T he Mozilla site has a new roadmap laying out plans for the projectis future. Mozilla is the multi-platform, open-source browser project that lies at the heart of the Mozilla, Camino, Phoenix, and other browsers. Significant changes to the projectis roadmap include an emphasis on standalone applications, as well as development led by a smaller team of core developers. Main points from the Mozilla Development Roadmap:
- Switch Mozillais default browser component from the XPFE-based Navigator to the standalone Phoenix browser.
- Develop further the standalone mail companion application to Phoenix already begun as Minotaur, but based on the new XUL toolkit used by Phoenix (this variant has been codenamed Thunderbird).
- Deliver a Mozilla 1.4 milestone that can replace the 1.0 branch as the stable development path, then move on to make riskier changes during 1.5 and 1.6. The major changes after 1.4 involve switching to Phoenix and Thunderbird, and working aggressively on the next two items.
- Fix crucial Gecko layout architecture bugs, paving the way for a more maintainable, performant, and extensible future.
- Continue the move away from an ownership model involving a large cloud of hackers with unlimited CVS access, to a model, more common in the open source world, of vigorously defended modules with strong leadership and clear delegation, a la NSPR, JavaScript, Gecko in recent major milestones, and Phoenix.
The full text of the roadmap can be found at the Mozilla Web site.