2006-02-11, 08:20 PM
Racing Towards 2
It's going to be an exciting year. Not since the run up to Firefox 1.0 have I been so excited about the content of a release. Firefox 2 is going to be great.
I've updated the Firefox 2 Roadmap Page on mozilla.org with some more detail about how we're going to get there, based on Chris Beard's blog about Mozilla Product Strategy. I'll summarize briefly here, and call out some of the important work that's getting done right now.
Firstly, Firefox 2 is based off the same Gecko branch that shipped Firefox 1.5, so they should be compatible from a web developer's point of view. APIs might be added, but none should be changed.
From a development point of view, the idea of Firefox 2 is to deliver significant user experience enhancements on top of a relatively stable rendering engine as significant retooling is done on the main development trunk for what will become Firefox 3, and deliver them in a timely fashion. By being deliberately cautious with our goals for the rendering engine, we hope to avoid long cycles of shake and bake that delayed Firefox 1.5 (which had more substantial Gecko changes than user interface changes).
Key Engineering Objective: Deliver an enhanced product mid-year 2006.
In order to ship a Firefox 2 around the middle of the year, we must be solidly feature complete by the end of Q1.
So, without further ado, some of the most important features from the planning brainstorming page:
New Bookmarks and History
Improve the browser's Bookmarks and History systems to improve their effectiveness as renavigation aids while at the same time improving the back end for speed and extensibility.
Tabbed Browsing Enhancements
Make tabs behave more like windows in the operating system environment, making them behave more as users would expect.
Improved Basic Content Type Handling
For things like RSS/Atom feeds, mail links etc. Improve discovery and handling user interfaces.
Web Search
Improve the discoverability and adaptability of the search UI within Firefox.
Bug Fixing
Bug fixing at all levels where risk is low and yield high, e.g. the blank tab download bug, platform stability, etc.
Some additional things we would like to look at in the Firefox 2 timeframe include:
Visual Uplift
A freshen of the visual design of Firefox while maintaining high levels of system integration.
Inline Spell Check
The rise of applications like web mail, blogging etc highlight the weaknesses of HTML's textarea widget. We should at the very least offer people the ability to spell check their submissions.
Exit Survey
We'd like to know why people leave Firefox. A survey on uninstall would help us find ways to make the software better in future versions.
UI Consolidation and Simplification
Consolidate and simplify user interface in the browser window tying together features in meaningful ways where possible.
It's going to be an exciting year. Not since the run up to Firefox 1.0 have I been so excited about the content of a release. Firefox 2 is going to be great.
I've updated the Firefox 2 Roadmap Page on mozilla.org with some more detail about how we're going to get there, based on Chris Beard's blog about Mozilla Product Strategy. I'll summarize briefly here, and call out some of the important work that's getting done right now.
Firstly, Firefox 2 is based off the same Gecko branch that shipped Firefox 1.5, so they should be compatible from a web developer's point of view. APIs might be added, but none should be changed.
From a development point of view, the idea of Firefox 2 is to deliver significant user experience enhancements on top of a relatively stable rendering engine as significant retooling is done on the main development trunk for what will become Firefox 3, and deliver them in a timely fashion. By being deliberately cautious with our goals for the rendering engine, we hope to avoid long cycles of shake and bake that delayed Firefox 1.5 (which had more substantial Gecko changes than user interface changes).
Key Engineering Objective: Deliver an enhanced product mid-year 2006.
In order to ship a Firefox 2 around the middle of the year, we must be solidly feature complete by the end of Q1.
So, without further ado, some of the most important features from the planning brainstorming page:
New Bookmarks and History
Improve the browser's Bookmarks and History systems to improve their effectiveness as renavigation aids while at the same time improving the back end for speed and extensibility.
Tabbed Browsing Enhancements
Make tabs behave more like windows in the operating system environment, making them behave more as users would expect.
Improved Basic Content Type Handling
For things like RSS/Atom feeds, mail links etc. Improve discovery and handling user interfaces.
Web Search
Improve the discoverability and adaptability of the search UI within Firefox.
Bug Fixing
Bug fixing at all levels where risk is low and yield high, e.g. the blank tab download bug, platform stability, etc.
Some additional things we would like to look at in the Firefox 2 timeframe include:
Visual Uplift
A freshen of the visual design of Firefox while maintaining high levels of system integration.
Inline Spell Check
The rise of applications like web mail, blogging etc highlight the weaknesses of HTML's textarea widget. We should at the very least offer people the ability to spell check their submissions.
Exit Survey
We'd like to know why people leave Firefox. A survey on uninstall would help us find ways to make the software better in future versions.
UI Consolidation and Simplification
Consolidate and simplify user interface in the browser window tying together features in meaningful ways where possible.
