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I recently upgraded a Win box (yes, the shame) from Netscape 4.75 to 6.11 and it's a dog.

It depends on how fast your computer is and how much memory it has. Older computers with less than 300MHz processors and less than 64MB or RAM won't run Mozilla/NS6.x well. If you have an older computer that's low on RAM get Opera.

Is there much difference between the Mozilla 1.0 build and the Netscape 6.11? Should I have chosen native Win code during the install instead of "generic" code?

The Netscape version tends to run several builds behind the Mozilla version. This is because Netscape's people put together a custom build from the original Mozilla build and this takes time. Furthermore, the Netscape version is likely to be weighed down with a lot of AOL specific crap -- like custom themes, links, sidebars, and applications you don't need -- that will slow it down even more. Go to Mozilla's official website and download the latest build. It will have the latest bug fixes and improvements that won't make it into Netscape for weeks or even months.

I read too many comments on current sites that don't support netscape/mozilla, and on the stats pages that say so many people are using MSIE.

I've installed *nix on many desktops where I work, and have the users using galeon, but I had to set the browser string to something MSIE-like or else sites crucial to our business reject them. And after that little change, all of a sudden the site FULLY supported galeon (w/ moz 9.9), gee, what a shocker.

Sad, but there's no good way to tell how many people are using what anymore.

FWIW, a few of those sites: quest quoting tool, and webdialogs.com account admin

Someone posted this link as a really good browser detection javascript: mozilla.org It said my galeon on linux was WinNT running MSIE 6.
If you're running galeon, you can set your string and test this thing out by doing this:
gconftool -s /apps/galeon/Advanced/Network/user_agent --type=string "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; Q312461)"

By the way, what is the best method to detect Mozilla on the UserAgent? Look for "Gecko"?

7.2.1 Type
[snip]
Any HTTP/1.1 message containing an entity-body SHOULD include a Content-Type header field defining the media type of that body. If and only if the media type is not given by a Content-Type field, the recipient MAY attempt to guess the media type via inspection of its content and/or the name extension(s) of the URI used to identify the resource. [snipped]

Yea, Blizzard is doing this atm. Here is the tracking bug:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=92033

I'm not sure how far he's gotten though.

Yes OS X still works when you remove IE. But is it possible to write a program like Napster, KAzaa which has a built-in browser and that browser is one of the best?

Yes. Just embed Gecko. It's as easy as embedding MSHTML (IE's rendering engine) on Windows. The problem then becomes replacing Windows's MSHTML with a wrapper around Gecko.

Mozilla has been my browser of choice for a while now, but it still has some serious bugs. So consider this criticism based in love. It's also encouraging that all these bugs have a real chance of being fixed. Even I could theoretically fix them.

There is a huge bug with bookmarks:

51683: Unable to have 2 differently named bookmarks for the same url.

This is more than a bit ridiculous, since the bug was submitted September 2000.

Another, less serious bookmark bug:
85469: Bookmark select/cut/paste operation is sensitive to order of selection

This is a major meta-bug:
73812: Browser doesn't fit with Mac OS X UI Specs

Anyone who uses a Mac uses it because of the user interface--having a program that doesn't comply with the guidelines is extraordinarily frustrating. But they're definitely getting closer.

128658: Typing in textarea really slow

Large textareas overwhelm Mozilla. This makes editing in WP, for example, very frustrating. Totally unacceptable.

However, it's great watching bugs get steadily fixed. So vote for the above bugs, get them fixed, submit patches, hooray. The rendering engine really is marvelous.

Mozilla has been my browser of choice for a while now, but it still has some serious bugs. So consider this criticism based in love. It's also encouraging that all these bugs have a real chance of being fixed. Even I could theoretically fix them.

There is a huge bug with bookmarks:

51683: Unable to have 2 differently named bookmarks for the same url.

This is more than a bit ridiculous, since the bug was submitted September 2000.

Another, less serious bookmark bug:
85469: Bookmark select/cut/paste operation is sensitive to order of selection

This is a major meta-bug:
73812: Browser doesn't fit with Mac OS X UI Specs

Anyone who uses a Mac uses it because of the user interface--having a program that doesn't comply with the guidelines is extraordinarily frustrating. But they're definitely getting closer.

128658: Typing in textarea really slow

Large textareas overwhelm Mozilla. This makes editing in WP, for example, very frustrating. Totally unacceptable.

However, it's great watching bugs get steadily fixed. So vote for the above bugs, get them fixed, submit patches, hooray. The rendering engine really is marvelous.

Mozilla has been my browser of choice for a while now, but it still has some serious bugs. So consider this criticism based in love. It's also encouraging that all these bugs have a real chance of being fixed. Even I could theoretically fix them.

There is a huge bug with bookmarks:

51683: Unable to have 2 differently named bookmarks for the same url.

This is more than a bit ridiculous, since the bug was submitted September 2000.

Another, less serious bookmark bug:
85469: Bookmark select/cut/paste operation is sensitive to order of selection

This is a major meta-bug:
73812: Browser doesn't fit with Mac OS X UI Specs

Anyone who uses a Mac uses it because of the user interface--having a program that doesn't comply with the guidelines is extraordinarily frustrating. But they're definitely getting closer.

128658: Typing in textarea really slow

Large textareas overwhelm Mozilla. This makes editing in WP, for example, very frustrating. Totally unacceptable.

However, it's great watching bugs get steadily fixed. So vote for the above bugs, get them fixed, submit patches, hooray. The rendering engine really is marvelous.

Mozilla has been my browser of choice for a while now, but it still has some serious bugs. So consider this criticism based in love. It's also encouraging that all these bugs have a real chance of being fixed. Even I could theoretically fix them.

There is a huge bug with bookmarks:

51683: Unable to have 2 differently named bookmarks for the same url.

This is more than a bit ridiculous, since the bug was submitted September 2000.

Another, less serious bookmark bug:
85469: Bookmark select/cut/paste operation is sensitive to order of selection

This is a major meta-bug:
73812: Browser doesn't fit with Mac OS X UI Specs

Anyone who uses a Mac uses it because of the user interface--having a program that doesn't comply with the guidelines is extraordinarily frustrating. But they're definitely getting closer.

128658: Typing in textarea really slow

Large textareas overwhelm Mozilla. This makes editing in WP, for example, very frustrating. Totally unacceptable.

However, it's great watching bugs get steadily fixed. So vote for the above bugs, get them fixed, submit patches, hooray. The rendering engine really is marvelous.

jesser has covered keyboard access to the address bar. Thanks! I was wondering about that one myself.

As for speed, the UI chrome can be a little sluggish on a slower machine, but I find the HTML renderer to be quite swift.

rather slow loadup time

I use QuickLaunch and find startup quite reasonable. You can turn it on under Preferences->Advanced, or during installation.

there doesn't seem to be a way to turn on mouse gestures through the preferences

For now gesture navigation is an optional module that you need to install yourself by visiting the OptiMoz site. The installation is really painless, and you can configure or uninstall optimoz through the prefs panel. One caveat: the latest nightly builds seem to have changed some interfaces that OptiMoz uses, so the prefs are no longer visible, though I expect the OptiMoz project to have an updated release available soon.

And while it doesn't have mouse-wheel window switching...

...it does however allow you to configure the mouse wheel with a modifier key to scroll pages at a time, line at a time, change text size or go back and forward through history.

All the UI people are already screaming that Moz has too many prefs. I guess I wouldn't be hired for UI design since I like lots of configurability. I don't see a RFE bug in bugzilla to add switching windows using the mouse wheel, but you can search bugzilla yourself and if you're sure such an RFE doesn't exist, then add a bug.

Of course, RFE's are low on the totem pole right now...

Christopher

jesser has covered keyboard access to the address bar. Thanks! I was wondering about that one myself.

As for speed, the UI chrome can be a little sluggish on a slower machine, but I find the HTML renderer to be quite swift.

rather slow loadup time

I use QuickLaunch and find startup quite reasonable. You can turn it on under Preferences->Advanced, or during installation.

there doesn't seem to be a way to turn on mouse gestures through the preferences

For now gesture navigation is an optional module that you need to install yourself by visiting the OptiMoz site. The installation is really painless, and you can configure or uninstall optimoz through the prefs panel. One caveat: the latest nightly builds seem to have changed some interfaces that OptiMoz uses, so the prefs are no longer visible, though I expect the OptiMoz project to have an updated release available soon.

And while it doesn't have mouse-wheel window switching...

...it does however allow you to configure the mouse wheel with a modifier key to scroll pages at a time, line at a time, change text size or go back and forward through history.

All the UI people are already screaming that Moz has too many prefs. I guess I wouldn't be hired for UI design since I like lots of configurability. I don't see a RFE bug in bugzilla to add switching windows using the mouse wheel, but you can search bugzilla yourself and if you're sure such an RFE doesn't exist, then add a bug.

Of course, RFE's are low on the totem pole right now...

Christopher

I'm building a release for Commodore 128 right now. I'll have a fresh M18 milestone release soon. That was long build time. I'll go get some coffee now and see if this is funny still.

I'm a big mozilla fan, but to be forking for 1.0 and still have no splash screen or icons? And this stuff isn't even themeable, so the usual suspects can't help us.

This is the kind of stuff closed-source people are laughing at. Why can't the Moz team get this together??

I'm a big mozilla fan, but to be forking for 1.0 and still have no splash screen or icons? And this stuff isn't even themeable, so the usual suspects can't help us.

This is the kind of stuff closed-source people are laughing at. Why can't the Moz team get this together??

I don't know what I would use if not for mozilla, but I'm sure it would not be as cool.

Galeon is basically more featureful than Mozilla, and it uses Gecko. Plus it's not as painful to use on my Celeron 366 :)

Now if they can make Mozilla cohabitate successfully with Netscape on the same box for testing purposes, that would be just swell. :)

MadEagle

see bugs :
95228
82352
125546
112101
75011

see bugs :
95228
82352
125546
112101
75011

see bugs :
95228
82352
125546
112101
75011

see bugs :
95228
82352
125546
112101
75011

see bugs :
95228
82352
125546
112101
75011

You can find the link on the mozilla site by following the home page to the Mozilla 0.9.9 link (it's updated with every release, always in the same position) that points to the Releases page. Then, just above the [bold,italic] export notice, you'll see the roadmap link. Scroll down and you'll see a cool graphic, near which there's a grayish table with the tentative schedule for the near future - with all sorts of cool "insider"-type info & dates.

Cheers. And know that 0.9.9 is almost perfectly fine, and you don't really need to wait for 1.0. I've never had a crash or even a problem since way back when (0.9.3-ish)

You can find the link on the mozilla site by following the home page to the Mozilla 0.9.9 link (it's updated with every release, always in the same position) that points to the Releases page. Then, just above the [bold,italic] export notice, you'll see the roadmap link. Scroll down and you'll see a cool graphic, near which there's a grayish table with the tentative schedule for the near future - with all sorts of cool "insider"-type info & dates.

Cheers. And know that 0.9.9 is almost perfectly fine, and you don't really need to wait for 1.0. I've never had a crash or even a problem since way back when (0.9.3-ish)

You can find the link on the mozilla site by following the home page to the Mozilla 0.9.9 link (it's updated with every release, always in the same position) that points to the Releases page. Then, just above the [bold,italic] export notice, you'll see the roadmap link. Scroll down and you'll see a cool graphic, near which there's a grayish table with the tentative schedule for the near future - with all sorts of cool "insider"-type info & dates.

Cheers. And know that 0.9.9 is almost perfectly fine, and you don't really need to wait for 1.0. I've never had a crash or even a problem since way back when (0.9.3-ish)

First off, kudos to the Mozilla project team for getting this far... it's shaping up to be an excellent browser especially once you count the security track record of the opposition.

One question I have as a DHTML web designer, is that will v1.0 fix the DHTML timing issues? The v0.98 changelog indicated that "DHTML performance has regressed", which I can verify is putting it lightly -- one of my animations that revealed a DIV via clipping worked fluidly in Moz 0.97 and hardly at all in Moz 0.99, which still hasn't patched it. Check out the "Popup Menu v5" script on my homepage on a slower computer if you want to see what I mean.

A quick search of Bugzilla reveals some articles also mentioning this issue. Does anyone know what plans are afoot to improve this?

I hope DHTML performance improves before this tree is used for another NS6 or AOL browser release, as otherwise it could render some of the more technically involved sites unviewable. If anyone's more involved in Bugzilla than I and knows the bug ID that most work is going into, please post a link to vote for it, otherwise try this one :).

Apart from that, I'm finding new Mozilla releases to be strides above the versions this time last year. Hopefully once fully mature it'll be the cross-platform web page development environment of choice... that's one area in which IE can never beat it, with the huge differences between IE on Windows and Mac.

More power to the lizard!

The strange result is that 1.0.3 is scheduled to be released about a month after the final 1.1. Are they really planning something huge for the 1.1 branch that they don't trust themselves to re-merge the tree? I guess there is precedent for this, with Netscape 4.08 being released after the 4.5 releases were well on their way. Also, it seems that this is how Linux kernel releases work, with 2.2 still being maintained after the release of 2.4. Still, this is a new policy for Mozilla.

[plea for help]

Now is the time to increase the testing effort. Everybody out there, please download the latest nightly build. Get out there and test and submit bugs to Bugzilla.

You can poke fun as much as you want about the release timeline, but these Mozilla guys really work their asses off to get this product out to you at no charge. The least we can do as part of the open source community is help out by testing.

[/plea for help]

[/rant]

PK

P.S. Posted using April 9th Mozilla nightly build. A testament to how well it works and the stability of the nightly builds. I install a nightly build almost every morning and never had to revert back to using an older build because something major was broken. I always install the Linux tarballs, but of course YMMV for other platforms and installation methods. But I don't expect anything would be different for the Windoze and Mac builds.

Sorry, pal. It don't work that way :)

On another note, it's getting so fantastically good right now (not to mention all of the bugs that were marked for 1.0 will be fixed [Note: copy & paste URL - can't link to bugzilla from slashdot]) that it will probably be that much less noticable. Think of the differences between the linux kernel between the beginning and 1.0 and the more recent changes. Or pick any of the distributions. Or apps. I think you'll see a trend.
(Of course, there are exceptions, every so often radical changes take place - usually in apps - but they are quite rare)

When now can we expect an official 1.0 release?

It seems to be, that it will be when it's ready and not an minute earlier. I think the mozilla guys take this release quite serious, 'cause they have to live with the API of this release for a pretty long time. In case you didn't realize: Mozilla 1.0 is targeted primarily on developers/embedders, although I'm pretty sure many end-users (especially from the /.-crowd) will use it, nonetheless.

If you want to get some kind of countdown you could try to look into Bugzilla and search for bugs with the "mozilla1.0"-keyword and blocker severity (I could provide a link, but b.m.o will definitely have better things do do than serve the /.-crowd with requests, if you're really interested, just enter the query yourself, it's not that hard).

55583

oh wait... it's fixed.

nevermind.

Please vote for bug 135331.

Anyway, now that the tree has branched (which is really cool, by the way) the only drawback that I see is that I won't get my Mozilla fix every 5 weeks (5 weeks in Mozilla development-speak is more like 7 :o). Their release schedule has changed to 13 weeks.
Well, hopefully it will be 13 chronological weeks rather than 13 mozilla release weeks, hehe.

But anyway, once I've been weened off my Install-Newest-Version-of-Mozilla addiction, I guess I'll appreciate that all the serious bugs have been ironed out (i haven't noticed a single one since an early 0.9.x), it's so fscking customizable, and the performance is far better than anything except perhaps Opera. [I'm not even going to mention lynx - whoops. Damn]

Hey, I said I was biased (^&

Anyway, now that the tree has branched (which is really cool, by the way) the only drawback that I see is that I won't get my Mozilla fix every 5 weeks (5 weeks in Mozilla development-speak is more like 7 :o). Their release schedule has changed to 13 weeks.
Well, hopefully it will be 13 chronological weeks rather than 13 mozilla release weeks, hehe.

But anyway, once I've been weened off my Install-Newest-Version-of-Mozilla addiction, I guess I'll appreciate that all the serious bugs have been ironed out (i haven't noticed a single one since an early 0.9.x), it's so fscking customizable, and the performance is far better than anything except perhaps Opera. [I'm not even going to mention lynx - whoops. Damn]

Hey, I said I was biased (^&

Huh? Popups? What are popups?

Actually, this capability is already there. There just isn't any GUI for it. See http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/component s/ConfigPolicy.html.

Why are you still surfing porn with IE? Mozilla lets you block pop-ups, ignores exit pop-ups by default, and lets you open links quickly with one hand if you have a three-button mouse or a clickable scroll wheel. It even has a command and shortcut to close all Mozilla windows for when someone knocks on your door, which annoys the hell out of people who try to use the browser for anything bug porn and hit Exit accidentally.

Be sure to check out Pornzilla, a set of Mozilla add-ons useful for porning and instructions for doing things like making stealth profiles. We're always looking for new contributors who can write add-ons or fix bugs in Mozilla that affect porning. We also need input from someone who is uses Mozilla's tabbed-browsing feature so we know which tabbed-browsing bugs are most important for Pornzilla users.

I just wrote a pair of bookmarklets that take you to the previous and next numbered image or numbered image gallery. They'll probably be included in the next version of Pornzilla, along with the zoom-images and search-links bookmarklets that are already included.

In three easy steps:

1) Goto mozilla.org and download latest release installer here.
2) Start up mozilla after installer completes
3) Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Scripts & Windows and uncheck "Open unrequested windows"

Couldn't be easier.

See this bugzilla entry for Mozilla's jpeg2000 progress.

Doesn't seem too promising:
If you look at appendix L of the jpeg2000 draft, there are 22 companies who believe that implementing the spec may require use of their patents.

PNG still hasn't taken off despite being supported in all major browsers (now if only IE did proper alpha, any year now...), how much chance does an image format that requires third party plugins have?

A little birdie tells me that this feature [ignoring html] *might* be included in Mozilla 1.0

Mozilla doesn't yet have full MHTML support in mail (and has no MHTML support in the browser). MHTML is/will be the standard in multi-part messages, and once it integrated, there should be an option to view text over html.
Here's the feature request for MHTML improvement in Mozilla Mail.
Here's the feature request for MHTML support in the Mozilla browser.

If you want an estimate of when it should be done, look towards mid-May for the Mozilla1.1alpha release.

A little birdie tells me that this feature [ignoring html] *might* be included in Mozilla 1.0

Mozilla doesn't yet have full MHTML support in mail (and has no MHTML support in the browser). MHTML is/will be the standard in multi-part messages, and once it integrated, there should be an option to view text over html.
Here's the feature request for MHTML improvement in Mozilla Mail.
Here's the feature request for MHTML support in the Mozilla browser.

If you want an estimate of when it should be done, look towards mid-May for the Mozilla1.1alpha release.

I think they've done a pretty good job, actually. I particularly like the integrated encryption

There's Enigmail a plugin that allows users to access the authentication and encryption features provided by GPG and PGP.

and spam-reporting tools

For this one you can vote or work on this bug.

That said, I'd settle for just having the colour-coded "new mail" icon with the ability to hover over it and see the sender/title. At the office, where we use Outlook/Exchange Server, one of our guys tried to write a tool that hooked into Outlook and did that a while back. Unfortunately, he found insurmountable problems with the way Outlook's automation and new mail reporting features work. Too bad, as the rest of us were looking forward to him finishing it!

Hacking Mozilla should be fairly easier and that feature would be handy... why don't you tell him to start working on that feature for Mozilla? ;)

Andrea

Here's one!. Maybe a little long on design and short on implementation, but overall sounds like a good idea to me.

• Fast IMAP performance (roughly twice as fast as OE, Kmail, Evo, and Sylpheed)
• Internationalisation (so that the rest of the world can also use it)
• Quick search bar (in both mail and address book)
• LDAP auto-completion (rocks for a (li|u)n(u|i)x-based mail server running something like OpenLDAP)
• Drag-and-drop of mail folders to and from an IMAP server
• The fact that it has sane operation in a network, for example, in windows you can have your mozilla profile on a network drive (home dir on a samba server for example), so that your mail client doens't put your mail in your windows profile to be dragged around the network if you log into different machines (OE sucks in this regard, it caches ALL your mail from IMAP servers in your message store, and you can't set it to put it's message store on a network drive).
• You can use it cross-platform. My dad runs Win2k/Mandrake 8.2 dual boot, and has his mail and address book accessible from both sides. How cool is that?
  

There are three major points for my perfect email client:

1. Look and feel the same in X and console, so that I could make use of both xpdf/mozilla and remote mail reading.
2. Localization. Being non-native english speaker, this one is pretty important.
3. Keyboard navigation

For the last 4 years I am extremely satisfied with the combination:
- fetchmail (getting mail)
- procmail (sorting mail into mailboxes)
- mutt (reading/replying)
- vim (editing)

When it comes down to analyze mailbox and generate some reports, like for example, in the case with antivirus reports, I use perl with Mail::MboxParser module.

For all my friends, who need GUI to read email, I recommend using Mozilla and or Evolution

Thanks to the Configurable Security Policies in Mozilla:

The gist of configuring security policies is described here:

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/component s/ConfigPolicy.html

The bottom of the page has examples that you can use for your 'default' security policy. You can customize them to any security policy you configure in just a few minutes.

Wasn't this the whole point of Mozilla's XUL?

note, I'm as anti-microsoft as the next guy, but
there really isn't a better browser than IE
w/Google toolbar...

Slightly off-topic - the DHTML is b0rked in mozilla; a quick search at
bugzilla.mozilla.org shows no-one else has logged this so I've done so myself. (Hmmm, actually I was just searching against the URL to find the bug I just logged and it didn't turn up... oddness... ) (And now I get the error "Sorry, bugzilla links from Slashdot are not allowed." heh! :) http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/slashdot/index.html?id =134931 is the one, anyway... ) Yes folks, you can file mozilla bugs against the "tech evangelism" component to sic the mozilla wranglers onto the site's designers and get them to fix non-standard HTML for the non-IE world's benefit. (Remember when sites were designed only for Netscape, and we used to complain that they should test on mionirty products such as IE? Ah, happy days...) </ot>