__/ [ Sinister Midget ] on Tuesday 20 June 2006 03:00 \__
> http://www.networkingpipeline.com/189500613?rssfeed_pl_ntp
>
> Who says Firefox is only about Web browsing? Plenty of extensions
> exist for letting you share files, chat with one another, meet new
> people, and call them, all without leaving Firefox. Yet without a
> single page for collaboration or social networking on Mozilla's
> extension page, finding those extensions isn't easy.
I think that Mozilla applications are slowly becoming an 'O/S', much like
emacs (to borrow some popular sarcasm). Their appeal for developers through
hype, exposure, as well as being extensions-friendly (hooks and the like)
make them able to extend enormously, by a community. Some examples from
Firefox: P2P, VoIP, games, FTP client, and mouse gestures. Thunderbird is no
exception as many extensions are released for both applications in parallel.
I syndicate new releases from both, so it's rather apparent. They are a
plotform that 'absorbs' a lot of Java components. I won't be surprised if
spreadsheets and word processing software will soon be hanging off the ends
of Firefox. And with Google's Sync extensions, portability (of data) and
inter-operability will become a snap, possibly at the expense of Web
services (unless these are ultimately integrated).
> .....
>
> All totaled we uncovered 15 extensions that fell into five
> functional groups. Telephony clients let users call, and often IM,
> one another. Social searching and bookmarking extensions use social
> recommendations to help searchers locate Web sites of interest.
> Cobrowsing coextensions turn Firefox into a tandem browser, and chat
> extensions let users text-message other users on a Web site.
>
> I can't recall running into anything that makes IE useful. /NECESSARY/
> yes. But not useful.
Firefox will flourish primarily because of its developers -- those who
contribute plug-ins. Once you use more and more of them, you become hooked.
Your dependency on plug-ins that even Opera and IE cannot replace will make
Firefox the one and only browser. And why? Because it's Open Source. And
it's community-driven, i.e. people use it to serve themselves. Users know
best what is needed and they don't depend on the ego of closed-source
developer to have these implemented, if time and capacity (e.g. testing)
even permits that. IE7 will never pull that off...
Best wishes,
Roy
--
Roy S. Schestowitz | Open Source Othello: http://othellomaster.com
http://Schestowitz.com | SuSE GNU/Linux ¦ PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
3:00am up 53 days 8:14, 13 users, load average: 1.25, 1.16, 1.26
http://iuron.com - help build a non-profit search engine
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