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Exclusive: Firefox 3 interview with Mozilla president

Tristan Nitot, Mozilla's European President, gives the full low-down on Firefox 3

June 13th | Tell us what you think [ 0 comments ]

Mozilla president explains what's in store with Firefox 3, in anticipation of 'Download Day' on Tuesday 17th June

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TechRadar recently caught up with Tristan Nitot, president of Mozilla Europe to discuss the forthcoming release of the much-heralded faster and more secure Firefox 3 browser – due for release on Tuesday 17th June.

TR: Apple isn't yet a serious competitor in the browser stakes. Could it be?

Tristan Nitot: Safari is a good browser compared to Internet Explorer, and they have the advantage of distribution on the Mac, as the Apple machines are shipping with Safari installed by default. But on Windows, which is the leading platform, they don't have this distribution advantage, and I am not sure that Safari's look is well integrated on Windows, as it really looks like a Mac application. This may be something that will slow down.

Safari adoption on Windows. We'll see!

TR: How can browsers develop to help us better browse the web? Does it require a fundamental rethink of interface design?

Tristan Nitot: On the desktop, the challenge is to bring new functionality without demanding the user to learn again how to use a browser. This is something that we are working on, and Firefox 3 demonstrates this. Our "Awesome Bar" is a great example, where Firefox 3 suggests Web pages as the user types in the location bar. It's the same with the bookmark feature and our Password manager

On mobiles, things are really different. The lack of mouse, big screen, tabs, mouse and keyboard means that we need to reinvent the user interface. I'm not sure that anyone has found the right thing for Mobile, and we're working on it. My colleague Aza Raskin has just posted a video about this It's just a concept, but it does show the issues that browsers on mobile are facing.

TR: What developments does Mozilla have planned in the mobile space?

Tristan Nitot: We currently have a project, code-named Fennec. It's basically the engine powering Firefox 3 (called Gecko 1.9), ported to mobile devices. We hope to have an Alpha version by the end of Summer 08. Then we will be more able to talk about it at length.

TR: How does Mozilla push out new browsers to users that may be using really old versions?