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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."
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.