It's going to be an exciting year. Not since the run up to Firefox 1.0 have I been so excited about the content of a release. Firefox 2 is going to be great.

I've updated the Firefox 2 Roadmap Page on mozilla.org with some more detail about how we're going to get there, based on Chris Beard's blog about Mozilla Product Strategy. I'll summarize briefly here, and call out some of the important work that's getting done right now.

Firstly, Firefox 2 is based off the same Gecko branch that shipped Firefox 1.5, so they should be compatible from a web developer's point of view. APIs might be added, but none should be changed.

From a development point of view, the idea of Firefox 2 is to deliver significant user experience enhancements on top of a relatively stable rendering engine as significant retooling is done on the main development trunk for what will become Firefox 3, and deliver them in a timely fashion. By being deliberately cautious with our goals for the rendering engine, we hope to avoid long cycles of shake and bake that delayed Firefox 1.5 (which had more substantial Gecko changes than user interface changes).

So, without further ado, some of the most important features from the planning brainstorming page:

New Bookmarks and History

Improve the browser's Bookmarks and History systems to improve their effectiveness as renavigation aids while at the same time improving the back end for speed and extensibility.

Tabbed Browsing Enhancements

Make tabs behave more like windows in the operating system environment, making them behave more as users would expect.

Improved Basic Content Type Handling

For things like RSS/Atom feeds, mail links etc. Improve discovery and handling user interfaces.

Web Search

Improve the discoverability and adaptability of the search UI within Firefox.

Bug Fixing

Bug fixing at all levels where risk is low and yield high, e.g. the blank tab download bug, platform stability, etc.

Some additional things we would like to look at in the Firefox 2 timeframe include:

Visual Uplift

A freshen of the visual design of Firefox while maintaining high levels of system integration.

Inline Spell Check

The rise of applications like web mail, blogging etc highlight the weaknesses of HTML's textarea widget. We should at the very least offer people the ability to spell check their submissions.

Exit Survey

We'd like to know why people leave Firefox. A survey on uninstall would help us find ways to make the software better in future versions.

UI Consolidation and Simplification

Consolidate and simplify user interface in the browser window tying together features in meaningful ways where possible.

There are many other ideas floating around, this is just a brief snapshot of some of the high priority items on our plates. If we get this done, we'll be satisfied!

At Lotusphere next week, the IBM Software Group is poised to announce updated Mac OS X support in the latest Notes client. In addition, the company will pledge big-time support for the new Intel-based Macs due later this year, sources said.

IBM’s Workplace Portal and Collaboration group, often known simply as Lotus, fields the Domino collaboration server, Notes client and Workplace portfolios.

The older Notes 6.5 client supports Mac OS 10.3 but thus far the current Notes 7 client has not. While Macs comprise a small percentage of business desktops, their users constitute a very vocal and influential minority, solution providers said. “Mac support for Lotus is a check-box item,” said Jim Murphy, practice manager for Strategic Computer Solutions, a Syracuse, N.Y.-based IBM partner. “We have a lot of health-care customers and maybe 1 percent of a company’s research department is on Macs but they have 99 percent of the influence.”

An IBM spokesman would not comment on the Mac plans, although in an interview late last week, Ken Bisconti, IBM’s vice president of Workplace, Portal and Collaboration products said to “stay tuned” for Mac-related news.

Industry observers say this newfound Apple love is actually a throwback to an era in which IBM and Apple collaborated on projects such as Taligent in the early 1990s. In that project, the two companies teamed up on “Pink,” an object-oriented operating system designed to take on Windows. It failed.

Some might say since Apple switched to Intel over IBM’s PowerPC chips last year, the two companies would be at odds, but they both face Microsoft on many fronts.

While not commenting specifically on Lotusphere plans, Judith Hurwitz, president of Hurwitz & Associates, Waltham, Mass., said she expects IBM to do all it can, once again, to marginalize Windows. “They do not want Windows to be the gate to everything,” she said.

At the Orlando event, Mike Rhodin, general manager of Workplace, Portal and Collaboration products, also will show off new Sametime products. Sametime is IBM’s secure realtime communication infrastructure comprising instant messaging, Web conferencing and white boarding. Products based on the updated infrastructure will include “social networking” offerings for business, Bisconti said.

“We will productize capabilities we’ve used in-house,” he said. One application, SkillTap, used by IBM consultants to broadcast requests for advice or service, will be available next year, he said. “We’ve had 60,000 users on it, consultants who can opt into communities of interest—Linux, collaboration, portals. If I’m an engineer on-site and I can’t figure out how to install the portal on Red Hat Linux, I can broadcast an SOS to other experts,” Bisconti said.

Sametime will now embed an Eclipse-based realtime application model to allow “mash ups” with other Web 2.0 applications, including AJAX-based services such as Google Maps. IBM also plans to showcase e-forms technology purchased with PureEdge; the soon-to-ship Workplace 2.6 managed client; and real code for Project Hannover, aka Domino/Notes 8, for the first time.

一起一起, 为开源服务, 反微软垄断.

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

Video Lectures by Hal Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs has been MIT's introductory pre-professional computer science subject since 1981. It emphasizes the role of computer languages as vehicles for expressing knowledge and it presents basic principles of abstraction and modularity, together with essential techniques for designing and implementing computer languages. This course has had a worldwide impact on computer science curricula over the past two decades. The accompanying textbook by Hal Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman, and Julie Sussman is available for purchase from the MIT Press, which also provides a freely available on-line version of the complete textbook.

很遗憾, 一直都说要看这本书, 却一直耐不下性子, just no reason.

在想自己是否太功利, 急于求成, 反而忽视了一些纯正的技术. 也许这就是外家子和内功的区别吧. 苦练内功, 这是我给自己定的一个目标. 要沉下去!

同时广告一下:  这里指的Video Lectures校内有, 在mirror上.