Hey

[DQuinn79]

Hey everybody - I am a new user of FireFox - just got it about 30 minutes. Having fun with it now. Loves the tabbed pages thing. Also love being able to choose a theme.

Anyway - great product so far.

[peter.reisio]

allo

(YES ANOTHER SOUL IS OURS MUAHAHAHAH)

[Virtuose TK]

welcome and enjoy firefox...

[DQuinn79]

I would enjoy it however, my status bar is now about an inch thick...I don't understand why? Anybody else know?

[mick_dundee]

I much prefer the suite. Firefox just seems so... empty!

[raiph]

Many people have similar views to mick_dundee's. Here's the current FANS "neutral point of view" on the topic in the subject line.

<FANS meme="Suite Firefox resources" style=NPOV lastedit=25/06/2004>

Mozilla 1.x (the Suite) has a rich feature set and tight application integration. As of summer 2004, the Suite can still do things that Firefox, Thunderbird, et al merely dream of. Otoh, it cuts both ways: Firefox and Thunderbird can go places and do things that the Suite can't, and many people prefer products that aren't Suites, and prefer applications to be simple.

Fortunately, we have both -- Mozilla 1.x AND Firefox, Thunderbird, et al. So, everyone's happy right?

Well, no. Unfortunately, having both has meant a switch of development and marketing focus away from the suite and onto Firefox et al. Which leaves the question, was that the right thing to do?

Despite many suite user complaints, and a decision process that many object(ed) to, the core developers clearly thought so. The core team switched focus around xmas 2002. They had concluded that they should try to appeal to users at both rich/suite and simple/non-integrated ends of the spectrum, and that the approach of developing and bundling mods that converted the suite to become Phoenix (Firefox) et al would be significantly weaker technologically and marketing-wise than developing and bundling extras that a user could install that converted Firefox (nee Phoenix) and its sibling products into a rich suite. So they plunged ahead with a new roadmap to go that way.

Were the developers right? Their approach has meant that the suite has languished while they put their energies into bringing Firefox to production parity with the suite. They have claimed that, after Firefox goes 1.0, extensions will emerge that convert Firefox and its siblings into a rich/integrated suite as good as or better than the suite is today (and was 2 years ago). Is that going to turn out to be right? We shall all see...

</FANS>

Personally I support the developers in making development decisions. I like to think this is because I support those who have to do things making the decisions about how to do it. (This is especially true in an open source or any other voluntary effort.) Otoh, it might be that, because I've been a developer (as well as a marketer), I can't help but see the enormous technical merits of going the way they've gone.