12 ms·

Some history about Firefox and BeOS. Before Firefox, there was Mozilla, which had a BeOS port (called Bezilla). Bezilla was bloated and slow. So the BeOS commun

Some history about Firefox and BeOS. Before Firefox, there was Mozilla, which had a BeOS port (called Bezilla). Bezilla was bloated and slow. So the BeOS community tried to make a stripped version of Mozilla with only the browser (minus all the bloat). This project became an inspiration to do the same for Mozilla, and that product became Firebug (or something similar - edit phoenix, then firebird), which due to trademark conflicts got renamed to Firefox that we all know today. So in a round-a-bout way, we have come full circle after 20 years, Firefox is finally ported to the platform that inspired its creation. Kind of poetic. We should write a 3-5-3 Haiku about this journey.

cdman 2y ago
I guess Firebug was the original "developer tools": https://getfirebug.com/ https://getfirebug.com/
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  It was an amazing revolution that made complex app development of JS based front ends finally tolerable.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    IE already had debugging tools, however they had to be installed either via Visual Studio or Office Developer Tools.
    - unilynx 2y ago
      Also they barely worked for anything non trivial, let alone what we now call SPAs
  - titusjohnson 2y ago
    It flat-out made training people on CSS tolerable. I could have them install the Bookmarklet (before it became an Extension), show them how to use it, and boom, instant productivity boost. Being able to dig through the DOM and figure out what element was applying excessive margin or padding reduced 80% of my "heeeelp!" requests. Within months I couldn't imagine working without it.
- biglyburrito 2y ago
  Firebug was amazing and one of the reasons I started doing front-end development again, after swearing it off because IE 5.x made it such a frustrating experience.
simcop2387 2y ago
It wasn't Firebug, that was a developer tool extension. It was first Phoenix which hit trademark issues, and then Firebird which hit trademark issues, which then became Firefox.
- Foobar8568 2y ago
  From what I remember, Firebird was more related to the database open source project which was a fork of InterBase, so at that time it was relatively well known due to its roots with IB.
- guessbest 2y ago
  Maybe it hit trademark issues, but the reason I remember from slashdot was that phoenix was already a semi-popular open source project in the debian repository, so firefox had to be named from phoenix to mozilla-phoenix. But firefox at the time still named phoenix just ran so much better on windows than linux, it was funny.
  - simcop2387 2y ago
    Both Phoenix and Firebird were over the naming and trademark clashes: For firebird, https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/mozilla-holds-fire-in-naming-fight/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/mozilla-holds-fire-i... and https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/mozillas-firebird-gets-wings-clipped/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/mozillas-fir... in this case it was AOL Time Warner that owned the Firebird trademark for the database. 2) For Phoenix, https://web.archive.org/web/20070914035447/http://www.ibphoenix.com/main.nfs?a=ibphoenix&page=ibp_Mozilla0 https://web.archive.org/web/20070914035447/http://www.ibphoe... the main reporting on it seems to be lost but wikipedia still backs it up
    - asadotzler 2y ago
      Phoenix was because of a challenge from Phoenix Technologies, the BIOS maker. Firefox was because of concerns about stomping on a small OSS project, the Firebird Database. I was responsible for all of this at Mozilla. Happy to answer any questions.
pjmlp 2y ago
With a fraction of the userbase it had 20 years ago, thanks to everyone that keeps shipping Chrome with their applications, testing only with Chrome developer tools, and so on. Anyway, congratulations to anyone involved in the port.
- badsectoracula 2y ago
  Wouldn't 20 years ago have less people using Mozilla/Firefox since everyone was still using IE6? I remember around that time i was still encountering several (public, not internal) sites that refused to work with anything that wasn't IE6. I think at least nowadays people try to pretend they care about web standards.
  - Uvix 2y ago
    There were some sites requiring IE6 but not that many, and the improvements like tabs were enough for people switch to Firefox where they could. Unfortunately Mozilla’s refusal to implement process-per-tab, combined with Flash’s instability, let Chrome eat their lunch.
    - prmoustache 2y ago
      chrome eat their lunch for only one reason: everytime you were doing a google search, google literally begged people to download their browser while half of the smartphone were coming with google chrome by default. In the head of people google and chrome slowly became a synonym of internet the same way the ie icon used to be in the previous decade.
      - The_Colonel 2y ago
        Beware of simplistic reasoning. What you mention was certainly a major reason, but not the only one. Another one was that Chrome was simply a better browser for many years for normal users (mainly because of its performance).
        2y ago
fifilura 2y ago
Around that time, and probably for that reason, Opera was ported to BeOS. https://www.wired.com/1998/08/opera-browses-beos/ https://www.wired.com/1998/08/opera-browses-beos/
whamlastxmas 2y ago
[flagged]
wwweston 2y ago
From ash to famed flame wings then fox feet now return whence they were kindled
kstenerud 2y ago
Mozilla Through BeOS becomes Firefox
asadotzler 2y ago
Not really accurate. I was there. Native front ends like Galeon on Linux and Chimera/Camino on Mac inspired Firefox (m/b->Phoenix->Firebird->Firefox, my bad that naming mess was also my fault, see Chimera->Camino for more of my handy work with AOL lawyers right before Netscape shuttered and we got our independence with MoFo.) We kept XUL because Dave made it great on Windows so no native front end but that let us preserve extensions and re-used a few key widgets in XPToolkit easily. Bezilla was just another Mozilla suite port, one of about a dozen at the time, one that never got any core Mozilla team attention except as a niche port we were happy to host, so suggesting it was inspiration for what Blake and I did to get Firefox going (and later Ben, Dave and Joe and others) is a bit off-track.
deaddodo 2y ago
> which due to trademark conflicts got renamed to Firefox that we all know today. There wasn't a trademark issue, the Mozilla team opted to change the name out of respect for the other OSS project (Firebird SQL).
phlakaton 2y ago
A tale like that? It might be very useful But now it is gone
anthk 2y ago
Galeon and Kazekahase existed too.
tivert 2y ago
> Some history about Firefox and BeOS. Before Firefox, there was Mozilla, which had a BeOS port (called Bezilla). Bezilla was bloated and slow. So the BeOS community tried to make a stripped version of Mozilla with only the browser (minus all the bloat). This project became an inspiration to do the same for Mozilla... I see no mention of that on the Firefox Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox#History.

cdman 2y ago

I guess Firebug was the original "developer tools": https://getfirebug.com/ https://getfirebug.com/

cmrdporcupine 2y ago
It was an amazing revolution that made complex app development of JS based front ends finally tolerable.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  IE already had debugging tools, however they had to be installed either via Visual Studio or Office Developer Tools.
  - unilynx 2y ago
    Also they barely worked for anything non trivial, let alone what we now call SPAs
- titusjohnson 2y ago
  It flat-out made training people on CSS tolerable. I could have them install the Bookmarklet (before it became an Extension), show them how to use it, and boom, instant productivity boost. Being able to dig through the DOM and figure out what element was applying excessive margin or padding reduced 80% of my "heeeelp!" requests. Within months I couldn't imagine working without it.
biglyburrito 2y ago
Firebug was amazing and one of the reasons I started doing front-end development again, after swearing it off because IE 5.x made it such a frustrating experience.

simcop2387 2y ago

It wasn't Firebug, that was a developer tool extension. It was first Phoenix which hit trademark issues, and then Firebird which hit trademark issues, which then became Firefox.

Foobar8568 2y ago
From what I remember, Firebird was more related to the database open source project which was a fork of InterBase, so at that time it was relatively well known due to its roots with IB.
guessbest 2y ago
Maybe it hit trademark issues, but the reason I remember from slashdot was that phoenix was already a semi-popular open source project in the debian repository, so firefox had to be named from phoenix to mozilla-phoenix. But firefox at the time still named phoenix just ran so much better on windows than linux, it was funny.
- simcop2387 2y ago
  Both Phoenix and Firebird were over the naming and trademark clashes: For firebird, https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/mozilla-holds-fire-in-naming-fight/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/mozilla-holds-fire-i... and https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/mozillas-firebird-gets-wings-clipped/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/mozillas-fir... in this case it was AOL Time Warner that owned the Firebird trademark for the database. 2) For Phoenix, https://web.archive.org/web/20070914035447/http://www.ibphoenix.com/main.nfs?a=ibphoenix&page=ibp_Mozilla0 https://web.archive.org/web/20070914035447/http://www.ibphoe... the main reporting on it seems to be lost but wikipedia still backs it up
  - asadotzler 2y ago
    Phoenix was because of a challenge from Phoenix Technologies, the BIOS maker. Firefox was because of concerns about stomping on a small OSS project, the Firebird Database. I was responsible for all of this at Mozilla. Happy to answer any questions.

pjmlp 2y ago

With a fraction of the userbase it had 20 years ago, thanks to everyone that keeps shipping Chrome with their applications, testing only with Chrome developer tools, and so on. Anyway, congratulations to anyone involved in the port.

badsectoracula 2y ago
Wouldn't 20 years ago have less people using Mozilla/Firefox since everyone was still using IE6? I remember around that time i was still encountering several (public, not internal) sites that refused to work with anything that wasn't IE6. I think at least nowadays people try to pretend they care about web standards.
- Uvix 2y ago
  There were some sites requiring IE6 but not that many, and the improvements like tabs were enough for people switch to Firefox where they could. Unfortunately Mozilla’s refusal to implement process-per-tab, combined with Flash’s instability, let Chrome eat their lunch.
  - prmoustache 2y ago
    chrome eat their lunch for only one reason: everytime you were doing a google search, google literally begged people to download their browser while half of the smartphone were coming with google chrome by default. In the head of people google and chrome slowly became a synonym of internet the same way the ie icon used to be in the previous decade.
    - The_Colonel 2y ago
      Beware of simplistic reasoning. What you mention was certainly a major reason, but not the only one. Another one was that Chrome was simply a better browser for many years for normal users (mainly because of its performance).
      - 2y ago

fifilura 2y ago

Around that time, and probably for that reason, Opera was ported to BeOS. https://www.wired.com/1998/08/opera-browses-beos/ https://www.wired.com/1998/08/opera-browses-beos/

whamlastxmas 2y ago

[flagged]

wwweston 2y ago

From ash to famed flame wings then fox feet now return whence they were kindled

kstenerud 2y ago

Mozilla Through BeOS becomes Firefox

asadotzler 2y ago

Not really accurate. I was there. Native front ends like Galeon on Linux and Chimera/Camino on Mac inspired Firefox (m/b->Phoenix->Firebird->Firefox, my bad that naming mess was also my fault, see Chimera->Camino for more of my handy work with AOL lawyers right before Netscape shuttered and we got our independence with MoFo.) We kept XUL because Dave made it great on Windows so no native front end but that let us preserve extensions and re-used a few key widgets in XPToolkit easily. Bezilla was just another Mozilla suite port, one of about a dozen at the time, one that never got any core Mozilla team attention except as a niche port we were happy to host, so suggesting it was inspiration for what Blake and I did to get Firefox going (and later Ben, Dave and Joe and others) is a bit off-track.

deaddodo 2y ago

> which due to trademark conflicts got renamed to Firefox that we all know today. There wasn't a trademark issue, the Mozilla team opted to change the name out of respect for the other OSS project (Firebird SQL).

phlakaton 2y ago

A tale like that? It might be very useful But now it is gone

anthk 2y ago

Galeon and Kazekahase existed too.

tivert 2y ago

> Some history about Firefox and BeOS. Before Firefox, there was Mozilla, which had a BeOS port (called Bezilla). Bezilla was bloated and slow. So the BeOS community tried to make a stripped version of Mozilla with only the browser (minus all the bloat). This project became an inspiration to do the same for Mozilla... I see no mention of that on the Firefox Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox#History.