Chris Blizzard, now working at Mozilla and Linux integration, gave a most interesting talk, about Mozilla, and their new mobile initiatives. We managed to speak (but not nearly enough) about the mobile strategy afterwards (i.e. I think limiting it to the n810 or tablet like devices alone, seems myopic; phones are where its at), and I hope the conversation continues. Now for some quick notes.
– mozilla.org, is where products create motion. Been around for just over 10 years now
– Mozilla targets human beings (not developers)
– Focus on protecting open standards
– “Creating Joy!” for users
– Avoid feature creep (this is the secret of add-ons) – control the product, and just say, go build an extension. It isn’t just about customising your experience, but its about keeping the core experience joyous and uncluttered.
– Fix real problems on the web (i.e. pop-up blocking)
– 500 contributors to Firefox 3, 75 Localization teams, 200 people, 11,000 patches, 165+ Million users, added +45 million users in the last 6 months, and doubled in the last year – these are impressive statistics (I for one, am impressed by their developer community)
– Who are we targeting? Read Seth Godin’s blog entry “Why downloading Firefox is like getting into college“. Also, Stephen O’Grady’s Blog “Ode to the Common Man“
– Bring the full web to mobile. FF3 is where great technology for mobile exists.
– Apple has reset the idea of what the Internet on a mobile should be, thanks to the iPhone. They’ve definitely opened up the market for mobile based browsers. Note, no reason to redesign your website for mobiles in the future…
– Fennec – mobile browser experience
– Performance numbers on the n810 – faster than MicroB and WebKit. Not even optimised for ARM (i.e. no atomic locking), but already at a headstart
– Fennec will support add-ons. Touch and keypad versions are coming soon… Keep in mind all this is just getting started
– Android includes WebKit as part of the base platform. Mozilla on Android? Not quite yet, since Google wants only Java based applications. No mention of native applications yet from Google.
– Not really considered Series 60 (it would be nice), no talk of PalmOS, there is some form of Windows Mobile version, but its not released
– Gecko is hard to embed, in comparison to WebKit. The technology needs to improve, so that the gap that WebKit has, doesn’t widen further
Technorati Tags: gecko, webkit, mozilla, chris blizzard, lugradio, lugradio live usa, nokia, handhelds, tablets, mobile web, firefox, community, fennec, android