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<title>Mozilla Firebird</title>
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<h1>Mozilla Firebird</h1>
<p><span class="LXRLONGDESC">This project is a redesign of the
Mozilla browser component, similar to Galeon, K-Meleon and Chimera,
but written using the XUL user interface language and designed to be
cross-platform.</span></p>
<h2>Principles, Strategy, Tactics, and Concrete Design Decisions</h2>
<ol>
<li>CVS access is restricted to a very small team. We'll grow as
needed, based on reputation and meritorious hacks.</li>
<li>This will be a single process for the browser only. Mail
clients, web editors, etc, will be out-of-process. Hooks for other
apps will be provided eventually, although that is not an immediate
goal.</li>
<li>No profile manager UI on startup, although you can still select
multiple profiles from the command line.</li>
<li>The default theme will be based on Classic, utilizing nsITheme
to respects the system look and feel. Mozilla Firebird will not use the old
and stale Communicator icons. Additional themes will be supported
but will not be part of Mozilla Firebird.</li>
<li>The toolbar(s) will be configurable. That includes moving the
location bar where the user wants it (not just splitting it so it
takes a whole toolbar width).</li>
<li>The personal toolbar is the personal toolbar, not the
whorebar.</li>
<li>All wallet-like functionality will be rewritten from
scratch.</li>
<li>We will have a sidebar, but it may work differently from
Mozilla's current one.</li>
<li>There won't be 239 access points for Search and for
Bookmarks!</li>
<li>We may drop the throbber.</li>
<li>The interface will not be "geeky" nor will it have a
"hacker-focus". Nor will it be "minimal". The idea is to design the
best web browser for most people. (This doesn't mean every feature
has to be enabled by default.)</li>
</ol>
<h2>Notes</h2>
<p>We won't be redesigning the editor widget(s) or other parts of
Gecko as part of this project.</p>
<p>We plan to move this app to the
<a href="http://www.mozilla.org/projects/embedding/MRE.html">MRE</a>
or the <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xul/xre.html">XRE</a>
but those projects are not ready for us so we have not started that
work yet.</p>
<h2>FAQ</h2>
<h3>Q1. Why?</h3>
<p>Some of us want to have fun and build an excellent, user-friendly
browser without the constraints (such as unnecessary features,
compatibility, marketing requirements, month long discussions, etc.)
that the current browser development requires.</p>
<p>Others of us are simply using this as a prototype to demonstrate
possible optimizations to the trunk, such as stripping overlays or
separating the application into separate processes instead of
running one monolithic suite.</p>
<h3>Q2. Why only a small team?</h3>
<p>The size of the team working on the trunk is one of the many
reasons that development on the trunk is so slow. We feel that
fewer dependencies (no marketing constraints), faster innovation (no
UI committees), and more freedom to experiment (no backwards
compatibility requirements) will lead to a better end product.</p>
<h3>Q3. Where do I file bugs on this?</h3>
<p>We're still chopping with strong bursts and broad strokes. There's
plenty that's obviously broken and we don't need bugs on that. If you
find a bug (a feature request is not a bug) and you're sure that it's
specific to Mozilla Firebird (not present in Mozilla) and you've read all of the
existing Mozilla Firebird bugs well enough to know that it's not already reported
then feel free report it on the Mozilla Firebird product in Bugzilla. </p>
<h3>Q4: Why are you guys wasting time making a FAQ?</h3>
<p>Because we would waste tons of time answering these questions, if
there were no FAQ.</p>
<h3>Q6: So to whom do I send patches?</h3>
<p>We're not quite ready for this stage.</p>
<h3>Q7: How do I get involved?</h3>
<p>By invitation. This is a meritocracy -- those who gain the respect of
those in the group will be invited to join the group. See Q6.</p>
<h3>Q8: What about OS X?</h3>
<p>Chimera is the top gecko-based browser for OS X. We do not intend
to compete on that platform.</p>
<h2>Getting and Building the Source</h2>
<h3>UNIX, Windows (gmake), Mac (mach-o)</h3>
<ol>
<li>Create a .mozconfig file in your home directory, or in the mozilla directory, containing the following:<br>
<br>
<code>
export MOZ_PHOENIX=1<br>
mk_add_options MOZ_PHOENIX=1<br>
ac_add_options --enable-crypto<br>
ac_add_options --disable-tests<br>
ac_add_options --disable-debug<br>
ac_add_options --disable-mailnews<br>
ac_add_options --disable-composer<br>
ac_add_options --enable-optimize=-O2<br>
ac_add_options --disable-ldap<br>
ac_add_options --disable-mailnews<br>
ac_add_options --enable-extensions=default,-inspector,-irc,-venkman,-content-packs,-help<br>
ac_add_options --enable-plaintext-editor-only<br>
<br>
</code>
<li>Pull from CVS and build as described in the <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/build/unix.html">Mozilla build instructions</a>.
<li>Run the MozillaFirebird executable that is left in dist/bin</li>
</ol>
<h2>Mac (CodeWarrior)</h2>
<p>This platform is currently not supported.</p>
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