We are Mozilla, ask us anything!

Is this your mascot?

Holy crap that is adorable.

Nope, this is our mascot.

How does Mozilla feel about the proposed DRM restrictions for HTML5? Will you be ignoring the specifications, should they be approved?

The debate is raging inside the Mozilla community, so take everything I write with a healthy dose of uncertainty.

Firstly, note that the DRM scheme being discussed at w3c is actually essentially a safer subset of the current plug-in API that has been implemented in all browsers since ~1995 and is used by Flash, Silverlight or Java. I believe that, should an agreement be reached between Microsoft, Google and Apple regarding said API, ignoring the specifications would be pointless and suicidal, so we will probably implement it.

Now, this does not mean that we have given up the fight. We are actively pursuing anti-DRM strategies. If we manage, say, to convince major Hollywood distributors to use watermarking (which is cheap, simple, non-intrusive and doesn't require such a heavy machinery to produce robust results) instead of DRM (which is complex and doesn't work), we can win the battle of minds outside w3c.

Finally, I personally believe that DRMs are doomed by definition. I'm sure that some astute add-on developer will be able to produce an add-on that short circuits any protection scheme cooked up at the w3c.

I don't believe that Mozilla has made an official announcement about their views on this, but the CTO of Mozilla, Brendan Eich posted the other day about his personal views. These aren't necessarily representative of the company, but I'd like to think that they're similar as his post.

Mozilla has not made a official position on the proposed DRM restrictions for HTML5 that I know of but I can say that Mozilla supports a open web.

A question about Firefox. I use Firefox on my linux machine because I like what Mozilla stands for a lot more than Google. The problem is that everytime I launch chrome it is noticably faster than firefox. This is the case both on my computer and on my android phone. I was curious as a team, how do you guys view the Google Chrome and Chromium projects? Are there any decisions that Chromium has made that may lend them a bit of speed that you guys aren't comfortable with? I know for instance, chrome does something with its cache (which I don't understand) which causes problems on a few sites I frequent. I also am REALLY looking forward to the flash plugin you guys are starting to roll out. Thanks for all your hard work.

Thanks for the kind words :)

I have started a series of blog entries about the topic. To make a long story short: we have considerably improved our speed (we are now often faster than Chrome), our memory usage (we are considerably leaner than Chrome) but we still have lots of work improving our responsiveness (Chrome is much more responsive than us). We are very actively working on it.

Now, one of the ways Chrome gains speed and responsiveness is by modelling and predicting the behavior of the user, which it does by sending huge amounts of information to the mothership. That's the kind of thing we don't really like, for privacy reasons.

Also one thing to consider is that its hard for the Firefox Team to analyze performance on Linux even with telemetry enabled because each distro packages their own release of Firefox and may use libraries that differ from what Mozilla ships in its Firefox for Linux release.

I've researched about one way to do this for you to do in Linux: https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/using_firefox.

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Why do all modern browsers want to have the tabs across the top of the screen? I have a nice big widescreen monitor, and I'd rather have the tabs on a column on the left so I have more vertical space for reading. I currently use Tree Style Tab and almost everyone that sees it wants it.

Consistency and familiarity is a strong argument here. Everyone does it, so users are used to it. Any browser that deviated would need to have an incredibly intuitive replacement interface, and I'm not convinced that vertical tabs fulfill that description.

Why did you implement the change to stop downloads when closing the browser by default rather than leave the download manager open until it completes? This is confusing to a lot of non-technical people. I usually go into about:config and change it to notify them if they still have a download going.

You might be surprised by how many people were confused by closing the main Firefox window and seeing the download manager window remain open. I'm pretty sure that we prompt the user when closing the last Firefox window while a download is running, now.

I have a question for all of you...

How'd you get involved in Mozilla? How long have you been around?

I was volunteering for another company at the time, building simple, small apps, before switching to Linux OS. But, that other company didn't really have reliable assistance to and for developers, and their products (their web browser, their apps, etc.) weren't very good. So, I switched to contributing for Mozilla because Mozilla has good products, is great at what is done, and they have good support for developers. And now that I've graduated from college, can contribute more often.

how old are you?

Now, 37 years old. I'd started college, before, but kids and a lot of other stuff on top of all of that had happened that wrecked a schedule to finish college. But, I finally got the chance to go back to college. So, I did. :)

I got involved via Mozilla UK. I sent in a email asking about getting an Irish community set up since the UK community was the closest one to myself. Our lovely Leo put me in touch with Brian King and the rest is history. Mozilla Ireland has been a work in progress and we are about 8 people strong!

Besides, I really love what the Mozilla Project stands for.

Around 2003, I decided to write an e-book reader for the format that wasn't yet named epub. By making this a Firefox add-on, I managed to write a fully functional version in a matter of weeks and on my spare time while development of the official prototype was taking forever.

That's how I got hooked :)

Answering my own question!

I started in SUMO totally on accident, Firefox was acting up and I went to live chat. Saw on the page that it was volunteer-run so I decided to give it a try. It was a lot of fun (other than the software we used, anybody who did this with me can vouch for that). Started doing stuff outside SUMO and now I'm working on a few things in Community I.T., which has been an interesting experience. I've been around just over 5 years now.

A good friend of mine who works for Mozilla's identity team referred me for a position at Mozilla. I just celebrated my one year anniversary at Mozilla two weeks ago.

4.5 years ago, I saw a blog post asking for help getting the Electrolysis project started. I spent a couple months working on the first bug I was assigned, and I've been hooked ever since.

It all happened back in 2009: Ironically, Mozilla gained me by giving me problems with my browser. I had been using Firefox for a long while and encountered a problem (as we all do from time to time). I decided to ask help from the SUMO live chat team and the problem was solved within just a few minutes. The next day, I decided to give Mozilla something back by joining the team and helping others.

I started as a Theme (Personas) approver as I wanted a Firefox Theme for my students NGO. It has been almost 4 years ago.

I started localizing a Firefox fork (namely Flock), then moved on to others things (subtitles, websites, developper documentation). It's been almost 6 years now !

Almost a year, seems like much longer now though. I became part of the first hackerspace and open source organization in Albania, called Open Labs and got to know our first ReMo here, Redon Skikuli. Things have been going quickly afterwards, going from conference to conference, becoming Firefox Student Ambassadaor and then also ReMo and even taking part in the summit. I try to help also with Visual Identity stuff in the community

Started with Army of Awesome .. simply supporting users on twitter then got into the localization into Arabic. Lastly I'm now a mozilla rep. All of that was just about a year and half ago. Still enthusiastic to contribute more.

Why should I use you guys over Chrome?

We put people before profit.

Congrats you are our boss.

Because we strive and continue to strive to keep the web open, safe for you; because we are non-profit, because we have great products, and because we strive to keep your information private when you browse the web.

"use you guys" :D that's funny., I imagine hundreds of mozillians running behind the browser changing things as you move the mouse.

Hey folks, I just wanted to thank you for all the hard work. I've been using Mosaic/Netscape/Firefox since before some of you were born, and it's been great. The web is the greatest thing to happen to humanity since [something] and you and your predecessors have made it possible.

I think to myself all the time "I'm living in the future", and it's because of you.

Thank you so much for using Firefox. It's actually users like you who made all of this possible. You rock!

What are some must-have add-ons for Firefox, that you guys can recommend? For general use and for web development. Thanks a lot for doing the AMA.

1. Cloud to Butt. I'm immature, but it provides a little unexpected entertainment.

2. Ghostery

3. YouTube HTML5

4. Reddit Enhancement Suite

Cloud to Butt is great. It's subtle enough that you totally forget about it until reading about some very weird weather patterns.

I got a nice chuckle out of it yesterday when I opened my AWS console and saw "Virtual servers in my butt".

HTTPS Everywhere

1. Adblock Plus.
2. Lightbeam.
3. Better Privacy.

Whimsy!

I'm saddened that that is the fifth most popular response. Whimsy needs to spread further among Mozillians! ;)

(Disclosure: I wrote Whimsy. And this site.)

No problem, you're welcome! Thanks a lot for stopping by.

I personally really love Ghostery, Awesome Screenshot, Lightbeam and Firebug.

Hi! I love Mozilla products a lot and I get excited of every new release/update you do (I have used Firefox since the first releases and I've been using Thunderbird for about 2 years). Lately there have been some rumours about Mozilla being slowly lowering the development of their email client, Thunderbird and that it doesn't improve at the same level than Firefox. Having said that, I want to say that I absolutely LOVE Thinderbird. Is Thunderbird still a priority for Mozilla just like Firefox or it's falling into a less important level in Mozilla?

EDIT: typo.

I'm on the Thunderbird Team and can assure you that although Mozilla has refocused a lot of its developers on priority projects... Thunderbird is here to stay and is still releasing awesomeness.

Thunderbird has officially been deprioritized, I'm afraid. Which is a shame, I love it, too.

Is there a reason for that? Thunderbird is almost the only free, good, multi-platform mail client. Just look at http://alternativeto.net/tag/imap/. Why would you deprioritize that?

I think Mitchell's blog post on the subject (she's the Chairperson of the Mozilla Foundation) clearly explains the reasoning behind the decision.

Hi alavios, IMHO it is not officially supported but there is a whole army of contributor working day and night to give the latest version of thunderbird, that's what makes open-source community driven products awesome .. Its not going anywhere anytime soon ... all i can say is It's here to stay :D and I love it too :D

--- edit : It is supported officially

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For #4, it's because the EFF doesn't think Mozilla's privacy policy is strict enough, iirc.

To the team at Mozilla: Your incredibly hard work is sincerely appreciated. I painted this picture to say thank you. EDIT: Thank you for the GOLD!

Wow, that is magnificent. :) You are talented. Thank you.

Thanks for not making me update flash every time I want to use the internet.

You're welcome. :)

What kind of vacuums do you guys use?

Currently.. I have 3 in my house. Together they make one half working Vacuum.

Mozilla does not own a vacuum. We have a janitorial service.

I think I have a Eureka.

More seriously, does Firefox automatically call SQlite's VACUUM on its databases from time to time, or are we still supposed to do it by hand?

I believe it automatically vacuums every so often.

Hi there Mozilla team! :)

My question is about the Firefox user experience on OS X.

I've been a Mac user for a couple years now. Before that, I used Firefox on Windows. When I made the switch to OS X, I eventually gave up on using Firefox because (at least in my opinion) it doesn't feel as native as the other browsers.

I wanted to know: Why is the browser not well integrated with the native features in OS X?

Here's a couple examples:

• Lion came out in 2011. It took one year or more for Firefox to support the full screen mode, and another year for it to support the fading/invisible scrollbars. It doesn't yet support rubber-band overscrolling like Safari and Chrome. Obviously Safari is gonna support everything from day 1, since it's made by Apple, but IIRC Chrome got support for those features only a couple weeks after the 10.7 release.
• Firefox does not support three fingers tap to define a word in the dictionary.
• Firefox does not support pinch to zoom.
• The tab dragging/tearoff experience on OS X is not good when compared to Safari and Chrome: Both have smooth animations/fade effects, while Firefox displays a broken rectangular thumbnail of the page.
• While gestures for back/forward are supported, there's no visual feedback of the gesture to the user like on Chrome and Safari.
• Firefox doesn't use the native notifications feature from OS X, instead rolls out its own notifications. (Chrome is guilty of this one, too)
• Until recently (haven't checked on that, so it might have been fixed), Firefox downloads didn't show up in Finder with nice progress bars on the icons, like Safari and Chrome downloads.
• The right click menus displayed by Firefox are not real right click menus, because they do not blur the background content like menus from native applications.
• While the main Firefox UI has been updated to support Retina Displays, a lot of the assets are still not available in high resolution. For example, the preferences icons are pixelated.
• The help button on the preferences pane is not a standard OS X help button, but an icon designed to look like the purple button from OS X 10.6, and not updated ever since.
• The "resizing" animation on the preferences pane runs on a slower frame rate than the preferences panels of native applications.
• The main app Window has no minimum size, so you can scale it down so it looks like a broken square.
• The "customize" panel of the toolbar doesn't come down with a nice, 3D sheet animation like the "customize" panel of every native app on OS X.
• Select HTML elements switch to a Windows 95-like theme whenever you apply CSS background colors to them.
• The "Pulse" animation on dialog's default buttons is not as smooth as on native apps.
• Cmd+Left and Cmd+Right do not go to the beginning of line and end of line on rich text fields like on Gmail.

I know most of those issues are caused by the user interface not being made directly in Objective C, but instead built upon XUL. I'm not asking why they currently happen on a technical level, because I'm also fairly certain it would be possible to patch XUL to fix all of these.

My question is more on a management/priority level. i.e. Why is the Firefox UX in OS X not a high priority for Mozilla?

PS: I don't mean to say that the Firefox UX is bad everywhere. To me this feels like an isolated problem in OS X. If I had to rate, from my personal experience, the quality and integration with the platform, both in terms of experience and look and feel, I'd say Firefox is absolutely great on Linux, good on Windows and Android and not good at all on OS X.

Thanks!

There's a confluence of factors that led to this situation. Our Windows marketshare overwhelmingly dominates our OS X and Linux population, so we allocate resources accordingly. The team of paid employees working on OS X integration could be counted on one hand for the past few years, and we've never had a strong community of volunteer developers with OS X experience either. That's changed in the past year, so we're now starting to see some catching up occurring (swipe animations, download animations in the dock, etc.), but the team is still quite small and overburdened unfortunately. As you're clearly aware, the fact that we need to reinvent all of this stuff for XUL makes it a challenging process.

Guys, I think Firefox is very important because it's the only browser right now that is not directly subject to the unilateral commercial interests of individuals or corporations. However, historically, and perhaps still presently, most of your funding came from Google.

Is this still the case? If so, do we have any promise that Firefox will always remain free as in freedom? Although Chrome is still free, there are minor and subtle attempts here and there to subvert this spirit of freedom, whether in advertising or tracking.

Would Mozilla do something like the KDE Free Qt Foundation to ensure that no matter what happens, we will always have Firefox?

While Mozilla has certain financial arrangements with Google, in no way whatsoever does that mean Google has any control over the direction of the Mozilla Project.

You might not know that Mozilla is a registered not-for-profit organisation [1] within the US, so there's no need to worry, we'll always have Firefox :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation

Just being a 501(c)(3) nonprofit isn't a promise in the way that the KDE Free Qt Foundation is a promise. While I grant that it's unlikely for Mozilla to ever go "evil" any time soon, a clear promise that this would never happen would be nice.

Also, what control, if any, does Google have over Mozilla? They're just giving all that money to Mozilla out of the goodness of their hearts?

Well, it is no secret that being on the default home page of the half a billion users of Firefox is a big revenue stream for Google. It is also no secret that there is at least another big name involved in developing a search engine who certainly would be interested in acquiring this half a billion users.

The only control that Google has upon Mozilla is that the home page and the search button point towards them and not towards a competitor in the default setting.

What is your favorite feature of firefox that isnt present on chrome?

the "Turn off NSA" feature that is off by default :P On a serious note i used firefox by default just because of "Firebug" and now features like managing different user profiles, the army of addons, no "sticky-use-google-products"... and a lot more . that's what i could think of quick :D

My only question is, what does the fox say?

Everyone asks what the fox says but nobody asks how he feels

WAPAPAPAPAPAPOW

Dog goes woof (come on folks)

Cat goes meow.

It says Ring-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding "Thanks for stopping by, zlip15!".

I love you

We love you too!

Firefox is my default browser back again after a few years, and I'm really happy about it. Thank you guys a lot for your contributions.

If you have to sum up your experience gained through helping and contributing to Firefox in one word, what would it be?

Thank you so much for using Firefox and for stopping by! We are glad to make your browsing experience better. If I had to put my experience into a single word it would definitely be "valuable".

"breathtaking"

Oh my.. If I start bit by bit I will never end. Must important technically I gain a lot of knowledge in different domains. I met lot of inspirational people from all around the world. spoke at events in 10 diff countries. I learned to dance Indian Bollywood stye, I made Indonesian paper toys, I've learned words in more than 20 languages...

I used to swear by Firefox, as 5 years ago it was great. I am still using it, but only just barely.. really considering moving to Chrome. The problem I keep having, no matter what computer I use is that eventually Firefox gets slow. It's a big issue and I've spent a lot of time googling it and seeing more and more about it. Is it ever going to get addressed? I'd really prefer not to use Chrome but I'm almost at my wits end. EDIT how about making a slim version and call it something else like fire cheetah?

A solution which works for a number of users is navigating to 'about:support' (without the quotes) and pressing the 'Reset Firefox' button in the top right hand corner.

Alternatively take a look at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-slow-how-make-it-faster from our awesome army of support contributors!

Why are you so damned good looking?

As they said Sunday... Looking good is part of our code.

Is that code somewhere on Github?

Greetings everyone! Checking in from Mozilla Ireland! I am the community manager for the Irish community and a Mozilla Rep for the region too. We are a young community but today announced our first public event in Dublin, Ireland for November. Come check it out and ask me anything!

Mozilla Ireland @ TOG, Dublin City November 22nd

/sjmur

What do you guys think about Google deciding to fork Webkit into Blink?

I believe that having multiple rendering engines is extremely important for the web. If, for some reason, tomorrow's web ends up relying on a single engine, this will make extremely difficult or outright impossible any attempt to upgrade that engine, or to fix its bugs, or to rearchitect its back-end for new hardware constraints, etc. I suspect that this would largely paralyze innovation in web browsers.

This would be even worse if a single company could control that engine, as they will effectively own the web, as Microsoft tried to do around 15 years ago.

Diversity is a good thing, since it allows us to be more intentional about creating web specs that are not tied to a particular engine or engine design. We lost Presto as a separate engine when Opera switched to Chromium, but gained a new engine in Blink, and one which seems to take web compatibility and best practices seriously.

I am working on one of Mozilla Firefox's bug as an Open source contributor and the community is absolutely great and helpful. Please do join if you can code and help us achieve something better. Plus, did I mention, I love Firefox? Keep it up, guys, you are awesome.

I love this community!

No, sir.. you are awesome! =]

Take pictures of your work place please!

London ; Paris Opening

Is there any hope for mozilla app for windows8 phone? If yes, please, include a back button.

Due to Microsoft's policy on other rendering engines it wont be possible to port Firefox to Windows Phone 8. Same for Apple's iOS. If this changes though

Whats up with ES6? Can we use it in Firefox? Will Typescript ever appear in Firefox?

ES6

You are going to love those release notes: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/25.0/releasenotes/ (btw, it was released today!)

To answer the second question, given Mr. Eich's current position at Mozilla, I suspect we won't be adding Typescript anytime soon. But check out http://asmjs.org/ for your performance needs… :)

1) What do you think will be the impact of Firefox OS on the world?

2) Do you think HTML5 apps should be possible in the Google Play Store and Apple App Store without tools like Titanium?

3) What is your favorite Firefox OS app?

And I would also like to invite you to join /r/FirefoxOS and join our discussions!

My opinion only, may not reflect Mozilla's take on it.

1) The impact will be enormous as it is currently distributed in areas not yet controlled by other players, and Mozilla already have one strong advantage on its side: the Web! 2) They should be possible, and Mozilla's working on cross-platform open web apps. A recent status check was published here: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/10/progress-report-on-cross-platform-open-web-apps/ 3) My favourite app is zMaps because it's always handy to have a good map app! But there are so many other, and I love the "Add to homepage" feature.

What's your favorite Mozilla product or feature that most people don't know about?

Actually, my favorite Mozilla stuff is not a product, but it is our involvement with teaching people how to become actors of technology, rather than the simple-minded consumers than some other companies would like to have as client base.

Congrats on the release! What are Mozilla's plans, moving forward, for increasing security and privacy in light of the Snowden revelations?

Also, when can we expect that overhaul to FF Sync? :)

Also, when can we expect that overhaul to FF Sync? :)

According to https://wiki.mozilla.org/User_Services/Sync, it looks like we're hoping for late 2013 or early 2014.

When do you plan on making another IE cake?

IE cake

Firefox OS cake is better

Are they releasing something soon? :D

Do all of you guys use Firefox OS phones?

I think a lot of us have Firefox OS phones, but not all of us use them.

I know the popular phones in the community are the Nexus 4 and the Geeksphone Keon.

My favorite browser! What got you started in mozilla?

We actually have a thread about that going here.

As FxOS uses HTML5 for apps, does this mean that Jolla's Sailfish apps (native and and third party) will work on FxOS and vice a versa?

Possibly. I'm not familiar with Sailfish, but Firefox OS apps are pretty much packaged websites with a manifest.

Hello, Mozilla! Welcome to Reddit! I have a question: how much Easter eggs are hidden in Firefox? If small amount - which and where?

There are a few.

about:mozilla

about:robots

about:credits - not really an Easter Egg, but still nifty.

What do you like more, Chrome or Internet Explorer?

Chrome. By far. More standard compliant, and they're at least based on an open-source project.