek has the eagerness and willingness to spend the time learning something new, something different. A user is reluctant to learn anything new and avoids anything different. While something looks rather useful for a geek it's many times a complete mystery to the average user. Yet while geeks thinks something usable, they most of the time don't even understand the problem of a user.
Since usability is always subject to the personal knowledge and taste and since
Re:A lot of open-source projects ... (Score:2)
Are you really saying that firefox is not usable? Are you seriously saying IE is?
Re:A lot of open-source projects ... (Score:2)
O. Wyss
Improved download manager? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Improved download manager? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Improved download manager? (Score:2)
My Guess On The Stealth Mode Startup (Score:1)
Q: You're working on a startup with Joe Hewitt, but you seem to be in stealth mode. What can you say about what you're doing?
Ross: I honestly can't say anything at this point -- especially to a Seattle newspaper.
Q: Why especially to a Seattle newspaper?
Ross: Because the people who are most likely to care about the startup are most likely to be reading your paper.
Q: Over in Redmond?
Ross: Yep.
Q: There seems to be a good relationship between Google and Firefox. Where do you see that relationship goi
Matching feature parity? (Score:2)
Matching feature parity? What sort of nonsense corporatebabble is that?
Sure, interviews are tough. It's easy to say something stupid without meaning to do so. But you really shouldn't announce that you're "very careful to say" something stupid.
It sounds like Blake Ross has been possessed by the spirit of a dead sales-department mid-level manager.
Re:Matching feature parity? (Score:4, Informative)
Language matters, especially in defusing a religious beliefs. I'm not interested in promoting the idea that Microsoft "ripped off" Firefox.
Re:Matching feature parity? (Score:2)
Re:Matching feature parity? (Score:2)
No worries. That's all I meant. The actual content of your statement is perfectly clear (and quite worthwhile and interesting, for that matter.)
It was just a bit of pre-breakfast, curmudgeonly grammar slamming. Hope I didn't offend. (I've certainly said far, far sillier things in
Re:Matching feature parity? (Score:2)
That "coropratebabble" is the base of most technological advancement to date. Hell, firefox took most of *its* features from Opera, and implemented them a hell of a lot poorer than they have.
"Good artists copy, great artists steal."
Picasso
Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Funny)
[ ]Incorrect assumptions about what people care about.
[ ]Uncreative formulation.
[x]Too obvious an attempt to start a flame.
Re:Interesting... (Score:2)
[ ] Suggesting that Unbuntu is better than OS X
[ ] Pointing out that Linux is a hodgepodge of little compilations
[ ] The mention of a Macbook Pro
[ ] Use of Redhat Linux
[ ] KDE vs. Gnome flamewar attempt
[ ] K is for "Krap" classic troll
[ ] Mention of iPod
Re:Interesting... (Score:2)
Re:Interesting... (Score:2)
[ ] Pointing out that Linux is a hodgepodge of little compilations
[ ] The mention of a Macbook Pro
[ ] Use of Redhat Linux
[ ] KDE vs. Gnome flamewar attempt
[ ] K is for "Krap" classic troll
[ ] Mention of iPod
[X] All of the above.
Re:old news (Score:3, Insightful)
After all submissions are made based upon what users of websites find, so its inevitable that some of those sites are on your bookmarks list.
As it happens I read 2/3 of the sites you listed, but hadn't read this interview so slash is doing its job.
Re:old news (Score:1)
no
> inq
Never heard of it.
> and el reg
Shit. They think they're funny, but they're not - and most of their stories (apart from the...uh.fascinating "ram production up 2.1% in Q2" type nonsense) are on Slashdot anyway.
Re:old news (Score:1)
Erm... no. As my boss says (without a hint of irony) "When you assume, you make an ass of yourself
Re:old news (Score:1)
At last, a sane saying. I've never understood precisely how you assuming something is supposed to make an ass of me.
Re:old news (Score:1)
Re:Obligatory Question.... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Obligatory Question.... (Score:1)
Re:Obligatory Question.... (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Obligatory Question.... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Obligatory Question.... (Score:2)
Re:Obligatory Question.... (Score:2)
Re:Obligatory Question.... (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:On topic (Score:5, Funny)
On topic: Religion! (Score:2, Funny)
No way... It must remain a religion... I just redyed my black Firefox hat again a few days ago (I shit you not, the black fades to orange because of my sin: being outside too much).
They created a holy grail already too...
Surely you've seen it?: http://developer.mozilla.org/contests/extendfirefo x/images/grand-prize-pc.png [mozilla.org]
It's religious, and IE will burn in flames less holy than
Re:Forms, Textboxes and the Cache (Score:2, Insightful)
That's not Firefox; at least, I never see this behaviour on any of the various versions I run on Mac , Windows or Knoppix. It sounds like the owner of the relevant page has stuck a bit of JavaScript in there to do this; that's the only way I've ever seen this behaviour implemented on any browser. Complain to the owner of the site(s) where y
Re:Forms, Textboxes and the Cache (Score:2)