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We really need a browser that lets you *selectively* disable Javascript.

It already exists, just doesn't have a fancy GUI for configuration yet

In Mozilla you can disable any javascript method or property on a site by site basis.

So you can disable window.open, OnClose and other annoying methods.

Deny scripts access to data on your browser, screen dimensions etc.

See here for info on how to do it.

How do you think Torvalds created the linux kernel?

What is used/needed to develop on apache?

How did CmdrTaco make Slash?

What development tools do you need for mozilla

Impossible without GUI? Yeah, right. End of discussion.

Initial request
and
Actual work.

This is to get SVG into the main develpment line, it seems things are mostly working in branches.

Mozilla also has quite good PNG support.

Initial request
and
Actual work.

This is to get SVG into the main develpment line, it seems things are mostly working in branches.

Mozilla also has quite good PNG support.

It's not HTML, it's XHTML, which is an XML dialect, and so a text/xml MIME type is quite appropriate.

The reason the browser should know it's XHTML is that it has the XHTML namespace attached to the root element (html). Therefore, it should render it as XHTML, with the styles proposed both in the Link: header and also in the link tag in the body.

That's how I understand it, anyway. See here for the lowdown.

Gerv

Does anyone have the scoop as to why Mike Angelo hates Mozilla so much? Was a contribution burned? Did they decide to use someone else's ideas instead of his? Is he just having a permanent "that-time-of-the-month"?

I ask this because he is not forthcoming on his own information. That, and his site is very, very misleading. Do not be fooled the "we asked" or "we investigated" lines. This is the pursuit of one person.

Also, almost all of this individual's "articles" are taken from the Bugzilla entries and Mozilla mainsite postings. They have little foundation in actual fact.

Now, I myself am not involved in the day-to-day of Mozilla and Netscape, but I follow the direction of this project closely, since the technologies being developed here (mainly XUL and XPCOM) can have a dramatic effect on the future of my employers (sorry, I cannot go into much detail here). I keep updated from the mailing lists, and from MozillaZine and The lizard farm.

I very rarely ever head over to MozillaQuest. The reason: most of the "articles" are factually incorrect. take for instance the article on "Mozilla 0.9.2.1 released". If all you ever do is read MozillaQuest, you'd think there was this tremendous conspiracy going on between Mozilla and Netscape. But a quick perusal of Mozilla and/or MozillaZine shed actual light on the subject: The 0.9.2.1 release is 95-99% equivalent to Netscape 6.1, and is being provided for developers to test and debug their XUL/XPCOM/Plug-ins/skins/etc.. against for Netscape 6.1 compatibility.

MozillaQuest is fiction, with enough truth to make it sound legitimate. If you want the real scoop, head over to MozillaZine. Don't waste time at MozillaQuest.

Why does /. continue to propagate the anti-Mozilla rants from Michael Angelo? He is not even close to a viable source of information on Mozilla. See bug 97146, as well as previous /. posts that say just what I said.

Please, please. Don't feed the trolls.

the location bar becomes full length below the navigation buttons

I happen to like Mozilla's toolbar configuration enough that I set IE to have the location bar to the right of the navigation buttons. But I use the huge resultion of 800x600, so YMMV. See bug 49543 to split the navigation buttons from the location bar, once Mozilla supports rearrangable toolbars and allows toolbars to be horizontally adjacent.

rectangular navigation buttons are used to save vertical space (a la IE)

The clickable regions are rectangular. They just *look* like circles. Use the "classic" skin if you want buttons that look rectangular.

that annoying "Search Netscape Search for" pulldown that appears as I type a URL is removed

In preferences, go to Navigator > Smart Browsing > Location bar autocomplete > Advanced. (This pref was added after 0.9.3, so you'll have to grab a nightly build or wait for 0.9.4 to see it.)

there's no pop up alert when a site is unreachable (no one has "127.0.0.1 m.doubleclick.net" in their /etc/hosts anymore? hello?)

That's a real bug, and its name is 28586. You can vote for it if you want.

I would know if anyone's with me if I could understand the bug search

Try the search form on bugzilla's front page. The syntax is a lot like like Google's, except that each word you type is treated as a substring (so a search for "bookmark" will also find a bug with "bookmarks" in the summary).

the location bar becomes full length below the navigation buttons

I happen to like Mozilla's toolbar configuration enough that I set IE to have the location bar to the right of the navigation buttons. But I use the huge resultion of 800x600, so YMMV. See bug 49543 to split the navigation buttons from the location bar, once Mozilla supports rearrangable toolbars and allows toolbars to be horizontally adjacent.

rectangular navigation buttons are used to save vertical space (a la IE)

The clickable regions are rectangular. They just *look* like circles. Use the "classic" skin if you want buttons that look rectangular.

that annoying "Search Netscape Search for" pulldown that appears as I type a URL is removed

In preferences, go to Navigator > Smart Browsing > Location bar autocomplete > Advanced. (This pref was added after 0.9.3, so you'll have to grab a nightly build or wait for 0.9.4 to see it.)

there's no pop up alert when a site is unreachable (no one has "127.0.0.1 m.doubleclick.net" in their /etc/hosts anymore? hello?)

That's a real bug, and its name is 28586. You can vote for it if you want.

I would know if anyone's with me if I could understand the bug search

Try the search form on bugzilla's front page. The syntax is a lot like like Google's, except that each word you type is treated as a substring (so a search for "bookmark" will also find a bug with "bookmarks" in the summary).

the location bar becomes full length below the navigation buttons

I happen to like Mozilla's toolbar configuration enough that I set IE to have the location bar to the right of the navigation buttons. But I use the huge resultion of 800x600, so YMMV. See bug 49543 to split the navigation buttons from the location bar, once Mozilla supports rearrangable toolbars and allows toolbars to be horizontally adjacent.

rectangular navigation buttons are used to save vertical space (a la IE)

The clickable regions are rectangular. They just *look* like circles. Use the "classic" skin if you want buttons that look rectangular.

that annoying "Search Netscape Search for" pulldown that appears as I type a URL is removed

In preferences, go to Navigator > Smart Browsing > Location bar autocomplete > Advanced. (This pref was added after 0.9.3, so you'll have to grab a nightly build or wait for 0.9.4 to see it.)

there's no pop up alert when a site is unreachable (no one has "127.0.0.1 m.doubleclick.net" in their /etc/hosts anymore? hello?)

That's a real bug, and its name is 28586. You can vote for it if you want.

I would know if anyone's with me if I could understand the bug search

Try the search form on bugzilla's front page. The syntax is a lot like like Google's, except that each word you type is treated as a substring (so a search for "bookmark" will also find a bug with "bookmarks" in the summary).

the location bar becomes full length below the navigation buttons

I happen to like Mozilla's toolbar configuration enough that I set IE to have the location bar to the right of the navigation buttons. But I use the huge resultion of 800x600, so YMMV. See bug 49543 to split the navigation buttons from the location bar, once Mozilla supports rearrangable toolbars and allows toolbars to be horizontally adjacent.

rectangular navigation buttons are used to save vertical space (a la IE)

The clickable regions are rectangular. They just *look* like circles. Use the "classic" skin if you want buttons that look rectangular.

that annoying "Search Netscape Search for" pulldown that appears as I type a URL is removed

In preferences, go to Navigator > Smart Browsing > Location bar autocomplete > Advanced. (This pref was added after 0.9.3, so you'll have to grab a nightly build or wait for 0.9.4 to see it.)

there's no pop up alert when a site is unreachable (no one has "127.0.0.1 m.doubleclick.net" in their /etc/hosts anymore? hello?)

That's a real bug, and its name is 28586. You can vote for it if you want.

I would know if anyone's with me if I could understand the bug search

Try the search form on bugzilla's front page. The syntax is a lot like like Google's, except that each word you type is treated as a substring (so a search for "bookmark" will also find a bug with "bookmarks" in the summary).

There is no Mozilla for OS X at all. I'll laugh if you think Mozilla under classic is a suitable alternative to IE on OS X.

Sure, there's a netscape 6.1 preview for OS X, but there's no way I'll trade IE for that. If you've run it, you'll know what I'm talking about.

So, the "news" that Mozilla won't go for 1.0 until next year won't affect me. Mozilla is already my primary browser. I find remarkably few bugs that affect me (the only annoying bug affects overlapping table cells, simultaneous colspan/rowspan, since we use simultaneous colspan/rowspan on our web site.)

• Select which SSL version to use
  
• Select which ciphers in which strengths to use
  
• Selectively block cookies based upon site address
  
• 
  BLOCK CERTAIN SITES [or just by default; much more configurable, though, read the link] FROM BEING ABLE TO LAUNCH POPUPS [or various other bits of JavaScript]
  
• Encrypt saved passwords and have a master password for access to them
  
• 
  Save form data
  
• Work with certificates and their validation
  
• stay memory resident like IE and just launch new windows [this is why IE "loads" so quickly]
  
• the ability to not be memory-resident [unlike IE]
  

Good lord, sometimes it seems a lot like Oceania around here.

Although most of the evidence has been suitably erased from Mozilla.org, I have been able to find a document which clearly shows the plan: Originally releases 1.0 and 1.0.1 were scheduled for Q2 2001. That would have put 1.0 in April 2001 or perhaps May at the latest.

I'll miss the favicon's in the title bar and bookmarks, and the ability to enable cookies and JavaScript on a per-site basis.

You can enable cookies and JavaScript on a per site basis. You can go one step further too. You can disable specific bits of JS on a per domain basis. You can, for example block a group of sites from opening new windows or resizing your window. You could block a site from moving your windows or altering the status bar text. See Configurable Security Policies for more information.

--Asa

• the location bar becomes full length below the navigation buttons
  
• rectangular navigation buttons are used to save vertical space (a la IE)
  
• that annoying "Search Netscape Search for" pulldown that appears as I type a URL is removed
  
• there's no pop up alert when a site is unreachable (no one has "127.0.0.1 m.doubleclick.net" in their /etc/hosts anymore? hello?)

The incoming bug rate is NOT DOUBLING. I don't know if that is some figure you got from MozillaQuest (reason enough to discount it) or if you actually went to the source (bugzilla.mozilla.org) but someone got their queries/reports confused. The bug charts show that the rate has been pretty much steady for a long time. The only interesting thing about this graph (that the person reporting the doubling nonsense obviously was confused about) is the rise in New and the drop in Assigned. Bugs start out as New and get marked Assigned when a developer decides the bug is his. In late 2000 we stopped sending out a 'nag' email that urged developers to accept their New bugs. When we stopped sending that mail the Accepting dropped off. The incoming bug rate has not changed significantly and neither has the fix rate.

--Asa

I've been a Microsoft customer for years now. I'm writing this on my Windows 2000 Pro system, using IE 5.5, and I may fire Office 2000 up to spellcheck this. I use these products on purpose, not because they came with my computer.

Goodbye Karma.

Now to redeem myself. Microsoft and the companies it pays to lobby our lawmakers have gotten out of hand. I'll wait while everybody says "Duh" right now. Here's what we should do about the "grassroots efforts" they are trying to fabricate: start our own.

I don't mean this in a pro-Linux sense, and especially not in a pro-regulation sense. What I propose is that American /.-ers start writing to the office of the Governor, local Congressman, Senator, and/or State Attorney General's office expressing concern over Microsofts lobbying behavior. Point to the LA Times article, point out that this was tried 3 years ago when MS was going to pay for "sponaneous letters of support" at the outset of the trial, and most of all be polite and concise about it. Mention being concerned about their stranglehold on the tech industry or behavior towards other companies or blatant disregard for the court rulings against them, but not as the main focus of your letter.

We have a huge use community here. Let's use it to correct a lie.

Andy Hunter
San Jose, CA

PS: This is the only time you'll see my real name anywhere online. I hope that says something here.

PPS: In my defense, I'm not submitting this in Mozilla because there was a submit bug in the nightly build from last night ;-)

I've been a Microsoft customer for years now. I'm writing this on my Windows 2000 Pro system, using IE 5.5, and I may fire Office 2000 up to spellcheck this. I use these products on purpose, not because they came with my computer.

Goodbye Karma.

Now to redeem myself. Microsoft and the companies it pays to lobby our lawmakers have gotten out of hand. I'll wait while everybody says "Duh" right now. Here's what we should do about the "grassroots efforts" they are trying to fabricate: start our own.

I don't mean this in a pro-Linux sense, and especially not in a pro-regulation sense. What I propose is that American /.-ers start writing to the office of the Governor, local Congressman, Senator, and/or State Attorney General's office expressing concern over Microsofts lobbying behavior. Point to the LA Times article, point out that this was tried 3 years ago when MS was going to pay for "sponaneous letters of support" at the outset of the trial, and most of all be polite and concise about it. Mention being concerned about their stranglehold on the tech industry or behavior towards other companies or blatant disregard for the court rulings against them, but not as the main focus of your letter.

We have a huge use community here. Let's use it to correct a lie.

Andy Hunter
San Jose, CA

PS: This is the only time you'll see my real name anywhere online. I hope that says something here.

PPS: In my defense, I'm not submitting this in Mozilla because there was a submit bug in the nightly build from last night ;-)

Could it be that ?

I'd like to point out Netscape's rather interesting history of GUI browsers. It starts of showing how some of the founders of Mosaic went on to found Mosaic Communications Corporation which was later renamed to Netscape. It then covers Microsoft IE and the decision to start the Mozilla project which is producing the next generation of Netscape browsers as well as others.

People need to stop associating the meaning of life with web browsing. Web browsing should be about looking at pages displayed clearly, and FAST. It shouldn't be about messaging, email, news groups, chicken soup and making coffee.

It depends on how you look at it. I love using Mozilla for my browser and my e-mail. After all, it's a little annoying clicking on a "mailto" link and having your non-default mailer pop up. So, I've used Mozilla's one forever. It has almost everything I need in a mailer, and I'd prefer to look at the new e-mail thing at the lower-left, rather than load up a seperate e-mail client and check my mail.

Fortunately for me, I've been using IE, which seems to be more stable then the above. It really helps to be using the hedgemonic browser. I'm not sure how these people got their IE browsers to crash, but I certainly remember Netscape crashing perpetually on Linux, since I had to muck with the X and Gnome/KDE settings to get it to work. I never have to do this with Windows, because It Just Works! And faster at that!

Your comparing Netscape/Linux with IE/Windows, which isn't that fair. (Netscape sucks, hands down.) Even with that comparison, though, Netscape will STILL beat IE in W3C standards. When IE 5 came out, I wanted to rip out Bill Gate's beating heart for releasing browser that was so fast and loose with the HTML/CSS standards that it cost millions of dollars for businesses to "repair the damage".

If a page doesn't look right in Mozilla, it's YOUR fault (as a webmaster), not the browsers. If your page is W3C compliant and it doesn't work on IE, bitch at Microsoft, not W3C, Mozilla, Netscape, or anybody else.

Javascript popup disable feature -- Mandatory, mandatory, mandatory.

I'm watching this Mozilla bug entry closely :)

Image disablement. But let the user choose which ones to disable, such as banner adds.

Speed and simplicity. Stop trying to cram everything into one "browser."

People need to stop associating the meaning of life with web browsing. Web browsing should be about looking at pages displayed clearly, and FAST. It shouldn't be about messaging, email, news groups, chicken soup and making coffee.

It depends on how you look at it. I love using Mozilla for my browser and my e-mail. After all, it's a little annoying clicking on a "mailto" link and having your non-default mailer pop up. So, I've used Mozilla's one forever. It has almost everything I need in a mailer, and I'd prefer to look at the new e-mail thing at the lower-left, rather than load up a seperate e-mail client and check my mail.

Fortunately for me, I've been using IE, which seems to be more stable then the above. It really helps to be using the hedgemonic browser. I'm not sure how these people got their IE browsers to crash, but I certainly remember Netscape crashing perpetually on Linux, since I had to muck with the X and Gnome/KDE settings to get it to work. I never have to do this with Windows, because It Just Works! And faster at that!

Your comparing Netscape/Linux with IE/Windows, which isn't that fair. (Netscape sucks, hands down.) Even with that comparison, though, Netscape will STILL beat IE in W3C standards. When IE 5 came out, I wanted to rip out Bill Gate's beating heart for releasing browser that was so fast and loose with the HTML/CSS standards that it cost millions of dollars for businesses to "repair the damage".

If a page doesn't look right in Mozilla, it's YOUR fault (as a webmaster), not the browsers. If your page is W3C compliant and it doesn't work on IE, bitch at Microsoft, not W3C, Mozilla, Netscape, or anybody else.

Javascript popup disable feature -- Mandatory, mandatory, mandatory.

I'm watching this Mozilla bug entry closely :)

Image disablement. But let the user choose which ones to disable, such as banner adds.

Speed and simplicity. Stop trying to cram everything into one "browser."

First, the man should have really pointed the version numbers. Using Mozilla .8.x [ that comes with Mandrake ] is not the same as using the latest .9.x releases.
Also, the hardware is a Joke. Should have used something above P200, and something like 64 megs of memory. At the very least. The test should have had 2 machines: a machine with more advanced hardware, and another with crappy hardware ( like the used that was used ). Results would have been more accurate.

The Mozilla fellows SAY that one should have 64 megs to run the damn thing. The same probably goes to Galeon and other Mozilla-based browsers. Why should we test it under an environment that is not ideal ? We shouldn't. I don't, he did.

Also in Mozilla, it's possible to Kill popup-windows. If it's a juicy detail in Konq. why ain't it in Mozilla? Probably because, in my best knowleadge, it is a feature that was only implemented after .9.x got out. So, the tested .8.x doesn't have it. If this isn't enough reason to use the latest versions, maybe the fact that .9.x releases are faster then .8.x ones.

I do agree that Mozilla has the nicest interfaces & skins around. I like it more than I like MSIE when it comes do user interface.

Galeon was pointed has having a bad interface, but that interface can be changed trough the usage of other (gtk) Themes. I think this is also possible with Konqueror ( with tq ).

Another thing. Does Konqueror have the same performance outside The K Desktop Environment ( KDE for short ) ?

Another reason for using the latest releases is this: this browsers are projects in alpha/beta stages. They are changed everyweek, and they get faster&better as the development goes on. With small release cycles.

Soon, Mozilla will be at 1.0 and it will be a lot better. In every release they fix the nastiest bugs around. They improved & clean the code. The browser is getting stabler and faster. The next release of Mozilla, .9.4 is targeted for September 7.
Mozilla WILL get there.

Sure, Mozilla can get slow, but it ain't just a browser. It's a browser, email client, news client, irc client, HTML editor/composer, etc..

Another question worth pointing out: Other alternatives, like Links and Lynx. Sure, Lynx is text based, but sure does a good work when the objective is to browse clean, low on gfx, HTML sites.

Galeon won. It is based on Gecko(Mozilla). It's a good indicator about the quality of Gecko/Mozilla, anyways.

If you (or anyone interested) aproach another one of these tests, please do the following:

• Use the latest stable versions of each browser tested.
  
• Use it with diferent hardware specs. A pentium 166 w 32 mb, and a pentium 350 with 64 megs in example.
  
• Don't do the test to a single page. Try two or three. Keep it variable. Do tests with pages with CSS, pages with simple, non-tabled HTML. Pages with lots of tables (like slashdot).
  
• Point extras in each browser. Point out all the features [ mail, news, irc, html editor ] in Mozilla. They are plus, and one should know they are there. With Mozilla you don't need to use another IRC client. Just use Mozilla's. You don't need an external mail client. In windows you can discard the MS Outlook. Do you need to use HTML editor to do some simple pages? Use Composer. If you need nothing of this, just use Galeon.. that's what it's there for.
  

• Opera
• Konqueror
• Mozilla
• Galeon
• Skipstone
• Netscape

The article did not review a number of browsers. Here are a some more that you may want to try:

• Arena
• Amaya
• Chimera
• MMM
• Emacs/W3
• Lynx (text based)
• Links (text based)
• Debris (text based)
• w3m (text based)
• Libwww (text/line based)
• HowJava
• Express
• Armadillo (was Gzilla)
• Mnemonic
• Kde (file manager with builtin browser)
• mMosaic
• QtMozilla
• QWeb
• Mosaic
• Arachne
• Beest
• Beonex
• BrowseX
• Grail
• Dillo
• NetRaider

And how the disclaimers: The list above by no means complete. The browers above were listed in j-random order. Some browsers are in early alpha stage, some in Beta and others are in full release. Some of the browsers may suck, some are OK and some are good. Your mileage may vary. Sorry If I left out your favorite browser. IE was left off the list for obvious reasons. Good while supply lasts or until Bill Gates takes over. I'm not a member of the FCIA. Void where cast as (void).

Hi /.-ers,

My primary browser is Galeon, and has been for the last few months. It's a Gecko- and Gnome-based web browser. As such, it is very fast, because it uses a native graphics toolkit (Gtk+) and does very nice rendering. Give it a try - the guys have RPMs for RedHat, Slackware packages, and it's already in Debian sid - just apt-get install galeon. It is significantly faster than Mozilla and offers pretty much the same web browser functionality, if not even better. Stability with Mozilla 0.9.3 and Galeon 0.11.5 is pretty much perfect - I don't recall a single crash with this combo. And it seems like it's becoming the default browser for GNOME - somethind I'd definitely love to see.

Just a note to those using Konqueror - I don't know what the claims that it supports CSS are based on. I haven't yet tried the latest KDE 2.2, but the one in 2.1.1 just doesn't cut it.

Umm...perhaps for you stability has not changed, but the release notes for the latest Mozilla build keep listing the bugs they fixed. For instance Mozilla 0.9.2 fixed 25 bugs over the previous version. This is largely due to the reporting from the growing user base. The reviewer should have made sure he used the latest versions of the browser in the comparison.

Also, I don't remember Mozilla ever officially releasing a 0.8.7 -- they went 0.8., 0.8.1, 0.9, ...

Yeah, I don't know what that guy was thinking. Mozilla ( and galeon and skipstone, by extension), was written with at least a P-233, 64MB RAM in mind (see here), and all the binaries I've seen have actually been optimized for i686. It wouldn't surprise me if the other browsers were similar.

I don't want any of the ads, so I use Bugnosis to detect the web bugs and the free WebWasher proxy with IE to scrub out the cruft, which is somehow available for free on Linux, though I'm told that Squid and Junkbusters can do the same. AdSubtract is another alternative that comes packages with the ZoneAlarm firewall these days, but I found it to not be as flexible as WebWasher. Unfortunately there are a few sites that do not work with WebWasher, most notably EBay and no matter how I tell it not to touch EBay's cookies and content, it still blocks something that keeps that site from working.

What is needed is some sort of plugin that works directly with the browser, sets all pages and cookies to be filtered out by default, and which lets you just right click on a page to tell it this site is OK to not filter and remember to let these cookies through. All browsers have the cookie feature, but management is usually a pain with what they provide and often left up to third party tools like all of the above. Sounds like Mozilla has some of this built it, so I'll give it a try...it may be time to make a switch. IE6 is supposed to have some of this cookie control, though I'm not sure if it's to that level of convenience.

I haven't seen an ad or a web bug on pages since I've made that change. I look forward to being popup/under and ad free in the future.

IE has always been more W3C HTML compliant then Netscrape.

More like "had always been." Mozilla 0.9.x, aka Netscape 6.1, does quite a bit more CSS than 4.x did. IE's CSS engine has a nasty problem: it inserts three extra pixels of whitespace on both sides of a floating object, even when its margin-left and margin-right are set to zero. This creates problems when creating cute little rounded corners on web pages, especially when CSS itself can only do one corner per box (fine for Slashdot's design but not for that of Misunderestimated).

Any idea whether this will have an effect on Mozilla or the Open Directory Project?

Tim

Plus, they will never have to compile that new, sexy app that only seasoned veterans can.

In my haste to put up that ever-so-witty sarcastic retort, I forgot to comment on this. They don't have to compile that new, sexy, app, because the sysadmin can do it once on the server and it's instantly available to everybody. That's the real advantage of thin clients. Only one upgrade, instantly applicable to everyone.

Mozilla has a similar blurb on their releases page. But they don't give you the option of downloading binaries without crypto, and you don't even see the blurb if you opt to download a nightly build instead of a release build. I can't imagine someone in an embargoed country downloading and building from source just to avoid breaking a US law.

The strange thing is that the default build options don't include crypto. I found this out when I copied someone else's build script, which included the BUILD_PSM2 (build with crypto) option, and then tried to build Mozilla. It turned out that I had to install an extra program in order to make the PSM2 build work. (Why don't they link to the how to build Mozilla with crpyto page from the how to build Mozilla on Windows page?)

Mozilla has a similar blurb on their releases page. But they don't give you the option of downloading binaries without crypto, and you don't even see the blurb if you opt to download a nightly build instead of a release build. I can't imagine someone in an embargoed country downloading and building from source just to avoid breaking a US law.

The strange thing is that the default build options don't include crypto. I found this out when I copied someone else's build script, which included the BUILD_PSM2 (build with crypto) option, and then tried to build Mozilla. It turned out that I had to install an extra program in order to make the PSM2 build work. (Why don't they link to the how to build Mozilla with crpyto page from the how to build Mozilla on Windows page?)

Mozilla has a similar blurb on their releases page. But they don't give you the option of downloading binaries without crypto, and you don't even see the blurb if you opt to download a nightly build instead of a release build. I can't imagine someone in an embargoed country downloading and building from source just to avoid breaking a US law.

The strange thing is that the default build options don't include crypto. I found this out when I copied someone else's build script, which included the BUILD_PSM2 (build with crypto) option, and then tried to build Mozilla. It turned out that I had to install an extra program in order to make the PSM2 build work. (Why don't they link to the how to build Mozilla with crpyto page from the how to build Mozilla on Windows page?)

Uh, yes it should - it's always a pain when a third-party site doesn't display, and you can't fix it.

Uh, no, it shouldn't.
that error wouldn't have existed in the first place if during testing, the third party's browser would have shown a large, red page saying: "PARSE ERROR ON LINE X, DOCUMENT DISPLAY ABORTED"
too bad mozilla doesn't do this either. imho HTML should be parsed very strictly. luckily XHTML fixes some of this.

IE 5.0 doesn't do that on any computer I've used, 98SE or 2K.

IE 5.5 does on all computers I have run it on.

Having a consistant look should be of highest importance, but Mozilla decided to go their own path.

Mozilla HAS a consistent look, it looks exactly the same on every platform it runs on. people who know mozilla on windows can also use it on linux, mac, BeOS, etc. etc. etc.

And come November when I'm running XP, Mozilla will look really strange in the Luna-scape. Oh well.

I've played around a bit with some XP beta's ,and luna really is butt-ugly, it's a failed attempt to rip off Aqua, the title bars on windows are huge, and take up a lot of screen space. the green start button looks weird and is even uglier when pressed (it 'behaves' like a square button).
that start button really shows that their attempt to make the OS skinnable failed miserably (the startbutton in the 'classic' style feels wierd too.)

Your second point about embedding is interesting, seeing as ActiveX is the way to embed controls in other applications in Windows (not just webpages, any app can embed any ActiveX control). And Moz does this too. I've never seen Mozilla embed via Java though, link anyone?

check here
you can not only embed mozilla in a java app, you can write mozilla plugins in java (pluglets) and write XPCOM components.

It's not like Netscape listened to their customers either.

they do now, check bugzilla.mozilla.org , submit bug reports, feature requests. people will listen. people will discuss it. it might end up getting implemented if there's enough people who want it.

And of course there is a bug logged in bugzilla on using pspell. Try http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=56301 and that should get you there. It hasn't moved in a while, but maybe someone can help.

Ack! prefs.js is overwritten everytime you change Preferences in the dialog. Create user.js in the same dir and put your customizations there. See this doc. And spread that URL, spread it. Nobody seems to know about it

I just have a few comments regarding netscape 6.1/mozilla.

Standard compliance : Netscape is the most standard complaint browser out there, even the internet explorer 6.0 beta fails to render pages correcly. For example just go to W3 CSS page and compare the pages rendered my mozilla/ns and ie. Note the position of the toolbar as you scroll down the page in both browsers. Also you can choose alternate stylesheets on that site using View->Use Stylesheet

Speed : Performance is comparable to that of IE now.. If you want faster than IE browsers use Galeon or skipstone which are based on mozilla

UI issues : Unfortunately mozilla/ns does not support some features which used to work in NS4.x. Dynamic Font issues bugs 52746 Ugly list items ON LINUX 91816

I just have a few comments regarding netscape 6.1/mozilla.

Standard compliance : Netscape is the most standard complaint browser out there, even the internet explorer 6.0 beta fails to render pages correcly. For example just go to W3 CSS page and compare the pages rendered my mozilla/ns and ie. Note the position of the toolbar as you scroll down the page in both browsers. Also you can choose alternate stylesheets on that site using View->Use Stylesheet

Speed : Performance is comparable to that of IE now.. If you want faster than IE browsers use Galeon or skipstone which are based on mozilla

UI issues : Unfortunately mozilla/ns does not support some features which used to work in NS4.x. Dynamic Font issues bugs 52746 Ugly list items ON LINUX 91816

Mozilla is way too slow and the file save dialogs take a second or two to disappear. Sucks when you're trying to grab images fast and spank it at the same time!

I'm glad I'm not the only person who ran into this problem. Please vote for bug 66723, "Download window should not appear when saving from cache". The bug is currently marked as INVALID, but it's likely to be reconsidered if several people vote for it, especially since fixing the bug would be matching IE's behavior.

Recent fixes landed to speed loading time and new window drawing. For example, on my PII/366 192MB, a new message compose window takes NS6.1 4.5 seconds to draw and place the cursor in the "To:" field after striking ^M, 2001-08-07 nightly takes only 2.1 seconds.

Alas, the bloated footprint is no better, but fortunately memory leak bugs are coming in fast and furious now.

Actually, Netscape's Release Notes page is incorrect and my guess was based on it. They should have a link to Mozilla 0.9.2 instead of Mozilla 0.9.3.

Actually, Netscape's Release Notes page is incorrect and my guess was based on it. They should have a link to Mozilla 0.9.2 instead of Mozilla 0.9.3.

In a way, AOL/Netscape had to release v6.1 Right Now (TM), since IE 6 is going to be released next Wednesday This isn't to say that I don't like Netscape, though -- I download the Mozilla daily builds every day..

Only the spell check "interface" was released. The actual spell check that Netscape uses is "International ProofReaderTM text proofing software, copyright © 1995 by Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products N.V." so it's not Netscape's to release.

See this bug for information on work to get aspell in Mozilla.

The Release Notes are here. A link to Mozilla 0.9.3 is at the top of the page so I would assume Netscape 6.1 is based on it.

No, although they certainly are improving. You might want to read the GNOME Usability Study Report.

As long as your hardware is not total crap, Linux is not far from being a "insert CD, click install, come back in 15 minutes, start working" kinda OS. What do I mean by crap hardware? The kind of stuff that no self-respecting kernel hacker would buy, let alone write drivers for. (Like Winmodems, no-name Ethernet cards, old cheap SB-compatible sound cards, scanners with proprietary interfaces made by some company that died 5 years ago, etc.)

This is an internal myth of the Linux community. There is nothing wrong with reducing the cost of modem hardware by offloading some of its functions onto the main processor. In fact there's a major user benefit, which is lower cost. The reason people say Winmodems are crap is so they don't have to deal with the issue that Linux software support and availability isn't as good as on Windows. The tiny Linux market share doesn't lend itself to broad software or hardware support.

We have the same problem on the Mac side of the fence. It's a really unfair thing in a lot of ways, but it also is a concrete problem with using a minority platform, and the way to deal with it is not by saying that all the missing hardware and software is crap. (Although that was a good enough answer back when the war was between Mac and DOS!)

Mozilla, btw, is moving along nicely.

An ever-increasing number of bugs is not my idea of moving along nicely. I wouldn't ship commercial software that had Mozilla's defect curve. I'd link directly to the chart, but the bug chart feature is broken again today.

I think it's time to face up to the fact that projects people do in their spare time as tinkerers may never catch up to those that are funded, staffed and managed based on the potential for financial reward.

You need to read Eric Raymond's Cathedral and the Bazaar. http://tuxedo.org/~esr/ Enjoy.

I read it years ago. It bears no resemblance to reality and has even largely fallen out of favor in the open source community.

• His understanding of what it means to manage a project is totally wrong.
• His example program is a trivial small utility program having nothing to do with large software projects.
• His dictum that "to many eyes, all bugs are shallow" is demonstrably false.
• His predictions of commercial benefits from open source have caused several companies to crash and burn, but none to achieve profitability.
• His approach never had a quantifiable business model.
• He is completely unaware of software engineering as a discipline.
• He acknowledges that he has never taken a single class in the subject, and it really shows.

Tim