Topic: The Man behind FireFox - A New Zealander

Kiwi helping build browser
17.09.2004
By PAUL BRISLEN

The web browser wars are over and Microsoft won, right?
Well someone's forgotten to tell Ben Goodger and his team at the Mozilla Foundation because this Kiwi software engineer is taking market share from Internet Explorer (IE) with Firefox, the browser that's smaller yet smarter than anything else available. Goodger, back in New Zealand this week visiting family and friends, works for the Mozilla Foundation and has been the lead engineer on Firefox throughout its development.

He began while still at the University of Auckland waiting for the launch of Netscape 5.0. "I used Netscape 4.0 and basically was just designing web pages and doing web development work." The wait for version 5.0 was a long one and when Netscape finally ceased development work on its browser and opened up the source code to the Mozilla Foundation, Goodger found himself taking time off to work in the US on the browser itself.

Today he leads a relatively small team of engineers who are hard at work preparing for the release of Firefox version 1.0 and the Kiwi input is hard to miss. The code names for the previous versions of Firefox include Three Kings, Royal Oak, One Tree Hill and Greenlane. Firefox has generated an enormous amount of interest among hardcore internet users around the world and for the first time has taken market share away from Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Goodger said the figures themselves varied depending on the source but US-based web training organisation W3Schools claimed IE 6.0 peaked in May of this year with 72.6 per cent market share among its "early adopter" users and had fallen back to 68.3 per cent in August. That's the first time IE has declined in market share since its release and could mark the turning point for the browser community'

Source - The New Zealand Herald
View Complete Article: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydispl...ondsubsection=

Wow.

I was not aware there was a Kiwi behind it..

Spose that could explain why I don't use IE at all any more...unless I am checking to see what you poor IE users see when using NZB.

Goes to show how little we know about the people who create the things we use on an almost daily basis

Hes not the same dude that was behind pegasus mail is he? that was an NZ thing too...

*shines her proud to be NZer halo*

I checked google and I don't see anything about a New Zealander being the person behind Pegasus Mailer. Sorry Penny.

Well who was, he was he was, I know it. I remember being taught it at tech when I was doing my business computing course.

Ok So I went and looked, becuase I have believed all this time that The NZer did Pegasus Mail.

Pegasus Mail was created by David Harris. Hi e-mail address is David.harris@pmail.gen.nz. that was enough for me, (you can see it written here http://io.uwinnipeg.ca/~tss/tss/policy/etiquette.html). Down the bottom it shows his address as being Dunedin.

So try www.pmail.gen.nz.

Thats enough for me AND it answers my other question that they are not the same person.

This is funny too. Cos I am an IE user, this is becuase my mate has to use IE for this work he does. Anyway, I was looking up Ben Goodger on the internet cos I was interested, and this site came up http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Ben%20Goodger. I went to it, and saw he has a weblog and thought I'd take a look. It comes up with this:

The browser you are using (Microsoft Internet Explorer) is not supported at this time due to incomplete support for web standards. By using Microsoft Internet Explorer you are making it difficult for web content providers to give you a better internet experience because they must design material for the limited functionality that it offers.

Please upgrade your browser today and enjoy the web as it was meant to be!

Well it amused me anyway! Small minds and that I spose

Thanks for clearing it up Penny

It was my Pleasure! :P