Firefox 1.5 is out. Hurrah? Not for me. What is the big deal? Firefox and IE are like a twin. So what if the geeks favor one over the other? I use IE most of the time and fire up Firefox when IE fails to display certain pages or when I am testing webapps to ensure compatibility. On non-Windows platform, I just use Firefox. I say leave politics and idealism out of engineering.

As a developer, Firefox 1.5 means just another browser/version combo I have to make sure my software is compatible with. While I am wary of AJAX hype, one fringe benefit of AJAX that I rejoice in is that DHTML-based AJAX technology requires fairly modern browsers with DOM support and, get this, JavaScript. AJAX wacks the dizzying combinations of environments I have to support by half at least. Now that's something to celebrate if AJAX comes to rule hearts and minds of clueless executives!

What I wish Mozilla folks to do is to spend more time breaking new grounds, creating an entirely new breed of browsers and making new types of applications possible, instead of beating the same dead horse over and over. Whole Web 2.0 hype is just party inside MacGyver's shoebox: look what we can do with what we got! With all the energy and resources being poured into Web 2.0, we could have broken out of the box instead.