We are Mozilla. AUA.

"Restore Previous Session" button is amazing.

Whoever thought that idea up, I salute you!

I love that button too. By the way, thanks a lot for using Firefox! :)

That button has saved my butt a few times as well. My boss probably is happy we have it too.

I guess I'll be the one to ask it:

• Memory leaks. are they fixed and people just keep on saying that they are not, or are there still memory leaks?

and my question:

• If you could impliment one feature what would it be? Be crazy.

Memory leaks. are they fixed and people just keep on saying that they are not, or are there still memory leaks?

There are no significant memory leaks that we know of, and overall memory usage is quite good.. but there still might be memory issues. A 'memory leak' happens when a program reserves some memory space, and then loses all ways to access it without releasing it. These are pretty easy to find and take care of.

Much harder is when a program reserves some memory space, and something still holds on to it -- even if it's not being actively used. For example, a web app may load a bunch of data off the network and keep it around in case you click a button on the page to have it be displayed... and then keep loading more data every hour (for example, to make sure you have the latest info). If you keep your browser and this tab open, you will see your browser's memory usage go up and up and up. There's no real leak, but memory isn't being used efficiently -- and it's not the browser's fault! As web apps become more complex, this kind of stuff is becoming very common. You can get an idea of what's going on by looking at 'about:memory' in Firefox, which lists all sorts of interesting memory data.

I keep my browser open forever, other than for updates, so I see this stuff frequently. Usually just closing tabs that I suspect are doing this causes memory usage to drop pretty quickly.

If you could impliment one feature what would it be? Be crazy.

Vertical tabs ;)

If you could impliment one feature what would it be? Be crazy.

Vertical tabs ;)

Like this?

The only problem are other addons expecting horizontal tabs.

Tree Style Tab unfortunately has a lot of issues; there's a Vertical Tabs addon that I recently took over to make compatible with nightlies that gets the job done, but I'd like to see it in the core :)

I just want to point out that we'll never "fix all the memory leaks", and we should never claim otherwise. Firefox has millions of lines of code, and we're constantly changing it. As hard as we try, we occasionally introduce new leaks (e.g. [1]). And as we change the browser, the amount of memory it uses also changes -- this can give the appearance of "leaks" when there are none per se.

The right question to ask isn't "are the leaks finally fixed?" but "how has the chance that Firefox's memory usage is acceptable for my workloads changed over time?" In this respect, we've made demonstrable progress, as we've not only decreased memory usage for average workloads (as indicated by the telemetry we collect from users who opt in [2] and by our automated tests [3]), but we've fixed a number of edge cases which were causing some users to see high memory usage. (For example, we fixed the vast majority of leaks caused by add-ons.)

[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=795221 [2] http://bit.ly/memorytelemetry [3] https://areweslimyet.com/

Practically, every program has memory leaks. Unfortunately, adding new features to Firefox can also cause them to appear. But thanks to our contributors and developers who try to fix them as soon as possible, most users' browsing experiences won't be affected. And as soon as someone tells us about a memory leak, we're fixing it and keeping the numbers of leaks as small as possible. :-)

Regarding your second question: I'd personally love a feature that allows me to make sandwiches. I know it's impossible, but I'm really looking forward to seeing it in the future.

Important question and one that keeps popping up in all our minds. I feel one can never say "We have fixed ALL memory leaks", but I am sure we can say we have fixed a LOT of them, although there are still a lot of them. Feel free to follow Nicholas Nethercote blog where he keeps us posted of the progress. One important one that was fixed is this. A lot of people are working hard on this and I am sure Firefox has and is going to slim in the near future.

Memory usage of Firefox has improved tremendously during the past few years. Currently, most memory leaks are actually caused by add-ons, which makes it difficult (but not impossible) to fight them.

A number of recent and ongoing API improvements have considerably reduced the number of add-on leaks. Further devtools improvements will let both add-on developers and add-on reviewers track down and remove these leaks.

NIGHTLY MASTER RACE REPORTING IN.

Nightly users really do control the Web. You're living on the edge, good Sir!

the bleeding edge!

Which addons do you think would be in the top 3 "must-have" if you guys took a poll?

Edit: Thanks for replying guys! Looks like its time for me to score some new addons, many fine recommendations here indeed!

1. Reddit Enhancement Suite
2. Ghostery
3. Firebug

Just a quick note RES will slow your reddit page load by about 1-2 seconds so it may make reddit feels a bit sluggish but the features are worth it. I'm hoping we'll be able to get improvements for this add-on.

I've also heard multiple times that RES causes memory consumption problems, but the reports have always been vague and I haven't seen concrete steps to reproduce.

Yeah, RES is a killer for RAM. When I've got 40ish Reddit tabs (it happens) when using RES, my memory usage soars to close to 2GB, but when I don't have RES, it stays below 1GB with the same tabs. If I want to continue my Redditing addiction, I'm going to have to max out my motherboard's RAM slots. :P

Hi. I'm the author. I'd love some help figuring out why that is...

RES doesn't use much memory really, including in other browsers...

The only case where I know it uses a ton is where it can't really help it -- e.g. a neverending reddit page that's 5 pages deep with images expanded -- that's gonna take a lot of RAM.

I can't seem to figure out why RES and Firefox don't seem to get along so well. It's worth noting that when RES is run as a Greasemonkey script instead of an XPI this is not a problem - so I don't really feel it's (all) RES's fault.. would love some insight or info on ways I could investigate better/further than I already have.

honestbleeps: you should ask at the Addons Developer forums for feedback. https://forums.mozilla.org/addons/

1. Adblock
2. Ghostery
3. Greasemonkey

Adblock

So, clearly this is your opinion and not the opinion of Mozilla at large, but could you expand on why you chose Adblock as a recommended plugin? I know it's pretty much a great plugin for making the web not-so-obnoxious and protecting your privacy, but what do you think about the elephant-in-the-room issue that Advertising is what is currently paying for the web, and how adblock affects that?

Edit: For those that are baffled by the idea that there's ads on the internet, they look kinda like this. It turns out there's quite a lot of them, and that websites make money from them.

Yes, these are my personal choices. The main reason for me is not privacy (I use Ghostery for that), but that I simply prefer a webpage without any ad. That said, as you note it, it may affect website revenues if everybody do the same, but I think they should change their business model (In fact, I don't really have to find them a way to earn money, I just have the right to load a page the way I want, and I want it without ads :) )

1. Adblock
2. Greasemonkey
3. Pocket

It really depends on the use I have.

For day-to-day use:

• Webmail Notifier
• Pinboard extension
• Chatzilla is all I need

For dev:

• Firebug with different plugins
• SQLite Manager
• and the very excellent OpQuast Desktop !

I use different profiles depending on the use I want to make of my Firefox so that it doesn't get overloaded ;)

• AdBlock
• ChatZilla
• FireBug

That is probably a per person kind of question. I'm sure some of our dev guys will have difference answers then myself. For me the top three I have to have are ad block plus, no script and lastpass (with stumbleupon following close behind)

i know nothing of computers but i was wondering if you could simply state why i should use firefox on my PC instead of others?

Firefox is designed and implemented by a non-profit organization fighting for the rights and the privacy of users on the web. Other major browsers are basically the opposite.

Because Firefox is the safest and most customizable browser out there. It's powered by people like me and you who contribute to make it better every day. It's running stable and does your best to protect your privacy on the internet. Plus it's incredibly fast and supports many open standards, giving you a better browsing experience. :)

Plus, as an Open source model, if a security flaw is discovered, it's fixed in an average of one day, rather than other proprietary softwares can take weeks or months to fix it, for instance.

Firefox for Android, in my opinion, is the best mobile browser out there for Android. With it's recent features like Reader Mode and shift to native widgets to improve performance, it's become my favorite. Using Firefox on Desktop, gives me the option to use Firefox Sync.

Also, beside being open and for community is design to be yours only - you can choose what data to share, your privacy rules. It doesn't use your data and also provides you ways to keep you save for sites to track it.

No question, just wanted to say that I started using Firefox back in 2007 or 2008, can't remember, and haven't switched to another browser yet (although I do admit I tried Chrome for a few months and Rockmelt as well). I find that other browsers are not as comfortable as Firefox, so much more customization and genuinely useful addons. Anyway, keep it up.

Thank you - that means a lot to us!

Thank you so much for your comment and for using Firefox! You rock! :-)

Love hearing that people love our product that much :D

Thanks . So cool of you! Thank you.

Thanks, we're glad you like what we do :)

Are you in need of contributors and is it easy to get involved?

We are always happy to gain new contributors. And yes, it is very easy to get involved! Simply go to this page to get to know how to join us.

Besides visiting the link others have suggested, join the channel #introduction on irc.mozilla.org and ask any question and you'll always find people ready to help.

PS : If you're looking for contributing via programming, check out http://whatcanidoformozilla.org/ .

Absolutely, there is always things to do, and more important, no technical skills are required! https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/contribute/ As you can see, there is a lot of ways to contribute, you just have to choose an area of interest, someone will get in touch with you to help you to start your contributions

As mozjan said, we're always looking to increase the number of conributors. More contributors = more awesomeness!

The only hard thing is deciding which area(s) to get involved in - there's so much going on! mozjan has already linked to our Get Involved page - and coders may also find What can I do for Mozilla helpful.

Why does my non-private instance need to be closed when I open a private browsing instance? Is this something that you plan to address or is it by design?

Feel free to track the work being done on Per Window Private Browsing here : https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=pbngen . The wiki is here : https://wiki.mozilla.org/Per-window_Private_Browsing

I like Nightly.

So do we!

Thank you! Nice to hear that!

Firefox is practically slow compared to Chrome. What are you doing about it? I am not talking about speed of launching it on the desktop, I am talking about speed in general. Chrome is simply faster when in use compared to Firefox.

What are you doing to develop/upgrade the local Bookmarks Manager?

These are the make/break things for me. I gave up on Firefox after many years of complete support only after I realized that Chrome was faster. There is a huge saving of time in a long run when you use Chrome over Firefox.

ps: I am not a great fan of Google or even their browser, but speed is a big deal when one looks at it in a long run. The amount of time one can save is significant.

Firefox is getting faster and faster with every release, so you might want to check back every so often to see if you still find it slow...

But, if you find Chrome faster, use Chrome! Mozilla is a not-for-profit which exists for the good of the web, and part of the web remaining healthy is there being multiple web browsers out there. As we saw when IE completely dominated, the web was a boring mundane place, but now where IE, Chrome and Firefox have a much more even split of the browser market, the web is a much better place! (Wouldn't you agree?)

So, where was I going on this point? Ah, yes - if you prefer Chrome then use Chrome! If Opera has features you like, use Opera. Heck, if IE floats your boat... then use it! The competitiveness in the browser market is what pushes development on the web, and is exactly what Mozilla likes and wants!

As for the local bookmarks manager, I have no idea :P

It seems PCs and OSs are becoming increasingly locked down - tightly controlled App Stores, Restricted Boot etc - which actively discourage third party applications like browsers or make them impossible to install or compete fairly with the native one. What future do you see for Mozilla in a world where computers become thin clients on which the users have minimal control and just accept the defaults?

This is why we are building Firefox OS we think that while OSs are currently locked down that it doesn't need to be the trend for all time.

Firefox OS, just like Firefox browser, is not aiming to take over the world and force everyone else out (unlike what our competitors would like in both cases.) We want to have an open platform that forces platforms to also embrace open standards. Shake things up and make them better for humans instead of only getting better for corporations.

I think we will still care about the user, and put him on first place for our products. We'll bring alternatives where others give web closed tools.

Are there any future plans/projects for Firefox that we should looking forward to?

Firefox OS :)

This seems like a very ambitious project. Many iOS and android users are heavily devoted to sticking with these systems. How do you plan to compete with them and convince people to switch?

The world is a big place and not everyone can afford to pay for a higher end iPhone or Android device. I think our objective is give people a smartphone experience at a very affordable price range to begin with.

Can we expect a Firefox Phone anytime soon?

There is no plan for a Mozilla phone.

• FirefoxOS, formerly Boot2Gecko, is going to be available early next year. It is an OS aimed at commodity smartphones built exclusively on web standards, and it is pretty freaking neat. This has driven a lot of the performance improvements we've seen in Firefox (and Firefox for Android) over the last year.

• WebRTC: real-time communication in the browser without plugins required. p2p Audio, Video or data streams directly from within the browser, all in a couple lines of javascript.

• Rust, a C/C++ replacing system language that is memory safe. They just released version 0.4.

• Servo, a next-generation, multi-process, super-flexible browser engine, conveniently being written in Rust.

Per Window Private Browsing : The details are here https://wiki.mozilla.org/Per-window_Private_Browsing

Finally, I've really wanted this one for a while now... for, er... reasons.

Buying presents, I presume ;)

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Roadmap has a number of features/enhancements that we're adding to the browser. Social API just got released with Firefox 17 Beta 2, for example.

That depends on what you want to look forward to. All our plans are publicly available on our wiki, with roadmaps for each area. The big news this week was SocialAPI availability on the Beta channel for Facebook integration.

I am a Firefox fan and a programmer. I would like to be able to see Firefox with eyes of a developer by making changes in code and building it.

The issue is that I always get put off by thinking about creating the build environment. Creating a build environment for Firefox is too complicated.

Could you guys please create a build VM template which people like me can download and get to fiddle around?

Check out foxinabox. It's just what you need. Thanks a lot for using Firefox by the way. :)

That's a really good idea, I'll ask around with the devs to see what they think about it, and report back.

Thanks. This guy 'mozan' mentioned about foxinabox. I am going check it out, but just wanted to get an idea if Mozilla team recommendeds foxinabox?

I wrote it, and I'm a Firefox developer. It's not the most ideal setup (smaller amount of RAM than is optimal to improve setup speed), but it should get the job done.

I actually have a question for Mozillians: Favorite video game, and why?

I like TF2. Because hats.

At the moment it is Starcraft 2. We have a team for the After Hours Gaming League hosted by Day[9]. That or The War Z.

Portal 2. Because Cave Johnston.

edit: forgot the why!

StarCraft 2 is where I spend a lot of my time with my friends an co-workers. I also play League of Legends when I need to unwind and want something less stressful than SC2.

A game I highly recommend to anyone who wants a fun game that isn't serious at all, is Orcs Must Die (1 and 2).

You switched from major overhauls being the cause for your version scheme

e.g. 1.x.x.x ---Huge Change---> 2.x.x.x

Why the change? We're now on like 14 or something but it feels much the same as 4.x.x.x.

EDIT: I like the more common updates, don't get me wrong, but I couldn't help but feel that it was changed so that users would feel as though more 'progress' was being made simply because there were more big numbers being changed.

I still prefer that IE update numbering system; when the big number changes, it means big change.

EDIT #2: Thanks gw280, exactly the kind of answer(s) i was looking for.

HTML5 is a constantly evolving standard, and so the browser needs to be able to keep having features added supporting the latest HTML5 standards incrementally instead of having to wait a year or two for the next major version to be released. The rapid release cycle deals with this issue nicely.

Yes, but why the major versioning?

You can still release a ton of point releases on a regular schedule, but save the major version number for major changes.

Instead of calling this version 18 or whatever crazy high number it is, you could call it 5.6.3 or something. No significant changes have been made since 5.0, so the question is, why the version number?

Admit it, it's to keep up with Chrome's versioning, isn't it?

Because version numbers don't matter. Let's pretend they did matter, and you could know that FF 6 contained at least one "major change". How do you define that? Do you still have some kind of schedule for when major changes occur? What if you suddenly need to make a "major change" due to a 0-day security bug that threatens users? Do your updating rules change for major releases?

The point is, version numbers are arbitrary. Many people associate them with big things like UI refreshes, or a new JIT engine, but there's a host of things that could constitute "major changes" that are harder to market in a traditional way. When we are releasing new versions every 6 weeks, it is counter-productive to limit the changes we're allowed to make in a particular cycle due to an arbitrary number.

The new release cycle is based on a 6-weeks span between each versions. It's closer to the "Release early, release often" philosophy. This way, the users do not need to wait for improvements for a long time and get a fair share of awesome more often!

Even though, Mozilla keeps releasing versions with extended-support period called ESR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Firefox#Extended_Support_Release)

[deleted]

Unfortunately, there aren't any plans in the near-future because the Electrolysis project is currently rather on hold. But stay tuned, I promise that this feature will come one day. :)

if mozilla is non-profit organization, how do you guys get the money? just wondering.

1. Donations
2. Agreements with other companies, like Google.

http://www.technobuffalo.com/internet/how-does-the-mozilla-foundation-make-money/ is a bit old, but the information is pretty much the same. The majority of revenue for Mozilla Corporation (not to be confused with the Mozilla Foundation) comes from contracts with various search vendors. Mozilla Foundation is funded by donations.

I love the idea of firefox sync, it's awesome once you get it working, but doing the pairing of devices with the generated numbers is a little tedious. I wish it worked more like Chrome does where you just have an account that you can sign into and tie your browser to your synced data. Are there plans to add to firefox sync? any specifics you can offer?

Part of the reason it is the way it is, is to ensure your privacy. We can't read your synced data even if someone shows up with warrant. So yeah its a bit more cumbersome, but much more privacy protecting.

Indeed, Firefox Sync is really useful, and show its full potential when you use several computers and a mobile device. Yes, in the future, we will use Mozilla Persona (http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/persona/) our new identify system, which is easier to log in. Plus, it will be natively included into Firefox. But I don't know if it will replace the pairing procedure. BTW, our Sync feature is more secure than Chrome's one, because synced data are encrypted/decrypted by your browser itself, and even Mozilla can't decrypt them on their servers, only your Firefox on your device. Google can decrypt Chrome's synced data. So it's a choice to have a maybe little more complicated system, but it's truly secure.

It's unfortunately really hard to find the border between security and usability. There are plans for a newer Firefox Sync, so stay tuned. :)

Last time I checked the preferences menu was under tools in windows and under edit in linux. Why?

Because this matches the guidelines/best practices under both platforms.

Thoughts on Ice Weasel? http://www.geticeweasel.org/

What is your favorite joke?

I love that there are so many alternatives to firefox by others as it really gives people the ability to configure there browser how they want it. On my systems I run Waterfox to get the 64bit support I needed.

The only reason iceweasel exists is because mozilla's branding, and the firefox logo are copyrighted. Not to add or remove any features, but simply to get around the licensing issues. As it stands, firefox isn't free enough to be included in Debian, so they just stripped out the logos, the only non-free part of ff.

Just a slight correction, don't you mean trademarked?

Licences like the GPL rely on copyright to ensure that all code based on the code under the GPL is also GPL. So I don't think Debian had any issue with the copyright.

However, for some insane reason, Debian took an issue with Firefox being trademarked... although this is good for the user, allowing Mozilla's legal team to quickly take down sites trying to scam them, who are using Mozilla's trademarks. Like this case: http://blog.gerv.net/2012/07/another-victory-more-germans-protected/

Genial! Estaba esperando este AUA en reddit, siempre he sido fan de Mozilla y he buscado por donde comenzar para volverme parte de esta comunidad, pero no se por donde empezar lo único que he echo es colaborar en Twitter contestando preguntas, por donde empiezo, se algo de web pero que debería aprender por donde arranco? Gracias !

Tenemos una gran comunidad de su idioma : https://www.mozilla-hispano.org/documentacion/Colabora

Si lo que te gusta es echar código puedes checar http://whatcanidoformozilla.org/.

Tambien puedes revisar https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/contribute/

I've been a user of Firefox since I read on a forum about version 1.0 being released way back in 2004 - have used it ever since. I love the Awesomebar - I use it all the time and a fundamental part of my browsing experience, one of the main reasons why I continue to choose FF over Chrome (as far as I know and have tried, Chrome's URL bar does not offer this feature/is not as good as the FF awesomebar).

I have one question - are you going to go the Chrome/IE way and have a unified search and URL bar? And if so, could you please still have an option to keep them separate?

The UX designers have wanted to merge the Location and Search bar, but as a non-profit concerned about user privacy, Mozilla is worried about accidentally leaking private information to search engines.

Wow, thanks for being a Firefox user since 2004!

I haven't heard any plans to have a unified search and URL bar. If they did get combined for some reason, there would probably be an option to keep them separate.

Also a fun fact is you can setup your search providers with keywords then use them from the AwesomeBar, so you can get the unified bar feel.

There are no plans for unifying them. But even so, for sure there will be alternatives.

Thank you so much for using Firefox, you rock. :) As far as I know, there aren't any plans to unify the search box and the URL bar.

What are your favorite things about working at Mozilla? What makes Mozilla stand out from other tech companies?

Edit: Thanks for the responses, everyone! Keep up the good work! :)

I wake up each morning and ask myself "how am I going to make the Web better today?"

Passionate and smart people. Seriously, these people are extremely smart and want to make the world better. I also love that I get to work with volunteers around the world every single day. Most times I usually meet a Mozillian online on Bugzilla or IRC. Then one day I'll finally get to meet them in person, and it blows my mind.

Most other tech companies are focused primarily on their IPO or share price. Most aren't global (or your team's mindset isn't global). Many companies work behind closed doors, although several are starting to be more open.

The unlimited snacks. Especially creme eggs at Easter.

Snacks are actually one of the rare things I try to avoid like the plague at Mozilla :)

I don't work at Mozilla, I am just a casual contributor. There a few things which drive me to contribute :

• Impact : The contributions you do, be it in the form of fixing bugs, QA, support etc. , has an impact on a huge user group. I was working on getting Per-Window Private Browsing landed and when I the number of people who wanted that feature, it felt great that I would be doing something which would be used by so many people. I also started working on WebGL conformance, and you can imagine the number of devs I will be affecting (although in a small way, but still). This is just a little bit, other much smarter people do much more awesome work.

• Community : Mozilla has an awesome, lively and extremely helpful community. Be it from IRC to bugzilla to real life, wherever I've encountered a Mozillian, they've offered to help with my problems and this makes you help others. Plus for everything you do, people appreciate you, which I guess everbody likes ;)

• Learning Experience : You get a feel of how software development actually works in the industry and how various concepts which we've normally just read in the books in Uni are applied, gets clear to us. Plus we get to work with the latest technology like HTML5, CSS3 and play a part in the shaping of the Web.

When you're not preoccupied with things like share-price, etc. your mind can spend days and weeks thinking about problems solely for the pleasure of finding things out, to paraphrase Feynman. Obviously, it's not the only company that affords that. I think the fact that Mozilla is a non-profit while having a highly successful product in the market and a large user-base makes it a great place to work!

The people. Really, everybody I've met at Mozilla, online or otherwise, has just been awesome. They're very friendly, and they genuinely care about you.

• Autonomy. I am part of a team and I am given tasks/bugs etc, but that doesn't mean I am not afforded a lot of autonomy.
• I get a task and I can implement it however I want that meets the specification.
• I can take the time to patch libraries to fix bugs rather than quickly monkey patch our code base.
• If I notice chunk of code that could be useful on its own, and I am working in that area then taking the time to pull it out into its own code base and getting it distributable is an acceptable use of my time.
• Trust and respect. This means a lot. This results in being able to ask questions whenever I need to without looking silly. That I will take the time to get something done right, but I wont delay a project because I am lazy or slacking off.

Overall, working at Mozilla has been the best experience I've had so far in the tech industry.

• I interact in permanence with a huge and extremely dynamic community.
• I make the world a better place, starting with the web.
• I work with smart and interesting people, I learn lots of stuff and I keep pushing my own boundaries.
• Whatever I do will be used by half a billion people and will contribute to influencing the web experience of a few hundred million others.
• No office politics.
• Oh, and free hours :)

First for me is the Community - a lot of wonderful smart people. I am not talking only about geeks, also PR and others. Getting to knowing them just opens you mind and initiatives. As the technical side, I would say that has great projects and that you could grow a lot within them.

That I get to work with the smartest people I have ever met, who are just as passionate about what we do as I am.

Working on the Release Operations team gives me a chance to work with bleeding edge technology on a day to day basis. At times it can be stressful and fast paced but at the end of the day I am excited to be pushing myself to the next level.

I can't describe with words how awesome it is to work with the most creative persons on the planet every day. It's truly amazing to see their stunning ideas they can come up with and it feels great to be on the active side and "make" the web a little bit more open. I personally think that no other tech company could ever give me the same feeling.

I don't have a question, however, You guys ARE THE SHIT, KEEP UP THE FUCKING WORK BROS.

i'm an unconfirmed Mozillian here, but I've been involved with Mozilla for about 8 years now.

Anyhow, we do this for us. Not "you guys", but "us". We're web users too, and we work to make the web better for all of us. Some of us have the privilege of doing this full time for pay (many of whom came out of the open source community to start with), and many more of us do this in our free time. Either way, we do this because we love what we do and we love what Mozilla stands for.

Having people say "thanks" sometimes is awesome. So thanks :)

You are now a confirmed Mozillian. I recognize your username.

YOU USERS ARE AWESOME! KEEP UP THE USING BRO!

AWWW YEAHHHHHH thanks. It's YOU who is awesome.

Why do you guys like Rust, beside the fact that one of your employees started it?

Type-safe and concurrent. Enough said :)

You guys have made Firefox a lot faster, and that's great, we really appreciate it. But, the program still feels heavy. After the Firefox 4 UI refresh, the performance has improved a lot, but under the hood still feels the same as pre-4. Compare this with Chrome, where options and under the hood tweaking is minimal and it performs faster, despite both browsers having minimal interfaces.

I guess what I'm trying to ask is: Even though the UI refresh helped a lot, it feels like there could be a better Firefox. Are you guys planning a complete rewrite of Firefox in the future?

We keep improving Gecko and we hope that you will enjoy the improvements. However, we are also toying with an experimental rewrite of the key components, called Servo, optimized for next-generation architectures.

1. How do you compete with such big browser creators such as Google (Chrome)? Is it friendly competition or an all out catfight?

2. How do you make your income when it's a free browser?

3. I usually use Rockmelt because it integrates my FB into the browser. What reasons should I move over to Firefox? Sell it to me!

1. We are not out to compete with them directly. We want to ensure the internet and browsers remain a place that gives the user a choice and a voice for what they want. And it is mostly friendly.
2. Donations and other revenue streams I'm not qualified to speak about.
3. We've been protecting the open web for over a decade, and new features like SocialAPI will give the Facebook integration your looking for a better experience with privacy protections.

I can easily answer to point 3: We are about to add social integration in Firefox :) https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2012/10/22/help-us-test-the-social-api-with-facebook-messenger-for-firefox/ You can already try it on Firefox beta! Enjoy

1. Mozilla and Google are on good terms and have a long, positive history together, but both Chrome and Firefox engineering teams set out to be the best browser in the world.

Competition is a good thing. Firefox made Chrome possible in a post IE6-world. Chrome has made Firefox improve by leaps and bounds in performance. They both will continue to benefit from the other.

1. I think our competition/cooperation with google and other venrods is usually pretty friendly. There's a lot of borrowing/reuse that takes place in the browser market, and since we're in it for the good of the user, anything that helps that is great in our book. There will of course be times when we have differing opinions on the best way to implement something (and we're very motivated by the privacy, security, and control of the user over his/her own web experience), but that's a difference of opinion, not a catfight.

2. Mostly the Corporation makes its revenue through contracts with search vendors (when you search from Firefox, we get a small portion of that revenue from the search engine you use). The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization that's funded by donations.

3. As for FB, I mentioned in a comment above that we've just added social API into Firefox 17 Beta 2. http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/mozilla-begins-firefox-social-api-testing.html Check it out!

"How do you make your income when it's a free browser?"

Mozilla has contractual relationships with the search services that ship with Firefox. While the details of those contracts are private, you can think of it like this: those search providers make money from Firefox users interacting with their ads, and Mozilla gets a share of that revenue.

You can see the 2010 financials from Mozilla (because Mozilla is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in the US) here:

http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2010/

Hey team! I've been using Firefox since it was called Mozilla and was using Mozilla when it was first spawned from Netscape Navigator. Yeah, I'm old.

Aside from general thanks for a great product, one question:

• Is "Mozilla" the official name of the red dinosaur mascot, and do you have a Tyrannosaur-sized animatronic version in your lobby that breathes fire?

Thank you - we love our more experienced users. You've been using Firefox for a while!

The name Mozilla comes from Mosaic Killer. Mosaic was the number one browser at the time. The red dinosaur mascot is unofficially named Dino.

And we do have a a dinosaur in the lobby of our Mountain View space. He sometimes answers the phone.

here is the Mozilla MV office dino

What web browser do you use at home?

Firefox of course. ;) What about you?

Hi! Thanks for this AMA. FireFox is a good browser and I wish I could use it even on my arm6 Android device. Can I ask why the development into this particular branch and to mobile in general have been a bit delayed?

No problem, you're welcome! Thank you so much for supporting Firefox. You can download an experimental arm6 build and start using your favorite browser on your Android phone. There are lots of contributors working on Firefox for Android, recently there were many updates that changed the design completely, made it faster and added a reading mode. You can see the upcoming features right here. :)

regarding the mac implementation, why avoid completely some mac specific technologies such as keychain and dictionary?

also what's the point of changing the standard "right button" menu which allows for Mac Services and other userful technologies. I get that you would require some additions to it but I don't understand why you feel the need to strip out all the other options.

I can't speak to dictionary, but keychain integration is a long-desired and contentious issue: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=106400

Integration is apparently not straightforward, and poses some technical drawbacks. Beyond that, it hasn't been a priority, and on top of that we're severely shorthanded on people who can and want to write OS X platform integration code.

Dictionary integration is being tracked in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=301451; looks like there are some technical issues holding it up (comment 58).