Recently, Neowin sat down with Ben Goodger, the chief developer of Firefox, and had a good long chat.
Ben talks to us about 1.0 PR, Ben's views (or lack of) on SP2, the future of Firefox / XUL technologies, and much more.
Read on below; stay tuned for our essential guide to tweaking Firefox and getting the best extensions to make you, a happy browser :)
View: Neowin Interview : Ben Goodger
Ben talks to us about 1.0 PR, Ben's views (or lack of) on SP2, the future of Firefox / XUL technologies, and much more.
Read on below; stay tuned for our essential guide to tweaking Firefox and getting the best extensions to make you, a happy browser :)
View: Neowin Interview : Ben Goodger
Gamespot interview with Rooster Teeth
GameSpot: Burnie, how much have you had to change your usual MO, given that you are no longer creating video for the heck of it, but for largest game publisher in the world.
Burnie Burns: Well, going from the largest software company in the world, Microsoft, to working with the largest game company in the world is not that big a change. It’s not like we’re having any new challenges or anything like that.
GS: But the games are worlds apart; Halo and The Sims 2.
BB: Yes, the biggest thing, as far as what changes, is that The Sims 2 is a Teen-rated game, whereas Halo is a Mature-rated game. And so to keep in tune with the game itself, we’ve agree to make [the videos] Teen rated. But that fits with the humor anyway. Whenever we write stuff, we like to have it fit in with the audience that already likes the game.
GS: Are you still doing work based on the Halo universe?
BB: I want to make it clear that we’re still doing Red vs Blue. It’s not like we’re stopping. In fact, we’re about to start season three.
GS: What's it been like working on The Sims and with EA?
BB: Everything so far has been great. Everything we’ve done so far has been lots of fun. When we first started talking about [The Sims 2], they had seen Red vs Blue. EA were fans of Red vs Blue. That helped a lot. It wasn’t just like somebody told them that they should get in contact with us. They contacted us because they liked Red vs Blue. They’ve been very, very cool to us.
GS: How are you approaching the creative challenge? And what are your goals with this new project?
BB: Well, with Machinima, you have to work within this limited world. We can’t really go in and make The Sims characters fight with guns or anything like that. That’s something we can do in Halo, but in Halo you can’t put them on a couch or things like that.
When we were writing Red vs Blue over the last year and a half, we’d come up with things that were funny that we wanted to use, some concepts we wanted to make fun of, things that we wanted to parody, but that we just weren’t able to do.
Now, with the strangerhood, we can make fun of sitcoms, make fun of reality shows, poke fun at stuff that we were just not able to in Red vs Blue.
GS: Sounds good.
BB: The project is a really good fit. We actually have a lot of stuff already written out. Hopefully, as we start to work with The Sims 2 engine, we’re going to be able to use that. But the way Machinima works, you never know. The game’s not built to make movies, that’s what the creative process is…we try to milk all that out of [the limited palatte]. Some things you can do and some things you can’t, but that’s part of the fun challenge.
GS: Besides posting the movies that you make using The Sims 2 engine, are you going to be providing any other sorts of content gamers can read or watch?
BB: If there’s any inspiration, it’s going to be inspiration by example I think.
We don’t have a problem talking with people on our forums about how we do things, but we have a commitment to not to do too much stuff that’s outside of the game engine. We try to keep it so that anybody can replicate what we do in the game engine. That’s the really cool part about Machinima.
GS: In general, what do you hear from your fan base?
BB: We get a lot of email from young filmmakers who are wanting to tell a story but who don’t have the money to go out and buy even a video camera. But they may already have a PC game or an Xbox game so they can sit down and create. With The Sims 2, the cool thing is, they’ve already got all this stuff built in. You just hit a button and you can record your gameplay footage. You don’t need any kind of external video capturing equipment…anything like that.
GS: Do you end up answering lots of reader mail that poses "how-to" questions?
BB: We answer questions as they come up but we don’t really put too many tutorials out there because there’s lots of great Machinima sites like machimina.org…they talk about how Machinima works and they offer free tools and things like that.
GS: How many Strangerhood episodes are planned?
BB: Our goal is always to try to treat any series like a TV series, so we try to do 22 episodes in a season. That’s what we’re planning to do here. As far as continuing seasons and things like that, as long as the game company will put up with us then we’ll be happy to do more.
GS: Any fear of losing your core fan base?
BB: We got emails as soon as we put the strangerhood videos up; people were real positive, they were liking it. We thought perhaps the change from a first-person shooter to a more sitcom’y looking cartoon might [alienate] some people, but so far they’ve been real excited about it.
GS: Burnie, that character you call Tovar, he looks a bit like Sims creator Will Wright. Is that intentional?
BB: [laughs] I don’t know, I don’t think so! I might be a little colored by the fact that I know what Tovar’s character is really like. Trust me, if he looks like Will Wright, I don’t think he acts anything like Will Wright. And if he does act like Will Wright, I definitely want to get a job working for Will very, very soon.
GS: Thanks, Burnie.
<< personal insult removed >>.
Last edited by 36818 on 03 Oct 2004 - 16:14
For those willing to undergo the ordeal of the download and/or install, I'm sure they'll find improvements. But you can find a lot of improvements in a 4.5MB Firefox download, too.
Nice objective view there
What's so strange or bad about that answer?
The only thing I can see is that he's making it sound like Firefox works as a replacement for SP2, which it certainly don't, but hopefully people understand that it's more than a browser, like a firewall, OS security fixes, and more. I don't think he's as incompetent that he doesn't know what SP2 means, but maybe rather that he was thinking about IE in SP2 when saying that.
Very political answer. I hope that people who are "in the know" about security and not just "I'll download the smallest possible quasi-fix" realize just how myopic this answer is.
2) Provide a vague answer.
3) Steer the question back to what he wants to talk about.
What's with all the "Rediscover the web" crap?
Firefox is way overrated. It's simply mozilla without all the bloat and a slightly lighter interface.
Opera on the other hand has been revolutionizing the web for ages. It has the best tab browsing support to date (without the need for any plugins, it just works as you would expect).
I have used Mozilla, Firefox, IE, Maxthon (MyIE2), and Opera.
And IE has the best rendering engine (because most sites were tested on it), mozilla comes second, and opera comes last.
But feature-wise, Opera wins hands down!
At least fx has a plugin for this.
And gecko and khtml are not the same...
Just because IE is the most used browser DOES NOT MEAN that it has the best rendering engine. In fact, it has the worst rendering engine.
That article had nothing to say about the rendering quality of IE. It just said that IE does not conform to standards. I'll agree with him there, IE really does suck when it comes to following standards, but there are a few things he hasn't considered. For one, it's not really that bad that IE doesn't follow standards. Most sites are written for IE anyways, so if IE were to change then it would probably break a lot of them. The article says that the internet would pretty much self-destruct if everything weren't based on standards, but IE has been around for about a decade now and the internet is still doing fine. Also consider that IE had CSS/DHTML/jscript long before they were standardized (in fact, MS came up with much of that stuff), so who has the right to make them change it? The standards groups should receive just as much blame as MS because they should have based their standards on what was already in use by the majority (ie. IE).
Look at the # of downloads they managed to hit within a week since the 1.0PR release. That should give you an idea how revolutionary it is for a browser
Their goal is so you can navigate without actually going thru crap. By that I mean having ActiveX install all this crap that you have no clue what you want.
Slightly? you kidding? The installer weights less than 5MB. And bloat? Not quite. Mozilla offers the full package which most people don't need. That's why they started to work on Firefox and Thunderbird seperately.
IE is free, Firefox is free, Opera ain't. ok let's move on mr. who cracked all his programs.
You are probably the most ignorant neowin member on this community. IE doesn't follow any standards. People who want to make websites have to make sure it works for IE and all the others (FF, Opera, Safari, etc.) and for that sometimes you have to add many "redundant" css code.
What most sites? most sites written and hosted on Geocities? If you properly build your site, then you know the only problem you'll face is making IE display it correctly. Many and I mean Many web developpers hate this.
Sure they might have supported it before they became standards but they never took the chance to make their own standards. W3 did it, M$ didn't. It's same thing with patent wars. Sure I can invent a product but if somebody else takes that and patents it if I didn't, then I'm screwed and I have to respect that.
They aren't called standards just for the heck of it. They call em standards cause after your site is built following those standards, you know you won't have trouble making it work with most browsers except IE. Who knows what IE wants. Sometimes you have to google and find user-experience with IE to see what you need to add to make your site work with IE.
In a nutshell, IE wouldn't suck as much if it followed standards.
Yes I am aware of IE not following any new standards, but please show me a major web site that does not work properly in IE.
Most people who can't visit a site on FireFox/Mozilla/Opera go to IE, because it will work perfectly there.
Standards or not, IE just works, and works better than the rest.
When a major company makes a website (or orders a web design) they will make sure it works 100% with IE. Mozilla/Oper compatibility is not a must.
I do agree that by moving to Firefox/Opera/Mozilla/Whatever MS's power will decrease in the browser market (which is a great thing), but come on, Firefox can't make toast just yet....
And the way you, kev^, are raving on, it sounds that even if IE supported all the standards, you wouldn't like it very much. And my whole IE directory is 1,4MB. And the Firefox installer was recently compressed with 7-zip, making it smaller than it used to be.
Note that I use IE, Opera and Firefox extensively. I just think it's sad when people can't get their nose out of their behinds and see things from the regular guys point of view. And number of downloads / size of install says nothing to me about quality. (And this is typed in Firefox, mind you)
I'm using Firefox/Opera/IE atm too.
Ben's right (nuff said)
Removing the crap makes using the internet more or less nice again
what? comparing a major operating system service pack against a measly browser update? what an arrogant asshole. here's some news for you: SP2 has comparatively little to do with the browser.
in fact i could almost say that sp2 ad a lot more to do with the ie then the rest of the os the firewall is slightly improved and the security center is not really a fix just one more warning to disable
It seems to me that he answered the question as well as he could: say IE2 has improvements, and that Firefox has improvements, too.
He really should spend more time trying to fix the memory leak problems in Firefox that have been there since god-knows-what-version than spending his time doing idiotic interviews.
Yes... he said that Firefox was less hassle than getting the SP2 update for IE (in order to update to it you need SP2). How is that wrong? He is saying that if people only want SP2 for browser improvements then Firefox is the more worthwhile download.
To be fair, SP2 has caused a lot of problems for many people... one of my computers downloaded SP2 automatically in the background and when it installed it kept putting the screen out of range so that it was unusable... on another computer it disabled the DVD burner... etc. If you are only interested in the improvements to IE then it is easier, and less hassle, to download Firefox and use that instead (though having both would be better).
Why, do you ask? Well, first of all, it's a much larger download then a 4.5 MB firefox download. As a dialup user, this is a pain in the ass. Especially on three computers. Secondly, Sony shipped my VAIO laptop (and my brother's) with a very small C drive, and a large D drive. To install SP2, it required me to uninstall all my bundled programs (which I cannot reinstall again without a full system restore), clean out my restore points, and then I tried it, 60 MB short. Because Windows Update now saves downloaded files (even failed ones) I had a useless waste of space on my computer, constantly low without any way of removal. Somehow, I got it to install.
When installed, SP2 would constantly write some file to the HD, until it filled up. This was no virus, but a bug in SP2. After filling up my drive to the max and having me constantly remove scandisk/whatever temporary files, it went away in about two weeks, as strangely as it came. Pissing me off in the process.
Oh, and it killed Shareaza on my computer, as it limits the amount of open connections a program can have.
But, I did get a pop-up blocker in IE. Yay!
in context of the third world where internet isn't always as fast as is in the more developed countries, downloading an SP indeed can BE an ordeal. but i think that comment has little to do with what the question was.
likewise, im sure if u asked the IE chief about Fx features n stuff, they'd give u a similar answer. it is merely a tactic to eclipse other products to promote urs and NOT JUST BY VIRTUE OF THE FEATURES U OFFER.
Ben has managed to come across as sounding like a complete and utter i-can't-say-it-or-the-expletive-will-be-removed. Especially his SP2 comments. Cretin.
Yeah... I'm sure he goes home and molests children as well.
And yet, the unanimous support behind the "print" option in the context menu is repeatedly shot down by only the devs. I've grown to really dislike the dev team because of that simple situation.
Last edited by 13 on 03 Oct 2004 - 19:45
You're just giving him points in some stupid game.
Neowin asked the question about Service Pack 2, the Mozilla developer didn't just comment out of blue. People are freaking out about his comment, even though it was completely true.
Service Pack 2 for Windows XP is over 200 MB. That takes a long time for many people without broadband to download. It also has many known issues.
All he said was that it was an ordeal to download and install, which is true in many cases. He also said anyone who did so would see improvements. What is so horrible about that? You guys are totally wack-job-crazy to think that is even arrogant. He was extremely brief and polite. What is he supposed to say? That Internet Explorer is awesome and that he and the Mozilla team are wasting their lives?
Seriously, some of you need to use your brains before posting bizarre, non-sensical, knee-jerk responses.
I am mostly referring to Ciderx and netizen. Their reactions made absolutely no sense.
Last edited by 1798 on 03 Oct 2004 - 20:12
edit
Also, this is under the wrong post, its ment to be uner 17. >.<
Remember the fuss it caused when some M$ exec said he used Firefox? Well, if that was such a shock, why does it surprise you that the Firefox Chief Developer....likes Firefox...?
And those sheep have all come home to roost in this thread.
IE is more compatible with the internet TODAY than FireFox is, IE can read sites 100% perfectly, or look so, while FF will only render the HTML side of it and mess up at the first "error".
Tabs arnt THAT important, sure they are more convient, but the difference from tabs to having another browsers window open is almsot none. ALT-TAB vs moving the mouse under the address bar. /note I AM NOT SAYING THE ARE A BAD FEATURE, JUST OVER HYPED!
The only reason why I would prefer FF over IE right now is the plug-ins, you can find a crapload of HELPFUL FF plug-ins, and find liek 3 HELPFUL ones for IE, like google bar, and pluck.
Im not using basic IE, I do admit I use Avant Browser to upgrade my IE. Please comment, I am expecting both agreements and arguements.
What, it is an error! It's not correct HTML! Maybe the problem is that people are writing work-arounds for the hideous problems in IE's code that cause it to render HTML incorrectly. (Though I've never seen an error bad enough for Firefox to simply stop rendering the page, though IE has done that many times on sites that use CSS heavily.)
Well, it does a great job at freeing your task bar. Or when you're reading slashdot, and open up the article in a backround tab while you're reading the comments. They're not overhyped, they're just a power-users feature and may not be helpful to everyone.
There's other tings to. Could care less if FF supports E>C CSS or :hover on everything. Get the other stuff working first.
Last edited by 29476 on 04 Oct 2004 - 12:07
Commenting has either been disabled on this article or you are not logged in. Click here to login or register, its free!
Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.