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tavilach · Dec 12, 2004, 09:01 PM

This is it! I must now switch to Firefox! There's an extension that takes POST arguments and converts them to GET arguments! That makes my life so much easier when trying to create bookmarks that'll search forums and the like.

Wow...Firefox is absolutely amazing, aside from its inability to search textareas (Safari can't do this, but even Camino can) and its yucky GUI (which is a little better once Firefoxy is applied).

I can't wait for Aqua Firefox! It'll completely kill Camino...

theJoKell · Dec 12, 2004, 09:03 PM

Originally posted by tavilach:
I can't wait for Aqua Firefox! It'll completely kill Camino...

Do you know something no one else does? Because I don't think this is ever planned...

tavilach · Dec 12, 2004, 09:16 PM

Originally posted by theJoKell:
Do you know something no one else does? Because I don't think this is ever planned...

Actually, it is.

Soon, too.

Of course, it won't be Cocoa, but whatever.

yukon · Dec 12, 2004, 09:24 PM

There probably will never be an "Aqua" Firefox. What you're pointing to (I see the link to the roadmap) is an attempt to improve Firefox's compatibility with the Aqua and GNOME HumanInterfaceGuidelines. The most they could do would be sorta like an Aqua skin on Winamp....for example, note that the "sheets" in firefox are actually modal dialogs with a funny animation.

AFAIK, there is no plan to discontinue Camino in favor of Firefox. Camino is an awesome browser in it's own right.

tavilach · Dec 12, 2004, 09:28 PM

Originally posted by yukon:
There probably will never be an "Aqua" Firefox. What you're pointing to (I see the link to the roadmap) is an attempt to improve Firefox's compatibility with the Aqua and GNOME HumanInterfaceGuidelines. The most they could do would be sorta like an Aqua skin on Winamp....for example, note that the "sheets" in firefox are actually modal dialogs with a funny animation.

AFAIK, there is no plan to discontinue Camino in favor of Firefox. Camino is an awesome browser in it's own right.

I read otherwise, but can't find the link.

yukon · Dec 12, 2004, 09:36 PM

Mozilla.org said at http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/roadmap.html-
1.1 Deer Park March 2005 Bugs Re-sync with trunk. Ongoing HIG compliance work for Aqua, GNOME etc.

Unless you find that link, and it's said by the people who make Camino (on it's discontinuation) or Firefox (on it's replacement of XUL by a .nib file), then that's all I can give you. The only thing I've heard is a plan to discontinue Mozilla itself when Firefox/Thunderbird are mature (though that was over a year ago ISTR).

wataru · Dec 12, 2004, 09:53 PM

Originally posted by tavilach:
I read otherwise, but can't find the link.

I've been following Firefox development since the Firebird days, and I've never heard of any "Aquification" plans. Yes, they will fix the outstanding HIG compliance issues, but it will not be "Aqua." The whole point of Firefox is that the interface is XUL-based. That will not change. If you insist on native OS X technologies, then your best bet is Camino, though you take a big hit in terms of functionality.

By the way, there are some excellent Aqua-style Firefox themes.

theJoKell · Dec 12, 2004, 10:05 PM

Originally posted by wataru:
I've been following Firefox development since the Firebird days, and I've never heard of any "Aquification" plans. Yes, they will fix the outstanding HIG compliance issues, but it will not be "Aqua." The whole point of Firefox is that the interface is XUL-based. That will not change. If you insist on native OS X technologies, then your best bet is Camino, though you take a big hit in terms of functionality.

Exactly. It'll become more HIG compliant, but it'll never be Aqua.

ambush · Dec 12, 2004, 11:01 PM

still can't use Firefox because it does not scroll well with the keyboard arrows.

Also does not feel very aqua to me..
and finally.. I just love camino.

CharlesS · Dec 12, 2004, 11:34 PM

Originally posted by tavilach:
This is it! I must now switch to Firefox! There's an extension that takes POST arguments and converts them to GET arguments! That makes my life so much easier when trying to create bookmarks that'll search forums and the like.

OmniWeb's been able to do that for a long time now.

Millennium · Dec 13, 2004, 05:00 AM

Originally posted by wataru:
I've been following Firefox development since the Firebird days, and I've never heard of any "Aquification" plans. Yes, they will fix the outstanding HIG compliance issues, but it will not be "Aqua."

I've heard the term "Aquification" used to describe the outstanding HIG fixes. It is likely, given this, to follow the Aqua interface guidelines. Will it be Aqua? For all intents and purposes, probably. It won't be done through .nib files, but frankly, so what?

TETENAL · Dec 13, 2004, 05:27 AM

Originally posted by Millennium:
[S]o what?

Firefox will always be XUL or whatever that is called. It will never use native controls (and I'm talking about the user interface aka "chrome" here, not the web). That means it will have to mimic Aqua in look and behavior. Mimicking the look might be rather easy, but mimicking the behavior is more tricky. For one there will always be slight behavioral differences that stay unnoticed by the developer, and then there is stuff like spell checking and accessibility that are rather hard to implement if you don't get them "for free" with a low return of investment. Stuff like that will probable stay out of Firefox.

So Firfox will always stay a second class Mac application compared to apps with a nativer Mac interface like Camino.

RedHerring · Dec 13, 2004, 05:45 AM

Originally posted by wataru:
I've been following Firefox development since the Firebird days, and I've never heard of any "Aquification" plans. Yes, they will fix the outstanding HIG compliance issues, but it will not be "Aqua."

Some of these changes can already be noticed in the newest nightlies of Firefox.

Preferences are now a sheet (or sheet-like thing if not an actual one)... minor appearance tweaks to the bookmark manager, etc... I think there's been some optimization of the interface itself as well because it seems to be more responsive in the nightlies.

But it still has a long way to go...

On a side note... at one time this weekend I had 4 versions of Firefox on my computer at the same time.... Firefox 1.0.... Firefox 1.0 G4 optimized... Firefox Nightly... and Firefox Nightly G4 optimized... haha. I was impressed that there were not profile or setting conflicts between the 4... they all shared like nice little web browsers... haha. Of course I'm back to just one now. But I'm sticking with Camino for the time being...

monkeybrain · Dec 13, 2004, 06:51 AM

By 'Aquafication' perhaps you're referring to the move to try and get Mozilla browsers to use Quartz rather than Quickdraw to display webpages. I believe both Firefox and Camino will be able to take advantage of this. I think I got the facts rights there. The move should allow use of proper text fields so spell checking can be put in etc.

Millennium · Dec 13, 2004, 10:23 AM

Originally posted by TETENAL:
Firefox will always be XUL or whatever that is called.

I know. I have made no attempt to contradict this. But do keep in mind that XUL is only a file format. There are plenty of ways to create Carbon and even Cocoa interface controls, and not all of them involve the .nib file format.

It will never use native controls (and I'm talking about the user interface aka "chrome" here, not the web).

I wouldn't be so certain of that. There has been talk for a long time of a XUL-to-Aqua layer; see Bug 74292 and Bug 117584. A while back there were even patches made to work with this. These patches used the "real" widgets for XUL, and the more suitable cross-platform widgets for Web stuff.

For one there will always be slight behavioral differences that stay unnoticed by the developer...

If this is true, then it would be primarily Apple's fault for poorly documenting their interface standards. A developer should never have to determine proper widget behavior by looking at how it works in other apps; such behavior should be clearly spelled out in the operating system's developer documentation. Fortunately, Apple is famous for its UI documentation, so your fears, while reasonable, are unfounded. Barring actual bugs, there is no reason for this to happen.

...and then there is stuff like spell checking and accessibility that are rather hard to implement if you don't get them "for free" with a low return of investment.

Spellchecking, while not the easiest thing in the world, is quite doable. Quite a few Carbon apps have already implemented it, and Apple even has sample code for it right here. As for accessibility, Apple is once again providing a straightforward API. Your Cocoa-zealotry does not hold.

Millennium · Dec 13, 2004, 10:33 AM

Originally posted by monkeybrain:
By 'Aquafication' perhaps you're referring to the move to try and get Mozilla browsers to use Quartz rather than Quickdraw to display webpages.

That's not it, actually; Aquafication is something separate. The Aquafication deals only with bringing Firefox more into compliance with the Aqua HIGs (there is a separate project for the GNOME HIGs on Linux as well). The push for "native" widgets is something different, and while some work has been done it is opposed by many in the Mozilla community, so there is no guarantee on when or if that will happen.

As for moving to Quartz, this is true, but it is only happenning indirectly, and is part of yet a third effort. Mozilla as a whole is moving to use a graphics API called Cairo (the site is very slow at the moment), which has many similarities to Quartz but is much more cross-platform. By default, Cairo actually renders using OpenGL, but there has been some work on making it render using Quartz on OSX. When this move is complete, Mozilla and its derivatives may use Quartz on OSX through Cairo. It is, however, also possible that they will continue to use Cairo/OpenGL even on OSX; this will provide a more consistent look across platforms, and it will also provide hardware acceleration even to pre-Tiger users.

It is unknown whether or not the Cairo effort will be finished by the time Firefox 1.1 (the Aquafication release, among other things) is released, but I wouldn't count on it. Replacing an entire graphics backend is hard work, particularly for something as complex as Mozilla, and so it will probably take longer than that. But it is coming. Aquafication is also coming. The push to overhyped native widgets is less certain.

TETENAL · Dec 20, 2004, 07:50 AM

Originally posted by Millennium:
If this is true, then it would be primarily Apple's fault for poorly documenting their interface standards. A developer should never have to determine proper widget behavior by looking at how it works in other apps; such behavior should be clearly spelled out in the operating system's developer documentation. Fortunately, Apple is famous for its UI documentation, so your fears, while reasonable, are unfounded. Barring actual bugs, there is no reason for this to happen.

The basics are documented, so that you can create your own controls that fit in, but for the standard controls you are simply supposed to use native controls. It's practically impossible to describe any details of behavior short of providing the source code. And some aspects of behavior change over OS versions. The scroll acceleration of scrollbars might be fine tuned over time for example. If you mimik native controls you will always do something not quite right. Observe the slight differences between Cocoa and Carbon open/save dialogs for example. And these people did have access to each others source code.

And no, Apple is not famous for its documentation by the way.

Spellchecking, while not the easiest thing in the world, is quite doable. Quite a few Carbon apps have already implemented it, and Apple even has sample code for it right here. As for accessibility, Apple is once again providing a straightforward API. Your Cocoa-zealotry does not hold.

I'm not Cocoa zealotring. I was talking about native controls, not Cocoa controls. You need to understand the difference.

I'm not saying things like accessibility are impossible without native controls. I was saying that it is difficult to do with a low return of investment. Your insistance that it can be done is pointless; fact remains that it is not done in Firfox and I don't see it coming in the coming years. Beyond an Aqua lookalike theme, Firefox' Mac integration is poor compared to Safari and Camino.