Ben is the lead developer on the Firefox web browser. Ben talked about the history of Netscape and how that lead to the development of the Mozilla Foundation. Netscape was in a lot of trouble and was being lead by people that exacerbated the problems. Netscape 6 came out and that was the disaster that forced enough change to happen. Mass disillusionment resulted.
This then lead to a salvage operation that involved incremental improvement. However mindsets inside the organisation didn’t change and this lead to Netscape being much like the walking dead.
Out of the ashes rose Phoenix/Firefox. 1.0 launched in November 2004. 12%-25% market share.
Focus on the small details such as download size, installation procedure, and removing complexity. Be ambitious and question assumptions. AND JUST SHIP IT.
End game project management, make meaningful releases, avoid dangerous feature creep. Ensuring success and learning from the mistakes that Netscape made earlier.
There was a demonstration of Firefox 2. Most of the feature, while useful, have been in Safari for over a year…
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