One of the more frequent comments I’ve heard about AllPeers is that being a Firefox extension is a two-edged sword. Rafe Needleman published an article recently on CNet, for example, which praises our vision but expresses concern about us limiting ourselves to Firefox users.
In fact, we’ve discussed a standalone version of AllPeers based on XULRunner since we started developing our extension. What’s interesting is that my stance on this has changed somewhat since the product has matured and I’ve become a regular AllPeers user. Yes, we could make a version of AllPeers that installs as its own executable, but considering how tightly we integrate with Firefox’s browser features, how much sense would this really make? Wouldn’t we simply end up building our own web browser user interface on top of XULRunner?
In my view, the real problem isn’t that AllPeers runs on top of Firefox. There’s no reason that users of other browsers can’t install Firefox just to use AllPeers, if they like, and use it alongside their browser of choice. There is the issue of having to download Firefox and then AllPeers, instead of downloading/installing everything at once. There is also a potential psychological issue since users might balk at installing a “second browser” even if this is not technically very different from installing a separate AllPeers client. One option that would at least partially resolve these concerns would be to offer a Firefox/AllPeers bundle for people who don’t already have Firefox.
Over the longer term, the goal should be to split AllPeers more from Firefox. I had an opportunity to discuss this face-to-face with Mr. XULRunner himself, Benjamin Smedberg, while at EuroOSCON last week. He suggested creating a “headless” version of AllPeers based on XULRunner. This would contain all the nuts-and-bolts that make AllPeers tick (sharing, downloading, etc.), but the only user interface would be the (in)famous tray icon. The interface as we know it today would still be accessible from Firefox. This means that you could easily shut down Firefox without shutting down AllPeers and vice versa. It would also mean (and this is a tantalizing possibility) that it would be much more straightforward to create alternate user interfaces for AllPeers, perhaps hosted inside other browsers, since all the heavy lifting would happen inside the AllPeers process and wouldn’t have to be ported.
I’m in love with this idea, but the bad news is that it might not be possible for quite a while since it might require Firefox 3.0 (which will be based on Gecko 1.9), and this is scheduled for release next summer. I’m planning to look into possibilities for making this happen sooner.
Title says it all. The “Work Offline” feature is very cool.
UPDATE: I mentioned this in the comments but I’ll put it here as well to make it more visible. As some people have noted, the upgrade to Firefox 1.5.0.7 broke the popup menu of our system tray icon. To get around this, you can simply double click on the icon to reopen Firefox when you’re minimized to the system tray. You can quit Firefox using File/Exit. If you like, you can turn off the close to tray feature entirely by going to Tools/AllPeers Preferences. We’ve fixed the problem already so it will no longer be an issue in v0.52, which we are currently finalizing for release.
AllPeers v0.51 is now in the queue at the Mozilla addon site, waiting to go online. It should be available today or tomorrow. In the meantime, here’s the next in our three part series on the continuing evolution of AllPeers: the road to v0.60.
The next AllPeers version, planned for release this month, is v0.52. Highlights of this version include:
- Pause, resume, cancel downloads
- Queued files remain in queue when Firefox is restarted
- Registration screen is displayed just once
- Preliminary NAT traversal implementation
- Less obtrusive tray icon
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- Peers can’t share with you until you approve them
- Deleting happens in the background without blocking Firefox
- Improvements to registration and restore account processes
- Many bugfixes and improvements to user interface, presence and downloading
These are just the highlights. There will be a lot of important improvements under the hood as well.
We still haven’t nailed down all the details for the v0.53 and v0.60 versions, but you can expect to see at least most of the following:
- Instant messaging
- Better handling of extended Unicode characters in filenames
- Localized versions for languages other than English
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- Sharing folder hierarchies
- Upload page (to see what people are downloading from you)
- Faster load time for Firefox
- Click on peer to see both what they shared and what you shared with them
- More intuitive display of messages that have been shared by and with you
- Bandwidth meters and throttle
- Reduced CPU usage
- Multiselect of files in album view
- Many minor improvements…
We’ll let you know what the release date targets are for these versions when we’re done with our planning.
In the final instalment of this series, I’ll post more details about our longer term plans.
UPDATE: Version 0.51 is still waiting in the queue on the Mozilla addon site. I know they’re really busy, but I guess it’ll be online on Monday. We’ll let you know if we hear differently.
If you are like me, from time to time you come across a video on YouTube or Google Video you want to share with all your friends. Today there are no quick easy ways to do so AFAIK.
With AllPeers v0.51, sharing a video with 1, 2, 10 or even 20 friends is just a simple drag ‘n’ drop operation (as long as your friends are part of your AllPeers social network).
To illustrate this we produced a little… video. See for yourself:
1 - Open the Share pane
2 - Drag the tab with the video
3 - Click on Friends
4 - Press Share
Of course this works for any webpage but it’s more fun to share YouTube videos than anything else!
I recognize a picture of Kepler and suddenly I’m a “mid-rank nerd”? Personally I prefer “nerd lieutenant”, thank you very much.
I had assumed that after releasing our first public beta, I’d be able to retire and move to my own private island in the South Pacific. Then I read somewhere on the web that people are expecting us to continue working on AllPeers, fixing issues and adding features. So it seems I’ll have to wait a bit longer to concentrate full-time on honing my golf skills.
But seriously. We’ve got enough plans for AllPeers to keep us busy for years, and I wanted to give some more information about what we’ve got cooking. I’m planning three posts on this topic covering immediate, short-term and long-term plans.
By far the most common feedback we’ve got on AllPeers v0.50 (i.e. the first public beta) is that the idea is awesome, the product shows great promise but the implementation is not quite ready for prime time. We absolutely agree with this assessment, and the comments we’ve received since our public debut are invaluable to us in determining priorities and moving the project forward. Thanks to everyone who took the time to write to us with their praise, suggestions and criticisms.
Our goal is for AllPeers v0.60 is to resolve all of the most important issues with v0.50 that have been reported to us. These include performance issues, usability concerns and real honest-to-goodness bugs. We’ve identified the issues that we want to address and we’re finalizing a detailed schedule, so I can’t give a firm deadline for this. Ideally I’d like to see this happen over the next couple of months, but I’ll give confirmation of this once we’re done with our planning.
Rather than go for a big bang with v0.60, we’re going to continue to release early and often, pushing out new versions as soon as they are ready so that people can try them out, let us know what they think and benefit from the improvements as quickly as possible. We’re currently planning three intermediate releases: v0.51, v0.52 and v0.53.
I’m using version 0.51 right now. It should be online early next week. New goodies include:
- Work offline
- Hide toolbar link, which causes small toolbar to be displayed in the sidebar
- Much better feedback during registration process
- Option to create a new group in the Add a Contact form
- Various small performance, download and presence improvements
Once we’re done with our detailed scheduling I’ll post information about what we’re planning for the other versions leading up to v0.60. Cancelling downloads is definitely slated for v0.52 and we would like to have our instant messaging client included in v0.60. Please do keep in mind that any and all of this is subject to change. I’ll post here with updates if that happens.
As always, your comments are most welcome.
Update: I just realized that 0.51 also has an option to select the AllPeers download directory.
We popped into Mozilla’s offices in Mountain View for a visit last week, and we were lucky enough to have a long chat with Asa Dotzler, one of the driving forces behind Firefox and co-founder of the SpreadFirefox community marketing website. He told us an interesting anecdote about the early days of Firefox that has great relevance to any project that aims to simplify an existing application category.
As some may remember, before Firefox there was the Mozilla Application Suite, a powerful but complex set of internet applications that included a web browser and email client. As Mozilla struggled to regain market share in the teeth of Internet Explorer’s increasingly entrenched dominance, the drivers of the nascent Firefox project realized that mass market adoption meant radically simplifying their web browser product.
As Asa recalls, Firefox was a huge success in terms of trimming the fat from the Mozilla browser, but met initially with a lot of negative reviews. The reason is straightforward: the kind of early adopters who are likely to be the first to try a new product are also those who are most keen to have slews of bells and whistles at their disposal. If you’re making a consumer-oriented product in an area dominated by geeks, you can therefore expect to be slammed at first for missing any number of “must have” features. Of course, once Firefox adoption went through the roof, it became evident that the Firefox developers were right to stick to their guns and resist the temptation to add features merely to appeal to early adopters.
We’re certainly seeing some of this dynamic with AllPeers. One frequent critique has been the lack of such-and-such feature, and in many cases these comments are perfectly legitimate. In terms of functionality we’re still on the light side. However, it’s important not to lose sight of our primary goal, which is to popularize powerful sharing technology so that it is accessible to the tech savvy and tech challenged alike. We’ll continue to neglect certain features if we think that they add too much complexity, and focus instead on streamlining our user experience.
We are now 10 days into our Public Beta program. This means anyone who wants to know what AllPeers is about can go and try it for themselves. More than 88,000 have done so since we made the Beta available which means that 1/ we are currently in the Top 10 most downloaded Firefox extensions for the week and 2/ we are getting a lot of feedback on where the priorities should be for the next releases before we come out of Beta.
Release 0.51 should be coming out this week and we are finalising 0.52. Wait for the announcements here and on our support forums for details about what has been fixed in these versions.
A lot has been written about the Beta in 10 days but one of my favorite post was Blogo Numericus, a French blog. Here’s an abstract if you are not familiar with Voltaire’s language:
What’s interesting with AllPeers is that the whole system is centered around the user sharing rather than the shared files unlike your typical existing P2P network. There are no search engine for files and the most important item presented by the software is your list of contacts you can share with. […] Visually the interface is very similar to an Instant Messenger. In fact AllPeers is a cross between IM and P2P: instead of sending messages you are sending files and the file becomes the message.
Let’s now try to imagine use cases for AllPeers beyond the simple sharing with friends and colleagues. Of course the immediate idea is the distribution by self-produced artists for any type of digital content (audio, video or text). […] I can imagine users buying content or registering to a specific user’s channel: I can purchase a user’s new album or I can subscribe to him and automatically receive his new creations from him. Likewise customers could register with a photographer’s stream to receive his latest hi-definition photos. AllPeeers is also a brilliant way to distribute podcasts since bandwidth consumption and storage are the two issues podcasters face.
