ReadWriteWeb

Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus.

We wrote recently about the renewed web browser war between Microsoft and Mozilla (and some other, smaller, usually very innovative players). Our theory is that in 2006 a lot of the ground work for a major battle was laid out. Microsoft launched a significant upgrade to Internet Explorer for the first time in about 5 years (IE7), while the Firefox team spent time polishing up their open source browser. But it is the latest developments which make it clear that Firefox thinks it's showtime. The first development was the Firefox ad on Google's home page. The second one was the annoucement that Firefox is going to advertise on television (curiously our post on this didn't seem to get much reaction, but we thought it was big news). So in terms of the browser wars Part II, the coding part is done and it is now all about the marketing.

Later today Firefox will begin broadcasting, for the first time, four "fan-produced" commercials on prime time television. Initially the ads will only run in the San Francisco and Boston regions, but this will be expanded over time. The 4 video ads are a sampling of approximately 300 clips which were submitted to Mozilla's Firefox Flicks program. The theme of the ads is that Firefox is "the safest, fastest and most enjoyable way to experience the Web." The ads are also partly sponsored by Firefox fans - and Mozilla will insert the names of those sponsors at the end of each commercial.

I spoke to Asa Dotzler, Mozilla's director of community development, at the end of last week in anticipation of the TV advertising launch. I'd previously spoken to Chris Beard (Mozilla's vice president of products) in October when Firefox 2.0 launched. At that time Chris had mentioned the tv ads were coming, so it was great to catch up with Asa last week to get the full skinny.

Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus.

The last few weeks have been packed with browser action and the two market leaders, Internet Explorer and Firefox, have launched major new versions. So to round out our recent browser coverage, we present the Web Browser Faceoff - looking at how all the main browsers compare with each other in terms of features and innovation. We are basically looking for what is unique, interesting - and missing - in each browser.

Right now Microsoft still holds onto its huge market lead, but Firefox is gaining more ground every month. Probably more importantly, there are other major innovators in the browser space - such as the social browser Flock (a Read/WriteWeb sponsor) and the perennial innovator Opera. The Mac browser Safari of course has many passionate supporters, while new kid Maxthon is one to watch.

Regardless of who will prevail in the 'browser 2.0 wars', the users will win. While fighting each other, the browser makers innovate and simplify. They increase our productivity by integrating into the browser web concepts such as search, RSS, OPML, microformats and more. The core browsers are getting slimmer and faster, while extensions that cover a wide range of services are being developed by external parties.

Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus. Disclaimer: Alex's company AdaptiveBlue has a product called The blueorganizer, which was one of the twenty "Recommended add-ons" selected by Mozilla for the Firefox 2 launch.

This week the spotlight is on Firefox as it launches its milestone 2.0 release. We've covered the launch with a Firefox 2.0 product review, an interview with Mozilla exec Chris Beard and a Firefox marketing discussion post. Today we bring you a review of the top twenty add-ons (aka extensions) selected by Mozilla for the Firefox 2 launch. We've categorized the add-ons and analyzed them, to bring you what are hopefully the pick of the crop.

Thriving ecosystem

Since its inception, Firefox has been a great platform on which web developers can build on top of. Recognizing that the core browser must be lean, the Mozilla team put together the infrastructure for creating add-ons. In this single decision, Mozilla created not just a fine browser - but a thriving community and a free marketplace, which links add-on developers directly to browser users. The developers are free to be creative and the users are free to choose the add-ons that they like. Such an ecosystem gives rise to innovation.

The moment has arrived, Mozilla has pushed the go-live button on Firefox 2. The new final 2.0 version of the browser is now available for everyone to download.

Read/WriteWeb has been actively covering the launch, most recently with a pre-launch interview with Chris Beard - Mozilla Vice President of Products. We've also reviewed the product and have additional notes on how Mozilla plans to market Firefox 2. Digg and Slashdot have additional commentary.

For a look at the competition, you may also want to check out our comparative review of Internet Explorer 7.

And the R/WW coverage doesn't stop there! We have a couple of other in-depth articles coming soon, one about Firefox add-ons and a special one on a yet-to-be-disclosed topic ;-)

This afternoon Firefox 2 will be officially launched. In anticipation of the unveiling, here is an in-depth interview with Chris Beard (Mozilla Vice President of Products). Subjects discussed in the interview include the growing enterprise usage of Firefox, the importance of user experience and security, Mozilla's theory behind Web feeds and why they haven't included an integrated RSS Reader, the growing add-on ecosystem, offline browsing, why this is a 2.0 release and not a 1.x one, and finally Chris tells us a little about the future of the browser.

Firefox growth

Chris started off with an overview of Firefox's market position. He said it is a global community and a public benefit organization. Their free and Open Source products attract:

• 100’s of active technical contributors
• 10,000’s of nightly testers
• 100,000’s of evangelists and marketers
• 70,000,000+ end-users in 40+ languages

Chris said there is strong demand and growth. Last year at this time when they released Firefox 1.5, they had around 200,000 people per day downloading it. Today that number is more like 350,000 and growing, which Chris attributes to strong viral and organic growth. 

Firefox in the Enterprise

I asked Chris whether enterprise users are beginning to use Firefox more? Chris said yes, they're noticing that more and more. He said their focus is building products for individual users as opposed to enterprises or organizations, however they're finding that users are bringing Firefox into the enterprise with them - on the basis of security advantages, productivity gains [etc]. 

Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus. Disclaimer: Alex's company AdaptiveBlue has a product called The blueorganizer, which is a Firefox extension.

It is ironic, but the laws of physics apply to technology. Since Internet Explorer won the browser battle 10 years ago, it had little incentive to change. So obeying Newton's law of inertia, Internet Explorer did not bother to innovate. But they got a kick 2 years ago when Mozilla launched a browser that threatens to dethrone IE. After about five years of silence, Internet Explorer 7 has made its long awaited debut.

With the bar raised high and the crowd cheering for Firefox, the IE team came out with a solid product. It is not fantastic and does not have a lot of new things that we have not seen before. But it is a good effort and a worthy response to Firefox. In this post, we look at the IE7 feature set and talk about both the good and bad of this market-leading browser.

User interface improvements

The first thing that stands out in the new Internet Explorer is its completely redesigned navigation bar. Besides the URL entry box, everything else is new and it is an interesting design.

The major theme here is to have buttons as short cuts and pulldowns for more detail. For example, the History button is accessible as a pulldown right next to the Back and Forward buttons. The Home button does the usual, but the pulldown next to it allows the user to add more Home pages as well as perform additional customizations. The Print and Tools menus also have detail pulldowns that have a lot of options. This redesign makes sense, as it establishes groupings and also allows the user to quickly switch between using the function and customizing it.

This week I spoke to Chris Beard, Mozilla's vice president of products. Among other things we discussed how Firefox 2.0 is going to be marketed. I was going to save this for the full write-up of my interview with Chris Beard, but reading Chris Messina's post today about IE7 made me want to address it now. Chris Messina, an ex-Flock architect, wrote:

"So here we are now, on the precipice looking out on the mere beginnings of Web 2.0. With Internet Explorer caught up and inching ahead, there is a critical question for Firefox advocates: do we stay the course and continue promoting Firefox as a product competing with Internet Explorer? Or, do we focus on the wider, more gradual fight to spread and improve open source principles and practices — in effect, to “win the hearts and minds” of those who employ us by day but leave us hacking at night, struggling to make a decent living at it should we choose to pursue it as our primary occupation? Personally, I prefer to chase the latter… for, after all, what really comes next, well, shall be determined by our combined intentions being realized."

Note that the 'competing' line was linked to Read/WriteWeb's review of Firefox 2.0, in which we positioned FF2 as a product that may take market share from Microsoft's IE. I really enjoyed this post from Chris Messina, although I'm surprised he brought up the web 2.0 meme (does he really want to go there again? I know I don't). His core point though is that Firefox should promote itself as an Open Source super hero in Web 2.0 City, fighting off its evil nemesis Dr Proprietary (I'm paraphrasing). This sounds great, but it doesn't seem fully rooted in the real world.

Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus. Disclaimer: Alex's company AdaptiveBlue has a product called The blueorganizer, which is a Firefox extension.

In this post, we take a look at what the Firefox team is going to deliver in their upcoming major release: Firefox 2.0. We ask the question: will it be enough to make significant ground on IE?

Current browser market

In just a few years, Firefox has taken the previously dormant browsing market by storm and woken the slumbering giant Microsoft. The Mozilla browser now owns 12-14% of the browser market (the number varies depending on the source - see Wikipedia for more). The Firefox brand is also making an impact, thanks in part to the Spread Firefox campaign. For example, last year Firefox was voted the #7 global brand by brandchannel.com. But the question is still up in the air: will Firefox ever get close to Internet Explorer's market share?

Firefox share, Feb 04-July06; Source e-janco

Brad Neuberg has announced the release of HyperScope 1.0, a Web app based on tech legend Douglas Engelbart's 1968 NLS/Augment (oNLine System). Engelbart and team have been working on Hyperscope since March this year, in a project funded by the National Science Foundation. Its aim is to rebuild portions of Douglas Engelbart's NLS system on the web, using current Web technologies such as AJAX and DHTML.

Brad Neuberg and Doug Engelbart - photo by Niall Kennedy

The project team members are Doug Engelbart (visionary), Brad Neuberg (software architect and implementor), Jonathan Cheyer (who knows more about Augment than anyone else under 35), Christina Engelbart (the bridge between the old and the new) and Eugene Eric Kim (project liaison and collaboration guru).

Those familiar with their Web history will know that Douglas Engelbart invented the computer mouse and was a pioneer in the development of hypertext, networked computers and precursors to GUIs. Indeed NLS was the system demonstrated by Engelbart in his famous 1968 Mother of All Demos.

What is it?

HyperScope is described as "a high-performance thought processor that enables you to navigate, view, and link to documents in sophisticated ways." This is seen as the first (renewed) step towards Doug Engelbart's larger vision for an Open Hyperdocument System - only this time round it'll be based on Web technologies.

How do you use it?

The goal for HyperScope is to "make more advanced browsing capabilities available in existing tools, and to engage community participation."

I must admit I haven't fully grokked it yet, but Brad told me to "keep in mind that this is a faithful reproduction of the earlier systems, with the original commands, so it takes a bit of training to use." He also said that one of Douglas Engelbart's goals is "to create software that makes experts more powerful", which means there is a learning curve. But once you do learn it, you have expanded capabilities. According to Brad, Doug calls this "software for adults."

There is a tutorial available and also here are some detailed notes on how to use HyperScope, courtesy of Brad:

"It's basically a clone of Engelbart's 1968 system named NLS/Augment; that's the Turbo Mode button you will see. It is also a clone of pieces of a later system of Engelbart's named VAT, written in SmallTalk, from the early 90's; those are the Jump and Viewspecs buttons and overlays you see. That's the Browser Mode and those little icons you see when you run the mouse over the rows.

What you see are the original hyperlinks brought onto the web, the ones that were invented first. They are actually much more powerful than the web's hyperlinks, allowing things like indirect linking, granular addressability, the ability to control how a remote website is displayed using something called viewspecs, transclusions of pieces of remote web documents in real time, etc. Now they are all brought onto the web, built with contemporary technology: Ajax, Dojo, DHTML, OPML."

If you want to have a play, HyperScope 1.0 can be used with both Firefox and Internet Explorer - but Brad says Firefox is faster and preferred.

How was it built?

HyperScope includes 'old school' features like indirect links and transclusions of remote pieces of other documents. But Brad completely built it with open source JavaScript toolkit Dojo - meaning that everything is done on the client-side with Ajax and DHTML. He says it's a great show-case application for Dojo. It also uses OPML as its base file format (Dave Winer will be pleased!). HyperScope is open source and available under the GPL.

Party like it's 1968!

To celebrate, the HyperScope team is having a release party this Tuesday at SRI, the birthplace of Engelbart's work. Doug will be there, as will many of the original members of the Augment programming team and the original Xerox PARC team. RSVP here. It's times like these I wish I was in Silicon Valley, but if you're in the neighborhood then it should be a great event.