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OpenOffice is working on a OS X port. It's currently a developer version using XFree86.

OpenOffice Mac

Chimera is an open OS X mozilla web browser in development.

Chimera

These are just a couple of quick examples, but the ability is there to continue OSS work on a very capable platform - it's already begun. I was amazed I was able to compile and install my favorite tools and utilities, right out of the box.

But the Mac... Mail.app filters my junk mail very efficiently. Chimera does tabbed browsing almost as well as Galeon. iCal is young but already extremely cool, letting me keep track of my schedule and tasks. Terminal.app's ANSI colors suck, but it's a good emulator otherwise. Oh, and Fink and XDarwin let me sudo apt-get install gimp and almost anything else I could do on my Linux box.

Oh, yeah, and I can run Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

I've switched, and I can't see going back.

I eagerly await the day when i can include GoBe Productive on this list, it is really 'suite' (if you will forgive the pun).

But then again, should we call everything GNU/xxx if it uses the gcc extensions to be compiled?

If compiler used has any bearing on the name of the compiled program, then Visual C++ brings us Microsoft/Mozilla!

I have yet to see a single Mozilla 1.2 feature that Netscape 7 doesn't have.

Type Ahead Find?
More shortcut keys?
Attaching multiple messages to e-mails?
Improved XML support?
A rather serious e-mail bug?

Just naming a few from the 1.2 release notes.
Perhaps some changes was introduced prematurely in Netscape 7, but I doubt all of them were.

This is also from 1.2. I'm not sure if Netscape 7 even has all the 1.1 improvements since it was, after all, based on 1.0.1.

uhhhm. are you serious? I'm not sure how you figure this is a binary only distribution. Check out the Mozilla website .

Someone's now filed this as Bug 170517.

Bugzilla is there for a reason, you know.. There's a thread trying to get CapitalOne's website working. Most companies are willing to help and are compliant. Some try really hard not to help (ie. CapitalOne)

W/o a quick way to cycle through my tabs,
CTRL+PGUP, CTRL+PGDN
w/o being to have a tab be automagically reloaded,
they're working on that.
you can currently set bookmarks to auto-check if the site contains unviewed content.
w/o a keyboard shortcut to close the tab,
CTRL+W
I dont see why opening multiple windows and using the WinXP group programs feature isn't any better.
there's an extra click involved, you can't see the names right away, and all the reasons you mentioned above.

maybe I can w/ a theme, but I can not quickly move and re-arrange my bars like I can in IE. Luckily there is a google bar (kinda) for moz now, but since it has to sit stacked w/ the other bars and I can not combine, I don't use it.
phoenix can do this, mozilla themes currently don't (yet). you can shrink but not move or put them side-by-side. try the pinball theme, as it is very compact.

Would it be so wrong to add in what is needed so IE pages render correctly?
yes, because this has already been done to the extent that the standards are not compromised.

Mime types. It is really anoying to click on links like .rar, .wmv, etc. and just have the file not downloaded, but opened in a new window or tab. I see where I can add such mime types, but this should be done already.
this is being worked on. you can hold shift then click to immediately download.

I am the only user and its really anoying having to enter a password every time to save the time of entering a password.
there's a preference to set this so that you need only enter it once per session (and iirc sessions don't end with quicklaunch on). it's good to note that there should be an option to never need enter it. somebody should log that into bugzilla.

Every time I wanted to highlight something, and then copy it, the gestures decided I wanted to close Moz. I could have saved this with a modified key, but then what is the point of the gesture if I have to hit my keyboard?
set the gestures to your middle mouse button (scrollwheels work) or right mouse button. problem solved. (hello, optimoz, please change default!)

One last thing that relates to this article is speed. After I have moz open and have gone through a few tabs and few windows, I check mem usage and Moz is using over 40megs and is running 20-30% cpu usage. IE never did that.
IE definately always does that. it's embedded into windows and thus its resources are all buried in everything. mozilla does go a bit overboard, but not as much as you think.

see also mozilla's keyboard shortcuts.

next try, i think theres a bug in the comment system code, preview as plain old text killed my link although i noticed my mistake and set it to HTML Formatted. Here is the url: http://www.mozilla.org/unix/customizing.html#keys

This is because the Mozilla project is _more_ than just a browser. It is an application framework. (see http://www.mozilla.org/projects/). The scope of what they have taken on is amazing.

I personally think the XUL think was a very far-thinking investment in developer mind-share. Yes, it hasn't paid off yet, but have you actually taken a look at what XUL can do? (point Mozilla at http://www.xulplanet.com/tutorials/xultu/). This is a dream for web-based apps. I am so sick of the standard DHTML/Javascript cruft that I have to use to get a decent GUI. If Mozilla/XPToolkit/XUL (http://www.mozilla.org/xpfe/) become a standard, then I will be the happiest developer on earth. It really is kind of the answer to client-side .NET even before .NET was invented.

Yes, at first it was kind of slow, but that is because thay worked on features first, performance last. Honestly, with the hardware that is available nowadays, is performance really a problem? The average user can have a machine that only 5 years ago would have been considered a supercomputer, capable of rendering fullscreen realtime 3D at 30 fps, or better, so what's the problem compiling a little Javascript? On my "older" PIII 600, or my AMD 550, or even my Celeron 500, Mozilla seems to perform well, in both Windows and Linux. I personally don't see where the problem is. 1.5 Ghz machines now don't even cost $600.

There is always a trade-off between performance and features, but I think the Mozilla project took the long view, and I hope we will eventually see an XUL-type interface available for any GUI, on any platform. Goodbye .NET!!

This is because the Mozilla project is _more_ than just a browser. It is an application framework. (see http://www.mozilla.org/projects/). The scope of what they have taken on is amazing.

I personally think the XUL think was a very far-thinking investment in developer mind-share. Yes, it hasn't paid off yet, but have you actually taken a look at what XUL can do? (point Mozilla at http://www.xulplanet.com/tutorials/xultu/). This is a dream for web-based apps. I am so sick of the standard DHTML/Javascript cruft that I have to use to get a decent GUI. If Mozilla/XPToolkit/XUL (http://www.mozilla.org/xpfe/) become a standard, then I will be the happiest developer on earth. It really is kind of the answer to client-side .NET even before .NET was invented.

Yes, at first it was kind of slow, but that is because thay worked on features first, performance last. Honestly, with the hardware that is available nowadays, is performance really a problem? The average user can have a machine that only 5 years ago would have been considered a supercomputer, capable of rendering fullscreen realtime 3D at 30 fps, or better, so what's the problem compiling a little Javascript? On my "older" PIII 600, or my AMD 550, or even my Celeron 500, Mozilla seems to perform well, in both Windows and Linux. I personally don't see where the problem is. 1.5 Ghz machines now don't even cost $600.

There is always a trade-off between performance and features, but I think the Mozilla project took the long view, and I hope we will eventually see an XUL-type interface available for any GUI, on any platform. Goodbye .NET!!

Ever heard of company called "Netscape"? Mozilla isn't meant for end users. Quote:

Mozilla is an open-source web browser and toolkit, designed for standards compliance, performance and portability. Mozilla.org provides binaries for testing and feedback.

Many of the preferences are listed on customization page. To edit preferences, quit the browser, edit your prefs.js file, save it, and restart the browser. Using these preferences, I can set pop up, cookie, window permissions, and other options.

I will agree with critics that say the average user, and even the average programmer, is not capable of reading through the examples and manually setting preferences. But those who can are freed from slow and viral browsers.

You can, just check the Mozilla Keyboard Shortcuts document.

W/o a quick way to cycle through my tabs, w/o being to have a tab be automagically reloaded, w/o a keyboard shortcut to close the tab, I dont see why opening multiple windows and using the WinXP group programs feature isn't any better.

Would it be so wrong to add in what is needed so IE pages render correctly?

However, I am the only user and its really anoying having to enter a password every time to save the time of entering a password.

Mouse gestures were a joke.

Look at the release notes and FAQ. You can still use a proxy, but you have to manually add it to the prefs file.

Not nice I agree, but at least the author is aware of it.

Cheers,
Ian

What road/highway is this and what are the towns for each "milstone" along it?

here is what I offered as a RFE
and about a year ago I also sent the idea to google. they never answered me.. who knows :)
here is the link (read the pdf, not a very long one, you wont be disapointed.) Implement a web assistant in mozilla

if you sniff their versions properly you can redirect them to a page that has links to upgrade their browsers.

According to the Mozilla 1.2a release notes, its system requirements include the following:

• Intel pentium class 233 MHz (or faster) processor
• 64 MB RAM

Many users of the World Wide Web do not have the money to purchase such equipment. They make do with their old Pentium 133 with 32 MB of RAM that runs Netscape 4.x. It would cost real money to upgrade their browser, and it's illegal for many people to earn money.

If you've got a MathML enabled browser (and it's associated fonts) installed, take a look at Rice University's Connexions Project. I worked there when it was getting started a couple years ago, and it was already being used as the "textbook" in a few electrical engineering classes. I think it's still mostly electrical engineering and math content, but the means of presenting that content (single-concept "modules" which professors can tie together and expand into courses navigated via a Mozilla sidebar panel) is pretty neat.

You know, Mozilla has this nice built in password manager which can store account information for you. You can also set it up so that you need to enter a password before you can access the whole mother lode of them.

This is pretty much the same thing as you are describing, but you don't need to install yet another app to use it.

Looks like Mozilla is aware of the bug (bug #169620), and it may just be on 1.2 alpha.

Alternatively, convince the millions of average web surfers to use a standards-compliant browser. Then, when everyone complains that their whizz-bang site doesn't work, the bad designers will be forced to standardize their site.

Of course, this is something that quite a few people have done (including, amongst many others exim). However, you have to get permission from every single person who has contributed to the project, which is a huge hassle. For example, Mozilla is still trying to find everyone who has contributed to it, so they can switch to a triple MPL/GPL/LGPL license.

Of course, this is something that quite a few people have done (including, amongst many others exim). However, you have to get permission from every single person who has contributed to the project, which is a huge hassle. For example, Mozilla is still trying to find everyone who has contributed to it, so they can switch to a triple MPL/GPL/LGPL license.

see the FAQ.

Yes. I think it's clear that you can't beat MS at their homecourt.

You need to take the battle somewhere else

This is kind of weird. I was going to post a comment about how linux is nice & all, but usually I find myself using WinXP, and that I was in XP right now. And then I took a good hard look -- and it turns out I'm in gentoo linux right now and have been most of the day & didn't even notice. I'm totally serious. Maybe linux has come a long way!

(mozilla looks the same on both platforms)

I'm assuming when you say you are a Microsoft user you mean that you have only ever used Microsoft products. At this stage, any Unix-based operating system, be it a Linux distribution, Lindows (I do not personally count Lindows as a true Linux distribution), FreeBSD, or whatever, will be like jumping into a cold swimming pool. That is to say, it will be a shock at first, but if you are reasonably intelligent and you have picked a newbie distribution (Mandrake, Lycoris, Lindows, ELX), you should be able to adjust.

Some things to keep in mind:

1. You will not have perfect compatibility with Windows apps like MSOffice. You can use OpenOffice and most of your docs will look fine, but some will have visible display glitches (although I have never seen one that was unreadable). You can also download browser plugins for Mozilla (the best Linux web browser) which give it virtually all the worthwhile functionality of IE. Ximian Evolution is an excellent replacement for Outlook. OpenOffice, Mozilla, and Evolution all come with most new Linux distributions today. Another solution is Codeweavers Crossover Office and Crossover Plugin, which let you use Windows office apps and browser plugins. However, this option requires a subscription fee.

2. Many/most Windows games will not work at all, or without a good deal of tinkering. If you are a hardcore gamer, check out Transgaming WineX which can let you play some of the most popular Windows games with a minimum of glitches. This option also requires a subscription fee.

3. A Linux installation needs either its own hard drive, a free partition of space on a Windows drive (at least a few gigabytes) or its own machine. If you have only one machine with one partition on one hard drive, and that is for Windows, then you *might* damage your Windows installation installing Linux. Your best bet if you don't know what I am talking about is to ask a friend who knows more for some help in the installation.

4. While most hardware I have ever purchased is supported, some things just don't have support yet. One example is the "winmodem". Most modems sold today are sneakily designed to work only with Microsoft Windows. Yes, this is a conspiracy between Microsoft and the manufacturers of those modems. If your modem doesnt work, you will probably have to buy a new modem which specifically says it is a "hardware modem". As someone in [your local computer/electronics store] for help.

**Aside from all that, a tonne of things are different in the actual underlying operating system, but if you aren't a developer, you proably won't be intersted in those details. (Feel free to continue this thread if you are, I will be happy to answer more questions.)

With all this, I was trying to provide full disclosure of pitfalls to migrating, not to discourage you. I definately think the switch to Linux is worthwhile in the long term.

If as you implied you have only ever used Microsoft products, the best path you could take is to switch to OpenOffice and Mozilla running on Windows, then if you are comfortable with them, try to dual-boot with a newbie distribution like the ones mentioned above.

1.1. For whom is Mozilla 1.0 intended?

Mozilla 1.0 is a fully functional technology demo for those interested in seeing what can be done with Mozilla technology, and those who want to create Mozilla-based products and packages. The intended target audience is the development community.

"Oh, going back to Slashdot, I see...well, no suprise there, considering you're a Mozilla user..."

Re: The Ada catastrophe:

It is a pity that the catastrophe of ADA brought down the idea of dimensional analysis with it. Of course Hoare's Turing award lecture (please don't use this for anything safety critical the compilers are certain to be full of bugs) gave a salutary warning on unbounded complexity.

Gradually these objectives have been sacrificed in favour of power, supposedly achieved by a plethora of features and notational conventions, many of them unncessary and some of them, like exception handling, even dangerous.

But I come not to bury Hoare, but to praise him (Hell, he invented the case statement..):

It is not too late! I believe that by careful pruning of the Ada language, it is still possible to select a very powerful subset that would be reliable and efficient in implementation and safe and economic to use

It seems to me that privacy bugs often get short shrift in Bugzilla. I believe we're still waiting to get inline loads blocked within mail messages (i.e. for web bugs).

Well, Microsoft and Yahoo don't get paid just because some guy using a yahoo e-mail account e-mails someone using a hotmail account.

Uhh, of course they do. You can't check your mail on Yahoo or Hotmail without going to their Web site, which contains advertising banners. The companies are getting paid to run those ads.

(Whether you choose to see them or not is another matter, of course, but most people do, so the companies do get paid.)

Hello everyone!

Well, its been a long time coming, but I think that the calendar is finally at a release that I consider to be relatively stable, and that performs well. The XPI that is available right now fixes many selection problems, reads in Apple's iCal files from http://www.apple.com/ical/library/ and allows users to publish their events back to a webDAV enabled server. I'm calling this release 0.8.

What this means:
The 0.8 XPI will remain on the website until we release 0.9. We will continue to make XPIs available as they need to be (daily, weekly, whatever) but they may be more unstable than the 0.8 release.

At the same time, we will work towards putting the calendar into the Mozilla default builds. Build issues are being resolved now, and we should be ready to go soon. I imagine we'll see calendar in Mozilla by their 1.5 release (I hope, and assuming all goes well).

The 0.9 Mozilla calendar release will coincide with turning the calendar on by default in nightly builds.

The 1.0 calendar release will hopefully coicide with the 1.5 release of Mozilla, at which point our numbering system will jump up and match theirs.

Hopefully soon we'll have the target milestones in bugzilla. We will start to prioritize the bugs and see which bugs must be fixed for 0.9 and 1.0, and which ones can wait.

Thanks. The latest XPIs are linked off the website. The 0.8 XPIs are available at:
http://www.oeone.com/files/calendar08_linux.x pi
http://www.oeone.com/files/calendar08_windows. xpi

Mike

Mike Potter
Software Developer, OEone Corp.
Mozilla Calendar Project
http://www.oeone.com

if you are constantly changing critical code, you need to worry more about your development practices and not your testing.

Not true in many developement shops. With short iterations, refactoring, rigorous unit testing, collective code ownership, and continuous integration, code can be constantly changing but stable. Take for example the Mozilla Tinderbox. Development proceeds on many components and the builds and tests are run continuously. There are daily build smoketests (download a daily build and you'll see the smoketest menuitem), and sometimes things are broken for an hour or a day, but overall things just get better.

Embrace Change.

The Mozilla project is doing something similar to this. Check out the Mozilla Calendar project, which uses iCal calendars (yes, the same format as the Mac calendar) - you can load the calendar on any server and access either through ftp or webdav.

Combined with Roaming Profiles (getting worked on) - the Calendar, Mail/News using LDAP/IMAP, and Mozilla, will offer a very powerful, OPEN solution for groupware. Add all this up, and you can have the same bookmarks, cookies, prefs, calendar, and contact list hosted on a server, that you can access from your local copy of Mozilla.

I've yet to try it but it seems to me Bugzilla could easily be much more if you just changed some names, just mentally think of changes as bugs and machines as products. Bugzilla already has systems to track when and who entered stuff and can email people as needed.

I think other features could work well too but no software package is going to make up for the fact that a good system adminstrator has to have the discipline to document even trivial changes.

Every IM and gooey IRC client these days is replacing the noble ASCII smile with the hideous rictus of a yellow dot. Even punctuation is threatened
by the forces of Disnification.

There were some frequently encountered problems when both Flash and Java plugins were installed such as bug 86591. I think this was supposed to be fixed just before Mozilla 1.0. What version are you running? (A problem like this still occurs in the version of Mozilla shipped with Red Hat Linux 7.3.) Perhaps try disabling Java support (click on the Advanced preferences item) to see whether the issue you are experiencing could be related.

There's also an issue with Flash when using a remote display (bug 58937). Perhaps Shockwave has a similar problem.

If neither of these works, I would recommend a Google web search for terms like Mozilla, Flash, Shockwave, and crash, as Bugzilla doesn't seem to have much of use here: most of the bugs that could be related are either marked RESOLVED or WORKSFORME.

You might also like to try to produce debug output, but I think that requires a build of Mozilla that has debugging enabled.

Note that to access Bugzilla links from Slashdot, you will need to copy and paste them into the location bar.

There were some frequently encountered problems when both Flash and Java plugins were installed such as bug 86591. I think this was supposed to be fixed just before Mozilla 1.0. What version are you running? (A problem like this still occurs in the version of Mozilla shipped with Red Hat Linux 7.3.) Perhaps try disabling Java support (click on the Advanced preferences item) to see whether the issue you are experiencing could be related.

There's also an issue with Flash when using a remote display (bug 58937). Perhaps Shockwave has a similar problem.

If neither of these works, I would recommend a Google web search for terms like Mozilla, Flash, Shockwave, and crash, as Bugzilla doesn't seem to have much of use here: most of the bugs that could be related are either marked RESOLVED or WORKSFORME.

You might also like to try to produce debug output, but I think that requires a build of Mozilla that has debugging enabled.

Note that to access Bugzilla links from Slashdot, you will need to copy and paste them into the location bar.

There were some frequently encountered problems when both Flash and Java plugins were installed such as bug 86591. I think this was supposed to be fixed just before Mozilla 1.0. What version are you running? (A problem like this still occurs in the version of Mozilla shipped with Red Hat Linux 7.3.) Perhaps try disabling Java support (click on the Advanced preferences item) to see whether the issue you are experiencing could be related.

There's also an issue with Flash when using a remote display (bug 58937). Perhaps Shockwave has a similar problem.

If neither of these works, I would recommend a Google web search for terms like Mozilla, Flash, Shockwave, and crash, as Bugzilla doesn't seem to have much of use here: most of the bugs that could be related are either marked RESOLVED or WORKSFORME.

You might also like to try to produce debug output, but I think that requires a build of Mozilla that has debugging enabled.

Note that to access Bugzilla links from Slashdot, you will need to copy and paste them into the location bar.

I agree with the concern, that was what I had initially thought as well. By taking away that many keys, keyboard customization is going to be a problem (figures, they release this as soon as I find this page on mozilla.org. I think that both features could be very useful to people wanting to use the keyboard more for browsing, but they seem to conflict with each other (I haven't tested 1.2 either, but based on the feature description I agree with you).

Maybe if you read your own link (bugzilla bug 28568, copy link and paste in address bar) you would notice that this is fixed in 1.2a, but you have to use a hidden pref to enable it:

user_pref("browser.xul.error_pages.enabled", true)

So next time, try READING instead of posting a useless flame about your favorite bug.

Does anyone know if it's possible to selectively allow pop-ups on some sites you visit, but disallow from all others?

Not all builds are linked to immediately from the releases page. We link to the builds we have at the time of release.

Sometimes other builds arrive later (all of the 'ports' that mozilla.org doesn't build itself filter in when we point people to the release tag or source tarball and give them the time to actually build it).

In this case it was probably an oversight on my part or the zip build wasn't at ftp yet when endico and I went home for the night. To tell you the truth, I don't remember. It was late.

But don't count on us to be perfect. Just go directly to the ftp directory to see what's really available http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/releases/mozill a1.2a/

--Asa

The Mozilla Spellchecker is scheduled to be added to Mozilla.

How about that goddamned modal dialog window that pops up when it can't load an unreachable embedded element.

Please don't whine about how it's not nice to alias whatever.doubleclick.com to 127.0.0.1 in my hosts file. I know it's a kludge, but it's my hosts file. I don't want any traffic to go to those domains, whether it's from Mozilla or any other application.

Bug 28586 has been open for over two years and has 115 votes against it. (Moz team, please just swallow your pride and deal with the fact that your users just might not use their machines the way you do.)

(And the fact that hosts-based blocking is a kludge doesn't change the fact that modal dialogs for "document contains no data" or "ain't no host there" are just plain evil. The domain serving an image might be Slashdotted, for instance.)

Until I switch to Mozilla for everything, I still need my hosts-based blocking for the crap my proxy doesn't catch.

Of course, if I keep having to click on its goddamn modal dialogs instead of just seeing "X"s or broken image icons when a site's images are Slashdotted or blocked by my hosts file or firewall, I'll never use Mozilla as a web browser, let alone switch other parts of my life over to it. Pity. Apart from this bug, it looked pretty cool. But with this bug, it's unusable.

This has to go into the main builds.

(Disclaimer: if this made it into the 1.1 release, I confess I never bothered checking. Anyone knwo if it made it into 1.2? I can apply the patch and build the damn binaries myself if I have to, but most Joe Sixpack users can't.)

How about that goddamned modal dialog window that pops up when it can't load an unreachable embedded element.

Please don't whine about how it's not nice to alias whatever.doubleclick.com to 127.0.0.1 in my hosts file. I know it's a kludge, but it's my hosts file. I don't want any traffic to go to those domains, whether it's from Mozilla or any other application.

Bug 28586 has been open for over two years and has 115 votes against it. (Moz team, please just swallow your pride and deal with the fact that your users just might not use their machines the way you do.)

(And the fact that hosts-based blocking is a kludge doesn't change the fact that modal dialogs for "document contains no data" or "ain't no host there" are just plain evil. The domain serving an image might be Slashdotted, for instance.)

Until I switch to Mozilla for everything, I still need my hosts-based blocking for the crap my proxy doesn't catch.

Of course, if I keep having to click on its goddamn modal dialogs instead of just seeing "X"s or broken image icons when a site's images are Slashdotted or blocked by my hosts file or firewall, I'll never use Mozilla as a web browser, let alone switch other parts of my life over to it. Pity. Apart from this bug, it looked pretty cool. But with this bug, it's unusable.

This has to go into the main builds.

(Disclaimer: if this made it into the 1.1 release, I confess I never bothered checking. Anyone knwo if it made it into 1.2? I can apply the patch and build the damn binaries myself if I have to, but most Joe Sixpack users can't.)

It is not complete yet, though, so you may find that certain features are missing -- for instance, the cookie manager isn't there yet. You may also miss certain items that they yanked to unclutter the interface -- for instance, the ability to right-click on an image and block future images from that server.

Nightly builds are here: http://komodo.mozilla.org/pub/phoenix/nightly/late st-trunk/