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Mozilla has continuous rolling builds hooked up to Tinderbox. You break the build and your name shows up in big red lights. This is pretty standard. You shouldn't check into a tree until you've tried it...that only makes sense.

--GnrcMan--

jiles wrote:

I think we need to focus on the word standard here. From my point of view there are two standards:
- the stuff that w3c poors out: the formal standard
- that what people actually use: the practical standard.
Agreed so far.

Right now the practical standard is a mixture of HTML 3.0 and HTML 4.0 with lots of propietary extensions. Mozilla will be fully HTML 4.0 compliant, that's different from the current practical standard.
First off, proprietary extensions are not in the practical standard. The practical standard currently is what can be reasonably expected to look good on Netscape 4.x, IE4 and IE5 (ambitious developers include Netscape 3.x, IE3 and Opera). Proprietary extensions don't fit that criteria, it's just HTML 3.0 with some of the new stuff from 4.0. Mozilla will be fully 4.0 compliant, which works just fine with HTML 3.0 and earlier sites.

So that means more work for web developers.
How? If they've been developing their sites right, leaving them alone will work just fine with Mozilla. All that should happen is that Mozilla will get added to the list of browsers that define the defacto standard, and eventually Netscape 4.x and IE4 will join Nescape 3.x and IE3.

If it's backward compatible with some extensions, that means even less motivation to abandon them.
Which extensions are you talking about here?


I think the HTML spec is fundamentally flawed and should be abandoned as soon as possible. For me that would be when I could use XML, XSL and stylesheets.
Agreed, but "XSL and stylesheets" is redundant, unless you meant XSL and CSS. Gecko probably won't support XSL out of the box, since there are still wrinkles in the XSL specification. I'd expect XSL support to come soon though.

Then I could use XSL to provide backwards compatibility.
XSL does nothing to provide backwards compatibility, unless you're talking about server side XSL (i.e. the server takes an XML document, an XSL style, and renders it into HTML, which it feeds to the browser client). This is very server and bandwidth intensive, I'd rather see good XSL support in all major browsers and the clients doing the processing.

Unfortunately MS is doing everything to let XML, XSL and stylesheets go the same way as HTML: they are providing propietary extensions. So again the practical standard will deviate from the formal standard.
No, because using any MS-proprietary XSL tricks wouldn't work on any of the "standard" browsers other than IE5, so it won't be in the practical standard.

The only hope for preventing this is a quick (within months) acceptation of mozilla by a large share of the web community (I'm thinking 40% or more of the web users here). Just looking at the figures of usage of the latest generation of browsers will show you that that is not going to happen (sorry don't have those figures readily available so please post them if you have them).
It's not the only hope, and yes 40% in the first few months isn't likely, but I suspect that Mozilla based browsers will spread faster than you think. I think people other than Netscape are planning to distribute based on M11 or later pre-release versions. The Gecko engine (which is the important part, standards-wize) will have a noticable percentage of the market before Communicator 5.0 is released.

----

The fixed bug list is truly impressive, but there aren't just three bugs open as your link would have us believe.

Who said "three bugs"? You did. One of the list items is this one which is the "Release Notes scratchpad", which IMHO is about as definitive as it gets. Did you read the list, or just count the items??? By any measure, M11 is obviously nearly here.

BTW, who besides me thinks that Bugzilla is infinitely cool, yet could be made even better?

The fixed bug list is truly impressive, but there aren't just three bugs open as your link would have us believe.

Who said "three bugs"? You did. One of the list items is this one which the "Release Notes scratchpad", which IMHO is about as definitive as it gets.

Seriously, though, we build the system continuously and close the tree daily for verification and detection of regressions. (We publish the builds that are used to verify.

(The Extreme Programming stuff is pretty cool, but it uses the acronym XP, which causes no end of confusion around the Mozilla camp.)

Seriously, though, we build the system continuously and close the tree daily for verification and detection of regressions. (We publish the builds that are used to verify.

(The Extreme Programming stuff is pretty cool, but it uses the acronym XP, which causes no end of confusion around the Mozilla camp.)

What other open source project would you expect Netscape Communications Corp (or AOL) to be involved with?

The fact that it has taken a whopping long time for the (marginally usable) M10 release to arrive is not a clear example of failure; the project has had to labour under several significant constraints:

• In order to release Mozilla as Open Source(tm), Netscape had to tear out a whole lot of code that they didn't own. Java, VisiBroker, RSA stuff, ObjectStore, TrueDoc, Full Circle Talkback, Inso Proofreader, and others.

  This left gaping holes in the source code tree, things that had to be reimplemented.

• Mozilla has essentially been rearchitected.

  What with the above gaping holes, and other things that had grown into being ill-designed, it made huge sense to rebuild a whole lot of the functionality from scratch.

If a version that is of "production quality" is released in the next 4 months, which is not inconceivable, that essentially means that Mozilla has been recreated in two years, which is certainly not a monumental failure.

Mozilla milestone M11 is coming out any minute. Here's the open bug list. Obviously, the team is on the green and just about to sink the putt.

This is the one, guys. This is the first mozilla named "mozilla" instead of "apprunner". This is a fully functional browser, with all the trimmings (plus more), and it just could be good enough to browse with. If not, we can make it that way. The source code is only 20~ something meg - it's a reasonable sized project. It's ours. This is the time to jump in and help.

Guys, this is our last chance to claw back the client side of the net from Microsoft.

Alas, despite the initial burst of enthusiasm with which a bunch of crazy Ozzies threw strong crypto back into the original codebase (the Cryptzilla project IIRC, moz as he is spoke does not include strong crypto. What's needed is an enterprising ex-US team to incorporate, say, GPG or some other public domain code.

\a

--

Yes they could argue that the law is vague but the Judge can simply say "The law is NOT vague" and be done with it. Supreme Court, supreme court, yaaay supreme court!

I would like to see the court order that from now on the operating system and anything bundled with it must be open sourced. Let Microsoft bundle IE with Windows 2000 then!

My $0.02 worth.

I have always designed my web pages to work with all browsers. And Netscape has always been my browser of choice, because it was the best. Though it lacks nifty features like IE's rebars, I really like the Netscape Communicator 4.x interface. I find bookmark handling in particular easier to deal with in Netscape than in IE.

Unfortunately, Netscape dropped the ball, and stopped improving their browser engine after Communicator 4.0 was released in June 1997. Though it wasn't standards-compliant then, I fully expected Netscape to remedy that as soon as possible. They never did. In fact, I've never even heard them say that they were working on full HTML 4.0 support.

Instead, Netscape has wasted time with side projects, first trying to push (no pun intended) its ill-fated Netcaster client, then its portal site, and then all kinds of useless junk like AOL Instant Messenger and the Shop button.

Meanwhile, Microsoft wasn't just relying on bundling IE with every conceivable piece of Windows software. IE4 was released with a solid lead over Netscape in HTML and CSS support. While Netscape's ill-named SmartUpdate was and still is broken and difficult to use, IE4 introduced Windows Update, which makes installations, upgrades, and add-ons a snap.

Now IE5 is the undisputed best web browser. Under the hood, it is so far superior to any other browser that there is no contest. To initiate an exodus from IE, Mozilla will have to be fully compliant with HTML, CSS2, XML, and be amazing to boot. And it will need to be released soon.

As for Netscape, I am resigned to its crushing defeat. Over a year ago, it was already clear that it lost the browser war. People have waited patiently since 1997, but there is still no sign that Netscape 5 is forthcoming, let alone any indication that it will be as good as IE5.

Unless there is a dramatic reversal in this situation, I think you can expect to see more and more Netscape holdouts give up and start writing web pages to today's standards, whether Navigator can deal with them or not. I am unhappy about this state of affairs, but that's just the way it is. Netscape stood still while the world kept on turning.

Firstly, something I have to get out of my system ...

FIRST POST!

Yes, it's my first post to Slashdot. I've been here about 18 months now, and never felt compelled to contribute before. But this discussion just makes me sick. I am in a maze of whiny little Slashdotters, all alike -- complaining about Communicator, doomsaying about Mozilla, and no-one doing anything.

So let's cover the whingers' main points.

Navigator/Communicator 4.x is buggy.

Sure it is. Basically, Communicator 4.x is built on the same basic architecture as Navigator 1.0, and has grown like topsy. It's a mess, and it's hard to debug. Which is why, earlier this year, Mozilla.org ditched the old codebase and rewrote nearly all of Mozilla from scratch.

But in the meantime, I'd much rather have a browser with several performance bugs and fewer security bugs, than the other way around.

Communicator hasn't improved since version 4.5.

Yes, that's mostly true (unless you count `Shop' buttons and the like as improvements), except that a number of bugs have been fixed since 4.5. Basically, Netscape are keeping Communicator 4.x ticking over while they work flat out on Mozilla, because Mozilla is where the future is.

Balls. Mozilla 5.0 will far outclass IE5's broken support for HTML 4.0, CSS1, CSS2, and XML. And Mozilla optimized builds are already faster than IE5. To quote Rick Gessner, Netscape's Director of Engineering:

About a year ago, I was asked to present the very early demo on Gecko. As a follow up, we went back to debate with Microsoft on the state of the browser war. The MS guy was nice enough, and credible, too. He seems like he cares about what he was doing ...

But our own Eric Krock was on a mission. Even though he had larengitis (sp), he managed to show a side by side demo of us vs IE, and we killed 'em.

We smoked their demo on size, speed, and mostly on standards compliance. It was really funny to watch.

But even more exciting than Mozilla's standards-compliance and performance, is the fact that it offers the building blocks for constructing any client-side Internet application you like -- using its cross-platform front end of XUL (the XML User Interface Language) and JavaScript. So not only can you change the look and feel of Mozilla, but you can alter the entire user interface, or even create your own app using the Mozilla layout engine and networking code.

Mozilla is doomed.

So if CNet and ZDNet say something often enough, it becomes true? That's sick. Sure, JWZ left. Good! Sure, Mozilla.org had to scrap a lot of their old code. Great! It's an open source project, you can't kill it, you can only delay it ...

And this is the bit which really annoys me. Everyone is standing around moping about how IE is taking over the world, and thinking that talking about it (in usual Slashdot fashion) is enough.

It's not.

Join the Mozilla effort. Do it now. It doesn't matter if you don't know C++. It doesn't matter if you're stuck on Windows. It doesn't matter if you only have two hours a week to spare. Just join in. Download binaries. Report bugs. Suggest enhancements.

I'd like to think that the Slashdot readership were actually interested in the future of both Linux and the Internet. I don't want Linux to be a second-class end-user operating system, simply because it doesn't have the world standard Web browser on it. And I don't want Microsoft, or any company for that matter, to control the Internet.

Do you?

[ Give up ] [ Fight back ]

-- mpt

Firstly, something I have to get out of my system ...

FIRST POST!

Yes, it's my first post to Slashdot. I've been here about 18 months now, and never felt compelled to contribute before. But this discussion just makes me sick. I am in a maze of whiny little Slashdotters, all alike -- complaining about Communicator, doomsaying about Mozilla, and no-one doing anything.

So let's cover the whingers' main points.

Navigator/Communicator 4.x is buggy.

Sure it is. Basically, Communicator 4.x is built on the same basic architecture as Navigator 1.0, and has grown like topsy. It's a mess, and it's hard to debug. Which is why, earlier this year, Mozilla.org ditched the old codebase and rewrote nearly all of Mozilla from scratch.

But in the meantime, I'd much rather have a browser with several performance bugs and fewer security bugs, than the other way around.

Communicator hasn't improved since version 4.5.

Yes, that's mostly true (unless you count `Shop' buttons and the like as improvements), except that a number of bugs have been fixed since 4.5. Basically, Netscape are keeping Communicator 4.x ticking over while they work flat out on Mozilla, because Mozilla is where the future is.

Balls. Mozilla 5.0 will far outclass IE5's broken support for HTML 4.0, CSS1, CSS2, and XML. And Mozilla optimized builds are already faster than IE5. To quote Rick Gessner, Netscape's Director of Engineering:

About a year ago, I was asked to present the very early demo on Gecko. As a follow up, we went back to debate with Microsoft on the state of the browser war. The MS guy was nice enough, and credible, too. He seems like he cares about what he was doing ...

But our own Eric Krock was on a mission. Even though he had larengitis (sp), he managed to show a side by side demo of us vs IE, and we killed 'em.

We smoked their demo on size, speed, and mostly on standards compliance. It was really funny to watch.

But even more exciting than Mozilla's standards-compliance and performance, is the fact that it offers the building blocks for constructing any client-side Internet application you like -- using its cross-platform front end of XUL (the XML User Interface Language) and JavaScript. So not only can you change the look and feel of Mozilla, but you can alter the entire user interface, or even create your own app using the Mozilla layout engine and networking code.

Mozilla is doomed.

So if CNet and ZDNet say something often enough, it becomes true? That's sick. Sure, JWZ left. Good! Sure, Mozilla.org had to scrap a lot of their old code. Great! It's an open source project, you can't kill it, you can only delay it ...

And this is the bit which really annoys me. Everyone is standing around moping about how IE is taking over the world, and thinking that talking about it (in usual Slashdot fashion) is enough.

It's not.

Join the Mozilla effort. Do it now. It doesn't matter if you don't know C++. It doesn't matter if you're stuck on Windows. It doesn't matter if you only have two hours a week to spare. Just join in. Download binaries. Report bugs. Suggest enhancements.

I'd like to think that the Slashdot readership were actually interested in the future of both Linux and the Internet. I don't want Linux to be a second-class end-user operating system, simply because it doesn't have the world standard Web browser on it. And I don't want Microsoft, or any company for that matter, to control the Internet.

Do you?

[ Give up ] [ Fight back ]

-- mpt

Firstly, something I have to get out of my system ...

FIRST POST!

Yes, it's my first post to Slashdot. I've been here about 18 months now, and never felt compelled to contribute before. But this discussion just makes me sick. I am in a maze of whiny little Slashdotters, all alike -- complaining about Communicator, doomsaying about Mozilla, and no-one doing anything.

So let's cover the whingers' main points.

Navigator/Communicator 4.x is buggy.

Sure it is. Basically, Communicator 4.x is built on the same basic architecture as Navigator 1.0, and has grown like topsy. It's a mess, and it's hard to debug. Which is why, earlier this year, Mozilla.org ditched the old codebase and rewrote nearly all of Mozilla from scratch.

But in the meantime, I'd much rather have a browser with several performance bugs and fewer security bugs, than the other way around.

Communicator hasn't improved since version 4.5.

Yes, that's mostly true (unless you count `Shop' buttons and the like as improvements), except that a number of bugs have been fixed since 4.5. Basically, Netscape are keeping Communicator 4.x ticking over while they work flat out on Mozilla, because Mozilla is where the future is.

Balls. Mozilla 5.0 will far outclass IE5's broken support for HTML 4.0, CSS1, CSS2, and XML. And Mozilla optimized builds are already faster than IE5. To quote Rick Gessner, Netscape's Director of Engineering:

About a year ago, I was asked to present the very early demo on Gecko. As a follow up, we went back to debate with Microsoft on the state of the browser war. The MS guy was nice enough, and credible, too. He seems like he cares about what he was doing ...

But our own Eric Krock was on a mission. Even though he had larengitis (sp), he managed to show a side by side demo of us vs IE, and we killed 'em.

We smoked their demo on size, speed, and mostly on standards compliance. It was really funny to watch.

But even more exciting than Mozilla's standards-compliance and performance, is the fact that it offers the building blocks for constructing any client-side Internet application you like -- using its cross-platform front end of XUL (the XML User Interface Language) and JavaScript. So not only can you change the look and feel of Mozilla, but you can alter the entire user interface, or even create your own app using the Mozilla layout engine and networking code.

Mozilla is doomed.

So if CNet and ZDNet say something often enough, it becomes true? That's sick. Sure, JWZ left. Good! Sure, Mozilla.org had to scrap a lot of their old code. Great! It's an open source project, you can't kill it, you can only delay it ...

And this is the bit which really annoys me. Everyone is standing around moping about how IE is taking over the world, and thinking that talking about it (in usual Slashdot fashion) is enough.

It's not.

Join the Mozilla effort. Do it now. It doesn't matter if you don't know C++. It doesn't matter if you're stuck on Windows. It doesn't matter if you only have two hours a week to spare. Just join in. Download binaries. Report bugs. Suggest enhancements.

I'd like to think that the Slashdot readership were actually interested in the future of both Linux and the Internet. I don't want Linux to be a second-class end-user operating system, simply because it doesn't have the world standard Web browser on it. And I don't want Microsoft, or any company for that matter, to control the Internet.

Do you?

[ Give up ] [ Fight back ]

-- mpt

Firstly, something I have to get out of my system ...

FIRST POST!

Yes, it's my first post to Slashdot. I've been here about 18 months now, and never felt compelled to contribute before. But this discussion just makes me sick. I am in a maze of whiny little Slashdotters, all alike -- complaining about Communicator, doomsaying about Mozilla, and no-one doing anything.

So let's cover the whingers' main points.

Navigator/Communicator 4.x is buggy.

Sure it is. Basically, Communicator 4.x is built on the same basic architecture as Navigator 1.0, and has grown like topsy. It's a mess, and it's hard to debug. Which is why, earlier this year, Mozilla.org ditched the old codebase and rewrote nearly all of Mozilla from scratch.

But in the meantime, I'd much rather have a browser with several performance bugs and fewer security bugs, than the other way around.

Communicator hasn't improved since version 4.5.

Yes, that's mostly true (unless you count `Shop' buttons and the like as improvements), except that a number of bugs have been fixed since 4.5. Basically, Netscape are keeping Communicator 4.x ticking over while they work flat out on Mozilla, because Mozilla is where the future is.

Balls. Mozilla 5.0 will far outclass IE5's broken support for HTML 4.0, CSS1, CSS2, and XML. And Mozilla optimized builds are already faster than IE5. To quote Rick Gessner, Netscape's Director of Engineering:

About a year ago, I was asked to present the very early demo on Gecko. As a follow up, we went back to debate with Microsoft on the state of the browser war. The MS guy was nice enough, and credible, too. He seems like he cares about what he was doing ...

But our own Eric Krock was on a mission. Even though he had larengitis (sp), he managed to show a side by side demo of us vs IE, and we killed 'em.

We smoked their demo on size, speed, and mostly on standards compliance. It was really funny to watch.

But even more exciting than Mozilla's standards-compliance and performance, is the fact that it offers the building blocks for constructing any client-side Internet application you like -- using its cross-platform front end of XUL (the XML User Interface Language) and JavaScript. So not only can you change the look and feel of Mozilla, but you can alter the entire user interface, or even create your own app using the Mozilla layout engine and networking code.

Mozilla is doomed.

So if CNet and ZDNet say something often enough, it becomes true? That's sick. Sure, JWZ left. Good! Sure, Mozilla.org had to scrap a lot of their old code. Great! It's an open source project, you can't kill it, you can only delay it ...

And this is the bit which really annoys me. Everyone is standing around moping about how IE is taking over the world, and thinking that talking about it (in usual Slashdot fashion) is enough.

It's not.

Join the Mozilla effort. Do it now. It doesn't matter if you don't know C++. It doesn't matter if you're stuck on Windows. It doesn't matter if you only have two hours a week to spare. Just join in. Download binaries. Report bugs. Suggest enhancements.

I'd like to think that the Slashdot readership were actually interested in the future of both Linux and the Internet. I don't want Linux to be a second-class end-user operating system, simply because it doesn't have the world standard Web browser on it. And I don't want Microsoft, or any company for that matter, to control the Internet.

Do you?

[ Give up ] [ Fight back ]

-- mpt

Firstly, something I have to get out of my system ...

FIRST POST!

Yes, it's my first post to Slashdot. I've been here about 18 months now, and never felt compelled to contribute before. But this discussion just makes me sick. I am in a maze of whiny little Slashdotters, all alike -- complaining about Communicator, doomsaying about Mozilla, and no-one doing anything.

So let's cover the whingers' main points.

Navigator/Communicator 4.x is buggy.

Sure it is. Basically, Communicator 4.x is built on the same basic architecture as Navigator 1.0, and has grown like topsy. It's a mess, and it's hard to debug. Which is why, earlier this year, Mozilla.org ditched the old codebase and rewrote nearly all of Mozilla from scratch.

But in the meantime, I'd much rather have a browser with several performance bugs and fewer security bugs, than the other way around.

Communicator hasn't improved since version 4.5.

Yes, that's mostly true (unless you count `Shop' buttons and the like as improvements), except that a number of bugs have been fixed since 4.5. Basically, Netscape are keeping Communicator 4.x ticking over while they work flat out on Mozilla, because Mozilla is where the future is.

Balls. Mozilla 5.0 will far outclass IE5's broken support for HTML 4.0, CSS1, CSS2, and XML. And Mozilla optimized builds are already faster than IE5. To quote Rick Gessner, Netscape's Director of Engineering:

About a year ago, I was asked to present the very early demo on Gecko. As a follow up, we went back to debate with Microsoft on the state of the browser war. The MS guy was nice enough, and credible, too. He seems like he cares about what he was doing ...

But our own Eric Krock was on a mission. Even though he had larengitis (sp), he managed to show a side by side demo of us vs IE, and we killed 'em.

We smoked their demo on size, speed, and mostly on standards compliance. It was really funny to watch.

But even more exciting than Mozilla's standards-compliance and performance, is the fact that it offers the building blocks for constructing any client-side Internet application you like -- using its cross-platform front end of XUL (the XML User Interface Language) and JavaScript. So not only can you change the look and feel of Mozilla, but you can alter the entire user interface, or even create your own app using the Mozilla layout engine and networking code.

Mozilla is doomed.

So if CNet and ZDNet say something often enough, it becomes true? That's sick. Sure, JWZ left. Good! Sure, Mozilla.org had to scrap a lot of their old code. Great! It's an open source project, you can't kill it, you can only delay it ...

And this is the bit which really annoys me. Everyone is standing around moping about how IE is taking over the world, and thinking that talking about it (in usual Slashdot fashion) is enough.

It's not.

Join the Mozilla effort. Do it now. It doesn't matter if you don't know C++. It doesn't matter if you're stuck on Windows. It doesn't matter if you only have two hours a week to spare. Just join in. Download binaries. Report bugs. Suggest enhancements.

I'd like to think that the Slashdot readership were actually interested in the future of both Linux and the Internet. I don't want Linux to be a second-class end-user operating system, simply because it doesn't have the world standard Web browser on it. And I don't want Microsoft, or any company for that matter, to control the Internet.

Do you?

[ Give up ] [ Fight back ]

-- mpt

Proxies do work as far as I know (I haven't actually tried using proxies)....for more info look at bug reports:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10276
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8559

Proxies do work as far as I know (I haven't actually tried using proxies)....for more info look at bug reports:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10276
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8559

Proxies do work; that was new in Milestone 10. See the release notes.

With the way Mozilla is going, its very possible that in a few years, IE will be the only "modern browser"

Mozilla should be out by the end of this year. Even though it's still technically a pre-beta, it's already more standards-compliant (as in the latest ones for HTML, CSS, XML, DOM from W3C and for scripting from ECMA) than any version of MSIE. I don't know what your definition of "modern" is, but that sure as heck sounds pretty durn close to mine.

I say fie! upon Micro$oft's bloated, non-compliant "Internet Extensions to Windows" and the hideously twisted source code from whence they sprang. Let it keep them. Moz is doing just fine without them, thank you very much.

The preceding has been a public service of Zontar The Mindless, who has no official connection to Mozilla.org, just knows a good thing when he sees it. :-)

Zontar The Mindless,

With the way Mozilla is going, its very possible that in a few years, IE will be the only "modern browser"

Mozilla should be out by the end of this year. Even though it's still technically a pre-beta, it's already more standards-compliant (as in the latest ones for HTML, CSS, XML, DOM from W3C and for scripting from ECMA) than any version of MSIE. I don't know what your definition of "modern" is, but that sure as heck sounds pretty durn close to mine.

I say fie! upon Micro$oft's bloated, non-compliant "Internet Extensions to Windows" and the hideously twisted source code from whence they sprang. Let it keep them. Moz is doing just fine without them, thank you very much.

The preceding has been a public service of Zontar The Mindless, who has no official connection to Mozilla.org, just knows a good thing when he sees it. :-)

Zontar The Mindless,

I have used Netscape 3 Gold for Linux and it hasn't crashed on me once. I have also used Netscape 4.5 for Windows, and it crashes occasionally. I have never used IE3 or IE4, but I have used IE5 and it is ... not very good. As far as I have noticed, Netscape3 and IE5 can both render almost all pages on the web, with the exception of Java pages and Plugin pages. (I avoid pages using Plugins even under Windows, and I almost always have Java turned off.)

Lynx manages to render most pages on the 'net, and if you run it under X11 it can render graphics, too.

No matter what you do to Mozilla for Linux, it won't be able to use Microsoft's latest OLE/VB/whatever plugins. Microsoft seems to have polluted the Java standard, unfortunately, which means that Mozilla probably has a fair bit of catching up to do.

Microsoft does not (yet) control the server standards, except indirectly through the FrontPage extensions. I am not sure exactly what the purpose of these are. It is perhaps more likely that MS will pollute the internet mail standards, with more and more people using `free' services like Hotmail.

Sorry. The lyrics have been stuck in my head for days now...

Ok. So. the article is rather inflammatory, and there is some debate on this whole browser war issue. But the points that come out of it are very valid. The key one is this:

I am making a personal committment to get involved with the Mozilla project. It is the project with the most potential to become this Free Web Browser that we so desperately need. Netscape is NOT going to save us this time. Netscape has failed us, and it's time to take matters into our own hands.

To sum up: GET INVOLVED

Somehow, somewhere you have some free time. Use that time to find a project that interests you, and help out. If nothing else do it to make you r life easier in the long run.

And if you do go searching for a project, pick one of some significance. We really do not need *another* gtk ICQ program, or *another* mp3 player. We do need a better netscape. An earllier post talked about developing a competitor to Exchange. We do need better UI's.

What would happen if all the little developers hacking away on exactly the same thing, dropped those and decended in a massive horde of mad programmin' skillz upon the big projects? Mozilla would be done in no time. The desktop argument would fall by the wayside.

Is there a central website of some sort for project posting? Show up, stick your project idea on the board and get interested people? If so, why haven't I heard anything about it? The apps repositories don't count. Sticking a sentence in a slashdot comment doesn't count either. I talkin' a purely administrative site. www.lets-code.org or something.


"You want to kiss the sky? Better learn how to kneel." - U2
"It was like trying to herd cats..." - Robert A. Heinlein

Mozilla has a whole page devoted on how to get involved. Get Involved!
I, myself download the milestones and then report bugs I find. It's really easy to do, and most people could probably replace their current browser with Mozilla. (however there is no SSL support -- encryption export problems on source code).

Don't be afraid to help out for windows either. Mozilla isn't going to release on windows only -it's a cross platform development. So if you report bugs for the windows or mac (others too) versions then you're still helping out Linux as well as the rest.

Mozilla has a lot of room for helping hands, in paticular bug reporting, testing, and documentation writing. For the more technically advanced: code writing and bug fixing.
Do your part!
Joseph Elwell.

On the free side, definately look at Bugzilla, from Mozilla.org. In many respects defect tracking and help desk is very similiar, so a customised Bugzilla could do the trick.

You could code your own Helpdesk software, which is what Australian ISP connect.com.au have done, using perl.

If you are a glutton for punishment and seeking mega kudos, then perhaps try getting the NCR (AT&T) MP-RAS version of Remedy to work. I assume you would need to do something similar to what happened with the SCO version of Oracle on Linux before Oracle did a Linux port

Man, you been living in a box lately or what? :) Go to http://www.mozilla.org...

PNG support in M10 is terrible. PNGs render inline, but slowly. Alpha seems to be binary instead of 8 bits, and gamma is ignored completely.

Alpha is indeed binary-only (see bug 3013)--and not on the fast track to improve much--but gamma is fully supported and works correctly. As for speed, I haven't noticed any particular problems there, but libpng 1.0.5 includes MMX code for fast PNG decoding on Windows, and libpng 1.0.6 (or 1.1.0?) will include corresponding code for Linux and other gcc/gas targets.

I converted my whole site from GIF to PNG a while back. IE5 works great, Mozilla breaks on the transparencies (not alpha channel), that is, binary transparency for PNG is still broken. You can see my bug report, and vote for it at: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_ bug.cgi?id=13627. It seems the mozilla folk (who I love) are very concerned with DOM, XML, and HTML standard support...but have left out the PNG standard as a _fundamental_ required building block of the web. I think full PNG support should be as core as HTML, and I eagerly await full support in my favorite browser.

First of all, a play by play critique:

"No one -- not a single person -- doing serious commercial Internet work would consider it for a moment. Why? Clients today (and busdev, marketing types when stuff is developed internally) still hold the 3.0+ rule as ironclad, and that rules out PNG."

So all the hype about XML is hot air too, since it's only to be supported in the 5.0 browsers. Samething goes for style sheets, etc. In fact, we might as well stop developing new features/formats/etc. because everyone will still be using 3.0 browsers.

"For the tens of millions of "nothing" sites out there that together represent a tiny percentage of Internet traffic have that as their option, of course, since they have little traffic anyway. Losing a few percent to people with old browsers isn't going to hurt them."

This is snobbery. Didn't slashdot start out as Rob Malda's little nothing programming homepage? Those nothing sites are a major part of the draw of net access. Say 20 people looked at my homepage. 10 of them were potential employers checking my resume at their convenience. The other 10 were geographicaly seperated friends just checking to see what's up. I may not be an Amazon or a Yahoo, but that nothing web page is one of (if not the) major reason I pay an ISP. If I just wanted to visit corporate high traffic sites, then I'd get cable television.

"PNG support is too spotty in the modern browsers to seriously do it anyway. They all seem to handle things like transparency differently, and things like that."

PNG transparency support is spotty b/c it is too advanced for today's browsers. In order to implement true alpha channel blending for the .png format, alpha blending must be built into the layout engine -- a nontrivial task. However, Mozilla will be feature alpha blending in the layout engine.

"On the low-end of the internet bell curve, wanna-be designers are way to infatuated with their animated GIFS -- the late 90's version of the blink tag. They're certainly not going to switch and give up their beloved animated icons collection."

MNG

anyway

Burn all gifs day is a publicity stunt much like the microsoft refund day. But the PNG image format has a _lot_ going for it. Alpha blending alone is enough to make PNG the favorite of designers. But it also supports variable bit depths from 2-24 bit color with loss-less compression, making PNG a complete solution (as opposed to the gif/jpeg situation we are in right now.) for most web graphic needs. Finally, since it would be built into the layout engine we might see a w3c style sheet for alpha blending on more elements than just png images -- another major feature.

The PNG format allows for full 8-bit alpha (transparency). However, most browsers don't yet support that feature. You can help convince the Mozilla engineers that full alpha support is A Good Thing. You can vote for that feature enhancement at this location (If nothing else, it is a good excuse to get a bugzilla account set up) :-)

Could it be that acceptance of one type of license vs. another simply boils down to readability, i.e. whether a mere mortal can quickly scan and understand it?

In this respect, the BSD and GPL licenses rule, closely followed by the Perl artistic license. All of these are clearly written with understandability in mind, not just with a lawyer's mindset.

However, the licenses that Netscape produced, and worse still what SUN published with their SCSL is so bloated and peppered with legal terms that the average developer may tire and loose momentum before he/she actually reaches the end of the document.

I know I only finished reading the SCSL because I made it a point to be able to report to users here on campus what it may mean to them.

I would think that at least in the academic sector and among the crowd of 'hobby enthusiasts', people have little patience to wade through legalese, hence there will be little participation in 'open source' projects that are marred with a long and incomprehensible license.

ESR stated that a plausible promise will motivate people to participate. This may include an interesting project, strong design and reasonably clean, understandable (and maybe even working) source. I propose that clean and strong design be also applied to the license (or simply use an established and accepted license). lest noone will bother.

So show of hands: who here is not working on Mozilla right now solely because of its licensing? Who here would suddenly drop their current projects and download Mozilla source if it was relicensed? And most importantly, if I mention that the Mozilla.org JavaScript engine is already dual-licensed under the GPL, will you explain why you're not already using it?

But, realize that it's a $50 gift certificate to amazon (the $ amount wasn't mentioned in the post), and that the author of the book is sponsoring the contest. The author wants to create a buzz around the contest, so he gives away a book. Also remember that finding design patterns is as easy as searching the m10 source code for key words, such as singleton :)

If you're looking for even moderate stability, you should download the real milestone, not the nightly.

Greg

Hmm... guess I should have used the preview button.

This is a known problem with glibc 2.0 and lower.

Read this newsgroup posting for more information.

Also, bug #8849 contains a lot of info:

I18N is not slang, but a well-established abbreviation for internationalization (a is L10N for localization).

The Mozilla site has a pretty good introduction to the goals and problems of I18N and L10N.

If you can find a case of code depending on 32-bit pointer width, please file a bug and Cc: shaver@mozilla.org on it. I will _personally_ repair it, if you don't get rapid response for the owner of the code in question.

Shouldn't this be telling us that there's a need, in the open source world, for a standard model of this kind? In-process CORBA seems to have been found wanting by these projects, as discussed elsewhere in this thread and also, for example, in this kde-core-devel message.

Perhaps there's something to be learned from Microsoft here - MS started out with COM as a strictly local component architecture (and took a lot of PR heat from the OMG at the time because of not being distributed), but, has it ended up with a model that's more suitable for local component work?

People have talked about the potential benefits of being able to develop for both KDE and Gnome - a way to help this happen would be for them both to be using the same underlying component model.

Something like this would have benefits way beyond KDE & Gnome. Very few open source projects use CORBA as a central architectural model. Berlin is one exception - it would be interesting to hear what its developers see as the pros and cons of CORBA in that context. But the lack of a standard component model elsewhere limits interoperability throughout the open source universe.

Perhaps the open source community would have better luck than the OMG in coming up with a smaller, tighter common spec for local components than CORBA. It doesn't mean the whole of CORBA has to be thrown out - XPCOM still uses IDL, for example.

As one small example of the benefits of a common local component model, imagine if Mozilla, KDE & Gnome could share low-level components! Surely there's some potential for reuse between those projects (even if only at the level of the component model itself)? Also, developers could work on more than one of these projects, without having to deal with a different API in each case.

Of course, these kind of benefits would all be possible with CORBA. I don't have direct knowledge of the reasons these projects have rejected CORBA in this context, but I'm assuming their reasons were good, and extrapolating from that to the question asked in the subject:

Does Open Source need a COM-like standard???

Go read http://www.mozilla.org/scriptable/

By rewriting it to be a multi-threaded library, we discovered shortcomings in glibc 2.0. After talking with the glibc developers, they themselves said that making it work would 2.0 would be way too much trouble to try to support 2.0. On the other hand, they have made glibc 2.1.2 more robust thanks to holes that Mozilla exposed.

Mozilla is perhaps the most complex desktop application ever to run on Linux. It exercises almost every aspect of Linux and reveals its strengths AND shortcomings. Don't blame the mozilla team because linux and related projects aren't absolutely perfect...if anything the mozilla project has driven linux-oriented projects like glibc to be better - to meet and exceed existing non-free solutions.

BTW: The bug is #8849

Mozilla still doesn't work on systems that don't use glibc2.1 libraries. That means Debian 2.1, Slackware, Redhat 5.2, and many other popular distributions can't try out Mozilla milestones. It has been this way for two months. There is a link to the initial discovery of this bug on M10's release-notes page. Follow that link and READ that thread carefully, all twenty messages, and you'll discover just why the Mozilla project is screwed up.

I think this problem with glibc illustrates perfectly why Mozilla development is so slow. Because despite being behind schedule, they decided to rewrite the netlib library. That was the only C code really left in Mozilla besides NSPR, and it worked, but they decided to rewrite it anyway in C++. When they landed the new networking library, called NECKO, they also broke NSPR threads. NSPR threads are what allow the current generation of netscape browsers to appear to do things simulataneously, like hitting STOP when a page loads. Normally, having a bug in glibc would mean that non-glibc2.1 systems could still try out Mozilla milestones and submit bugs by building a version using NSPR threads. But because of NECKO, they can't.

So a project already hurting for outside developers loses more, the already distant release date is pushed further back, and Mozilla developers create even more work for themselves.

I wan't to help Mozilla succeed, I wan't to even write code (I'd like to see a dumb-tty version of mozilla). Shit, I'm even learning a language I dislike to do so. But they're making it awful tough to remain cheery and optimistic.

Mozilla is a bunch of guys who write code in their spare time for the general good of the community.

Umm, that's not true of all of them. To quote the "Who We Are" page on the mozilla.org Web site:

The members of mozilla.org are employees of Netscape Communications Corporation. We are some of the people who wrote Netscape Communicator. We are the people who know the code best, since (until March 31st) we were among the very small set of people who have ever seen it.

As time goes by, it will no longer be the case that the people who know the code best are necessarily people who are also employed by Netscape Communications Corporation; we intend to delegate authority over the various modules to the people most qualified to make decisions about them. We intend to operate as a meritocracy: the more good code you contribute, the more responsibility you will be given. We believe that to be the only way to continue to remain relevant, and to do the greatest good for the greatest number.

...

Netscape is paying our salaries, and providing hardware and bandwidth in the hope of making mozilla.org a success.

Other than that, Netscape's role is the same as yours: Netscape writes code, and makes use of code written by others. Netscape will contribute new code back to the public just as others will.

(emphasis mine). Has the situation changed since that was written, such that the folks on Mozilla with e-mail addresses ending with "@netscape.com" aren't being paid by Netscape^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HAOL to work on Mozilla?

That page also says that

Netscape will also continue to provide an executable-only release of Mozilla that bears the "Netscape" brand (e.g., the name "Netscape Communicator."

which, if still true, may mean that there's at least some extent to which a development project by a commercial entity depends on Mozilla, and might put some pressure on Mozilla to have schedules, etc..

However

They are not looking for a profit.

is, to some extent, presumably true, as AOL will probably be giving Netscape {Navigator,Communicator} 5.0 away, just as they're giving 4.x away. However, that's also true of Internet Explorer, if you treat it as a separate program rather than a pile of OS/GUI COM objects to provide HTML display and Internet access, plus a browser wrapper around those objects (if you treat it as the latter - which is true only in Windows - then you could view its developers as part of the Windows OT and Windows NT development teams, I guess).

It's at least compileable, although I have had no luck, yet.

They always release a new Milestone the day after I download the previous one. Of course, in this case, I'll admit it was kind of dumb of me to download M9 yesterday when the Milestone page clearly stated the target date for M10 was 10/08/99. That whole discussion just got me itching to download something, so I did.

I'm about two hours away from being able to try M10, but I have some comments on the Mac version of M9: the browser functionality is coming along nicely -- for example, it loads Slashdot perfectly, though it still can't log in. The front-end is starting to look relatively polished, but my concern is that it doesn't look like a Mac application. Actually, with previous builds, I assumed that it was simply because the GUI-polishing was being left for last. Now, though, it seems to be starting to look the way it's meant to look, if that makes any sense. I'm seeing the interface that they're designing, and it doesn't seem Mac-like.

As I understand it, they use some sort of cross-platform front-end framework to make all versions use a single codebase. This doesn't seem to use native widgets, so things look funny. This could be okay, if the widgets were similar enough, and if they worked right (even so, the non-native look-and-feel would be a turn-off for many Mac-users), but in fact, many of the text fields, radio buttons, etc., don't draw quite right. Text fields are too tall and narrow for their text, radio buttons are too small, and a few of their pixels get chopped off, the sidebar in the Preferences window sort of jumps when I click something, etc.

This sort of thing is a problem with cross-platform GUIs, I guess, because corresponding things have different relative sizes, and some amount of platform-specific attention is needed to make everything fit. I don't know how this compares to other platforms; maybe the Mac version is just not getting enough attention.

By the way, what's with the second date for M12 on the Milestone Page? "M12 - 12/7/99 - 15/99/99"? Is somebody having Y2K trouble?

David Gould

You certainly can write XPCOM components in JavaScript, sir. See nsSample.js for the quick sample I provided when I finished enabling them. -- due for an update and better comments shortly. (And you've been able to implement XPCOM interfaces in JavaScript for some months now.)

Two more bugs to go before they reckon it's ready to release.

http:/ /bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&b ug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&e mail1=&emailtype1=substring&emailassigned_to1=1&em ail2=&emailtype2=substring&emailreporter 2=1&changedin=&chfieldfrom=&chfieldto=Now&chfieldv alue=&target_milestone=M10&short_desc=&s hort_desc_type=substring&long_desc=&long_desc_type =substring&bug_file_loc=&bug_file_loc_ty pe=substring&status_whiteboard=&status_whiteboard_ type=substring&newqueryname=&form_name=q uery&order=assign.login_name%2C%20bugs.priority%2C %20bugs.bug_severity

...is due on 15/99/99 according to this page. When is that?

All target dates quitely slipped up to 4 months.
..Sucks...

UI features such as preferences have historically been very expensive to implement in any multi-platform product. In communicator, the reason is that the UI was coded by three seperate teams - Windows, Mac, and Unix.

It was also felt that new features shouldn't go in without appropriate UI, so they didn't.

So how is this different in mozilla?

Config settings are stored in a file, as before, and you can edit it.

But, this file, and the UI itself is manipulated with javascript.

By replacing the javascript, you can customize the UI to provide as much or as little options as you want. For example, if *you* wanted a 'clear cache' button on your toolbar, *you* could put it in. If you want a 'simple' browser, for kids, you could make a toolbar with only 'Back' for example.

At the other extreme, you could configure the browser so that it exposed *every* possible option.

For more details - see the XPFE home page at mozilla.org

Incidentally, modifying the front end code is really easy - and it's a great way for someone to get started helping out the mozilla project.

Mozilla.org isn't 'saddled' with anything from AOL (referring to Instant Messenger). I think AOL IM is GREAT and the relatively minor task of integrating that support into the browser is real easy thanks to our open modular architecure. In fact, it's already been hacked on by third parties, who have, incidentally, also gotten IRC to work in the same framework.

Anti-mozilla articles have plagued the project since the beginning. That's why it's important to only release the Beta when it's ready, and not before. Its important to make a good impression with the first beta. After the beta is released, who will remember all the nay-sayers like Mr Wood who wrote their crap?

Here's how you can help make the first beta great:

• Download the nightly builds
• try out all the features
• discuss on the mozilla newsgroups
• use mozilla as your browser.
• report bugs with reproducible test cases
• learn CSS, XML, javascript, MATHML, XUL, and make some websites which show the true power of Mozilla.

Signed
Netscape Engineer

I was under the impression that Mozilla was using the Gecko rendering engine, which is a new one seperate from Netscape. read about it...