http://billmill.org/My Name RhymesBill Mill blogs irregularly2007-05-21T21:14:00ZBill Millbill.mill@gmail.comhttp://billmill.org/Open Letter to Mozilla: Put up or Shut uphttp://billmill.org/putup.html2007-05-21T21:14:00ZI have been using Firefox since it was <a
href="http://www.flexbeta.net/main/printarticle.php?id=89">Phoenix 0.1</a>. It
was the best browser then, and it is the best browser now. The first computer
language that I ever <a
href="http://vzone.virgin.net/sizzling.jalfrezi/iniframe.htm">learned</a> was
HTML, and I learned it largely by hitting "View Source". Without it, who knows
if I would be a programmer today?<p>
Today, though, the world is a different one than it was back in 1998 when I was
plunking around with HTML. Broadband has (finally!) gotten widespread adoption,
and with it the web has gotten past animated rollover effects. <a
href="http://youtube.com">Youtube</a> serves millions of crappy videos per
year, <a href="http://pandora.com">pandora.com</a> sends millions of bits worth
of music over the wire every day, and you can head over to <a
href="http://espn.go.com">espn.com</a> and check out the highlight's of
tonight's Red Sox - Yankees game.<p>
And do you notice something that all three of those sites have in common? All
of them use <a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/">Flash</a> to
serve their content. So, while I'm not a big fan of people developing in a
closed environment that costs <a
href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832105307">ungodly
amounts of money</a> to develop in, and leaves *nix developers in the dark, I'm
a bigger fan of innovative products and services continuing to crop up on the
internet.<p>
Mozilla, information may want to be free, but it won't be if it can't
outcompete the closed kind. You are in a unique position to make that happen,
but you're falling behind. We all know about Java applets, and Flash has been
around for a while, but with the release of <a
href="http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/">Silverlight</a> and <a
href="http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Apollo">Apollo</a>, the web is
threatening to sneak away from us. It's awfully tempting that one lets me write
rich web interfaces <a
href="http://aleiby.blogspot.com/2007/05/silverlight.html">in my favorite
language</a>, and the other lets me <a
href="http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Apollo:Articles:Taking_Apollo_Applications_Offline">bring
my applications offline</a>.<p>
So while it's all well and good to post about <a
href="http://shaver.off.net/diary/2007/05/10/the-high-cost-of-some-free-tools/">the
high cost of free tools</a>, and talk about how important Freedom is, you need
to bring us a viable alternative. Give me the tools to write a <a
href="http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/05/flash-silverlight-and-javafx-all-look.html">file
upload box</a> that doesn't suck; Give me the tools to show my users <a
href="http://ajaxian.com/archives/opera-element-proposal">video</a> and audio;
Give me the tools to put the closed-source developers to shame. Maybe someday
SVG <a href="http://www.themaninblue.com/writing/perspective/2007/04/18/">won't
suck</a>, or <a
href="http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Drawing_Graphics_with_Canvas"><canvas></a>
will be a viable answer to flash.<p>
If that day doesn't come soon, it may come too late.<p>
<b>Update:</b> jerf at reddit <a
href="http://programming.reddit.com/info/1sijf/comments/c1sj3h">takes a
slightly different angle</a>, but says some things that I think but that I failed to get
across.<p>
I have been using Firefox since it was <a
href="http://www.flexbeta.net/main/printarticle.php?id=89">Phoenix 0.1</a>. It
was the best browser then, and it is the best browser now. The first computer
language that I ever <a
href="http://vzone.virgin.net/sizzling.jalfrezi/iniframe.htm">learned</a> was
HTML, and I learned it largely by hitting "View Source". Without it, who knows
if I would be a programmer today?<p>
Today, though, the world is a different one than it was back in 1998 when I was
plunking around with HTML. Broadband has (finally!) gotten widespread adoption,
and with it the web has gotten past animated rollover effects. <a
href="http://youtube.com">Youtube</a> serves millions of crappy videos per
year, <a href="http://pandora.com">pandora.com</a> sends millions of bits worth
of music over the wire every day, and you can head over to <a
href="http://espn.go.com">espn.com</a> and check out the highlight's of
tonight's Red Sox - Yankees game.<p>
And do you notice something that all three of those sites have in common? All
of them use <a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/">Flash</a> to
serve their content. So, while I'm not a big fan of people developing in a
closed environment that costs <a
href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832105307">ungodly
amounts of money</a> to develop in, and leaves *nix developers in the dark, I'm
a bigger fan of innovative products and services continuing to crop up on the
internet.<p>
Mozilla, information may want to be free, but it won't be if it can't
outcompete the closed kind. You are in a unique position to make that happen,
but you're falling behind. We all know about Java applets, and Flash has been
around for a while, but with the release of <a
href="http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/">Silverlight</a> and <a
href="http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Apollo">Apollo</a>, the web is
threatening to sneak away from us. It's awfully tempting that one lets me write
rich web interfaces <a
href="http://aleiby.blogspot.com/2007/05/silverlight.html">in my favorite
language</a>, and the other lets me <a
href="http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Apollo:Articles:Taking_Apollo_Applications_Offline">bring
my applications offline</a>.<p>
So while it's all well and good to post about <a
href="http://shaver.off.net/diary/2007/05/10/the-high-cost-of-some-free-tools/">the
high cost of free tools</a>, and talk about how important Freedom is, you need
to bring us a viable alternative. Give me the tools to write a <a
href="http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/05/flash-silverlight-and-javafx-all-look.html">file
upload box</a> that doesn't suck; Give me the tools to show my users <a
href="http://ajaxian.com/archives/opera-element-proposal">video</a> and audio;
Give me the tools to put the closed-source developers to shame. Maybe someday
SVG <a href="http://www.themaninblue.com/writing/perspective/2007/04/18/">won't
suck</a>, or <a
href="http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Drawing_Graphics_with_Canvas"><canvas></a>
will be a viable answer to flash.<p>
If that day doesn't come soon, it may come too late.<p>
<b>Update:</b> jerf at reddit <a
href="http://programming.reddit.com/info/1sijf/comments/c1sj3h">takes a
slightly different angle</a>, but says some things that I think but that I failed to get
across.<p>