Firefox 2.0 Alpha 1 is going to be released on Friday. Looking at the feature list for the release, you can see that the browser is basically finished. The biggest feature seems to be more robust RSS support, all of the other features are usability improvements. I’ve had the sense that Firefox was basically finished since version 1.0 was released, and I’m glad to see that the team is still pushing through incremental improvements, unlike a certain other browser that dominates the market and is about to see its first major update in about fifty Web years.
Update: Ben Goodger published a history of Firefox. If you ever wondered where some of the truly hideous early Mozilla themes came from, this article provides the answers.
February 7, 2006 at 11:30 am
It’s never finished. Being ‘feature complete’ is great and that’s the ‘width’ of the project. Width in that adding features appeals to a wider user base.
Now they can add ‘depth’. That’s the work to make the lives of current user’s better. Maybe a new feature here or there but depth usually consists of invisible things like performance, scalability, etc.
Adding depth is not sexy, and in the OSS world it usually means less contibutors and slower progress.
Let’s hope not.
Cheers,
Geoff