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Mozilla 1.0 was not delayed by hixie · 2001-05-28 06:37 · Score: 5 · on Mozilla 1.0 Delayed Again

I drew the roadmap.

Mozilla 1.0's ship date has been the same for around 3 years now: "When It's Ready".

When I drew the first roadmap which mentioned a 1.0 release [2], I placed it "in the future", faded out and labelled "if we're lucky". The accompanying text explained that Mozilla 1.0 would be released "when it is ready". When I next changed the roadmap significantly [4], it was to add in another milestone (0.8.1) which had been requested by groups who use the Mozilla codebase in their projects (like Nautlius and AOL). So far, nothing too serious.

The next big change [5] was to simply move the roadmap along a bit so that there was more room. Mozilla 1.0 was still a faded out, but I also took the opportunity to move it along a bit too, thus keeping it at the end of the roadmap. The release date for 1.0 was not changed, it was still "when it's ready".

However, when that roadmap diagram was published, I discovered that I had previously a undiscovered power among the Slashdot community! People were outraged that the faded lines had been moved! The text hadn't changed, the release date hadn't changed, but the image was adjusted a bit and this is clearly what matters!

Wary of this amazing power, when I made my next update to the roadmap image [6] I was very careful about making the release date of the Mozilla 1.0 product extremely clear: the branch is labelled "Mozilla 1.0 (when it is ready)". I figured that would prevent another outburst from my fans.

Clearly not! Both RootPrompt and Slashdot have me as their top article! My power remains untamed! Woohoo! :-D

The roadmap images:

So when will Mozilla 1.0 be ready? We have a definition document.

Mozilla 1.0 was not delayed by hixie · 2001-05-28 06:37 · Score: 5 · on Mozilla 1.0 Delayed Again

I drew the roadmap.

Mozilla 1.0's ship date has been the same for around 3 years now: "When It's Ready".

When I drew the first roadmap which mentioned a 1.0 release [2], I placed it "in the future", faded out and labelled "if we're lucky". The accompanying text explained that Mozilla 1.0 would be released "when it is ready". When I next changed the roadmap significantly [4], it was to add in another milestone (0.8.1) which had been requested by groups who use the Mozilla codebase in their projects (like Nautlius and AOL). So far, nothing too serious.

The next big change [5] was to simply move the roadmap along a bit so that there was more room. Mozilla 1.0 was still a faded out, but I also took the opportunity to move it along a bit too, thus keeping it at the end of the roadmap. The release date for 1.0 was not changed, it was still "when it's ready".

However, when that roadmap diagram was published, I discovered that I had previously a undiscovered power among the Slashdot community! People were outraged that the faded lines had been moved! The text hadn't changed, the release date hadn't changed, but the image was adjusted a bit and this is clearly what matters!

Wary of this amazing power, when I made my next update to the roadmap image [6] I was very careful about making the release date of the Mozilla 1.0 product extremely clear: the branch is labelled "Mozilla 1.0 (when it is ready)". I figured that would prevent another outburst from my fans.

Clearly not! Both RootPrompt and Slashdot have me as their top article! My power remains untamed! Woohoo! :-D

The roadmap images:

So when will Mozilla 1.0 be ready? We have a definition document.

Mozilla 1.0 was not delayed by hixie · 2001-05-28 06:37 · Score: 5 · on Mozilla 1.0 Delayed Again

I drew the roadmap.

Mozilla 1.0's ship date has been the same for around 3 years now: "When It's Ready".

When I drew the first roadmap which mentioned a 1.0 release [2], I placed it "in the future", faded out and labelled "if we're lucky". The accompanying text explained that Mozilla 1.0 would be released "when it is ready". When I next changed the roadmap significantly [4], it was to add in another milestone (0.8.1) which had been requested by groups who use the Mozilla codebase in their projects (like Nautlius and AOL). So far, nothing too serious.

The next big change [5] was to simply move the roadmap along a bit so that there was more room. Mozilla 1.0 was still a faded out, but I also took the opportunity to move it along a bit too, thus keeping it at the end of the roadmap. The release date for 1.0 was not changed, it was still "when it's ready".

However, when that roadmap diagram was published, I discovered that I had previously a undiscovered power among the Slashdot community! People were outraged that the faded lines had been moved! The text hadn't changed, the release date hadn't changed, but the image was adjusted a bit and this is clearly what matters!

Wary of this amazing power, when I made my next update to the roadmap image [6] I was very careful about making the release date of the Mozilla 1.0 product extremely clear: the branch is labelled "Mozilla 1.0 (when it is ready)". I figured that would prevent another outburst from my fans.

Clearly not! Both RootPrompt and Slashdot have me as their top article! My power remains untamed! Woohoo! :-D

The roadmap images:

So when will Mozilla 1.0 be ready? We have a definition document.

Instead of flaming each other, consider this... by slashbrent · 2001-05-28 05:37 · Score: 5 · on Mozilla 1.0 Delayed Again

1) Whats the rush for AOL to release the new browser now that AOL is going with IE? None.

2) The release schedule in actuality has not changed. Go to mozillaquest and compare the two graphics for yourself - they only moved the 'X' further along and pushed the 1.0 grey branch down - the point releases have not been moved, hence, the production schedule remains the same.

3) I use mozilla day-in-and-day-out - i'm using it right now. It beats the sh*t out of IE. Why? Because if we have no other choice, and we all had to use IE, as soon as M$ sees no more competition, they will stop producing the crappy thing for other platforms. Oh, sorry Steve Jobs, we decided that Mac's are too difficult to support, bye. Then what would us Linux, BeOS, Sun, Amiga, HP, and others do? Stop using the web. Riiiiiiiiight. Time to swtich to Windows! What else has M$ showed over the years other than the ability to twist peoples arms and make them use Windows?

4) For the love of God, people - quit frickin' cutting our own throats. Mozilla is our ONLY major OpenSource platform for web applications. (Which, hopefully, some of you more intelligent slashdotters realise is the future of the web.) If you dont like it, download it and try it again - like now, today. If you still dont like it - SHUT UP! We could kick each other in the teeth day after day about how Redhat is more secure than LinuxPPC, or how Mandrake is better for newbies, ow what have you, but what does that accomplish? NOTHING. The best thing you could ever hopw of your competition is that they attack each other - united we stand folks, divided we fall.

Mozilla - you're soaking in it.

Better URL by ChrisCampbell47 · 2001-05-28 05:13 · Score: 3 · on Mozilla 1.0 Delayed Again

The "tree management diagram" is also known as the "roadmap" and is located at

http://www.mozilla.org/roadmap.html

and it was updated to the current state three weeks ago (i.e. this is not news). It's done when it's done. In the meantime, the milestone releases (0.9, 0.9.1 soon) are very very good. Nightly builds are bit more risky but addin/fix/improve features and performance.

Can we trust that projection? by wrinkledshirt · 2001-05-28 05:05 · Score: 1 · on Mozilla 1.0 Delayed Again

That source tree (scroll down a bit) says that in a worst-case scenario, we might only be at 0.9.6 or 0.9.7 by the end of Q4 2001.

Just curious, but considering how delayed the thing is already, why should we believe their optimistic best-case projections? Sorry if this sounds like trolling, but I'm genuinely curious.

Re:maybe it's because AOL wants a decent browser by chrisv · 2001-05-25 03:45 · Score: 2 · on AOL 6.0 Bundled with Windows XP?

the latest version of MSIE does not crash

Are you sure about this? I've had IE crash a fair amount of times recently. Of course, being a web developer, I also know what kind of stuff will make almost any browser crash. I just love getting the "Internet Explorer has crashed" dialog box.

is stable, stable, stable

You haven't used Mozilla 0.9 yet. That's all I can say.

does not waste resources with stupid themable interface

I don't see it as a waste of resources -- it has to load a set of pixmaps/bmps/etc whether it's using a single "theme" that's part of the browser in the first place (see MSIE, Netscape 4.x), or loading multiple "themes" out of files (see WinAmp, XMMS, etc).

does not have major parts of the browser written in java script

Just the UI.

does not require 128 megs of ram to run

Mozilla-0.8.1 embedded on a Pentium/120 with 48M ram. It flew. Repeat that please?

does not include stupidity such as AIM clients and IRC clients

Both of which are fully optional if I'm not mistaken? Some people like doing everything out of one interface. Live with it.

at some point mozilla may become a better browser, but right now it is not. it is behind.

Try it before you knock it. Sure, it has it's bugs, but so does MSIE.

The primary reason that I see for AOL including MSIE over Mozilla (which, BTW, has been stated many times over on this article by other people) is for getting their icon on the WinXP desktop. It's all a marketing ploy to get people to sign up with them -- if you didn't know anything about the internet or anything else, but found an AOL icon sitting on your desktop, would you be more likely to call your local ISP, install the insert-service-provider-name-here cd that showed up in your mail the day before, or use what was already there? Considering that my mother used AOL for a while.. I think it's that much more likely that they'll use what already exists on their system before installing something else or getting online with a real ISP.

Just my 0.02.

Re:Mozilla's usable now by monkeyfamily · 2001-05-25 02:39 · Score: 2 · on AOL 6.0 Bundled with Windows XP?

SSL's been working in Mozilla for a damn long time now. Make sure you're downloading the right build (some don't come with the PSM(==Personal Security Manager) installed -- but even then you can do it seperately by just grabbing psm.xpi from netscape's or mozilla's ftp sites. I generally grab the build labeled mozilla-i686-pc-linux-gnu-sea.tar.gz

!!Damn I can't believe I just typed that url from memory, and I think it's right too.

Re:Not sure that this is news exactly... by mattdm · 2001-05-25 02:32 · Score: 2 · on AOL 6.0 Bundled with Windows XP?

IE has one major feature that Netscape still doesn't even come close to approaching -- an API that can be used to make a custom browser (which is just a shell over the HTML/Script parsing engine that offers most of the functions of a web browser).

Um. Perhaps you haven't been paying attention? Mozilla (and therefore Netscape 6+) is easily embedded.

Re:Not sure that this is news exactly... by mattdm · 2001-05-25 02:32 · Score: 2 · on AOL 6.0 Bundled with Windows XP?

IE has one major feature that Netscape still doesn't even come close to approaching -- an API that can be used to make a custom browser (which is just a shell over the HTML/Script parsing engine that offers most of the functions of a web browser).

Um. Perhaps you haven't been paying attention? Mozilla (and therefore Netscape 6+) is easily embedded.

Re:Not sure that this is news exactly... by JJC · 2001-05-25 02:32 · Score: 1 · on AOL 6.0 Bundled with Windows XP?

IE has one major feature that Netscape still doesn't even come close to approaching -- an API that can be used to make a custom browser (which is just a shell over the HTML/Script parsing engine that offers most of the functions of a web browser).

WTF is Gecko then? Seems to work pretty well in Galeon.

tinderbox by Proud+Geek · 2001-05-16 09:45 · Score: 1 · on Building a Test Automation System from Scratch?

The Mozilla project uses tinderbox. It comes in version 1 and 2 flavours, and is nowhere near mature (version 1 is more mature, I believe), but it is an open source framework that already exists. It is a tool for automating testing and reporting results. For running test cases you need something else, like DejaGNU.

You might also find that a lot of projects are using lighterweight scripts to automate testing. Since the software available isn't mature, a quick custom solution written in a scripting language (shell or Perl are good choices) might be a good solution.

Re:Death's Road. by ppanon · 2001-05-10 16:19 · Score: 2 · on Red Hat: Who Needs Netscape?

OK, why isn't Netscape keeping up with the Mozilla release schedule? Because they never wanted to release 6.0. As somebody else said above, they did it because of market pressure. Look at the latest roadmap. It even has a an X to mark the spot. You'll see that little X where they mention their current progress, how a bunch of new code has been added, (which are heavily demanded features or for performance improvements) and how the source tree is in flames as a result. Go a little farther and you will see the the blue lines marked 'recommended beta branch time' and 'vendor branches as required'. Those will probably be the Netscape 6.5 beta releases. Mozilla 0.9.1 and 0.9.3, after the addition of silly Netscape customizations like a shop button, will become the Netscape betas and eventually the release version.

It isn't worth it for Netscape to track the Mozilla milestones because the effort to recustomize each time would take up developer time that is better spent on the common source base. Those Netscape-brand customization branches would cause bugs that have to be fixed separately without adding to the end product. Understand this, Netscape 6.0(1) was a 'feature-complete' pre-beta/technology preview. I'm sure that Netscape knows it was pre-beta quality. It was put out there under pressure from journalists and standards advocates who immediately proceeded to about-face and blast the result. So Netscape decided that if that's the thanks they get, they'll release the next version when its ready. What did you expect when Netscape got slammed for doing what everybody else claimed they wanted?

The developers probably told management "We told you it wasn't ready!" and management certainly knew it wasn't ready, but they needed to keep up the perception that they were listening to the user base.

On the other hand, if Netscape is being kept alive by AOL to keep MS honest, Netscape 6.X is only effective as FUD if it is perceived to be a viable threat and not complete vapourware. Until the Netscape 6.X release, crappy as it was, the whole project was in serious danger of being perceived as vapourware and giving MS an effective browser monopoly. At that point it becomes ineffective for use as FUD by AOL and their funding might have dried up. All that bad publicity from NS6 meant that at least people were still talking about Netscape instead of forgetting about it. If NS 6.x was the price to keep Mozilla afloat to get to this point, then it was worth it. It's too bad they couldn't call it Technology Preview 2 instead of NS 6.0

mozilla as multi-user package by n-russo · 2001-05-10 14:00 · Score: 1 · on Red Hat: Who Needs Netscape?

afaik, bug 42184 is still unresolved. As a sysadmin, I can't really take mozilla seriously when its release notes suggest installing it separately for each user who wants to run it.

mozilla as multi-user package by n-russo · 2001-05-10 14:00 · Score: 1 · on Red Hat: Who Needs Netscape?

afaik, bug 42184 is still unresolved. As a sysadmin, I can't really take mozilla seriously when its release notes suggest installing it separately for each user who wants to run it.

Re:Thanks for talking out of your ass by dimator · 2001-05-10 13:43 · Score: 1 · on Red Hat: Who Needs Netscape?

Those sound like good ideas. I'm not sure if they've been suggested or not, but if you want to know, you can head over to bugzilla and check. If they're not there, you can file them as request for enhancements (rfe).

Their current work load is focused on finishing features/bugs for NS6.5, but once work on 7.0 starts (end of the summer, last I checked), there will be *lots* of room for feature work.

--

Re:I've been running nightlies regularly by jesser · 2001-05-10 08:51 · Score: 2 · on Red Hat: Who Needs Netscape?

Other than that, recent changes in how pages are built make everything seem a lot smoother and faster. I forget what they called the one fix... it had a funny description, but the upshot was that you can now click on things on an "outgoing" page if your new page hasn't loaded yet. For us impatient browsers who give up on crappy-loading sites, that one was a real breakthrough!

That was probably bug 76495, "We tear down the world before having anything to replace it with."

Unfortunately, bug 78680, "if a page is loading but paint-suppressed, can't interact with old page," hasn't been fixed. So while you can see the old page for a longer time as the new page starts to load, you can't necessarily click on other parts of the old page.

Re:I've been running nightlies regularly by jesser · 2001-05-10 08:51 · Score: 2 · on Red Hat: Who Needs Netscape?

Other than that, recent changes in how pages are built make everything seem a lot smoother and faster. I forget what they called the one fix... it had a funny description, but the upshot was that you can now click on things on an "outgoing" page if your new page hasn't loaded yet. For us impatient browsers who give up on crappy-loading sites, that one was a real breakthrough!

That was probably bug 76495, "We tear down the world before having anything to replace it with."

Unfortunately, bug 78680, "if a page is loading but paint-suppressed, can't interact with old page," hasn't been fixed. So while you can see the old page for a longer time as the new page starts to load, you can't necessarily click on other parts of the old page.

Who needs it? I do! by Alan · 2001-05-10 06:03 · Score: 2 · on Red Hat: Who Needs Netscape?

Not for the browser... no, I can easily live in my galeon-ized world quite happily without the netscape browser. Unfortunately, I still need digital signing/encrypting ability for my mail, and my company has adopted X509 (verisign) certs for this. As all inter-company mail must be encrypted, I can't get around this.

Yes, I tried to convince them to use pgp/gpg, but the lack of integration with netscape and other (windows) mail clients made that no happen :( I *really* wanted it to.

There is alread a bug about this in the bugzilla database, but it looks like they aren't going to be able to get it in by 1.0 :( Yes, I'd love to help them instead of just bitching, and I would if I had any experience coding this part of the system.

Re:Mozilla? by doozy · 2001-05-10 04:51 · Score: 2 · on Red Hat: Who Needs Netscape?

I disagree. I also run Windows as my primary OS; IE is by far the slowest browser I've used. For raw speed, nothing right now beats Opera. Although supposedly it sticks to the standards to most, a lot of pages dont look perfect in it. Mozilla is definitely getting MUCH better. I'm actually using it right now: much faster than IE6.0 in just about everything. These are my experiences; your mileage may vary. As an aside, does Slashdot use http/1.1 compression? One of my favorite game news sites now uses it, and everything loads perceptibly faster...

Jamie Zawinski, is -I'm sure- Thrilled about this by hillct · 2001-05-10 04:41 · Score: 3 · on Red Hat: Who Needs Netscape?

I'm sure Jamie Zawinskiis thrilled about this. It seemed that he took it as a personal failure that Mozilla.org didn't take off in it's first year of operation. In the last 6 months it seems to have been holding it's own and here's one of the proofs of that theory. Keep up the good work guys.

--CTH

--

Re:Netscape by LordNimon · 2001-05-10 04:38 · Score: 4 · on Red Hat: Who Needs Netscape?

The OS/2 version of Mozilla 0.9 can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/releases/mozilla 0.9/mozilla-i386-pcos2-vacpp-0.9.zip. In other words, you're a moron.

BTW, feel free to ask the Mozilla team what they think about the OS/2 programmers they work with.
--
Lord Nimon

Re:What we really need by Twylite · 2001-05-09 07:40 · Score: 1 · on Developing Attractive non-GUI Apps for Unix?

There are a couple of systems that already exist. XwingML builds Java Swing interfaces from an XML specification. XUL is a similar XML-based markup supported by Mozilla. XForms is the W3C's draft standard for the next generation of web forms.

Most particularly you may want to look at UIML, which is intended as a cross-(viewing-)platform markup, supporting PCs, PDAs, etc. There is a Java viewer, and the new version seems to have some renderers for WML and HTML, but a text renderer should be possibe (if not already available).

There are several other lesser-known XML-to-GUI toolkits, such as KUIL and AUIT. Most of these are implemented in Java and map the Java Swing classes into XML (as with XwingML).

Re:PSM 2.0 by vectro · 2001-05-08 01:42 · Score: 1 · on Mozilla 0.9 Out

It works fine for me. If you're having problems, why not report a bug?

Re:LDAP support? by tk422 · 2001-05-07 13:46 · Score: 1 · on Mozilla 0.9 Out

LDAP support is going to be in 0.9.1.

I believe the UI for it was checked in a couple nights ago but don't quote me on that.

Ah yes according to this Link:
5-7-1: LDAP autocomplete feature checkins happened on friday. In non-installer builds (ie .zip, .tar.gz), LDAP autocomplete works, modulo bugs, if you set the appropriate preferences.
No known regressions. Master tracking bug number for LDAP Autocomplete: 17880. The only remaining work before closing this "landing" out is to get the appropriate installer packaging tweaks checked in. Should happen today.

Re:Not True on Linux by cobar · 2001-05-07 13:37 · Score: 2 · on Mozilla 0.9 Out

There should be a nice performance gain when they move to gcc 2.95.3 and start using -O2 to optimize as well.

See http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=53486 for details.

The only reason this hasn't happened yet is they didn't want to introduce potential compiler and optimization issues right before the .9 release.

LDAP support? by ehackathorn · 2001-05-07 11:55 · Score: 1 · on Mozilla 0.9 Out

It's nice to see this browser is coming along so nicely! Quick question: Does anyone know when LDAP support will be offered in the Mail/News client? Until this support is included I cannot see a wide spread adoption from Netscape Messenger users.

Reading the bugzilla report it doesn't seem like anyone is taking this problem that seriously...

Please use talkback builds. by endico · 2001-05-07 10:19 · Score: 5 · on Mozilla 0.9 Out

Please, please, please, use our talkback builds on Windows, Macintosh and Linux. Using talkback builds gives us more crash data so common crash bugs can be quickly identified and fixed. Yes, people really do look at this stuff. This is an incredibly easy way to report bugs. You don't need a bugzilla account, you don't need to write coherent english sentences and for a change, filing DUPLICATES IS GOOD!

Here's a sample crash analysis page. Watch out, this page is 2+ MB.