Firefox supports CSS & RSS = better

But Firefox is the better browser (at least versus Safari, Konqueror Opera and IE6). Not because it's secure, or less buggy versus something else but because it's simply a better product for a variety of reasons. After years of using Opera, Mozilla, Firefox et al. when i'm forced to use IE I find myself missing features.

Very nice :)

very nice, although i think there should be one addition. articles that are top "whatever number" should count down

dude I love you

dude i dont love you

Thanks for a great post, will link up :)

I agree with most of your list, but your comment about Firefox is a little off. I think the issue is that IE is insecure because it allows Active X.

This article is on the front page of digg:
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2005-12-31-n34.html

11. Tedious top 10 lists.

What's the bug number you filed. I'll take a look at it. Can you cc: me on it? or email me, rebrongmail.com

Two things:
We're very careful about not to make claims about Firefox and we do have to market the product and we try to be matter of fact about it.

As far as security is concerned, hackers cast the widest net possible and so would go after both IE and Firefox and look for shared or similar holes. You can look at the track record of responsiveness for Firefox and IE and see which is more secure and you can ask the US Cert as well. The mozilla community works it's butt off to provide a secure product so yes we're going to say Firefox is more secure because it is. Otherwise, it's a slap in the face to the engineers and security researchers working on the project not to say anything for all their hard work.

You totally blow BALLS wheres you f-ing german Page??

Although I agree to everything in this list except for the one about Firefox, I have to say that Chris Campells comment above is really funny. In an ironic kind of way.. :)

(How about mentioning that small startup companies should let their users translate their contents (like Netvibes does)?)

A decent list. You can (should be able to) get Gmail on your mobile phone.

http://www.google.com/glm/gmail

No inline frames, I promise.

Solution to keep mobile web content the same as on a computer:

Download Opera Mini:

http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/operamini/

It works on any almost any Java enabled phone and renders webpages before they are sent to the phone. It also fits webpage content to any size screen. The official release date is early 2006, and used to only allow people in certain countries to download it. However, those restrictions are gone and anyone in the world can get it now.

Firefox "buzz" is called marketing,. and marketing is important – especially in trying to topple the IE giant.

I can add two more to the list.

11) An end to blogging
12) The death of podcasting

Both just choke up bandwidth for no good reason.

If Gmail Mobile won't install on your 6600, get the firmware flashed. Before I flashed from 4.27.0 to 5.53.0 most Java and Symbian apps wouldn't install.

Ryan, he has a 6600 so it would probably be better to run the full Opera Mobile, as it's a native Symbian app and should be faster than a Java app.

Web2.0 buzzword should die.
Its not new. When we get to 1.0 someone please tell me.

Yeah, that would be smarter...

Firefox is better BECAUSE it's not so mainstream and not being exploited. Same argument with Apple. Right now the gun isn't aimed at you. Why would you pick a target?

His webpage doesn't claim to be in German, that's what he means. Google actually has all the countries as if they build for them, but actually they have made shortcuts and have not really "localized" for them. I'm not sure about that terminology as with german and english, the same character set would work.

One thing I'dlike to see end is the use of any ISO character set except for UTF-8, so all languages would be availble and not translated or displayed strangely. Yes I'm talking to you china and Japan and usa.

"Let's complain about things on blogs, because everyone cares."

I don't agree with 7. “Let’s care about low bandwidth!”. I'm on dialup, as DSL isn't availble everywhere yet.. so I hate it when they say "Let's not care about low bandwidth!"

Or 8. “Let’s read out loud the URL on TV.”

If its a new site, it might not be spidered yet. Search engines aren't gods, even thought we might like them to be.

And I don't think that putting Firefox ads all over the page is good.. but I do think that everyone should move away from IE as fast as possible ;) I don't care wich – Opera.. Firefox.. Mozilla.. doesn't matter. As long as it isn't IE.

Josh

Haha I loved #6. It made me laugh :P

I fully agree with the former statement. We shouldn't care what broweser people use, as long as it isn't IE ...

I agree with everything (yeah, you'd better care).

Firefox doesn't need to be promoted any more. There's genuine competition among web browsers now – Microsoft is having Internet Explorer developed again; Opera is now gratis – because of Firefox.

Its work here is done and it's now Just Another Browser. Hyping Firefox excessively will only make IE6 users who try Firefox come to the conclusion that the grass isn't actually greener and go back to IE6. This would be bad.

Let's have no more "omg FireFox r00lz lol".

How about this: "Let's use excerpts instead of the full text of posts for our site feed so blog reader users have to click through to read the whole thing, instead of allowing them to read it where they wanted to read it: in Bloglines or whatever service they use."

I agree with #9. I hate that I can't type in accented letters into form fields as long as the Google toolbar extension is operational.

"I can add two more to the list.

11) An end to blogging
12) The death of podcasting

Both just choke up bandwidth for no good reason."

Ah, that tedious old canard. Unless a blogger or podcaster comes round to your house and forces you at gunpoint to subscribe to their feed, you're talking out of your arse. Podcasts only use up bandwidth if you download them – your bandwidth isn't affected by other people subscribing to them, unless they're sitting in your garden stealing your wifi. If the podcast you are listening to sucks (or the blog you are reading sucks), unsubscribe and hey presto, it uses up none of your precious bandwidth. People choose to use their bandwidth how they want to, just as they spend their time how they want to.

Of course, blog technology is a labour saving device for website owners (and, often, their readers too). You may not like the content, but the end result is the same – websites. And you may actually find that, set up properly, RSS is actually a more bandwidth-efficient way of delivering content, since you are transmitting less data in an RSS file than in an HTML file, and, the nature of aggregators means that you don't visit a website until it's updated.

If you dislike blogs and podcasts, great. That means my blog's bandwidth can go to someone who does care.

Advertisements probably avoid saying "just Google it!" because search engines could bring up a lot of negative rap about their product. :)

Yes, I agree with Matt Saler. Give us the full text!

An additional suggestion for the list: No more sites that require (free) registration to view articles. I don't see how the benefit to the publisher of collecting (mostly bogus) info from the user is with the huge annoyance.

"If you dislike blogs and podcasts, great. That means my blog’s bandwidth can go to someone who does care."

Translation: Blah blah blah, my opinion is more important or more believable because I have a blog. I'm a part of the nifty online blog community where we all care what each other thinks, unless they don't agree with my opinions then I can tear them down in my little diatribes. I also believe bandwidth is unlimited and what I do with it can never effect other users.

Get rid of blogs and podcasts? That's idiotic. Blogs are like personal news outlets to the world. You can share all your happenings – blogs are like an online diary – a reccollection of your life. As for podcasts, I have to say that This Week in Tech is the most useful media I've ever listened to. It beats all the radio shows and all the TV shows I've ever seen.

This has got to be the absolute worst list of drivel I have ever seen in my entire life. Cry much?

"Blah blah blah, my opinion is more important or more believable because I have a blog. I’m a part of the nifty online blog community where we all care what each other thinks, unless they don’t agree with my opinions then I can tear them down in my little diatribes. I also believe bandwidth is unlimited and what I do with it can never effect other users."

No – it's got nothing to do with believable or any of that. And, no, bandwidth isn't unlimited. But, whether or not I subscribe to a blog or podcast doesn't affect your bandwidth, unless of course you hold that delivering stuff via RSS-over-HTTP is somehow magically strange and different from delivering it via BitTorrent or email or USENET. Should we get rid of Telnet or porn websites just in case it's a waste of your precious bandwidth? No, site owners pay hosts for their bandwidth, and users pay ISPs for theirs.

As for content, subscribe to a respected blog on a subject you are interested in and compare it to reading a newsgroup on that topic. They're miles apart. There's a group blog I read which has five or six daily posts which are on topic, new, interesting and relevant by acknowledged and published academic authors in the field (which I'm writing my dissertation on). This takes me five to ten minutes to skim each day. Compare that with the newsgroup on the topic, which is filled with inane and circular arguments, plenty of off-topic, political crap, trolls and idiots which would take two or three hours out of my day to filter through. And the bandwidth? Probably 300k a day in newsreader pings compared with 10 megs of text.

It takes less time, gives me better information, uses less bandwidth and doesn't require me to spend time filtering the crap from the good stuff, since the vast majority of it is directly related to what I'm interested in.

But, of course, all blog content, by dint of it being on a blog, is a waste of bandwidth. And all audio delivered by podcast technology is crap – despite it often being the same stuff which is broadcast via streaming or on FM radio or other sources – just delivered conveniently.

3. “Let’s ignore the rest of the world.”

Its a pet peeve, but US sites insist on using month, day, year numeric date format despite the fact that the US is about the only country in the world to use this format.
It makes working out the date on older information problematical. It is so simple to use alpha numeric, or the year, month, day format in wide use.
You are guilty of this one yourself!

You forgot one that's much more important, and that's having to register and log in to simply read a news article. Yea, you heard me NYT.

I would like to thank Phillip for "Google Blogoscoped". I like it the way it is, but perhaps it could be improved. I know he provides hooks to customize it to ones liking, but it would be nice to not have to resort to that.

He recently wrote an article "10 Web Trends That Should Die in 2006".
   blog.outer-court.com/...

We might have a better chance of success in improving this site. I will begin a list of "Blogoscoped Trends That Should Die in 2006". Perhaps others can add to the list.

Remember the list is of things to be eliminated. Later in its description you can indicate how the site should be. I think it is best if we limit the list to things that are trivial to implement. Perhaps Phillip can integrate your suggestions into the below list.

   Happy New Year,

   George

Blogoscoped Trends That Sould Die in 2006

1. "Put the full text of long articles on the front page." (George R)
Long articles deserve their own page. On the front page they get in the way.

2. "Waste screen realX* estate." (George R)
It has a wide sidebar and two wide margins. On my screen the sidebar and two margins are more than half the screen. Much of the sidebar is empty. The right margin may sometimes have ads, but I do not see any now.
[* Note: the forum software blocks the correct spelling of this item.]

good article.
i like this blog very much. i've been reading it for months now.
keep it up.

Very good article, crisp and to the point. I could find the reflection of my own thoughts in here.

* I actually tried using some sites on my PDA and wondered why some sites just take forever to load non-essential bells and whistles. To the point I even switched banks to one that had perfect Web banking, optimised for desktop, PDA and WAP.

* I am sick & tired of Firefox swarm constantly repeating mantras "Firefox is better, take the web back, really secure, no popups" like there's no tomorrow (IE7) and IE-based browsers that do all that and more... Opera is cool – they just do their job – and they've made their browser FREE! I do have all the three browsers, but FF is the last one I'll choose.

* yes, split articles one screen long, surrounded by lots of advertising shite = more hits to advert servers and more frustration for user, trying to keep all the article in his mind. Not to mention that using search on split pages is... not really useful.

* The first commenter, can't say best. I've got 1600*1200 Dell 2001FP, and this page we're on now uses about 1/3 its width; all the rest is basically white space :(

* I've been to a Flash-enhanced site (Russian branch of one worldwide car manufacturer). The site was ordered from a "renowned design studio". It looked extremely cool, bar one thing... took me about 10 minutes of frantical clicking just to understand where to click to get the coveted page with car specs. (And when I did I realised... nope, guys, despite that site I'll stick to my trusted and true BMW 5er :)

2 rev 2. "Waste screen realX* estate." (George R)
The front page has a wide sidebar, two wide outer margins, a wide inner right margin, and a narrow inner left margin. Combined the four margins and sidebar take almost two thirds of my screen. Much of the sidebar is empty. The outer right margin may sometimes have ads, but I do not see any now.
[* Note: the forum software blocks the correct spelling of this item.]

With number six, please include 90% of the websites of all educational institutions in America. Ugh.

I must confess strong disagreement on number seven. Broadband is still not available to many at a low enough cost. Many people still get tricked by the so-called "accelerators" and believe they are getting it as good as broadband for less money. They don't know that their ISP's servers are compressing web pages [clever] and severely degrading images [yuck] to save bandwidth. It appears faster until they actually try to view rich content. The average surfer will simply think that a particular site is broken, since everything else is "fast" and will avoid it.

Web 2.0, like it or not, will still have to care about the low-bandwdth users until, say, 2010, when everyone should have a big fat pipe to their doorstep (if the telcos and Cable companies are to be believed). Yes, people with more bandwidth should have (and deserve) richer experiences, but don't force out the other half who have no choice.

Fortunately, most of Google's services work quite well at 56kbps. Yahoo and MSN could do better, I think.

--JM

Good article.

Nice article, I have written a follow up at http://blog.ranta.info/archives/42/web-trends-that-should-die-in-2006/

#3 “Let’s ignore the rest of the world.” and #7 “Let’s care about low bandwidth!” are opposed. You dont seem to realize that much of the rest of the world uses low bandwidth and that it is still important.

I'd really love to just forget about low bandwidth, and I tent to do so at times since I no longer have low bandwidth... but truth is there is still a huge percentage of "the rest of the world with low bandwidth".

I think what Philipp means on low band-width is that there are some things you would never, ever want to use them on a low bandwidth connection so why should they cater to people with 56k.

#10 is one of my biggest pet peeves. Thankfully the zoomy firefox extension helps alot with this, Unless the tiny font is embedded in flash...

George wrote:
> The right margin may sometimes have
> ads, but I do not see any now.

I hope to solve this problem in early 2006, and will also make an announcement when it happens :)

As for long articles on the front-page, I realize that's an issue. I will keep thinking about what to do. I kind of like the simplicity of it, in terms of that you can go to the front-page and read a full article without clicking anywhere. But I realize it comes at the price of scrolling longer for older posts.

> You dont seem to realize that much
> of the rest of the world uses low bandwidth
> and that it is still important.

The question is whether this part of the world wants to see extremely low-quality videos, or if they actually prefer just text and images on low-bandwidth.

Caring for low-bandwidth users is good, when the content allows it. Like Idiot says, some content may simply not downgrade nicely, however, and this often includes videos. And sometimes, giving the user all the options hurts the experience for high-bandwidth users. Take iFilm, for example, where your connection setting will be stored in a cookie... and when you realize the video quality is too bad after you went for a "fast download" option, you can't just go back to choose a faster one!

What I would prefer, on any bandwidth, is to have a large movie download option for all the "viral" videos, and then I don't care if I have to wait 1 hour or 5 minutes because the download can happen in the background (e.g. while I'm eating lunch). On most sites today, the video is actually only offered in low-bandwidth users (and embedded, auto-playing)... so here, high-bandwidth users are ignored.

> You can (should be able to) get Gmail
> on your mobile phone.

Nope, my Nokia 6600 wasn't on the list of supported phones last time I checked (the site didn't work on Opera – which I bought a while ago – or the default Nokia browser).

> wheres you ... german Page

Like I said, small-time developers may not always have the resources. I actually had a German Blogoscoped for a while, translating some articles, but it was too much work for 1 person to keep up.

> Let’s use excerpts instead of the
> full text of posts for our site feed
> so blog reader users have to
> click through to read the whole thing

I'm doing this for different reasons, here are the main ones:
- I do not want to let spam/ shadow bloggers (who already copy my full RSS feed) all of my content
- Bloglines and others often hide the view stats from me, and these stats are an important feedback to me
- I want to be able to show ads on this blog, because I would love to be doing this full time, and no one else is paying me for writing but advertisers.

> An additional suggestion for the list:
> No more sites that require (free)
> registration to view articles.

Agreed...

Rafael Ebron wrote:
> What’s the bug number you filed.
> I’ll take a look at it.
> Can you cc: me on it?

The bug number is 252371, "searching in textareas doesn't work," – if you're a blogger or wiki user, this bug is incredibly annoying. It has been introduced in a pre-final 1.0 release, and hasn't been fixed since.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=252371

(Emailed as well)

Funny, that in conjuction with Firefox you say you don't like hubris, yet you do seem to join the 'Web 2.0' advocates blindly and with assumptions.

When I hear someone say he hopes that major companies will join the blog, podcast and rss hype it makes me twitch and put 'Ban the term web 2.0' on my 2006 wishlist.

I'm all for moving forward, but these dreams about 'Web 2.0' are doing nothing but promote trendy technology and hyped widgets while we should be focussing on clear communication and solid content delivery.

History is nothing but repeating while we blindly promote the 'proven concepts' as it so easily convices clients that we're handing them gold.

Nice list, but very subjective.

Hey Philipp,

How about having a small button next to each blog post that allows the whole post to be collapsed (without reloading page). That way you dont need to scroll down for long articles, instead you can just collapse them and then scroll down.

I love #6. Do you know how many times I've heard people this year tell me, "We don't want to blog right now because we're spending $XX,000 to upgrade our website with some really cool new stuff"?

http://learfieldcreative.typepad.com/learfield_creative/2005/12/thoughts_on_hom.html

I found these to be neither humorous, nor even all that specific to 2005. Why am I wasting even more of my time commenting? argh!

you need to provide proof instead of baseless generalizations about Firefox.

10. “Let’s have a tiny font that looks better.”

This is the number one reason I don't read sites I would like to read. Whatever put it into their heads that 4-point type is readable? Hint: newspapers typically publish in the 10-12 point type range. Making it smaller than that, and not scalable for those of us whose eyes lock up at tiny type, keeps me away from your site.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.01/blogger_pr.html

In reference to the WIRED frustration -
   just go the the bottom of the article where you will see the PRINT icon – -->right-click ---> Copy Shortcut

and the copied URL will be the One Page Print Friendly Version

Hey Philip, great list. Here are some thoughts and replies.

I wondered why this article had so many comments, after reading through I see that it was digged. No wonder it has so many trolls /ducks ;)

I agree about the bandwith. When you make websites, make them as low bandwidth as possible. Compress your images well (but not to the point of seeing nasty artifacts) and don't put lots of annoy flash, etc. But when you have 'rich' content like video, make it as high as you possibly can. I've been spoiled by Apple and their H.264 content. Now I can't imagine watching a Stevenote in less than widescreen, high resolution format. Also, the hidef trailers are amazing. With H.264, we have finally entered the era of enjoyable online video, if only news, blogs, and porn sites would catch up.

I'm also a little annoyed with this huge explosion of Firefox orgies.
I started using Mozilla at like version .93. I stopped using Moz regularly when I switched to a Mac in August 2004. Even though Firefox came out, I stuck with Moz. Safari is much nicer on OS X than Firefox on OS X. I do use Firefox for some things (like Google Analytics), and it has faster Javascript usually. However, I've seen a huge spike in the amount of hubris of Firefox users and developers recently. Fine, you are getting popular, good for you, but don't act like Firefox is the One True Browser, it just alienates your long-term users.

Finally, I agree with Matt Saler. I don't subscribe to this blog because I can't view the whole posts in my RSS reader. I had excerpts in my blog for a short while, but I changed to the full post before I ever pinged anything or gained any readers :).

Andrew

“Let’s read out loud the URL on TV.”

I don’t know, I always think it’s funny when someone on TV says, “To find out more about this news magazine go to www.blabla.com.”

LOL!

I like when they say it "www.blabla.com" and then they feel obligated to spell it out for you.

Right now IE has 85% of the browser market share. Please do not criticise the promotion of a cross-platform standards-compliant browser.

IHow about instead you replace that trend that should die with this one: "let's dominate the market with a buggy, non-standards-compliant security-risk browser by using monopoly power."

Yes!! Podcasts & blogs are the perfect way to present information about a company and its products. Traditional websites suck big time!

Get real man... There is no single solution to numerous problems! Blogs certainly aren't. Just use whatever works best in a particular situation. Saying blogs should substitute all traditional websites is like claiming a dragster car is the best choice for off road driving.

And no... Firefox is not better than IE. ;)

The searching in textareas bug is something about Firefox that really annoys me too. I've read comments on the bug from pissy developers who say they'll never work on fixing it because end users dared to complain about the bug never being fixed. God forbid that Firefox end users don't kneel down and worship the great Firefox developers!

Firefox do css worse.
Firefox crashes all the time.
Firefox make some stupid situations after wich it get frozen.

But Firefox provide new way to enjoy web.
I use it.

Phill you got it right, everyone is talking about benefits of using Firefox, but if its #1, it would be a target to hack.

Happy New Year!

It's really hard for me to understand how anyone could feel IE is superior to Firefox. IE's great if you want massive security holes, constant crashes, no tabs, and ads all over the place. Firefox isn't perfect but it's surely a major improvement over IE, any way you slice it – and it's the extensions that make it fabulous. Try prying my Adblock, Filterset.G Updater, and TinyURL Maker from my cold, dead hands – you won't get anywhere.

I still use a box at home with Win98SE. Once I went to Firefox, two things happened: I stopped having almost daily browser crashes (Firefox might crash about once per month, and I'm a heavy user), and I stopped gathering gobs of adware and spyware. It's a remarkably stable system, now that I never touch that evil little blue E icon.

i agree completl on the list. though my still hopes on the spammer would always reamin as a hope.

I am totally with you with using the most smallest type available. In my safari browser, I use the "increase font size", almost daily. If I cannot make the type bigger – I usually stop reading the article and exit the whole website. On a similiar note: making a huge .jpg out of one page, so when you go to click on something, the next window shows text but no links – very annoying.

IE3 is was the best browser ever. IE6 is so overhyped...

The term "Web 2.0" should die.

When it comes to splited articles, best way to get everything in one single page is provide the printer friendly link.

Sometimes I use Firefox.

Sometimes I use IE.

Nobody cares.

3. heh .. it's tough with hebrew, since even if the site is somewhat usable in other languages, hebrew users need everything aligned right and with dir=rtl. gmail still doesn't have it, meaning that if you insert a word in english into an email in hebrew everything gets messed up. the first half of the sentence appears after the second.
the translation of google to hebrew includes, in some points, strings like: "djg klsdnvf dlngsdfg lngfd". REALLY. someone just hit the keyboard randomly – and submitted!
the part in the faq about how to pronounce google says something like: "to the translator: explain how to pronounce google in your language". people, you were supposed to do that, not paste it!

5. before promoting mobile phone capability, lets convince everyone to support firefox, opera, safari etc.

I use a Nokia 6600 with Opera Mini. Gmail works fine – it just dumps me in the standard interface.

Nothing is wrong with blogs (That arent journals at least, its a easier way to make a website) and podcasts (its called free media (...))

Take a peek at http://blog.webbforce.nl for some webtrends for 2006

Bravo....
Wow. I read the first page of this site as research for a site I am working on about "trendy boxes" and other trendy web-stuff. hehehe... I will make sure to link to this site.
As a web developer I have a list of hundreds of things that drive me crazy about 90% of websites.... trendy ones mostly... and ugly ones.
And what is up with the whole blog thing anyway? why does everyone care what everyone else has to say all of a sudden?

Well someone here wanted us to use the friggen "blink" tag.

Kill me now.

your article sucks

Actually a very interesting read that. I often stumble across blogs and thing – oh no, not another tedious rant abount nothing interesting.

You changed my mind. Some are worth reading!

I use Internet Explorer btw. I have used Firefox to make sure my site works fine with it. But I just plain prefered IE. Not sure about the latest version though. I might have to think hard on that one.

All the best

Interesting list as I sit here reading it in the middle of July, 2006.
You have predicted well.

And yes, I am sick of the Firefox hooplah – show me a site that is a security risk for IE and I will go there in IE and come away unharmed, as yes, I know how to configure a PC.

If you don't know how to configure a system, get a mac and run safari – otherwise, shutup already.