Start-up wants to improve on Firefox

A new version of the Firefox Web browser is coming your way, but not from the Mozilla Foundation.

Round Two planned a corporate launch Monday night with the promise of bringing "a new crop of products and services that will enhance your Firefox experience."

"When we launch our own services, in about a month or so, we'll be looking to offer the must-have companion to Firefox," said Bart Decrem, Round Two CEO and a former staffer at the Mozilla Foundation. "We see tremendous room for innovating on top of the Mozilla and Firefox platform, and we see ourselves as the first company outside of the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation that's fully dedicated to serving Firefox users."

Round Two's mission to improve the Firefox browsing experience may puzzle some Firefox fans, who consider the browser an already vast improvement over Microsoft's Internet Explorer standard-bearer. Firefox has capitalized on widespread dissatisfaction with IE's security and features to swipe considerable market share from Microsoft.

Firefox, an open-source browser developed and distributed by the Mozilla Foundation, is designed to appeal to third-party developers, and Round Two is but one of several businesses in the Mozilla development ecosystem.

While Round Two--formerly known as MozSource--puts the finishing touches on its own products, the company is sponsoring development of several other Firefox extensions.

These include FlashGot, which lets Firefox work with third-party download managers; Bandwidth Tester, which lets people determine their connection speed; and SwitchProxy, which lets people surf anonymously with Firefox by configuring Firefox to work with multiple Web proxy servers. Round Two is providing developers of these extensions with technical resources including Web servers, bandwidth, project management resources and some financial support.

Round Two is also supporting the ExtensionsMirror.nl Web site, which is growing about 25 percent every month, according to Decrem.

"They needed a new server with a lot of bandwidth," Decrem said. "We're providing that. Now we're exploring ways we can work together even more closely."

Round Two also said it was supporting StockTicker, TinyURL Creator, Copy Plain Text, Extension Uninstaller, Lorem Ipsum Content Generator, OpenDownload, Open Long URLs, Search Plugins and Secure Password Generator.

As for Round Two's own extensions, Decrem said the company was considering antivirus software to integrate with Firefox.

[aabcdefghij987654321]

Firefox slowly turning into IE?

Firefox extensions seem like a better, more complete implementation of what Microsoft had in mind with ActiveX. Although extensions do not pose an immediate security risk to the operating system like ActiveX, spyware and viruses targeting the extensions subsystem for Firefox will eventually lead to an infected, broken operating system. Clearly a balanced tradeoff between customization and security has yet to be achieved in the browser market.

[System Tyrant]

IE

I disagree with you in that Firefox is slowly becomeing IE. However, I do agree that extentions could pose a security risk.

IE forced ActiveX on everyone who used IE. You can turn it off now, but I'm not sure you had that option upon its release.

Extention in Firefox could be misused. Assuming a flaw or lack of a way to lock out extention could allow attack through Extentions as well.

FireFox is what Netscape was soupposed to be

FireFox is a lot more than a browser.. is a plataform... Netscape people had that idea but MS destroyed the concept along with the company.

I'll love to see an AutoCad plugin, a Virtual reallity plugin... how about having a small TV set on the side-bar??? so you could see your favorite TV show or news just when you want and while youre doing some web work???.

how about an MP3 stream sintonizer as a plug in?.. that'll be great for Kiosks...
there are millions of ideas that are not new.. the y existed since Netscape come to life, but MS cut all innovation because THEY have to authorize almost everything.

Having a Open Plataform is just GREAT!!!.. I'll like to have a minimo implementation on my symbian phone in order to access my intranet..

The geek and internet guys have had great ideas since the begining, now we have the tools to make them real despite MS efforts.

Greetings from Mexico

[Michael Grogan]

I don't think so...

Firefox with comercial extensions will be just another IE or Netscape. The extensions are just more garbage to slow it down and allow opportunities for virus attacks...and advertising. Look for searches on the 'new and improved' Firefox to redirect you to commercial sites as they do in IE and Netscape now. Thanks ever so much but my version of Firefox will remain as is and sans extensions.

[ProphetPX]

I thought the Amish did not use computers? let alone a modern flash web browser like Firefox?
LOL

geez @ ignorant n paranoid luddites!!

[DaveyBoy3737]

Michael, Recently I down loaded a trial copy of BitDefender to replace the anti virus software I had been using. The computer reaction time has slowed to a snails pace. What anti virus program would you suggest I try?

[201293546946733175101343322673]

New and Improved?

This reminds me of a Dilbert comic: a consultant that doesn't know how to do things, she only knows how to make things "better" by criticizing ideas and opinions :)

[ivand67]

Settle down dude

Settle down dude, if you wanna watch TV just download Winamp and get your TV shows through file sharing (BitTorrent). And all those other things are available separately too, there's no need to have Firefox do those things.

[edbong]

Firefox chrossing the chasm

Geoffrey Moores presentation at OSBC was defintly the best and everybody agreed: Firefox is crossing the chams. Those of us that are working profesionally in Open Source... its a MAJOR milestone...
<br/>See my comment <a href="#" title="http://www.humano2.com/network/?q=node/221">here</a>.<br/>Tim- <a href="http://www.humano2.com" title="Humano2">Humano2</a>

[edbong]

this sucks

Looked like it supported HTML but maybe not..thisn comment engine sucks... it also shows my name as Steve ????!!!!. Well anyway .. here the link for my comment on Moore, Firefox and crossing the chasm from OSBC
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.humano2.com/network/?q=node/221" target="_newWindow">http://www.humano2.com/network/?q=node/221</a>

[pcLoadLetter]

Yuck

Firefox is just fine as-is + an extension or two, especially adblock.

Adding features of dubious value on top of an otherwise outstanding program is what turned formerly decent apps like Word into bloated, slow pigs.