I attended Mozilla DevDay yesterday here in Bangalore.So thought of sharing my experience with you guys.This post does not gives you detail happening of the day's activities...it will be coming soon..If you want know what it was all about check here.
Firstly I have to confess that I am not an ideal Firefox fan. I switched to Google Chrome when it arrived in Linux few months ago and very happy with that. But attending the yesterday's conference changed my view about whole FireFox community and why Firefox is not yet another browser in world. By the way , i am posting this post from Chrome itself :)
Firefox vision of Web as a platform
If you are following the news very closely , your may be heard that word “Cloud computing”. Its says you can do every thing in the browser.Companies like Google,FireFox say that Web is not just document host, but its next generation application platform.But both companies differ in their visions.
Google's vision is very enterprise centric.Its all about blazing fast web applications, fast web browsers and fast Internet connections. But FireFox vision is very user centric. They are more interested to help user to deal with web with little annoyance and with greater security and privacy.
One of the very interesting project in this path is,
Account Manager– A protocol and add-on which enables the user to log-in to any site with very secure manner and that to right from the Browser window. A great step towards avoiding fishing.
It also should be noted though this feature now in the FireFox, it can be easily implemented any other browsers since its open, which means Firefox does not want tie the user to a single browser as other browsers.
Firefox vision of Open Web.
“Web is very healthy and open today....But is it will be same after 100 years?” ,its the question asked by one of the Mozilla Developer.We are all enjoying a nice open web.But recent developments are becoming threat to open web. FireFox wants to our next generation to enjoy the open web which not governed by any corporation or government. Open web means open formats, open source and open standards. One of the most controversial dissuasion in open web is the open format for video codec in HTML5 . Its nice to see FireFox is committed to the open source,royalty free implementation codecs like Ogg thoera.Firefox believes that Web should be available as it to anyone which any control over
Firefox -”Browser for human beings”
Community is what makes FireFox very special. Many millions of users are participating in shaping the Firefox and Mozilla as a whole. It is the key part that is missing in other browsers. Thought Google Chrome is also an open source browser, i never heard or seen a guy saying i am chrome guy , but you can see millions of FireFox guys outside. So FireFox gives a human touch to the browser.
Firefox.next
DevDay gave me a chance to see the what will be available in FireFox 4.0.Not too surprisingly many nice features of Google Chrome will be coming to the FireFox like tabs on top of URL bar, single reload,stop,go button etc.But thankfully FireFox not trying to yet another Chrome. They are also trying many great user interface ideas like Home Tab,Account Manager etc which are unique to Firefox.It also nice to see that many great developer tools like Ruler will find their place in next Firefox version.
Firefox was the first browser to break the IE monopoly over web. It showed how much innovation can be done in browser space. I hope that they continue their good work and make the web a great world to be in.
Next post will be on some of very interesting projects by Firefox that are showcased on DevDay .They are targeted towards the young ,new web developers. So if you are interested stay tuned......
