More Than a Pile of Ashes:
“My name is Bob, and I’m a Firebird addict.” Or something like that. Mozilla’s Firebird browser (formerly known as Phoenix) impresses me. “Snappy”, standards compliant, and sprinkled with key features like tabbed browsing, text zooming, and pop-up blocking. It’s a bit of a memory whore, but I expect that they’re working on that.
This piece on browser innovation hints at the benefits of building with XUL (Mozilla’s cross-platform interface language):
“In some cases a XUL application has a “look and feel” very similar to that of an application written for a specific platform. For example, Mozilla’s Phoenix browser on Win XP looks and feels very much like a native application”
No kidding! I keep having to remind myself that Firebird hasn’t actually been engineered as part XP. Despite the fact that there’s no real OS integration, it still feels like part of the OS — very much unlike Mozilla where you’re left in no doubt at all as to the fact that you’re launching an entirely separate application.
I expected that a number of sites (including my own) might of course display somewhat differently in the browser, but that hasn’t been the case. Of course there are a couple of bug reports out there, but we’re talking version 0.6 here so it goes with the terrirtory - I haven’t run into a single problem so far though.
Firebird is my new prefered browser. It’s quicker, and lighter than big brother Mozilla, and also embodies a range of features sorely missing in IE6. Good work guys, keep at it!
