Slashdot Mirror

Mozilla already supports almost all of this (if not all). Check the DOM support in Mozilla.

Maybe a debate with idiots. OK, that's a little over the top (and trollish), but Netscape 4.0 was nowhere near as good as IE 4.0. Both were fairly equally unstable, although as I recall IE was actually slightly more stable than Netscape 4.0. However, IE 4 added many things that made their browser far superior to Netscape 4 - and many of these things are now standards.

I believe that there was a working DOM in IE 3, but it wasn't until 4 that the DOM became really fleshed out and usable, and that it could be changed dynamically client-side after the page loaded. No Netscape browser allowed changing of the DOM after the page had loaded until Mozilla. Likewise, IE4 had a fairly complete implementation of CSS 1, whereas Netscape 4 had a mind-numbingly bad implementation. (Namely, IE 4 would usually ignore things it didn't implement, while Netscape would half-implement things and behave truely strangely in certain cases. I have pages that work fine in IE 4 and Lynx, but not in Netscape 4 due to half-implemented CSS bits.)

IE 4 was a superior product. In this case, Microsoft won with the superior free product - don't forget that Netscape was also using their browser as a "loss-leader" for their server products, which are generally regarded to suck. (Just like Microsoft's server products, but...)

Microsoft continued to improve their browser. Netscape offered patch-after-patch that offered very little actual improvements other than not crashing in the same ways. Some patches actually made the browser worse, like the removing of "try {} catch {}" from JS in 4.97. (Or was it 4.98? I don't remember - just that all of a sudden all my pages stopped working in Netscape due to a single try {} catch {} block. I hate having to try and write pages that work on both NS4 and anything else...)

I personally think that Microsoft won the browser wars in a perfectly fair manner. The "browser wars" really weren't a good indication of where Microsoft was abusing their monopoly. Things like forcing companies to only offer PCs with their OS and using their office suite monopoly to control Apple are better and more clear-cut examples of abuse of monopoly. Even if Microsoft intended to abuse their monopoly to "win" the browser wars, they managed to win fair and square in spite of themselves. Netscape really dropped the ball in the end, allowing Microsoft to overtake them.

Now with Mozilla, we might see a new browser war. Since 0.9.6, I've switched back to Mozilla from IE (when on Windows, at least) - it works in almost all cases. Personally I think the IE vs Netscape thing is a very weak argument against Microsoft, especially when there are so many other things they've done that are much more clearcut abuses.

I don't know of any open source projects that do that, do you?

In fact, Nagios provides documentation. What you're talking about is support, ie somebody who will spend however long it takes working with you to get your problem sorted out. Pro level support is very different from writing documentation, and asking people to pay for it isn't unreasonable, it's what Red Hat do for instance.

No, not all open source projects have quality docs. If they don't, then write some! I've done that, took me about 40 minutes, plus a few emails to correct mistakes and get it uploaded. Nothing to it. Every little bit counts you know.

It seems to me most open source/free software is essentially an ego trip for the developer

Oh hardly, most open source software is written to be useful. It's a charitable contribution remember, if it didn't exist you'd still have to pay for commercial equivalents. If you don't find it useful for whatever reason, you can help make it useful, or you can go elsewhere. Complaining about it doesn't write docs though.

bugzilla doesnt allow links from slashdot. IIRC angelfire uses this technique against deep linking

Pretty soon, people are going to stop using hyperlinks all together and just use google keywords. Maybe there should be a google:// .. I know if I'm in a conversation and someone wants a hyperlink, I say "google for (keyword) instead of using a url.

I already browse that way. See, I've got a real browser, and with this browser I can configure it to use one of several search engines from the URL bar. I chose google, and so I just type in keywords in the URL bar, click Search (or use the arrow key to navigate to the google search choice in the dropdown menu and hit enter).

Galeon has blocked them better for a long time. Mozilla followed soon after, and I think that Galeon now uses it. Hell, even MSN's browser *chough*probably VB*cough*.does it!

Try mozilla, ghostzilla(winshit), or Galeon today.

Why didn't Apple just take an existing, proven browser like Chimera and improve upon it? It's not as if we need everyone and their grandma writing their own HTML rendering engine, we have enough problems with standards compliance with just 2 competing ones (though to credit Mozilla, they're not the ones with standards troubles).

Both great ideas, but... it's not like we'd lack mailers/browsers anyway, is it? What I'd really like to see them (or someone) do is an integrated mail+news reader. Like (pine, emacs, the good'uns...) but graphical too. ("For my woman" ;-)

So you can keep one library for mail and news articles, and search/move stuff around there to your heart's content.

It only makes sense, since the format is basically the same, and news traffic often intermingles with mail anyway. People sending you private answers, etc.

Right now, Mozilla is the only one that comes close -- afaik, it's the only integrated mail+news reader in Aqua. The bliss of saving a news post onto your imap box, drag & drop.

But why, oh why, does it have to keep also the browser in the same process? This soon gets humongous (nearly 100 Mb at the moment), and why should your mailer crash at the whim of any miscoded javascript site? That doesn't make sense.

So here's to Mail+News.app -- or else, a nice Minotaur/Thunderbird.

Are available from the Mozilla FTP site

The easist way to get Mozilla to use rpms that had support for XFT (AA Fonts). for 1.2.1 http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/releases/mozill a1.2.1/Red_Hat_8x_RPMS/xft/ Of course, you could always download the source and compile it with --enable-xft. :) As for my own pref, I like Luxi Sans. AA support looks great on mine, and even the menus use the default font. Nice when you are running 1600x1200+!

Various Linux distributions have problems with fonts; in particular, Arial, used in many web pages, may map to a font that looks blocky and is smaller than the requested size. A full discussion is in bug 46415, but an easy solution for Redhat users is this:

mv /usr/share/fonts/ISO8859-2 /usr/share/fonts.ISO8859-2 and then log out of X and log back in again.

You can always undo this, if necessary, with the command:

mv /usr/share/fonts.ISO8859-2 /usr/share/fonts/ISO8859-2

It's also worth reading this excellent discussion on fuzzy Linux fonts.

Or, add things like this to user.js in your .mozilla/.... directory:

// X font banning: see bug 104075.
// Ban all arial fonts, because abiword installs an ugly one
// and there doesn't seem to be a good one available:
user_pref("font.x11.rejectfontpattern", "fname=.*arial.*");

// Some alternate forms for rejectfontpattern:
//"fname=.*arial.*;scalable=.*;outline_scaled=.*;\
// xdisplay=.*;xdpy=.*;ydpy=.*;xdevice=.*");
// "fname=-zz-abiword.*;scalable=false;outline_scaled =false;");
// Alternately, reject font if accept pattern does not match it:
//user_pref("font.x11.acceptfontpattern", ".*");

Various Linux distributions have problems with fonts; in particular, Arial, used in many web pages, may map to a font that looks blocky and is smaller than the requested size. A full discussion is in bug 46415, but an easy solution for Redhat users is this:

mv /usr/share/fonts/ISO8859-2 /usr/share/fonts.ISO8859-2 and then log out of X and log back in again.

You can always undo this, if necessary, with the command:

mv /usr/share/fonts.ISO8859-2 /usr/share/fonts/ISO8859-2

It's also worth reading this excellent discussion on fuzzy Linux fonts.

Or, add things like this to user.js in your .mozilla/.... directory:

// X font banning: see bug 104075.
// Ban all arial fonts, because abiword installs an ugly one
// and there doesn't seem to be a good one available:
user_pref("font.x11.rejectfontpattern", "fname=.*arial.*");

// Some alternate forms for rejectfontpattern:
//"fname=.*arial.*;scalable=.*;outline_scaled=.*;\
// xdisplay=.*;xdpy=.*;ydpy=.*;xdevice=.*");
// "fname=-zz-abiword.*;scalable=false;outline_scaled =false;");
// Alternately, reject font if accept pattern does not match it:
//user_pref("font.x11.acceptfontpattern", ".*");

While it's not completely free of the "cat-and-mouse game", Mozilla's Junk Mail Controls are cutting my spam down by about 90% and it only requires a single mouse click for each of the few spam messages that gets through to keep the filter trained at that level.

--Asa

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/netlib/Link_Prefet ching_FAQ.html

...it would have been more tolerable had he not felt the need to comment on fucking everything...

For those who wish to read only the original content, you can use CSS to disable the comments by putting the following rule in your browser's user style sheet:
.comment { display: none; }

In Mozilla, this means adding the above line to $HOME/.mozilla/profile name/random salt/chrome/userContent.css and restarting your browser. The same can also be achieved in Opera.

Admittedly it's a little much to make these changes for just one Web page, but as more Web pages start to use CSS, this sort of thing will hopefully apply to more than just one or two pages. Alternatively, you could contact ESR and suggest he provide an alternate stylesheet so you can easily toggle comment display.

If your going to simply cut'n'paste for karma, you could at least give credit to the source

except when it comes to this bug: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=186064

IE's other trick, or so it is assumed (since the source isn't available) is that it does full DOM and JS caching.

That is to say, if you visit a webpage with (say) Mozilla, the HTML is interpreted and the HTML tree is built in memory. Pages with advanced CSS have a more complicated tree, of course. However, when the user leaves the page, that tree is destroyed and has to be recreated each time the user visits the page.

The bug to correct this in Mozilla is bug 38486 - "[FEATURE] Keep DOM and JS context in memory to provide fast access when clicking back". You can also vote for it (free Bugzilla account required) though you'll have to copy-n-paste the URL into your browser window since Bugzilla doesn't accept referrers from Slashdot.

PS Threaded e-mail is handy, eh? It sure is, unless your mail reader doesn't remember that you want to see your mailboxes in threaded view and keeps reverting back to collapsed form. That one is bug 64426 (vote for it if you like).

IE's other trick, or so it is assumed (since the source isn't available) is that it does full DOM and JS caching.

That is to say, if you visit a webpage with (say) Mozilla, the HTML is interpreted and the HTML tree is built in memory. Pages with advanced CSS have a more complicated tree, of course. However, when the user leaves the page, that tree is destroyed and has to be recreated each time the user visits the page.

The bug to correct this in Mozilla is bug 38486 - "[FEATURE] Keep DOM and JS context in memory to provide fast access when clicking back". You can also vote for it (free Bugzilla account required) though you'll have to copy-n-paste the URL into your browser window since Bugzilla doesn't accept referrers from Slashdot.

PS Threaded e-mail is handy, eh? It sure is, unless your mail reader doesn't remember that you want to see your mailboxes in threaded view and keeps reverting back to collapsed form. That one is bug 64426 (vote for it if you like).

IE's other trick, or so it is assumed (since the source isn't available) is that it does full DOM and JS caching.

That is to say, if you visit a webpage with (say) Mozilla, the HTML is interpreted and the HTML tree is built in memory. Pages with advanced CSS have a more complicated tree, of course. However, when the user leaves the page, that tree is destroyed and has to be recreated each time the user visits the page.

The bug to correct this in Mozilla is bug 38486 - "[FEATURE] Keep DOM and JS context in memory to provide fast access when clicking back". You can also vote for it (free Bugzilla account required) though you'll have to copy-n-paste the URL into your browser window since Bugzilla doesn't accept referrers from Slashdot.

PS Threaded e-mail is handy, eh? It sure is, unless your mail reader doesn't remember that you want to see your mailboxes in threaded view and keeps reverting back to collapsed form. That one is bug 64426 (vote for it if you like).

IE's other trick, or so it is assumed (since the source isn't available) is that it does full DOM and JS caching.

That is to say, if you visit a webpage with (say) Mozilla, the HTML is interpreted and the HTML tree is built in memory. Pages with advanced CSS have a more complicated tree, of course. However, when the user leaves the page, that tree is destroyed and has to be recreated each time the user visits the page.

The bug to correct this in Mozilla is bug 38486 - "[FEATURE] Keep DOM and JS context in memory to provide fast access when clicking back". You can also vote for it (free Bugzilla account required) though you'll have to copy-n-paste the URL into your browser window since Bugzilla doesn't accept referrers from Slashdot.

PS Threaded e-mail is handy, eh? It sure is, unless your mail reader doesn't remember that you want to see your mailboxes in threaded view and keeps reverting back to collapsed form. That one is bug 64426 (vote for it if you like).

IE's other trick, or so it is assumed (since the source isn't available) is that it does full DOM and JS caching.

That is to say, if you visit a webpage with (say) Mozilla, the HTML is interpreted and the HTML tree is built in memory. Pages with advanced CSS have a more complicated tree, of course. However, when the user leaves the page, that tree is destroyed and has to be recreated each time the user visits the page.

The bug to correct this in Mozilla is bug 38486 - "[FEATURE] Keep DOM and JS context in memory to provide fast access when clicking back". You can also vote for it (free Bugzilla account required) though you'll have to copy-n-paste the URL into your browser window since Bugzilla doesn't accept referrers from Slashdot.

PS Threaded e-mail is handy, eh? It sure is, unless your mail reader doesn't remember that you want to see your mailboxes in threaded view and keeps reverting back to collapsed form. That one is bug 64426 (vote for it if you like).

Oh, but don't let something like the facts interfere with your nasal evangelism.

Weird News

the inability to tailor the browser string to be whatever I want without recompiling (at least one website I *have* to use will ban you if your browser doesn't say "MSIE" in its string).

Random sidenote: look here, about halfway down is an option you can put in user.js to change the UA string. Your point is still valid, though, since it doesn't have a UI.

better 'threading' behavior: I notice that tabs behave 'blocked' by other tabs' slowness or failure to load pages. Each tab (and browser window obviously) should download and behave independently of any other.

Yes, I want to feed the troll. Yes, I want to pay gobs of money for a mail server on my Windows Desktop. Yes, I want to pay for a shareware filter plugin that may not exist with my brand new mail server software. No, I do not want to mess with the Mozilla email filter for Windows, Linux, Mac, HPUX, OpenVMS or OS/2. No, I do not want to install SuSE, which offers an AV email filter with an email server during the install.

If every browser vendor would publish a definite conformance guide like that with their releases and patches, the web would be a better place.

Well, it's not, but you know...

Mozilla now comes with it's own Spam Filter starting with 1.3Alpha. Anyone know how well it works? I haven't had a chance to try it.

Think this is off topic? Read the last line of the slashdot story and click the link, where you can take a "Free 30-Day Trial!!"

=)

MPLAYER
This project has managed to become imho the best media player on any platform. Having been exposed to windows media players such as realone and divx recently , I can appreciate these guys' effort even more. MOZILLA - (the framework)
Mozilla is simply amazing, I finally got bitten b y the XUL bug and have been losing much sleep to playing with this incredibly usefull tech. I am now contemplating forcing mozilla down the throats of my clients for intranet web based apps. =) PHOENIX - (the browser)
An absolute GODSEND, and very late entry into this year's favorites =) Yet more proof that xul rocks. And there's prolly more I am forgetting.. but these stand out =)

MPLAYER
This project has managed to become imho the best media player on any platform. Having been exposed to windows media players such as realone and divx recently , I can appreciate these guys' effort even more. MOZILLA - (the framework)
Mozilla is simply amazing, I finally got bitten b y the XUL bug and have been losing much sleep to playing with this incredibly usefull tech. I am now contemplating forcing mozilla down the throats of my clients for intranet web based apps. =) PHOENIX - (the browser)
An absolute GODSEND, and very late entry into this year's favorites =) Yet more proof that xul rocks. And there's prolly more I am forgetting.. but these stand out =)

The fact you could not find a forum to post your question is is not so surprising (there is a whole debtate on the "Mozilla is not for the end users" speech).

Personally over the years I've found that mozillazine is the most helpful place to go for non developers. There tend to be enough people there who are friendly to both tech and non-techs (thus you end up with a group of people who know the answers and are willing to tell you them ;). I used to hang out in the #mozillazine irc channel myself when I had the time and before my University blocked irc...

Concerning the memory hog alegations under Windows I feel your pain. For whatever reason Mozilla always seems to be swapped out of memory when left idle for a few minutes which doesn't help it's responsiveness. Hopefully the phoenix (it's still beta but coming along nicely) will help to solve the memory issues.

For a little bit of detail about setting hidden preferences in Chimera, see the Chimera documentation.

Chimera also imho handles tabs better than Opera for OS X, and I like that it integrates with OS X proxy settings (though I'd like the developers to make that a little more obvious in the doccys ;)

The Chimera documentation about proxy settings states:

Proxy Servers

Some organizations block direct connections to the Internet, for security or other reasons. In these situations, connections are required to go through proxy servers, which are intermediate servers that redirect connections to their final destination.

Chimera normally gets information about yor proxy server settings from the Network System Preferences pane (see the "Proxies" tab there). If you switch network locations, or change the proxy settings, Chimera will pick up those new settings without restarting.

It then goes on to describe how to enable Proxy Auto Config support in Chimera by way of several hidden preferences.

There is more than just that zeplin. Much of the artwork in the Mozilla logos and "posters" use a type of art popular in the 30's that was seen in many places, including Soviet propaganda and in American posters. Searching newsgroups a while back, I never found why the red theme is used (e.g. here. Some say it is a joke or parody of the people's revolution, while others argue that it is not a parody of anything.
Many people have submitted new logos, but most have been rejected by someone for some reason. Somehow people argue that the red star is as innocent as any pentogram, but if that is the case, why not use the "innocent" swastika as a logo? WTF is a reoccuring theme in the newsgroups. Search google groups for many discussions on the red theme.

Got a response? TalkBack!

Got a response? TalkBack!

Got a response? TalkBack!

Got a response? TalkBack!

Got a response? TalkBack!

Got a response? TalkBack!

Take a look at Mozilla i18n & L10n Guidlines and Netscape ToolCool. These projects allow mozilla to be localized without recompilation of binaries. Local language data is kept in a seperate data store that the application can pull from. Translating the app is just a matter of adding the language to the database. Seems logical and simple.

Take a look at Mozilla i18n & L10n Guidlines and Netscape ToolCool. These projects allow mozilla to be localized without recompilation of binaries. Local language data is kept in a seperate data store that the application can pull from. Translating the app is just a matter of adding the language to the database. Seems logical and simple.

Take a look at Mozilla i18n & L10n Guidlines and Netscape ToolCool. These projects allow mozilla to be localized without recompilation of binaries. Local language data is kept in a seperate data store that the application can pull from. Translating the app is just a matter of adding the language to the database. Seems logical and simple.

By this I assume you mean using client-level filtering. I do. Alot. I typically get about 60-80 pieces of spam a day, and have set up 30 or so filters. But that only catches about 2/3's.

Simply put, there is no client-level filtering solution that is going to work 100% of the time.

I recently started using Mozilla 1.3a, which includes Bayesian filtering for incoming email. So far, having only trained it for a few days, I'd estimate it's flagging around 95% of the spam I recieve. It got a few false positives in the first day or so I was using it - mostly on mailing list messages, but once I told it those weren't spam it's not had any problems since.

This doesn't solve the underlying problem of the spam clogging up the mailserver, but it does mean I don't have to deal with it.

if you're not familiar yet with the good gnus [gnu.org], you may want to first acquire a browser [mozilla.org] that doesn't: begin to eXPloit you, &/or, "redirect" you, to the FraUDuleNT pourtolls of the stock markup hostage ransom scam liesense peddlers.

no phony DOWts any more?

ucann go over to father william's "free" hostdead session, if you knead this FraUDuleNT /.charade to .continue. you KNOW what to do, robbIE? @40?

if you're not familiar yet with the good gnus, you may want to first acquire a browser that doesn't: begin to eXPloit you, &/or, "redirect" you, to the FraUDuleNT pourtolls of the stock markup hostage ransom scam liesense peddlers.

no phony DOWts any more?

ucann go over to father william's "free" hostdead session, if you knead this FraUDuleNT /.charade to .continue. you KNOW what to do, robbIE? @40?

if you're not familiar yet with the good gnus, you may want to first acquire a browser that doesn't: begin to eXPloit you, &/or, "redirect" you, to the FraUDuleNT pourtolls of the stock markup hostage ransom scam liesense peddlers.

no phony DOWts any more?

ucann go over to father william's "free" hostdead session, if you knead this FraUDuleNT /.charade to .continue. you KNOW what to do, robbIE? @40?

I just submitted this as a feature enhancement to mozilla... everybody that likes this idea, go vote for this bug #187187:

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=187187

You'll probably have to copy and paste that URL into your browser, I think bugzilla blocks people coming straight from slashdot.

"Here you are, a nice shiny new computer. What do you do with it? Why, plug it in, of course". About the best learning software I've seen (and admittedly I haven't looked recently) was MathBlaster. Better tools and better training for the teachers is what is really necessary to make computers work in schools.

What absolute drivel!. I teach in a school division that has increased the student:computer ratio to about 2:1 over the past two years. MathBlaster and Reader Rabbit are nice cute diversions, but they are rarely used as part of a true educational curriculum. They are toys at best, that allow teachers a few moments to do some marking or other preparation work for which they do not get nearly enough time.

The best educational software I have seen is a combination of OpenOffice and Mozilla. I have heard of Grade 6 students using the presentation software to create stories (illustrated with pictures found online), then going into the grade 1 classroom to present their stories to the younger students using a data projector (after having the stories proofread and checked over by their teacher, of course). I do not think that it is a coincidence that both of these are free (both types) products; they don't have a large team of marketing trolls developing educational support materials so their products can be rammed down the gullet of a starving educational system! These programs are run on a *nix based system, including the use of LTSP to allow access to all terminals in the school in a very cost effective means. Maybe the first step to making computers useful educational tools is to install a linux distro, so that M$ and (it pains me to say) Apple, and all the educational software companies, can't get their claws into the schools

Oh my but I did have the good rant going there, didn't I?