What features of Avalon & WinFS does Firefox need?

RA

The other thread got way off topic, talking about Avalon & WinFS. However, the issue is still interesting to me, so here it goes...

1. What features of Avalon should Firefox support? Why does Firefox need them?

2. What features of WinFS should Firefox support? Why does Firefox need them?

The mainstream market (average users and corporations) won't be using Avalon for at least another year, and WinFS for another 18 months (this article). However, assuming that these technologies were in the competitive market today, what benefits could they bring Firefox?

AlphaAddict

its not a benifit if ff dosntr support win fs and it wont you will not be able to save anything
At the mo you just cant save in the winfs items
but when the full on database style view arives youll have to use ie if you want to download anything
see the screenie below

As for avalon it generly supports any window ff still uses the old 2k style buttons not the new animations ff is also not compatible with DCE ...

RA

I haven't been able to find any documents that point to legacy (drive letter and the old way of saving) support being dropped when WinFS is implemented. As far as I could see at sites like this and this and this, the ability for non-WinFS programs to write/save files would continue. Could you provide the source where you got that information?

As for Avalon, Firefox can use whatever style buttons and textures you want using a theme (aka skin). I'm sure someone will write an "Avalon" theme for Firefox by the time Vista is released. I know Firefox supports some types of animation, but I don't know which ones you are talking about - could you post a link to maybe a video of what you are looking for? Also, do you think that users would drop Firefox simply because it does not have some of the animation features of IE?

As for the DCE reference, Firefox 2.0 will contain built-in hardware acceleration for both its app and in webpages (via Cairo). Included in this will be Scaled Vector Graphics and 2D animation effects. What parts of DCE do you think Firefox needs to support?

P.S. I couldn't get any of your links to work (website bandwidth limitation).

AlphaAddict

It wont because My Computer now becomes a Win FS item the old c:/ structure is dead and since it cant support the Win FS itemns we allready have it cant support the Win FS files view That replaces what we have today even though it will look identical as in that screenie above.

As for hardware acceleration why bother when running in longhorn you have access to the most advanced gui ever
producing amasing visuals on intagrated graphics : )

RA

According to the articles which I referenced, the old C:\ structure will still be supported. Again, where do you get the info that it will be removed?

The reason most people will run Longhorn is because that is what is preinstalled on their system, or because the old OS isn't supported anymore. Just because a feature exists on the new OS doesn't mean that it HAS to be used. If Firefox has a similar feature already built-in, why can't it use that? In other words, why can't Firefox use its own hardware acceleration?

AlphaAddict

1 you cant save in here

2 so you cant save in here

3 so you cant save anywhere !

as for ff hardware acceleration why bother avalon has 1 the lowest system requirements 2 greater capibilities and 3 easly customisable why bother with some complicated third party app that probibly wont worlk with poladium ?

RA

So what if you can't save into the Documents or Windows/system32 folders using the file manager? That has nothing to do with how Firefox saves files. Looking at the API compatibility, programs made using the Win32 API or MFC will be able to save files using their own calls...and I still haven't seen an article link saying that this functionality has been removed.

Why bother with hardware acceleration? Because it is already part of the program, and it works.

Pallidum is OT.