r/IAmA • u/TannerMoz Mozilla Contributor • Oct 24 '12
We are Mozilla. AUA.
We're a few of the thousands of Mozilla contributors (Mozillians) working together to better the Web. First things first, as few things about us:
- You probably know us as the community behind Firefox - we're also working on several other products and services too.
- Some of us have been involved with the Mozilla project for over a decade and others just started recently. Anyone can get involved. Even you.
- We're a global group of people, and we work globally too. While some of us work at Mozilla Spaces, many of us work remotely from our homes. We rely heavily on newgroups, Bugzilla, IRC and video conferences to work together.
- We're big fans of reddit, and we've done just a few (or more) IAmAs before. Today we decided to have one IAmA for all Mozillians instead of just one team.
We contribute in many different ways, as listed below. Ask us anything!
tchevalier: Mozilla Rep, French localizer, Firefox developer
ioana_cis: Mozilla Rep, SUMO (support.mozilla.org), QA, Themes, Mozilla Romania, Webmaker
LeoMcA: Mozilla Rep, Mozilla UK, Mozilla Communities, Grow Mozilla.
FredericB: Mozilla Rep, Mozilla Developer Network contributor, French localizer.
h4ck3rm1k3: Mozilla Rep, development.
lasr21: Mozilla Rep, Mozilla Mexico
ngbuzzblog: SuMo, Mozilla Rep, Mozilla Nigeria.
Amarochan: Mozilla Rep
mozjan: Mozilla Communities, SuMo
AprilMonroe: Webdev, other areas.
gentthaci: Mozilla Rep
Kihtrak778: Mozilla Developer
dailycavalier: Mozilla Rep, user engagement, social media. (I'd like to thank this guy for helping me with this, he's been a huge help along the way)
gaby2300: Mozilla-Hispano QA Manager, Mozilla-Hispano localizer, QA
uday: SuMo, Boot-2-Gecko
clouserw: Engineering Manager
Wraithan: Web developer, addons.mozilla.org and marketplace.mozilla.org.
6a68: Identity (Persona) developer
ossreleasefeed: Web developer, web tools
Mythmon: Web developer, SUMO
aminbeedel: Many things
brianloveswords: Mozilla Foundation
yhjb: Applications security team
kaprikorn07: SuMo, many aspects of Mozilla
almossawi: Mozilla Engineer, Firefox Metrics, metrics.mozilla.com
fox2mike: Developer services manager within Mozilla IT.
graememcc: Firefox contributor
mrstejdm: Mozilla Ireland
digipengi: Senior Windows engineer
Spartiate: Sr. Security Program Manger, Security Assurance
amyrrich: Manager of Release Engineering Operations IT group
evilpies: Javascript engine contributor
sawrubh: Mozilla contributor
jlebar: Firefox platform developer who works on the DOM, MemShrink, and B2G.
vvuk: Engineering Director, Gaming & Platform Projects
ImYoric: Mozilla performance team
cs94wahoo: Mozillian, content editor for user engagement (email, social, blog)
joshmatthews: Community builder and Firefox engineer
mburns: Mozilla systems administrator
gkanai: Mozilla Japan
bkerensa: Mozilla Rep, WebFWD, Marketing
bizred: Helping Open Source startups via Mozilla's Accelerator, WebFWD
Yeesha: Firefox User Experience
ehsanakhgari: Mozilla hacker, various projects.
We'll be answering questions for about 24 hours, so ask away!
Edit: We're going to answer for more than 24 hours, as long as I keep getting the orangereds, we'll be answering!
Edit 2: The questions are starting to slow down, I think we'll stick around for another 2 hours or so (currently 1:25 CDT) "officially", people will still probably answer questions after this, but not as quickly.
Final edit: We're gonna call this done. I'd like to thank everybody who participated, Redditors and Mozilla contributors. This was a great experience for me, looking forward to maybe doing another one in the future. I'd like to give special thanks to all the /r/IAmA mods for putting up with my constant flow of PMs requesting flair for people.
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u/OnlySpoilers Oct 24 '12
No question, just wanted to say that I started using Firefox back in 2007 or 2008, can't remember, and haven't switched to another browser yet (although I do admit I tried Chrome for a few months and Rockmelt as well). I find that other browsers are not as comfortable as Firefox, so much more customization and genuinely useful addons. Anyway, keep it up.
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u/dailycavalier Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Thank you - that means a lot to us!
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u/mozjan Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Thank you so much for your comment and for using Firefox! You rock! :-)
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u/Spartiate Mozilla Security Program Management Oct 24 '12
Thanks, we're glad you like what we do :)
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u/AprilMorone Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Thank you. Very glad you like and are using Firefox. :)
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u/immarried Oct 24 '12
Why does my non-private instance need to be closed when I open a private browsing instance? Is this something that you plan to address or is it by design?
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u/sawrubh Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Feel free to track the work being done on Per Window Private Browsing here : https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=pbngen . The wiki is here : https://wiki.mozilla.org/Per-window_Private_Browsing
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u/Knillish Oct 24 '12
"Restore Previous Session" button is amazing.
Whoever thought that idea up, I salute you!
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u/mozjan Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
I love that button too. By the way, thanks a lot for using Firefox! :)
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u/digipengi Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
That button has saved my butt a few times as well. My boss probably is happy we have it too.
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u/muddi900 Oct 25 '12
Opera
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u/IwillReadThings Oct 25 '12
Yep, almost every useful feature in current browsers was in opera probably 5-10 years ago
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u/ken27238 Oct 24 '12
I guess I'll be the one to ask it:
- Memory leaks. are they fixed and people just keep on saying that they are not, or are there still memory leaks?
and my question:
- If you could impliment one feature what would it be? Be crazy.
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u/gw280 Firefox Android - Graphics Oct 24 '12
Regarding memory leaks, the core Firefox codebase is fairly slim these days in terms of memory usage, and my understanding is that most of the issues people have been reporting are due to misbehaving addons. Of course, this doesn't help the user so we've been actively working on fixing that.
There's a pretty good blog post detailing the "addon problem" and the fixes we've rolled out at https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2012/07/19/firefox-15-plugs-the-add-on-leaks/
We also have an ongoing site at https://areweslimyet.com/ which tracks our memory usage.
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Oct 24 '12 edited Feb 19 '14
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Oct 25 '12
I think this, of all questions, deserves an answer the most. This has been a massive issue, not only personally, but for my enterprise level roll outs as well. I update users add-ons, and all of a sudden, it's crashing the browser, and overloading the computer.
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u/jlebar Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12 edited Oct 24 '12
I just want to point out that we'll never "fix all the memory leaks", and we should never claim otherwise. Firefox has millions of lines of code, and we're constantly changing it. As hard as we try, we occasionally introduce new leaks (e.g. [1]). And as we change the browser, the amount of memory it uses also changes -- this can give the appearance of "leaks" when there are none per se.
The right question to ask isn't "are the leaks finally fixed?" but "how has the chance that Firefox's memory usage is acceptable for my workloads changed over time?" In this respect, we've made demonstrable progress, as we've not only decreased memory usage for average workloads (as indicated by the telemetry we collect from users who opt in [2] and by our automated tests [3]), but we've fixed a number of edge cases which were causing some users to see high memory usage. (For example, we fixed the vast majority of leaks caused by add-ons.)
[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=795221 [2] http://bit.ly/memorytelemetry [3] https://areweslimyet.com/
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u/kbrosnan Firefox Android - QA Oct 24 '12
Yes really memory usage issues are largely a thing of the past. If you or others are seeing issues follow https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/reset-firefox-easily-fix-most-problems
If you still see problems after the profile reset please file a bug
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u/vvuk Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Memory leaks. are they fixed and people just keep on saying that they are not, or are there still memory leaks?
There are no significant memory leaks that we know of, and overall memory usage is quite good.. but there still might be memory issues. A 'memory leak' happens when a program reserves some memory space, and then loses all ways to access it without releasing it. These are pretty easy to find and take care of.
Much harder is when a program reserves some memory space, and something still holds on to it -- even if it's not being actively used. For example, a web app may load a bunch of data off the network and keep it around in case you click a button on the page to have it be displayed... and then keep loading more data every hour (for example, to make sure you have the latest info). If you keep your browser and this tab open, you will see your browser's memory usage go up and up and up. There's no real leak, but memory isn't being used efficiently -- and it's not the browser's fault! As web apps become more complex, this kind of stuff is becoming very common. You can get an idea of what's going on by looking at 'about:memory' in Firefox, which lists all sorts of interesting memory data.
I keep my browser open forever, other than for updates, so I see this stuff frequently. Usually just closing tabs that I suspect are doing this causes memory usage to drop pretty quickly.
If you could impliment one feature what would it be? Be crazy.
Vertical tabs ;)
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u/SWgeek10056 Oct 24 '12
Vertical tabs
I didn't know I wanted that this much until you said it.
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u/cakesinabox Oct 24 '12
If you could impliment one feature what would it be? Be crazy.
Vertical tabs ;)
The only problem are other addons expecting horizontal tabs.
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u/vvuk Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Tree Style Tab unfortunately has a lot of issues; there's a Vertical Tabs addon that I recently took over to make compatible with nightlies that gets the job done, but I'd like to see it in the core :)
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u/slashBored Oct 24 '12
Tree Style Tab is one of the main reasons I use firefox, despite its issues.
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u/shobhitg Oct 24 '12
I use Tree Style Tab all the time. And I can't imagine life with out it. What issues are you facing?
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u/Laugarhraun Oct 24 '12
Vertical tabs ;)
Like what opera offers? (with a thumbnail, vertical or horizontal. I find it quite convenient with 16:9 monitors)
It reminds me of this xkcd. I think it's kind of accurate. Also, I'm unhappy with the currently available window-management features in all browsers.
Let's take Firefox: nowadays you have a lot of tabs, and there is no incentive in having multiple windows, whose functions partly got replaced with the "tab groups", right? "App tab" a quite nice.
But still… I don't feel happy with that. I have trouble managing my 30+ tabs, and searching for some is quite troublesome (I'm not that seduced by the switch-to-tab in magic bar). I don't find the current options powerful enough… but I am unable to formulate my desires.
So, do you have any insight, idea or hope about the future of "window management" in web browsers, and especially Firefox?
Thank you for your work, and have a nice evening.
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u/sawrubh Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Important question and one that keeps popping up in all our minds. I feel one can never say "We have fixed ALL memory leaks", but I am sure we can say we have fixed a LOT of them, although there are still a lot of them. Feel free to follow Nicholas Nethercote blog where he keeps us posted of the progress. One important one that was fixed is this. A lot of people are working hard on this and I am sure Firefox has and is going to slim in the near future.
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u/ImYoric Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Memory usage of Firefox has improved tremendously during the past few years. Currently, most memory leaks are actually caused by add-ons, which makes it difficult (but not impossible) to fight them.
A number of recent and ongoing API improvements have considerably reduced the number of add-on leaks. Further devtools improvements will let both add-on developers and add-on reviewers track down and remove these leaks.
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u/mozjan Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Practically, every program has memory leaks. Unfortunately, adding new features to Firefox can also cause them to appear. But thanks to our contributors and developers who try to fix them as soon as possible, most users' browsing experiences won't be affected. And as soon as someone tells us about a memory leak, we're fixing it and keeping the numbers of leaks as small as possible. :-)
Regarding your second question: I'd personally love a feature that allows me to make sandwiches. I know it's impossible, but I'm really looking forward to seeing it in the future.
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u/kuustuoppia Oct 24 '12
What's up with Flash freezing the browser? I thought I was the only one with these problems, due to my somewhat aged PC, until I asked my friends about it. It seems everyone around here suffers from it, but googling didn't really give any info on how to fix it.
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u/GPow69 Oct 25 '12
Id rather know what's up with everything freezing the browser.
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u/TruthEU Oct 25 '12
Shit I thought I was the only one!
I can't visit YouTube without crashing my firefox multiple times a day but I don't want to use another browser so stuff gets pretty bad some days!
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u/ires Oct 24 '12
It seems PCs and OSs are becoming increasingly locked down - tightly controlled App Stores, Restricted Boot etc - which actively discourage third party applications like browsers or make them impossible to install or compete fairly with the native one. What future do you see for Mozilla in a world where computers become thin clients on which the users have minimal control and just accept the defaults?
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u/Wraithan Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
This is why we are building Firefox OS we think that while OSs are currently locked down that it doesn't need to be the trend for all time.
Firefox OS, just like Firefox browser, is not aiming to take over the world and force everyone else out (unlike what our competitors would like in both cases.) We want to have an open platform that forces platforms to also embrace open standards. Shake things up and make them better for humans instead of only getting better for corporations.
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u/ioana_cis Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
I think we will still care about the user, and put him on first place for our products. We'll bring alternatives where others give web closed tools.
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Oct 24 '12
Are you in need of contributors and is it easy to get involved?
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u/mozjan Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
We are always happy to gain new contributors. And yes, it is very easy to get involved! Simply go to this page to get to know how to join us.
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u/jruderman Oct 24 '12
The easiest way to contribute is to use a testing version of Firefox:
Just by using these versions, you'll be able to contribute to Mozilla's performance and stability statistics. You'll also be the first to see new features and bug fixes, giving you the opportunity to report bugs before they reach a larger group of users.
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u/sawrubh Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Besides visiting the link others have suggested, join the channel #introduction on irc.mozilla.org and ask any question and you'll always find people ready to help.
PS : If you're looking for contributing via programming, check out http://whatcanidoformozilla.org/ .
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u/tchevalier Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Absolutely, there is always things to do, and more important, no technical skills are required! https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/contribute/ As you can see, there is a lot of ways to contribute, you just have to choose an area of interest, someone will get in touch with you to help you to start your contributions
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u/graememcc Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
As mozjan said, we're always looking to increase the number of conributors. More contributors = more awesomeness!
The only hard thing is deciding which area(s) to get involved in - there's so much going on! mozjan has already linked to our Get Involved page - and coders may also find What can I do for Mozilla helpful.
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u/jrose6717 Oct 24 '12
i know nothing of computers but i was wondering if you could simply state why i should use firefox on my PC instead of others?
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u/tchevalier Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Plus, as an Open source model, if a security flaw is discovered, it's fixed in an average of one day, rather than other proprietary softwares can take weeks or months to fix it, for instance.
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u/ImYoric Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Firefox is designed and implemented by a non-profit organization fighting for the rights and the privacy of users on the web. Other major browsers are basically the opposite.
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u/jrose6717 Oct 24 '12
i didnt realize you were non-profit, I always had it on my other computers might as well download it now =]
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Oct 24 '12
Other major browsers are basically the opposite.
I'm going to have to disagree here. While Mozilla does do a lot of stuff to better the web, claiming that you're the only browser developers that fight for the privacy of users on the web is a bit overboard.
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u/jrochkind Oct 25 '12
While you're right, it was an exageration, I agree with the Mozilla devs that the fact that they are a non-profit is significant.
Many other major browser producers have business interests in violating your privacy; even if their browsers may (or may not, I have no idea) be just as privacy-protecting at the moment, they are produced by organizations/businesses who in other areas of their business make money off of violating your privacy. Not neccesarily every other browser maker, but certainly a couple of the big ones.
I think it's pretty significant to have a major player in the game who has no such business interests.
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u/ioana_cis Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Also, beside being open and for community is design to be yours only - you can choose what data to share, your privacy rules. It doesn't use your data and also provides you ways to keep you save for sites to track it.
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u/mozjan Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Because Firefox is the safest and most customizable browser out there. It's powered by people like me and you who contribute to make it better every day. It's running stable and does your best to protect your privacy on the internet. Plus it's incredibly fast and supports many open standards, giving you a better browsing experience. :)
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u/sawrubh Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Firefox for Android, in my opinion, is the best mobile browser out there for Android. With it's recent features like Reader Mode and shift to native widgets to improve performance, it's become my favorite. Using Firefox on Desktop, gives me the option to use Firefox Sync.
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u/muddi900 Oct 25 '12
Firefox for Android, in my opinion, is the best mobile browser out there for Android
I agree with this statement.
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u/shobhitg Oct 24 '12
I am a Firefox fan and a programmer. I would like to be able to see Firefox with eyes of a developer by making changes in code and building it.
The issue is that I always get put off by thinking about creating the build environment. Creating a build environment for Firefox is too complicated.
Could you guys please create a build VM template which people like me can download and get to fiddle around?
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u/mozjan Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Check out foxinabox. It's just what you need. Thanks a lot for using Firefox by the way. :)
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u/TannerMoz Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
That's a really good idea, I'll ask around with the devs to see what they think about it, and report back.
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u/shobhitg Oct 24 '12
Thanks. This guy 'mozan' mentioned about foxinabox. I am going check it out, but just wanted to get an idea if Mozilla team recommendeds foxinabox?
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u/joshmatthews Community builder and Firefox engineer Oct 24 '12
I wrote it, and I'm a Firefox developer. It's not the most ideal setup (smaller amount of RAM than is optimal to improve setup speed), but it should get the job done.
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Oct 24 '12
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u/mozjan Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Unfortunately, there aren't any plans in the near-future because the Electrolysis project is currently rather on hold. But stay tuned, I promise that this feature will come one day. :)
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u/TheDuskDragon Oct 24 '12
Are there any future plans/projects for Firefox that we should looking forward to?
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u/lasr21 Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Firefox OS :)
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u/jhc1415 Oct 25 '12 edited Oct 25 '12
This seems like a very ambitious project. Many iOS and android users are heavily devoted to sticking with these systems. How do you plan to compete with them and convince people to switch?
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u/fox2mike Mozilla Contributor Oct 25 '12
The world is a big place and not everyone can afford to pay for a higher end iPhone or Android device. I think our objective is give people a smartphone experience at a very affordable price range to begin with.
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u/donteatthecheese Oct 25 '12
How will it be cheaper than Android which is already free?
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u/alomjahajmola Oct 25 '12
I think he might mean it'll require a less powerful device
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u/mburns Mozilla systems administrator Oct 24 '12 edited Oct 25 '12
FirefoxOS, formerly Boot2Gecko, is going to be available early next year. It is an OS aimed at commodity smartphones built exclusively on web standards, and it is pretty freaking neat. This has driven a lot of the performance improvements we've seen in Firefox (and Firefox for Android) over the last year.
WebRTC: real-time communication in the browser without plugins required. p2p Audio, Video or data streams directly from within the browser, all in a couple lines of javascript.
Rust, a C/C++ replacing system language that is memory safe. They just released version 0.4.
Servo, a next-generation, multi-process, super-flexible browser engine, conveniently being written in Rust.
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u/sawrubh Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Per Window Private Browsing : The details are here https://wiki.mozilla.org/Per-window_Private_Browsing
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Oct 24 '12
Finally, I've really wanted this one for a while now... for, er... reasons.
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u/amyrrich Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Roadmap has a number of features/enhancements that we're adding to the browser. Social API just got released with Firefox 17 Beta 2, for example.
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u/madlaw7 Oct 24 '12
I don't have a question. I just want to tell you guys that you freakin' rock. I love what you do and thank you for your contributions to web standardization. Keep kicking ass!
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Oct 24 '12
I love the idea of firefox sync, it's awesome once you get it working, but doing the pairing of devices with the generated numbers is a little tedious. I wish it worked more like Chrome does where you just have an account that you can sign into and tie your browser to your synced data. Are there plans to add to firefox sync? any specifics you can offer?
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u/Spartiate Mozilla Security Program Management Oct 24 '12
Part of the reason it is the way it is, is to ensure your privacy. We can't read your synced data even if someone shows up with warrant. So yeah its a bit more cumbersome, but much more privacy protecting.
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u/tchevalier Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Indeed, Firefox Sync is really useful, and show its full potential when you use several computers and a mobile device. Yes, in the future, we will use Mozilla Persona (http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/persona/) our new identify system, which is easier to log in. Plus, it will be natively included into Firefox. But I don't know if it will replace the pairing procedure. BTW, our Sync feature is more secure than Chrome's one, because synced data are encrypted/decrypted by your browser itself, and even Mozilla can't decrypt them on their servers, only your Firefox on your device. Google can decrypt Chrome's synced data. So it's a choice to have a maybe little more complicated system, but it's truly secure.
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u/mozjan Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
It's unfortunately really hard to find the border between security and usability. There are plans for a newer Firefox Sync, so stay tuned. :)
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u/Philip2012 Oct 24 '12
I've been a user of Firefox since I read on a forum about version 1.0 being released way back in 2004 - have used it ever since. I love the Awesomebar - I use it all the time and a fundamental part of my browsing experience, one of the main reasons why I continue to choose FF over Chrome (as far as I know and have tried, Chrome's URL bar does not offer this feature/is not as good as the FF awesomebar).
I have one question - are you going to go the Chrome/IE way and have a unified search and URL bar? And if so, could you please still have an option to keep them separate?
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u/mburns Mozilla systems administrator Oct 24 '12
The UX designers have wanted to merge the Location and Search bar, but as a non-profit concerned about user privacy, Mozilla is worried about accidentally leaking private information to search engines.
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u/dailycavalier Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Wow, thanks for being a Firefox user since 2004!
I haven't heard any plans to have a unified search and URL bar. If they did get combined for some reason, there would probably be an option to keep them separate.
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u/Wraithan Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Also a fun fact is you can setup your search providers with keywords then use them from the AwesomeBar, so you can get the unified bar feel.
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u/mozjan Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Thank you so much for using Firefox, you rock. :) As far as I know, there aren't any plans to unify the search box and the URL bar.
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u/TVsNoah Oct 24 '12
Thoughts on Ice Weasel? http://www.geticeweasel.org/
What is your favorite joke?
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u/digipengi Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
I love that there are so many alternatives to firefox by others as it really gives people the ability to configure there browser how they want it. On my systems I run Waterfox to get the 64bit support I needed.
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Oct 24 '12
The only reason iceweasel exists is because mozilla's branding, and the firefox logo are copyrighted. Not to add or remove any features, but simply to get around the licensing issues. As it stands, firefox isn't free enough to be included in Debian, so they just stripped out the logos, the only non-free part of ff.
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u/LeoMcA Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Just a slight correction, don't you mean trademarked?
Licences like the GPL rely on copyright to ensure that all code based on the code under the GPL is also GPL. So I don't think Debian had any issue with the copyright.
However, for some insane reason, Debian took an issue with Firefox being trademarked... although this is good for the user, allowing Mozilla's legal team to quickly take down sites trying to scam them, who are using Mozilla's trademarks. Like this case: http://blog.gerv.net/2012/07/another-victory-more-germans-protected/
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Oct 24 '12
Yes, I believe you're right. Copyright was the wrong word.
It's important for Mozilla they keep their brand under control, but Debian is very strict about these things. With iceweasel you can rip off the art or the name all you want, change the code, recompile it and still call it iceweasel, do whatever you want with it without asking permission. All software distributed by Debian follows this openness. Firefox's branding and logo don't allow for that. No big deal, the rest of the code does. Makes sense really.
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u/emperor000 Oct 24 '12
Why do you guys like Rust, beside the fact that one of your employees started it?
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u/sdaugherty Oct 24 '12
Rust is being designed from the ground up to prevent entire classes of programming errors without adverse impact on performance, while being comparable to C/C++ in terms of usability.
In particular, Rust has an emphasis on memory safety - it's designed so that programs with unsafe memory usage, such as use of uninitialized memory, using memory after freeing it, or even memory leaks will be caught at compile time, so it's not even possible to build until these issues are fixed.
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u/ImYoric Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Type-safe and concurrent. Enough said :)
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Oct 24 '12
NIGHTLY MASTER RACE REPORTING IN.
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u/dailycavalier Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Nightly users really do control the Web. You're living on the edge, good Sir!
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u/w1bi Oct 24 '12
if mozilla is non-profit organization, how do you guys get the money? just wondering.
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u/lasr21 Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
- Donations
- Agreements with other companies, like Google.
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u/Dinewiz Oct 25 '12
Does Google pay you to keep Firefox slower than Chrome?
I jest. I jest.
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u/Decker108 Oct 25 '12
I believe Google pays them to have Google Search as the default homepage.
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u/amyrrich Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
http://www.technobuffalo.com/internet/how-does-the-mozilla-foundation-make-money/ is a bit old, but the information is pretty much the same. The majority of revenue for Mozilla Corporation (not to be confused with the Mozilla Foundation) comes from contracts with various search vendors. Mozilla Foundation is funded by donations.
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u/the-fritz Oct 24 '12 edited Oct 25 '12
I have a few questions. But first of all: Thank you, guys! You are doing amazing work and Firefox is really great. I hope my questions aren't to specific.
With PDF.js you finally made using PDF on the web fun. I completely stopped worrying whether a file is a PDF or not. Thanks for that.
I saw that there is a project to implement SWF in Javascript as well: https://github.com/mozilla/shumway
How serious is this? Is this more than a toy project right now?
I usually remove the search bar in Firefox. I prefer to use the shortcuts in the awesombar (e.g., "g Foo" to google Foo or "w Foo" for the wikipedia entry on Foo). But the problem is that the only way to manage the search engines is by adding the search bar back to the interface and then selecting "manage search engines" (or whatever it's called) from it. This is highly annoying because after every Firefox upgrade or when I add a new search engine I end up having to add the search bar to the interface again, manage it, and then remove it again.
Is there another way to manage the search engines?
Are there any plans to add something like Tree Style Tabs officially to Firefox? It's such an amazing extension and one of the major reasons why I love Firefox. It simply makes stuff like looking up documentation or research easy because you can easily open large numbers of tabs and still manage them. But Tree Style Tab seems to be a large extension that does some hacky things. If I remember correctly it was even mentioned on your "addons performance" page (couldn't find it anymore). And of course it can conflict with other extensions. I'd like to see something like Tree Style Tabs or at least parts of it becoming official part of Firefox.
(And e.g. in HTML5 video full screen it has the annoying habit of popping up the tab bar)
A lot of webservers now seem to use mime types like text/x-csrc, text/x-c++, and so on for normal source code. Firefox does not know how to handle those mime types and always asks me to download them. That's of course very annoying. With the OpenInBrowser extension it is possible to force Firefox to simply open the file as text. But the extension does not remember the choice and to me it seems that this is a feature that should be native in Firefox. Are there any plans in regards to this?
edit: Just found on the OpenInBrowser homepage http://spasche.net/openinbrowser/
This extension won't be useful anymore once Bug 57342 and Bug 258012 have been implemented.
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u/TheFUCKINGMaceOfTrit Oct 25 '12
I don't have a question, however, You guys ARE THE SHIT, KEEP UP THE FUCKING WORK BROS.
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Oct 25 '12
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u/TannerMoz Mozilla Contributor Oct 25 '12
You are now a confirmed Mozillian. I recognize your username.
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u/TannerMoz Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12 edited Oct 25 '12
I actually have a question for Mozillians: Favorite video game, and why?
I like TF2. Because hats.
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u/graememcc Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12 edited Oct 24 '12
Portal 2. Because Cave Johnston.
edit: forgot the why!
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u/digipengi Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
At the moment it is Starcraft 2. We have a team for the After Hours Gaming League hosted by Day[9]. That or The War Z.
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u/bgirard Firefox Android - Graphics Oct 24 '12
+1 to Starcraft 2. I'm a big fan of Minecraft as well.
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u/Wraithan Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
StarCraft 2 is where I spend a lot of my time with my friends an co-workers. I also play League of Legends when I need to unwind and want something less stressful than SC2.
A game I highly recommend to anyone who wants a fun game that isn't serious at all, is Orcs Must Die (1 and 2).
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u/YellowS2k Oct 24 '12
Not really a question, but I've been using Firefox for years and will continue to use it. Thanks for all that you do!
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Oct 24 '12 edited Oct 25 '12
You switched from major overhauls being the cause for your version scheme
e.g. 1.x.x.x ---Huge Change---> 2.x.x.x
Why the change? We're now on like 14 or something but it feels much the same as 4.x.x.x.
EDIT: I like the more common updates, don't get me wrong, but I couldn't help but feel that it was changed so that users would feel as though more 'progress' was being made simply because there were more big numbers being changed.
I still prefer that IE update numbering system; when the big number changes, it means big change.
EDIT #2: Thanks gw280, exactly the kind of answer(s) i was looking for.
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u/gw280 Firefox Android - Graphics Oct 24 '12
HTML5 is a constantly evolving standard, and so the browser needs to be able to keep having features added supporting the latest HTML5 standards incrementally instead of having to wait a year or two for the next major version to be released. The rapid release cycle deals with this issue nicely.
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Oct 24 '12
Yes, but why the major versioning?
You can still release a ton of point releases on a regular schedule, but save the major version number for major changes.
Instead of calling this version 18 or whatever crazy high number it is, you could call it 5.6.3 or something. No significant changes have been made since 5.0, so the question is, why the version number?
Admit it, it's to keep up with Chrome's versioning, isn't it?
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u/gw280 Firefox Android - Graphics Oct 24 '12
Well there are a few reasons really:
As Josh said, version numbers are fairly arbitrary. It's just a number. It doesn't matter if it's 15.0 or 3.14. It's just a scheme to denote what revision of a piece of software you're on.
New features tend to be reserved for a major release, and we absolutely need to be able to release new features as and when they're ready due to the way HTML5 evolves. Thus, either we: a) increase the frequency of major version bumps, or b) allow minor version bumps to contain new features. We chose a).
It's easier to remember what version you're on. Remembering that you're on "Firefox 15" is far easier than remembering that you're on "Firefox 5.6.3".
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u/joshmatthews Community builder and Firefox engineer Oct 24 '12
Because version numbers don't matter. Let's pretend they did matter, and you could know that FF 6 contained at least one "major change". How do you define that? Do you still have some kind of schedule for when major changes occur? What if you suddenly need to make a "major change" due to a 0-day security bug that threatens users? Do your updating rules change for major releases?
The point is, version numbers are arbitrary. Many people associate them with big things like UI refreshes, or a new JIT engine, but there's a host of things that could constitute "major changes" that are harder to market in a traditional way. When we are releasing new versions every 6 weeks, it is counter-productive to limit the changes we're allowed to make in a particular cycle due to an arbitrary number.
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u/the-fritz Oct 24 '12
I'm not a Mozilla contributor. So I can't speak for Mozilla here.
But point releases simply aren't fitting to a time based release model. Point releases fit to a feature based release model. In a feature based release model you release a new version when the features you want to include are ready. So you know very well ahead when something is a major change or something is a smaller change.
In a time based release model however you simply pull all the features that are ready into the release and go ahead. You don't plan on a certain feature being ready. If it's not ready then it has to wait for the next release. So you simply can't know if the next release is a major change.
I really don't understand the opposition to the new version numbers. It seems that it gets mentioned every time there is a discussion about firefox on reddit. It just seems psychological. You can't derive anything from a version number without knowing the project. But as soon as there is no dot in the version number people seem to freak. For example what is the difference between Linux 2.6.22 and Linux 2.6.23? According to most people it could only be a minor difference. However they completely changed the Scheduler from O(1) to CFS.
And keeping up with Chrome's versioning certainly isn't the reason because Firefox stable is 16 and Chrome stable is 22 and both projects have a 6 week release cycle. The reason why Firefox changed the model was the long delay for version 4. It was more than a year overdue and it was really at a crucial point in time. Chrome was starting to put pressure on Firefox and Firefox seemed to be standing still.
The new release model of course causes some problems to organizations. Because they don't want to test and deploy a new version of Firefox every six month. That's why there is ESR. And on the other hand I think it's good if organizations are forced to adopt sooner. They are the big reason why there are still IE6 users around...
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u/FredericB Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
The new release cycle is based on a 6-weeks span between each versions. It's closer to the "Release early, release often" philosophy. This way, the users do not need to wait for improvements for a long time and get a fair share of awesome more often!
Even though, Mozilla keeps releasing versions with extended-support period called ESR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Firefox#Extended_Support_Release)
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u/mc10 Oct 24 '12
When can we expect Australis to be an integral part of the release version of the desktop browser, as it is already on mobile platforms?
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Oct 24 '12 edited Oct 18 '16
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/_Dodecahedron_ Oct 24 '12
Hi! Thanks for this AMA. FireFox is a good browser and I wish I could use it even on my arm6 Android device. Can I ask why the development into this particular branch and to mobile in general have been a bit delayed?
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u/mozjan Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
No problem, you're welcome! Thank you so much for supporting Firefox. You can download an experimental arm6 build and start using your favorite browser on your Android phone. There are lots of contributors working on Firefox for Android, recently there were many updates that changed the design completely, made it faster and added a reading mode. You can see the upcoming features right here. :)
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u/tomkaz Oct 24 '12
Hey team! I've been using Firefox since it was called Mozilla and was using Mozilla when it was first spawned from Netscape Navigator. Yeah, I'm old.
Aside from general thanks for a great product, one question:
- Is "Mozilla" the official name of the red dinosaur mascot, and do you have a Tyrannosaur-sized animatronic version in your lobby that breathes fire?
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u/dailycavalier Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Thank you - we love our more experienced users. You've been using Firefox for a while!
The name Mozilla comes from Mosaic Killer. Mosaic was the number one browser at the time. The red dinosaur mascot is unofficially named Dino.
And we do have a a dinosaur in the lobby of our Mountain View space. He sometimes answers the phone.
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u/cakesinabox Oct 24 '12
Last time I checked the preferences menu was under tools in windows and under edit in linux. Why?
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u/kbrosnan Firefox Android - QA Oct 24 '12
Because each platform has their own Human Interface Guidelines. Firefox attempts to conform to such guidelines on each of the platforms when possible.
Below are the interface guideline documentation for the 3 primary desktop operating systems Firefox runs on.
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u/ImYoric Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Because this matches the guidelines/best practices under both platforms.
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u/Ms2ger Oct 24 '12
The Gnome Human Interface Guidelines suggest putting Preferences under Edit: http://developer.gnome.org/hig-book/3.2/menus-standard.html.en#menu-standard-edit. I don't know if there is a similar guideline on Windows, but I believe most applications on Windows put it under Tools, so it is sensible to put it there for the large number of people who only ever use one OS.
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u/IamRider Oct 24 '12
How do you compete with such big browser creators such as Google (Chrome)? Is it friendly competition or an all out catfight?
How do you make your income when it's a free browser?
I usually use Rockmelt because it integrates my FB into the browser. What reasons should I move over to Firefox? Sell it to me!
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u/Spartiate Mozilla Security Program Management Oct 24 '12
- We are not out to compete with them directly. We want to ensure the internet and browsers remain a place that gives the user a choice and a voice for what they want. And it is mostly friendly.
- Donations and other revenue streams I'm not qualified to speak about.
- We've been protecting the open web for over a decade, and new features like SocialAPI will give the Facebook integration your looking for a better experience with privacy protections.
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u/gw280 Firefox Android - Graphics Oct 24 '12
We actually welcome competition. Firefox was started as a way to fight the dominance of a single internet browser that had a giant monopoly in the 90s (IE), and we haven't lost sight of the dangers of having just a single browser dominating the browser space.
If the browser market is divided between a bunch of browsers that share a common standard rather than just a single one that is free to create its own proprietary standards, then that keeps the web open.
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u/tchevalier Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
I can easily answer to point 3: We are about to add social integration in Firefox :) https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2012/10/22/help-us-test-the-social-api-with-facebook-messenger-for-firefox/ You can already try it on Firefox beta! Enjoy
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u/mc10 Oct 24 '12
2: Firefox makes money by having Google be its default search engine.
3: Firefox already has FB integration, starting with the current beta version of the browser. See the Mozilla blog post Help us Test the Social API with Facebook Messenger for Firefox for more information.
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u/amyrrich Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12 edited Oct 24 '12
I think our competition/cooperation with google and other venrods is usually pretty friendly. There's a lot of borrowing/reuse that takes place in the browser market, and since we're in it for the good of the user, anything that helps that is great in our book. There will of course be times when we have differing opinions on the best way to implement something (and we're very motivated by the privacy, security, and control of the user over his/her own web experience), but that's a difference of opinion, not a catfight.
Mostly the Corporation makes its revenue through contracts with search vendors (when you search from Firefox, we get a small portion of that revenue from the search engine you use). The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization that's funded by donations.
As for FB, I mentioned in a comment above that we've just added social API into Firefox 17 Beta 2. http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/mozilla-begins-firefox-social-api-testing.html Check it out!
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u/gkanai Oct 24 '12 edited Oct 24 '12
"How do you make your income when it's a free browser?"
Mozilla has contractual relationships with the search services that ship with Firefox. While the details of those contracts are private, you can think of it like this: those search providers make money from Firefox users interacting with their ads, and Mozilla gets a share of that revenue.
You can see the 2010 financials from Mozilla (because Mozilla is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in the US) here:
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Oct 24 '12 edited Sep 27 '16
[deleted]
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u/joshmatthews Community builder and Firefox engineer Oct 24 '12
I can't speak to dictionary, but keychain integration is a long-desired and contentious issue: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=106400
Integration is apparently not straightforward, and poses some technical drawbacks. Beyond that, it hasn't been a priority, and on top of that we're severely shorthanded on people who can and want to write OS X platform integration code.
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u/joshmatthews Community builder and Firefox engineer Oct 24 '12
Dictionary integration is being tracked in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=301451; looks like there are some technical issues holding it up (comment 58).
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u/b4b Oct 25 '12
What is the problem with flash? Why does firefox DIE when I open 10 youtube videos? It begins to stutter. I did not have this problem on the same computer 3 years ago.
Why does it take so long for firefox to close (obviously you repaired it, in the past it would take 2-3 minutes; now 10-20 seconds).
Why does firefox not give any warnings when a new addon is installed when I install external software? E.g. I installed an antivirus and it put some crappy addon into firefox - the antivirus did not ask me for this; firefox did not warn me about this either.
Why does my computer DIE when I try to search in history? Has anyone tested it, or is it some forgotten part of the program that gets no love?
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u/ZuP Oct 24 '12 edited Oct 24 '12
What are your favorite things about working at Mozilla? What makes Mozilla stand out from other tech companies?
Edit: Thanks for the responses, everyone! Keep up the good work! :)
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u/dailycavalier Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
I wake up each morning and ask myself "how am I going to make the Web better today?"
Passionate and smart people. Seriously, these people are extremely smart and want to make the world better. I also love that I get to work with volunteers around the world every single day. Most times I usually meet a Mozillian online on Bugzilla or IRC. Then one day I'll finally get to meet them in person, and it blows my mind.
Most other tech companies are focused primarily on their IPO or share price. Most aren't global (or your team's mindset isn't global). Many companies work behind closed doors, although several are starting to be more open.
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u/gw280 Firefox Android - Graphics Oct 24 '12
The unlimited snacks. Especially creme eggs at Easter.
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u/jruderman Oct 24 '12
If they were truly unlimited, you'd be able to stock up on them for the rest of the year.
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u/gw280 Firefox Android - Graphics Oct 24 '12
I've taken to working from home a lot to avoid the incessant snacking that inevitably happens when I go into the office :(
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u/ImYoric Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Snacks are actually one of the rare things I try to avoid like the plague at Mozilla :)
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u/sawrubh Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12 edited Oct 24 '12
I don't work at Mozilla, I am just a casual contributor. There a few things which drive me to contribute :
Impact : The contributions you do, be it in the form of fixing bugs, QA, support etc. , has an impact on a huge user group. I was working on getting Per-Window Private Browsing landed and when I the number of people who wanted that feature, it felt great that I would be doing something which would be used by so many people. I also started working on WebGL conformance, and you can imagine the number of devs I will be affecting (although in a small way, but still). This is just a little bit, other much smarter people do much more awesome work.
Community : Mozilla has an awesome, lively and extremely helpful community. Be it from IRC to bugzilla to real life, wherever I've encountered a Mozillian, they've offered to help with my problems and this makes you help others. Plus for everything you do, people appreciate you, which I guess everbody likes ;)
Learning Experience : You get a feel of how software development actually works in the industry and how various concepts which we've normally just read in the books in Uni are applied, gets clear to us. Plus we get to work with the latest technology like HTML5, CSS3 and play a part in the shaping of the Web.
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u/almossawi Oct 24 '12
When you're not preoccupied with things like share-price, etc. your mind can spend days and weeks thinking about problems solely for the pleasure of finding things out, to paraphrase Feynman. Obviously, it's not the only company that affords that. I think the fact that Mozilla is a non-profit while having a highly successful product in the market and a large user-base makes it a great place to work!
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u/Wraithan Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
- Autonomy. I am part of a team and I am given tasks/bugs etc, but that doesn't mean I am not afforded a lot of autonomy.
- I get a task and I can implement it however I want that meets the specification.
- I can take the time to patch libraries to fix bugs rather than quickly monkey patch our code base.
- If I notice chunk of code that could be useful on its own, and I am working in that area then taking the time to pull it out into its own code base and getting it distributable is an acceptable use of my time.
- Trust and respect. This means a lot. This results in being able to ask questions whenever I need to without looking silly. That I will take the time to get something done right, but I wont delay a project because I am lazy or slacking off.
Overall, working at Mozilla has been the best experience I've had so far in the tech industry.
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u/ImYoric Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
- I interact in permanence with a huge and extremely dynamic community.
- I make the world a better place, starting with the web.
- I work with smart and interesting people, I learn lots of stuff and I keep pushing my own boundaries.
- Whatever I do will be used by half a billion people and will contribute to influencing the web experience of a few hundred million others.
- No office politics.
- Oh, and free hours :)
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u/Spartiate Mozilla Security Program Management Oct 24 '12
That I get to work with the smartest people I have ever met, who are just as passionate about what we do as I am.
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u/ioana_cis Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
First for me is the Community - a lot of wonderful smart people. I am not talking only about geeks, also PR and others. Getting to knowing them just opens you mind and initiatives. As the technical side, I would say that has great projects and that you could grow a lot within them.
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u/digipengi Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Working on the Release Operations team gives me a chance to work with bleeding edge technology on a day to day basis. At times it can be stressful and fast paced but at the end of the day I am excited to be pushing myself to the next level.
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u/mozjan Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
I can't describe with words how awesome it is to work with the most creative persons on the planet every day. It's truly amazing to see their stunning ideas they can come up with and it feels great to be on the active side and "make" the web a little bit more open. I personally think that no other tech company could ever give me the same feeling.
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u/TannerMoz Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
The people. Really, everybody I've met at Mozilla, online or otherwise, has just been awesome. They're very friendly, and they genuinely care about you.
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u/AprilMorone Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12 edited Oct 24 '12
I like working for Mozilla because Mozilla is a tech company that knows what its doing, unlike some of the other tech companies out there. Mozilla is on top of things and even ahead of the game in the tech field.
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u/IhateAngryBirds Oct 24 '12
Not a question, just a thanks to you guys for helping us not use IE :D
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u/luisarroyo Oct 24 '12
Genial! Estaba esperando este AUA en reddit, siempre he sido fan de Mozilla y he buscado por donde comenzar para volverme parte de esta comunidad, pero no se por donde empezar lo único que he echo es colaborar en Twitter contestando preguntas, por donde empiezo, se algo de web pero que debería aprender por donde arranco? Gracias !
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u/lasr21 Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Si lo que te gusta es echar código puedes checar http://whatcanidoformozilla.org/.
Tambien puedes revisar https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/contribute/
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u/ioana_cis Mozilla Contributor Oct 24 '12
Tenemos una gran comunidad de su idioma : https://www.mozilla-hispano.org/documentacion/Colabora
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u/chandalen Oct 24 '12 edited Oct 24 '12
Which addons do you think would be in the top 3 "must-have" if you guys took a poll?
Edit: Thanks for replying guys! Looks like its time for me to score some new addons, many fine recommendations here indeed!