10/25/2003 02:27:00 PM - OSX Browser Wars
Tired of being a Firebird dev and not having a usable version for OSX, Ben has released FB 0.7.1 (except none of the 0.7.1 bugs are closed). Camino has had a big rewriting of its bookmarks code. OSX 10.3 will include a version of Safari "with [a] pop-up blocker and its Google search box right in the toolbar." To me it sounds like there will be three great OSX webbrowsers that support standards. There's probably an Opera for OSX, so make that 4. Of course Safari will be the one most people use because it comes with OSX. And why shouldn't they? I would probably prefer Firebird because it is cross-platform and so it would be familiar, but up until recently FB on OSX was awful.
This won't be the first time that a Firebird release will be for OSX only. The Firebird Roadmap has finally been updated and targets 1.0 for mid-2004. Unfortunately, the Mozilla project roadmap is still out-of-date. Things I hope to see on the "big map" include seperation of GRE (thus apps can share it), the bugzilla reorg, and switch from Seamonkey to Firebird/Thunderbird.
Let's take a look at what is currently targetted for 0.8, December 2003. (Just a few highlights)
- Pinstripe theme for FB OSX (if ya can't beat em, join em)
- Built-in Help (firebirdhelp.mozdev.org)
- Work Offline (yes, this one is still around)
- Make "Set Default Browser" not suck (ie. stop taking my image associations dammit.)
- Better seperation of Toolkit (this is the one that broke lots of themes in 0.6.1+.)
- Remove JS Console (but make it installable via extension)
- Official Windows Installers (unofficial win32 installers)
- Default extension bundles (Developer pack and Browsing Enhancements)
- Uninstalling Extensions/Plugins
