Last month, Firefox founder Blake Ross was kind enough to participate in a blogworking interview where you, the users get to ask questions and have them answered. We believe this departure from the traditional interview format, where a variety of people ask things from multiple points of view create a much more well-rounded article. Here are the results of the questions you asked.

michael iva:
Ok Blake, WHY should I be interested in Firefox instead of it's competition? List "all" the reasons WHY. Sell it to me. Talk me into it. What is in it for me? What are "all" of the benefits, now, and in the future? I'm waiting. . . . .

Blake Ross: Michael, I’d rather not get into a feature-by-feature comparison, since such charts are freely available on the Web, and it makes me sound like a loudmouthed car salesman. So I’ll speak here from the bird’s eye view, and in relation to our primary competitor (and the world’s most used browser by far): Microsoft Internet Explorer.

First and foremost, I encourage people to use Firefox because as a non-profit organization, our only motivation is the user, and I think that kind of environment produces the best software. Now, that sounds mundane–surely every piece of software is produced for users–until you consider that our primary competitor, Microsoft, stopped working on its Internet Explorer browser in 2001, as soon as it crushed competitor Netscape. This was a piece of software used by over 90% of the web-browsing population–over 700 million users!–and Microsoft just stopped working on it for four years, abandoning users at a time when pop-up ads and spyware reached new highs. I can’t trust a company that comes and goes with the tide, nor can I recommend that my parents entrust their online safety and livelihood to one. Microsoft is back in the game now that Firefox has appeared on its competitive radar, but there’s no telling where it’ll be next year, or the year after that. Mozilla (the organization behind Firefox) has been developing browsers for eight years now, despite the fact that for five of those, it had virtually no marketshare. We’ll still be pushing the Web forward ten years from now independent of what our competitors are up to.

Another primary reason to use Firefox is that it offers better security when transmitting private information (such as credit card numbers or social security numbers) or files over the Internet. Fewer security holes have been discovered in Firefox than in Internet Explorer, and while there is plenty of (valid) debate over whether this might largely be due to Firefox’s smaller marketshare, three facts are indisputable:

1. Firefox was built with security in mind, while Internet Explorer was not. The IE platform was built in the mad dash of the (first?) browser wars–the geek’s version of the Cold War, a time when features and finish mattered more than mundane elements like security, stability and compatibility as Microsoft and Netscape battled for users. The IE team has freely admitted that security was not a primary concern in those days, and that they must now retroactively safeguard the platform. This is a very difficult thing to do. By contrast, work on Firefox started after the browser wars ended and continued at a more leisurely pace over a six-year period, during which time security was always first priority.
   
2. Firefox is open-source, which means that its code is freely available for scrutiny by any security expert or firm in the world. We have no incentive, financial or otherwise, to conceal security flaws–in fact, we pay experts $500 for each flaw they find! Just last week, renowned security firm Symantec had to revise one of its security reports to show *both* vendor-reported flaws *and* flaws the vendor did not disclose–an adjustment that dramatically increased Microsoft’s count. Again, it goes back to a question of trust.
   
3. By all accounts, flaws in Firefox are patched more quickly than those in Internet Explorer. Since all browsers have security flaws (it’s just the nature of creating such a complex and networked program), the best measurement of your online safety is how quickly those flaws are fixed. After all, a program with 100 patched flaws is still more secure than a program with one unpatched flaw.

   

Oh, shoot–this ended up sounding like a marketing pitch anyways, which is why I tend to shy away from these types of questions. So let me close here by reminding you that I don’t profit or benefit if (hopefully when) you switch to Firefox. You may not like my answers, but at least they’re honest :)

Sunil Shibad:
   I maybe a bit late but here is a question: The new version of Firefox kepps crashing! I love Firefox and it was quick, simple and increased browing speed. All my friends here in India are facing the same problem. Thanks.

Blake Ross: Sunil, sorry to hear you’re having trouble! In general, we’ve had very positive feedback about the 1.5 release, which I assume is what you’re referring to. There are complaints of excessive memory usage that we’re working to resolve, but crashing hasn’t been a significant problem. To help you, I need to know more specific information about the crash, such as which system you’re using (Windows? Linux?) and when the crash occurs (when you visit a website? If so, which site?).

shaun arora:
What has worked in the history of marketing browser apps? If you were google, would you continue to prey off browsers or create a browser? Or a next-generation browser? Do you feel that Firefox is threatened by Google and Microsoft?

Blake Ross: Shaun, I wouldn’t characterize Google as “preying” off browsers, nor do we consider the company a threat. Google is actually one of our partners in the industry among many (such as Yahoo and Oracle); in exchange for our using Google as the default search engine in Firefox’s search box, the Mozilla Foundation receives a portion of the profits that accrue when a user searches from the box and clicks on an advertisement on the resulting page. I want to point out here that from the day we started the Firefox project, long before Google had ever heard of us, we chose Google as the default engine because it was (and continues to be) the best engine available. Although we now receive revenue from Google that goes back into the project, this was not a business decision, and we may decide to change the default engine at any time if Google ceases to be the best choice for our users.

As far as the history of marketing browser applications, the criteria by which a browser is judged (and thus the way the browser is marketed) has changed considerably over the past decade. Page load time, for example, used to be a major consideration, but in an era of broadband, I doubt that our users care if Firefox loads pages 10% faster than Internet Explorer. Likewise, we’re finally beginning to achieve cross-browser standardization in terms of the languages used to create websites, so site compatibility and proprietary features are becoming less and less of an issue. Indeed, the issues at the center of browser marketing today–security; ease of use; and battling information overload (via features such as Firefox’s tabbed browsing)–reflect the Internet’s newfound ubiquity in our culture.

ghislain tenneson:
I'm a bit afraid of being to serious. I'm a French student in Paris and I am in need of an expert opinion. Firefox is born from the assumption that the Internet must be as free and simple as possible for users. (correct me if I'm wrong). I would like to know your vision of what tomorrow's technologies (beyond internet) should be.

Blake Ross: Ghislain, you’re correct about our intentions with Firefox. Your question is very broad, but I’ll do my best to avoid answering it in an equally vague fashion.

In general, I believe all technology going forward needs to be created with Firefox’s principles in mind: it has to be simple and it has to be standardized. We seem to be living right now in a geek’s world, in which we must have intimate technical knowledge of every device we use. There’s really no reason that the average person should have to understand codecs to watch a movie, voltage to change a light bulb or IP addresses to get on the Internet. In the software industry, this is a cardinal sin known as “exposing implementation details,” but unfortunately it has become our way of life.

There are almost certainly going to be some technically minded folks who read this and skewer me for advocating that we “dumb down” society, but it’s usually a dangerous cocktail of arrogance and misunderstanding that breeds this response. There is a difference between dumbing things down and making things easier to use in a world where we all have plenty to worry about as it is.

So I’ll echo Larry Page’s sentiments in his CES keynote: we need to get to a place where devices just work and automatically interoperate via a single, standardized connection. And we’ll get there eventually, because it’s eminently superior. Unfortunately, it’s going to take many decades before all the parties involved realize that such collaboration is infinitely more lucrative than the every-man-for-himself marketplace we live in today. It’s just another case where the technology is already there and we humans have yet to catch up.

Jesse Tayler:
   I'd love to see just a few comments on where the future of browsers is in the near term and longer term. Browsers are now a bit of a platform - I mean, adholes itself is more application than website - and then you look at google maps or something and you wonder how can we keep this platform simple and secure while still moving in technical directions that open up new possibility?

Blake Ross: Jesse, great question. As it happens, some of the original Firefox team and I have been building our idea of the next-generation Web platform for a little over a year now as part of an as-yet-unnamed project. I’ll share some brief ideas here, but some of these may not be tangibly understood until we release.

First of all, with regards to the future of browsers, I expect them to remain fairly constant over the next 5-7 years. They will certainly grow more stable, more secure and easier to use, and they will also become more powerful platforms as they implement more Web standards, but from a user’s perspective, I don’t expect the browser itself to change all that much in the medium term. Browsers don’t evolve very quickly because they must all evolve in lock-step for the overall Web experience to improve. In other words, if a Web site makes use of a feature that has only been implemented in a single browser, that Web site won’t work, or won’t work as well, in any other browser or Web-enabled device.

This kind of limitation was one of the motivations behind my decision to develop my next project independently of Firefox and the Mozilla environment. By taking matters into our own hands, we can make our platform work not just atop Firefox, but also atop Internet Explorer and other browsers, without having to wait for each vendor to catch up. Frankly, we’re too excited about the future to wait.

Having said that, what kinds of things do I see coming down the pipeline? Like you, I believe the future lies in powerful Web applications, but I’m glad you mentioned *new* possibilities. It’s depressing to see how many startups these days pursue the perfunctory mission of porting existing desktop metaphors, such as windows and files, and applications, such as Microsoft Word, straight onto the web, as if the medium were no different from its desktop predecessor. In my opinion, they’re missing the point of the Web and the huge opportunities it affords. The Web is the ultimate social and presentational environment, and a true web platform would play to those strengths.

So while I do believe we’re going to move most of our lives online, I think the platform that gets us there is going to look and feel like the Web, not the desktop, which means it’s going to be infinitely customizable, social, and above all: fun. Everything isn’t going to reduce down to a generic file or folder, and “applications” will be more than just utilities; each piece of content we own, whether it’s a picture, a recipe, a news clipping, a quote, or an address, will be offered in the rich and stylistic language we’ve come to expect of the Web. Uploading will be completely transparent, finally ending an era where your content naturally lands on the desktop and must be manually copied to the Web. You will always be one click away from sharing it with any audience and getting their feedback, from your twice-removed cousin in the Philippines to the entire world, using the same interface you personally use to view and work with it–no more bland, abstract file system underlying everything. And of course, your content will be available offline, or wherever you go.

We spent half of our time developing Firefox imagining what a true Web platform would look like, and now we’re building it. If you want to join the conversation, if any of this sounds intriguing, or if you just enjoy Firefox and want to see what’s next, you can sign up to hear when we launch.

Olivia McKinsey:
How have the ad blocking plug-ins that you offer positively or adversely affected your distribution rate? What kind of work arounds have you seen from advertisers?

Blake Ross: Olivia, unfortunately the ad-blocking game never ends. As you suggest, each time we block a new kind of advertisement, another kind appears–which underscores the importance of choosing an organization who never abandons the game, as I touched on earlier. In terms of pop-up ads, the most difficult kind to block technically speaking are the kind that don’t actually open in a separate window, but that instead appear in an overlapping box inside the page. While these appear to be “pop-up ads” to the user, the browser just sees them as another box that happens to sit in the middle of the page. We’re always investigating new ways to reduce annoyances on the Web, but as usual, we encourage users to vote with their patronage. Advertisements probably help fund many of your favorite Web sites, but if they’re too intrusive, let the company know.

As far as the impact of ad-blocking plugins on our adoption rate, extensions in general are used by such a small percentage of the population that I don’t believe any particular one has visibly helped or hurt us. The extensions platform in general, though, has certainly boosted our adoption among the power-user crowd.

Jason Kerr:
Blake, Much of Firefox and other Mozilla based apps are framed around XUL/XML, which is part of what has made Firefox so extensible. There seems to be a lot of jazz around these technologies. I've even seen XML find it's way into the init scripts of some otherwise obscure Linux distros. BUT, while the variety of XUL extentions is nice, really nice - in fact some are listed as "full-blown apps"- even so, I'm yet to see anything since Firefox that quite "takes the cake" in the same way. Have these tools been stretched to the limit? Or what's the next big step?

Also, I've been toying around with an idea for a Firefox extension/app but wouldn't have the first clue how to code it. It doesn't seem to fit the mold of the usual bugzilla suggestion (I could be wrong), but I'm crazy keen on seeing it realized. How might I go about getting it noticed/worked on/working with someone on it?

Blake Ross: Jason, regarding finding support around your extension idea: as with any idea, the best way to get traction is to make your vision as real and tangible as possible to others. If you can’t code it, you need to get someone who *can* sufficiently excited that it’s worth their time and attention. Could you mock it up in Photoshop? Or sketch it out on paper, accompanied by a proposal? Once you’ve painted the picture, try sharing it with the community via the MozillaZine.org forums (especially the Extensions forum), via SpreadFirefox.com, and via our newsgroups (e.g. mozilla.dev.apps.firefox and mozilla.dev.extensions).

As far as creating the “next big thing” in XUL and related technologies, it’s certainly possible–it’s as possible as in any other language or development environment, which is to say, very very difficult, since you have to have a big idea first. XUL can’t help with that ;) Admittedly, part of the reason there haven’t been many standalone XUL applications is because XUL has traditionally been closely coupled with the Mozilla core. We have a project under way called “XULRunner” that seeks to isolate the XUL runtime and make it more suitable as a foundation for any kind of application, and you can see the fruits of that effort in projects such as the recently launched Songbird.

Jeffrey Riman:
How do you see open source products like Mozilla influencing the direction of companies like Microsoft and Apple? Can open source become a shared space that serves as a meeting ground for all platforms?

Blake Ross: Jeffrey, once they get over their knee-jerk reaction to attack the development model (which isn’t going away), I think open source will ultimately benefit companies like Microsoft and (to a lesser extent, since they already do well in this regard) Apple by pushing them to create not just better technology, but better products. There’s a big difference. Open source commoditizes the complex underlying technologies that power all kinds of products. For example, as a developer today, I can create a database-driven app at no cost using one of the industry’s best database platforms, MySQL. That means less time mucking around with the underlying plumbing (technology), and more time carefully refining and polishing the overall user experience (product). Of course, all my competitors are starting from the same place–so you can see how everyone is pushed toward creating the superior experience.

Most of the open-source projects that preceded Firefox were academic exercises that focused on the technology itself, with little or no concern given to creating products usable by the mainstream. (Indeed, many open-source projects ridicule the mainstream.) One of the goals of Firefox is to persuade open-source developers that they can create both the underlying platform *and* the end-user products, and that in fact it can be much more rewarding to cater to both the (very small) development community and the (unbounded) mainstream of hundreds of millions. A key component of that, of course, is marketing, which has traditionally been a loaded word in open-source communities. Asa Dotzler and I founded the SpreadFirefox.com initiative to demonstrate that marketing can be genuine but still as effective as the glossy campaigns of our big-budget rivals (155 million Firefox downloads and counting).

Jeremy Feldman:
What's your opinion of where Apple has taken Safari, and how do you think it compares/holds up to Firefox?

Blake Ross: Jeremy, first, I’ll admit up front that I’m a Windows user. OK, there goes half the room–but I think it’s important while developing software to live in the same world as your users, painful as that world might be, and right now that’s Windows for 90%+ of them.

I think Safari is a solid browser, and Apple is a solid competitor in this space. They are as obsessed with creating simple, elegant user experiences as we are, and in fact one of the leads on Safari–David Hyatt–was my cofounder on Firefox.

Safari loses to Firefox in two significant areas. First, its core page rendering engine (”KHTML”), is not as compatible with the Web as Firefox’s engine (”Gecko”), which means that sites are more likely to look or function incorrectly in Safari than they are in Firefox. And second, Safari is not the versatile extensions platform that Firefox is. Apple designs very good products in general, but if something rubs you the wrong way in the Safari interface, or if it’s missing a feature you desperately need, you’re likely going to have to live with it–each and every time you use the Web. With Firefox, you’ll probably find what you’re looking for among the hundreds of extensions others have already created.

However, Firefox is slower than Safari overall, such as in starting the browser or creating a new window.

John Morris:
    Are you afraid of being the next Shawn Fanning?

Blake Ross: John, there are so many ways to hear that question. Shawn created something that tens of millions of people used and woke a stuffy, out-of-touch industry from its pathetic slumber. I can think of worse things to do at 19.

But I assume you’re talking about his legal troubles, in which case: no, I don’t expect to find myself there. Although I’m about the age he was when he created Napster (I’m 20), he seems to have been more interested in creating software for his generation. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I enjoy creating software that appeals to all generations, particularly the older and less technically savvy generations that too many developers seem to forget about. And since they seem to be less interested in breaking the law, I think I’ll stay out of trouble ;)

Roy Moskowitz:
Blake, I tried downloading Firefox for the Pocket PC operating system on my non-phone based PDA. It didn't work. I need to be able to use firefox because the email section of the allegedly revamped AOL.com website doesn't support the Pocket PC version of IE. This means I can no longer check my AOL email with my PDA. Please advise.

Blake Ross: Roy, when you say you downloaded Firefox, do you mean you went to www.getfirefox.com and downloaded that version? You need a version of Firefox code-named Minimo (short for “Mini-Mozilla”) that is specifically designed to run on PDAs. See the Minimo page which links to a Windows CE version. As you can tell from the version number, Minimo is still pre-alpha technology, so be careful.

Thanks everyone for your questions! Please feel free to follow up right here in the forum. I’ve also just released Firefox for Dummies that goes into both the how *and* why of Firefox.