Talk:Firefox/Archive 10

message: Some sections especially the google relationship one needs a rewriting, it sounds like a telegram or that it was written by a non english speaking person 201.252.216.216 09:52, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Grammar 

message: Schapel, could you elaborate on this edit? On WP:AWW we can read: "Avoid "some people say" statements without sources. Weasel words are words or phrases that seemingly support statements without attributing opinions to verifiable sources.". But I gave reliable source. LWN is "a computing news site (or webzine) with an emphasis on Free/Libre/Open-Source Software and software for Unix-like operating systems." 193.219.28.146 02:37, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, you gave a source for the statement "By some accounts, this feature will turn Firefox into spyware." But those are still weasel words. Who says that? If a statement can't stand on its own without weasel words, it lacks neutral point of view. Without any sources, it is also unverifiable. Either a source for the statement should be found, or the statement should be removed. Unless we can give a reliable source that says "this feature will turn Firefox into spyware," standing on its own without weasel words, the statement should be removed. -- Schapel 02:58, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: "Who says that?" Well, author of the article given as reliable source. This is the same as citing opinion of editor of Forbes that FF is "the best browser". 193.219.28.146 03:09, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No, the author of the article says "By some accounts, this feature will turn Firefox into spyware." Who says "this feature will turn Firefox into spyware?" It is not the same as citing Forbes that Fx is the best browser, because Forbes says it's the best browser. Anyone can verify that Forbes makes that statement. Forbes doesn't say "some say Firefox is the best browser." Do you understand the difference? -- Schapel 03:27, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the point Schapel is trying to make is that saying 'by some accounts' forbes is just being a proxy for those other accounts and without providing a source themselves forbes becomes unreliable in that article. The forbes article stating that firefox was the best browser did so directly and didn't say 'some think it is the best browser'. I hope this helps clear this up.-Localzuk(talk) 22:56, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Revert of my edit 

message: So, rather than be accused of hiding edits I am posting here first. This talk page is getting too long again. Time for an archive?-Localzuk(talk) 23:05, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Go for it. It's not like it's being deleted. And it's not like people seem to have a problem with brinign old topics back up if they feel they weren't resolved. Chris Cunningham 12:56, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Done. Nothing constructive lost. The less flame wars in here the better. Chris Cunningham 16:40, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Archiving 

message: I see our anonymous editor is re-adding redundant information to the Licensing section. Could you please remove the redundant statements, such as "Mozilla Firefox ... contains several elements with copyright and trademark restrictions" and "the official artwork is trademarked and copyrighted." With the redundancies left in, the section seems poorly written to me. Thanks. -- Schapel 23:55, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've taken a stab at cleaning it up; I've (hopefully) removed the redundancies, and done what I can to improve the style and clarity of the text (the licensing is a complex issue, though, so I don't consider this anything more than a rough attempt). Ubernostrum 04:23, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Licensing section 

message: I have seen this article go wrong, this is reaching the point of being stupid, this is an encyclopedia, not a collection of internet quotes about a piece of software and a soup opera, so my sincere opinion is this, trash the whole article and rewrite it making it minimal with these sections only:
General Description
Features
History
and thats it, no more criticism, no more praise, no more 300 quotes trying to make it look bad, good, ugly, etc. Just the solid facts
Good luck 200.82.113.37 05:43, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Um, this article is filled with facts. The quotes support the facts added in this article. So, pay attention to the article more. --esanchez, Camp Lazlo fan! 05:47, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

text: If you read the discussion page you will notice the war that is going on and that is ruining th article, thus my advice to make it minimal, there are facts that belong on an encyclopedia and facts that belong on specialized blogs like "Ill marry firefox if it was human" or "Firefox, devil reincarnated". It seems to me like the only feasible solution here, just get rid of all the unnecesary fat, im sure the user can make an opinion for himself without being spoon fed this kind of things on wikipedia 200.82.113.37 05:53, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. There are too many details and opinions being added to the article. The details belong in the daughter articles. POV rants belong on a blog or other personal website. This is one of the problems mentioned in the featured article review. Firefox is in danger of being removed as a featured article if these problems aren't fixed. The new edits are simply ruining what used to be a great article. -- Schapel 14:21, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, "Relationship with Google" is too short to make separate article, but OTOH too important to remove it completely... 193.219.28.146 23:43, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Oh, I think you're exaggerating when you write about "ruining the article". There is a lot of talk indeed, but there were not too much controversial edits actually. And about rewriting article to include only few sections -- how about doing the same with other articles about browsers before even thinking about so radical changes here? 193.219.28.146 23:43, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Others agree with me. This article is a previously featured article. However, someone recently wrote, There is an edit war going on, and editors are making poorly-sourced edits based on original research and in violation of Wikipedia:NPOV. The page has been flagged with  and , and includes many technical details which are unnecessary, citing pages from mozilla.org. Because of this, the article can also no longer be considered "Well written", since the prose is not necessarily compelling, and definitely not brilliant. This article needs significant amounts of work in order to maintain its featured article status. Others have expressed similar thoughts on this talk page. Instead of immediately disagreeing, could you look around and think about these other opinions first? What editors do you think they could be referring to? -- Schapel 00:15, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Just some friendly advice 

message: Seeing as this article is a huge mess and the talk page is a wasteland, I'm being bold and editing it heavily. At the moment it's incoherent, incomplete and far too heavily-focussed on adverts for add-ons and what random reviewers said. Chris Cunningham 14:31, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The random reviewers part is because originally those statements in a criticisms article/section that said essentially "Some people think Firefox is slow. For example, Joe Bloe from some magazine people have heard of thinks it takes too long to start up...". The statement makes sense in that context because it kept the article NPOV. Now it is indeed just random reviews of the product. I think it would be better to move statements like that into sections in the Features article. "Critical reception" is just "Criticisms" reworded, with two "pro" sentences at the start to appear balanced, and two paragraphs at the end that are off-topic.--Nonpareility 17:17, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Heavy editing 

message: Are these strictly necessary? Chris Cunningham 15:32, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I was planning to move the entire Market adoption section to its own daughter article. If I did so, I would be inclined to keep only the usage share graph, not the download table and graphs, in the summary section. Perhaps it's not necessary and we should only state that Firefox's usage share is 12% and has been growing since its initial release? -- Schapel 15:36, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  If there's enough there for its own article I'd suggest that, but I can't see such a thing being particularly useful in itself. Yeah, a simple claim and a couple of good refs should be fine. We're not trying to write an article about how awesome and popular the thing is. Chris Cunningham 16:15, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I left the graph there, but if anyone removes it I won't object. -- Schapel 16:23, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Graphs 

message: I just upgraded my Fx. As a result I can no longer save in wiki using alt-s. Any solutions pls? - Kittybrewster 23:41, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Alt-shift-S. :) Chris Cunningham 01:50, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Upgrade

message: Please be careful to use the terms for Firefox Add-ons properly.  I put in the 6 common Fx plugins -- this short list seems appropriate, and there is no real Firefox Plugins article.  But I don't know how we would decide which of 1000 extensions to mention by name here, if any.  And I doubt that the set of security-related extensions currently mentioned deserve this special distinction. 69.87.203.136 15:59, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't even see the need for the "Software ecosystem surrounding Firefox" section. The Licensing section already mentions Netscape, Flock, Songbird, and IceWeasel, the Features section/article mentions add-ons, and if it doesn't already, it should probably also mention plugins.--Nonpareility 17:02, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  It was a quick wrapper for some loosely-related items which didn't belong in whatever sections they were formerly held in. The whole article needs to be reorganised properly at some point. Chris Cunningham 17:20, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

text: I've knocked the whole section out. Add-ons are discussed under Features, Portable Firefox has its own article and I don't see why it should be discussed in this article any more than Flock or Netscape.--Nonpareility 02:40, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Extensions and Plugins

message: Pipelining, a feature than can only be enabled by changing a hidden pref, is not notable enough for inclusion in this article, since our discussion of the features of Firefox is only an overview. It may be notable enough for Features of Mozilla Firefox, but likely not as a section on its own.--Nonpareility 16:56, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Pipelining

message: *1: Forbes.com said this, not Forbes magazine. (Even click on the guy's name, it says "Former reporter at Forbes.com. "
*2: The article in question is labeled "commentary".
It would make more sense to either change it to "Arik Hesseldahl, a former reporter for Forbes.com..." or "Forbes.com calls..."
What do you think? --Indolences 03:24, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think it matters that he's not with Forbes anymore. He was with them when he wrote the piece.--Nonpareility 02:16, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  And what do you have to say about the rest of what I wrote? --Indolences 09:29, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I say,  be bold! and fix it yourself. Stale Fries 03:52, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Forbes called Firefox the best browser when it was released in 2004." 

message: Mention of "FF" as an abbreviation for Firefox has been removed from the article before, probably multiple times. I don't see the logic in it because it is an abbreviation, after all. There might be reason to remove it if usage is very minor but this isn't the case. For example, when I searched Slashdot using Google, this is what I got:
* http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=site%3Aslashdot.org+ff+firefox --- 2,030 hits
* http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=site%3Aslashdot.org+fx+firefox --- 502 hits
I could change the Google search queries around, but in general on most places on the web, "Fx" seems to be in minority use, occasionally hitting about 50-50 with "FF."  People who say FF is not an abbreviation for Firefox appear to be playing dumb. —Tokek 06:17, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: FF as abbreviation for Firefox

message: "Many features that previously distinguished Firefox from competitors are now available with Internet Explorer 7" Such as? One or two examples needed here. 196.203.17.67 19:55, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I find this incredibly incorrect.  Perhaps english is not your first language or you just misread the clause you quoted so I shall attempt to enlighten.  Nowhere in what you quoted does it indicate that IE "copied" Firefox.  Please don't manipulate quotes like that.  As a matter of fact, features such as tabs, available on Opera first or not (I don't even know if they were to tell you the truth) still distinguished Firefox from its competitors (a major one being IE, which did not have them).  Don't abuse language simply because you don't agree with something, thank you. --Oni Ookami AlfadorTalk|@ 13:57, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If a feature distinguishes Firefox, that means it is unique to Firefox. Features like tabs do not distinguish Firefox: Opera, a FF competitor, had them for years before FF 1.0, along with quite a few of FF competitors. Besides, the point wasn't that the statement quoted was untrue, it was that it needed an example because examples don't occur to the reader spontaneously. And since none occur to me, some-one else needs to do it. Any volunteers?196.203.19.243 12:03, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, there may be features that distinguish Firefox from competitors; but the way it is worded now it implies that Internet Explorer "copied" Firefox. Also, the features that are given as examples of what "distinguished" Firefox weren't unique to Firefox (RSS/Tabs), if anything Internet Explorer (6.0 and below) was distinguised by the fact that it did not have them. I think the statement that Internet Explorer now has these features is out of place - perhaps it should be mentioned in the Internet Explorer article that some of the features were based from other browsers (not necessarily just Firefox), but not in the Firefox article unless its in a section of what. If the statement as meant to say that Firefox is seen as the biggest competitor to IE in Microsoft's eyes and chose to use features from it for that reason than the sentence needs to be changed so as to not imply that those features are unique and distinguish Firefox. DarkJedi613 00:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry but the term 'distinguished' is not synonymous with 'unique'. It is a feature that allows it to stand out in some way against a selection of its competitors. In this case those features were tabs and RSS feeds and it stood out in comparison to IE6. Both Firefox and Opera exhibit these features and they distinguish themselves from IE because of them. If 4 people in a group of 50 had red hair you could say that the red hair was a distinguishing feature - but it isn't unique to any one of them. The browser market is made up of dozens of browsers, each with different features. Saying that tabs and RSS feeds don't distinguish FF from competitors because Opera had them is the equivalent of reducing the market down to only 3 browsers - and I would agree with you that 'distinguishing' would be a bad choice of words if there were only 3 browsers. (Note: A dictionary definition of distinguishing: 'Recognise or treat (someone or something) as different)' compared to unique: 'being one of a kind'.-Localzuk(talk) 00:52, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Features that IE7 copied off FF 

message: Firefox's interface is written in XUL (which is rendered by the underlying Gecko layout engine).  XUL serves much the same purpose that XAML does: XML-based GUI markup language.  For this reason it is unreasonable to suggest that Mozilla would use XAML in the next Gecko/Firefox release. 208.242.14.198 06:44, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's weaselly nonsense. Removing. Chris Cunningham 09:25, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Firefox 3.0 using XAML 

message: I believe version 2.0.0.2 has been released, im not sure of the date.  The article currently has 2.0.0.1 as the latest version
:Yea you are right. I just tried to update my Firefox and 2.0.0.2 is now available. Gdo01 00:06, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Version?