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Hmm... the mozilla website's "Why You Should Switch" page seems to say things like "improving real world performance and increasing the value you get out of your time online" and "focused on the big picture". That hardly sounds like a reference implementation of standards compliance.

The new version of Adblock, when finished, will indeed prevent Mozilla from ever downloading the ads.

It will also be able to block anything that has an URL (from iframes to plugins) instead of just blocking images. It will so fulfill the needs of Bug 78104.

http://www.mozilla.org/party/1999/mozilla2.gif
link
nuff said

Thunderbird 0.3 release notes.

See Mozilla's opinion.

Maybe you should take the tour which explains the auto-download feature here.

I really like how they keep mentnioning how the new firebird browser 'eases media collection'.

I also like the new slogan in the screenshot here.

Maybe you should take the tour which explains the auto-download feature here.

I really like how they keep mentnioning how the new firebird browser 'eases media collection'.

I also like the new slogan in the screenshot here.

Maybe you should take the tour which explains the auto-download feature here.

I really like how they keep mentnioning how the new firebird browser 'eases media collection'.

I also like the new slogan in the screenshot here.

Many of you are asking for torrents, so I filed a bug report about them. Please do not comment on the bug unless you actually have something serious to add. If you're interested, add yourself to the CC list. Unfortunately, the mozilla.org component doesn't seem to allow votes.

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mozilla/rele ases/mozilla1.5/

Did anyone actually try to build this on Linux? Or is everyone using the binary versions?

I tried building an rpm with the source and it didn't work.

Others seem to have the same problem: bug 222241

Heh. You see, rather than "doing something," I've done something better. I've installed a superior product that already does exactly what I want. Why spend time and energy making something else function more like something that already exists and fits all my needs?

Don't just complain, do something!

Others are having problems too: bug 222241

For example:

• Why do I have to set browser.fixup.alternate.enabled just to turn off Firebird's damn "helpful" URL-rewriting "feature" (yes, I *didn't* mean to put a ".com" at the end!)
• Why do I have to set browser.tabs.autoHide to false just to have it keep the tab bar visible all the time like it should be doing by default (don't they understand it's *annoying* to have your whole window shift down whenever you open a new tab?)

This means that all those who thought that they could replace the animated GIFs on their pages with the patent-free MNG format will have to go back to GIF or Flash.

Note that MS Internet Explorer does not support MNG either, and Mozilla has a small market share in comparison to MSIE. But on the other hand, it is true that the removal of MNG is bad news for those who intended to use it inside their company, if their company uses Mozilla or other browsers derived from it.

I think that is is possible to restore a part of the MNG support by installing an XPI file for Mozilla. This is not a perfect solution because it requires every user to download a separate package for MNG support, but this could be a partial workaround for companies wanting to use MNG in their intranet.

For details, take a look at Bug 18574.

Heh! The links to Mozilla from Slashdot are disabled. So if you want to take a look at this bug, you have to copy this URL and paste it into a separate browser window (or tell your browser or proxy to drop the Referer header, if you can do that):
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18574

Please do not add a new comment to that bug report. Voting for it is probably equally useless, because this bug report has far more bugs than any other bug report in Bugzilla, but still nobody wants to apply the required patches that would revert the removal of MNG support. Instead, spend your votes on related bugs, such as bug #196670 or bug #204520.

The site has been reorganized and given a face list...

Click on the Firebird throbber (that ugly thing in the upper right part of the browser that spins around when loading a page) - http://texturizer.net/firebird/ - Click on Download on the left under Home

Now, you're on http://texturizer.net/firebird/download.html - Scroll down to the tan box that says Testers.

There's a link there next to Linux: ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firebird/nig htly/latest-trunk/MozillaFirebird-i686-linux-gtk2+ xft.tar.gz.

Hope this helps. Also, be sure to install the Bitstream Vera fonts.

There is one major regression from Mozilla 1.4 to Mozilla 1.5: the support for the MNG image format has been removed. This means that all those who thought that they could replace the animated GIFs on their pages with the patent-free MNG format will have to go back to GIF or Flash. This also means that JNG, a subset of MNG allowing JPEG-style photgraphic images with full transparency, is broken as well since the release of Mozilla 1.5.

The worst part is how this was handled: support for MNG was dropped because the code was too large and there was no maintainer, but then it was never restored despite impressive reduction of the size of the code and the presence of several active developers.

For details, take a look at Bug 18574. The release of 1.5 without MNG support is a sad day for those who love open image formats.

The "Take a Tour!" link reminds me of some sort of pay sites where you take a tour and get a preview of what you'll get after joining the site. Especially this censored one.

The "Take a Tour!" link reminds me of some sort of pay sites where you take a tour and get a preview of what you'll get after joining the site. Especially this censored one.

Compare! and Why? ;)

Compare! and Why? ;)

Check out the Mozilla roadmap. It shows a version 1.6 coming out in December 2003. Of course, it looks like 1.5 is several months "late" (an observation, not criticism) so I guess the schedule could be a bit loose.

BTW, for us who are too lazy to go find out ourselves, what makes firebird better than mozilla itself? I find mozilla to be quite satisfactory, why would I switch?

Read Mozilla's Eolas announcement!

vote here to get XForms support in Mozilla

"To help launch the new organization, America Online has pledged $2 million in cash to the Mozilla Foundation over the next two years. AOL will also contribute additional resources through equipment, domain names and trademarks, and related intellectual property, as well as providing some transitional assistance for key personnel as they move into the new organization."

One of the goals of Perl 6 is to make non-trivial projects possible. That's good. The way it's being done is bad. Perl was once a lightweight, extremely flexible language. Now it's become a huge ugly monster. People wanted OO, so a nasty hack was bolted on top to allow some semblance of it. Now this nasty hack is being expanded. Sure, the code's different, but the basic form is the same. Kludge upon kludge upon kludge; I'd much rather have a nice, clean, pure language (and not one with loads of irritating whitespace thank you very much).

The same goes for the syntax. All the switching between $, @ and % is really irritating (ask a newbie how to get at the length of the keys array of a hash inside a hash, for example), and the changes proposed for 6 are just making this worse -- it seems that Larry, in his infinite wisdom, wants to prefix every data type with a different hard-to-type character. Perl was only designed for the three data types, and adding more is a mess.

Perl 6 is a complete rewrite, but it keeps all the mess which has accumulated over the previous versions. This is not good. Sure, my const int $var = 27; may look neat (in the same way that, say, Pascal does), but $var isn't entirely constant, or entirely an integer, it's just a hack which makes it sort of behave like one. The whole thing is an exercise in pseudo-computer science masturbation with little real purpose except to please the managers who dislike the one thing that makes Perl special.

On a similar note is regexes. I'm an avid fan of regular expressions simply because a nondeterministic finite automata is far more flexible than linear code. However, Larry must have been smoking that cheap $2 crack when he wrote this. Does he want Perl 6 to be flex or something?

I won't be going on to use 6. It's a nice idea, but it's completely unnecessary. It won't make large projects any easier to manage (the language is still, at heart, an almighty hack -- an impressive one, but still a hack). It won't make OO any cleaner. It won't make development any faster. To put it bluntly, Perl scripts will still look less beautiful than our friend Mr Goatse. I'd prefer to use a language which has always been pure synthesis of science and engineering, not some half-baked imposter.

Perl 6 will be nice, but I'm guessing it will be the end of Perl. It can't do what it wants to do whilst still being based upon a nasty mess. There are now other options, which provide all of Perl's power and none of the mess. Sorry, but *BSD^H^H^H^H Perl is dying. Larry is buggering it up the ass without lubricants, just like Shoeboy is doing to Larry's daughter.

Yes.

The interesting thing is how the intersection of supported features has changed a lot over the past decade.

There used to be some C++ coding standard guidelines used by the Netscape/Mozilla team that were quite restrictive because of the need for Windows/Mac/Unix cross platform use.

I imagine a lot of those restrictions have dissolved as new compilers have become more standards compliant.

The really nice thing about standards, though, is that developers can extrapolate forward a little in the direction of standards. Not too much, mind you, but for a project that is under development for many years, as many C++ projects are, this can help reduce crufty anachronisms introduced soley so that code will compile on 8 year old compilers.

It seems that Microsoft had lost it's momentum. Next edition in 3 years, when Samba is faster than Windows Server 2003, Mozilla is better than Internet Explorer 6, and GNU/Linux is rapidly conquesting desktops may mean only one thing: when Longhorn will finally be released, world will be dominated by Open Source Software.
Constant evolution in hardware due to Moore's Law, kicks forward software evolution and Microsoft apparently don't care.
Given the current speed of adding features to GNU/Linux and FreeBSD I have no doubts that Longhorn will be long behind competion when it'll be released in 2006.

I think I'll just clarify that. In four or five years, what changes would you like to see happening to the language, and how realistic it is to be able to achieve those goals in that time period?

Wrong question. Being that there is no (AFAIK) compiler that even conforms to the existing standards, the only change in the language in the next 4 or 5 years would be to make this happen.

C++ is a neat language to study & learn, but I've found little use for it in the real world. Granted, I'm not a fulltime programmer anymore, and I've never worked on a huge (say the size of mozilla) project, so you can take my suggestions based on my experience with a grain of salt.

However, when programming in C++, I've found that debugging, even a compile problem at the syntax level to be a pain in the but. I can't tell you how many times I've seen pages and pages of error messages saying that a header that I did'nt know even existed was screwed up, simply because I missed a ';' in my code somewhere. Inheritance, as sexy as it seems, adds a layer of abstraction and complexity, especially if there is a bug somewhere in one of the middle classes. I cannot find a reasonable way to create a reusable class in C++. Because I can do so much with the language with overloaded functions and operators, I don't know when to stop. How many 'new's do we need? What about operators? etc, etc.

Templates are the best and worst thing about C++. I would never suggest making a typo when using templated classes. The syntax is ugly with templates, but the idea of being able to apply any arbitrary datatpe to predetermined routines is really cool, however, there seems to be a disparity between theory and reality. Templates is another thing that different compilers have problems with.

I would believe that the best place to use C++, would be on the microsoft platform. M$ has MFC and is relatively stable between platforms and releases. I cannot think of another platform where C++ would be as stable. But this too is changing with .NET and c#, but I do not see any reduction in support for C++ by M$.

This is my random rambling about C++ for the day. I really like that C++ has pass by reference, and that its a little more anal about prototypes and datatypes than C. Heck, I can use a c++ compiler to compile C code and get this. For portable code, the best thing I've seen is mozillas portable c++ guide, which kinda says, don't use many features of the language.

Mozilla finally - finally! - has a marketing project. It's be an uphill battle - to say the least - but it's a tremendous win over the active anti-marketing they had previously ...

"So tell me, how's anybody even supposed to know it exists?"

That thought has occurred to me and others on some of the mailing lists I frequent. Some are using redirects, but I find this in my Zope's standard_html_footer to be sufficient:

0">
USE MOZILLA

From the site:

We appreciate your interest and your support of our security research efforts over the past several years. Please join with us in being part of the solution.

Try Mozilla or Konqueror instead--two fine free software web browsers (and there are many others). Then consider switching to a free software operating system so you don't bump into holes in other applications and have to wait for the proprietor to fix them for you. If you want to inspect, copy, distribute, or modify free software programs you can do so (or get someone else to do so for you). Freedom is really worthwhile.

I really don't see where the 5% figure comes from. Install Xpde. It will give it the look of Windows XP. Use mozilla, with the IE theme from mozdev.org. That way mozilla will appear to be IE (duh!).

The folks at mozilla keep their security bugs hush-hush in the name of compromise:

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/security- bugs-policy.html

Not all security holes in Bugzilla are public. For example, bug 217195, which I reported, is marked as security-sensitive. Bugs that are marked as security sensitive usually aren't made public until after a release (such as 1.5) that includes the fix.

On the other hand, the code and information about changes to the code are public. For example, you can search bonsai to find out that this checkin was associated with bug 217195. I'd be impressed if you could construct an exploit based on that patch, though.

Smart people use mozilla though.

Get the latest version of Mozillabird. Unlike the bloated mozilla, its only a 6Mb download, and is getting smaller everyday! Its Extremly easy to use, complete with tabs, built in popup blocking and more! If you know somebody whose got screwed by a Internet explorer vulnerability, then get it installed today and save them!

And of course, if you want to take the plunge into linux, then use epiphany, easily the best browser for linux! Decent fonts, easy to use and no geeky bits!

How fortunate this is for the internet community! Imagine if IE were open source like this Mozilla thing! Keeping every working detail and possible vulnerability all very hush-hush is what makes IE the great browser that it is! How does Mozilla survive? I mean, come on... Bugzilla? They should follow these guys example and shut down.

For the good of the internet as a whole!

So Konqueror will have decent SVG support now.

When are we going to get decent working SVG support for Mozilla (and Phoenix) in X then? Last I checked, we're still stuck with libart (which can't be officially included in Mozilla thanks to the lack of a tri-license) and the infamous Bug 111152 was still open...

This is covered in the FAQ

Actually, it's XUL.

Well, I use the Mozilla browser *and* mail client. Since I use both, I use Mozilla instead of Firebird.

As for the Moz mail client, my biggest rave is it's junk mail filter. Other than that it's a very basic email client, certainly not as feature full as Evolution but it's well organized, easy to use, and it just works. If you're looking for calendaring functionality, you're not going to find it in Moz mail. There's another app that adds that called Calendar but I've never used it. Mind you, I've been using Moz mail forever (NS 3.x) so I'm pretty accustomed to it now.

of the whole article was when he tried to tell me that using a mouse is faster than using the keyboard. Cut and paste in windows is vastly superior to that of linux systems running X. Not only is it unified, it works everywhere. In X, maybe it works, and maybe it doesn't. Some applications don't take kindly to the clipboard, while others tend to try to impliment their own method. I don't care what anyone says, linux isn't all that hot as a desktop system. Like the author complains about windows, it's the little things that make it awful.

In fact, most hardcore linux/unix users i know do everything they can to get away from using their mouse. Guess this guy doesn't use vi/vim.

While we're on the subject of mice, why do i *STILL* have to hack in support for my wheelmouse manually in the conf? Are we not at the point yet where X can detect this automaticly? Making buttons 4 and 5 on my mouse is a pain as well.

The author also fails to mention that you are not strapped to applications like IE and Outlook, they can be replaced, or simply not used. I mean, what is wrong with using firebird and thunderbird? IMHO this is strong evidence that he didn't really explore his options much. The desktop can be replaced as well, with any one of dozens of explorer replacements. Hell, you can even get blackbox for windows or another favorite, geoshell - there are many more if you look. He also failed to mention that installing programs is almost always hassle free, while with linux you're into a horrid mess of library dependancies, un-unified packaging formats, and software that doesn't compile for whatever reason. If windows is so inferior, why is it past all this?

To me, linux users are just like windows users who swore by the 9x series, you're just used to the way things are, and you're past the point of objective thinking. Windows 9x users didn't like how their machines crashed all the time, they just accepted it. Linux users don't admit all the hassles that linux causes them, because they are used to it. When put on the defensive, most people will argue in favour of whatever they're using.

I've used both as primary operating systems before, and hands down, windows is much easier to use, the software is easier to install, and most times, you don't have to follow some cryptic manpage or readme that was designed for other programmers to understand it. My theory is Linux fails not because it's inferior, but because it's written by programmers for programmers. This tends to make it confusing, awkward and just plain hard to use, let alone set up. Just try to set up a pppoe or dialup connection, it's hours of frustrating fun if your distrobution doesn't include something to help you out.

I apologise if i come across sounding like a troll, but this guy's article is laughable, at best. It just goes to show you that you have as much chance of locating an unbiased article about windows on newsforge.com as you do finding an unbiased article about linux on microsoft.com.

I suppose the bright side of the argument is that he was not 100% negative about windows like most linux zealots, but make no mistake, this guy is a zealot. From the very start, he's setting this up to be a negative review.

In the end, i use windows. I want to work, get paid, and live a happy life, not wade through an operating system that tries to make my life hard at every turn.

However, there are lots of pages, including banking sites, that refuse to load properly or let you continue

Vote with your feet or wallet, which is what I did. I had a bank try that and I walked across the street and got better interest rates and lower / fewer service fees plus web access.

You gotta wonder about how secure the MSIE-only sites are anyway. I investigated getting a loan from a third bank, which turned out to be in on the Windows/MSIE MLM scheme, and left a clean e-mail address. Within days that address was getting spam with subjects like "Home Loans" or "Prospective Buyer"

Having pre-installed MSIE onto machines is the only reason it got market share. Unlike five years ago, there are now several very good browsers. If people actually had to choose and install / order a web browser the large majority would go with mozilla or opera

I've tried a good deal of the stuff listed. The following are the most intuitive, free, software products I have encountered. They increase productivity, and are stable.

Freeware List: If you can think of it, it's in here.
OpenCD: Precompiled CD with all open source software.
Doom9.org: Famed site for lots of media tools.
Trillian: AIM, ICQ, IRC, MSN, Yahoo! IM software all in one.
AVG Anti-Virus: Free AV
SpyBot (Spam Remover): Free Spam Remover/Search & Destroy
Firebird: Web browser w/ adblock & popup control.
FileZilla FTP: FTP Client
Smart FTP: Free Client, better looking, faster
Kerio: Personal Firewall, better than ZoneAlarm
Textpad: Text Editor.
PuTTY: SSH Client.
CygWin: Linux emulation.
FFDshow: DivX/XVid decoder.
TweakUI: Microsoft's famed Powertoy for Windows XP.
WinAce: Fast, high-compression (40% smaller, faster compression than ZIP).
WinAmp: MP3 player, with this skin.
dBpowerAMP: Music Converter (copies CDs to MP3)

One last thing, don't use Outlook. Find a better program: Eudora, Thunderbird, or PegasusMail (in that order) are safer/more powerful. Windows comes bundled with great software, just like Mandrake - but their internet package leaves much (security) to be desired.

Yes, maybe I'm bitter. I've created a website that works fine in every other browser that I've tested it on, but sucks in IE. So I'm maybe not your average surfer, but I think this topic is much more important than surfing for porn or stock quotes (or stock quotes of porn companies).

I couldn't help but think of the not-so-distant future when reading this topic. I'd say the web is an important part of my life now, but in the future, the web could be extremely important to everyone's life. It could bind cultures and peoples together or tear them apart. It is becoming our main source of information and communication. It is changing the way we think, do business, and approach our world.

If Microsoft continues to set the standards for the web, there is absolutely no doubt that they will abuse their position. They are right now, by not innovating, and ceasing in their bug-squashing efforts (chortle). Soon, there will be no standards-compliant HTML, there will be only Microsoft-compliant HTML. Apparently, CSS will never work right. The W3C will be a joke. People without IE will be locked out of important sites, and alternate platforms will be totally screwed, since development has stopped for the Mac, and there isn't IE for Linux, to my knowledge.

We need to view this as a war, 'cause it is. If we cede this battle, we've lost. We're at the breaking point right now, since Micro$oft has almost complete market dominance. We can't turn to the courts. The business world sees monoculture as a good thing, and IE as a defacto standard. They haven't been burned by it; yet.

I think guerrilla warfare is the only way. Any successful geurrilla movement must win the hearts and minds of the villagers/people. That means we must be honorable with them, and calmly educate them about the dangers of our mutual oppressors. But what are the dangers? Do they care about monoculture and standards? Probably not; that's a web developer bitch. Most web developers will sympathize with our plight. How then, do we win over the common people?

Features.

Microsoft has given us an opening, and we must take it. Since they've slowed down work on their browser, now is the time to redouble our efforts. We need browsers with cool features beyond popup-blocking. Innovative browsers, that work. Microsoft has given Apple a free pass. Safari rocks; I'm using it right now. Firebird is another great browser, and it works on every major platform. We need to support these browsers and get people to change over. When people check their site and see less than 80% of their users are using IE, then they will have to design for and support other browsers. Only idiots and crazy people can afford to lose 20% of their business.

Increased speed, and lots of features will be great, but nobody will know about it unless we spread the word. Get your Windoze-using friends to switch to Firebird or any other browser. Even better, get them to switch to Linux or the Mac. But we need to get the word out and convince people to change, one person at a time. I think we'll find there's a lot of discontent out there.

Anyway, sorry about this long-ass rant. But I feel strongly that something must be done about Microsoft's crappy-yet-dominant browser. Don't even get me started on their OSes.

Its intresting what you say about CSS and IE.

I use Mozilla and was browsing their site the other day and came across this pretty page on why you should switch to Mozilla. It was all very well done and heavily relied on CSS.

So I thought, this page is obviously mainly intended for the 90+% browser users who use IE. So how would it render in IE, bearing in mind how much CSS it uses. OMG, its crap! This doesn't help ppl switch because if they use IE it looks like a poorly designed page and thus they make think similar things about the browser.

Go try out the page in IE, and see what I mean.

Here it is... go snatch it up !