There has been considerable debate here about what features or bugs or
performance issues should be added, fixed, or improved before Moz goes 1.0.
Well, I have a very different sort of standard to propose. Lets use an
empirical standard based on user feedback of people who normally use a
different browser.
In particular, take each point rev of Moz (v0.92, v0.93 and so on) and
install it on machines of a large group of current MS IE v5.5 and above
users. Come back a week later. Ask each user whether they are using IE or
Moz. Once a Moz release reaches the point where some percentage (eg 50%) of
those who have access to both browsers decide to use Moz instead of IE then
use that as an indication that Moz is now good enough to be released at the
v1.0 level.
If making Moz more attractive than IE for 50% of the users seems too high a
bar to set then make the bar be some lower percentage. The goal should be to
evaluate Moz's fitness not in relation to other browsers and to the most
widely used browser in particular. I think such an exercise, repeated for
each point rev, would cause attention to focus on those aspects of Moz that
discourage the bulk of browser users from using it.
If people who get the browser installed onto their machine won't use it then
the people who have to go download it won't use it either. We'd need to find
some people to be the guinea pigs. But there are lots of companies and
millions of users and it is likely that we could find some volunteer
companies that would let someone go thru and install each Moz release on each
machine and then send an e-mail to the users after a week asking for feedback
as to their usage.
