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Mozilla Status Update
EmilEifrem writes "BrowserWatch has an interesting feature about the status of Mozilla. It's a mail from a Netscape engineer but it's NOT the official word from AOL/Netscape. It talks about how half of the Netscape engineers now use Seamonkey as their main browser, about upcoming dates (first Netscape branded alpha/beta doesn't seem to be far away) as well as engineering priorities and goals. Not the official word but an interesting read nevertheless."
Wouldn't you be the lazy one, they merely presented the e-mail for the public to judge. You're the lazy one for not wanting to read the article and summarize for yourself.
Why don't you try reading the installation instructions before bitching.
Way to go!
signal 11 often indicates bad hardware like memory or overclocked CPU.
Yeah, ok. If you don't mind, I'll do without your "expert" opinion.
Mozilla is nowhere near being ready for primetime.
That's why so many people have come to dislike the GUI and GUI adovcates with a passion, because the studies and claims they make don't tend to reflect the reality of the people who aren't included in the studies for one reason or another. Yeah, 90% of the personal computers on the planet run Windows, another healthy chunk are Macs, lots of Linux users running one of a boatload of X packages... Boy I wish everyone would come clean and admit that they'd rather just use the command line. BTW, that's sarcasm...from your post it's pretty obvious you wouldn't have figured that out on your own.
blah blah blah blah blah you do not love me and my brothers who do not have your fast computers you throw us out of your house as if we were enemies, when yesterday you had no quarrel with us
Both access a fairly complex java applet that configures firewall rules for the LAN. Both access "webmin" (an excellent remote admin tool). One (the 10 day old one). Is used for general browsing on all kinds of animation, jscript, and java infested pages. It's version 4.06 for FreeBSD. The 45 day old process is version 4.71 Linux.
I have no idea what anyone is talking about when they say netscape is "unstable".
All along I always suspected Debian was the most ``amateur'' of the Linux distributions. After their ignorance displayed toward legacy users, I was convinced. Since Debian was forcing my hand to upgrade anyway, I just dumped Debian and went with Red Hat and never looked back.
Does that mean that open source failed for netscape/mozilla?
Uh - it runs just fine on my P2 400, and I know others that use it on a p90, so I would suspect that your machine has some issues.
LOL. Someone here is bitching because MS gave IE for free? ROFL! It's okay, you could've continued paying for Netscape. $49.95. Next release. $49.95 I cant wait until people start bitching MS giving away Windows 98 just after complaining about how much it costs to purchase.
"Native operating system widgets"? Since when does Linux have those?
And how do you know he is using Linux?
blah ... you are a not smart person ...
It's known as "to eat dog-food".
The cookers will never spit in the food if they have to eat it later...
It's nice to know the mozilla folks are eating dog-food cause this means the project is something closer to final release... :-)
--
Malba Thaan - O homem que calculava
"The war isn't over yet as we still have that 18-25% that insist on using Netscrape. Why do they continue to use it? I wish I knew. But I'll guarantee that their reasons are political." Yeah, mine are partly political, but a minor part. I like having the browser, mail and news as one package, rather than Outlook Express, etc. Netscape also gives more control to the user as to how it looks/operates. And it IS quite comforting to know that I'm not succeptable to worms!!! Zilla
}C: Mozilla pops up a DOS window on me.
Perhaps you should explain that a Win32 console window is not DOS. Windows users (correctly) have the suspician that DOS is under the scenes, and should realize that a console window doesn't equal a primative application.
> Mozilla is not ready for the outside world....
Well I've been using it for the past few weeks without problems, although I guess that I wouldn't yet recommend it to the general public as it's still not complete. However for people who understand it's still prerelease and that it's still rough around the edges, it makes an excellent browser. Just remember give feedback and report bugs and help improve the lizard.
But remember to read the bug reporting guidelines on http://www.mozilla.org/
Yes, those that are not for us, are against us. Way to tell them!
Idiot. signal 11 is a particular return code which indicates, most likely, hardware problems. If it was a software problem, signal 11 is extremely unlikely.
Netscape 4.61 for OS/2 is surprisingly stable. IBM did a great job. That said, my favorite browser is StarOffice.
The problem is, glibc 2.0 was the first glibc to use a symbol versioning framework which should have meant that older you wouldn't need to worry quite so much about backward compatibility. Unfortunately, there were two problems - i) the bugs in the symbol versioning system weren't fixed uintil 2.1, and some of them _required_ api changes to fix.
ii) threads had to be rewritten with a better interface/implementation separation for glibc2.1 to allow this new versioning system to work...
(this is Willennium ... I'm at work and I don't have my slashdot pass here .. but it's me :) The statistics came from www.theCounter.com, and the stats refer to all versions of both browsers.
hahaha, first you offer your "expert" opinion without anything to back up your assertions and now you resort to calling me idiot. Typical slashdot commentary.
I've never gotten that error message from ps before in the years that I've run Linux.....never. The fact that I get it while running the shitty Mozilla code leads me to believe that Mozilla is fucking shit up on my hardware.
I bet you don't even know what a Signal 11 is, you dumb fuck. I bet you're not even a fucking programmer either.
Suck my dick, if you want to be useful, bitch.
Mozilla is a piece of dog shit and so are your opinions.
evidently you know jack shit about MS's deranged win32 architecture. That 500K exe is not IE. That just loads all the zillions of COM objects stored in DLLs (ooh, they're part of the OS, so we don't count their size towards IE.) What complete and utter bullshit.
IE4 worked reasonably well for me. Certainly better than Netscape. IE5 has an annoying habit of exploding, taking the whole OS down with it in a giant flaming crater.
So what if Skins will allow Mozilla to have a native look and feel? Currently, several GUIs support systemwide themes (MacOS [using a shareware add-on], GNOME, KDE, perhaps others, too). Every app that doesn't use a system standard widget set is a big problem on those.
And, I doubt that Mozilla's GUI engine supports all rendering features _needed_ to fully support Apple's new AQUA look (seen all those translucency effects on the screenshots?)
M12 for the Mac took 30 min to install and TWO MINUTES to launch for the first time on a 233MHz PowerPC. I'm ready to blame half of that time on the OS, but in that time, I can install BeOS and surf with NetPositive!
Keep in mind Netscape is owned by AOL (Time Warner). If AOL switches to Netscape as their default browser, that's 20 million users right there. And most of them Windows users.
IE 5.0 has the best support for XML of any browser. Also, Netscape wasn't the huge breakthough, but Mosaic was. I guess you are probably only about 18.
I also hate the fact that when you download an update with windows update, you can't keep a back-up copy of the download. So that if ever you need to re-install windows, you could then re-apply all of the previous download updates without having to start all over from scratch, and download them again !!!!
Where MS really screwed up was in failing to deliver a solid browser for set-top boxes, handhelds, and other embedded devices. Even if MSIE wins the desktop PC (which seems unlikely, given the poor quality of their browser), they may find that it doesn't matter much if they can't grab enough of the total browser market to enforce proprietary protocols and discourage the use of Java applets.
The problem is that FreeBSD doesn't have native kernel threads, so that they have to be emulated in a library which is very dodgy. Mozilla was really designed to be used in a true multi-threaded environment. You'll just have to wait a little longer.
I run on a not to dissimilar machine. I think your problem is likely something else. Although I will concede that the memory footprint needs to come down to run smoothly. But that's why this release is not for the broad market of users -- there is still work that needs to be completed, including trimming the memory footprint.
With all due respect to Mike Shaver (and I mean that), but I don't know if it's appropriate to refer to him as a key developer; there are many people whose departure would be a far more serious loss to the project.
While I agree that its sad that IE has become the defacto browser on preinstalled computers, lets not blame it all on tactics.. part of the problem is the fact that netscape has been pretty buggy throughout pretty much all 4.x versions.
Hmmm... Guess what browser doesn't have any of these problems. But keep on whining. Don't do anything logical, by any means.
(Read Netscape as Netscape 4.x) I'm one of those 18-25% that insist on using Netscape. I use it because: a) downloading files using Netscape STILL is better than with IE 5.0. I hardly get any "closed connections" mid-way though downloading like in IE. b) IE 5.0 doesn't craah as often as Netscape but when it crashes it usually brings the whole system down (i'm using W95 OSR2), whereas Netscape doesn't. My major problems with Netscape 4.x are: a) I notice Netscape (at least in Linux) after a couple of hours uses up an insane amount of RAM and then locks up or crashes (i suspect it's Windows version also does this). b) Netscape doesn't allow you to save a whole web page text, pics and all like IE 5.0
"Hello, I'm Joe /., I'm ready to fully evaluate a product in the pre-alpha stage. Yeah, I fully expect that a program compiled for debugging should run just as fast as the packaged competitor's product, it's available for download, so it should be fine. Also, since I know so much about Mozilla, I'd like to complain that I don't like the GUI, because I fully understand that I will be able to download skins soon after the official release to make the GUI look like whatever I want it to."
What happened to you people? I thought you were supposed to be smart. I give up, there are no smart people left. For now on I'm just going to stop pretending and just get all of my news from C|Net.
OK ... there is one feature of NN that I find valuable. If there is JavaScipt on a page, NN will parse it into the source of the document. This way you can see the output of the JS, which comes in handy sometimes.
I've played with Mozilla M10, M11, and M12 on the Mac.. They're all pretty nice, and appear to be equivilent to Netscape 4.x in render speed. However, the new rendering engine handles pages that Netscape mutilates...
As for bloatware, I'd strongly recommend that all the Mac users out there keep a copy of iCab on their machine, in additon to Netscape or IE. It doesn't handle Javascripts which is often frustrating, but the installer is only 700kb and the app is only 2Mb. It uses QuickTime to render images, off loads any email tasks to your default mail reader (e.g. Eudora), off loads source viewing to your preferred text editor (e.g. BBedit), and uses MRJ to handle java applets (4-10x speed bump over Netscape).
There are a couple other nice features of iCab that I haven't seen in any other browsers, for example the ability to filter images by size or link (e.g no more wasted time spent loading banners).. There's also the built-in option of downloading the entire contents of site or just selected contents, for example just the audio files, or just the files with the form *.png..
I didn't want this to turn into an advertisement, but I thought while we were discussing the topic of bloatware I'd mention that Mozilla and IE are not the only games in town, just the most recognized..
By the way, a little poll over at macosrumors shows that iCab is being used by roughly 25% of their readers. Despite the fact that Netscape and IE come bundled with the MacOS. It has to have something to do with the fact that most people can download a 700kB installer much easier than a 16MB Netscape update over their 56kb connections..
You may well find that this is already fixed. See http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9967 which includes an interesting discussion of floating point issues on BSD
No, IE doesn't suffer from half those problems, it
just crashes all the time and brings down the
entire taskbar. I tried to switch to it at the same time as I started using OE, and gave up after
two weeks because of that and some other stupid
things it kept doing.
Netscape works great, but I can't wait for NS 5.0
Yet another great example of how awesome open source is... Netscape isn't even dogfooding their own software.
Well, there's the fact he's talking about "native operating system widgets" - which means he's probably on win32, MacOS, BeOS or AmigaOS (actually, widgets are called gadgets on the amiga and also by many BeOS developers who originate on the amiga, so it's unlikely he's using them)
AOL will not switch browsers and risk pissing off millions of users should something goes wrong. Mozilla is a step child that they tolerate and that is it....
Is it because they are implementing their mail system in Java/JavaScript?
Whats the deal? The major user base of their browser will be unix users. Why not just use straighforward GTK themes and dialogs?
Of course I could be wrong, but thats what it looked like when I used it the first time. And I thought to myself "Not another look and feel".
For what its worth.
The link for 'start using Mozilla' tjhat you posted is broken. The link you require is:
http://www.mozilla.org/get-involved.html
Stability, schmability. Everyone knows IE is the better browser because of its faster, better page rendering, more customizable interface, and on-the-fly installation of new components. This is far superior to the old Netscape approach to updating your browser, which used to be "download the entire thing again". The SmartUpdate is a step in the right direction, but still seems really half assed compared to IE.
I too hope Mozilla becomes a realistic option to IE.
You should take your own words to heart. There is no reason to be using IE4 when IE5 is so much better.
I just downloaded the latest release of Mozilla. The first site I visited was Slashdot. I clicked on a link to respond to a post and all hell broke loose. It took 10 minutes for Mozilla to render the response page and then proceeded to thrash my harddrive for 15 minutes. I switched to another virtual terminal to shut down mozilla. When I tried to execute ps to get the process id, ps returned an error message indicating that it had encountered a Signal 11 and instructing me to send a bug report! I don't know if Mozilla is to blame, but conisdering that it's never happened to me before, I wouldn't be surprised.
Needless to say, I won't be playing around with Mozilla any longer until there is at least a beta release. It's unfortunate because I really want Mozilla to succeed, but the current state of affairs leaves very little room for optimism. I don't understand why they can't release a version without debugging code installed. Not everyone wants to be a tester. Some of us just want to get a feel for how Mozilla is coming along. By forcing us to use versions with debug code, it just gives the majority of us a negative perception of Mozilla.
Buy some extra memory, dork. 32MB is pitiful.
Hmmm... KDE 2 Konqueror?
IE suffers from half of the above listed problems (including the cursor-keys on toolbar "feature")
The number one reason why I don't use Mozilla daily is the VERY SLOW GUI. Once that is fixed and has the speed of GTK+/QT/FLTK, Mozilla will be my choice, but not until then.
And, of course, with linuxconf, if you're remote adminning a web server, you're probably doing it through a web interface anyway...
It looks like a mixture between the old Russian flag and a bad Godzilla movie (not that the Godzilla movies were bad).
Well, think about whether they want to have to pay extra for licensed copies of Netscape or instead have free copies of IE on installation. Less hassle, less money... I could see some people thinking that's a good thing..?
If you're going to let yourself be ripped a new bunghole (budget wise) by buying MS products for your workplace you might as well use what you paid for.
either bad hardware... or maybe a BUG IN THE FREAKING PRE-ALPHA SOFTWARE.
Am I the only one who thinks Mozilla's interface is terrible? Why can't it by sleek an clean like IE or Netscape? The toolbar is horrible, and I has a bunch of clutter around the edges. I want efficient, not ugly buttons and useless frames.
>computers on the planet run Windows, another healthy chunk are Macs,
>lots of Linux users running one of a boatload of X packages... Boy I
>wish everyone would come clean and admit that they'd rather just use
>the command line. BTW, that's sarcasm...from your post it's pretty
>obvious you wouldn't have figured that out on your own.
The difference is under Linux you can *CHOOSE* not to run a GUI,which is something you GUI freaks would love to take away. With Windows you have little choice but to use a GUI, and that choice is being taken away more and more with each new version of Windows.
Those studies are as much of a joke as benchmark testing has become.
>I wish that Redhat, now that it has the money, would make some
>investment in human-factor studies of desktop interfaces.
Why bother? Those studies don't mean a damn thing in the real world, and everybody but people like yourself it seems realize it.
That's why so many people have come to dislike the GUI and GUI adovcates with a passion, because the studies and claims they make don't tend to reflect the reality of the people who aren't included in the studies for one reason or another.
>Please, stop pretending you don't know.... it is well known that the
>Mozilla interface SUCKS in terms of responsiveness/redraw time.
>The slow GUI is the main reason I don't use it. I really hope removeal
>of the debug code will make it substantially faster, or else I'm
>afraid this browser is going nowhere.
Who really cares what you think or do? In case you haven't realized it yet the browser world is splitting up and you Microsoft Astroturfers/IE freaks have to get over the fact that there is little or no interest/demand among linux users for a linux version (shudder) of IE. This must really burn you guys.
One could just as well ask why MS did what they did - they give IE away for free so there was no revenue threat. Netscape simply enhanced the average Window's user's experience. Either everyone on this thread is only 14 years old or they have completely forgotten the last 3 or 4 years of the WWW but netscape was a HUGE breakthrough and added to the popularity of ... Windows 95 (!)
Mozilla continues as a threat to MS and an important innovation because entire web based applications can be built using XUL and XML using *one* tool (the browser). Wordprocessors, spreadsheets, MM apps are all possible without having Excel Word etc installed on the client and activated through COM Active/X and all the other bloated crap we "need".
IT doens't work very well. The reason is that Mozilla is pervasively multithreaded internally, and threads changed (got a lot better) between glibc 2.0 and 2.1. The mozilla team do not want to program for glibc2.0 sucky-threads, since it would make mozilla development harder + less reliable (more indeterminate conditions+possible races), and glibc2.0 is thoroughly obsolete by now.
On www.lwn.net/daily/ they have a story about Mike Shaver, a big Mozilla developer and promoter, leaving at the end of Jan. Are any of the original big guys left?
Netscape will take Mozilla, brand it as Netscape 5. Netscape 5 will be on all the cover CDs, on Netscape's web site, on the ISP CDs, on the university boxes, - Mozilla as a branded product will have such small market share.
That's just my 2 cents.
How the f#$k is this offtopic!?! HEY, MODERATOR - it's called an OPINION. You know, that thing that you don't have any of 'cause you get all yours from Slashdot.
Well done Mozilla team for making it this far. This is going to be the best web browser written IMHO. The important thing is that it's standards compliant. BTW why not vote for Mozilla in the Slashdot beanies awards? I've voted for mozilla as best improved open source project of 1999 as they made so much progress even though many people doubted them
When I've used mozilla, I've always found it slow, particularly the gui. I'm currently using the debian M12 package on a P100. Is this because there is debug code present? Is it likely to be quicker if i compile my own?
A seamonkey is a tiny little creature, often sold in advertisements in the back of comics during the 70's, which would die almost immediately upon being exposed to anything resembling the outside world.
Did that clear it up for you?
I'm sorry to say it, but there's already a LOT of browsers out there faking the user agent strings. Filtering out them like that doesn't simply work. It's much better just to tell the customers what browsers are bad, and why, and also what browsers they recommend.
Please read the thread:
"user-agent strings" by Judson Valeski on netscape.public.mozilla.netlib for some possible solutions.
If you use the port in /usr/ports/www/mozilla, it's much more stable. Although it does have trouble with slashdot, most other things work quite well.
-Dom
You can see the "official" status message this was taken from. Search down for the entry named "Seamonkey" dated january 10th.
...and there is always iCab, which is a serious browser for geeks who do not want to run Netscape 4.x bloat-ware (why drop the stand-alone install?) or IE and all related MS stuff (how many MS extensions does it take to run a simple web broweser?)
iCab proves that you can make a small, HTML-spec browser without all of the bells and whistles and people will be interested. I am looking forward to the day that I get to send in my $29.
I think that the Mozilla/Mac team should take a long, hard look at iCab. Is Mozilla trying to be more than iCab and, if so, are the added things really needed? Clean up the code base for a lean browser and get it out the door.
It is strnage for me to see that iCab was started after Mozialla (granted, iCab had a working code base on the Amiga) and will be at final builds a longtime before Mozilla. Rumor has it the next pre-release of iCab will have JavaScript (finally) and will be the last pre-release beore a final version.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
Ok, well like the above poster said, iCab does not even have javascript. Java? whats that? Mail/news? what for? Please do not compare these prehistoric browsers against mozilla. Compare them to navigator 2.0.
I suggest you don't worry about people spoofing they're likely to be more technical people who understand the risks of doing so.
Of course, there is a deeper issue. Take a random feature, say JavaScript (since you brought it up), that the site "needs". First, what about users with acceptable browsers who disable JavaScript? Are we to be turned away? This is another support problem area.
Also, consider why they feel the need for JavaScript or similarly uncertain technologies? In many cases, JavaScript, DHTML, and the ilk are used just to "pretty up" the site. Maybe a better idea is to make the site use straight HTML, opening up your userbase to almost everyone?
If you really need the JavaScript/DHTML/Java/Whatever, limit it's use and put a "This page needs JavaScript. We recommend Netscape 4.X or IE 4.X or later. We can't support anything else, sorry." on the pages.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
funny you should say that...
i remember when i first tried sawmill, it was a while back. and man, it really sucked hard. but that is what you get when you start a project. but good lord, sawmill is now one sweet windowmanager. Unfinished code should never be used by someone who is afraid to get burnt, or to lend a hand.
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
well, i know them as "brine shrimps" or something similar to that. When i grew up in Trinidad, there was a time my brother and i raised siamese fighting fish. and one of the thing that we fed em was those brine shrimps. you could buy em in the petshop, in little plastic bottles (they were the eggs or some such thing), put a certain amount in water and put a airpump in the container, and in a few days you have those yummy food to feed to your fishes. we also fed the fishes mosqutio larve. Ah those were some good days. I think i will give my brother a call and verify some of this info, since i do seem to have a bad memory.
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
IE suffering half those problems is an exaggeration imho. But certainly one problem it does have annoyed me the most this past Christmas when I was using my dad's Windows machine. The partial download problem. So much loss of productivity (relatively, in Christmas holidays terms) just because I had to completely re-download so many things.
:)
I use wget (under Linux) to do most large downloads anyway. I don't enjoy using Windows so I never go looking for a wget-like utility either.
In anycase, using IE is completely irrelevant to me since it doesn't run under Linux. Running Windows to just to use IE would be illogical. What I'm waiting for is for someone (or me) to implement a javascript on/off toggle button. Going to preferences has become routine, but that's tedious...
I hope so. I used the last beta(alpha? what?) version for Mac and it SUCKED. It was slower than cold maple syrup, crashed repeatedly (couldn't use it more than a few minutes), and I thought the user interface needed a TON of work. If anyone of you haven't used it, take a look at the Netscape homepage. It looks like the menu bar on top.
This kinda scared me. After seeing IE 5.0, I'm tempted to switch, folks.....
I can't stand the fact that I can't resume downloads from microsoft updates. Of course I can't stand alot of other things about Windows...
---
I also notice Mozilla's sluggishness on my Celeron 333 Linux box, although it's far from unusable.
Two things to note:
1. Mozilla doesn't have its memory or disk caches enabled yet. Therefore, it loads every page from scratch every time, even when you just press the back button. This is a big contributor to perceived slowness (the kind of slowness most people are talking about whether they know it or not).
2. Mozilla is doing more per page load than NS4.x... it is also building and exposing a complicated standards-based DOM tree structure. This is a very good thing, but it does take more time.
Arguably IE 5.x is doing the same, so this shouldn't ultimately slow Mozilla down more than it slows IE down (unless IE cuts corners for speed--we know they cut corners on implementing the DOM spec, but we don't know why they did it).
Ultimately, though, what other people have said is correct: Mozilla is pre-alpha, and until it is beta this is normal. Come back and complain if Mozilla is still slow when it hits beta, or better yet stop complaining and help the project out.
I don't know how some of you guys are using it so regularly. I grabbed the M13 build and it wouldn't stay running more than 5 minutes. And I wasn't even pushing it.
-Vince
Linux help for beginners to advanced users: Control-Escape.com
--
IE4 didn't even allow installing IE4 without OE4 until SP2 came out
--
Please, stop pretending you don't know.... it is well known that the Mozilla interface SUCKS in terms of responsiveness/redraw time.
The slow GUI is the main reason I don't use it. I really hope removeal of the debug code will make it substantially faster, or else I'm afraid this browser is going nowhere.
I got this too. I removed my old ~/.mozilla directory (used by M11) and then it worked fine.
And I'm certain that huge amounts of the critical work that you do requires a web browser.
Got my first core dump! Not so cool :(
I just installed Mozilla (m12 release) and of course the first site I pull up is Slashdot...the first story I read is on Mozilla. Pretty cool!
\begin{pedantry}
:)
A B.html
:)
I used the original CAB ('Crystal Atari Browser') on the Atari ST some years ago, when I first got an internet connection - it was pretty nice and surprisingly fast even for an 8MHz machine.
There were two main editions; up to v1.5, when it was freeware, and after, when it became commercial (although with a nearly full-featured demo). Then at some point development switched to the Mac.
The original was written in Pascal, and unless the MAc has a pretty recent version of Pascal I expect it will all have to be recoded. But still taking a lot less time than Mozilla, and with far fewer programmers. Hmmm...
There's some stuff about CAB at http://homepages.tu-darmstadt.de/~aclauss/Atari_C
The browser I'm looking forwards to is Konqueror in KDE 2 - again coded in less time with a lot less programmers.
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
My take of this is that you are against performing client side field validation as a data integrity check. I would partially disagree. You can use it, provided that everything is validated at the server. This sounds redundant, but it isn't. A server side check requires a new page, Javascript checking requires some Javascript in the page. So, from a client perspective, it's faster. You need the server side stuff for people without Javascript or those attempting to bypass your security.
I'd say that the vast majority of sites need to provide their core functionality in a function available from the lowest common denominator. This would be HTML 3.2 without Javascript, and possibly without frames. This doesn't mean that newer browsers cant take advantage of the new stuff, but never for the core features. Unless you must provide a function, and it's the only way to do it.
Colin Scott If you build it, they will be dumb...
Skins will allow Mozilla to look "right" for the OS it's running on, and if I've been understanding the newsgroups right (see netscape.public.mozilla.ui on news server @ news.mozilla.org), there's something called XBL which will help with the look-and-feel part of the OS... This is all kinda new, I think XBL landed in the tree like this week, so...
Incidentally, for those who hate the current UI, there's an "alternate UI" that's been developed, and you can check it out on the same newsgroup.
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
1. Where's your source?
2. In all those pro-IE articles where they actually DO identify the source, it always seems to be some kind of bizzare subsection of users, like "business users who are forced to use IE at work" based on some tiny sample like 100 people.
3. Netscape used to dominate with an even higher percentage (say, 1995). If IE didn't give up, then, why should Netscape/Mozilla/AOL/Time-Warner now?
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I swear, the only thing keeping me from throwing Netscape 4.x out the window and using iCab exclusively is the fact that there is no -- ZERO -- style sheet support.
Even then I stil use iCab; it's fast, light, has some basic ad-blocking functionality, doesn't break too many sites (yes, I know it's the site's fault, not iCab's) and I still use it to test my CSS-styled sites -- what better way to find out what a site will look like without stylesheets enabled?
Jay (=
On the contrary, there are quite a few people devoted to increasing performance and reducing footprint. Check out the "performance" and "porkjockeys" newsgroups (linked from the www.mozilla.org site).
I'm sorry the progress isn't as fast as you'd like. There are no obvious "big wins" left and most changes result in only incremental improvements, but they are being made and performance is an important focus of the mozilla project -- second only to standards compliance.
If you're interested in making speed improvements why not pitch in now rather than wait for us to "finish" as you stated in an earlier post?
I hate to say it, but that article was nearly unintelligible. Browserwatch could have done better by summarizing the content themselves, rather than being lazy and slapping the entire mail in via cut-and-paste.
And how do you know he is not?
Well, duh. That's what I was talking about in my original post.
"Native operating system widgets"? Since when does Linux have those? All X Window widget sets are "non-native" in the sense that no particular set is required for operation.
Check out http://www.bitwizard.nl/sig11/
"Most likely there is nothing wrong with your installation, your compiler or kernel. It very likely has something to do with your hardware. There are a variety of subsystems that can be wrong, and there is a variety of ways to fix it. Read on, and you'll find out more. There are two exceptions to this "rule". You could be running low on virtual memory, or you could be installing Red Hat 5.x or 6.x. There is more about this near the end."
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Yes, I know this is about the kernel. I'll leave it up to the critical slashdot reader (hah!) to determine if it's a hardware, installation, or Mozilla problem.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
That's because the only "standard" in the real world is the behavior of your customer's browsers.
Mozilla 5 and IE 5 are nice steps towards a standards-based future, but realistically you need will need to target and test your DHTML for a long time. (For example, otherwise DOM compliant IE JavaScript will probably contain a "document.all", which is a microsoftism that Netscape made the political decision not to support.)
Even in the utopian future where NN and IE are fully standards compliant, as a web developer you will be then worrying about the broken JavaScript implementation in PalmPilots and Lincoln Navigators. As others have said, write HTML 3.2, or design around the problem, depending what the budget is.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
If either IE4 or IE5 explodes, it's pretty clear that your Windows (9x?) install was hosed to begin with. Sucks, but that's Windows. Go find FORMAT.EXE.
My Win advice -- run NT from a NTFS system partition. It usually stays stable for production use. Boot W98 to play games.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
The point is that "skins" are a system-wide feature on Macintoshes, although the "appearance manager" currently only supports one Apple-blessed appearance.
Mac users are lazy bastards who want everything to look right just out of the box. Unlike Linux users, they'd rather bitch than manage skin files. (This is the right attitude, IMHO, because unlike Microsoft, Netscape is ignoring the OS features staring them in the face.)
Apple could modify Mozilla to support the appearance manager, but with the current IE deal, I wouldn't expect it. If a third party solves the problem, hopefully Netscape will include it in the standard package.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
signal 11 often indicates bad hardware
like memory or overclocked CPU.
for me mozilla renders slashdot faster
then every other browser (even with
incremental refresh)
Meme of the day: I browse "Disable Sigs: Checked". So should you.
Ok, this needs to be put to rest already.
> it runs about twice as SLOW
> as netscape 4.7, and I have little hope that
> will change.
You do realize that this is *pre-alpha* software. There is a *ton* of debugging code in it and they have a bug tracking system linked in as well. You can also download the source and compile it with a different interface (GTK, QT, and Lestiff are all there). The speed factor is *not due to the browser.* Wait until the beta is out before complaining about speed.
Funny, the majority of Mac users I know all prefer Netscape over IE. I can't think of a single exception. If you don't like the way Mozilla looks and feels because it avoids OS-centric trends I wouldn't worry. I'd be very surprised if Apple or some other Mac-oriented company doesn't run w/ the Mozilla source and blend it into the MacOS in some interesting ways. The great thing about Mozilla is it is open source so that anything that you don't like you can change. In cases such as this where many people might not like it there is all the more chance that a variant that fixes that annoyance will be available. This way everybody gets what they want. :)
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Crypto export regs just got lifted. Open-source stuff (Mozilla, f'rinstance) can now be exported freely except to dangerous nations like Cuba (!), and closed-source programs can be exported with a one-time license inspection.
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
Buy some extra memory, dork. 32MB is pitiful.
:)
Dammit I know! I'm waiting for (1) Prices to come down. $1/meg would be nice, it's actually just above that on krex.com now, and (2) for me to get some actual spending money. Mainframe Operator at PSU doesn't pay the same as CEO of AOL/TW
Care to contribute to finkployd's "128, here I come" fund?
Finkployd
Bill Gates: "Innovation"
You can also download the source and compile it with a different interface (GTK, QT, and Lestiff are all there).
And I've compiled EVERY milestone (that would compile on my machine) with every possible plugin.
My point is, they really don't seem interested in making it that fast. I see lots of interface and code that says they are more interested in fearures than speed, and that is fine. All that means is that a open source project will spring up to create a "streamlined" version that just browses the web, and does it fast.
Finkployd
Bill Gates: "Innovation"
There is a RFE for Roaming Access, check it out: bug 17048
Help is needed to get it started.
Markus
--
No, it's not. I've probably done ten or fifteen installs of IE5, and every time, I choose thee CUSTOM install option, which allows you to pick and choose whatever packages you need. You only need to download what you're going to use. The base install is only (I Think) 8mb, and that's all you need to download.
And with IE5--there is no active desktop to install...if you don't have it, you can't install it. (unless you choose to reinstall IE4)
Julius X
-Julius X
remove "-whatkindofspamdoyoutakemefor-" from email to send
The war isn't over yet as we still have that 18-25% that insist on using Netscrape. Why do they continue to use it? I wish I knew. But I'll guarantee that their reasons are political.
:o)
Not to mention practical - at home, I mostly (like 99.9% of the time) connect to the internet under Linux (because the only thing I do under Windows is play games). Makes it kind of hard to use IE
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
I'm excited to see that Mozilla is nearing completion. When it reaches a more stable state than current netscape, I'll switch.
:)
I also look forward to Opera. When I was a windows-user, my only browser was Opera. I wouldn't be without it. How Mozilla will compare to Opera -- well, time will show. It'll probably have more releases, more features, and so on.
Ohwell, time will show.
--
"Rune Kristian Viken" - arcade@kvine-nospam.sdal.com - arcade@efnet
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
Netscape 4.x needs replacing urgently if it is to catch up with IE.
Heck, I don't care about IE as its not available on Linux (as far as I know?:). I want a stable browser, and I want it now.
I do however think that Netscape has lost their windows market. More and more people buy computers, and netscape is NOT preinstalled. The result is that people learn that "internet equals internet explorer".
I'm afraid microsofts tactics have succeeded. They've beaten netscape in the windows market, and I don't think anything can make it different - except if netscape/mozilla suddenly becomes something *extremely* much better and featurefilled than IE. That, unfortunately, will not happen.
--
"Rune Kristian Viken" - arcade@kvine-nospam.sdal.com - arcade@efnet
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
The unofficial letter looks to be pretty similar to the Jan. 12 status update on mozilla.org. No big surprise here.
evidently you don't read very well. That executable indeed is not IE, DUHH!
I was just making the point that you only download the objects you are actually going to use.
However deranged MS' architecture may be, downloading one huge chunk of software called netscape communicator doesn't seem very smart either. It comes with all sorts of stuff you don't need or want to update straight away and there's no way you can avoid having to download it (except for getting it on cd of course).
But we weren't discussing architectures here we were discussing downloadsize. I made a point you missed it, sorry.
Jilles
That's only an issue if you *want* your browser to do everything. I don't know if I'm the typical Mac user at all, but I certainly don't want to use mail and news within my browser. I have separate mail and news programs that I really like, and that run *faster* than the ones built-in to my browser, so I don't need those capabilities in the browser at all and certainly wouldn't miss them.
Once JavaScript and CSS support are complete in iCab, and it's out of beta, I just might switch over to iCab as my primary browser. I really like the browser so far (speedy, non-bloated), but I need more stability than the betas have shown.
Of course, Mozilla might be so amazingly cool that I won't need to switch. We'll see. So far the milestone builds crash way too fast and it takes up too much HD space for me to do any extensive testing, though I'd like to test it more.
See http://www.icab.de/info.html for iCab's features -- it really is quite a bit beyond Netscape 2.0. (And you can see java applets with it, though I don't bother -- I haven't yet found a site that was worth turning java on.)
//
I'm afraid microsofts tactics have succeeded. They've beaten netscape in the windows market, and I don't think anything can make it different - except if netscape/mozilla suddenly becomes something *extremely* much better and featurefilled than IE. That, unfortunately, will not happen.
Even if it was better, even after the DOJ case - how many companies would actually pre-install it?
Not many I'm guessing...
You're forgetting something -- AOL. Here's a scary statistic: 54% of the people online in the US use AOL (this number is from a recent NY Times article on the merger). Now remember, the AOL client software has a built in web browser. Most AOL users use that.
Previously, AOL has agreed to use IE because it gets AOL a spot on the Windows desktop. But do you really think that MS would threaten to kick AOL off the Windows desktop over this issue in the middle of an antitrust trial?
--
This space unintentionally left unblank.
Don't worry about the GUI. It's just a skin. You can change it. Mozilla skins will be as common as themes. Just pick the one you like. I'm sure you will be able to get a classic Netscape skin, or even make it look like IE (To fool your PHB into thinking you are using the company approved browser.) Don't worry about the bloat. It's open source. If Mozilla or Netscape don't have browser only downloads somebody else will. The DOS window is just dogfood. It'll go away soon.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
...about which I sent a submission to Slashdot on January 13th, which was promptly rejected...
mykmelez wrote:
[ A marvelous sum-up of and response to recent Mozilla-related whining, including a proper skewering of the Windoze "Duh, what's a command line?" brigade and a great shot at Mac shallowness disguised as self-righteous ranting about "consistency", concluding with ]
Slashdot, heck, submit it to the folks at mozilla.org!!
A. N. Onymous says:
Well! A shallow Macintosher whining about "consistency" — that's certainly a change from all the Windozers complaining about the dreaded DOS BOX [dramatic organ chord] but it's no less thick.
Go worship at the altar of Cardinal Toolbox, Mr Anonymous — like the Neil Peart quoter elsewhere in the comments tree, I will choose free will.
Which version are you running? In M11 they made the GUI quite a bit faster, though the mail/news components were still fairly slow. In M12, it's as fast as 4.x under Linux and Windows for me.
sorry if this is a bad question, but could one of you tell me what it is?
john
-- john
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Let's say there's lot's of code already in place that uses Javascript to make sure the form fields are correct. In the banking industry, a misplaced decimal can make for a very unhappy customer, even if it's the customers fault. Older browsers and newer browsers with javascript problems suddenly become a huge headache.
I would agree with you if the site was blocking you because of aesthetics but I'm pretty sure that's not the case. More constructive criticism would be:
Don't let the browser do the error correction. Do it on the server side through your CGI
program where you have complete control.
--
A mind is a terrible thing to taste.
"A mind is a terrible thing to taste."
>> Do it on the server side through your CGI
>> program where you have complete control.
> That's usually not a great solution
> either. Doing it that way you wind up
> printing some sort of(hopefully
> non-cryptic) error message to the
> customers' browser, and you STILL
> haven't solved the problem. And the
> user is still messed up, often not
> understanding the error message.
I agree but it's still better than blocking the browser. The trick is writing useful error codes
--
A mind is a terrible thing to taste.
"A mind is a terrible thing to taste."
On both linux and windows, both arrow-key and mousewheel scrolling work fine.
All you need to do is click on the frame/window you want to scroll to give it focus. You may or may not be able to use tab to get focus. I'm not sure.
------
If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
Im running my own builds here, because of my very own library setup (manually current-made Slackware 3(?).0).
Im having debug disabled and optimizations enabled, and it is _really_ fast.
Bit of a pet peeve here, so bear with me:
Java script should never be necessary to use a site. Hotmail recently made it necessary, so I've quit recommending it.
Java script should only be an enhancement (for example, checking for proper syntax in form fields, or perhaps doing mouseovers). At all times, an ultra-dumb browser should be correct, if not pretty. This goes back to the argument that anyone who trusts the client to do the right thing deserves the reputation they'll get.
end of rant.
Oh, and with dynamically generated html, this is not that hard to do.
But ok. Maybe I'm talking out of my ass again. Can anyone suggest a web-solution that cannot be redesigned according to the above?
I've been using m12 for some time and I'm afraid it simply is not as usable as netscape at this time. I hope it improves (and i'm sure it will)
My biggest problem is that with netscape 4.7 on an i686 invoking netscape creates 2 processes (and more for additional windows) of 14M and about 8M of memory (according to the ever precise top :). Mozilla m12 starts with 4 processes each using about 20 meg, which quickly swell to about 40 meg each after a few minutes of browsing. I hope the extra memory is used for debugging and will be gone from thw final release, but I am horrified that Mozilla will suffer from the Netscape/AOL disease, that is: creating function after function w/o bothering to repair the current bugs or poor code. I have more faith in mozilla as assuming they wrote the code in a relatively modular fashion I should be able to remove the crap I do not need (read AIM, messenger, newsreader, etc, etc)
To be honest, I'm really excited about Gzilla.... I mean Armadillo
I am aware that there are glibc2.0 problems with Mozilla, which is why there are no glibc2.0 binaries available. Does anyone know if this problem has been resolved yet? Has anyone tried to compile Mozilla on glibc2.0 system? (such as debian slink)
//qrash
"Try not, Do, or Do not" - Yoda
you may find the Higgs in this signature.
Well, considering I can even (today) use lynx, and
set the browser string to "Mozilla 5.0", well, you
can't. I'm not even talking about wget, Python's
httplib or Perl's libwww or Tcl's (whatever) or
Guile's (something). Anyone with fourth a brain can get into any site he wants, if that site filters by broswer string.
Of course, simply stating you only *support* some versions of broswers (as in, our tech-support won't talk to clients with other browsers) is just too easy, isn't it?
ObMozilla: wonderful! Finally, the Free Software world is managing to get a decent, modern broswer.
I'll continue to use lynx myself.
I hated this deletion of incomplete downloads too. wget kicks a lot of ass in *nix, but for those of you condemned to windows, you can use wget for windows:
http://www.interlog.com/~tcharron/wg etwin.html
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
troll?? Every thing I do at work requires a web browser.... except when we're admining a web server.
These pretzels are making me thirsty.
> you because of aesthetics but I'm pretty sure
> that's not the case. More constructive criticism
> would be:
> Don't let the browser do the error correction.
> Do it on the server side through your CGI
> program where you have complete control.
That's usually not a great solution either. Doing it that way you wind up printing some sort of (hopefully non-cryptic) error message to the customers' browser, and you STILL haven't solved the problem. And the user is still messed up, often not understanding the error message.
That said, I work for a company providing Web based banking solutions to smaller institutions, and the only browsers we block (I know this; I wrote the code for it) are IE3 versions, because they won't support the security levels our solutions require.
I'm not feeling that clever this morning.
--
--
E2 IN2 IE?
My own, private worry over Mozilla is that it renders pages way too slow on my steadfast & sturdy 120MHz system. The artifacts produced when resizing, uncovering, etc are really quite visually distressing. For this reason alone I won't be using Mozilla as my primary browser.
Dan Peng wrote: "Coming from a Windows background, I'd really like to be able to access all my system configuration options from one application..." You pretty much can: vim :-)
full of cool and often buggy "features".
Like ActiveX? har har har
_________________________
I mean, if they hardly use it, then why Jon X. Doe should?
Everyone who wishes to support this great project and to advocate Open-Source in general should:
Get Mozilla
Install Mozilla
Brag about cool-new-browser to friends/co-workers, until the social pressure under which they exist will collopse their thin defense shields and... i said too much.
Just Get It!
To the fool, he who speaks wisdom will sound foolish. ---Euripides
I'm not sure that it's really the "overall conciseness of a design" that suffers in the Linux GUI. Most GUI tools that are available under Windows are available under Linux. The problem (as I see it) is putting it all together.
Coming from a Windows background, I'd really like to be able to access all my system configuration options from one application, like Control Panel, rather than having to do some stuff with linuxconf, other stuff with the Enlightenment configurator, other stuff with Xconfigurator or XF86Setup. linuxconf is extendable, so perhaps modules for that would work best. Plus, it's always nice if there are a curses or plain dumb-terminal front-ends for these tools also, so that I don't have to start X just to, for instance, alter my printer configuration (which RH's printtool really makes a lot easier than editing /etc/printcap); linuxconf seems to provide a curses front-end too. (This was not meant to turn into a linuxconf rant... but :-)
An API along the lines of OLE would be nice, although that does leaves me wondering what kinds of appliations I would use under Linux that OLE could possibly benefit. Still, regardless of whether OLE is useful or practical, Linux applications definitely need more consistent drag and drop support.
IMO, this lack of integration seems to be what suffers "when there isn't a widely known 'reference design' out there for people to model their coding efforts on." There needs to be some way to put tools together and some way to create standard API's, so that programs work together properly. Well, I guess that's what happens when "wandering coders can, well.. just wander through the code extending it."
Daniel J. Peng
Oh and BTW, if anybody can point me to solutions to these other somewhat annoying aspects of X, I'd be grateful:
Daniel J. Peng
True, but Mozilla isn't really in an "open the source" situation. It is being written over again from scratch as an open source project (not GPL, but plenty open enough). One of the biggest problems it had to start out with was that it was based on Motif, which is not free. That probably scared a lot of people away from contributing, at least at first before they switched to GTK (which set them back a bit--why the hell did they base it on Motif for, anyways?). And the codebase for this thing is so huge that you can't really just pick it up one weekend for fun.
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
Netscape IS Mozilla, Mozilla IS Netscape. NS 5 will incorporate Mozilla code, so AOL which switch whether they want to or not. And, I'll bet it'll be remarkably better than the previous versions once it's done. Besides, Mozilla has a much nicer interface than the older browsers--people might want to switch.
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
Some netscape guy ought to read this.
I don't agree with your opinion about personal toolbar though.
There is a discussion of the User-Agent string there, perhaps those fears could be added to the thread.
On the internet, no one knows you're a frog.
I wasn't. I'm using Windows.
I'm looking forward to this -- from what I understand, Mozilla will be far snappier than Netscape is, particularly on older machines with limited RAM.
I'm not so sure. I've tried M12 and the some of the latest nightly builds, but the user interface seems sluggish (on my P200). This is apparently because they use their own custom user interface rather than native operating system widgets and this slows things down.
Perhaps Microsoft should explain it. The window title and the icon on the Programs menu says "MS-DOS Prompt" in Win9x.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
is the behaviour not being mac like enough, beauty of the chrome is really "skin" deep.. mac user is expecting more, e.g. at least drag and drop should work and some descent mac like buttons should be used for the mac version. In the M12 nightly build, the scrollbar is even replaced by the mozilla scollbar, rather than the system scroll bar, this make a lot of mac user fairly unhappy. Especially when compared to the tight integration of IE5 on the Mac, a few users is going to switch..
And I have not yet talked about AQUA...
Don't get me wrong, I am still using NC and plan to use Mozilla when it's available, but the face of the project make us really nervous..
Testify!
Actualy, yes. about 65% of my work requires a web browser. The company I am employed by intigrates much of our tools into HTTP servers. If my browser keeps crashing everytime I try to launch a java applet, then I am not being productive.
Munky_v2
Jay
The issue that is causing companys to switch back to IE is that Navigator (even 4.06) is too buggy. It doesn't work with Java well, it does not properly support most Mmedia formats out of the box, and it crashes for no apparent reason way to often. At home I use Netscape out of dislike for MS, but I work I sometimes find myself using IE, because I do have work I have to get done.
Munky_v2
Jay
Asshole. I hope you wallow in your problems. You're obviously too lazy to investigate the reasons for the problem and too rude to take advice from others.
slashdot loads and behaves much better in IE than netscape. With netscape and threaded comments it puts you back at the top of the page, instead of where you left off. IE doesn't do that.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I just did a minimal install the other day and and the bare browser takes up about 6 or 7 meg. Add 4 meg for java if you choose to install that. Sure a full install with new fonts, media player, outlook and some plugins will take 50 meg. Don't spread your FUD around here.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Netscape 4.x needs replacing urgently if it is to catch up with IE. At my place of work most people have switch back to the evil exploder now as it is far more stable than netscrape.
As far as I am concerned, they are six months away or longer on this platform.
I bet the reason why you can log into your hotmail account is that mozilla doesn't have SSL (secured Socket Layers) built in. Damn crypto exports restrictions :(
!
^_^
If you can't trust the client, you can't trust the client. It's hopeless.
I mean, I suppose you could obfuscutate a secret return string in the code, and only use that one when connecting to your site... note that something like Mozilla is *required* for this, since each site has to have it's own hacked web-broswer (ick). It could still be defeated by reverse-engineering, and maybe even by a proxy unless you do some cryto hacks (not sure if SSL is sufficient, or if certificates will do it).
And Javascript, btw, is the Work Of The Devil.
Agreed ... Netscrape has to figure out some semblance of business plan before they move on. And although Mozilla is a noble idea, it has yet to be anything but a myth.
The war isn't over yet as we still have that 18-25% that insist on using Netscrape. Why do they continue to use it? I wish I knew. But I'll guarantee that their reasons are political.
Refusing to give in to Microsoft is noble. But holding onto and supporting an inferior product is not doing anybody any good. Even AOL, who owns Netscrape, uses IE.
Netscrape should do the right thing and put NN to sleep (like the boy in old yeller). Mozilla should continue, but with the foresight that their browser will be used for niche devices, and design accordingly.
I'm using Mozilla right now.. really, its pretty good. Oh, its got bugs, but thats to be expected. The groovy thing is, the bugs WILL ACTUALLY GET FIXED. No fooling. That totally blows me away. Most things seem to work, although I can't log into hotmail, it seems to ignore me when I press the login button. Grunt. I imagine if more people used it we would get a finished mozilla quicker. Hint hint =)
...no Gareth rocks, there's a difference! ;) Anyway good luck to the Mozilla team, it's my first ever download of their product today and it's brilliant. BTW this is on Windows unfortunately :( - however I'm impressed with the stability. BTW if you're running alladvantage in Windows to get a few extra pennies (i.e. a poor student like me who needs as much as you can get) you'll notice that it doesn't give you credit when browsing with Mozilla. However it detects the browser that you're using by checking it's titlebar. Therefore if you edit the file.\chrome\navigator\navigator.dtd and change the lines beginning !ENTITY mainWindow.title and titleModifier from Mozilla to Microsoft Internet Explorer (or probably also Netscape) then it'll still add up your credit while you're browsing using Mozilla.
I disagree. I don't think a browser should ship with a JVM. Rather, the JVM should be supplied by the OS (either built-in or as some sort of installed package). Java is not only for websites... There are whole Java Applications and non-Internet related Java-based tools.
And correct me if I'm wrong, but I think most OS's come with a JVM already (MacOS - MRJ, Win9X - MS JVM, Linux - Java SDK, etc). Java should be an Operating System service and the Browser should call upon that service to perform Java code.
If Mozilla can cause ps to be killed by signal 11 (segmentation violation) then that means either ps or the kernel is buggy. Or possibly your hardware. Probably it is a lack of checking the return value of malloc combined with a memory leak in Mozilla that is causing you problems.
It also means Mozilla is buggy, but we knew that already. It's not even alpha yet, of course it's buggy. It works pretty well for me, though.
I'm not speaking from experience, but I certainly would imagine that whatever sends "Mozilla 5.0" back as User Agent is just a string somewhere in the source, easily changed.
I seem to remember that wget has an option to change the User Agent to whatever you want, so even today, the method you mention doesn't REALLY guarantee sucess.
One possible solution might be to subject a browser to a quick series of queries, the response to which would be known ahead of time for a particular browser...not ever having dabbled in javascript, I don't really know how something like this would work.
Perhaps Mozilla's javascripting engine is a module or a plugin for which you could have a custom version used on your client's sites, but once again, not having delved into Mozilla code, I do not know how this works.
...and when is Malda going to give us real <pre> tags....
!##NETSCAPE
Netscape*drawingArea.translations:#merge\
<Btn1Down>:&nb sp;&nb sp;ArmLink()\n\
<Btn2Down>:&nb sp;&nb sp;ArmLink()\n\
~Shift<Btn1Up>: 
~Shift<Btn2Up>: 
&n bsp;&n bsp;DisarmLink()&n bsp;\n\
Shift<Btn1Up>: ActivateLink(save-only)\
&n bsp;&n bsp;DisarmLink()&n bsp;\n\
Shift<Btn2Up>: ActivateLink(save-only)\
&n bsp;&n bsp;DisarmLink()&n bsp;\n\
<Btn1Motion>:& nbsp;& nbsp;DisarmLinkIfMoved()\n\
<Btn2Motion>:& nbsp;& nbsp;DisarmLinkIfMoved()\n\
<Btn3Motion>:& nbsp;& nbsp;DisarmLinkIfMoved()\n\
<Motion>: 
<Btn3Down>:&nb sp;&nb sp;xfeDoPopup()\n\
<Btn3Up>: 
Ctrl<Btn4Down>:PageUp()\n\
Ctrl<Btn5Down>:PageDown()\ n\
Shift<Btn4Down>:LineUp()\n \
Shift<Btn5Down>:LineDown() \n\
None<Btn4Down>:LineU p()LineUp()LineUp()LineUp()LineUp()LineUp()\n\
None<Btn5Down>:LineD own()LineDown()LineDown()LineDown()LineDown()Line
Alt<Btn4Down>:xfeDoCommand (forward)\n\
Alt<Btn5Down>:xfeDoCommand (back)\n
Shift<Key>space:PageUp()\n\
<Key>space:PageDown()\n\
<Key>BackSpace:xfeDoComman d(back)\n\
!<Key>Left:xfeDoCommand(back)\n\
!<Key>Right:xfeDoCommand(forward )\n
Netscape*globalNonTextTranslations:#merge\
Shift<Btn4Down>:LineUp()\n\
Shift<Btn5Down>:LineDown()\n\
None<Btn4Down>:LineUp()LineUp()LineUp()LineUp()
None<Btn5Down>:LineDown()LineDown()LineDown()Li
Alt<Btn4Down>:xfeDoCommand(forward)\n\
Alt<Btn5Down>:xfeDoCommand(back)\n
Shift<Key>space:PageUp()\n\
<Key>space:PageDown()\n\
!<Key>BackSpace:xfeDoCommand(back)\n\
!<Key>Left:xfeDoCommand(back)\n\
!<Key>Right:xfeDoCommand(forward )\n
#Restricttherangeofsizeincrementsallowed&nbs p;by<fontsize=n>directivesto
#therange80%-120%ratherthan50%-& nbsp;210%.Defaultincrementis20.
#KMSelfWedDec2915:47:57PST1999
Netscape*documentFonts.sizeIncrement:05
#Cleanupthefsckingtoolbar
Netscape*toolBar.search.isEnabled:false
Netscape*toolBar.destinations.isEnabled:false
Netscape*toolBar.myshopping.isEnabled:false
Netscape*toolBar.viewSecurity.isEnabled:false
Netscape*toolBar.print.isEnabled:true
Netscape*toolBar.home.isEnabled:true
#Andsomeotherbraindamage
Netscape*useStdoutDialog:false
Netscape*useStderrDialog:false
Netscape*noAboutSplash:true
#Fonts--dialogsandsuch
Netscape*attachmentProps*XmLabelGadget.fontList
Netscape*AddressBook*mainform.fontList: fixed
Netscape*XmLGrid*fontList: fixed
Netscape*attachItemLabel*fontList: fixed
Netscape*prefs*fontList: fixed
Netscape*statusBar*fontList: fixed
#Documentfonts--scalingdoesn'tappearto takeeffectw/TTFfonts
Netscape*documentFonts.defaultFont*iso-8859-1.p
Netscape*documentFonts.defaultFont*iso-8859-1.f
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
First off, why the heck don't the arrow keys work to scroll up/down? When I'm looking at a story someplace, it's habit to just nonchalantly press the "down arrow" key a couple of times -- having to grab the mouse, mouse over to the sidebar and either click in the arrow or grab the scroll thingie is really annoying.
Second, anything that's gonna be my primary browser *must* have the security stuff built in so I can order stuff online or check my stocks. I know there are side-projects that have the encryption, but they all seem to be at different places designwise.
Mozilla's looking better, but it ain't ready for me yet and it definately isn't ready for Joe & Jane Consumer yet.
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Mozillas best chance is probably outside the wintel market, in alternative OS'es and as part of non-PC devices. The new Mozilla structure (and its status as open source) makes it easy to create specialized subsets, and port them to all sorts of devices. This may in fact end up being a lot more than a niche.
Their online banking system rejects all browsers but, like Netscape 3.x and 4.x, and IE 3.x, 4.x and 5.0x.
They say IE5.5 is in beta and won't be permitted on their site until it's publicly released. Which sucks, since the only way I can seem to uninstall IE 5.5 is by re-installing Windows. Grr. (God knows I've tried.) Good thing I have Netscape.
The reason, I'm surmising, is precisely what the other author mentioned -- support. The site uses a lot of JavaScript (mainly for keeping things secure, timing out sessions, and routing people between pages), but a lot more browsers out there would work fine, so I really don't see what the big deal is. Maybe they're just too cheap to get a few copies of other browsers and try them out.
Fortunately, Netscape under Linux works fine as well.
"Keep in mind, Mozilla does support Java. You can use Mozilla with any OJI-compliant VM. The benefits of this are clear:
- If you don't need Java, don't download it.
- If you already have Java, don't download it.
[etc...]"
That sounds remarkably like the Internet Explorer 5 installation. I think that's a good thing. You've basically described a componentised system unlike the current monolith of Netscape. The new architecture sounds promising and reasuring.
"- You can use multiple JVMs for development, testing, etc. "
That's fine if you're a software developer or a techie, but it's hardly an end-user feature. There must be a clear and simple standard as most end-user will quickly be turned off when they get message saying they can't access a web-site due to an incompatible JVM. Besides, in an *IDEAL* world, we wouldn't have to test with multiple JVMs because they wouldn't incomapatible (but how easy is it to reproduce all of Sun's bugs so that your JVM is compatible with their standard?)
"I find Sun's treatment of Java (i.e., pretending to support it as a standard, and then pulling out when everyone has been suckered in) a lot more disappointing"
I couldn't agree more. The excitement I felt when I discovered Java and it's possibilities has turned sour. Makes you wonder if the management team at Sun could score in a brothel, or organise a piss-up in a brewery.
"Please allow me the free will to make my own decisions"
That's fine and dandy, end-user's like choices. However, you're average end-user (you and I will be in a minority if Mozilla is successful) doesn't want to have to choose between 4 different JVM versions, or 3 different VRML versions. They just want to choose whether they have Java support, or VRML. IMHO, KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) is the best rule of thumb that can be applied to a software product. There needs to be a simple way for your average end-user to install the software where they can make a choice on the type of components they want. A more knowledgeable person such as yourself will still be able to achieve what they want too.
From reading the responses, it sounds like there will be a Mozilla distribution from Netscape. It sounds like that will ship with a JVM, etc.: my concern satisfied.
If you have something to protect, a server can never trust a client, whatever the environment. IMHO, that's just sound software development practice.
I've been using Mozilla as one of my primary browsers for several months now. The only real problem is that lots of sites don't work correctly with it, especially where Javascript is concerned. Sometimes is buggy code (sites that check for a 4.0 Netscape browser specifically) and sometimes it seems to be issues related to backwards compatibility with older versions of Netscape.
Unfortunately I hate to say the Windows version is a LOT more stable than the Linux version. I'm hoping thats not the case in the future. I'd hate Mozilla / Communicator 5.0 to be as crash prone as every other version Netscape's ever released for Unix.
At least now if Netscape can't get it right, at least someone else can fix it!
HELLO! Does the word "debug" mean anything to you? What about the word "alpha"? The reason mozilla opens a console window is because it is needed for debugging. The same goes for the 5MB download. A lot of it is debug code, and code for reporting the bugs, etc.
When was the last time you checked how big IE is? IE5 is at least 50MB. Netscape 4.x is about 17MB. Please don't compare a finished product to something that is not even beta.
This is exactly why I am against introducing the browser to anyone non-geek until it is finished. They will try it, hate it, and will think that it will always be like that. "Yeah, I tried it a long time ago, and it really sucked!"
--
Just install Junkbuster - the version at http://www.waldherr.org/junkbuster/ works well on Windows, and it's available on Linux, etc.
You can set the user-agent to whatever you want, just point IE5.5 at it.
As a bonus it can also block cookies and adverts, but these are configurable features.
The problem is that when a client can't access your website because their web browser is broken, they tend to think that your site is the problem. After all, their browser was fine until it hit your site. Just because we know that a browser should never crash for any input, doesn't mean that the average Win 9x user understands this. Simply telling them "Sorry, your problem" is a good way to lose a customer. Hence why we test sites on multiple platforms and browsers... Tedious, but necessary until people start demanding browsers that are standards compliant as well as (or better yet instead of) full of cool and often buggy "features".
Colin Scott If you build it, they will be dumb...
I'm running a P3 500 with 256 megs of RAM. It doesn't run *that* slow
:)
I'm running a P 200 with 32 MB and yes it does run that slow
Compared to other browsers (Netscape 4.x, opera) in linux and the ones I had when this used to be a Windows machine, Mozilla is the slowest by far. That needs to be fixed, but I have little to no hope for that. I imagine it will be a spinoff project that slims it down and speeds it up.
Finkployd
Bill Gates: "Innovation"
I'm looking forward to this -- from what I understand, Mozilla will be far snappier than Netscape is, particularly on older machines with limited RAM.
:)
Try it out and see if you find that to be the case. On my P200 32MB it runs about twice as SLOW as netscape 4.7, and I have little hope that will change.
Little hope, that is, until some of us get our hands on the final release code, and make it much faster and smaller. That is the beauty of open source
Finkployd
Bill Gates: "Innovation"
Well, according to your logic, all we need to do is bump the version to 7 to get back in the game right?...please.
Look, nothing is EVER over. IBM used to be the last word in computers right? The won and it was all over right? Unless you are really new to this whole computer thing, you should realize that NOBODY reigns forever. Something better always comes along and takes over. This works in favor of Mozilla, because it can improve at a much faster rate than IE can. Look at Linux, it has come a long way in a short time, whereas Windows has added some spiffy graphics, but they haven't innovated in years. The open source model will win out in the end simply because the alternatives cannot keep up.
So yes, IE is the number one browser for now. History shows that things will always change. Perhaps Opera will beat them both?
Finkployd
Bill Gates: "Innovation"
Additaionlly, whoever the dumbass was who decided that doing Javascript validation of user input (and yes I realize that new morons probably reinvent this scheme hourly) should be shot in the face in public. The idea that such validation is effective, or actually provides any measure of security or integrity is ludicrous.
"Cause there's 40 different shades of black, so many fortresses and ways to attack, so why you complainin'?"
Busness needs to start addressing it's own fears.
True if a clueless user dosn't recognise the defect is in his browser he may blame you for problems he experences.. However your not going to prevent this loss by telling the user you don't support his favoret browser..
Worse yet he MIGHT forgive you for a defect but not for the browser rejection....
If a clueful user runs into your website he will recognise the defect in his browser and put the blame where it belongs... He will NOT be so understanding if you tell him he has to use something else.
This isn't a unique problem.. many busness have illrational fears.. a single product (some times a Microsoft product but not allways) will have a defect and busness people fear it as if it were a wide spread problem.. Windows has GPFs so they fear Linux GPFs to spite the fact that none exist.
there is no easy way to address those fears. Often addressing them will just make the problem worse validating the original fear of it being a wide spread problem.
10 years form now some manager will be worrying about defects located only in MsIE6.2 when everyone is using NetZen 2.3 (NetZen was created long after MsIE develupment stopped.. yeah but the bug was fixed in 6.5 and NetZen is only in 2.3... But NetZen never HAD the bug.. Then why is it still 2.3 and not 6.5 if it dosn't have the bug)
The problem only HALF exists.. thats what makes it such a pain... Yes a bad Mozila clone with broken JavaScript COULD report itself as the codifyed Netscape 5.0... Or a Mosaic client could report it's MsIE 5.0... You just have to trust the user didn't tamper with the client... Konqueror lets you change this information from within the browser itself (no hexedit, no recomile..)
Any Client can report false information if a user wants it to.. Information is on the net on how to get MsIE and Netscape to clame to be something else.
Anyway if a user IS using a browser other than MsIE or Netscape chances are they allready have some clue... even knowing something else exists is a major bonus...
A manager who knows Netscape and IE arn't all there is and that some browsers have problems with JavaScript allready have a clue.. you can educate him from there..
Anyway chances are a user not using MsIE is clueful enough to know when it's a browser defect... but if you reject a browser you WILL lose busness...
I don't actually exist.
I'm looking forward to this -- from what I understand, Mozilla will be far snappier than Netscape is, particularly on older machines with limited RAM.
;-)
The fact that proprietary technologies had to be stripped from Netscape before the product was Open Sourced is a _feature_, IMHO. Sure, Java is nice, but I wonder when/if I've ever used ``Full Circle Talkbalk Software'', ``INSO International Proofreader'', ``Visibroker'', etc. Not to mention the unused features such as the newsreader (I prefer tin), the mail-reader (pine), and the composer (vim).
I've only got 64 Mb of RAM, and after using Netscape for a good 30 minutes or so, my entire system bogs down. It's either memory leaks in Netscape or leaks in E/GNOME. Judging from past experience with other windowing environments, it's likely Netscape doing the leaking.
Looking forward for the beta release (middle of February, wasn't it?)
This is pre alpha. That means there is probably still a lot of debugging code in it. Debugging code slows things waaaay down. Don't doom it before it's done, you can't judge a product by it's pre alpha quality.
You are right as far as wintel machines are considered. It's unlikely that a newby user running windows 98 will want to go to the traumatic experience of installing new software that will basically provide them with the same functionality they already have.
However there's a whole lot of other devices outthere that are also in need of browsers, Unix workstations are only a small part of that group. PDA's & mobile phones are going to be a big thing the coming years and it already looks like they won't be running CE&IE. So guess what browser those things will run. The fact that you can run essentially the same browser as on your desktop will be great for marketing these devices
Then there's also the good old settop box that will run linux or a similar cheap OS and will also need a browser. Many ISP's are considering to provide these devices to their new customers.
I think some people have estimated that the market for non wintel browsers will explode the coming few years and mozilla will have a huge headstart there.
That's only the non wintel side. On the wintel side ISPs are going to fall in love the way they can customize the browser they ship to their customers. With mozilla they will be able to integrate their specific services into the browser. You can probably do this to some extent with IE but you don't get the source code with that.
Some statistics, Dec 1999:
Internet Explorer: 78 %
Netscape: 18%
There's lies, big lies and statistics. What makes me suspicious is that:
A you don't provide a reference
B you don't tell how these statistics were gathered
C which versions these statistics apply too (ns 4.7 vs ie 5.0?)
About your comments on W2K. I might someday use it but certainly not on this machine (only 64 Mb). I once used Linux on a 486 with 8 Mb (it ran X windows too!).
I haven't heard about any features in W2K (except it's improved stability) that would make it worthwhile for me to upgrade to W2K (I only use the browser and some plugins, play quake, framemaker and Java). And since w98 is stable enough on my PC (at home) I don't really care to give it a try.
Jilles
I mean, even on a celeron the interface is kindda sluggish don't you think? And although the page rendering is MUCH improved from nutscrape 4.x, it is also sluggish compared to the silky smooth IE5 rendering.
Yeah, and a car without tires is going to be pretty slow, too.
People, you have to realize something here: Mozilla IS NOT DONE YET.
People keep saying Mozilla is "too big", or "too slow", or "too buggy" to be considered a production browser.
You know what? You're right. And the Mozilla people agree with you. It isn't production code. Or perhaps you missed the twenty or so warnings about this being an UNFINISHED product when you went to download it?
Any programmer will tell you that you finish the program first. Then you test it. Then you get rid of the bugs. Then you test it again. Then you get rid of more bugs. Then you test it again. Then you optimize it for speed, size, or whatever floats your boat. Then you test it some more. You keep doing that, until it becomes a finished product. Then you ship.
Analying Mozilla in a development state, with tons of debug code, dead code, and unoptimized code all over the place, and who-knows-how-many pieces still lying around on the floor, is just plain wrong.
I don't barge in on you and criticize you when your work is half done. Give the Mozilla folks the same chance, eh?
End of rant.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
To remove some toolbar buttons and add Find button, put this in your .Xdefaults and run "xrdb -merge .Xdefaults" (and restart Netscape):
Netscape*toolBar.search.isEnabled: false
Netscape*toolBar.destinations.isEnabled: false
Netscape*toolBar.myshopping.isEnabled: false
Netscape*toolBar.numUserCommands: 1
Netscape*toolBar.userCommand1.commandName: findInObject
Netscape*toolBar.userCommand1.labelString: Find
Netscape*toolBar.userCommand1.commandIcon: Find
I'm glad to see this is happening, it's been a long time, but Mozilla just keeps getting better and better. I've been using M11 as a replacment for Netscape (although all I use it for is to read offline GTK+ documents) and it's been brilliant.
We've come a long way, baby.
Sorry to break the news, but glibc2.0 will be around for a long, long time.
Tell me, how many years has Sun been trying to kill of SunOS 4.1.3? Doesn't Netscape still release binaries for it?
The moral of this story is: Now that linux is no longer a FRINGE OS, the old versions of it WILL live on and WILL need to be supported. It's no longer acceptable to release code for software that is expected to be used by everyone and design it so that it won't work on anything but the latest distribution of Linux that was released last month!
What we really need is for RedHat/Cygnus to update the GLIBC 2.0 code, fix the problems, release new RPMS, and get on with GLIBC2.2!
Mozilla will be the code upon which any number of "commercial" web browsers will be based. Netscape 5.0 will be the bigest, publicity-wise.
While Mozilla-proper will not support Java (or SSL), it does have in place the ability to snap in any Java VM that hooks into its API. Netscape will release its version of Mozilla with a Java VM built by Sun. If, for whatever reason, you don't like that VM, you will be able to snap another one in. (see http://www.mozilla.org/oji/ and http://www.mozilla.org/oji/oji-intro.html).
But when I download it, it still has more than 5 megs.
...
Last time I checked, IE 5 added aprox 120mb to whatever Win32 OS you decided to meld it into. Saying that Mozilla is bad because it's greater than 5mb is like saying you don't like this car getting 10mpg, when your current car takes 20gpm..
It still pops up a DOS window and does not have a nice design.
A CLI box is != a DOS window. There is no command.com, and there is no DOSVM. This is a debug window for developers.. "Pre-alpha" not have meaning in your personal lexicon?
As soon as the GUI gets faster (and nicer) Mozilla will be an option.
The GUI is slick right now, although there are annoying bugs of things not implemented. Most of the slowness is, again, due to debug code. "Pre-alpha"
If they don't release a public BETA VERY SOON, with a SETUP and a NICE FAST GUI, most people will stick to IE. And all efforts made have been wastedt.
People bitched about Nintendo not releasing their Super Nintendo at the same time as the Sega Genesis. I still bought and loved my Super Nintendo, as did millions of others. Why bitch about delaying, when it's clear from the pre-alpha version that the quality will be much greater than the current 5th gen browsers, in an open source form which allows greater flexibility?
---
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Unlike with the Linux kernel, even numbers in the minor quad for the glibc indicates a developer, or unstable, branch. I would not sooner advocate an unstable libc on a distro intended for consumer consumption, than I would advocate using Win 3.1 for running a heart and lung machine.
Please do not join in the usage of unstable code on consumer machines. This leads to bad impressions of Linux, as people are exposed to what should be developer-only problems.
---
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I mean, even on a celeron the interface is kindda sluggish don't you think? And although the page rendering is MUCH improved from nutscrape 4.x, it is also sluggish compared to the silky smooth IE5 rendering.
:P
:P
Now, I don't think anyone here is willing to state that the reason IE5 does silky smooth rendering is "cause microsoft integrated IE5 into the NT kernel, infact KERNEL32.DLL is going to be replaced with MSHTML.DLL" or that it's silky smooth cause "bill gates is casting voodoo magic or making deals with the devil".
Come on netscape, make it faster
If it's faster when it's released I'll eat my celery processor (mm crunchy), I'm betting it's not going to get much faster - perhaps less BLOATED memory wise tho.
BTW, I thought xpCOM was supposed to be a light version of COM
A site that `filters out browsers' is being unnecessarily aggressive against their own customers. It is difficult to stay in business when constantly telling your customer to shove it.
Perhaps you should try writing your web pages more conservatively? The best pages don't use java or javascript much anyways. That is, if one doesn't consider `the carnival experience' as a critera for being a good web page.
With the advent of Mozilla and its inevitable widespread usage, fears of dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of different "flavours" of Mozilla, with unknown problems (potentially) with JavaScript or perhaps other features that could cause support nightmares abound.
Very true. I've had the dubious pleasure of working with Javascript recently, and writing cross-browser (NS and IE), cross-platform (NS on different platforms) Javascript is a nightmare. It's not too much of an exaggeration to say that every implementation of Javascript has its own idiosyncrasies/bugs that make it necessary to test the JS on every platform you can get your hands on just to be sure that everything works, and then work around problems that arise if necessary.
With the open-sourcing of Mozilla, the problem has the potential to become exponentially worse if different companies/organizations release slightly different variants of Mozilla that break in slightly different ways.
I had already seen this on Mozilla.org's Newsbot. The information was posted on netscape.public.mozilla.seamonkey. You can read it on deja here.
I really hope page rendering gets improved in mozilla/netscape.
Being a webpage designer, the current version of netscape is a total nightmare to code for. It's pixel positioning is buggy to say the least, it's page rendering is still too slow, and it often crashes (especially in linux)
I only use it to make sure that my webpages display correctly for netscape users in windows and linux, and to browse HOWTO files
What I really hope mozilla turns into, is a functional 'non-bloatware' browser which renders flawlessley, is stable, fully supports CSS, DHTML, XML, PNG and runs faster than IE.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
In case you haven't noticed, Mozilla isn't really trying to win the "war", at least that's what my take on this whole issue is. From what I understand, the Mozilla project is aiming to create a browswer that is stable, fast, supports standards, and modular. Since Mozilla will/already have/has support for skins, it has the option of appearing like any other browser or something completely new. Personally, I really don't care whether IE or Opera or Konquerer or Mozilla or even Lynx wins the "war", I just want to use a browswer that is fast and stable and customizable. So far Mozilla isn't quite there yet, but it will be.
Mozilla is coming along. So far, so good. But when I download it, it still has more than 5 megs. It still pops up a DOS window and does not have a nice design. As soon as the GUI gets faster (and nicer) Mozilla will be an option. As long as that isn't given, I'll use Opera or IE. The real problem for the entire project might be Mozilla coming too late. If they don't release a public BETA VERY SOON, with a SETUP and a NICE FAST GUI, most people will stick to IE. And all efforts made have been wastedt.
yeah, yeah, this has been out since the 13th on Mozilla's news server but slightly off-topic, who else noticed the "MONDAY, JANUARY 10th, 192000" at the top of that page? ;)
I've been using Mozilla all the time lately. I downloaded the M12 release and started using that. I became so impressed that I now use the nightly builds. The more people using and testing the better. If you're running on of the less peopular platforms certainly consider running mozilla as there's less people to report bugs for your platform. If you're running on a platform where mozilla doesn't run consider helping get the program to run on your platform often this won't involve too much effort as a lot of the code is cross platform. Help whatever way you can and we'll be rewarded with an excellent browser.
--
Posted with Mozilla
I have looked at the latest build of Mozilla for the Macintosh, and I am very surprised that they are completely abandoning the MacOS Appearance Manager. Macintosh users are especially picky about having applications that are consistent in their look and feel, and the current Mozilla is about the worst offender I've ever seen.
I don't think that Mozilla stands a chance to penetrate the installed base of IE 5 on Windows, and I predict that the users of the 2nd largest "alternative platform" - users of MacOS - will eschew Mozilla/Netscape 5 unless they pay some attention to the user interface standards of the platform.
You've already mentioned the reasons that E-Commerce sites technically cannot and financially cannot afford to try and 'filter' out user-agents. As you note user-agent strings are not guranteed and can be faked, Opera on Win32 does this already for example. Really you are looking at this the wrong way, the only reason the 'javascript' and similair problems exist is because the standards were ignored or not properly implemented: so it's in e-commerce sites interests to push for standards to be fully complied with. Luckily Mozilla/SeaMonkey is the most compliant browser in existance. Technically the core bits of Mozilla such as the renderer and javascript engines are unlikey to change between different people building/developing it, these are really deep core bits: no doubt people will alter the front-end but this wouldn't effect your E-Commerce sites. Finally, the worry you cite should be spurious because a site shouldn't be dealing with client problems as long as it is standards compliant: if you can say 'my site complies with W3C standards blah, blah' then it's the client browsers problem to become compliant. So Mozilla could offfer you a way out of having to test your site against 5 different browsers/versions, it's an opportunity not a threat!
Simply telling them "Sorry, your problem" to lose a customer.
You will lose
a lot
more customers by simply telling them "Sorry, it is impossible for you to use our service". Being up front about the problems is the best solution, but it's almost never necessary. Face it: if you're doing something useful with Java or Javascript for anything, you're an idiot. Would you expect your accountant to say to you "I'll tell you what calculations to do, but you have to do them all. If you make a mistake, it's your own fault"? Probably (hopefully), you'd expect your accountant to actually do the calculations and check them over.
... or kindness that can kill. I will choose a path that's clear; I will choose free will!"
:) The above shows that the institutions in question are less concerned with browser compatibility and are more concerned with cutting costs.
(With apologies to Niel Peart)
One major concern of several of these institutions going forward is the issue of browser compatibility.
And well it should be. I hope said institutions work strongly towards favoring standards compliant software, and only produce standards compliant content.
These institutions are VERY concerned about being able to continue filtering out browsers (primarily older browsers or those with known JavaScript problems) from their sites to keep support costs down.
Well, so much for the theory that standards compliance was the issue.
Filtering on USER_AGENT strings to find JavaScript problems is like filtering on the brand of your car to find emissions problems! "She's got a Toyota, I'm sure she is okay. Oh-oh, a Dodge, fail that one!"
You need to tell these instituions that they are going about things all wrong. Browsers are supposed to be a commodity item, despite what Microsoft is striving for. You should be able to switch browsers at will, and assuming the browser implements everything correctly, have no problems. And if the browser doesn't work correctly, you switch to one that does. That is why keeping the browser market a commodity market is so important.
The fact of the matter is, you can modify your USER_AGENT string right now! You can hack the binary and do a direct replacement, or you can use any of a number of proxy servers which can change the USER_AGENT string to report anything you want. Depending on USER_AGENT is an extremely bone-headed maneuver. USER_AGENT is designed for human consumption only. Don't use it to make content decisions.
With the advent of Mozilla and its inevitable widespread usage, fears of dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of different "flavours" of Mozilla, with unknown problems (potentially) with JavaScript or perhaps other features that could cause support nightmares abound.
So say right up front, "We will not offer technical support, except for these browsers: X, Y, Z." That is to be expected. It is impossible for any company to test every possible program out there, and find which ones work and which ones do not. So if you've got a glitch, you have to make sure it isn't your software first. You do that by using a configuration the vendor has tested.
But trying to restrict access to a site based on the brand of browser is ludicris! Give us the free will to make our own choices, thank you very much. Don't let phantom fears about browser compatibility worry you.
(Sorry if I seem a bit miffed, but I am. As Tim Berners-Lee said so well, people who build pages built to work only on one kind of browser are hankering for the bad old days of computing, where a document produced by one system could not be read on another. We don't want to go there! We don't even want to get close. Stop the slide now, before you get deeper.)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
In my day job, I work for a company that helps to implement web sites for large banks and credit unions. One major concern of several of these institutions going forward is the issue of browser compatibility.
These institutions are VERY concerned about being able to continue filtering out browsers (primarily older browsers or those with known JavaScript problems) from their sites to keep support costs down.
With the advent of Mozilla and its inevitable widespread usage, fears of dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of different "flavours" of Mozilla, with unknown problems (potentially) with JavaScript or perhaps other features that could cause support nightmares abound.
Please, correct me if I haven't seen it yet, or I'm just plain ignorant to something, but what mechanism/process would an e-commerce site have to ensure that all those "Mozilla 5.0" User Agent strings are "clean" versions of Mozilla? Do you exclude these people from e-commerce sites for support reasons? Only allow people with "Netscape 5.0" User Agents? What if the popular "home brew" Mozilla distros decide to fake their user agent strings?
Just a thought or three. Any ideas?
From what I can see from the Mozilla FAQ (http://www.mozilla.org/docs/mozilla-faq.html), Mozilla will not contain Java as it is proprietary to Sun.
I find this rather disappointing. I understand the sentiments, but I don't think that a browser is fully functional without a JVM. The browser needs to be distributed with a JVM, or it's not good from a Java perspective.
I don't know why we're still stuck with Java 1.1 in browsers. Having Swing 1.1 on a local VM would be great (those JAR files are far too big to make using it in an Internet environment inpractical). Obviously Internet Explorer will not lead the way with a newer version of Java: Microsoft, with their attitude towards Java, will only update their VM when they have to compete with other major browsers. If Mozilla doesn't normally ship with a JVM, it will not be a major competitor to IE on the Java front.
There are still a number of items that would prevent me from using Mozilla on a regular basis.
IMAP Mail: there are still numerous bugs with the mail/news component. I use a Cyrus IMAP server and support for it has only been added in recent days. Since this is my primary e-mail client, it must be stable.
SSL: I use S/IMAP and S/MIME, and connect to several secure sites. I can't use Mozilla for any of this due to the encryption export restrictions. I will have to wait for Netscape 5.0 - I hope??
Java: the Java implementation is not complete and only available on a couple of platforms. Netscape 5.0 again?
Roaming Access: I also use HTTP-based roaming access to retrieve my preferences at work and at home. This is a feature I do not want to give up.
Some of these features are not available in IE and I admit that I am a power user, but I don't see how I can use Mozilla given these requirements.
I hope the 5.0 release will give me the missing features, otherwise I will have to remain with 4.x until they are available.
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.
Lately, this has been a growing trend, even with large sites. I can understand sites not supporting Netscape 2.x, but I have seen many sites that refuse to work with Opera 3.61, which supports just about everything one needs (including HTML 3.2, Java, Flash, and anything else that is available as a Netscape plugin.)
If the page looks like crap in my browser, it is up to me to decide not to view it! Don't protect me from myself, please!
--
This IS part of the official Mozilla status report. Nice to see it get some widespread publicity though.
http://www.mozilla.org/statusIt is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
(slightly OT)
I'm really looking forward to a full release of Mozilla since it'll finally mean a stable graphical browser for Linux (right?). But, having used Netscape browsers for so long, there's a few bugs/features that I'm worried will still be around to bother me. So I'd like to list my irks with Netscape and anyone who has used the most recent milestones can tell me (and all of us) if Mozilla still does them. The reason I don't just try it myself is that it requires glibc2.1 which I don't have and can't upgrade to. (please don't reply just telling me to upgrade / use LD_LIBRARY_PATH, etc, I've heard it before) Thank you.
1. Blocking DNS lookups. Why is it that UNIX Netscapes have always shut down every single browser window while it's doing a name lookup? I mean, WTF?!?!?!
2. Deleting incomplete downloads. With Netscape it's always been that if you're downloading, say, a 50MB game demo and your ISP kicks you off when you have about 49MB, you're just %$#@ed, cuz it deletes the partial file. I imagine this is to "protect" clueless users from their own stupidity, but it'd be nice if there was at least a toggle for it, or even better, a continue option.
3. Cursor keys in the location bar. The guys at Netscape probably think this is a feature instead of a bug. I click in the location bar, put in a URL, hit Enter. The page loads. I've read the first screenful and want to scroll down, so I hit the down arrow or PgDn. Buuuuuut, my cursor is still in the location bar so instead of scrolling, I go whizzing back to some seemingly random site from my location history. AAAAAAAARGH!!! %$#@!!!
I'd settle for being able to toggle the drop-down feature of the location bar.
4. The "Personal Toolbar Folder". Ugh, this is just lame. Why can't I just remove it from my bookmarks and be done with it? Why does Netscape feel such an urgent need to burden my bookmark list with a folder full of crap I won't use?
5. Copious number of toolbar buttons. With auto load images off, 4.7 has 11 toolbar buttons. And since Stop is way off to the right, I have to either browse with a really wide window or do show toolbar buttons as pictures only. It would be SOOOOO nice to be able to choose which of these buttons I really need. (and to have back the Find button, that was far more useful than Shop or My Netscape)
6. Resizing causes the page to reload. I don't know why, but on some sites, if you resize the browser window, Netscape feels the need to reload the whole thing. This is another WTF?!?!?! kind of thing.
MoNsTeR
C: Mozilla is not as good as my favorite production browser.
A: Mozilla is pre-alpha software. It is not supposed to be as good as your favorite production browser. It is supposed to be as good as your favorite production browser back when it was pre-alpha, so please do post comparisons if you used pre-alpha versions of IE, Navigator, or Opera.
C: Mozilla is too slow.
A: Mozilla is pre-alpha software. It is supposed to be slow at this stage of its development per the industry-standard practices of building features first and optimizing them later, including debugging code in software being debugged, etc. You might better phrase this complaint as "Mozilla is being built using software engineering best practices rather than according to my personal list of priorities."
C: I hate X about Netscape Navigator.
A: Mozilla is a completely different code-base and is conceptually very different than Netscape Navigator. Many of the problems with Navigator do not exist in Mozilla (f.e. too many extraneous toolbar buttons). Mozilla is also an open-source project, which means anyone (the AOL/Netscape company, Microsoft, Richard Stallman, you) can download the source and build their own browser.
C: Mozilla is too ugly.
A: Mozilla's interface is completely skinnable (down to the existence, placement, and content of toolbars, menus, buttons, dialog boxes, etc.) so you are free to make it look however you want. Besides the default skin a number of people are spending their valuable time creating alternate skins so you actually won't have to lift a finger to have a pretty Mozilla as long as you like one of the alternate skins. Otherwise, sorry, you will have to lift a finger.
C: Mozilla does not/will not contain Java.
A: Mozilla already supports Java on some platforms and will sport complete support for the latest versions of Java in its production release.
C: Mozilla pops up a DOS window on me.
A: Mozilla binary builds are created by the project team so everyone who wants to can help test and debug the software. The DOS window is an important part of this process. Notices are posted on the web site and the ftp server that Mozilla does not have any anything of interest to a non-developer available for download. You are a developer interested in helping to debug the software right?
C: Mozilla doesn't/won't have SSL, encryption, etc.
A: Mozilla can't add this stuff into the open-source browser because of US export control laws, but Netscape is going to add it into the Netscape-branded version of Mozilla they release. Third parties outside the US may also add encryption to the Mozilla source code base to produce a browser with strong encryption capabilities available around the world (more than can be said for Navigator or IE).
C: Mozilla on the Mac does not look like a Mac application.
A: W3C standards require all HTML to be styleable, including GUI widgets. This cannot be done with native widgets on the Mac, hence Mozilla must use its own styleable widgets for all GUI components in web pages. Mozilla has also chosen to use the same widget set to construct its user interface. Besides extensive skinnability, Mozilla recently added a technology called XBL to improve the native look and feel of the application.
C: I don't want to lift a finger to use Mozilla. I just want a fast, bug-free, pretty, featureful browser.
A: Wait until the production release.
C: I haven't downloaded any [recent] version of Mozilla, nor have I bothered to visit the web page recently, but Mozilla still sucks.
A: ?
Mozillans: Reply with corrections/additions and I'll add them to the next version I post next time a Mozilla article comes out on Slashdot.
From what I can see... Mozilla will not contain Java as it is proprietary to Sun.
:)
Mozilla will not include Sun's JVM in the main distribution, because Sun won't let them. Sun's JVM license is too restrictive, and Sun seems to be doing everything in their power to make sure the rest of Java is as equally well controlled by them.
Keep in mind, Mozilla does support Java. You can use Mozilla with any OJI-compliant VM. The benefits of this are clear:
- If you don't need Java, don't download it.
- If you already have Java, don't download it.
- If you do need it but don't have it, download it along with the Mozilla package. You don't waste any download time, as you'd have to download it anyway if they bundled it.
- If Mozilla is updated, you don't need to re-download the JVM.
- If the JVM is updated, you don't need to re-download Mozilla.
- You can use multiple JVMs for development, testing, etc.
- The JVM becomes a commodity product, able to be replaced at will. That is a Good Thing.
I find this rather disappointing.
I find Sun's treatment of Java (i.e., pretending to support it as a standard, and then pulling out when everyone has been suckered in) a lot more disappointing.
I understand the sentiments, but I don't think that a browser is fully functional without a JVM The browser needs to be distributed with a JVM, or it's not good from a Java perspective.
The browser needs to be distributed with Shockwave Flash, or it's not good from a Flash perspective.
The browser needs to be distributed with a VRML viewer, or it's not good from a VRML perspective.
The browser needs to be distributed with Windows, or it's not good from a Microsoft perspective.
As far as I am concerned, that argument is highly bogus. Please allow me the free will to make my own decisions, thank you very much.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.