Nov

Firefox 4 – Mozilla versus the world

by Alex Handy

When you think of a giant lizard-monster stomping through a major metropolitan area, you tend to think of Godzilla. Or maybe Rodan. What you probably don’t think about is a non-profit corporation that helps millions around the world gain access to the information they need in their day-to-day lives…

Standards issues
Today, you can’t talk about browsers without talking about standards. In the past, such discussions of web standards focused primarily on how to make things look the same in both the standards-compliant Firefox and the rogue agent that was IE. As a result, any web developer can tell you all about the day-to-day chore of testing pages across browsers, then including workarounds to make them render properly in each one.

But Shaver said that these days are over. With the advent of HTML5 and CSS3, browser makers will now be competing on their implementations of standards, not on their ability to create their own web. Shaver pointed out that Microsoft’s decision to support scalable vector graphics (SVG) in IE9 was indicative of the pressure being put on browser makers to adhere to the HTML5 and CSS3 standards.

“I was excited to see that. IE9 is the browser we’ve always wanted Microsoft to build. In terms of SVG, they don’t have a choice. They’ve hung their sign out about interoperability, and about how closely they’re paying attention to standards. I think they know the market is going to judge them based on their interoperability. The market is imposing pressure on all browser makers to make sure they support these standards,” said Shaver.

Images courtesy of Veronica Sutter — All the main components of Firefox 4, arranged in the form of Post-it notes!

With Microsoft finally playing nice, you’d think Firefox’s troubles would be over. But you’d be wrong. Chrome and Safari have provided a fast alternative to Firefox. It’s a proposition similar to the one that originated Firefox: Mozilla was a large, all-encompassing browser with email and chat capabilities. Firefox was created to be a fast alternative that only handled the web. Now, WebKit-based browsers hold the mantle of fastest and most nimble web browsers, while Firefox’s strengths have been relegated to its add-ons and developer tools.

But just because WebKit is the basis of both Safari and Chrome doesn’t mean it’s a united front against Mozilla.
“One thing about WebKit – you have to talk about which WebKit,” commented Shaver. “The ability to get a high-quality rendering engine into a device is great. If you look at it, in a lot of ways it was a sequel to the early version of Gecko, which is great.

“It’s open source, and we have learned from them too. We provide a network stack, a script engine, bookmarks, services and a UI with our rendering engine,” continued Shaver, pointing out the additional components Firefox has that WebKit does not.

Shaver also claimed that WebKit has helped the web, even though it competes with Mozilla. “The WebKit team gets the modern web in a way the IE team didn’t used to. We see this in Google versus Microsoft. Google just gets the web better than Microsoft does. Was it easier competitively before? Absolutely. It was one less thing to think about. But from the perspective of the web, it’s undeniable that having Chrome is a good thing,” claimed Shaver.

According to Shaver, it’s standards that thrive thanks to this new competition. Specifically, HTML5 and CSS3.
“One of the things that’s been challenging for web developers was making stuff look good,” said Shaver, discussing CSS3. “That took a lot of work. There were pieces that were a little too hard to do, like drop shadows and rounded edges, so they didn’t get done. With CSS3, again, because we’ve got the vendors at the table with the W3C to have these conversations, we will all compete on the quality of implementation and not on browser features.”