Firefox 3.6 brings joy to Web devs, not just users (ars technica) [LWN.net]

Ars technica reviews the Firefox 3.6 release. "Mozilla says that users don't always understand the role that plug-ins play in the Web experience and might not even realize that they have plug-ins installed. This is a major impediment to giving users the ability to protect their own security. The PluginCheck system is a new feature that Mozilla has introduced to address some of the problems caused by faulty browser plug-ins. It gives the browser the ability to make the user aware when a vulnerable plug-in is detected."

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Firefox 3.6 brings joy to Web devs, not just users (ars technica)

Posted Jan 23, 2010 0:08 UTC (Sat) by aristedes (guest, #35729) [Link]

That doesn't really make sense. HTML 5 isn't a standard yet. And it isn't being written so that browsers will then implement it. Rather it is being written for the most part around what browsers have already implemented.

I think it is fair to say that Firefox 3 has the most complete implementation of the proposed HTML 5 working draft of any browser. Webkit is also doing pretty well. IE has implemented many important parts. But we are a long way from having a final specification, never mind having that implemented in every browser. And then that's a long way from actually being able to use any of it and abandon users on old browsers.

Firefox 3.6 brings joy to Web devs, not just users (ars technica)

Posted Jan 25, 2010 15:23 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

YES. This is how proper standards are made if you give a crap about proper
engineering.

You don't make the standard first then make a product around it and expect
it to work properly. It is going to be nearly impossible for you to
properly anticipate and take into account the full scope of the problem at
hand. What you'll end up doing is putting a lot of effort into focusing on
things that are going to end up being minor issues and ignoring things that
are going to be major issues.

By having multiple implementations of a standard in draft form and then
being willing to modify and improve the standard multiple times before the
final draft is published then it allows you to identify the problem much
more accurately.

This is why things like HTML5 take so freaking long.