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Leech might help with that last one.

If you'd like a Googlebar in Mozilla, try googlebar @ mozdev.org. I haven't personally used it, but it seems to be what you're looking for.

I forgot to add a link to Chimera, which is quickly becoming the best OS X browser:

http://chimera.mozdev.org/

I get my mouse gestures from Optimoz.

>. What is needed are many, many, focus group sessions to create an OSS interface guidlines document that everyone can refer to (or not) when they build thier applications. Arent Gnome doing something approaching this?

Focus groups themselves don't necessarily give you clear vision. First you have to agree on what problems you're looking to solve then go from there.

Regarding design-by-dictatorship vs. design-by-committee, look at the Phoenix project and Chimera which were started as a reaction to the designed-by-committee state of Mozilla's UI.

My experience was ugh to bad. The first big problem I had was copying text from webpages. For some reason, moz always thought I was gesturing.

You can always cancel a mouse gesture by pausing the gesture. I now use the right button for gestures, but before when it was the left... I just made sure to pause slightly before copying/pasting.

Check the mouse gestures FAQ. It answers some of your complaints. http://optimoz.mozdev.org/gestures/faqs.html

For what it's worth, Optimoz' piemenus page attributes them to "Don Hopkins, who introducted in 1974 the use of gestural motions to execute context-menu like functions..."

I don't know about Opera, but if you use Mozilla's mouse gestures, you can customize them. Try reading Optimoz's customizing page.

The problem with Optimoz and its successor RadialContext is that both require a Linux user to have root priveleges in order to be installed. When will the Mozilla project pause from developing advanced functionality and begin to make it accessible to all but those who follow poor security practices? In addition to not even entering the 'known issue' with non-priveleged installs in their bugs database, anyone who installs as these packages as root can't use it with normal user accounts anyway. By admitting to using this package, you are publicly admitting to running as root on console. This may not be a wise thing to do with your real name.

The problem with Optimoz and its successor RadialContext is that both require a Linux user to have root priveleges in order to be installed. When will the Mozilla project pause from developing advanced functionality and begin to make it accessible to all but those who follow poor security practices? In addition to not even entering the 'known issue' with non-priveleged installs in their bugs database, anyone who installs as these packages as root can't use it with normal user accounts anyway. By admitting to using this package, you are publicly admitting to running as root on console. This may not be a wise thing to do with your real name.

God, how I love this.

Much better than gestures, at least for me as a trackball user.

Optimoz PieMenues.

But your mileage may vary.

Bye egghat.

One of the problems I always had using pgp/gpg was client support. Getting it to work with outlook/outlook express, then finding something under Linux that would support it, having to scrap together a bunch of tools, all of which were half-written...

I've found a solution. Mozilla and Enigmail. Yes, Mozilla/Netscape mail used to be putrid. It's better with Mozilla 1.0+, honestly. It has progressed to a competitive state, and I switched over totally about a month ago.

Enigmail is a plugin for Mozilla that handles signing, encrypting, decrypting and verifying mail for you.

GnuPG, Mozilla and Enigmail all work on Windows as well as Linux, so I have the same tools no matter what I'm running.

You still need a key manager, but getting what mozilla+enigmail provides is a great step forward.

Too lazy? eh, you should know every cool stuff is on mozdev! So bannerblind is on bannerblind.mozdev.org.

The GNU Privacy Project provides gpg and gpa for Windows. It integrates with Mozilla using the Enigmail plugin.

If this were true then why does M$ insist on messing about with the UI every time there is an OS upgrade. Win 3.1 was consistant (though V different from Win 3) 9x/NT were consistant but different, so we had to get used to a new UI and then XP is all different again. To my knowlege /bin is still in the same place it allways has been. If you wrote a XUL app it would be the same accross all platforms so people will not get confused when you upgrade or change the backend. Anyway if you really want I am sure there is a mozilla skin that makes it look like IE. Personaly I think XUL has a lot of potential. I have only looked into it, but it is next on my list of skills to learn.

It's exactly what I need, let's scroll down looking for any useful info.

Other Gecko-based browsers include SkipStone and Q.Bati.

This article was not supposed to be a bookmark list - it's supposed to be "survey", remember? Where is any comparison of SkipStone or Q.Bati to Galeon and K-Meleon?

Other XUL-based custom browsers include Project Piglet, MercurySpider, and Dino.

Again, why to mention it here if you don't compare?

Drawing two groups, XUL and native-toolkit based, is the only thing I can learn from the article. For everything else I should try download every mentioned browser and try myself.

By the way, as a bookmark list the article is also far from being complete.

It missed Mozilla Kiosk - "a kiosk style browser".

It missed Nareau - a collaboration web-based framework.

And it missed many other interesting projects from mozdev.

It's exactly what I need, let's scroll down looking for any useful info.

Other Gecko-based browsers include SkipStone and Q.Bati.

This article was not supposed to be a bookmark list - it's supposed to be "survey", remember? Where is any comparison of SkipStone or Q.Bati to Galeon and K-Meleon?

Other XUL-based custom browsers include Project Piglet, MercurySpider, and Dino.

Again, why to mention it here if you don't compare?

Drawing two groups, XUL and native-toolkit based, is the only thing I can learn from the article. For everything else I should try download every mentioned browser and try myself.

By the way, as a bookmark list the article is also far from being complete.

It missed Mozilla Kiosk - "a kiosk style browser".

It missed Nareau - a collaboration web-based framework.

And it missed many other interesting projects from mozdev.

I am looking for someone to plan and organize the project with me (preferably someone with experience at Mozilla programming and cvs), and looking for people to work on the project. I will be here to provide support and organize, but won't be able to do a lot of the coding at the moment (I'm working on Mozilla and also have a programming job where I am managing the project). If you want to help, then please email me.

Also related is that O'Reilly has released "Creating Applications With Mozilla" under the OPL, and can be found in its entirety here: http://books.mozdev.org/

(Apologies if this has been mentioned before; I did a quick search and didn't see it.)

Agree wholeheartedly with the first reply to parent.

XUL makes it possible to quickly develop cross-platform applications that load like web pages but look like "regular" desktop apps.

That's great news. I for one am tired of using applications that are done with just HTML. It's not what HTML is designed for, and we need something better. XUL provides that.

It's also a potent weapon we can use against IE. I'm convinced that we're in a very dangerous situation right now. If Microsoft can get some of the bigger sites to only work with IE, you can kiss goodbye all hopes for competition in the web browser and operating system market. With its current market share, we're dangerously close to that level. The solution, of course, is to get people to use Mozilla!

And why would end users care about switching to Mozilla? APPLICATIONS!

For this reason, I advocate doing new Web development work in XUL instead of HTML. Not only does it look MUCH nicer than traditional web apps, but it will give people a reason to switch to Mozilla.

I'm currently inhaling O'Reilly's new Mozilla application book. It's available under an Open Content license. (I submitted this as a story to Slashdot but they rejected it!!! Why??? This is HUGE!) The book is a good one and it can really show you what Mozilla is capable of. It is a very slick environment. Please check it out!

Wrong. There are many more at MozDev, as well as links to other Mozilla/XUL sites. Also Komodo , a commercial product was written with Mozilla. Activestate is actually making money with this.

O'reilly is taking this seriously. Maybe they know something you don't ;-)?

That's what used to annoy me too, and setting mouse gestures to one of the other buttons just didn't feel right.

But upgrading to a later version was much better, now you can cancel a gesture by holding down the button briefly after you stop moving, highlighting hasn't been a problem for me since.

BTW: If you don't like sites complaing that you're using mozilla, you can use uabar to change what your browser submits as a User Agent on the fly, just be careful of the java bug.

That's what used to annoy me too, and setting mouse gestures to one of the other buttons just didn't feel right.

But upgrading to a later version was much better, now you can cancel a gesture by holding down the button briefly after you stop moving, highlighting hasn't been a problem for me since.

BTW: If you don't like sites complaing that you're using mozilla, you can use uabar to change what your browser submits as a User Agent on the fly, just be careful of the java bug.

"My main gripe is that it doesn't look or act like my other Windows applications"

F.F.S., get the IE skin, it's not that hard

The Mozilla IE Theme looks pretty much like IE to me, and I'm using IE regularly.

Of course won't solve the shortcut problems and if it's not customizable by editing some file (anyone know?), then I hope the Mozilla team will have that in 1.3 or so.

np, here you go

If you allow Mozilla to load itself into memory for faster startup times (only fair considering IE does it without asking) you'll find that you can get a page loaded faster with mozilla.

I tried it using both browsers on the same site with my machine at work. The difference was on the order of seconds...

IE is junk compared to mozilla. Also, the Orbit theme rocks! Take a look here.

.. it's just linked to the main page now. For something extra-schweet though, try their experimental keyboard-navigable search interface - found it from Mycroft, the Mozilla search bar plugin project.

When you first use this phone you are able to dial numbers. Why? because the digits are on each buttons, and you just hunt-and-peck your way along. But the real beauty of this UI is for expert users, and everyone is an expert user of their cellphone. By arranging the buttons radially, you have a much easier time dialing blindly. Check out the keypad, there's a nice buttonless space for your thumb to go when you grab the phone in your pocket. From there, each button is easily naviagble. In fact, it's somewhat similar to mozilla's pie menus. They're going for ease of use while dialing blindly, and they know that whoever get's this as their phone will have more than enough time to become an expert at using it. That's because people use it every day. Handspring made the mistake of not enabling blind dialing in their Treo phone. Because the touch screen has no texture, it's impossible to find the buttons without looking.

So don't look at the nokia layout as an attmpt to be retro or to emulate a rotary phone, they're trying to make it easy for people to effortlessly use thier phone without looking. And there's no reason to stick to the 3x4 layout. Most cellphones' buttons are so different in size anyways that it's impossible to blind dial one after constantly using another. Therefore, they might as well rearrange them completely.

It already exists. In a number of forms!

For those of you who like clicking, and not typing (or copying/pasting) here are those addresses again:

http://backflip.com/
http://bookie.mozdev.org/
http://wwwampire.mozdev.org/

Yes, I am truly that lazy.

It already exists. In a number of forms!

For those of you who like clicking, and not typing (or copying/pasting) here are those addresses again:

http://backflip.com/
http://bookie.mozdev.org/
http://wwwampire.mozdev.org/

Yes, I am truly that lazy.

As long as the banner size is the same, so I can use Bannerblind... ;-)

I hope this technology makes it over to weblog sites like Blogger and Xanga. Both of those sites have excellent tools for IE, but the Mozilla versions of the same tools completely blow goats.

Of course, there are always XUL-based alternatives like mozBlog and LiveLizard, or the very excellent Composite. Composite's great - it gives you a WYSIWYG editor for any <TEXTAREA> that Mozilla encounters... using it to make this comment :-)

I hope this technology makes it over to weblog sites like Blogger and Xanga. Both of those sites have excellent tools for IE, but the Mozilla versions of the same tools completely blow goats.

Of course, there are always XUL-based alternatives like mozBlog and LiveLizard, or the very excellent Composite. Composite's great - it gives you a WYSIWYG editor for any <TEXTAREA> that Mozilla encounters... using it to make this comment :-)

I hope this technology makes it over to weblog sites like Blogger and Xanga. Both of those sites have excellent tools for IE, but the Mozilla versions of the same tools completely blow goats.

Of course, there are always XUL-based alternatives like mozBlog and LiveLizard, or the very excellent Composite. Composite's great - it gives you a WYSIWYG editor for any <TEXTAREA> that Mozilla encounters... using it to make this comment :-)

Now they just need to add the Spellchecker.

Enigmail Project Mozdev Site.
I've been using it for a while, and since this is only in Mandrake (AFAIK) I doubt it would make that much difference.

Don't the slashdot editors even click the links in the article they post?

This is the correct link.

This is of course the correct link.

I've been thinking that the Mozilla project should do something like this. They have the resources to handle an Exchange replacement. Imagine "Mozilla Server" which is a single-install replacement for Exchange/IIS

Much more important to get the basics done first - like folding a spell checker into the email client. Kudo's to the spellchecker team (Pete, David Alen, Rob, Joshua, and all the others who are making this happen) for building the add-on. I look forward to seeing it bundled with the 'core' download, though they really made it easy to install this....

Again, huge props to the developers and testers for making the email client usable for us who kant spll. (grin)

The Mozilla Spellchecker is scheduled to be added to Mozilla.

Downloaded and installed 1.2a. Typeahead works well and also took the time to try bannerblind . It works well for the few sites I tested it on - no more banners on pages. With a tool menu item you can turn it on and off and you can tweek its effect - removing them entirely or hiding them (leaves page layout the same). Way to go mozilla.

I can confirm that the version on the Spellchecker installation page does indeed work with builds from mid-August and earlier (likely including 1.0 and 1.1).

Really, it's just the recent nightlies (and possibly 1.2alpha) for which the Spellchecker is broken.

I had not heard of this, so I checked it out. At mozdev.org they seem totally focused on Mozilla 0.9X for windows, there is no mention of mozilla 1.1, and buried obscurely a reference to a version that "should" work on 1.0.

So I guess you couldn't mention the spell checker for quite some time now.

Is there a version that not just "should", but "does" work for 1.1? 1.0?

In the latest release of the pinball skin, the active area of the drop down buttons is reduced in favor of bigger back and forward button targets. Please note that themes which are available from both DeskMod and MozDev are usually more up-to-date on DeskMod because there is no automated upload interface for the MozDev theme site.

User-Agent spoofing has been around for a long time.

http://uabar.mozdev.org/

Normally, at this point, I would mention that there's a Spellchecker available for Mozilla. However, it appears that the Spellchecker is broken with all nightly builds after August 30th (and I'm not certain whether 1.2alpha is affected as well)

The spellchecker-broken bug has been filed as a "blocker" (highest possible severity), but there's been no progress since August 31st (when the bug was filed). :-/

Normally, at this point, I would mention that there's a Spellchecker available for Mozilla. However, it appears that the Spellchecker is broken with all nightly builds after August 30th (and I'm not certain whether 1.2alpha is affected as well)

The spellchecker-broken bug has been filed as a "blocker" (highest possible severity), but there's been no progress since August 31st (when the bug was filed). :-/

Normally, at this point, I would mention that there's a Spellchecker available for Mozilla. However, it appears that the Spellchecker is broken with all nightly builds after August 30th (and I'm not certain whether 1.2alpha is affected as well)

The spellchecker-broken bug has been filed as a "blocker" (highest possible severity), but there's been no progress since August 31st (when the bug was filed). :-/

I rather like the 'Pinball' skin. If you're dissatisfied with Moz's appearance, I reccomend downloading it here:

http://themes.mozdev.org/skins/pinball.html

That said, Moz can be quite the memory hog, especially on graphically intense pages. One of the big mistakes I see that can aggrivate this is the practice of tiling single-pixel graphics over a huge area. I'm not familiar with the gecko code, but I'm guessing that rather than rendering the tiled image once and keeping a handle for the resulting bitmap, Moz renders the image over and over again as it tiles and keeps a handle for each tile.

PHPBB sites are particularly bad about this, since the 'Sub Silver' theme uses several images that are about 5 pixels wide x 30 pixels tall. 150 pixels total. If you have to cover an area that is 1000 pixels wide, you need 200 repetitions of that 5 pixel wide image. If you repeat that area 25 times, and keep seperate instances of the image for each tile, you end up keeping the image in memory 5000 times.

Anyone more familiar with Gecko willing to comment on the actual mechanism of how it handles tiled images like this?