Slashdot Mirror
Netscape 6/Mozilla Beta Release in 25 Days
liber wrote to us with the press release on Yahoo! regarding the upcoming release of Netscape 6, aka Mozilla. It's a beta, not a full release, but the piece does a good job of talking about consumer anticipation, as well as the big companies that are behind it. Don't wait until the crowd hits. Get started now.
We all need a new browser. Netscrape crashes all the time, especially with JAVA. Maybe, if we /. mozilla, beat the shit out of it, and contribut fixes/bug reports, it might get stable and be usable.
Lets download mozilla and run it, beat on it, help fix it. Maybe the /. effect could help to make it an alternative?
sig removed to protect the innocent and guilty!
1) I had problems with the "Mn" release.
2) You should try the nightly builds! They're great!
3) I had problems with the "Mn+1" release.
4) You should try the nightly builds! They're great!
...
56) I had problems with Netscape 6.23 Service Pack 4
57) You should try the nightly builds! They're great!
Remember microsoft's heavy handed overraction and the brute force they used to try to push Netscape out of business when they decided that a web browse was a threat to their monopoly simply because it ran java applets and supported plugins. Wow how are they going to react when they see the possibilities that Mozilla provides as a cross platform base for developing really cool apps. If you don't understand what I'm saying do a little research and you will see that Mozilla is really as much like a web browser as Emacs is a text editor. Check out XMLTerm for an example of what is possible.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
In fact, I've just seen the M14 Mozilla release, and I see it very promising. It didn't crash so fast as previos releases (though I didn't try it on various "dangerous" sites, only on my regular sites), and rendering is good.
Javascript still acts weirdly, and UI needs improvement, and it's hell slow, but I see many improvements - charset support, dynamic rendering, etc. - over present Netscape. So it can be expected that beta will bing some at least semi-usable browser.
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Yep, I'm afraid I have to agree here. I've been using M14 as my primary browser recently, and although it's far, far better than the previous versions I'd looked at (M10/M11), it's still not at the point where I'd say it was ready for public release, even as a beta. It still crashes occasionally, without warning, and comletely unreproducably (this is on Win32, admittedly :-) Still, it's showing a lot of promise. I just hope AOL/NSCP know what they're letting themselves in for with a beta release of this quality. The MS-sympathetic parts of the press are going to give them a really hard time unless things rapidly improve over the next month.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
If I remember correctly, Gecko is the new HTML rendering engine of Mozilla/Netscape 6 (wait a minute... but in that case, what was Seamonkey? Oh well, gone to http://www.mozilla.org to read the FAQ...).
You bring up a good point. It makes sense for Mozilla to be open-source because its success lies entirely on platform-diversity. If Linux fails to de-homoginize the OS market, Mozilla fails as well. If Linux succeeds, IE fails, since it is so Windows-centric. Yes, Mozilla may not be the best choice for everyone today, but as soon as non-IE browsers eat up more than half of the market share, web page content-providers will have to fall back on some sort of generally-accessable standard. And that standard will always be clean scriptless, pluginless HTML.
And I concede, Mozilla isn't good enough to make everyone want to switch on its own merits. Speed and resource-wize, it's comparable to IE. And being able to do things like ActiveX are good selling points for IE.
But Mozilla can wait until the climate is right for it to dominate. The code is out there. Frankly, I don't care if Netscape(TM) doesn't make any money off Netscape. If the company collapses, and Navigator is deemed a failure. I mean, basicly Netscape is a dead company. Their only source of revenue is their sucky portal. Oh, and their soon-to-be-demolished-by-Apache-2.0 server. I have already mourned the loss of Netscape. Fortunately, there's a lot of code that's out there and can be taken for future projects. Good code, too! So, when the time comes where cross-platform HTML becomes the standard again, Mozilla will be there, waiting. When the playing field is leveled, the true beauty of Mozilla will emerge.
No, it's alpha quality -- and soon beta.
I agree, there is a lot of hype. Then again Mozilla is/will be the first browser with full support for the latest W3C specifications. Mozilla is/will be fast compared to the majority of other browsers. So there is hype. But there is also code.
When this beta comes out, thousands will rush to download and install it, only to switch back to their old browser a few days later as they get frustrated with the slow performance and inevitable crashes. It's a crying shame as otherwise it looks like a good browser - maybe the next attempt will get it right. And as much as we all hate Microsoft, at least Internet Explorer works and is compliant with all but the latest W3C standards.
I doubt I'll bother with this release, but I'm looking foward to the day when we see a great browser for Linux which delivers performance rather than hype. Thank you.
If you are looking for a Linux browser, then don't mention MSIE. Face it.. at least Mozilla *runs* on Linux. Perhaps Mozilla will not be the best browser for the Windows platform soon, but please name one browser for Linux that is better than Mozilla (other than Lynx or w3m) and I'll be happy to give it a try.
By the way, it's terribly immature to bitch about someone's code, especially when they offer you to improve it. If you seriously have issues with Mozilla, go to Bugzilla and file some bug reports. I did, and got very neat responses as well as bugfixes.
Please *do* bother with this release, it will improve the next.
I'd have to disagree. I think its quite stable. It needs a lot of work though, as do most beta projects. The two main things that niggle me is the huge memory footprint (although I realise this is likely to drop when debug stuff is removed) and the lack of browser only binaries. If there *was* a browser only I probably would have switched by now. But, the mozilla guys are doing well, and I'll be first in line for the beta relase.
Now weary traveller, rest your head. For just like me, you're utterly dead.
[Sound of loud guffaws]
Soon? Soon?
[Sound of loud guffaws]
Opera for Linux is still early alpha; it doesn't even support animated gifs yet.
Steven E. Ehrbar
There's an important point here which I don't think any of the other follow-ups have picked up on: cross platform user interfaces are hard.
Its not trivial, as many people seem to believe, to "just go down to the native widgets". While the widget sets on different platforms are similar, they differ significantly in many ways, and some (notably Motif) are very limited. This is precisely what the Java AWT attempted, and as we've seen, user interfaces produced this way are limited, dull, and generally clunky to use.
This is exactly why the original Netscape went for completely separate user interface code for every platform. The trouble with that, of course, is that n separate user interfaces are hard to maintain, and inevitably functionality starts to drift into the UI code.
The option Mozilla has adopted - and Swing, most Smalltalk implementations, and almost every other attempt to create X-platform UI have also ended up with - is to draw the user interface in some way completely independant of the platform. Mozilla is particularly interesting in using web-like technologies to do it.
Of course, there is still a problem. People who are especially fond of their native UI get offended (surprised there haven't been any 'it's not like a Mac' posts yet), and its arguably less performant, though I don't see how that can be. If Gecko is fast, surely XPFE is fast too ?
how many more times can you mention "revolutionary" or "next generation" in a press release? The only feature I really want is stability. All those new features sound cool and I really like the look and feel of mozilla, but all of that is not as important as stability. After all, I'd like to use the application on a daily basis and not just drool about the cool features...
Go and download a nightly build and give it a try. If it crashes or has annoying bugs, report them and download a new one a few days later.
.xml for example). I guess there's going to be a lot more of that as time goes by :-)
:-) and that's a big improvement - though I still wouldn't try anything too fancy when I've got a form up (e.g., hitting back and forward and expecting to still have your field contents intact.)
It does crash, but you now have to work at it. I'm doing about 1/2 my browsing with Mozilla now, which I'd say is a pretty significant benchmark. Interesting thing: I've run across about 5-6 sites that you *need* Mozilla for (any page ending with
Mozilla is quite a bit smaller than Netscape 7 and it now loads faster, though not yet nearly as fast as Konqueror or Opera.)
I can post to Slashdot with reasonable confidence I won't lose my text
There are minor formatting problems that vary a lot from build to build. I downloaded my first skin yesterday (aphrodite - looks good). Memory usage has improved a lot, but it's still got a ways to go. The bugs are down to a short enough list that it's worth keeping track of them and sending them in.
I can remember when the browser's scrolling had a one second delay and the whole UI was sticky. Now it's really fast at least on Win32.
It's fast on Linux too.
I'm absolutely positive that Mozilla will be a success.
There's no question about that. I also have a feeling that the serious hacking on Mozilla is only going to start after Netscape 6 forks off officially. Then I think you'll see a lot more latitude for *real* changes and improvements to the user interface - beyond just skins and standards - because that narrow focus on just getting the thing out the door will be gone, and the netscape team won't be so protective about the feature set (I hope I hope I hope).
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Of course, the Gecko layout engine seems much more stable than the rest, so maybe Netscape 6 will actually just use that. (Whatever happened to Gecko embeddings in Tk, GTK, and other toolkits?)
M14 is impressive, but I think it's still quite far away from being mature enough for a consumer release, even a beta. If they release too early, that could further damage the reputation of open source.
send flames > /dev/null
Only 'flamers' flame!
It sounds like you're saying that the HTML parser and ECMAscript parser are all one piece, rather than separate components. Is this the case? Can web pages under Mozilla use scripting languages other than ECMAscript (e.g., Perl or Python), like under Internet Explorer, or would they need a plug-in?
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
1. When the debugging code is taken out, will it run faster/suck less memory, etc?
Well, it's hardly likely to run slower and use more memory, is it?
2. Are they going to get rid of the ugly, glitzy and only semi-functional interface in favor of, say, something with a working multi-level back button, drop-down address list and non-rounded menus?
The current UI is really just a test one. Two new ones have already been written in XUL: see ChromeZone.
3. Is the sidebar going away, please?
View | Sidebar. Magic.
Gerv
You see, when writing a cross-platform application, especially as big as Mozilla, running on som many platforms, you'll want, nay need, to reduce the platform dependent code to an absolute minimum. Given the incredibly cool, fast, standard compliant, cross-platform rederer that Gecko is, they thought: "Why not use it to render the UI as well?" So they came up with XUL (eXtensible User interface Language), which is just an XML DTD, and some suitable CSS to display the whole lot. (Just browse the chrome/ subdirectory of your mozilla installation to see for yourself)
And, while the current Mozilla has the same skin for all platforms, i'd expect Netscape to ship the final versions with a MacOS skin for the Mac version, a Windows skin for the Windows version, etc... It's just a matter of replacing the CSS.
As to websites re-skinning your browser, i've seen it mentioned by some Mozilla developer (and would be shocked see anything else), that it'd be a pref option (never, prompt, always; and in prompt mode, it'd have an "always/never for this site" option) And someone could probably write a plugin that checks for a skin with the same name as your GTK/windowmanager theme and skins mozilla accordingly (this already exists for xmms/enlightenment, IIRC).
So it's not just the ultimate fluff, Mozilla is just partially written "in itself" for portability/cross-platform reasons.
© ilmari. All rights reserved, all wrongs reversed
Well, when you try to shoehorn a reference where it doesn't fit, SOMETHING'S got to give!
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
> I wish it would behave like other GTK program so I could give one theme and it would cooperate with me so theme writers don't have to port their themes twenty times after they change something
.themerc and use whatever parts applied to it.
Yes, we need a standard for themes (XML?), so that any cooperative themable "software device" could read your
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> If you had, you'd know that mozilla is fully compliant with CSS1 and html. CSS2 compliancy is partial
No problem, just run DeCSS and any residual CSS issues will just go away.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Sorry, I'm not an expert. Probably you can plug them in if you write some wrapper for it.
Jilles
mozilla is the entire browser (mail, news, GUI, browser). Gecko is the component that does the actual browsing (displaying HTML, executing javascripts etc.). The html rendering component can be embedded in other environments, even IE would be no problem.
Jilles
I understand your frustration with Netscape not working with CSS and the newer HTML standards out there, but it is coming. If you stick to accepted standards you won't be locking your clients in for 4 or 5 years. They can use IE for now, then switch to Netscape/Mozilla or Opera or whatever else might be down the road when it becomes available.
However, I have absolutely no sympathy for you not wanting to learn and use JavaScript instead of VBScript. It never has been nor will be a standard, it was intended to be platform dependent, and has many basic security flaws.
If you're using a tool like VBScript just to make a quick buck on an application that has a projected lifespan of 4 to 5 years you're simply not being an ethical programmer. The Web will change, browsers will change, OSs will come and go, and if your app needs to last you need to take the time to build it right, work to common standards (even if they're lower) and be honest with your customer about what the Web can and can't do. You need to give them something that actually has a chance to last and still be relevant until the end of its projected lifespan. If they're not willing to listen to and pay for that, upgrade your skills and go somewhere else. Let them sink without your complicity.
I actually DO have an SMP-box, which I have
run most nightly releases since M13 on.
(dual celeron on BP6)
It works very well, it's still not
ready for release, and it isn't even ready
for beta. However, it WILL be ready for beta
when it ships as beta.
I thought Netscape 5 was coming soon - I guess that got scrapped and we're heading straight to 6? Sorta like the Slackware 4 -> 7 jump...
The one thing I hate about my netscraper now is that I'll go to type in a URL (say: www.foobar.org), and after I've typed "www.", I hit 'f' and "www.f" all dissapears, so I'm left with oobar.org...
That and I can't unselect components from the full communicator install (previous versions let me). I refuse to use the NS mail/news clients, since they bungled them so badly - but of course, I can't install anything without everything... bah!
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
It's especially good on a page like /. over a slow link. It's one thing at home over a cable modem, but ona dial-up or work link.... slow..... and again... slow for no reason...
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
I don't have this problem with Netcape on my AIX or Mandrake box, but it does happen on 95,98, and NT (that silly autocompletion thing must be killing me). Of course, it is kind of nice, considering I type 's' and hit return, since it's already filled in slashdot.org. Ayeeeeeeeee only shows a list of things to page down (which could be better at times), but doesn't really complete properly... oh well until it can read my mind, I can only suggest improvements (and try to fix them in Mozilla).
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
True, the 3.x and 4.x versions were close enough that that worked. Version numbering for the sake of version numbering is dumb, but so it the general populous (the same one whose word processor is Windows, and internet provider is Netscape....)
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
That's arrogant. The world must conform to Mozilla? Like that's going to happen. If the next version of Netscape is incompatible with the previous version, no one will want to design pages for it. All existing websites will look stupid in it, so people will not want to use it. "IE displays sites correctly," after all.
I do report bugs to bugzilla. And the bugs I report include things like "displays table wider than 200 pixels regardless of 'width="200"' being specified." And "Javascript/DHTML do not work, even though same code works in NS 4+ and IE4+." If Mozilla requires a totally different HTML than what currently exists, and what IE and NS use, then screw it.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Javascript that works fine in Netscape 4.x and IE 4.x and 5.x flubs on Mozilla. And the layout is wrong, and slow. I'm not trying to be a naysayer, but i do not relish the idea of having to go make all my web sites "Mozilla compatible (TM)".
Because it's always the webmaster's fault. Even if the browser pokes itself in the eye.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Fraid not. If you've taken a look at the site recently, like for instance here, it has been made pretty clear that M15 of mozilla will be the netscape commercial beta. As for the funky numbering, there are two theories on that floating around: one, posted earlier by Col. Klink, says that Netscape 5 was the origonal OS browser developed prior to Mozilla and Gecko. The other theory says that Netscape is playing the revision jumping game to make it sound like they're keeping up with the Jonses (or in this case, the Gateses). Either way, the NS browser being built is the one on Mozilla.org. It'll be given a lot of polishing and (hopefully) a lot more bug fixes before it gets out of the back room, but it will still be Mozilla. The basis for the branding, integrated AOL IM, and everything else is already in there, either visible in M14 or lurking in the code.
Okay, at least on Win32, Mozilla is finally running about as stable and lo-mem as IE5. It crashes much less and is actually somewhat fast.
/., and I just have to say that y'all must really really be suffering with the atrocious state of web browsing under Linux to think that Mozilla is as good as many of you make it out to be. (Not to mention the fact that no one disputs that the Win32 version is the most stable! I can't imagine Mozilla on Linux. Well, ok, maybe I can--it's probably something like Netscape in Unix...)
/., when they're always returned back the top of an article everytime they click a link in the comments or read responses below their threshold, is a mystery to me. This is beyond inexcusible. I'm not even sure if it isn't beyond laughable. Perhaps pathetic is word I'm looking for. I know that this is a bug they've identified and plan on fixing, but I really hope for their sake that it's a showstopper before they declare Mozilla beta.
I have to respectfully disagree there, unless the nightly builds have somehow made tremendous stability progress since M14. I bit the bullet and downloaded at M14, since I'd heard so many good things about Mozilla on
M14 is an impressive achievement, and contains many thoughtful, well implemented ideas that will really improve the browsing experience if they're contained in a stable framework. In my experience (albeit limited and on only one, slightly idiosyncratic, machine), M14 was nowhere near as stable as IE5. Indeed, I wouldn't even consider comparing the stability of the two programs.
In about an hour of playing around with M14, I managed to crash it no less than 6 times, not including multiplicities when I was testing to see if my crashes were reproducible. (One, involving both an incorrect rendering and a hard crash on the slashdot home page, was reproducible under several different circumstances. Yes, I reported it, and although it's an awesome system, it must be said that bugzilla is very intimidating for first-time users.) I managed on two occasions to magically lose my back arrow, and despite the much-touted new rendering engine, I ran into several rendering errors. (No, they were not caused by incompatible pages; Mozilla would incorrectly render the pages inconsistently.)
Furthermore, the little autofeedback-on-crash tool that's supposed to pop up with every crash never worked; it froze (recoverable through ctrl-alt-delete) every time. Dude, when even your crash-reporting tool always crashes, you've got problems.
That is to say, you're not at the beta level yet.
Now, maybe I'm just spoiled because the only other public beta I've really participated in has been the very high-quality Q3:Arena tests. On the other hand, no, I'm not. Maybe those of you who've had to make do with Netscape for Unix don't realize this, but browsers--in sharp contrast to, say, Q3:Arena--are designed (or ought to be) to run full-time, in multiple instances, with complete stability and low overhead. IE5 is very certainly not perfect in these respects (low overhead especially), but it does an immeasurably better job of this than Mozilla appears capable of. It loads up very quickly (yeah, that's just because it loads up with the OS...but with the way I use my computer (and indeed, with the way most people with persistant net connections--an increasing percentage of the populace--use their computers), that's a much better way of doing things, and I'd say Mozilla has close to no chance of capturing my desktop if it requires the long wait and splash screen to start-up. I mean, of course I could just stick a copy of Mozilla in my StartUp directory, but...eh, whatever.)
Back to IE: it's amazingly modularized, and works quite well in that capacity. Case in point, GuruNet (or Flyswat), two little programs that sit in your taskbar and will find definitions, synonyms, and other information for any word in any program that you Alt-click on. Both use a componentized version of IE, and both run transparently without affecting stability or sucking up too terribly much memory (although that could stand to be improved). Examples like this abound.
And finally, it's quite stable. Yes, IE5 crashes from time to time, sometimes taking down the whole OS. In Win98. However, IE5 is still running full-time in Win2000, which has remarkable stability. (From what I've heard, it's at least on par with KDE or Gnome on Linux, much more so if you run Linux Netscape. Now, sure, a Win2000 reboot is worse than just restarting KDE or Gnome, if your computer is acting as a server or something...but then you shouldn't be using it as a desktop anyways.) In Win2000, you can spawn 5 copies of IE, have a couple IE-based components running in the background, and browse to your heart's content without much risk of crashing. Mozilla is very very far from that, to say the least.
Finally, IE5 is faster. Yeah, there's still debugging code in Mozilla, and optimizations need to be made, but IE5 is much much faster. Don't believe me, then take your web connection out of the equation: check how much faster IE5 renders pages out of the cache. Easily an order of magnitude.
And finally, the back button in Mozilla still doesn't work. How on earth Netscape users manage to browse
Uch, so I've ranted for quite some time now, but the point is, Mozilla is going to be most people's first taste of open-source. (Well, except for all the things they use every day they surf the internet but don't realize, like Apache, Sendmail, Perl, BSD/Linux, etc. Their first taste of open-source on their own machines, say.) If it's declared beta in anywhere near its current state (much less *released* in anything resembling its current state), it will probably be their last for some time. Netscape/AOL/Mozilla/whoever really shouldn't rush this, and the open source community developing Mozilla really ought to realize just how much better the competition really is.
"4. When will the widgets ever look like they're supposed to?"
;)
I'm working on this right now. New widgets designed in XBL have come online recently and we just need to convert the front end to use them (e.g. titledbutton is being replaced by button, which looks like the examples on that page). Quirks aside, the new widgets are kicking ass. "Download a nightly build" if you want to see some of the conversion that has been done
-Ben Goodger
FE Geek, Netscape.
Tha isn't even just an inconvenience, or sloppy code, it's a freaking nightmare.
If you're trying to do any real session tracking, for things like testing, where students are only allowed to see a question once, the resizing issue is HUGE.
It isn't necessary, and creates some major issues for web developers. It's high time that SOMEONE over there figured this out and figured out how to resize a freaking window properly.
Actually, I thought that the credo was "early and often." :) Marketing or no marketing, getting this (highly usable) alpha into the hands of more people, *MORE TESTERS*, is definitely a Good Thing (tm). If the use a press release to flush out a few thousand more beta testers, more power to them. I've been using the latest Mozilla since it was released and it's nice enough now, destined for greatness certainly. It already runs faster than IE does in a lot of respects. When Navigator 6.0 hits the streets, it'll be a mofo :) Chris
Personal experience: I've attempted to use various incarnations of the milestone builds on Solaris, Irix, and Linux. The Solaris build has died every time I've attempted to run it. I think I could probably get the Irix build running except for the latest standard GTK libs I built don't have the same soname as the ones the milestone is built against (!). I did finally manage to get M14 running on Linux. Try running HTML 4.0 with CSS1/CSS2 through it sometime though - bet you don't get 5 pages through it before it dies. Seems to me that the browser is about as stable as group I elements in water ;)
I do have to admit though that for the most part M14 did what I expected it to; it is still lacking in some of the standards areas but in that respect it is way ahead of IE5.
I though some of the more recent milestone builds (circa 12 & 13) were a little slow, certainly slower than IE5, that was until I tried a build that had the message logging functions removed (these are presumably testing tools to help catch bugs etc and will not be standard in the production release) WOW! It was fast, certainly faster than IE5. As for crashes I've never had it crash on me (unless you count the times the imbedded activeX gecko control has crashed in the program I've been writing). It isn't my primary web browser (yet) but I have used it a fair bit. I can't wait for the beta release.
kWhen kis kde kgoing ktokstop kputting "k" kin kfront kof keverything ? kMaybe kI kwould ktry KDE kout kif ksuch kwas knot kthe kase. kEven kMicros~1 kdoesn't kuse ksuch kstupid kterminology. kI *ksuspect* kthat kthe khead kdeveloper's kname kstarts kwith ka "k"
Lars -
If you dont believe me I cant stand the purdies just go to my website lol. About as plain as they come :-)
Being impartial has little to do with trolling.
Slashdot must be one of the more frequently tested sites with Mozilla.
;-)
And if you get the "Aphrodite" skin, you'll get slashdot as one of the default sites on your personal task bar...
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
Mozilla looks horrible.
They'd better start working on some nice themes, because the default looks are crap. And so tells every friend I show Mozilla. I know that it's cute and looks like Netscape's portal, but it's just not pretty.
I downloaded and installed M14 last week (decided to put my money where my mouth is).   Go here to pick up a new GUI for your Mozilla.   This is one of the new features with this browser - changeable "skins".   There are only 2 out there right now and I'm using the one called "Aphrodite" (which is alot less "loud" then the "Fruity gum"), but this is what supposedly makes Mozilla different from the rest - modular enough to change your interface!   More info on this can be found at Mozillazine.
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
But I doubt it will be because they're using Mozilla. Or Netscape Communicator/Navigator/whatever. Mozilla started out as a good idea. But they took the idea too far, and got way too much of a case of featureitis. The main culprit: the skinnable GUI.
Skins are Good Things, mind you. If they're used properly; that is, on simple GUI's. Take MP3 players, for example. What can you do with an MP3 player? Let's see... play, pause, fast-forward, rewind... maybe a couple sound-related options. But all in all, not a complex thing, and as long as you make the buttons identifiable pretty much any interface will work well.
But skins don't scale. Wrap a skin around something as complex as a Web browser and you start having some serious issues. Consider:
- Consistency. MP3 players are one thing. But if start up something as big as a Web browser on MacOS, I want it to look like a Mac app. If I start it on Windows, I want it to look like Windows. And if I start it in Gnome, I want it to look like my other Gnome apps. While skins can provide a partial solution, there's no practical way to make it follow the changes I make (consider GTK themes to be a prime example; I can change my GTK theme to BlueSteel and get a BlueSteel Mozilla skin, but if I change the GTK theme my Mozilla skin won't change with it).
- Performance. Gecko is blindingly fast, but the rest of Mozilla is slow. I can launch Netscape 3.0 faster on a P90 than I can launch Mozilla on a G3/300, and I've timed this before so I know what I'm talking about. This isn't as much of a problem with small GUI's, but again the problem is one of scale; stick it on a Web browser and the issues that were minor on a small GUI will come back to bite you hard.
- Interface control. This one's actually unique to Mozilla, because of another nice little feature they added: Websites can change a user's skin. I'll pass. The possibilities of exploits notwithstanding, once I have a skin I like I'd rather keep it that way.
It's a pity. Mozilla could have been The Next Big Thing, even with the cross-platform GUI libs (which could still have gone down to OS-native widgets). But then they had to go and build in the ultimate fluff: a cross-platform skinning engine, and then they had to go and build it in before the rest of the product was even ready. That was their one mistake, and I believe it may well be a fatal one. I have nothing but respect for the Mozilla team; they've made a fine program given the specs. But ultimately, I think Mozilla will be treated only as a proof-of-concept. People will still use Gecko, of course. But it'll be embedded into OS-native browsers for that task. Gnome users will have it in Nautilus (and who knows? maybe the KDE folks will put it into the next Konqueror). NeoPlanet will take it on Windoze. And for MacOS? I don't know. NeoPlanet might do it again; there are rumors that they'll be porting and using the Mozilla engine. If not, there's always the WebThing project.It's a shame, but it proves the old adage: a jack-of-all-trades is master of none. Nonetheless, I'll probably use Netscape until something better that uses Gecko comes along.
The OJI, the necessary portion to do a Java plugin, is available at Blackdown. It works with
Netscape... the same technology works with the Windows version of Mozilla, so why no Java on Linux Mozilla?
Not that I'd cry if the world forgot about Java applets. The VisualWorks smalltalk plugin for Linux sounds very interesting.
Okay, at least on Win32, Mozilla is finally running about as stable and lo-mem as IE5. It crashes much less and is actually somewhat fast.
I have a few questions about how it will turn out, though:
1. When the debugging code is taken out, will it run faster/suck less memory, etc?
2. Are they going to get rid of the ugly, glitzy and only semi-functional interface in favor of, say, something with a working multi-level back button, drop-down address list and non-rounded menus? Don't get me wrong, the UI can be sleek, but mockable is a different story altogether.
3. Is the sidebar going away, please?
4. When will the widgets ever look like they're supposed to?
(see
http://www.mozilla.org/xpfe/nsGFXWidgets.html
to see what I mean.)
Anyone who can lend some insight into these minor yet somewhat crucial issues, I would appriciate it.
I'm using the nightly builds quite often and although there has been a lot of progress the last months, Mozilla would not yet be accepted as browser by the masses.
A few of the issues:
Mozilla looks horrible.
They'd better start working on some nice themes, because the default looks are crap. And so tells every friend I show Mozilla. I know that it's cute and looks like Netscape's portal, but it's just not pretty.
Mozilla crashes too often.
Don't let the Beta1 progress list fool you: these are only release-stopping bugs. There *are* tons of other serious ones that need to be addressed first.
Mozilla is not MSIE.
Harsh as it is, this *is* a problem. Even if Mozilla is better than MSIE, a lot of users will not even try it. MSIE does it's job good enough and the general public doesn't care about ethics (yet).
And there's probably even more...
But, Mozilla is open source so we can all help and address these issues. Mozilla is very cross-platform. Mozilla might/should/will? replace MSIE as browser component for AOL and gain instant market share. Other manufacturers can also ship Mozilla or even plain Gecko as browser component without paying a Microsoft fee.
Mozilla will do just fine. Thanks, developers.
Have you reported reproducable bugs on BugZilla? (I have, they were fixed, it was neat). Have you downloaded the source and submitted patches? Sitting and whining works great for closed source (where there's not much you can do anyway), but it's worse than useless for open source software. The source is out there, the bug database is wide open, get on with it.
You have obviously not tried any of the
later nightly releases. It is already
on par with Netscape 4.72 when it comes to
stability, and it isn't even beta yet.
It is _very_ usable, and you somehow imply that
Mozilla/netscape 6.0 won't comply with the standards.
This is just plain wrong.
AND... this is an announcement of a "beta".
If you do truly mission-critical stuff, you
would never use a beta.
The whole concept of beta, means not finished.
It is allowed to contain bugs.
However... beta means a very usable, if not
incredible stable release, and Netscape 4.72
is neither, so Netscape 6.0 beta would probably
be A LOT better for us Linuxusers.
When it comes to windowsusers:
stick with your IE 5.x for now, but when Netscape
6.0 is finished, upgrade.
The standars-complience will be better, and the
browser faster and lighter.
I appreciate your "cold shower" kind of thinking,
but it just goes to far, and ends up being something that could have come out of Microsoft.
I agree that the hype has been great, but the
progress made by the mozilla team is incredible.
The only thing that keeps Netscape 4.72 on my
harddrive right now, is that Mozilla still doesn't
support java. It should be included well before
release though.
This is complete speculation, but I think it is a plausible scenario.
Navigator 6 will contain the Gecko layout engine developed by Mozilla, but it will not be the Mozilla browser. I'm assuming that AOL/Netscape has been working on a parallel browser effort, using some Mozilla components. Navigator 6 is supposed to contain an integrated AOL Instant Messenger and porobably some other features that AOL thinks will give it the leg up on IE5 (aside from a bigger version number!).
Navigator 5 is most likely the version number for the plain-vanilla Mozilla browser without the bells and whistles. Ultimately, this is a dead project since only a minority (mainly Slashdot readers) would choose the plain version over the tricked-out Navigator 6...
I would like to make the comment that Netscape 6 is going beta in 25 days, not Mozilla. They are similar, but aren't the same. Mozilla still has a while to go before it hits beta (my guess). It's Netscape, not Mozilla!!! Anyone can release anything based on Mozilla and call it what they want, thus the case with Netscape.
Native widgets were not flexible enough for CSS1/2. They had to write their own widget, and why keep the native libraries for what? Scrolling? It's clearly better in the long run to just eat the development time, and write your own platform indepedent widget rather than keep 4 native widgets, while implementing your own. The skinnablity of Mozilla wasn't probaly that difficult to add concidering they had to write their own widget within specifications anyway.
:-( This hurts.
/. and it just died from all the select objects that loaded on the page.
,dreams as Mozilla desperately hacks a last attempt at a good browser?
I am doing some contract work just developing an intranet. FreeBSD/Apache/Php4/PostgreSQL For the server platform. (I need triggers MySQL people!)
My heartache comes in when I have to select a client. You see there is not much of a choice honestly. I can pick Netscape 4.x Which has somewhat lacking support for a LOT of goodies I like to use. Just standard CSS/DHTML/HTML4.0 that it cant even handle. And on the scripting side VBScript seems to play the nicest out of all scripting languages. It stops me from having to change coding mindframes when im doing VB/Delphi work.
The point is If you pick something IE4 is the way to go. Ive encountered some *nasty* problems with IE 4 and 5 and some Nasty problems with NS 4.x. Im at a rock and a hard place because they will be using this app for the next 4 to 5 years locking them into an investment with IE. What can I do I need to make money and im not gonna sacrifice some useability features AND time coding to make it work with Netscape I refuse.
I think this is happening a whole lot in RAD application development projects. It also locks people inevtiably into a windows platform when you throw ActiveX and stuff closer tied to windows.
I think I would jump on the Mozilla 6 band wagon Immediately if they could really put up some stable competition. But Ive used it and its crap. I tried to moderate on
*sigh* Im watching some fairly good dreams become just that
Jeremy
If you want to help, and own a Mac, mozilla.org could really do with your services testing each daily build. This is vital, as each build must be checked for basic functionality before the tree can reopen so people can go on working. We have enough Linux and Windows people, but no Mac people. This means that some days, the reopening of the tree is delayed an hour or more while someone is found from inside Netscape.
So, if you have a Mac and the spare time (under an hour, if all goes well), please come to irc.mozilla.org at 8am PST (ish), 4pm GMT in channel #smoketest.
Gerv
I am the KeyMaster!
XUL!!!
just couldn't resist...
//Phizzy
"Most European technology just isn't worth our stealing," -- Former CIA chief James Woolsey, referring to Echelon
Is it just me or did that article sound like a press release straight from netscape with no effort put in to remove the mindless netscape drivel in order to create a balanced article? Whats Next?
Yahoo Reports
Microsoft Corp has announced that Bill Gates has ascended to the right hand of the God today. This ascendence took place at the Gazeebo of the Rock located in the heart of Microsoft's Redmond campus. Microsoft urges its shareholders not worry about the loss of the chairman since he will reportedly descend from heaven with the divine inspiration for all future MS products. First among these will be IE 6.0 which, in a stunning announcement from MS, is going to be released to beta testers in 24 days.
CEO Steve Ballmer replied to all questions about the new product at a press conference saying, "IE6 will be a new paradigm in web browsers. It will be a cadillac of browsers, large and roomy with many features." When asked about some of these magnificent features Ballmer replied by saying, "Ummm... well... It has a wonderful soothing blue screen which appears at regular intervals to calm the user and prevent them from over-working themselves. We will also be including that cute paperclip into IE because everyone loves it so much."
Confirmation of divine intervention in Microsoft's product line was made by Pope John Paul II as he stood on a pile of unrelated money. The Pope was reported as saying "Direct divine intervention is the only thing that could give Microsoft high quality products." The pope then returned to writing his next sermon on his Jesux workstation.
Source: Microsoft Corporation
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
Internet Explorer works and is compliant with all but the latest W3C standards
:)
:-)
Forgot to mention this in my first reply
Here's what happens in the real world when browsers collide in W3C standards testing:
Click here for test results
As you can see, last September's version of Mozilla completely trounces MSIE 5 (and Opera, and Navigator 4.7, not that that's hard).
Apologies in advance to the page owner if they get Slashdotted
Many people have pointed out how M14 is unstable and how there's still so many bugs in Mozilla. As I've been testing many milestones and nightly builds, I'd like to tell a few things about how Mozilla has developed.
First of all. Don't run that M14 milestone any more. Go and download a nightly build and give it a try. If it crashes or has annoying bugs, report them and download a new one a few days later. Some builds are really keepers. They are nice and stable. Some builds may have more bugs.
There's also been lots of improvements in Mozilla. M12 or M13 choke on Slashdot. Incremental table rendering was a nightmare. A long Slashdot page could take minutes. But in the beginning of this year Netscape got it right. Slashdot is loading nicely and most pages I often visit work perfectly. Actually I use Mozilla way more than Netscape 4 already.
Someone also got moderated to 5 - insightful for bashing Mozilla's skins. It's pretty weird as he really didn't give any hard facs. It was just opinions. Well Mozilla is really skinnable. You can make Mozilla act and look like whatever you want. And it's not only about looks, it's also about functionality. And the most important is that thanks to skins Mozilla is really cross platform. The bonus is that we don't have to wait for Linux ports or curse the differences between platforms. Mozilla will really be the same on Win32, Linux, Mac, BSD, you name it. And when there's tens of different skins for Mozilla after a year, there should be absolutely no reason not to like skins.
Memory footprint and speed? The newsgroups are slow and Mozilla still eats a bit too memory. But I can remember when the browser's scrolling had a one second delay and the whole UI was sticky. Now it's really fast at least on Win32. So what makes you think that those slow parts won't be fixed?
I'm absolutely positive that Mozilla will be a success.
It's quite obvious you haven't tried any of the nightly builds or the milestone releases. If you had, you'd know that mozilla is fully compliant with CSS1 and html. CSS2 compliancy is partial, but it's better than microsoft's incorrect implimentation.
As for "slow performance," optimization is at the bottom of the list, behind getting things feature-complete and getting to zarro boogs. Besides, mozilla _is_ fast. But you haven't tried it, remember?
As for "inevitable crashes," I dare you to state that IE never crashes. I also dare you to say that _beta_ software never crashes. Besides, mozilla doesn't crash that much. But you haven't tried it.
As for bugs, there is a massive public database that anyone can access to report bugs. Several of the bugs I have reported have been fixed, and several more are being worked on. Again, this is old hat to mozilla regulars... but you haven't tried it.
Hype is one thing, but in this case there are avenues to decide for yourself exactly what the product is like.