One of the taglines currently being used by the Mozilla Firefox project is “Web Browsing Redefined.” Today I stumbled onto a Firefox extension which redefines CSS development. Editcss allows you to edit the CSS for a web page in real time, and see the results rendered in real time. It’s a simple concept, but an absolutely amazing experience to use it for the first time. I can’t wait until my next redesign or side project to really put this thing through its paces.
The editing pane shows up in the sidebar, the same place the history window appears. This turns out to be a good orientation, since most CSS files are long lists of short rules. The extension combines mulitple CSS files in the order they are processed, commenting each section with its origin (embedded, link, include). After editing is complete, you can save the final CSS to a file.
The latest release (0.8) of Mozilla Firebird is now available, but it isn’t Mozilla Firebird. The browser has be (re-) re-named Mozilla Firefox. This change comes hot on the heels of the last renaming, from Phoenix to Firebird, and leaves the associated mail client project, Thunderbird, without a good reason for being named for a cheap brand of wine.
The name change (redux) is not without reason, as explained briefly by the Firefox Brand name FAQ and at more length by Mozilla Firebirdfox lead engineer Ben Goodger. The short version: the first renaming was due to trademark issues around the name Phoenix; the second renaming was due to a name collision with another open source project that may not have been a trademark issue. I won’t go into an IP rant, others do a better job. I will say that while this was probably the right thing to do, and the time it took was unavoidable (read Ben’s account above), its unfortunate that all of the name recognition already built by Firebird has to be tossed.
Along with the new release comes a new focus on marketing, beginning with a Button Campain. Snide remarks about how well web-word-of-mouth worked for Howard Dean aside, I think it’s a good idea to get a unified branding effort out in front of the public. I am a little perturbed about this text from the bottom of the buttons page:
Mozilla Firefox™ and the Firefox logo are trademarks of The Mozilla Foundation. The Firefox logo is not licensed under MPL and may not be used without the prior consent of The Mozilla Foundation.
Does this mean I cannot create my own badge, or modify existing badges? I might consider using the little one, but the colors do not fit my layout (I use white text on a gray background). It looks like I don’t have the right to make a new button, only to use those provided. Update – see end of post
Lastly, if you look over the provided buttons, you’ll see a confusion of message: there are three different taglines/slogans. These are:
- The browser, reloaded
- Web browsing, redefined
- Take back the web
I think the project should select one and can the others. The last thing this project needs is another identity crisis. It’s time to send a single, unified message.
Update: Ben was kind enough to leave a comment. He said that the marketing message is still being refined, which is great. Even better, he provided clarification on the use of Firefox iconography. In a nutshell, the logo can only be used in conjunction with the official Mozilla.org project (as opposed to 3rd party custom builds, etc.) This means that I can create a variation of a Firefox button, as long as it is used to reference the Mozilla Firefox project. When you put it that way, it makes plenty of sense. I’ll try to get a color-adapted version up on the site tonight or tommorow.
If you use Firebird, and if you browse with tabs, you probably already know that you can drag tabs around the tab bar to resort them. But you can also drag a tab from one Firebird window to another, moving the page in that tab from one window to the other. If the tab was the last one in the window, the window will close. This is great for consolodating windows opened by other programs (like an aggregator or mail client) into a single window.
As much as I like Mozilla Firebird, I’ve been using it much less on my Mac than Safari. This is because Firebird doesn’t work when used as the default browser under OS X, when displaying an URL launched from another program. Since I launch many urls from places like NetNewsWire, that has meant alot of browsing without Firebird. Just today, as I caught up on over 350 headlines in NetNewsWire, I considered whether it was time to abandon Firebird on the Mac.
And then I saw this:
New! Mozilla Firebird 0.7.1 for MacOS X contains a number of important enhancements that improve usability on MacOS X. All users of Mozilla Firebird on MacOS X are strongly encouraged to upgrade immediately. ( Mozilla.org’s Firebird Product Page )
It’s fixed. And it loads faster. It’s my default browser once more. Read the Release Notes (includes download link).
Been doing some reading on XUL, The XML User interface Language used in Mozilla products like Firebird. Very cool stuff. Unfortunately, I’ve had some problems getting some of the samples/tutorials I’ve found to work under Firebird. It seems like some things have changed since Mozilla 1.0, and I haven’t found any good references on the differences. I’m going to continue tinkering and see if I can get it worked out.
Also, the excellent Venkman debugger from Mozilla Navigator is available as a Firebird plugin.
Some random observations on Mozilla Firebird v0.6.1, for Mac OS X and Windows:
- Warning: In the Mac version, holding CMD while clicking a tab closes the tab. Even if you’re working on a post via wikieditish in that tab. Even if you have alot of time invested in said post. You’ve been warned.
- Finally got the Windows version to work on my work pc (Win2k). As noted previously, my clean install was crashing on startup. Consistantly. Even after some fairly thorough cleaning of old Mozilla install bits. Turns out it was crashing while trying to import IE favorites, and the IE Favorites tree has circular shortcuts. The solution is to move all Favs to another location (or delete them if you are feeling pyromaniacal towards your bridges), then start up Firebird. Once the import succeeds, it won’t try again, and you can restore your IE Favs if you kept them.
- On the Mac, closing all browser windows has a curious effect. The menu bar reverts to Mozilla layout, including acces to the full Mozilla Preferences dialog and various debugging options. No parallel found yet in the Windows version.
- The magic url about:config lets you edit many settings right in the browser window (but doesn’t work as a link in a page).
- Scroll bars are not yet ready for prime time, at least in relation to themes. I’m currently using the theme Pinball, which does not appear to come with scroll bars. Instead, it depends on the default scroll bar implementation ( I think ). On my Windows install, switching to Pinball from another theme initially leaves the prior scrollers in place, but they break (i.e., look funky) when you scroll. A fresh restart of the app fixes the problem (assuming the theme is picked prior to restart). On the Mac, this theme never has working scrollers. This could be a bug in the theme’s chrome/rdf/other-mozilla-voodoo, but I’d hope the fallback behavior would, um, work.
- Pop-up blockage belongs in the browser. Period. +1 for the good guys.
- There’s a nifty extension available named StyleSelector that lets you choose alternate CSS stylesheets (or turn off all styles) right from the status bar. It needs an option to disable userStyle.css (the user stylesheet, see above) for those times when you think your ad-blocker may have whacked a non-ad.
- To run Preference Manager in the Windows version, run
MozillaFirebird.exe -p (as stated all over the Mozilla Site). This doesn’t work in the OS X version. Instead, use the trick from above in the list – close all Firebird windows. One of the menus revealed in the Menu bar will include the option to ‘switch profiles’. The resulting dialog provides access to the Preference Manager.
- My Mac version won’t launch links from other apps… even after making a new profile, which is supposed to cure many ills. If I try (for example, clicking a link in Mail.app or NetNewsWire Lite) I get the cryptic error “Error launching browser window:no XBL binding for browser”. Update: This seems to be fixed as of version 0.7.1, more info here.
Conclusion: Firebird, thoroughly unpolished at version 0.6.1, utterly rocks. It is now my default browser at work, on my (personal) Mac, and on one of my three home WinPC’s (the other two will fall as soon as I have time).
As noted previously, the administrative interface provided by my hosting service does not play nicely with Safari or IE/Mac. They suggested Mozilla Firebird. I finally decided to cave, and give it a try.
I think I like it. That’s really saying something, considering I’ve never seen a Mozilla browser I liked. From the early Netscapes onward, I’ve always thought they were ugly and slow. Mozilla 1.0 became usable, but not really comfortable. Firebird (I’m using the 0.6.1 build) feels alot different.
It’s still rough around the edges. Scratch too hard and you will see the mozilla underpinnings. In the Mac OS X version, if you close all windows, the menus all change… to what look like Mozilla menus. Even the Mozilla properties dialog, which Firebird normally replaces with a much slimmer version, returns when all the windows are closed. And when I tried to install the Windows version on my office PC (Win2K), it crashed. Repeatedly. I finally gave that up.
But this is only a 0.6x build… its supposed to be rough. It’s got some very nice features. Tabbed browsing is on par with Safari. The ‘extensions’ feature reminds me of Blosxom… There seem to be lots of extensions available already (this may be a general Mozilla feature). And of course, the CSS rendering is great.
All in all, so far so good. I might even make it my default browser. If I can ever figure out how to customize the keyboard shortcuts, I will. For some unknown reason ‘Backspace’ is only a shortcut for ‘Back’ in the Windows version. Why not make the Mac ‘Delete’ key do the same thing? Until then, I still find myself in Safari less and less.