You are comparing the first mass-market release of Chrome extensions with the first alpha release of Jetpack, which isn't fair. A better comparison would be the first dev channel release of Chrome with support for extensions. That was May 14 2009:

http://news.cnet.com/chrome-extensions-draw-near-but-advance...

... which is slightly before the first Jetpack alpha which was May 20 2009.

In any case, the issues that both extension systems try to address have been well-known for some time. It isn't surprising that multiple people came up with similar ideas on how to fix them.

ninja edit: Got timelines mixed up first time 'round

Interesting catch. Reminds me of Mercurial and Git births (in that they both were independently created around the same time to solve the same problem).

I'm sorry you think I was trolling, as I really was asking an honest question, and I appreciate your responses.

  > ... and learn about what you're talking about before you speak.

I have an interest in browsers and browser technology, but I don't develop any of them, no. That doesn't mean I am not allowed to discuss them, however.

  > Ok, if you want to know all the features ...

Please don't mistake me here. I am not at all trying to slight or belittle Firefox 4. As I dig into it, I think it has a great feature set, and I'm excited to see it come out. My question was specifically about the features chosen for the spotlight page.

Now, back to the discussion.

WebM: You are correct, Chrome 5 does not support WebM, although it is in the dev version of Chrome 6. I do think, however, that the perception of the feature is it was Google's first, considering its their codec.

WebSockets: Please don't try to pretend Chrome is ignoring the standards changes. The new version is in Chrome 6 for you to try, if you're interested. My point is that this is a feature they drove to market, and got everyone else to support, hence my perception of it.

IndexedDB: Again, the specific technology is beside the point. Google has been pushing for offline storage since Gears, and now everyone else is implementing it (albeit a slightly different backend). You see where I'm going with this.

Crash Protection: I stand corrected. I always think of Chrome being the browser pushing the segregated processes, better plugin separation, etc, but it appears IE8 was first. Still, Firefox is definitely not leading the market on this one.

JetPack: as per aboodman, I will call this a wash.

WebConsole: It is a bit specious to give Firefox credit for a 3rd party extension (FireBug), but regardless, this feature doesn't support my point, and I never pretended it did.

HTML5/CSS3: Every browser coming out has been touting these two technologies for ages, most of the time without a clear consensus on what they even entailed. At this point you couldn't not put them on a feature list. So I don't particularly consider it valuable or surprising to see them.

What IS your point then? Making arguments about who did what first sounds like the basics of a middle school browser holy war argument. Ask a coherent question, and I'll give you a straight answer.

Same question I've been asking all along. Why did Mozilla choose to spotlight these specific features? I assume there is a strategic answer, but I don't know what it is.

In that case, you're better off either talking to people who work there, or filtering through their meeting notes. Mozilla is a very open company, so you shouldn't encounter too much resistance. Although in all honesty, it was probably just a marketing person who chose what to highlight. Good luck with your endeavors!