Slashdot Mirror

That assumes that Mozilla is universally superior to IE. The indisputable facts are that it is not, particularly in terms of speed and bloat.

Nice troll, but the article is about Firefox.
...and if FF isn't fast enough, I'm running a "P4_AXP" optimized build. It's noticably faster than the standard build or IE. Frankly, it's the fastest browser I've ever used.
I wonder if an optimized build of IE would be faster... oh wait - we'll never know that, will we?

NTLM auth is supported by mozilla as well (source)

It is official; Netcraft confirms: Mozilla is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Mozilla community when IDC confirmed that Mozilla market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all web browsers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Mozilla has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Mozilla is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Mozilla's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Mozilla faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Mozilla because Mozilla is dying. Things are looking very bad for Mozilla. As many of us are already aware, Mozilla continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

Netscape 7 is the most endangered of them all, having lost 100% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant firing of all 50 Netscape developers by AOL only serves to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Mozilla is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

Mozilla.org leader Mitchell Baker states that there are 7000 users of Mozilla. How many users of Firebird are there? Let's see. The number of Mozilla versus Firebird posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Firebird users. Camino posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of Firebird posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Camino. A recent article put Netscape 7 at about 80 percent of the Mozilla market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Netscape 7 users. This is consistent with the number of Netscape 7 usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Mozilla, abysmal sales and so on, Netscape went out of business and will probably be taken over by AOL who sell another troubled browser. Now AOL is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that Mozilla has steadily declined in market share. Mozilla is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Mozilla is to survive at all it will be among browser dilettante dabblers. Mozilla continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Mozilla is dead.

Fact: Mozilla is dying

Mozillazine has an Atom feed.

Mozillazine has an Atom feed.

Ahh, I see what the problem is now.

The reason it worked for me was because I had run an earlier nightly build since a couple of months ago and forgot about it now.

Do like this.

Not only does the new default theme look like total ass

I can't disagree with you there. You've got Ben Goodger to thank for that one.

the "upgrade" also trashed all my extensions

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=8179 0

Oh, and make sure to update, I dunno... like version numbers or something. Everything still says .8.

If you look closely it says "0.8+". All releases before 0.9 final, and after 0.8 final are marked as 0.8+. This is the standard versioning scheme that Mozilla uses and has always used.

Does anyone else feel this entire release was just pushed out the door without any consideration at all just so people could see the new theme, which totally blows?

I highly doubt it was because of the theme. Even the ass who decided to change the theme isn't exactly raving about it. He did this so he wouldn't have to lower himself to, I donno, "negotiate" with Arvid Axelsson (the designer of the previous default theme called "Qute"). Arvid was asked about changing the license of his artwork, he expressed hesitation in doing so, so from there (without informing Arvid) found someone else to create a new default theme and even as Arvid was making checkins to the artwork for Firefox, Ben announced that Arvid was out the door and new artwork was going to be used -- only informing Arvid after the fact. At which point Arvid immediately made it clear that he would be willing to change the license of his artwork had he known what was going on. But Ben insists on wanting to feel like the all mightly dictator of the Firefox project, god forbid lowering himself to negotiate or discuss things with someone who works with him -- simply put a "my way or the highway" attitude (and he has no hesitation to make use of the highway at even the slightest sign of dissent).

For anyone who's interested, Firefox 0.9 now supports the ability to run from a USB key without any major changes AND be able to take your entire profile with you. I've repackaged the Firefox 0.9 Release Candidate as a ZIP that will create an 8.1Mb install of Firefox on your USB key, complete with a built-in profile. Full details of the changes (if you're curious, or so you can try it yourself) as well as a ZIP are available here:

http://johnhaller.com/jh/mozilla/portable_firefox/

Any commentary or questions on this new feature can be addresses in this thread on mozillaZine.

There is an extension, named Show Old Extensions, that allow you to reveal 'old' extensions in the new Extension Manager, and in the latest version (0.13) is supposed to show old themes as well. Discussion is here on Mozillazine.

Me again.

The attacks being referred to are here

... most of them, at least. Show Old Extentions 0.1.3

Screenie of the new "Winstripe" theme

I think that about hits the nail on the head.

From Ben Goodger's weblog:

The transition from the Qute theme has caused quite a stir, and pleas for constructive responses have been widely ignored. All I can say to those upset with how this was negotiated is that in a perfect world, things might have been done better, this isn't that world, it is a more complex and interesting dynamic than has been made public, there is no use in crying over spilled milk, so get over it.

Those of you who have attacked Kevin and Stephen should be ashamed of yourselves. Calm down, take a chill pill, or you'll severely limit the likelihood that anyone that matters will listen to you. Say what you will about me, but be constructive about the new theme or kerz and other MozillaZine moderators will lock your accounts. I have disabled comments since I'm not interested in hearing people bellyache any more. We (myself, VDT, marketing, etc) are frankly sick of it.

Good software development is not done by committee, it requires strong leadership and tough decisions. Time will tell whether or not this was a good one. I think it was, and expect to be vindicated by the release, and the continual improvement and commitment to excellence that the theme's authors have promised.

Yes, he may eventually be "vindicated", but what I see here is a worrisome attitude towards the user and developer communities. "We (I) know what's best, no matter how many people in the community present reasoned arguments to the contrary. If you complain about our decisions you're just a whiner, and we're going to censor you to the extent we can. Oh, and we have hidden secret information we're not telling you, so you can't possibly know what we're talking about." It's walking on thin ice at best, juvenile and egotistical at worst.

I love Firefox and I plan to use 0.9 when it's released (possibly with the Qute theme installed separately). But, whatever you think of the new theme aesthetically, I think the surprise move and disrespect for the community response speaks poorly for the project. They have a good product, which is why it was able to survive multiple name changes and the "loss" of direct AOL support, and I think it'll survive this. But it doesn't encourage me to contribute to Mozilla development, and it'll probably mean I'll pay more attention to alternatives when people mention them.

Open source: live by the community, die by the community.

• Camino .8 only reached beta status on May 17, 2004.
• Camino's release numbering is independent. Camino 0.8 doesn't correspond to Firefox 0.8
• They made a fork of the Mozilla 1.7 final code only on April 19, 2004

Initially, Camino (then Chimera) did release early and often and it garnered a loyal following who couldn't wait to get their hands on the next release. The problem stems from our own success. Camino 0.7 was so stable and polished that people came to treat it as they would a 1.0 product. Releasing another version of lesser quality would be seen as a black-eye to the project as a whole, that quality was slipping, and what once was a promising product was now beginning to collapse under its own weight.
Secondly, While "listen to your users" has a wonderful ring to it, Mozilla is a perfect example of what happens when you delegate UI to a self-selecting group of developers. Camino needs strong direction and someone in charge who has no qualms about saying "that sucks, fuck off". Bad ideas aren't suddenly good ideas just because they come from the open-source community. The project has succeeded because those of us in charge had a singular vision to keep it simple. Apple saw the benefit themselves and Safari shares the same belief.
...
Right now it seems we're stuck in a catch-22: we can't gather developer interest without shipping a version and we can't ship a version without developer interest. We're triaging bugs because being able to point developers to a single list that we can drive to zarro boogs is, in my opinion, the best way to engage the development community, and what this project has been lacking since AOL began to fund its development. Now that AOL has fully withdrawn all support (even for Gecko itself), we need developers more than ever. I understand that the end-users on the various lists don't give a donkey about bug triage, they simply want new bits to play with. I just don't think we can get them bits without focused development.

• Camino .8 only reached beta status on May 17, 2004.
• Camino's release numbering is independent. Camino 0.8 doesn't correspond to Firefox 0.8
• They made a fork of the Mozilla 1.7 final code only on April 19, 2004

Initially, Camino (then Chimera) did release early and often and it garnered a loyal following who couldn't wait to get their hands on the next release. The problem stems from our own success. Camino 0.7 was so stable and polished that people came to treat it as they would a 1.0 product. Releasing another version of lesser quality would be seen as a black-eye to the project as a whole, that quality was slipping, and what once was a promising product was now beginning to collapse under its own weight.
Secondly, While "listen to your users" has a wonderful ring to it, Mozilla is a perfect example of what happens when you delegate UI to a self-selecting group of developers. Camino needs strong direction and someone in charge who has no qualms about saying "that sucks, fuck off". Bad ideas aren't suddenly good ideas just because they come from the open-source community. The project has succeeded because those of us in charge had a singular vision to keep it simple. Apple saw the benefit themselves and Safari shares the same belief.
...
Right now it seems we're stuck in a catch-22: we can't gather developer interest without shipping a version and we can't ship a version without developer interest. We're triaging bugs because being able to point developers to a single list that we can drive to zarro boogs is, in my opinion, the best way to engage the development community, and what this project has been lacking since AOL began to fund its development. Now that AOL has fully withdrawn all support (even for Gecko itself), we need developers more than ever. I understand that the end-users on the various lists don't give a donkey about bug triage, they simply want new bits to play with. I just don't think we can get them bits without focused development.

Because Firefox has to be 100% free and open to be included in other open-source projects. If Arvid had 100% control of Firefox's artwork, then the whole Firefox product wouldn't be free. Ben Goodger has every right to change the artwork because of its license, the same way you might change your operating system because of its license. That's how I see it: a licensing issue, not a personal one.

Posted by: LinkTiger at June 8, 2004 03:30 AM

...

""Because Firefox has to be 100% free and open to be included in other open-source projects.""

That makes no sense at all.
The current FIREFOX ARTWORK (the globe with fox) is NOT under a free license and is actually protected more than Arvid was trying to protect Qute.

It doesn't matter, but I point is that yoru logic is way off as to what an "Open Source" program entitles.

Firefox has branding which mozilla.org is trying to protect, I don't see why the theme isn't something they consider their official branding.

Posted by: jedbro at June 8, 2004 05:41 AM

...

While I'd prefer if the firefox artwork was under a less restrictive license, it is pretty obvious that the in-program artwork is different.

Lets say that you are writing an extension for Firefox that provides some new functionality. You need to provide a toolbar icon for this new feature, and want it to fit in with the rest of the artwork in the program. With the Qute theme, you'd need to draw the new icon from scratch, while with the new (Pin/Win/Gnome)stripe theme you could take an existing icon and use it as a base for the new one.

From what I understand, this was the exact type of situation that forced the decision: the Qute theme for thunderbird was missing some icons, a third party started drawing some new ones using the existing ones as a base, and was asked to stop.

Posted by: James at June 8, 2004 06:11 AM

It is official; Netcraft confirms: Mozilla is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Mozilla community when IDC confirmed that Mozilla market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all web browsers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Mozilla has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Mozilla is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Mozilla's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Mozilla faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Mozilla because Mozilla is dying. Things are looking very bad for Mozilla. As many of us are already aware, Mozilla continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

Netscape 7 is the most endangered of them all, having lost 100% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant firing of all 50 Netscape developers by AOL only serves to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Mozilla is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

Mozilla.org leader Mitchell Baker states that there are 7000 users of Mozilla. How many users of Firebird are there? Let's see. The number of Mozilla versus Firebird posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Firebird users. Camino posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of Firebird posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Camino. A recent article put Netscape 7 at about 80 percent of the Mozilla market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Netscape 7 users. This is consistent with the number of Netscape 7 usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Mozilla, abysmal sales and so on, Netscape went out of business and will probably be taken over by AOL who sell another troubled browser. Now AOL is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that Mozilla has steadily declined in market share. Mozilla is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Mozilla is to survive at all it will be among browser dilettante dabblers. Mozilla continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Mozilla is dead.

Fact: Mozilla is dying

It's still optional - builds are available, but no release builds yet. If you're on linux, have a look here and to find out more I suggest the firefox forum on mozillazine.

Firefox download size becomes 4.6 MB

link to this skin.

Yes, Arvid Axelsson, the author of the current default theme (Qute), may have a bit of an ego himself, and may have been reluctant to freely license his artwork under the same MPL terms as the Mozilla codebase. But he's a reasonable person, and he's indicated he's willing to compromise and do a Free license that works for the Mozilla team, because he wants to make sure that Firefox succeeds, and has the best, most aesthetically pleasing look and feel possible.

For God's FUCKING sake you egomaniacs (and anybody who has followed some of these discussions over the last few years knows this is true - see the splashscreen debacle in Bugzilla, the many UI layout discussions, and the naming debacles for examples), we are relying on you and the excellent browser you have created and maintained. We respect immensely all the hard work the Mozilla and Firefox core developers have done, but their lackadaisical attitude towards branding of their product (Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox?), the terrible aesthetics of the splashscreens and icon sets they keep putting back in are just unacceptable. Qute was the best thing that ever happened to Firefox and the Mozilla project - compare to the awful looking old versions of the Mozilla browser - ugh.

You are the developers and project leaders of a critical mass-market product. If there is truly an unresolvable licensing issue with the current icons and their author is unwilling to compromise, come out and tell us, and assign a group of artists or other aesthetically inclined technology professionals to consider submissions for a new default. Realize that your contributions, while critical, do not need to include drawing shitty icons or making terrible off-the-cuff aesthetic decisions that have a negative impact on the adoption of a critical product for the entire Internet's wellbeing.

Here is the thread containing screenshots of the new theme.

I stopped using it because of the bugs. While some versions are worse than others, I think it's safe to say that it wins the "most buggy extension" award (it's also a contender for "most popular extension"). Check out the MozillaZine Forums, and look for posts reporting bugs. The replies frequently ask if the poster is using TBE, because the people who troubleshoot problems there have learned from experience that it is a likely source.

It's simply indisputable that the TBE extension has caused problems for many people.

It's a placebo. The Safari in 10.3.4 contains only a handful of fixes and is no faster than previous versions.

I suppose something could have made it faster. In our internal tests it's no faster. As far as WebCore code, there are a slew of bugs fixes, but those are mostly for the regressions from 1.1.

and I bet it's a result of this.

This algorithm completely transforms the feel of Safari over DSL and modem connections. Page content usually comes screaming in at the 250ms mark, and if the page isn't quite ready at the 250ms, it's usually ready shortly after (at the 300-500ms mark). In the rare cases where you have nothing to display, you wait until the 1 second mark still. This algorithm makes "white flashing" quite rare (you'll typically only see it on a very slow site that is taking a long time to give you data), and it makes Safari feel orders of magnitude faster on slower network connections.

Because Safari waits for a minimum threshold (and waits to schedule until the threshold is exceeded, benchmarks won't be adversely affected as long as you typically beat the minimum threshold. Otherwise the overall page load speed will degrade slightly in real-world usage, but I believe that to be well-worth the decrease in the time required to show displayable content.

That's questionable now since firefox/thunderbird
have just forked

Check out Ben Goodger's blog.

No it won't disable it, it just allows you to override the default. I believe 0.8 is the first browser in the pheonix/firefox lineage to support updates, but Mozilla has since 1.4 or something like that. Here's a screenshot of what updates in future Firefox's will look like (known as SmartUpdate)

There's a thread on the MozillaZine forums that lists some smaller extensions you can use to get most of the TBE functionality without TBE (since some consider it bloated, and with bloat comes complexity, with complexity comes bugs).

;i don't know about you, but the first thing i do after i intstall firefox is install adblock (sorry osdn).

;like many slashdotters, i use more than one computer too, so i really like Torisugari's bookmarksync as it allows me to up/download my bookmarks via FTP.

;and as i'm not a fan of pop-up windows, i dig download manager tweak--though it may not qualify as the "schiznit," it is useful.

;as for the snoop, is anyone out there working on a xul version of the shizzolator?

;treehead

Don't worry about it. Everyone feels exactly the same. Once Firefox 0.9 arrives this will be totally different as extensions, themes and updating Firefox itself will all be handled by a gooey new managers.

Follow Ben Goodger's blog if you need some ammo to show people Firefox is still improving.

By the time 1.0 comes around all of the little annoyances will probably be gone.

Asa summed up a lot of the feelings I had in a couple of his blog posts. Granted, he's likely to be somewhat Gecko-biased, but he raises very valid points.

Perhaps they were ;)

So if I am making a homebrew mail program to connect to my work's Exchange email, is the Ximian connector the best solution?

Doesn't Mozilla have access to Exchange mail because it can use SPA, Microsoft's Proprietary Secure Password Authentication?
See this note on Mozilla's forums saying that they Implemented SPA (aka NTLM MSN) authentication for IMAP (it was already implemented for POP and SMTP in 0.5). By using the NTLM Davenport project couldn't I use SPA with my homebrew email program in the same way that Mozilla does?

Also, does the Evolution work like YahooPops where it goes through a web page connection? If so, wouldn't a direct connection using SPA like Outlook and Mozilla do be more elegant, efficient, faster?

So if I am making a homebrew mail program to connect to my work's Exchange email, is the Ximian connector the best solution?

Doesn't Mozilla have access to Exchange mail because it can use SPA, Microsoft's Proprietary Secure Password Authentication?
See this note on Mozilla's forums saying that they Implemented SPA (aka NTLM MSN) authentication for IMAP (it was already implemented for POP and SMTP in 0.5). By using the NTLM Davenport project couldn't I use SPA with my homebrew email program in the same way that Mozilla does?

Also, does the Evolution work like YahooPops where it goes through a web page connection? If so, wouldn't a direct connection using SPA like Outlook and Mozilla do be more elegant, efficient, faster?

Believe it or not, everyone that works for Microsoft isn't an evil person trying to crush the free software movement

"...Process repeats itself at Step 1 and continues in perpetuity unless the user is fast enough to be able to close the actual browser window before the plugin pops up, or until the user consents, or unless the user shuts down Internet Explorer."

I'm going to make the assumption that XPI can be abused in the same way -- but why abuse 5% of the browser population (and the 14 users of Netscape Navigator) when you can abuse 95% of your browsing audience?

It's not very common, but it does happen. Check out this thread if you don't believe me.

What I want to know is, why do you have to upgrade from Panther to run the most recent version of the Safari web browser? Does a web browser really require the "advanced functionality" offered by Panther? Did the APIs really change that much?

From reading the blog of one of the Safari coders Safari does all manner of tricky font manipulation for very percise rendering control. Those APIs have been changed and improved (new information reported, new capabilities added) in Panther. My guess is that Safari actually drove those changes ("Um, guys, we need to be able to tell if a font can foo, and also we have to tweak the baz settings...and I don't see how to do that in the current API").

My guess is there are some similar things in other Apple apps. Or maybe they just don't want to have to test the newer software with the older OSes (that would either require more money for a bigger test division, or stretch them thiner and reduce quality on new releases). Or...gasp! horror! They want to make a little cash for all their hard work. (personally I'm going with a mix of the test & new API reasoning).

A lot of people are posting interesting suggestions and comments and some people are posting the reasons why they don't yet use Thunderbird.

To those of you who actually want to see your suggestions implemented, I suggest you file a bug or at the very least, submit it for discussion at the Mozillazine Forums.

Mozilla is starting the drive to firefox 1.0, and Ben Goodger (the firefox guy) is requesting that everyone report/nominate their most favorite bugs so that they have a better chance of getting fixed.

Oh and also it sounds like maybe Mozilla wants to do an eclispe plugin so you can generate your xul from eclipse...

"The slides from Brendan Eich's Mozilla Futures session are the first be available online. In the presentation, the Mozilla Foundation's Chief Architect outlined Mozilla's strengths and weaknesses and described a future strategy plan. Proposals include accelerating work on integrating SVG, implementing support for more scripting and programming languages (such as JavaScript 2, Python and Perl 5), creating a XUL builder plug-in for the Eclipse platform, improving native widget and desktop integration and setting up a new developer.mozilla.org site with programmer documentation. Collaboration with Opera and Apple to advance Web standards was also floated and several possible end-user innovations were discussed.

regards

dbcad7

See this and this slide on programming languages.

Extend existing Python support to match chrome JS

It is official; Netcraft confirms: Mozilla is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Mozilla community when IDC confirmed that Mozilla market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all web browsers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Mozilla has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Mozilla is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Mozilla's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Mozilla faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Mozilla because Mozilla is dying. Things are looking very bad for Mozilla. As many of us are already aware, Mozilla continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

Netscape 7 is the most endangered of them all, having lost 100% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant firing of all 50 Netscape developers by AOL only serves to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Mozilla is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

Mozilla.org leader Mitchell Baker states that there are 7000 users of Mozilla. How many users of Firebird are there? Let's see. The number of Mozilla versus Firebird posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Firebird users. Camino posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of Firebird posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Camino. A recent article put Netscape 7 at about 80 percent of the Mozilla market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Netscape 7 users. This is consistent with the number of Netscape 7 usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Mozilla, abysmal sales and so on, Netscape went out of business and will probably be taken over by AOL who sell another troubled browser. Now AOL is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that Mozilla has steadily declined in market share. Mozilla is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Mozilla is to survive at all it will be among browser dilettante dabblers. Mozilla continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Mozilla is dead.

Fact: Mozilla is dying

Microsoft reasoning aside, the current ActiveX solutions for Mozilla (as described in this thread), either do not work in Windows Update, or, like Neptune, use Internet Explorer rendering engine and security model. This nullifies any possible benefit, and I assume that you would still need Internet Explorer.

MediaWiki in particular implements many ideas that were already envisioned by Ted Nelson and Doug Engelbart. It does show backlinks, but perhaps more importantly, it also allows dynamic inclusion of any page in the current development version. For example, you could have a header and footer in your documentation that is the same for every page. What's more, you can add parameters to these templates to dynamically search and replace patterns of text in the template before transcluding it. This will allow us to replace the currently statically hacked Wikipedia infoboxes with dynamically included and parametrized templates, for example. One long term feature that might be worth hacking on top of this would be transclusion of labeled sections from another page, or interwiki transclusion.

Check out the current feature list and the development roadmap. Subscribe to wikitech-l to help us in improving the software. In true wiki spirit, we are fairly liberal at handing out CVS access (over 40 developers with CVS access at present), so please do ask if you want to work on a larger project.

There are many other wiki engines that are worth working on, such as TWiki and MoinMoin. Their main deficiency, in my opinion, is that they do rely primarily on the traditional wiki link pattern of CamelCase, which is nice for geeks but very ugly for everyone else, and also useless for search engines. MediaWiki uses [[free links]] instead, which are harder to type, but look just like normal links to the reader. Still, working on any other wiki engine is a lot better than starting yet another one.

A collaborative tool which is badly needed is a free software clone of SubEthaEdit. Combine wikis with real-time editing and the fun really begins. I imagine something like that might be hackable on top of a powerful graphical editor like Kate. For now WebDAV-support for MediaWiki would also be very cool, as Kate/KDE already supports editing WebDAV resources. So many worthwhile hacks, so little time.

This is an area where open source coders can make a big difference while corporations are still bewildered by the fact that open wikis can produce useful content. So please, let's work together on these tools.

the acrobat reader ... does what it is supposed to and nothing more

I wouldn't say that Acrobat reader does only what it's supposed to do. It's one hell of a resource hog. Upgrading from Acrobat 5, I find that 6 takes approximately 3X the time to load because of all of the default (read: useless) plugins.

Fortunately, you can disable most of the unused features and get it almost as fast as previous versions.

If you hack macs, please do the silent majority a favour and port a stable version of mozilla for us!

They have! It's called Web and Mail Communicator (WaMCom). They have produced a version of Mozilla 1.3.1 with hundreds of additional bugfixes that works on Mac OS 9.

Sure, it's only based on 1.3.1 (though with extra bug fixes), but it's better than nothing.

More details availble in these MozillaZine articles: 1 and 2.

If you hack macs, please do the silent majority a favour and port a stable version of mozilla for us!

They have! It's called Web and Mail Communicator (WaMCom). They have produced a version of Mozilla 1.3.1 with hundreds of additional bugfixes that works on Mac OS 9.

Sure, it's only based on 1.3.1 (though with extra bug fixes), but it's better than nothing.

More details availble in these MozillaZine articles: 1 and 2.