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Mozilla Milestone 15
[TWD]insomnia writes "Mozilla M15 is out on their FTP site. It seems already a bit faster than M14 and Netscape 6 PR1. " Not in woody yet (blatant hint ;)
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I see a better way then. Have what it opens to be fully configurable (you choose default: homepage, blankpage, or currentpage), but also allow the new window to inherit the history one step behind (at your discretion [this is configurable too]). Best of both worlds. Any other reasons?
IIRC from the last thread when NS PR1 came out it was stated that DHTML is different because in Mozilla it is based strictly on the W3C standard while NS 4.x and IE have made their proprietary extentions and only have part of the DHTML standard supported. Mozilla is more standards compliant, on all fronts, but this breaks backwards compatability on many pages, the upside is that once they are coded around the actual standard (who woulda' thunk?) this kind of thing won't happen again.
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
You're right, some of the other application packages available that use Mozilla XPToolkit technology are faster (e.g. Aphrodite, Sullivan etc) because their style sheets are significantly simpler.
One of the problems with the current skin is that it is huge, style wise - many rules for the different components of the UI (grey menubar menus, blue personal toolbar menus, different types of buttons etc), all of which are read into one large soup of style rules, which must be traversed (looking for matches) when resolving style for elements as the content is built (or is changed). This style resolution is a contributor to some of the UI sluggishness you may have seen.
Once the foundations of skinnability are in place (which is one of my current tasks), we will work to produce a simpler skin that should see some subtle but noticable performance improvements!
Thanks,
Ben Goodger
mozilla.org UI lead
--
The shareholder is always right.
Not really. It's intended to display to the spec (just like any other browser) but still messes up quite often. Most of www.gmx.de gets cut off, articles linked to from slashdot get jumbled, etc. Yes, it's open source, so these bugs get fixed in a reasonable amount of time, but mozilla isn't anywhere near being able to claim standards compliance.
Following the specs to the letter isn't such a great idea anyway, even when they're not contradicting each other and themselves. According to Ian Hickson, image alt text is supposed to be displayed as normal text, with nothing distinguishing it from page text, unless the page specifies how broken images are supposed to be displayed. And, oh, the spec for how to say how broken images are displayed will be in the NEXT version of CSS for website developers who don't want to use mozilla-specific code. Very few webpages with broken or slashdotted images look good in mozilla as a result, and layout is completely messed up even when width= and height= are specified.
It's like one dynamic living document... I love it.
Yeah, it's cool, as long as you have a dual 1Ghz box. (I'm sure it will start getting faster quickly once the features solidify a little more.)
It's a platform, not a program.
So why does the security still suck? (see my sig)
--
The shareholder is always right.
PIII 450 128M Voodoo3AGP running (woefully) Win98.
About the ball:
Mozilla M15 (from:ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/r eleases/m15/) Build 2000041805 a 5339K download without the talkback client.
Impressions:
[1] Downloading the program is fast. Getting a browser, mail and news in under 6M (1254 files), is impressive.
[2] click Mozilla.exe --> open browser == 11 seconds. Cool.
[3] Moving my mouse along the pull down menus, considerable lag when I hover over bookmarks (prolly from the 985 bookmarks:).
[4] Pulled down QA and loded the smoke tests. all OK.
[5] Loaded the aphrodite skin. The GO button is a few pixels to low on the tool bar but, It all works well.
[6] Loaded the Sullivan skin. The back ground color looks like something changed. M15 has a darker grey than the background on the buttons.
[7] Loaded xml.com Alert: "the connection was refused when attempting to contact adforce.imgis.com". There's a dialog for every time an image doesn't load. had to press OK 8 times.
[8] Fast...ohmygod fast. Loaded the Jargon file v4.2.0 Jargon.html file from my local drive (2.16M) and saw it on the screen in less than 2 seconds!
[9] Clean interface, standards compliant, and ohmygod fast.
[10] My best regards to the entire Mozilla team and to all that help them with this wonderfull platform. Your quality work shows in all that you do. To those of you who have been waiting for a working browser before you start your mozilla development project . . .come and get it! !
___
TechWeb has a review of Netscape 6, preview 1. It's not very flattering. Some quotes:
"Netscape 6 PR1 is far from ready for prime time, however. It's not even close-- yet."
"If things remain the same, AOL might succeed at doing to Netscape Navigator and the ever-popular Lizard (Mozilla) what Microsoft (stock: MSFT) and its Internet Explorer were never able to do -- kill it."
Harsh words -- but in line with many people's experiences that have posted here on Slashdot in the past.
It will be interesting to see if they can get the problems worked out and make it a competitive browser.
--
I am playing with Linux nightly build. It is newer and buggier than M15, which is likely rolled off into another line a week or two before.
The speed is definately picking up... I remember waiting for form pulldowns to draw... It's very close to the same league as NS4.7, and it's doing a SHITLOAD more.
The KILLER APP is the UI overhaul themes... I played with a few last night... If you DONT LIKE MOZILLA NOW, WAIT FOR THE NEW THEMES... A lot of the sluggishness is due to the sidebars and the moving crap and shit... Stuff like the ANDREW theme or whatever the fuck it's called makes things SIGNIFICANTLY faster...
I know because i tried them. =P
It displays most pages right.
It never knows when to stop moving the throbber.
And if you jack up the DPI setting in preferences, you can actually read the fonts.
No java in the nightlies, oh well.
It works much better than before, has replaced NS4.7 for me, remembers preferences well, behaves well, and is ACTUALLY GETTING FASTER... I can see what this will become and I seriously like it.
(faster as in, it is usable on my 400/128 assuming the X server is given a relatively high priority)
Oh yeah, the little turquoise pulldown next to the address bar with the down arrow is really damn sweet... mozilla has POTENTIAL... I like it.
-troll taker
I believe the code for automatic address-completion went in a couple days ago. It's probably not turned on or something.
Mozzy has password remembering already set up. It works okay. The mailer is radically better than previously. Javascript works. Most webpages work pretty well.
It will be better at web-FTP than IE5 for windows, which was the MOST IRRITATING thing I have ever seen. (it turned it into a file folder, but drag and drop didn't work, so you needed to Right Click, Copy To Folder, then do some GODFORSAKEN SHIT to get it to save... that option went off REAL FAST)
Mozilla knows how to download shit and save and open local files now.
Mozzy starts up without dying now. The initial load is very sluggish, like everything else. If it is in cache, it starts up very very quickly.
The biggest gripe is focus issues... They're still fruity and it is far too easy for focus to go into the void, leaving you with a useless shell.
The extras and the obscene flexibility of the UI definition language will make this a seriously cool thing... If you can't imagine how cool something this flexible will be, then that's sad.
It's like one dynamic living document... I love it.
So the colors suck. Deal. You can change them later. A theme manager will likely be set up in a few more months..
It displays shit correctly, to the spec... There are workarounds for shitty HTML like slashdots...
It remembers your homepage, it remembers all sorts of shit now. Except that goddamn default toolbar. Oh well.
Most of what sucks about mozilla is being fixed or can be changed by you... That's what i like about it. And it is free after all.
And stop bitching about the extra features... The editor and the mail program and all that shit are basically hyper-dynamic webpages. The size is probably going to be like 10MB compressed for EVERYTHING that mozzy does when it gets to netscape release... that includes all SORTS of shit plus new java.
/me shrugs... It's really not that bad folks. And it will continue to get better as long as AOL keeps dumping enormous amounts of money into the project.... And we all start learning how to design better (faster/more effective) user interfaces for mozilla faster...
It's a platform, not a program.
-troll taker
Look at the Mozilla dinosaur icon -- it looks identical to Gojira (aka Godzilla). THIS IS PLAGIARISM. Gojira (aka Godzilla) existed DECADES before the Internet was ever created, let alone the Mozilla project. And don't tell me this is just a coincidence; the name "Mozilla" is obviously intended to sound like "Godzilla". Copyright and trademark law prevents the use of similar names and logos when they are likely to confuse consumers. Well, if I was a consumer, I'd be damned confused -- a browser named "Mozilla" with a dinosaur mascot sure sounds like it's endorsed by Tojo, Inc. This is not true.
Why this has not been acted on is a mystery to me. The "Mozilla" dinosaur clearly violates Tojo, Inc's copyright on Gojira (aka Godzilla. C'mon, guys, how about choosing something a little more original -- like, say, a ferret? How many ferrets out there do you see as corporate mascots? Huh?
This post will act as an unofficial petition to the Mozilla developers to select a new mascot that does not resemble Gojira (aka Godzilla). Simply reply to this message if you want to add your name to the list.
Yu Suzuki
Yu Suzuki
Deamcast. It's thinking.