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  Tuesday, July 15, 2003 

The Mozilla Foundation

I've been writing about Mozilla quite a lot lately (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7), now that Firebird has -- quite unexpectedly -- become my browser of choice on Windows, Mac OS X (Safari notwithstanding), and Linux. In a recent column I implored AOL to do the right thing by Mozilla, and it seems that is happening. Today AOL announced financial and logistical support for the newly-hatched Mozilla Foundation. Excellent!

Of course, the $2 million that AOL is tucking into Mozilla's pocket, as it sends the project out to make its own way in the world, is only a drop in the bucket. Mitch Kapor writes:

Now, Mozilla's fate is under its own control. AOL has given it a good send-off so there is enough in the way of resources to get going, but it's going to need to gather more financial support from corporations and others for its long-term future. [Mitch Kapor's weblog]

My hunch is that that Mozilla will now find the air supply it needs to keep going. I'm curious to see how Microsoft will respond. As has been often noted, the stated or implied plan to make IE 6 hold the fort until Longhorn's arrival in 2005 (or whenever) suddenly looks pretty shaky. I'd love to see Microsoft turn the competitive crank a notch, for example by pushing some of the InfoPath and Word 2003 XML technologies into the IE browser where everybody (well, everybody on Windows) can get at them. Six months ago there wouldn't have been a business case for doing that. I'd love to see Mozilla's success make that case, and in so doing create its own next great challenge.

 

Test-driven development

I've been researching the subject of test-driven development for an upcoming story. My sources include Kent Beck's excellent book, Test-Driven Development by Example, and interviews with Ward Cunningham (again!), Brian Marick, and others. As one who has yet to incorporate any of the xUnit family of testing frameworks into my coding practice, I'm perhaps not the best person to tell this story. On the other hand, I do think I'm well suited to understand the message that test-first practitioners have been consistently delivering, and to broadcast it to a wider audience.

Test-first is quite radically different from test-later. And the most important difference I've discovered so far is that test-first, in the hands of people like Kent Beck and Ward Cunningham and Martin Fowler and the many others who practice the technique, is as much a tool for rationalizing the exploration of the problem domain, and sequencing the work of refactoring, as it is a way of protecting against regression. Those of you to whom this has already become second nature are probably yawning and thinking "welcome to the club." But I'm pretty sure this take on the purpose and benefit of test-first has not been adequately conveyed to a general audience of IT practitioners who regard "extreme programming" as, well, a bit extreme. It's going to be an interesting challenge!

 


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