At the Southern California Linux Expo, Mozilla evangelist and board member Chris Blizzard gave a presentation on the future of Firefox. He discussed Mozilla's long-term goals, demonstrated some of the impressive integration improvements that Firefox 3 will bring for Linux users, and also provided some insight into Mozilla's recent efforts to bring Firefox to the mobile market.

Protecting the Web

Mozilla's long-term goal, said Blizzard, is to "make sure the web remains a viable platform." He spoke about some of the emerging changes in the Internet ecosystem and expressed concern about new technologies like Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe AIR, which he describes as proprietary stacks that threaten to displace open standards. Mozilla aims to guard the web against potential vendor lock-in by delivering truly vendor-neutral technologies that are accessible to all web users and developers.

Firefox 3

Much of the presentation focused on new technologies that are in Firefox 3, including improvements to the user interface, platform technologies, performance, resource usage, and operating system integration. Over 12,000 fixes have landed since Firefox 2, he says. Some of the specific user interface features described by Blizzard include the new autocompletion URL bar, support for full page zoom, the overhauled download and bookmark manager interfaces, and a new security panel. You can read more about these technologies in our reviews of the various alpha and beta releases.

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