Slashdot Mirror

But people using programs like WinAmp and Mozilla have no choice! They can't even use a normal Windows or Mac interface if they want to, let alone having it as the default.

The review of NS6 at c|net said that the ability to change the chrome will be enabled in the final version (slated for late this year). I too think the default chrome is ugly, but I can deal with it because this is a beta release. I also wish I could find how to get it to start without the sidebar.

As far as learning a new UI...not really. All UI's have gone through some amount of convergence. Because Mozilla's source code is ~95% identical across all platforms, a greater amount of UI convergence is to be expected. As far as I've read about XUL, even the menubar can be changed. This is obviously not intended for browser use, but an allowance for application design in general. If skinners want to abuse this, then don't use their skins.

There have been some skins made for the milestone releases. Check out http://www.mozillazine.org/chromezone/. I tried installing the Navigator Classic chrome, but NS6 just crashed.

Let's hope someone at Netscape realizes how ugly the default chrome is, and changing it is enabled in PR2.

The review of NS6 at c|net said that the ability to change the chrome will be enabled in the final version (slated for late this year). I too think the default chrome is ugly, but I can deal with it because this is a beta release. I also wish I could find how to get it to start without the sidebar.

As far as learning a new UI...not really. All UI's have gone through some amount of convergence. Because Mozilla's source code is ~95% identical across all platforms, a greater amount of UI convergence is to be expected. As far as I've read about XUL, even the menubar can be changed. This is obviously not intended for browser use, but an allowance for application design in general. If skinners want to abuse this, then don't use their skins.

There have been some skins made for the milestone releases. Check out http://www.mozillazine.org/chromezone/. I tried installing the Navigator Classic chrome, but NS6 just crashed.

Let's hope someone at Netscape realizes how ugly the default chrome is, and changing it is enabled in PR2.

Until the article writer actually uses the skins option (which isn't available in PR1),

Skins support is available in PR1, but is a bit flaky. I got it to work with the Sullivan skin from Chromezone with the usual command line :

netscp6.exe -chrome chrome://sullivan/content/

Doesn't work perfectly (menu options are messed), but at least it gives a more pleasant view than the ridiculously ugly default Mozilla skin (doesn't Netscape have a single decent graphic designer in the entire company?)

Regarding the suck article, I agree to some extent about not having to use skins. In this case though, I think that performance has suffered as a result of implementing that support; XUL has quite a large runtime overhead. Afaik, NS6PR1 doesn't have a lot of debugging code in it, so we won't see any tremendous speed increases on final release. I'd trade the skins support for a small, fast, stable browser any day.

Personally, my team and I are currently working on a cross-platform XML representation that uses NATIVE widget sets with platform-specific code. My ideal crossplatform app is one which renders in the native window manager (win32, gtk, qt, whatever), and not a cross-ported effort. Just looking at a GTK-win32 app gives me the shivers; it just looks so out of place.

mozillazine redid their chrome section, chromezone
check the aphrodite one, it is *very* nice looking.

I made some icons for Mozilla if you want some. The old ones are at http://www.mozillazine.org/chrome/icon s.html. Newer ones can be found at http://au.4mg.com/moz.htm.

There was one good one posted on mozillazine last week - X-Objects: X-DOM, X-Browser, X-Version Objects. It doesn't cover everything, but it'll tell you how to do 80% of what people do with DHTML.

I don't know if they'll work with the netscape beta, but if you are using a nightly build of mozilla, you can get skins from Chromezone. Since beta is nearly identical to the nightlies, these should work, but no guarantees from me. BTW, I strongly recommend Aphrodite and Sullivan- don't waste your time on the others (yet- classic could be really nice, eventually.)
~luge

Here is a link to the page: http://www.mozillazine.org/sc reenshots/alookback.html

As mentioned, it is at the bottom of the page.

They aren't technically "skins" per say. They affect the whole UI- For instance, some of the current chromes change where buttons are, or the menu layout. Its more like an e-theme or something along those lines... Its really cool stuff. For more on all of this, check out ChromeZone at MozillaZine (It will eventually be at Chromezone.org). Be sure to check out Aphrodite, its an /excellent/ gui.
The sun is going down, I say we follow it out of town- We've been here for far too long.

Terminology: In Mozilla-speak, chrome is a package which changes the XUL that defines the interface for Mozilla. Chrome changes not just the look but also the feel and even the functionality of the browser. Within just one chrome package, however, users will also be able to use skins, which in Mozilla refer to packages which simply change the look of the widgets.

The chrome that Mozilla has been using since around milestone 12 is chrome that was designed by Netscape for Communicator 6. Hence Communicator 6 will look much like M14.

Mozilla developers have assured us that the grey strip under the buttons will go away. (There's even a bugzilla entry for it.)

In any case, it is likely that once the skinnability support in mozilla has settled down, the open-source mozilla browser will begin using a distinct skin, separate from the netscape skin. The following was posted to netscape.public.mozilla.ui by Matthew Thomas:

...This would actually be of little relevance to Mozilla itself, were it not for the fact that Mozilla has been wearing Netscape's skin for the past few months. That's not really anyone's fault, it's just that the Mozilla chrome isn't properly skinnable yet -- it has a few too many hard-coded values, boxes with incorrect wrapping properties (so when the font is changed some of the text disappears off the edge of the window), and other problems like that. So maintaining multiple skins during this period of development, when a lot of the chrome was being fiddled around with to add features, would have been difficult.

But skinnability is also going to be fixed by Ben during the chrome cleanup after beta 1 (go, Ben!), and Mozilla will be able to start using its own default skin distinct from the one used in Netscape. And that, in my humble opinion, can't come a moment too soon.

For now, you can download new chrome to use with M14 or with the latest nightlies at mozillazine's chromeZone.

It installed relatively painlessly with InstallShield (no restart required).

The cool stuff is it includes a Java 2 virtual machine licensed from Sun. I've tried a few java enabled pages today, and everything's worked fine on this relatively slow computer, at a comparable rate to MS's virtual machine.

SSL is enabled, so on-line shopping works well. The widgets don't feel nearly as "glitchy", especially the side toolbar. Dialogs are cleaner and closer to Netscape 4.7's. Page updates are as fast as recent Mozilla snapshots, if not more so, and easily comparable to IE5 on the same machine. Rendering speed is (subjectively) up there with Opera. And the new Netscape throbber really kicks ass. The memory footprint seems to be much smaller too, because I'm able to open a few windows without the usual disk grinding I had before.

The bad stuff - they still haven't fixed the button placement in the top toolbar. Grrrr...this is really ugly (but functionally irrelevant I should point out). No URL auto-completion. AOL have bundled some crappy Net2Phone application, and built in AIM to the browser. If these had been left out, I'm sure the 13MB download size would be significantly reduced (ie the bloat is not appreciated). And while I don't mind the general look of the Gecko widgets, I think the flat grey menus need at least a little sprucing up.

BTW, I'm not complaining. I actually used Communicator 4.x betas, so I realise that a lot of the final functionality will be fixed for the final release. It's disappointing the number of people who complain that Mozilla is unstable and not feature-complete. Well duh, it's a pre-release isn't it? The other frequent comment that bugs me is "Why Netscape 6 and not 5?" Well to the average consumer (and bear in mind Netscape is being produced by AOL for consumption by their user base, as the inclusion of the AIM messenger attests) version numbers are as good a way as any to compare software packages. Psychologically, a Netscape 5 release would imply a lagging of technology, considering IE5.5 is just around the corner. It's pretty obvious to me that this is a case of keeping up with the Jones's.

I should also warn to be wary of downloading this from the link at betanews because it appeared to link to a 4.7 release of Communicator. Use the direct link at arstechnica instead (if it's still up).

Cheers,

(posted with Netscape 6.0 Preview Release 1 :)

Check it out at mozillaZine.

Mozilla looks horrible.
They'd better start working on some nice themes, because the default looks are crap. And so tells every friend I show Mozilla. I know that it's cute and looks like Netscape's portal, but it's just not pretty.

I downloaded and installed M14 last week (decided to put my money where my mouth is). &nbsp Go here to pick up a new GUI for your Mozilla. &nbsp This is one of the new features with this browser - changeable "skins". &nbsp There are only 2 out there right now and I'm using the one called "Aphrodite" (which is alot less "loud" then the "Fruity gum"), but this is what supposedly makes Mozilla different from the rest - modular enough to change your interface! &nbsp More info on this can be found at Mozillazine.

Mozilla looks horrible.
They'd better start working on some nice themes, because the default looks are crap. And so tells every friend I show Mozilla. I know that it's cute and looks like Netscape's portal, but it's just not pretty.

I downloaded and installed M14 last week (decided to put my money where my mouth is). &nbsp Go here to pick up a new GUI for your Mozilla. &nbsp This is one of the new features with this browser - changeable "skins". &nbsp There are only 2 out there right now and I'm using the one called "Aphrodite" (which is alot less "loud" then the "Fruity gum"), but this is what supposedly makes Mozilla different from the rest - modular enough to change your interface! &nbsp More info on this can be found at Mozillazine.

1. When the debugging code is taken out, will it run faster/suck less memory, etc?

Well, it's hardly likely to run slower and use more memory, is it?

2. Are they going to get rid of the ugly, glitzy and only semi-functional interface in favor of, say, something with a working multi-level back button, drop-down address list and non-rounded menus?

The current UI is really just a test one. Two new ones have already been written in XUL: see ChromeZone.

3. Is the sidebar going away, please?

View | Sidebar. Magic.

Gerv

I saw a similar post to yours over on mozillazine. According to MozillaAdmin, they are "low-priority" M14 bugs that are in the process of being triaged to M15.

Mozillazine is a website manned by helpful volunteers hoping to make Mozilla the best browser possible. If you are unsure as to how to get started bug testing, I recommend stopping by #mozillazine for a friendly chat.

HOORAY MOZILLA! Just when they've missed another on-the-wire date and you start to lose hope, they pop back up again. You guys are big encouragers, especially by jumping into the forums here and educating us all.

---
In th is usenet article, Jim Roskind goes into some of the plans for M14 and beyond. One point he brings up (and this is the where-you-can-help part) is that the main things which prevent a commercial-branded alpha/beta are the "beta-stopper" bugs; bugs which are first marked beta1 on submission, then reviewed and marked by authorization as PDT. These beta-stoppers, by virtue of their priority, draw human resources from across Netscape as well as just the seamonkey group.

So if you can, test the program. If you find a beta-stopper - some real bug like a crash or a performance problem - report it and mark it beta1. These draw special attention from the mozilla people, and if promoted to PDT status, will attract extra developers from Netscape.

---
Someone else at MozillaZine had some insights about a (possibly semi-official) name for the full completed package: Netscape 2001 or some such. Yes it is the year thing, but as Henrik points out, it could be succesfully tied into the air of cooless surrounding 2001, A Space Odyssey. Maybe they'd even give it a classical soundtrack :-)

-- If you lived here, you'd be home by now.

One important note: the crypto in M14 will not be Open Source. Rather, M14 will incorporate hooks which will be usable with a binary-only crypto module from iPlanet (the offspring of the Netscape-Mozilla alliance.) For more on the situation, read this mozillazine post.

mmmmmmozillllla

Is this what you want?

Some Reasons To Try Out A Nightly Build

Gerv

Over in a MozillaZine article Chris Nelson says he talked to a Netscape engineer earlier and the name isn't final. Looks like News.com jumpted the gun again...

"Mozilla will be Netscape 6.0" ??

Isn't Mozilla independant from Netscape? I guess an accurate phrasing would be "Next Mozilla-based Netscape will be Netscape 6.0"

Besides, over on Mozillazine they discounted this as a rumor.

Try MozillaZine

A Win32 API-based Netscape using Gecko

Um, that's what Mozilla is. If you're wondering when it'll finally be released as a full product (not Alpha, not Beta, and bearing the Netscape logo), we're all wondering that.

The philosophy seems to be the same one that has made Linux good: It'll be done when it's done.

(But it's predicted to happen sometime about April or May.)

" The Mozilla binaries combined with the iPlanet Personal Security Manager binaries will implement SSL support; S/MIME support will be available sometime in the future when S/MIME integration with Mozilla is completed." - mozillaZine.org

So, the hooks will be there, and there will be a binary implementation given away. So, when does that RSA patent expire again?

Mozilla is certainly usable at the moment. I'm using it to post this message and for 90% of my browsing under Linux.

As more people start using Mozilla it increases the chances of finding obscure bugs and therefore reaching stability sooner.

Check out bug 17325. Then make an Bugzilla account and vote for this bug. As you can see, the slowness comes from incremental reflow and yet not optimized table handling. They have checked in some new code to improve it but it's not yet optimized.

You can also change settings to control incremental reflows. Slashdot is still a pain to read but it should help with other sites.

I compiled it this morning. It rocks.

The announcement was a little quick off the mark - binaries are due to be posted within the next couple of hours - but Mozillazine (great site) has news of M12 binaries for Solaris and RPMs for Red Hat

The speed at which Mozilla has come along recently is something else. If this isn't alpha, then it is damn close. Download, enjoy, and report those bugs!

Dave

--

It would seem to me like lawsuits could be brought upon web forums that allow anyone view but require login to post. By allowing anyone to view the statements they are making their forum public, which - apparently - the Supreme Court has stated that anonymous input should be allowed.

It's a good thing that Slashdot still has Anonymous posting. But what of other sites, like Mozillazine - an advocate of an "Open Community" forcing logins and registration in order to communicate on their forums. This kind of backwardness makes me wonder what sort of legal rights anonymous users should have.
Joseph Elwell.

Mozilla is NOT Netscape Communicator 5. Mozilla IS a free, open source, standards compliant browser that has been completely rebuilt from the ground up with things like portability, flexibility, and small size as key goals. Mozilla will soon enough be available for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux, BeOS, OS/2, OpenVMS, Amiga, and several other platforms. In other words, run whatever OS you want and Mozilla will be there. When Mozilla has reached a state where it is considered "finished", then Netscape will add things like cryptography, polish it up (perhpas with their own user interface), and ship it as Communicator 5 or whatever they will call it. I think it is important to realize that Mozilla is only the core of what will be Netscape 5. Because it's so easy to modify the user interface, there will be skins for Mozilla -- just like with WinAMP. Perhaps you can get matching skins for Mozilla and WinAMP. Since encryption software cannot be open sourced in the US, Mozilla does not have any encryption, but Netscape will add that on to Mozilla for the release of Netscape 5. People keep talking about market share, but I feel that when Netscape 5 begins shipping with AOL that will significantly affect market share. Not to mention the many people like me who believe that Mozilla is simply more standards compliant, more efficient, will very likely be faster when completed, and will be available on more platforms than any other browser on the planet. Someone correct me if I am wrong, but Mozilla is fast enough for browsing now -- and it doesn't even have the caching module yet because the Intel people that are working on it haven't finished it yet. Don't knock it's speed now. It's going to get faster. Wait for a beta. And finally, remember that the M12 release might be called an "alpha" release, not beta. After the alpha release, there will be a beta release every two months until it is finished. Then Netscape turns it into Netscape 5. Then AOL ships Netscape 5 as it's default browser. Please, read both the Mozilla and MozillaZine sites before spouting what you think Mozilla's faults are. Chances are, they have already been addressed there and are in the process of being corrected.

That's what MozillaZine asks us. There is a survey where they ask about readers' feelings regarding the current builds.

I have been trying Mozilla for months already. It has improved steadily but they are still making big changes there. For example they started doing incremental reflow. While it's nice, it caused some pages to load very slowly. IMO, that's still one thing to fix before Alpha.

I guess it's good to delay Mozilla until it's ready and free of bugs. Mozilla is designed from ground up, small, fast and supports standards beautifully. It'll be a pleasure to use it.

But I couldn't but notice some fear. Some people are scared that AOL will fill Mozilla with ads and make it unusable. While AOL might do it, remember that the source code of Mozilla is free. It's right there at ftp.mozilla.org and you're free to get it any day. So we can very well build custom versions of Mozilla without any AIM or other annoyances.

That's what MozillaZine asks us. There is a survey where they ask about readers' feelings regarding the current builds.

I have been trying Mozilla for months already. It has improved steadily but they are still making big changes there. For example they started doing incremental reflow. While it's nice, it caused some pages to load very slowly. IMO, that's still one thing to fix before Alpha.

I guess it's good to delay Mozilla until it's ready and free of bugs. Mozilla is designed from ground up, small, fast and supports standards beautifully. It'll be a pleasure to use it.

But I couldn't but notice some fear. Some people are scared that AOL will fill Mozilla with ads and make it unusable. While AOL might do it, remember that the source code of Mozilla is free. It's right there at ftp.mozilla.org and you're free to get it any day. So we can very well build custom versions of Mozilla without any AIM or other annoyances.

Wha?!?!?! an hour?! . .

Now please allow me to preface my comments with where my point of view comes from. I work in the machine tool industry, where MTBF is measured in thousands of hours.

Am I just off base? or is this criteria horibly inatiquit. Even for an Alpha.

Meaning future downloads of a dumbed down interface for your Aunt Gladis or a NIN mozilla chrome with inbuilt mp3 player.

If you can't hack Mozilla assembling a Chrome helps to do your bit to make Mozilla a better browser (...than IE :). If you want to learn more about chromes try Mozillazine's chromeZone.

evolt.org looks /.ed but mozillaZine has a mirror of the article

Mozillazine speedily got permission to post a mirror of the article:

http://www.mozillazine.org/evolt_mirror/

Dave

--

Also at http://www.mozillazine.org/evolt_mirror/

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

And that's just one of the nice features Mozilla has to offer. Go check out the Mozilla advocacy site and be impressed.

Hacked up CSS support? It is the first browser to display Box Acid perfectly.
Mozilla Screenshots
Better than IE 5 and MS, who just pick and choose the CSS features they think are the best and implement them as they go, making people think that they're completely compliant.

What the hell is so good about table background support? So you have a picture in the table, so what? If your website relies on something like this, what about all those people who are going to be using embedded browsers like on cell phones huh? Most of these "wow this feature is so cool" websites have little actual content. It isn't that hard to implement a nice looking webpage without loading on the JavaScript and saying "screw every other browser". Look at slashdot and freshmeat.

This article is an almost exact copy of an earlier article on CNet. Many good points were made on the MozillaZine article about the CNet article.

Its base OS is Linux, it uses Mozilla as its browser...

Linux + Moz sounds pretty cool to me. :-)

--Z.

Zontar The Mindless,

Does this mean they'll have to rm -rf their entire existing code? Yes.

Uh, no. They've already done just that a long time ago -- that's where we got Gecko. The current Mozilla is pretty much just a bunch of shared library files, so you can add and remove the modules you want by adding and deleting files to the directory. It is HEAVILY componentized. XPCOM/CORBA and all that. No mucking with source at all to add and remove features. If you don't want the editor, delete the editor files. I'm certain when Mozilla reaches beta someone will make a "distribution" of it with everything but the browser stuff stripped out. If not, you can just delete the files yourself.

For a more complete explanation, see the indicated Anonymous Comment. (not by me)

Oh, and by the way... the current footprint is ~2.5MB with the editor and browser and everything; memory usage is also decreasing nicely now that they've started paying attention to optimisation.

Grrr... I'm tired of people spreading FUD about Mozilla when all of their information is plainly hearsay. Try reading the status page regularly. Or maybe you'd find MozillaZine more palatable.

--

I'm not sure, but it might have something to do with this.

Basically, due to a bug in glibc 2.0, they were spending too much of their time hacking work arounds. That was taking time away from actual coding. It was decided to support only 2.1 for now...
David

Error: Method "~" of Object "~" Failed
Actual Microsoft Error Message