Mozilla's open-source browser update is likely to contain a host
of new features, including offline support for Web applications and
new bookmark and search features.
Jeremy Kirk, IDG News Service
Tuesday, February 27, 2007 12:00 PM PST
If the Firefox browser were a car, it would be in the garage right
now being souped up by an anxious group of gear heads.
When Firefox 3.0 is released later this year, the open-source
browser is likely to contain a host of new features, including
offline support for Web applications and new bookmark and search
features. Mozilla released the second alpha version of Firefox 3.0
earlier this month.
While the final feature set hasn't been determined, Firefox 3.0
will also contain elements for its 4.0 release and beyond, said
Mike Schroepfer, vice president for engineering for Mozilla Corp.,
during a stop in London on Tuesday. The browser is due out in the
second half of the year.
"What we're trying to do with all of these things is lay the
foundation," Schroepfer said.
Perhaps most exciting could be Firefox's ability to support writing
an e-mail in, for example, Gmail while offline, with the data sent
later when a user is connected to the Internet again. Ultimately,
Mozilla engineers are aiming for an integration between the browser
and Web-based services that is as smooth running as a desktop
application, Schroepfer said.
So far, engineers have made Firefox work with Zimbra, an
open-source e-mail, messaging and VOIP (voice over Internet
Protocol) application. With a bit of code from Google Inc. and
Microsoft Corp., it would be possible to integrate with Gmail and
Hotmail and other e-mail services.
To do offline support, engineers have overcome the hurdle of how to
store data locally on the computer, Schroepfer said. The feature
will make it into Firefox 3.0, although the user interface is still
under development, he said.
Other changes could come to "bookmarks" and "history," two features
that have seen relatively little innovation, he said. Mozilla would
like to create a function where bookmarks could be automatically
sorted based on popularity and frequency rather than the static
presentation now.
Firefox 3.0 will also have a small, embedded database -- SQL Lite
-- that will eventually be used for full-text indexing of the
browser's "history." Users could search for images and text and see
the cached page. The feature, however, may not make it into the 3.0
release, he said.
"The advantage of the database is that we can search your cache,"
Schroepfer said.
Most importantly, Firefox has to be fast and standards compliant,
he said. Some users have complained about Firefox sucking up
processing power because of add-ons or extensions, a popular aspect
of Firefox where small programs can be downloaded and used into the
browser to add new functions.
But extensions sometimes tax system resources, in part because it's
often part-time hobbyists doing the coding, Schroepfer said.
Mozilla will soon set up a shared library of tested code that
extension writers can download and use, Schroepfer said. Mozilla
also relaunched its extension site, cutting back on the number of
extensions listed so first-time users don't overload their browsers
and dampen their experience.
In a few weeks, discussion forums will also be set up for
developers to exchange feedback, since code writers sometimes don't
know of the problems, he said.
Firefox 4.0 will support the JavaScript 2 language, now under
development in part by Mozilla's Chief Technology Officer Brendan
Eich and the ECMA International standards body, Schroepfer said.
The idea behind the JavaScript revamp is to make high-performance
Web applications easier to write and assemble for people with less
coding expertise, he said.
"It's less about making it possible and more about making it easy,"
Schroepfer said.