johnath

You know what? If you're using a modern browser, the web's getting better, and the competition is really healthy for the web. So I'll answer, but I love that you have the choice in the first place. When we released Firefox 1 and IE had 98% marketshare, you didn't. The web is more awesome now.

So you're a fanboy. Let me guess: * Chrome is holy shit fast and you're worried because previous Firefoxes haven't always been * It's got a sleek interface and you don't want a lot of bulk

Totally legit. Zero debate. But you might want to consider that:

• Firefox 4 is holy shit fast.
• It's got a very sleek interface - menu bar collapsed into a button, bookmark bar hidden unless you use it, tabs on top - zero bulk.

and then you dig a little deeper...

• What if you want all your data synced between machines, and to your android phone? Firefox 4 does that, and it does it in a way that is fully encrypted before it leaves your machine - we can't mine that data, it's just an encrypted blob to us. I'd love to see other sync implementations match it, but they don't yet.
• What if you want to be more performant? Open tabs listed in the awesomebar means you don't duplicate 16 copies of gmail in your tab strip. Smart session restore means your app tabs come up right away and your browser doesn't grind to a halt under a 200 tab session restore. Panorama lets you organize your tabs and manage your world online without having to scan a giant tab list to find the one you want, or hack around it by opening 20 windows.
• What if you want a browser built for you alone, with things like a Do Not Track header to start pushing advertisers to respect your wishes around tracking, instead of trying to hack around your adblocker?
• What if you want a massive ecosystem of addons to make the browser anything you want it to be, built on an extension platform which is incredibly powerful and goes all the way into the core of the product instead of lingering around the surface
• What if you like foxes more than pokemon?
  

You might get a couple answers here (thanks for the kind words!)

1) You know, I'm gonna sound like a hippie here, but mostly having another browser out there trying to build for an open web and supporting things like WebM video is a great thing. We're Mozilla - our job is to make the web a better place - having more browsers competing on open is a great thing.

2) I'll obviously bias engineering here, but you hinted at it in question 1, the biggest shift we have to make right now is shipping faster. Google didn't invent fast, but I bet they did it for the same reasons we want to -- it sucks to have a better product in your dev tree and to not be able to get it to your users and the web. We feel that pressure a lot, and the fix is to start shipping small pieces more often. We know that, we're talking about it nonstop, but it'll be a big change in 2011.

3) You're gonna see us keep leading on the stuff that matters. We're going to push things like sync and social into the browser and we're going to do it in ways that respect your privacy and put you in control. We're going to keep pushing on things like Do Not Track to get users back into the discussion around behavioural advertising. We're going to keep building for a web that's open and royalty-free and hell-damned awesome. And if we're really good at it, we'll keep seeing other browsers copying us (just like we'll happily copy them if they have a good idea), and you'll get it even if you stay in Chrome, which is great.

Oh fine, real intros: I'm Johnathan Nightingale, and I run the Firefox Engineering team and have been on Mozilla full time since 2007. I'm Canadian as well, but I think we've had all the Bryan Adams we need on this thread so all I'll add is that yes, the rumours are true, our milk does come in bags.

Also, I exist

{{Obligatory charlie sheen reference, to seem hip with the kids}}

Yes, that will do nicely.