Cocoa widgets in Firefox, Thunderbird progressing nicely.
Posted on April 20, 2006
Filed Under Innovation |
When I switched to the Mac I just assumed that I’d still be using Firefox, then I experienced the crashes, the slowness, that Firefox is a memory hog, and that I didn’t have the same services that other Mac applications have… so I switched to Camino (on Om’s recomendation). I miss the extensions and bookmark bar in Firefox greatly, as well as the theme capability.
That Firefox is implementing Cocoa widgets (which make a Mac app truly a Mac app) is a good thing, and also a lesson for other applications that actually run on a client. You can’t just expect to write something in Java or PHP or Ajax or whatever and then say “it’ll run on any platform” if you really expect to support specific platforms. Windows (especially Vista) and OSX have vastly different architectures and services available for applications, and pro-sumers in those markets (who are also the source of your word of mouth) expect you to support them.
Infinite Loop: Cocoa widgets in Firefox, Thunderbird progressing nicely.: Camino is nice and all (it’s my daily browser, in fact), but Firefox is unparalleled in its plugins and installed userbase / community. One common complaint Mac users have about Firefox is that it just doesn’t feel like a native OS X application. This is a valid critisism, mostly because… Firefox isn’t a native application. Firefox abstracts away a lot of the OS-specific stuff like dialogs, context menus, and “widgets” like buttons and dropdowns in order to be more portable across platforms.
Technorati Tags: ajax, Cocoa, Mac, OSX, Vista
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My name is Jeff Nolan and I write Venture Chronicles. These are my thoughts on technology, innovation, management, public policy and pretty much anything else that I find interesting.
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