Cleaner, more efficient Mozilla vowed

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The Mozilla project, largely sponsored by AOL-TimeWarner, has taken a dramatic turn. Team leaders have advised Mozilla developers to abandon the "swiss army knife" approach for smaller and lighter applications, according to a statement posted on the mozilla.org site today.

In the statement, team leaders Brenden Eich and David Hyatt take the criticism on the chin, and the team has also vowed to tighten up its development methodology. The winners include Phoenix, a fast and light version implementation for Windows and Linux, which becomes the focus of the project. Phoenix uses a different browser UI infastructure than Mozilla/Netscape 7, and offers many other advantages.

The losers are the cross-platform toolkit (XPFE) and the user interface language (XUL), which created a rich scriptable environment that can justifiably be described as a "platform". The Mozilla suite will favor standalone mail and composer applications in preference to the monolithic package developed now.

News source: The Register

Eich and Hyatt acknowledge that there were many drawbacks as there were gains from an approach that was often critized for being unwieldy:-

While describing XUL as "a huge win (a "true economy") for customizers, localizers, distributors, and portable application developers", they note:-

"As intended, [XUL] allowed us to write a cross-platform application front end once, instead of writing native-OS-toolkit-based front ends for at least three platforms. But we ended up spending at least as many people and as much time on the various applications in the suite, and on integrating those application components, as we would have spent developing native browser-only front ends and one browser back end. "

Mozilla's UI complexities bogged down developers as much users, they note:-

"The inherently overloaded and complicated user interface (just one example out of too many: the File / New sub-menu). The target audience of the suite was never clear, and seemed to shift back and forth with prevailing business- and voluntary-contributor-driven winds."

You can read the full roadmap statement here.

Phoenix is a fast, light, themeable browser you can find here. For some time the project has needed a new name. On the discussion group today, one wit suggested that it now had one: "Mozilla".

(3 replies) #1 Quick Reply on 12 Apr 2003 - 08:26

I didn't understand much of that, quite simply, what's going to change in mozilla as a result of this article?

#1.1 JLP on 12 Apr 2003 - 10:52

Basicly they will brake one huge Mozilla exe into a couple of smaller components. For example Mail&News will be it's own smaller capp and so will be ChatZilla, Composer and Browser. Also they will be moving as much as possible to extensions instead of it being part of one huge Mozilla package. Great things all over!

#1.2 gameguy34 on 13 Apr 2003 - 00:12

it's called componentization i believe.

#1.3 hoodedone on 13 Apr 2003 - 08:50

Not only what was mentioned, but the UI will have a more "native" look to it - most Phoenix themes only skin the icons and such, leaving everything else to the OS. (And I think support for "full" skins that change the entire UI a la Mozilla are only in there because of old Mozilla code, and will eventually be removed. Don't quote me on that though.) This will make it look "cleaner," and it also contributes to the speed increase in Phoenix.

(3 replies) #2 louiskhorweiwu on 12 Apr 2003 - 08:33

Mozilla is getting chucked in favour of Phoenix and Minotaur, well actually what it means is I'm going to keep using Opera...

#2.1 cork1958 on 12 Apr 2003 - 11:12

Mozilla is getting chucked in favor of Phoenix is awesome! But, I agree with the second half of louis' post. Hell Yeah, Opera!!

#2.2 giantsnyy2002 on 12 Apr 2003 - 14:31

[neoquote=#2.0 by louiskhorweiwu]Mozilla is getting chucked in favour of Phoenix and Minotaur, well actually what it means is I'm going to keep using Opera...

[/neoquote] i like opera, but its way too annoying... i inatalled it and made sure i clicked NO to NOT make it default browser, but it did neways, and even the Set Program Access and Defaults didnt do it, theres still some files that call for opera, although its uninstalled. Plus the whole ads thing after 30 days? thats fucking stupid excuse my language

#2.3 prashidi on 12 Apr 2003 - 16:15

[QUOTE]Plus the whole ads thing after 30 days?[/QUOTE] When i installed opera on my computer the ads started right away. Most of the screen is filled with opera. why would i want to move from a simple browser like phoenix, or IE to Opera. For some reason all software producers are trying to fit the most bells and whistles to their products. I think they should build the most simplist software and have other features as optional addons.

(1 reply) #3 Beast_4thHM on 12 Apr 2003 - 09:36

Without new Internet protocols and languages none of the new browsers will be "NEW" Hopefully IE 7 will mark the "NEW" era

#3.1 JLP on 12 Apr 2003 - 10:57

There are quite a few new internet protocols and standards. Some of them can be found on [URL=http://www.w3.org/]W3C webpage[/URL] for example. But judging from the past IE basicly has not changed since version 4 and it still does a very bad job at supporting existing standards the right way.

#4 leebobs on 12 Apr 2003 - 10:08

IE6 ALL THE WAY!!

(1 reply) #5 Quick Reply on 12 Apr 2003 - 10:34

i didn't recall this article being about IE6/7

#5.1 antsy on 12 Apr 2003 - 11:22

And.......................

(2 replies) #6 midsummerstorm on 12 Apr 2003 - 10:59

I personally think this is a wise decision. Mozilla was a great product, but there's a lot of people (most of them?) that like the browser only approach, and this will be a much maintainable and extendable option for the programmers themselves. Phoenix is a great browser, that is in need of a much more dedicated coding comunity. I'm sure if the Mozilla organization invests the same efforts they where investing on Mozilla to make Phoenix better, then we have a winner. On the other hand, I'm just too used to Outlook to move to Minotaur when it's still on its early stages of emancipation. Maybe when they include the option to use dictionaries (catalan/spanish/english) and it's more customizable then I'll give it a go, but not now. And for those IE lovers, give Phoenix a try, and tell me if IE can offer half the options Phoenix does (tabbed browsing, themes, really curtomizable toolbars, a fast rendering engine, real standards compliance, a multi-purpose search bar, ...). And Opera... adware is evil, and I'm not gonna pay having such a good alternative.

#6.1 JLP on 12 Apr 2003 - 11:05

[QUOTE]Maybe when they include the option to use dictionaries (catalan/spanish/english) and it's more customizable then I'll give it a go, but not now.[/QUOTE] It works just fine in Linux where there are free and open dictionaries available and ready on a OS level.

#6.2 midsummerstorm on 12 Apr 2003 - 17:05

Do you know if there's the same thing for WinXP? Maybe I missed something... All I know is there's a Mozilla spellchecker project, that the Minotaur developers hope will be their spell checking engine, or at least available as an extension, but as of now, there's no spell checker for Minotaur that I know of. Please, correct me if I'm wrong.

#7 aleni on 12 Apr 2003 - 11:11

opera r0x0rr

(4 replies) #8 CheeseCow on 12 Apr 2003 - 11:58

This is sweet. Phoenix have just gotten better and better, and now Mozilla will use the best of Phoenix to create a lighter/faster browser. This is IMO a better approach, so that if you want all kind of junk you can always download it later.

#8.1 quintesse on 12 Apr 2003 - 17:08

For me personally I still prefer Mozilla over Phoenix. I can't see anything "lightweight" in a download of 8MB that contains only a browser while the minimal install size for Mozilla is 6MB and at 14MB for the full install this includes a mail and news reader, a web page editor and chat application. Regardless of the fact if you want all of those things it can't be considered a very large download IMHO. As for the fact that Phoenix is faster? I haven't seen one shred of evidence suipporting that claim, startup time is still horribly slow and using the same rendering engine as Mozilla means that the speed while browsing will be the same as well. I really do hope that they will make something better but this whole story about how Phoenix is so much better really makes me wonder.

#8.2 Ji@nBing on 12 Apr 2003 - 22:49

i agree. i like mozilla way more. and i dunno what ppl are talking about pheonix is faster. i find mozila to be definitely faster. especially those 1.4 nightly's. and i don't like the way pheonix handles fonts. it just doesn't look right no matter what settings i use.

i guess i'm just getting picky but u get used to fonts looking a certain way

#8.3 ss1 on 12 Apr 2003 - 22:53

No way! Mozilla is fat, slow, and ugly! Phoenix is far more lighter, and faster and doesn't even need a splash screen whereas Mozilla does since it's so slow! ss1.

#8.4 hoodedone on 13 Apr 2003 - 08:56

[neoquote=#8.1 by quintesse]For me personally I still prefer Mozilla over Phoenix. I can't see anything "lightweight" in a download of 8MB that contains only a browser while the minimal install size for Mozilla is 6MB and at 14MB for the full install this includes a mail and news reader, a web page editor and chat application. Regardless of the fact if you want all of those things it can't be considered a very large download IMHO. As for the fact that Phoenix is faster? I haven't seen one shred of evidence suipporting that claim, startup time is still horribly slow and using the same rendering engine as Mozilla means that the speed while browsing will be the same as well. As far as the person complaining about fonts... the actual drawing of pages in Phoenix, including fonts, is the exact same as in Mozilla.[/neoquote] Do you even read the release notes at all? The 8mb file you are complaining about still contains a LOT of extra Mozilla code that hasn't been removed yet. The total download size will shrink significantly by the time Phoenix reaches final (remember, it's an ALPHA product), and will probably shrink further depending on how they decide to manage the GRE. Phoenix is most certainly faster than Mozilla, and uses less memory. Yes, the browsing speed is the same, but the Gecko engine itself isn't what slows Mozilla down. It's the XUL. While Phoenix still uses XUL, it doesn't depend on it as much as Mozilla, and is therefore faster.

#9 cesardrgn on 12 Apr 2003 - 16:15

call that good news...

#10 Joshie on 12 Apr 2003 - 21:59

No, call that old news.

#11 Sticktron on 13 Apr 2003 - 03:20

Brilliant move on their part. Why else would I bother using a browser other than the already-streamlined and efficient built-in one?

#12 Mgz on 13 Apr 2003 - 08:35

LOL Does anyone see neowin stats, i'm sure there are some Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4a) Gecko/20030411 Phoenix/0.5+

BTW it's the OLD news, /edit posted with Px

(1 reply) #13 hoodedone on 13 Apr 2003 - 09:03

It's really sad that not only is this article posted rather late, but nobody has said anything about the glaring inaccuracies. [i]The losers are the cross-platform toolkit (XPFE) and the user interface language (XUL), which created a rich scriptable environment that can justifiably be described as a "platform".[/i] XPFE and XUL are NOT going away. It specifically says so on the actual information page. Anyway, this is definitely the best news to hit the browser world in a long time.

#13.1 tuxracer on 13 Apr 2003 - 16:39

XPFE [i]is[/i] going away. XUL isn't though.

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