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Firefox 1.5 still shy of ­

2005-09-04 01:42 2 Comments

Asa Dotzler says Firefox 1.5 is almost ready. I wonder whether it will finally get the handling of soft hyphens (­) right. Bugzilla says it's not so.

And here I was hoping for a standards-supporting, mature browser. Maybe I'll switch to Opera after all. They might not be Open Source, but they're open to user demands, something Firefox development seems to lack at the moment.

(Don't spam the bug, there's a link to a mozillazine forum thread in the last comment, use that.)

Martey

They might not be Open Source, but they’re open to user demands, something Firefox development seems to lack at the moment.

From Bugzilla Etiquette:

"Open Source" is not the same as "the developers must do my bidding." The only person who has any obligation to fix the bugs you want fixed is you. Never act as if you expect someone to fix a bug by a particular date or release. This is merely obnoxious, and is likely to get the bug ignored.

It is worth noting that the bug is in the Gecko core, and so it should have been resolved before Firefox 1.5 branched from the Mozilla trunk if it was to be added into Firefox 1.5. Of course, since the bug has not been marked WONTFIX, it is almost certain that if a patch to fix this problem were added to the ticket, it would be accepted into the Mozilla codebase. The fact that no such patch exists means that not enough people (you and me included) care enough to fix it, either by coding it ourselves and raising a bounty.

September 4, 2005 8:10am

moeffju

“Open Source” is not the same as “the developers must do my bidding.”

I know, I know. However, the Mozilla people make the claim of developing a standards-compliant, fast, user-friendly, etc., web browser. To fulfill that claim, correct handling of soft hyphens is important, especially in these times of narrow columns and lots of international content. The comments on the bug give examples for various languages where it's rather hard to work without semi-automatic linebreaks. To say "by never breaking, we're minimally fulfilling the spec" might be correct, but it's not helpful.

I find it unfortunate that there are so many bugs in bugzilla, some as old as seven years, that no one cares to fix, either because an elite of developers disagrees with the opinion of the customer base, or simply out of desinterest. And no one can expect web designers or even end users to learn C and the intricate details of the Gecko codebase to fix something that one of the core developers could probably do in 30 minutes. It's a nice idea of Open Source that "anyone can fix it", but it's simply not realistic. By making the claim to standards compliancy and user friendliness, the developers have taken on a certain obligation to fix such bugs, IMO.

The bounty seems to be around $20 + "a couple" and other wishes. I'll throw in another $20. If it takes someone just one hour to fix, that's a neat hourly rate.

Is there some official Mozilla bounty program where anyone can offer? I fear that the thread is hidden a bit too well in those forums.

September 4, 2005 3:58pm