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For Mac OS X, I recommend the following free software:
Audacity . Audio Editor.
Colloquy. An IRC Client.
Cyberduck. FTP client.
Fugu. FTP client.
Shiira. Web browser written in Cocoa.
Camino. Web browser.
Firefox. Web Browser.
Mozilla . Browser/E-mail/Composer/Address/Chat.
Thunderbird. E-mail Client.
GnuPG for Mac. GNU Privacy Guard for Mac = Encryption for the people!

Give the kids choices. All of the above are free as in freedom as well as gratis.

The problem is that when Netscape descided to create a new open source browser, they ditched the original Mozilla codebase and called the new browser Mozilla. Given the random crap that's happening now over Netscape the browser, Netscape the portal, and Netscape the ISP (, Netscape the Breakfast Cereal, Netscape the Tiolet Paper), it seems that someone in the Netscape division doesn't grasp that reusing names is a bad thing because it creates confusion. (Like, this thread.)

Netscape 4 could indeed be called "Mozilla." Entering "about:mozilla" in Netscape 4 would get you a screen similar to the one in the newer Mozilla browsers. Yes, this creates confusion with the current mozilla.org Mozilla. But, as mentioned above, naming confusion seems to be on par these days with the Mozilla project. Which is why I just use Phoenix^WFirebird^WFirefox as my browser.

And Netscape 5 did exist at one point. I saw a beta of it that someone was using for a research project. The problem was that Netscape 4 was so horribly broken and that Netscape 5 was based on Netscape 4 that they ditched the entire codebase at that time. I have a feeling that playing "the version number game" helped the next public release of Netscape (the Browser) be "Netscape 6," so that it would have caught up with Internet Explorer's version number, but there was a brief time when Netscape 5 was in development based on Netscape 4.

There's the Mozilla SVG Project.

I suppose we'll end having browsers that support everything from HTML to XAML and Flash and SVG.

Unofficial Firefox 0.8/SVG builds can be found here. The SVG code, as I said before, is not a part of the 0.9 branch, though.

No, but there are builds of Mozilla (not sure about Firefox) with SVG enabled. Get them here.

This bug has been fixed recently. (bug 217527).

according to the firefox roadmap it should be out this month.

Don't be such a troll. The download size for Firefox hasn't been anywhere near 10 meg (except perhaps before they stripped out all the app suite stuff).

If you look at the latest branch builds you'll see that the current download is below 5 meg on Windows.

Yes I do think this could have been handled a *lot* better because Arvid but a lot of work into this excellent theme and now is word will be getting a lot less attention as it'll now just be a downloadable theme on update.mozilla.org

Also as you can see from the forum thread mentioned in the original article you can see the information process wasn't the best.

However, ultimately difficult decisions have to be made and they can't satisfy everyone all of the time.

If you look at the original charter for m/b, Phoenix, Firebird, Firefox you'll see that they intended from the very beginning to have only a small group of people making the decisions.

To quote:
The size of the team working on the trunk is one of the many reasons that development on the trunk is so slow. We feel that fewer dependencies (no marketing constraints), faster innovation (no UI committees), and more freedom to experiment (no backwards compatibility requirements) will lead to a better end product.

The important things like fixing the preferences, the weird, fatal bugs can wait! We want fun eye candy!!!

The important things like fixing the preferences, the weird, fatal bugs can wait! We want fun eye candy!!!

Firefox + adblock + hosts file + edexter = fast advert free browsing

I have not had one popup since I fully switched to FireFox (around 6 months ago).

There is also a FireFox extension that blocks those annoying Flash popunder ads.

That has to suck... or maybe we're just smart enough to have our web browsers lie and say, we're running MSIE 6.01 WindowsXP, 1600x1200 24bit color.. eh? :)

XP is better as an emoticon anyways.

Here's teh offtopic part, and a shameless plug for a really awesome Window Manager. Try XPde out. It's really awesome at the look and feel of windows, especially when you want to move someone over to Linux without telling them.

Now I know that sounds evil, but hear this story out. My sister wanted me one day to fix her "slow" computer. Turns out that she has 100's of spyware, literally, running on her computer. Not to mention trojans and viruses. I did a backup of her documents, put them on a zip disk and virus scanned that on my comp, just to make sure. Then I installed Slackware Linux, and used XPde (quite successfully I might add) as the WM. Installed Gaim, OO.org, Mozilla, software firewall, gimp, and misc games (frozen bubble rocks!) Total install in just around 250mb. No crashes, no viruses, nothing and it's locked behind a NAT that allows no incoming/outgoing ports except what's specified for IM services and outbound httpd traffic.

She didn't know she was running linux for a few months until she went to install a program! (Insert WineX installation at this point. Went well too!)

My point. Most people dont care what they use, and if the conversion is successful (I do many like this, only with people I really *KNOW* and trust me), they'll learn to champion linux to people who are easily intimidated by "techies" and zealots who want to install linux for you because MS is "7!^3" (evil)

To summarize this success story by my sisters quote: "Windows SUCKS!, where's my cute penguin?"

----zoloto

I have no idea what you're talking about. I never see ads anymore what with the OSS champion's Mozilla and AdBlock

In this case, ignorance is bliss...

And recently, Internet Explorer stopped opening for me.

Me too.

Solution 1: Spybot
Solution 2 (when I got sick of repeating solution 1): Mozilla.

Incidentally, that article page sure looks wacked in Mozilla 1.6.

Eudora? How about some easy spam filtering with Thunderbird?

Copy and paste this URL if you'd like to read several hundred other people complaining about that behavior (can't click through 'cause bugzilla doesn't do links from /.).

Anyway, as many of those complainers (rightly, IMO) note, that's hardly a Windows problem when Moz (and Firefox, for that matter) is just about the ONLY app to exhibit that little annoyance. SOMEONE PLEASE FUCKING FIX THIS - IT'S DRIVING MANY PEOPLE, INCLUDING YOURS TRULY, RIGHT UP THE FUCKING WALL.

Sorry ;)

Using the 'explorer' shell, which is heavily intergrated into the Windows OS, is the fastest, and should be the default. Then if people want to change it to look pretty they can, by sacrificing speed (in slower machines).

Windows shell replacements, as opposed to skinning apps like WindowBlinds, usually run faster, not slower. The secret seems to be choosing an alternative browser and file manager, thereby using Explorer as little as possible.

My Win2k box runs a lot faster with Geoshell/Servant Salamander/Firefox than with Explorer/Explorer/Explorer.

user_pref("middlemouse.contentLoadURL", false);

I think that the approach may be similar to the MPL (as I understood the 1.0 edition, the 1.1 Mozilla Public License is different) requiring people to submit to the Mozilla foundation the alterations that they had made to the code-base.

This allowed the foundation to maintain centralised control of the project without forked copies damaging it. I think that will allow Sun to nicely control Solaris.

Take care.
K3n.

Anyone know if Thunderbird is affected by this? There's nothing posted about it on their home page.

Try letting her lose on Wiki software. Start on the basics such as triple quotes and wikitables, then work up on harder stuff such as Templates and Variables. There are hundreds of wiki's about, gov wild! The best wiki's around are the Wikimedia wiki's such as Wikipedia,Wikiquote and Wikibooks. You will have fun, plus you will learn stuff other than programming! Also check out the cool round tab trick, a reason for you IE users to upgrade to firefox already!

Ummmm, yea. Mozilla (Windows and Linux), Evolution (Linux), Eudora (Mac). Need I go on?

Get a Mozilla browser and use Type Ahead Find. If you see a link that you want to visit, type the first letter of it and it'll automatically be focused. Then you can press enter to visit the site.

I wish Mozilla (and friends) would ship with --enable-svg compiled by default.

I know the SVG implementation in Mozilla isn't 100% (the builds I've tried do crash more often), but neither has the DOM-JavaScript implementation been 100% in all the major browsers all these years, and we've worked around it (albeit a pain but) with great success.

I say turn SVG on by default and let the SVG websites a cometh. Soon enough you'll have the Mozilla crowd surfing a slew of fantastic SVG sites and their IE friends will be jumping ship in droves.

You can wet your whistle by grabbing the Mozilla-Firefox SVG build for Linux/Solaris and experience the fantastic SVG work at Croczilla. The bezier-paths demo shows some serious potential.

The progression for better SVG implementation in Mozilla (or any browser for that matter) will go hand in hand with the easy availability for the user to be able to browse these websites w/o jumping through hoops.

<last-blurb-of-nonsense>SVG is a native implementation in Mozilla, so the end effect is completely smooth and transparent unlike Macromedia's Flash which feels like a browser afterthought.</last-blurb-of-nonsense>

See <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla1.8a1 /README.html">here</a> for details.

1) This is not the unix way of doing things. Small individual apps that can be combined in powerful ways.

ImageMagick is great. So is The Gimp. I'd say ImageMagick is more the unix way of doing things, but there is still definitely a place for The Gimp.

Mozilla should break into separate apps to handle separate tasks.

That sounds like a great idea! I seem to remember reading that the other parts (chat) were being made into separate apps as well, but a quick googling showed nothing.

1) This is not the unix way of doing things. Small individual apps that can be combined in powerful ways.

ImageMagick is great. So is The Gimp. I'd say ImageMagick is more the unix way of doing things, but there is still definitely a place for The Gimp.

Mozilla should break into separate apps to handle separate tasks.

That sounds like a great idea! I seem to remember reading that the other parts (chat) were being made into separate apps as well, but a quick googling showed nothing.

Or you can just use a browser that can support SVG natively.

but

"Unfortunately, Carbon doesn't have the ability to recognize a middle mouse click"

Is completely false.

As this developer page shows, Carbon can handle 65,535 buttons. The problem is, as you would know if you poked around in bugzilla, mouse events don't use Carbon Events (here's the filed bug for rewriting them). At least be correct in your knowledge of the situation next time. :)

You probably want to try mozex or the actual kitchen sink...

The only differences I see when I switch from Mozilla-Linux to Mozilla-MacOSX is the middle-click issue and that tabs move between the URL bar and the main window(instead of between elements). You can fix these two issues by setting middle-click to command-click, and setting tab to move between elements in the preferences. Firefox's preference panel lacks the option to change tabs behavior, but regular Mozilla for OSX has it.

Setting middle-click to command click is a hack to get around a bug, not a real solution. Under Linux & Windows, using Firefox, if I middle click on a link, I get a new tab. If I middle click on a tab, the tab closes. Command click will open a tab, but it won't close it. So now I'm only half-way towards my usual usage.

As for the tab key, those options shouldn't even be necessary. The problem is Bug 187508, Mozilla doesn't respect keyboard preferences in OS X. You should just be able to turn on full keyboard navigation in System Preferences. Instead, in Mozilla Seamonkey, you have to set a preference. In Firefox, you have to use about:config, and set the tabfocus preference to 7, which will let you tab between all fields, links, etc.

I hadn't ever heard of ctrl-enter auto-complete before, but it seems worthless considering Mozilla assumes http:// for any URL lacking a protocol and you rarely need www before a domain. CTRL-ENTER in Linux Mozilla opens links in new Tabs, Command-Enter in OSX Mozilla does the same thing

It's not worthless at all. For one thing, if you just type "google", and hit enter, Mozilla will take a second or two to resolve it to www.google.com, and then take you there. Control+Enter will get you there faster. Additionally, there are keyboard shortcuts for .net & .org, which I use frequently. Moz for Mac has none of these shortcuts. Also, under Firefox, Control+Enter does not open a link in a new tab, it's a different behavior than Seamonkey.

I appreciate the link to Side Track; I actually don't need it, as my logitech wireless mouse came with software that lets me customize the middle-click button to command-click. My point, however, is that I shouldn't need a piece of 3rd party software to get Mozilla to function correctly. At least Mike Pinkerton (Camino Dev) approved a patch for Firefox to work around the lack of middle-click events in Carbon. Hopefully this will land for 0.9. If not, I'll build my own copies of Firefox.

And of course, there are other problems with Mac Mozilla, like Bug 137523, Command+M doesn't minimize Mozilla, or that always annoying bug where plugin content is z-indexed above the tabs, so if you switch tabs, you still see the plugin contents. I can't seem to find the bug for that, but it drives me crazy. My bank uses a java stock ticker on their home page, and if I switch to another browser tab, that ticker is still there, floating on top of the tab content.

Also, there is no way to get Single-Window mode on the Mac, as TBE and Tabbrowser Preferences both completely fail on Firefox for Mac. Also, plugins like MiniT (which let you rearrange tabs) fail on the Mac as well. Very frustrating.

The only differences I see when I switch from Mozilla-Linux to Mozilla-MacOSX is the middle-click issue and that tabs move between the URL bar and the main window(instead of between elements). You can fix these two issues by setting middle-click to command-click, and setting tab to move between elements in the preferences. Firefox's preference panel lacks the option to change tabs behavior, but regular Mozilla for OSX has it.

Setting middle-click to command click is a hack to get around a bug, not a real solution. Under Linux & Windows, using Firefox, if I middle click on a link, I get a new tab. If I middle click on a tab, the tab closes. Command click will open a tab, but it won't close it. So now I'm only half-way towards my usual usage.

As for the tab key, those options shouldn't even be necessary. The problem is Bug 187508, Mozilla doesn't respect keyboard preferences in OS X. You should just be able to turn on full keyboard navigation in System Preferences. Instead, in Mozilla Seamonkey, you have to set a preference. In Firefox, you have to use about:config, and set the tabfocus preference to 7, which will let you tab between all fields, links, etc.

I hadn't ever heard of ctrl-enter auto-complete before, but it seems worthless considering Mozilla assumes http:// for any URL lacking a protocol and you rarely need www before a domain. CTRL-ENTER in Linux Mozilla opens links in new Tabs, Command-Enter in OSX Mozilla does the same thing

It's not worthless at all. For one thing, if you just type "google", and hit enter, Mozilla will take a second or two to resolve it to www.google.com, and then take you there. Control+Enter will get you there faster. Additionally, there are keyboard shortcuts for .net & .org, which I use frequently. Moz for Mac has none of these shortcuts. Also, under Firefox, Control+Enter does not open a link in a new tab, it's a different behavior than Seamonkey.

I appreciate the link to Side Track; I actually don't need it, as my logitech wireless mouse came with software that lets me customize the middle-click button to command-click. My point, however, is that I shouldn't need a piece of 3rd party software to get Mozilla to function correctly. At least Mike Pinkerton (Camino Dev) approved a patch for Firefox to work around the lack of middle-click events in Carbon. Hopefully this will land for 0.9. If not, I'll build my own copies of Firefox.

And of course, there are other problems with Mac Mozilla, like Bug 137523, Command+M doesn't minimize Mozilla, or that always annoying bug where plugin content is z-indexed above the tabs, so if you switch tabs, you still see the plugin contents. I can't seem to find the bug for that, but it drives me crazy. My bank uses a java stock ticker on their home page, and if I switch to another browser tab, that ticker is still there, floating on top of the tab content.

Also, there is no way to get Single-Window mode on the Mac, as TBE and Tabbrowser Preferences both completely fail on Firefox for Mac. Also, plugins like MiniT (which let you rearrange tabs) fail on the Mac as well. Very frustrating.

You'd rather not have "Find" look in textareas as well as body text? You'd rather not have better CSS support? And don't forget all the rendering improvements, bugfixes, etc.

See the changelog.

Ok, im no 'zilla expert here, but ever since I can remember Mozilla (or at least Firefox) has supported opening tabs on middle click.

Well, you're mostly right. Tabs were added prior to the 1.0 release, and middle-click to open the tabs was turned on then...except on OS X.

Kindly see Bug 151249 -- Middle click on links does nothing in OS X (You'll have to copy that link, bugzilla has a referrer check to block links from slashdot.)

Unfortunately, Carbon doesn't have the ability to recognize a middle mouse click, so Mozilla (Seamonkey) and Firefox can't do anything on a middle click. Camino, on the other hand, is built with Cocoa, so middle-clicking works on a default build.

Combine this with the lack of Ctrl+Enter URL autocomplete, and I don't enjoy my Mozilla experience on OS X. I use Firefox on a daily basis on both Windows & Linux; the second I go over to my Powerbook, Firefox doesn't behave even close to the same way, and it drives me crazy. I still use it, because I really dislike Safari's interface, and it's still missing too many features, but Mozilla on OS X needs a chunk of work before it will act like it does on other OSes.

hey look features are features but a few are missing

I would like a IM client (IRC does not rock my world) a Jabber client would be good

jabber support

I would like a iCal clone... (in process)

Indeed it is :)

I would like OpenPGP intergrated (only 128bit to save the export legal stuff) just basic crypto would be great (make it easy to setup as well)

There's a gpg extension, will that do?

I thought Firefox was scheduled to be *the* browser in the suite (with Thunderbird the equivalent in the mail space). How does that work if Firefox is on a branch and the suite ploughs ahead?

I hope bugfixes (217527 for example which affects Slashdot) are consistantly and promptly backported to 1.7 (and thus to Firefox) or the impetus could be there to reverse the flow back to the suite- up until now I have tended to think of Firefox as "the best of Mozilla"...

For their poor servers ...
Win32 exe
Win32 Zip
Linux
Linux (installer)

For their poor servers ...
Win32 exe
Win32 Zip
Linux
Linux (installer)

For their poor servers ...
Win32 exe
Win32 Zip
Linux
Linux (installer)

For their poor servers ...
Win32 exe
Win32 Zip
Linux
Linux (installer)

According to Bugzilla entry 28327 this does not seem to block every traffic: A year ago I found, that css stylesheets will still be loaded from remote locations. This bug must be one of the longest-open entries in bugzilla.

Use "View/Message-Body As/Plain Text" to be really sure to cause no hit anywhere.

There is another company that claims to do this, ReadNotify.

It looks to be exactly the same kind of service as Didtheyreadit.com.

I first became aware of this company by reading Mozilla's bug report 28327 - http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=28327 (cut/paste URL and open in new window).

Mozilla/Thunderbird also has trouble completely blocking all server contact in email, as it evidently doesn't sandbox the email environment enough (images may be blocked, but stylesheets and other external URL's can still leak through, last I checked).

BTW, there is a workaround if you use Mozilla/Thunderbird: set your View/Message Body As settings to "Simple HTML", or better yet, "Plain Text". This works 100%!

Go to bugzilla.mozilla.org and search for BlackConnect to see where we are.

JRex lives at http://jrex.mozdev.org/

As for an IDE, there are some ongoing projects, like Vixen and XUL Maker.

1. If there is a Mozilla marketing arm, they should be jumping in with both feet.

There is. Go to the Mozilla Marketing Project and take a look.

To submit a marketing request, go to the main Bugzilla database, and select Marketing as the category.

1. If there is a Mozilla marketing arm, they should be jumping in with both feet.

There is. Go to the Mozilla Marketing Project and take a look.

To submit a marketing request, go to the main Bugzilla database, and select Marketing as the category.

This article brings up many good points about IE's potential of totalitarian rule over the internet in the future, but I feel that it lacks insight on certain predictions, especially those regarding longhorn.

For one, the time it will take for longhorn to be widely adopted isn't factored into this hypothesis at all. It's 2004, that means its something around 4 years since the release of Windows XP. But is it as ubiquitous as this author claims it is? Absolutely not. It costs a lot of money to upgrade a whole mess of computers to a new MS operating system, and many people just don't need to for whatever reason, so in many fronts, it hasn't been done. My high school has some 100-200 computers: some are brand spankin' new dells with XP, others are Windows 2000, and there are more than just a few OS 9 macs floating around there as well. M$ can't assume that longhorn's release - and subsequently the release of XAML, etc - will take web dominance even within four years. It will take much, much longer.

So do the math. We've had a year or so heads up on the threats that longhorn posits to the Interweb, we have 2 1/2 more at least until the sucker actually comes out, and then over 4 years for reasonable ubiquity of the OS to make developing all future websites in technologies like XAML, etc worthwhile. That's nearly a total of eight years for standards to be utilized and improved upon. There is no reason why technologies like XUL, CSS2.1 (or even 3), and SVG can't be the accepted norm before then. The word just needs to get out somehow, but that's another post altogether...

On another note, regarding his mentioning of a Google-branded mozilla or something thrown into the forray, that's just overkill. Just imagine if, instead, Google merely placed these words on the bottom list of links on its homepage:

Google recommends Mozilla FireFox for a faster, more reliable, and more enjoyable web browsing experience.

Really, they'd only need to have it up there for what... a month? two weeks? for it to make a HUGE impact in IE's dominance. Imagine......