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Lions and Tigers and EU MozCamp… Oh My!

I’m in Madrid right now for a couple of days of R&R (in theory, at least) before heading to Barcelona tomorrow for EU MozCamp. I’ll be running a session on Prism. The timing is auspicious since we’re at something of a crossroads with the product. It doesn’t have any obvious official standing inside of Mozilla since graduating from Labs, but it does kick ass (in my totally objective, unbiased opinion). I’ll be talking a bit about what we’ve been working on over the past few months, what the current architecture looks like and possible plans for the future.

I’m very keen to hear from others where they think the product should be heading and what sort of organization would be needed to keep some momentum behind it. I feel strongly that Prism can be of great value to Mozilla, and I’m curious to find out if anyone else out there (besides Mark, of course) agrees with me.

I’m also looking forward to attacks by rabid beers [ed note: I meant bears, of course, an obvious Freudian slip], vehicles plowing willy-nilly into air-conditioning units, epic rockslides and all the other mundane occurrences we’ve come to expect at Mozilla community events.

Tags: mozilla, prism | 9 Comments »

Browser Bits and Bobs for October 14, 2008

Let’s call this an “in case you missed it” edition of Browser Bits and Bobs, since I’ve been disgustingly busy and haven’t posted anything in far too long. But for those who have been preoccupied by events outside the tech sector (MLB postseason, impending financial armageddon, talking chihuahuas, etc.): this is for you.

• Chrome uptake tails off quickly (with more gloomy commentary at Giga Om). I’ve been running cold and hot on Chrome’s market potential, but with the steady hand of hindsight (backed up by statistics) to prop me up, I’ll stick with my original assertion that there simply isn’t much room in the market for a new browser brand. Google should focus on making Chrome an awesome single-site browser. I suspect that, once market realities set in, they may well do this.
• I learned a lot from this interview about HTML 5 with Ian Hickson. Just one thing: 2022? Really? I’m all for setting realistic (i.e. highly pessimistic) deadlines, but let’s strap on a pair and get this puppy out the door. My long and storied experience with missing delivery dates has taught me that setting deadlines too far in the future doesn’t make it more likely that you will hit them. It just reduces urgency and makes everything take even longer.
• Ars Technica has a detailed writeup on Skyfire, a Gecko-based browser for Windows Mobile. I’m not sure that users are going to be that gung ho to install third-party browsers on their devices, but maybe Skyfire’s strategy is to cut OEM deals once they are ready. The server-side rendering idea is certainly intriguing, although it breaks a core adage of the technology sphere: never bet against Moore’s Law.
• Did you know that Google has an open source effort called Chromium that complements its Chrome browser? Oh, you did? Ah well, my fault for having such spectacularly smart, well-informed and discerning readers. Anyway, here is a veritable slew of information about the relationship between Chromium, Chrome and the Google mothership
• I’ve been hearing for many months that Adobe has Flash running on the iPhone in its labs. Well here’s confirmation (that they are, at very least, working on it). Lack of Flash is one of the things I love least about my iPhone, so I dearly hope this happens. What use is a web without Flash video and Scramble?
• Todd Ditchendorf has done a fantastic job on Fluid. Now he’s readying a new OS X browser. The feature list is hot, but the same caveats mentioned for Google Chrome apply here, minus the market-bending might of the web’s most powerful company. And why the heck is this a “social browser”? Is every new piece of software now “social” by default?
• Dion Almaer and Ben Galbraith of Ajaxian join Mozilla to head an effort creating new tools for web development. The web sorely needs better development tools. Firebug is getting more love, and Ajaxian (them again!) ran a fascinating piece today about JS Bin, a pastebin variant that enables collaborative development of JavaScript code. Methinks I spot a trend.

Tags: ajaxian, chrome, chromium, flash, fluid, google, html5, mozilla, skyfire | 6 Comments »

Glubble for Families Launches

With all the hype generated by the launch of Google Chrome, one couldn’t help but wonder whether the world truly needs a new web browser. Two perfectly serviceable products are bundled with the leading operating systems (IE and Safari on Windows and OS X, respectively), and two open source competitors (Firefox and Webkit) provide excellent alternatives. It is far from clear that the masses are yearning for yet another general-purpose browser.

This doesn’t mean, however, that would-be web browser developers should necessarily change tack and get into iPhone app development instead. (And no, I’m not going to open that can of worms.) As Geoffrey Moore pointed out many years ago in the tech marketing classic Crossing the Chasm, the key to success in the software world is to focus on a niche, dominate it and take it from there. This might not make sense for a behemoth like Google, but it is exactly the strategy being pursued by browser startup Glubble.

When Glubble CEO Willem-Jan Schutte demoed the product to me a few months ago, he emphasized the challenges the treacherous waters of the web present to parents of young children. Shocking as it seemed to me, while I break in a new computer by setting the Google safe search filter to “damn the torpedoes”, parents are quite concerned that their offspring might stumble into inappropriate territory. Glubble provides a sort of walled garden with lots of fancy features to let adults monitor their kids surfing and explicitly approve sites before they can be accessed.

A new version, called Glubble for Families, launched yesterday. It adds a sort of social network for families, with features like instant messaging, photo albums and shared events, to the basic Glubble browser. The browser itself is available either as an extension to Firefox or as a standalone product (actually a bundle of Firefox and the Glubble extension). Piggybacking on Firefox is a smart move, and from what I’ve seen Glubble does a great job of adapting the web environment to be appropriate for families with kids. For those in that demographic, it’s certainly worth a look.

Tags: family, firefox, glubble | 1 Comment »

The Economist on “Non-Profit Capitalism”: What It Implies for Mozilla

Wending my way through this week’s Economist, I came across an article about “non-profit capitalism”. (Get it while it’s hot, it’ll probably end up behind a pay wall soon enough.) Specifically, the article describes the recent IPO filing of a non-profit organization called Do Something:

This imitation of the for-profit IPO process may seem gimmicky, but in fact it is part of a new trend to improve how non-profits are financed, so that they can escape the obsession with short-term fund-raising that is pervasive in the charitable world. With money in the bank to finance the next three years’ operations, Ms Lublin and her team will be free to focus on reaching Do Something’s goals.

Now I’ve savaged the idea of a Mozilla IPO in the past as demonstrating a “total lack of understanding of the Mozilla community ethos.” The Do Something IPO is different, however, since it does not provide investors with any voting rights. An IPO of this sort would therefore provide Mozilla with additional funds without hampering its ability to pursue its altruistic goals.

Mozilla is unlike most non-profits, of course, because it generates significant revenues. At the same time, income is still paltry compared to the financial resources of its competitors (with the recent entry of Google into the browser space only serving to drive this point home more forcefully). An IPO-like event might make sense if a) it brings in a significant amount of capital relative to current revenues and b) that capital can be deployed effectively to increase Mozilla’s competitiveness.

Both are big ifs. If we assume that Mozilla can achieve turnover of around $100 million annually (not that much of a stretch considering that 2006 revenues were $66 million), the amount raised in an IPO would probably have to be in the order of hundreds of millions to make any real long-term difference. Would Mozilla be willing to float enough of its equity to achieve this, considering that the implied market capitalisation would reflect the fact that “investment” in the company would actually amount to a charitable donation in the absence of voting rights?

Besides which, we all know that throwing more money at a software development project or projects doesn’t necessarily lead to increased productivity. Access to, say, twice its current financial resources certainly wouldn’t make Mozilla’s products twice as good or half their time to market. Then again, managed correctly this extra money could have a real effect on Mozilla’s competitiveness.

A Mozilla IPO still seems highly improbable, even if structured in this way, but the idea and the questions it raises are certainly intriguing.

Tags: money, mozilla | 3 Comments »

Prism for Firefox 0.2.1 Now on AMO

Due to overwhelming public outcry (which is how I characterize two requests in the same day), I’ve updated the version of Prism for Firefox on addons.mozilla.org to the latest 0.2.1 release.

This version is so much better than the old one, it’s not even funny. It includes a slew of new features, tons of bug fixes and probably a bunch of stuff I’ve forgotten. Please update.

Tags: firefox, prism | 6 Comments »

Browser Bits and Bobs for Septembers 16, 2008

• I didn’t see a compelling reason to switch to Opera when I tried it, so in the interest of fair and balanced coverage, here are 10 reasons why you should use the Opera browser, according to one commentator.
• Interview with Aza Raskin (Mozilla’s head of user experience) about the future of Ubiquity.
• Intriguing commentary on Chrome’s user experience manifesto. This one deserves a full post all to itself. Still think Google isn’t planning to replace traditional desktop GUIs?
• An update on Microsoft’s upcoming mobile browser release. By all accounts Windows CE is starting to approach something resembling usable. Clearly the iPhone casts a long shadow.
• Seth Godin argues that Mozilla should add viral features to Firefox to counter the Chrome threat. Techdirt replies that this runs counter to the Mozilla ethos. I agree, which is why a third party would be better placed to implement this type of feature (as we tried to do with AllPeers).
• Finally, Gears for Safari. I wonder what will have more impact, Chrome or Gears.
• Supposedly Chrome is stealing users from IE while helping Firefox to gain market share. Catchy headline but it looks like a statistical blip to me.

Tags: bits and bobs, chrome, firefox, gears, ie, microsoft, opera, safari, ubiquity | 2 Comments »

Prism Extension for Firefox 3.0.x

I posted an update of the Prism for Firefox extension weeks ago, but like an idiot I specified the maximum compatible Firefox version as 3.0. Naturally Firefox 3.0.1 came out shortly afterwards, but somehow I never got around to bumping the version number in the extension (which should have been 3.0.* in the first place, in retrospect). Make that a lazy idiot.

Anyway, better late than never. The following should be compatible with all Firefox 3.0.x versions (there are no other changes from the Prism drop I released in June):

Download Prism for Firefox extension for: Macintosh, Windows, Linux

Tags: firefox, prism | 10 Comments »

Browser of the Week: Chrome Conclusions

I cannot tell a lie. I hardly used Chrome this week. The problem, as I mentioned when I kicked off this Browser of the Week installment, is that my primary work computer is my Mac Book Air (from which I access my Mac Pro remotely to do development). I don’t even have Parallels on my Air, so I’ve been running Chrome in Parallels on the Mac Pro and accessing it via Remote Desktop Connection. If you ever want to make your product really sluggish and unpleasant to use, this would be a great way to accomplish that. Despite the best of intentions, I quickly became impatient and went back to using my local Firefox.

What little usage I did get out of Chrome impressed me. Considering that this is the first rev of a very complex software beast, I had surprisingly few issues. Everything seemed very simple, streamlined and straightforward. While I’m skeptical of the various kooky conspiracy theories about why Google made Chrome, it may turn out to have more strategic value that a lot of their zillions of products. The web app desktop shortcut creation is particularly intriguing. They’ve got a lot of work to do to catch up with Prism, but I’m officially worried.

I’ll revisit once they release a Mac version.

Tags: botw, chrome | No Comments »

Is Chrome a Prism Killer?

I have my Twitter set up to show me all tweets with the word “prism” in them, and over the past few days I’ve seen a surprising number along the lines of “I’m dumping Prism in favor of Chrome web apps”. This is how I first found out how badly my initial Chrome post missed the mark. I had hypothesized that Google was positioning itself in contrast to products like Prism and Fluid (and, more recently Safari) that let you create desktop shortcuts for web apps. As it transpires, Chrome permits exactly this and does so rather well.

So is Prism dead in the water? It has one clear advantage over Chrome, which is that it runs on Linux and Mac. (I’ll be ranting more about that tomorrow.) Also, Prism has a lot of cool bells and whistles (tray icons and menus, popup alerts, etc.). Google’s approach is better integrated with the browser, but there is a Firefox extension that accomplishes essentially the same thing. (And yes, I really must update it to work with Firefox 3.0.1.)

The main advantage of Chrome is that its architecture was conceived in advance to provide Prism-like functionality. One of the biggest challenges with Prism has been to bring its functionality up to the level of a modern web browser. Rendering web pages is a no brainer for any XULRunner application, but people have come to expect much more from a browser. There is a whole slew of bugs filed for Prism for everything from type-ahead find to proxy and security certification management.

The problem, in a nutshell, is the current dichotomy in the Mozilla platform between XULRunner, which offers all the nuts-and-bolts to build a browser-like app, and Firefox, which is a specific browser implementation. Ideally there would be an intermediate layer which gives you a complete browser without all the Firefox-specific stuff. From my perspective, the only thing that should be specific to Firefox is the user interface.

Rearchitecting Firefox in this way would be a massive effort, of course. (Consider the difficulty just getting tab browsing implemented in a way that lets different browsers use a common implementation.) In the meantime, a solution might be to base Prism on Firefox instead of XULRunner. In this way, we would get all the browser functionality for free. The problem is then flipped on its head, since we would need to find a way to hide anything Firefox-specific (including most of the user interface). Considering the ambitious improvements the Mozilla platform has benefited from recently, a restructuring of the browser functionality is perhaps not out of the question. However, moving Prism onto Firefox (something we’ve already discussed) is doubtless a more expedient approach that would immediately bring Prism up to the level of Chrome web apps (but with all the advantages mentioned earlier).

Another issue is that it is still too difficult to add the bells and whistles to Prism apps that make them really shine. We need more documentation and examples (something that has been on my to do list for far too long). Ideally, we would have a library of ready-made customizations for popular web apps that users could access directly, similiar to the library of scripts available for Greasmonkey. Chrome certainly doesn’t render Prism obsolete, but it does make it clearer how much work we still have to do.

Tags: chrome, firefox, prism, ssb | 12 Comments »

Why Did Google Make Chrome?

Yep, it’s Chrome week and I’m just going to blather on about it through Friday. Today we have a piece by the one-and-only Robert X. Cringely speculating on why Google decided to make Chrome in the first place. (Actually the post is four days old, but I’m perennially behind in my feeds. Sue me.)

What I like about this particular post is how fundamentally stupid Bob’s idea is. (Perhaps I seem hypocritical since I slammed Henry Blodget yesterday – gratuitously — for posting so much inspid linkbait. The difference is that even Cringely’s stupid theories are original, articulate and well-argued.) In a nutshell, Bob postulates that Google created a browser because they are afraid that Microsoft will “turn off ads” in IE. This would deprive Google of a huge slice of its revenue and prove to the world “who is still the sherriff.”

Needless to say, this theory is full of more holes than a Prague sidewalk in winter. First off, stripping out ads isn’t exactly as simple as flipping a switch. Microsoft would have to rely on the specific HTML format used by Google for its ads. To counter this, Google would just have to change the format. I imagine that an organization full of genius PhDs could perform some pretty impressive obfuscation with billions of dollars of revenue on the line.

Besides which, if this threat were real, what would a Google browser do to counter it? In a word: not much. (Okay, two words.) Unless you are willing to assume that IE users will shift en masse to Chrome in the short to mid-term, the implicit control over the web that Microsoft enjoys thanks to IE’s high market share would remain essentially unaffected. If this were really foremost on Google’s mind, they would do far better to invest in Firefox, which already has 20%+ market share and might make a real difference if those Redmond rascals did decide to do something dastardly with IE.

So why do I think Google developed Chrome? For the same reason they do most of what they do: because they can. Google VP Marissa Mayer says in this video interview: “We’re really excited about Google Chrome because we really like to innovate where we see not enough progress being made.” Translation: “We thought we could make a better browser than those numbnuts at Microsoft and Mozilla, and since our search business mints money we have the resources to invest in hugely ambitious projects with no obvious strategic value.” (Inserting the word “really” a few times to make this sound more like Marissa is left as an exercise to the reader.) No deep dark secret here, just the desire of a bunch of geeks to impress the world with their cool hack.

Tags: chrome, cringely, google, ie, microsoft | 10 Comments »