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Mozilla M17 Is Out
As the title says - Mozilla M17 is out. Release notes are available at that Web page as well. As usual - please test it and submit bug reports.. (please note: this is NOT the nightly build that was posted here previously). Update: I just got note that Netscape 6.0 PR2 is also out. Netscape bug reports should be reported here only!
The PR2 release is a complete disservice to the mozilla.org community. There are really two products here, the Mozilla browser and the Commercial browser. The Mozilla browser is a very fine product. The Commercial browser is a steaming pile of shit. Unfortunately, Mozilla.org, the makers of the Mozilla browser, are going to get skewered by Slashdot and trade press magazines because the Commercial browser, which is made by AOL, is such a joke.
Why is the commercial browser so lame? From out site of the walls at AOL/Netscape, I can only guess. But I can tell you that as an active tester of the Mozilla browser, Netscape Product Development Team's bug-fixing priorities are infuriating. Hours before the release of this PR2, I filed two "smoketest blocker" bugs. This is the most severe kind of bug, and should have prevented the release of the browser. A blocker is a bug which prevents the browser from passing the defined smoketests. These are tests of basic functionality. Not passing these tests means that the browser is not ready for release.
These two serious bugs were marked, by AOL/Netscape people, as "MOZ ONLY", which essentially means "to hell with you we're releasing the product anyway." Of course, the product is released, and the Linux installer doesn't work at all if you have bash2, and the browser will dump core if you try to load ftp.netscape.com in a particular way.
The quality control process at AOL/Netscape has completely failed. They do not follow the quality guidelines of the Mozilla project, as defined on the Mozilla web site. By releasing the Commercial product in such a sorry state, they have embarrased everyone who works so hard on Mozilla, and I suspect that they have lowered morale across the entire project.
Shame on you Netscape.
- ftp ftpi.netscape.com
- cd
/pub/netscape6/long obvious path/
- grab all the files (recursivly) including the xli and lps directories
- set up a FTP server locally to mirror above directory structure
- edit hosts file on machines to install, point ftp.netscape.com to be host of your FTP server
- run their install, and it goes local
- take ftp.netscape.com out of hosts file
Of course, could do DNS tricks to do the same...I'm a big IE5 fan. I think it is stable, fast, and reasonably standards compliant - despite the general view on Slashdot. I doubt anyone can argue that it is better than Netscape 4, anyway.
I tried Galeon the other day. If you haven't heard of this, it is a GNOME/Gtk based browser, which uses the Mozilla "Gecko" rendering engine. I was very impressed. You remember all that stuff everyone was saying about how Mozilla was going to be the fastest render on the block? Well.. it's a close call, but I'd say Galeon is pretty close to achievig that now (This with is M16 - it might be quicker now).
As for startup time (always the problem with normal Mozillas) - it is now much, much quicker than Netscape 4 on either Windows of Linux, and getting close to IE5 (which is the fastest starting browser I've ever seen, except maybe Lynx or something).
It's not quite ready for everyone to use - there are a few niggling problems (no animated "Page Loading" icon so you know when it is doing something for instance).
The cool thing is that using this doesn't stop you from using XUL as well. For instance, I used it to ftp a file, and was surprised to see a new window pop up with a XUL based download monitor.
Very Impressive. If you can't wait for the Mozilla UI to get better, give this a go. At least it will start putting a few "Mozilla 6" in web server logs around the place.
Oh yeah.. I found you needed Helix-Gnome for it to work correctly on Redhat 6.2
Mozilla maintainers - please, PLEASE, when you are creating a mozilla tarball, make the top level directory something like "mozilla-M17", or even "mozilla". When I untar that archive, I do NOT expect it to create a directory called "package". Please follow the lead of every other well-behaved program installed from tarballs.
</rant>
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
If you don't want to use the installer to download everything, just do it yourself - grab everything in the xpi directory and copy the installer to your local xpi directory and run it. No more autodownloading...
I skipped the initial suck.com discussion, but I'll bite here. Let's face this fact: Microsoft can't be beaten on its own platform. Mozilla, however, is intended to do all the things right that both IE and Netscape did wrong. That costs time and you know it! There's a reason that features are being added.. /dev/null until the Mozilla crew actually made it to 1.0! I tested yesterday's nightly build and except for keyboard shortcuts not being working under Linux, I thought Mozilla was fast, neat and stable. Give it a try and help Mozilla rather than just asking to bury it. Shame on you.
It seems to be fashion to claim that Open Source is slow and never releases something final, and that's just plain FUD. Because you, and I, and Suck are users and not developers, we have the right to beg and complain about final releases. But please, keep this Suck marketing shit in
Just like the subject line says. Of course Netscape 6 sucks ass, it's made by AOL, the same fine folks who brought us that helpdesk nightmare and lawsuit waiting to happen, AOL 5.0. Seriously, no one can blame Mozilla for AOL's incompetence. And, I don't care if Netscape 6PRwhatever is going to be most people's introduction to Mozilla, because there's still plenty of time for Mozilla/Netscape 6 Final to prove themselves. After all, did you ever run Netscape 0.9, the prerelease version of Netscape 1.0? It was horrid, horrid, and evil, and made Mosaic look like the future of the Net. Or, ever run early versions of IE? My GOD, the hooror that was IE before way into version 3.x still haunts me in my dreams.
Fact is, these days people are more adventurous about what software they install, as evidenced by stuff like Neoplanet, the front end for IE which many, many people download just to get skinning functionality, and other eye candy like WindowBlinds (think Enlightenment for Windows). When Mozilla gets final, people will download it, and people will be pleased. They'll not only get skinning, but more/better functionality than IE, and other useful integrated apps. All in all, this snafu has absolutely no effect on the viability of final releases of Mozilla/Netscape and their future popularity, except of course for the fact that AOL will probably fuck it up again when they release Netscape 6.0 final.
And as an aside, why the flying fucking sweet mother of jeezus h. christ would anyone want to install over the net, DSL or no DSL, when the sane thing to do is just download a complete installer and then work from there? that's a very disturbing trend I've been bothered by. For the love of God, you should always download a whole installation program, and store it for possible future use. Why would anyone want to risk getting disconnected during install, or getting a slow connection to the server during install, or having to download the whole thing over again later for a re-install? I think people are getting too used to getting programs for free, that they no longer bother to keep potentially useful installers around. After all, the version you love of a piece of software might be a pain in the ass to find a good ways down the line, but if you keep a local copy you'll never have to download again barring tragic accidents. It especially annoys me when companies make only the barebones installer easy to find, hiding the complete package on the server someplace; Apple has done this with Quicktime, making it difficult to find the full installer, but linking the Net installer all over the place. People ought to complain loudly about such foolishness.
And some of the problems you mentioned were possibly due to poor multitasking by MacOS; as improved as OS 9 is, it still has very poor multitasking. All it takes is too many processes running, and it'll sometimes choke and run too slowly. And, let's see--you were installing over the net, and that's at least two and probably more programs running; two or three programs can usually run fine, but any other running apps could have contributed to a slow system. And then, after it had installed and you were running Netscape 6PR2, how much stuff altogether was running, in addition to Netscape and AIM? AOL deserves most of the blame for their ineptitude, but never underestimate the ability of MacOS to bog down because of poor multitasking, either. OSX will fix that for good, but it's a little late--shitty multitasking in MacOS was one of the big reasons I switched to Windoze.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
Ack - okay, so this is actually being posted from PR2. That's not bad. PR1 wouldn't even run long enough to get here, but we'll see.
Just some opionions right off the bat, though:
First of all . . . fix the installation, folks. I selected a really minimal custom config. and what did I get? EVERYTHING. This is just bad. I din't want any stinking AOL crap, or instant messaging, or whatever. And I already have Java, and I develop in it, so don't install another JRE for me, please. Whoops, too bad.
That initial annoyance asside, let's look at some nice things. Namely, the interface. I actually design interfaces all day long, and this one isn't all that bad. The widgets are a step above the standard win32 API, I must say. Had to tweak it do death though because it had so much clutter! Ick.
But worst of all, what the hell . . . isn't this a browser? Can't we just have a browser by itself? I already read my mail with something else, I already use Instant Messaging with something else, and I really don't need another program taking up space to do these things! And if I wanted to register with your crappy Netcenter home pages, wouldn't I? Do I have to click past 3 screens just to tell you NO!?
But rants aside, it's getting there . . . still slow, still renders a whole lot incorrectly, but hey it IS a preview.
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Cherish. Live. Dream.
And up until this release, I thought that seamonkey sucked. However, this is a very stable release. It's much easier than IE to install. It was a mere 6 meg download, and installed in about 2 minutes. The load time is also about 3 times as quick as the last release (which, if I remember correctly, took 17 seconds to load on my computer). It's also far less buggy. I've managed to post this, haven't I?
Another thing that impressed me was the time it takes to parse a web page. M17 kicks IE's tail (and, quite obviously, NN4.x). The slashdot home page takes 6 seconds to parse on IE, and only 1.5 on M17.
Before this becomes widely used, however, I think that the following things need to change:
I applaud the Mozilla team. They've taken what I thought was an unreal fantasy, and turned it into a reality. Minus some minor bugs, this browser is already on par with IE. Now the real battle will be to get it into widespread usage.
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