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[Panajev2001a]

One of the questions I’m asked most frequently by innocent observers of the Firefox phenomenon is: “What’s all the fuss about? It just surfs the web.”

You’d think this would be frustrating—I did surrender any semblance of a normal adolescent life to work on it, after all—but few people understand that this is actually the highest compliment they could offer. Building “just a browser” that “just surfs the web” was, after all, the original intent. These were the same people sighing that Google just searched the web 7 years ago.

You’d be hard pressed to believe it with the ongoing media circus, but Firefox has humble origins in a product that—if everything went as planned—was designed to be invisible to the person using it. I remember sitting on IRC with Dave, Ben and Asa painstakingly debating feature after feature, button after button, pixel after pixel, always trying to answer the same basic question: does this help mom use the web? If the answer was no, the next question was: does this help mom’s teenage son use the web? If the answer was still no, the feature was either excised entirely or (occasionally) relegated to config file access only. Otherwise, it was often moved into an isolated realm that was outside of mom’s reach but not her son’s, like the preferences window.

This policy emerged from our basic belief that, for the 99% of the world who don’t shop at Bang & Olufsen, a technology should be nothing more than a means to an end. Software is no different. In this case, people had plenty of obstacles to the web already—popup ads, spyware, and that damn monkey who gets punched and keeps coming back for more—before Netscape decided that the only way to surf was with the aid of twelve managers, fourteen not-so-subtle links back to AOL web properties and other inane gadgetry. This is why, even though plenty of people made fun of us for it, Ben’s original “Why Firefox?” document celebrated that “Firefox offers 2% more space to web pages than Mozilla, 4% more than Internet Explorer, and a whopping 10% more than Opera.” Giving people unadulterated access to the web became something of a religion, and every wasted pixel, button or dialog that impeded it was a demon that nagged at us. Every time someone was “pulled out of the dream", every time they had to stop and realize that they were using a browser called Firefox and not just the amorphous “Web,” was a personal failure.

I believe this kind of development focus is most responsible for Firefox’s success today. I love asking someone what they love most in Firefox, watching them fumble for a moment, and then stammer something to the effect of “it’s…it’s just better.” The fact is that for most people, there is no one life-changing feature in Firefox, no “ah ha!” moment; the Big Thing is the sum of a thousand little moments where Firefox worked with them, not against them. If it does nothing else, I hope Firefox reminds software developers that despite “Internet time” and the constant pressure to reinvent, usability is still king. That the press is covering Firefox so intently suggests the maturity of the industry and the gradual departure from “Next Big Thing” mania.

Of course, the idea that software should be invisible to its users is somewhat sobering to its developers. Ask any seasoned programmer if coding is an art or a science and he will invariably claim the former. The frustrating difference is that art is inherently an end unto itself, created to be consumed and enjoyed. People enjoy the painting, but software is just the paintbrush. Until some programmers come to terms with the hard realization that nobody actually wants to use software for the sake of using software, I fear we will be forced to cope with ever more task panes and other distractions that seem to serve no purpose other than to remind us that someone worked late hours creating the program.

http://blakeross.com/index.php?p=9

This is the mindset that should rule OSS development.

P.S.: I have always been a Mozilla Suite (SeaMonkey) whore and although I have it for Composer and Mozilla Mail mainly, Firefox is THE web browser for me now: it definately won me over... firefox + Qute Theme ] tons of great little extensions .

 

[aoi tsuki]

does this help mom use the web? If the answer was no, the next question was: does this help mom’s teenage son use the web? If the answer was still no, the feature was either excised entirely or (occasionally) relegated to config file access only. Otherwise, it was often moved into an isolated realm that was outside of mom’s reach but not her son’s, like the preferences window.

That's such a great philosophy. Most of Firefox's users won't care that it renders pages with greater compliance to W3C standard than IE (though perhaps less than Opera), or that it uses RSS feeds. They just want something that works, and better than IE if they're going to switch. The intermediate users will add extensions and change their options, and the power users will head straight to the config file. You don't have to sell your product to the second two groups, and as much as i like Opera, i think it tries to hard to sell to the intermediate users, which limits its audience.

i really think they should go a step further and include a beginner's mode with "Getting Started" tutorial that guides users through performing basic tasks like adding extensions, the adantages of mouse gestures. It's available through links on their site, but i think adding a quick tutorial would make the process to using the browser even more seamless and rewarding to new users.

 

[NetMapel]

I beg to differ, but Firefox does not have "4% more space than IE" if the IE user is smart enough.

 

[JackFrost2012]

I beg to differ, but Firefox does not have "4% more space than IE" if the IE user is smart enough.

How is an IE user smart at all?

 

[Rahul]

On the other hand, one of the biggest problems with usability and user experience design is that minimalism gets in the way of "obvious face presence" eg. the big red button that mom needs to click to get what she wants. Cram it all together in a bar at the top and she just sees a bar with a bunch of icons and gets confused. I think the Mozilla team have done a good job at making such a minimalistic toolbar usable, but there's always room for improvement. Opera has excellent interfaces, but then they go and secede their ideology to their marketing branch and end up with an ad in the interface. What a waste.