Mozilla .6 Released

jensend writes: "Mozilla's .6 milestone has been reached. This should bring the functionality of Netscape 6 without the marketing stuff and performance hit. Details at Mozilla .6 Release Notes."

Comments

Re:an offtopic point

[FattMattP]

If you want to get yourself buried with the details as much as you seem, Linux really does not need an IRC client. I mean, my kernel is pretty fine as it is without any extra cruft like that.

Exactly. The IRC client doesn't compile into your kernel. Likewise, the IRC client in Mozilla is no more integrated into Mozilla than an IRC client is integrated into the Linux kernel. It's just some extra XUL and JavaScript code that comes along with Mozilla when it ships. Think of it as getting a Linux distribution and seeing all of the binaries that come along with that distribution. Now think of Mozilla the same way. Is a development platform. You can write code and run it on Mozilla.

Re:*sigh*

[Cid Highwind]

This is exactly the mentality that creates the suck-ass GUIs that are the root cause of the desire to skin apps. An interface that doesn't make the user want to puke is NOT fluff.

I agree about all-in-one clients though. I already have a mailreader, IM client, newsreader, and HTML editor. Why can't my web browser just be a browser.

okay someone said to me once that ..

[josepha48]

.. for a browser that lots of ram and a fast computer should not be reqired. While this may be true. The requirements:

Mac OS
Mac OS 8.6 or later
PowerPC 604e 266 MHz or faster processor, or G3/G4
64 MB RAM
36 MB of free hard disk space

Windows
Windows 9x/ME, Windows NT 4 or Windows 2000 Intel Pentium-class 233 MHz (or faster) processor
64 MB RAM
26 MB of free hard disk space

Linux
Red Hat Linux 6.x and 7 with X11 R6 [Note: Mozilla is certified and fully supported on Red Hat Linux, but will run on other Linux distributions, such as Debian 2.1 (or later) or SuSE 6.2 (or later). The libraries glibc 2.1 (or higher) and libjpeg.so.62 (or higher) are required.] Intel Pentium-class 233 MHz (or faster) processor
64 MB of RAM
26 MB of free hard disk space

Not the memory requirements 64Meg of RAM.

If you are using an old P100 with 32Meg of RAM. Don't complain that it is slow. Read the hardware and software requirements first and DON'T complain.

I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!

Re:okay someone said to me once that ..

[arcum]

for a browser that lots of ram and a fast computer should not be reqired. While this may be true. The requirements:

Mac OS
Mac OS 8.6 or later
PowerPC 604e 266 MHz or faster processor, or G3/G4
64 MB RAM
36 MB of free hard disk space


Compare the System Requirements for the web browser iCab, for the Macintosh, that has been quite popular in the Mac community recently. (check http://www.icab.de)

System Requirements

Minimum 4MB free RAM
System 7.0.1 or 7.1 if ThreadManager and DragManager are also installed
System 7.5 or newer
MacTCP or OpenTransport
InternetConfig 1.2 (or Mac OS 8.5 or newer)
PPC, 68020, 68030 or 68040

And the download is 1.2 Megs. The only real drawback is that Javascript is only half done, and CSS2 isn't implemented yet, but it renders most web pages well, and has a number of features not in most web browsers... (Turning off Blink tags functionality, and ad and Javascript filtering are favorites, as is the built-in HTML error reporter...)

Re:Another pathetic milestone reached.

[AFCArchvile]

Actually, I'm looking into Perl. As for the other two, I haven't even seen any application of them (or known it if I have seen them), so I can't make an educated opinion on it. As for Linux, I had Red Hat 6.2, and it stunk. X wouldn't run in true color (not even on an S3 Vision 868 or an ATI Rage IIC), and it took me a month to figure out how to get the box on the Internet. I'd rather spend money on decent programming than spend time trying to patch up such a motley collection of slapdash code.

Re:*sigh*

[Reziac]

I agree entirely. Skins are a waste of a good interface. I've got to where I won't even download a program that I can't set back to the generic Win32 look, because the damned skins and buttons and bows do nothing but get in my way.

They also make some programs (frex, WinAmp) just about unusable for the visually-impaired.

Re:Java runtime for Linux

[smartin]

All I do is create a symbolic link from the mozilla/plugins director to the blackdown
jre/plugin/i386/javaplugin.so file and it works
find. I was unable to get sun's 1.3 javaplugin.so
to work though

Re:No bloat because:

[Anonymous Coward]

Chatzilla has been developed by people in their free time, so it is no waste of resources concerning the developers.
If you don't load it, it won't use your RAM at all, if that is what you are concerned with, and as far as I know, you don't have to install it when installing, so it won't even bloat your HD if you don't want it to. So I don't see any reason why not to give it as an extra, some people (liek me) like it actually.

Re:*sigh*

[giberti]

• "skin"-ability might be nice, too.

<rant>

• Why do we care if we can change the skin on a software package?
• Is it really necessary to put some akwardly designed UI over essentially functional package?
• Why can't the UI be thought out from the get go?
• Do I really need a skin to match my favorite superstar/sports team/softdrink?
• Do I really have time to spend looking for all these "skins" or better yet should I stick with the branded one that will eventually come with my computer (gateway/dell/compaq/ibm)?
• Why do we insist on throwing out all of the design research that has been put into things like "windowing" technology by Xerox, Apple and M$, in favor of things like ie's new "head" skin for viewing streaming media?

Perhaps we should focus on more important tasks such as security, speed and _actual_ functionality and stop developing fluff like see through windows, skins and all in one clients!

</rant>

crappy version numbers

[knuffelbeer]

Mozilla 0.6: split from Netscape Communicator 5.0, milestone M18, same as Netscape 6, evironment variable MOZILLA5_HOME... When will there be some consistent version numbering for this? (it's worse than java or even solaris)

Otherwise: great software, use it at home all the time (M18). The rendering is cool. Love it how it rebuilds the page while loading.

Problem is I need about 600Mb to build it from source... and then it fails due to some weird configuration thingy in a Makefile/configure script/whatever.
Allso has the same problem that staroffice has: it tries to do all things you ever wanted (and a lot more you don't ever want) in a single application. Do one thing and do it well: make ghecko a seporate library! (go galeon go!)

Re:Interesting...

[b0z]

Any substantial piece of software written in the last 3 years will run like a dog on that sort of configuration. I'm afraid the answer is to upgrade or stick with the stuff you're running now.

I do intend to upgrade next year sometime when I get some money that doesn't need to be spent on other things...however, I view a web browser as a device that should only show text. It really should not be that complex unless you include plugins, java, etc. I don't see why a web browser has to be so complex. Sure, it is good to have features like css, javascript, etc built in, but even then it shouldn't be as slow as the browsers are these days. I don't see what a browser does that should reall need all the resources that a browser uses. It's not like I am trying to run Unreal on a P133, just a web browser.

Anyways, the reason I haven't upgraded is because I have spread my computer money out to multiple devices. Rather than having one kickass computer, I have two older machines, an older laptop, a palm pilot, dsl, small home ethernet network, etc.

Is it worth the upgrade?

[FroBugg]

I've been running NS 4.5 for as long as it's been out, and I've been able to tolerate the glitches and problems.

I think it's finally time to start giving the upgrades a serious look, and right now I'm trying to decide what exactly the difference is between NS 6 and Mozilla .6.

Is there anything that this Mozilla is missing that would make me need to use another browser? I need support for several different people's emails, the occassional secure page, cookies, and all the other goodies that the web has now (shockwave, flash, java, etc.)

Keep in mind that I'm running Win95 on a P100 (which has been very good to me for the past 5 years).

I just want to know if there's one good reason that this new Mozilla won't cut it for me. If not, then I'lll go for it.

Re:Is it worth the upgrade?

[ChristTrekker]

You will probably want to wait for the next Netscape 6.x version. Mozilla has lots of debug code in it yet, so it will be slow on your P100. It's pretty acceptable on the PII-233 here at work, but I doubt I'd want to go slower. N6 is reportedly pretty buggy yet, so I haven't bothered with it.

If you want to experiment with it, grab the latest nightly build of Mozilla. Yeah it will be slow, but lately I've seen better stability from them than the "official" releases. And they have more features/fixes too.

Re:BlOAt

[Black Parrot]

> Why the hell does Mozilla need an IRC client??

Because Netscape is now AOL's equivalent of MS's "integrated desktop", the average AOLer is happy to be spoonfed, and AOL is happy to oblige them on that.

Look forward to Galeon and its ilk, if you want a barenaked browser.

--

Re:Slow machine

[giberti]

Because not everyone has money to throw into a state of the art dual/quad processor workstation to run software on, but would like to see what the web has to offer them without waiting 15 minutes for the browser to load.

Mozilla X IE5.5

[Pac]

I have been using only M18 for a month (.06 is downloading while I type). Except for some problems with dialog boxes that won't go away, I have had no major problems. Sometimes it will crash and burn (twice when trying to render /., probably caused by a rogue banner), but it mostly works well.

It is also quick enough, at least. I have a list of behaviors that I am still deciding about. I do not know if they are bugs, if they bother me because they are different from IE or if I just find them wrong. The velocity problem applies here too. I am not yet sure if mozilla is slightly slower than IE or if it just renders HTML differently.

I do not remember having any show-stopper problem in ANY site (besides not having plugins I didn't bother to install).

Both at work and at home I mostly forgot IE.

Re:First Experience's w M6

[cuijian]

Thanks alot. That took care of the problem. I assume this is a known bug that they are working on? This seems like a good way to turn off lots of potential users.

shell script I use to get nightly builds

[gsherman]

#! /bin/sh

cd /usr/src
rm -rf package/
wget -q http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/nightly/latest/ mozilla-i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.gz
tar -xvzf mozilla-i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.gz > /dev/null
rm -f mozilla-i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.gz
echo "Finished...!"
if [ "$1" = "-run" ]; then
echo "Booting Mozilla...!"
moz &
fi

here's that "moz" script:

#!/bin/sh

cd /usr/src/package/
./mozilla

Re:Yawn...

[Cap'n enigma]

Fuck you! I am not a nerd. I am a Geek!
Fuckin lowbrows.

Re:Perhaps a Mozilla developer can explain, commen

[domc]

Try compiling Mozilla without the debug code (it is there by default). This should improve your performance greatly.

domc

Re:BlOAt

[Rico_Suave]

For me the issue isn't bloat, it's the fact that the Mozilla team wasted time on all these non-essentials, when what they should have been doing is focusing on the browser proper 100% of the time.

--

Re:Initial experiences - posted from .6

[carlos_benj]

There are small rendering glitches, such as when writing this text in the "Comment" textfield on slashdot. If I fill out a line, ending a word exactly on the last character in the field, then the "space" before the next word will be in the beginning of the next line.

The earlier version (don't remember which) that I'm using does the same thing.

Does anyone know if the new version allows import of Netscape email folders and messages? I've not been able to find out how to accomplish this as of yet. Couldn't get their site this morning for some reason....

It's slow on local pages

[beri-beri]

I find Konqueror to be slow. Much slower than NC 4.76. I use NC to read a lot of local docs in HTML, and I switch a lot between pages with very simple layout. It takes about 1-2 secs more for Konqueror to display a page with just a lot of paragraphs and some intermediate lines. This is just too annoying for me.

I don't know why is that. Maybe because Konqueror tries to draw the page while it's loading and then it has to draw it again at the end? But then why is the pagination (Pgup, pageDown, mouse scrool) also flipping for a fraction of a sec?

Preferences directory

[prog-guru]

Bookmarks are at ~/.mozilla/chris/n5rjykk5.slt/bookmarks.html

What the hell is that? ~/.mozilla/bookmarks.html makes a lot more sense.

Re:*sigh*

[f5426]

I hate skins. I like simple, well conceived user interfaces. And I am not alone. Unfortunately, this is not the ideal of the everyone. There are people that like those ugly cool desktops (with Jennifer Lopez as a background image, Enlightment with a StartTrek look, and translucent terminals)

Even latest apple OS sacrified usability to coolness factor [For instance, scollbars don't hilite when you click on them, or transparency of window title bar make non-focused windows more wisible (on the default background) than the focused one]

At least, skinnability works in both ways. If all the ugly coolness is made via a skin system, then it is possible to download a skin that don't sucks [ModernGray, in the Mozilla case]

Sure, it would be (IMHO) better to have a hard-coded usable default GUI first, but at least we are not locked in a hard-coded unusable default GUI...
</rant>

Cheers,

--fred

Mozilla better than NS.

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

I've been running mozilla-win32 since M14, the nightlies since M17. The current nightlies are loads better than the M18 build. Very slick. Hotmail (a necessary evil) is quite snappy, better than on IE even. Remember to install PSM to be able to surf SSL sites. I'm beginning to be surprised when it crashes (as opposed to before when I was surprised it didn't), and it's beginning to take over Netscape 4.7 as my browser of choice (I use IE only for HTML testing).

You should also check the build notes to see if the nightly is stable or not.

Re:mozilla IRIX build now works!

[kels]

Haven't tried .6 yet.

And I won't be soon, because 0.6 is only available for 3 platforms: Windows, MacOS, and Linux.

LDAP ?

[debber]

When is ldap going to be 'reincluded' ?

Re:LDAP ?

[m2e]

LDAP support is in sources, but it is unstable and therefore off by default.

Re:Unacceptable limitation

[Eil]

You ought to have done a bit more reading before jumping off the cliff, there sonny.

I actually did some work to find out the details of this bug. It started from some guy who just untarred everything and tried to run it as a user, and it failed. Upon further investigation, it turned out that when being run for the first time, mozilla creates some files in it's binary directory, which naturally a user has no write access to.

The workaround is deceptively simple: run mozilla as root or whoever owns the directory first. Then after the required files are created, you can run it as any user you choose and no problems will occur.

I did that and am now replying to your misinformed post using 0.6 as a regular user. Good day.

Re:Wow!

[lambda]

I wrote this post with Opera, and the last one too.

Re:Nested tables is NOT the problem w/ NS

[dvdeug]

The rendering core was one of the first things totally rewritten from Netscape. So just because the bug is Netscape, doesn't mean it's in Mozilla, unless someone reimplemented the bug.

Affording Hardware (was re: Slow Machine)

[Abreu]

You mentioned:

AMD Duron 650: $49 Abit KT7: $122 128MB PC100 RAM: $42 Seriously, I'm not rich by any stretch of the word (...) It's $213.

Well it depends... Thats a lot of money where I come from... Most of the people here dont make that in a month (I do make around 500USD a month, but thats because I speak good english). So, "by some stretches of the word" yes, you are pretty rich, so please be a little more thoughtful before posting.

If you can't afford that may I suggest another career?

I really wish the job market here was similar to the one in the US, but meanwhile Im stuck programming by night and toiling in phone customer service hell by day.

BTW Mozilla is very very slow in my Celeron 500 with 128Mb RAM...

Re:Affording Hardware (was re: Slow Machine)

[6j3]

stuck programming by night

One of those nights, compile Mozilla without debugging. This should improve performance on your machine that is low on resources.

Go vote for this bug at bugzilla!

[Walles]

This bug is in the Mozilla bug reporting system, and you should go vote for it (or better yet, fix it :-) since you (like me) seem to find this quite annoying.

However it can be worked around; Debian for example have done this.

Cheers //Johan

Netscape

[yetisalmon]

If Netscape and Mozilla ran at some speed uncomparable to a "cooter", it might be acceptable.

Although, I guess I shouldn't be complaining so much yet. I should wait until a more final product for evaluation.

Re:Netscape

[democd]

Actually the latest Mozilla Nightly builds render large pages a lot faster than IE 5 on My P2-400 128 MB running Win2k.

Changing theme WORKED!

[spineboy]

Weird, worked for me too
everything is fine now
..Thanks

Re:BlOAt

[jck2000]

I wouldn't have thought that the very simple IRC client that is included would contribute significantly to Moz's size.

Re:*sigh*

[MOPyvis]

Actually, you can choose not to install messenger/newsgroup during the install; simply click 'custom install' and deselect them...

I've been using it this morning.

[Craig Maloney]

I've been using it all this morning, and I must say I'm rather impressed with this release. It seems to work rather well... Now if I can figure out how to get SSL working on it, I think I might have a contender for my browser. Kudos to the developers!

Re:Java runtime for Linux

[SonofRage]

That's odd. I've been using a nightly build from last week in Linux and when I went to a page with java (I went to www.anfyteam.com b/c it has a lot of java applets on it and is good for testing) and Mozilla simply told me java wasn't installed and offered to take me to the page where I can get it. I then went to the site and a little installer popped up (I think its that xpinstall thing) and badabing bababoom I had java.

Re:BlOAt

[DrXym]

Why the hell has this been marked insightful?

AOL hates any messaging product that competes with AIM, or their AOL chatrooms so I fail to see how the inclusion of an IRC chat client into a browser which is binary compatible with NS 6 but free of all the AOL marketing junk helps them in anyway at all.

People should be praising Mozilla.org (an entity largely consisting of Netscape employees) that it should have the balls to cock a snook at AOL like this and get away with it.

Re:Netscape 6 <= Mozilla 0.6!

[DrXym]

From the Mozilla.org site:

Mozilla 0.6 is a milestone release based on the same branch as Netscape 6. It is aimed at developers who wish to create products that extend Netscape 6 or who wish to port it. Read the release notes for more info.

The 0.6 tag has little to do with the "version" of Mozilla that NS6 is based off because Mozilla doesn't even use version numbers yet. See the roadmap for more details.

Just because you don't

[PeelBoy]

like skins.. Doesn't mean everybody doesn't.. Obviously a LOT of people enjoy them.

I bet there are more people who want skins then people who don't want them..

Besides.. It's not like anybody FORCES you to skin your freakin app so calm down!!!

The only reason you should even CARE is because it might slow the development of an app down, or make it a LITTLE slower.. BIG DEAL.. Live with it!

Besides.. Some skins make the UI a hell of a lot better then the base UI...

And let me ask you this.. Do you use the base Winamp or XMMS skins? I bet the world that you don't!!!!!!
-----------------------
Jeremy 'PeelBoy' Amberg

Re:Netscape 6 <= Mozilla 0.6!

[Black Parrot]

> Makes you wonder what Netscape was smoking when they shipped.

An insider informs me that they've been smoking marketing glossies.

--

Wow!

[lambda]

It must be really hard to get a web browser running faster than Netscape! I'm impressed!

Re:Wow!

[beebware]

Opera is quite fast. See previous slashdot article.
Richy C.
--

Re:Java runtime for Linux

[BenLutgens]

yeah, you open that xpi file with the borwser and then click yes. it works fine for me. Memory leaks though.

Re:Slow machine

[davebo]

Considering IE 5.x runs well on such an old machine (under W95) . . . . it might be nice for Mozilla to do the same.

Anyone get PSM working?

[rm -rf /etc/*]

I installed it, and it works fine when I tried mozilla as root, but for non root users, mozilla locks up hard core when I hit an SSL site. Wierd...

Re:Anyone get PSM working?

[tweek]

Install mozilla to your home directory and then run the install for PSM. It's a permissions issue.

Initial experiences - on Winblows

[ArthurDent]

I just downloaded the latest Nightly Build for Win98. It seems at first glance at least to be much faster than IE 5. It looks much better too with the chromes. Once I was able to minimize the sidebar, I actually am pretty happy with it. It'll take a little while to get it configured to where I want it, and I probably won't use the mail/news on it (Outlook is pretty slick for someone coming from UNIX graphical mailers), but the browser seems to be pretty darn good.

Having said all that, there are still some rendering issues.. try surfing around ESPN.com. Not actually catastrophic failures or crashes, just wierdnesses. It's hard to tell if that's because the page is set up to work around weirdnesses in previous browsers, or if Mozilla is doing the wrong thing.

I don't know how things are going on the Linux side of the house, but on Windows things are going well seemingly. Good work folks!

Ben

Am I Blind? No URL bar?

[spineboy]

This version is Fast! and looks good too, however

Where is the URL bar? I looked under view, prefs

Can't find it - am I blind or did my install go wacky?

Re:Am I Blind? No URL bar?

[lucianx]

I had the same problem. It's unclear why, but on the initial install a number of rendering issues were occuring, such as the lack of URL bar and not doing some tables properly.

I was able to fix it by going to View->Apply Theme and choosing a Theme. After that they all seemed to render correctly.

It's EVIL!

[Mike Connell]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this - I just downloaded the installer version for windows, and it's 6,666 Kb.

I also thought it would be IE that had that size ;-)

Mike.

Re:Slow machine

[lewp]

Hmmm... AMD Duron 650: $49 Abit KT7: $122 128MB PC100 RAM: $42 Seriously, I'm not rich by any stretch of the word, but I manage to scrounge together enough to make an upgrade like this once a year or so. Anyone should be able to do so once every couple years. It's $213. Save up 59 cents per day for a year, 30 cents per day for two years, or 20 cents per day for three years and you could afford it. If you can't afford that may I suggest another career?

Re:First testings

[mrfiddlehead]

It didn't copy my stuff when I started, probably because my netscape profiles aren't stored in the usual location. One annoyance I did find was that you can import address books from Eudora, Outlook, ... but not from Netscape. Exporting them from netscape in ldif format allowed me to import them, but this is a step that would confound most newbies.

Re:Yawn...

[Mr_Dyqik]

My mp3z skip in a very similar way, when windows tries to play a sound (or do anything else complicated) at the same time as playing it. Probably because I'm not running it on the top of range computer availabel now and haven't reinstalled in the last 3 months. (Hey great antipiracy policy, if it isn't reinstalled every 3 months it goes to shit).

Currently attempting to get sound on my semi unsupport sound card in debian, and then the only need for windoze is Red Alert 2

Re:Mozilla going after the Net-appliance market?

[invalid email]

But is it plausable they included it all because they were looking at it more with the intention of it being used in Net-appliances that don't really have a native OS GUI, and to have the web, news, mail, irc as ONE monolithic piece of software for the appliance?

Yeah, as soon as you get a net appliance with 128MB of memory, plus some disk for swapping, then cool! You can browse the web!

Re:Another pathetic milestone reached.

[invalid email]

I'm going into Computer Engineering, so I'll only be programming drivers.

Thank god. The software engineering field dodges another bullet.

My Initial experiences - posted from .6

[Flavio]

I had been using Netscape 6 since it was released and I honestly don't see any difference between it and the .6 build.

My complaint is that Mozilla is SLOW. And every time I complain about this, people ask me "have you ever check out the latest night builds? They're a lot better!". Well, I don't think so! I've been testing night builds for a long time now and they're dog slow.

I just hate it when the "New Message" window takes 3 seconds to appear, among other things.

I have replaced Netscape 4.76 for Mozilla mainly because it doesn't crash as much, but I certainly haven't deleted 4.76.

Flavio

Re:My Initial experiences - posted from .6

[Tuzanor]

i guess i didn't word that right. I meant current browsers . People seem to expect all the features of of the latest browsers w/o the bloat of them. You want small browser that can render most page? get netscape 3.x. just don't expect flash and modern JAVA support.

fvwm2 rules, it's great for admining old 486s when you want multiple shells and a graphical congifuration.

Re:My Initial experiences - posted from .6

[Skeezix]

To me, part of the beauty of Linux is that I can run a tiny kernel, X, and a reasonably small window manager (fvwm2), and get decent performance out of truly obselete hardware.

Indeed, it is a beautiful thing. And if you do happen to have the resources, you can run a full Gnome or KDE desktop, with a window manager like Enlightenment where you get plenty of eye candy.

What I really don't understand is, why is every version of everything bigger and slower than the previous one? Shouldn't we be moving toward smaller/faster/lighter?

These days memory is cheap and life is short. Seriously, though, while it's true that performance issues should be addressed (I think it's absurd how slowly Mozilla runs on my machine given the resources I have), if you look at what Mozilla is and does, it is going to take some resources. Likewise, a full Gnome or KDE desktop is going to take some resources. In order to take advantage of things like component technology, themable widget sets, virtual file systems, font and drawing abstractions, you're going to take a performance hit. Whether or not you want to use these technologies, is up to you. As you mentioned, that is part of the beauty of Linux. But that is a big part of the reason why things are getting bigger. Smaller/faster/lighter almost always means it can do less and is leaner, which for some things is all you need. Also performance is often the last issue that developers deal with. Generally they want to get the features in, the major bugs out first, then turn to tuning everything, slimming it down, etc.
----

Re:My Initial experiences - posted from .6

[ocelotbob]

How much memory you got in your box? Mozilla crawled on a P200 with 32 MB RAM, and it hums along quite nicely on the same system with 64. The latest nightlys/newest milestone have simply made performance on the system all that much better, but you're still gonna crawl unless you've got 64

Re:My Initial experiences - posted from .6

[phutureboy]

Very much agreed. I've got 192M RAM on a K6-2/350, and it runs slower than a one-legged dog in the snow. Way too slow to use for my everyday browsing.

Can anyone speculate as to what makes the Linux version so much slower than the Windows version? I can see Mindcraft jumping all over that :)

--

Re:My Initial experiences - posted from .6

[Skeezix]

I know what you mean. I hear "Mozilla is bloody fast now that I'm using the nightly builds!" Well, I download the nightlies every day. In the morning at work I grab the Windows version and in the evening I grab the Linux version at home. The Windows version *is* fast. Unfortunately, the Linux version is not. The UI is just very unresponsive. Menus in particular are slow to update and feel very sluggish and unresponsive. popping up a new window is a slow process. It's very unfortunate. I believe I have an adequate machine, too. I'm running Linux on an AMD K6-2 450 with 256 Mb RAM. The widgets are just very very sluggish compared to the version I run on Windows.
----

Re:My Initial experiences - posted from .6

[Tuzanor]

any full browser whether on windows or Unix will crawl wtih 32 megs of ram. In Linux with x 32 megs is just unacceptable unless you are using an older window manager and in windows it's just painful.

Re:My Initial experiences - posted from .6

[Eimi Metamorphoumai]

Define crawl. I'm using Netscape 4.75 under 32 M of ram on a 200 Mhz Pentium, and it's usable. It's obviously a bit slow, but it works. To me, part of the beauty of Linux is that I can run a tiny kernel, X, and a reasonably small window manager (fvwm2), and get decent performance out of truly obselete hardware. What I really don't understand is, why is every version of everything bigger and slower than the previous one? Shouldn't we be moving toward smaller/faster/lighter? I can understand that in the Windows world, where adding 30 megs of dancing paperclips is considered an improvement, but why here? Anyway, my experience is that, under 32 megs, Mozilla is MUCH slower than 4.75. Even galeon, as cool as it is, is worse.

Re:My Initial experiences - posted from .6

[god, did I say that]

Rendering is fast, faster than even IE. What is slow is initial startup time and the time it takes to launch a new windows.

There's two simple fixes for this:

(1) Download one of the many mozilla based browsers which work with your native widget set. (Galeon and skipstone are the two that I know of.)

(2) What I do is keep two windows at all times. Whenever I see a link a like, I drag it into the 2nd window instead of right mouse->open in new window.

Actually, there's 3 fixes. The third is to read linearly instead of jumping all over the place. You know, read with your eyes instead of your mouse? But I suspect this is expecting too much from two generations of people weaned on mtv and video games.

--

Re:My Initial experiences - posted from .6

[Tridus]

Oh well they are a lot better, Mozilla now is way faster then Mozilla back then.

Which just goes to show you how insanely slow it was back then, because its still slower then hell.

Its also a memory pig, but you know...

Re:*sigh*

[vherva]

And then, last week, I ran into the links-stop-working problem which has existed in Netscape 4 for how many years? Don't tell me you've never seen it.

I've seen it, but only on windows. And guess what? I happens much more often with IE!

First testings

[gerddie]

Actually I am writing this with the Mozilla beta.

When you start it for the first time, it will copy most of your netscape profile: the mail folders, bookmarks, ..., but not the SOCKS preferences.

At first glace it makes a good impression. Thou I can't see any speed advantage over netscape 4.75.
Maybe my machine is simply fast enough - Dual PIII 700 :) on linux

After viewing some pages it eats up 40M RAM, netscape 4.75 needs only 28M

To use java it wants to download a plugin from netscape. So far I didn't try it.

more to come ...

Still doesn't work with MS Proxy 2.0!

[dannyspanner]

Will some more people please vote for the bug that prevents it from working behind MS Proxy 2.0! There's a patch, they just won't check it in!

Re:Another pathetic milestone reached.

[^chuck^]

didn't mean mozilla was a pile of fetid dingo's kidneys, meant the poster I replied to was full of them. (subtle difference, and hard to tell from posting, i know)

Mozilla

[andyjamesrowland]

Now and again I think I'll go and waste some time installing the various Mozilla builds under Win/Linux. Surely I'm not the only one that sees no merit to this browser. It looks stupid (I don't care that you can change the 'skin'), is slow to load, and tedious to use. When will the Linux community realise that when they have a browser to match IE5.5, then we may see more of Linux on the desktop. Hopefully I'll get some decent replies, but will probably receive some anti-Microsoft rants.

Mozilla CVS mirror sites?

[Nonanonymous_User]

Does anyone know of any CVS mirrors for the Mozilla source? All I seem to see on their CVS page is cvs-mirror.mozilla.org. Perhaps it just has too much traffic at the moment.

Re:Mozilla CVS mirror sites?

[etrnl]

Actually, it seems to be a router blocking it, or somesuch as opposed to a traffic issue. See:

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=62130

-=-etrnl-=-

BlOAt

[bluebomber]

<rant>
Why the hell does Mozilla need an IRC client?? Whatever happened to the idea of doing one thing and doing it well? If I want an IRC client, I can find a good one that works and fits my needs!!
</rant>

Sorry. Just tweaks me when I see this crap and think about the bloated mess that is Mozilla...

-bluebomber

Re:BlOAt

[joto]

Why bother concentrating on making a light version when there still are other bugs to iron out? Yeah, why bother putting all the stupid bloat in the first place when they still haven't managed to build a usable browser yet. Is there anyone, I mean anyone at all, that really wanted a built-in mail/news/irc-client in the browser. It would have been so much better and so much easier just to fork some other program. The GUI-stuff seems more forgiveable as it is at least a somewhat interesting project, but it would have been better if they focused on just getting something done in the first placee.

Re:BlOAt

[suffe]

Things like this is stated over and over and over again. To a part I agree with this - there is no need for this and that in mozilla but the fact is you do not need to use it. you don't even need to have it. Just download the source and tell configure no to include it. I can't say for sertain that this is possible with the irc-client, it is however possible with the news- and mail-clients. If they bothered to set the option for these I'm pretty sure they'll let u skip the IRC and other clients.

If they had energy enough to make the software then ppl could at least gather the energy to compile it.

Re:BlOAt

[Throw Away Account]

Which "Mozilla people"? If somebody who isn't being paid by Netscape to work on the browser and who otherwise wouldn't be working on Mozilla at all decides to write an IRC client based on Mozilla, so what?

Re:BlOAt

[Throw Away Account]

Netscape wanted Mail/News, since they had to duplicate the functionality of Communicator 4.7. The IRC client was written by volunteers who chose the project themselves and otherwise would not have been working on Mozilla. And the GUI stuff is 100% forgivable if you're running anything other than Windows, because otherwise you wouldn't have Mozilla for your platform yet.

Re:BlOAt

[Petrophile]

Nobody is arguing with non-native widgets for HTML pages (IE doesn't even use native widgets on Windows for that.)

The problem is the chrome surrounding the page. Face it -- it's slow, memory hogging, and still not completely bug-free. It also does not support native OS behaviors and accessibility requirements.

I'd hate to dump more work on Mozilla.org, but they really should be seriously looking into adopting things like Galeon and KMelon for the three major platforms (Windows/Linux/Mac) and leave the XUL stuff in for the people who give a crap about themes or are running mozilla on OS/2 or OpenVMS or whatever.

Re:BlOAt

[Petrophile]

By 'accessibilty', I'm referring to the Windows application guidelines which state that if I set my system up so that all of the menus are in 16pt Hot Pink Times New Roman and my screen is 50dpi, all applications should automatically pick up and use that information. (Unfortuantely for Moz, not all desktops are as 'policy-free' as X11.)

I'm sure this sort of thing is possible with XUL, but who has done it? (Hint: Netscape should have before they shipped.)

(BTW, I actually like the skins, but RTF/. -- people are pissy about the speed and the buggyness. Meanwhile, after developer-years have been burned by Mozilla on the XUL skins, the KMelon guy hacked his basic-functionality native skin in a weekend of work.)

Re:BlOAt

[Doktor Memory]

Mozilla isn't just a browser; It's a new development platform that happens to have a powerful HTML,CSS,XML,etc rendering engine at its core.

This statement neatly encapsulates everything that is completely wrong-headed and broken about the mozilla project.

It's not a browser, it's an operating system! Guess what? Netscape tried that trick once before. It didn't work, and the developers who were burned then have long memories. If Netscape couldn't pull that off when they were an independent company with 90% market share, only a religious adherant would believe that they could do it now, with 30% and dropping market share and a corporate overlord (AOL) who is utterly uninterested in the project. Hell, they can't even seem to communicate their API changes to the few remaining developers who do still support them, or did you fail to notice how broken Shockwave is under NS6?

Meanwhile, IE, which has primarily concentrated on being a "mere" web browser, while leaving the business of being the operating system to the, uh, operating system (just providing copious hooks to tempt developers into using the OS' functions), has successfully eaten netscape's lunch.

Re:BlOAt

[Alternity]

Because Netscape is now AOL's equivalent of...

Yeah but remember Netscape != Mozilla.


"When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun...

Re:BlOAt

[DrXym]

Perhaps you would rather haved a completely separate frontend for each platform that Mozilla was supposed to run on?

Assuming Mozilla was developed for Win32, Mac & Unix(GTK) this would have lead to 3 times the amount of UI development, localization, bugs & management for 3 UIs that were ultimately meant to look and feel the same anyway. And HTML form controls wouldn't be CSS-compliant either because they would be limited by the abilities of the native controls they were using. And users for other platforms such as OS/2, Unix(Motif), Unix(QT), Amiga, BeOS, Microwindows could all go screw themselves.

As it stands, the gfx widget approach is pretty sucessful. It has meant platform parity, massively reduced development times & easy porting to new platforms. The gfx widgets might not be 100% copies of the native widgets but for most people they're close enough. And this even assumes there is such a thing as a native widget to begin with. On Unix there isn't, on Win32 and Mac there are but plenty of apps choose to ignore them (e.g. Lotus OfficeSuite, IE 5.5, Encarta, Media Player 7, Quicktime 4, Sherlock, Kai Powertools, etc.).

Re:BlOAt

[zensonic]

Give it time!

Eventually the developers will get around to things like making "light versions" or "navigator" versions.

Why bother concentrating on making a light version when there still are other bugs to iron out?

It could also just be that developers are humans too. Someone within the development team probably just got bored and decided to see if the framework they had built was strong enough to make an irc client on top.

An a litle rant in the end. Nothings stops you from taking the source and modifing it to accept "light" versions. I think patheces would be greatly appriciated. You don't pay a dime for
mozilla which - I think - has an impact on just how hard you're allowed to bash it!!

Re:BlOAt

[DrXym]

Jesus Christ, some people are never happy. In old days this sort of stuff would be hardcoded in but now that it's all controlled at run time people still complain.

Everything from the browser, mail/news, editor, wallet, and the IRC client are MODULEs. If you don't want something then choose not to install it. Alternatively remove the JAR file and edit a few text files after installation and it goes away too. Even if you do leave it installed, the memory overhead of having the IRC chat client is low (consisting of some extra registry entries and chrome overlays) until you choose to run it.

Re:BlOAt

[ftobin]

It's a fucking browser, not a goddamn Operating System!

No, it's not simply a browser, and was never intended to be. It's an application environment.

Re:BlOAt

[DrXym]

You've said it yourself. If people want native widgets they should use another product that embeds the engine into a native UI.

As it stands, gfx widgets certainly aren't bug free but they're usable, they're not memory hogging and they're no slower than normal widgets assuming the skin is sensible. The last two points need elaboration because people tend to confuse widgets with skins:

Concerning bloat - most of it has little to do with the widgets and more to do with packaging and internal structure issues that affect the whole of Mozilla. Having 100 DLLs instead of 10 eats up extra megabytes of memory. Having unbounded or untuned internal memory caches eat up extra megabytes of memory. Having inefficient structures (especially trees of them) eats up megabytes of memory. Gfx widgets consumption is comparison is neglible. Sure, there's an overhead if you start associating images with each widget but that's no different than if you skinned GTK, Mac OS X or Whistler. Use a lighter skin if that bugs you. But the basic widget functionality is only a few hundred K and if you're suggesting that Mozilla should have these widgets anyway for HTML forms then you haven't lost anything have you?

Concerning speed - the limiting factor is not the gfx widget which is as fast as any native C++ object but the bindings to Javascript and the complexity of the CSS associated with the widget. Obviously a skin that renders a button as several opaque graphics above some centred text using a non-system font is going to be a lot slower than one that just draws the button as framed text.

And a note about acessibility. Mozilla is much more accessible than *any* other browser though existing tools will need updating to benefit. Afterall, the whole app is skinnable and extensible, allowing anyone to integrate it with a touch screen, screen reader, braille printer etc. or to use large fonts and buttons for the UI. There are also efforts to increase compatibility with existing software where possible, e.g. implement WM_GETWINDOWTEXT on frame windows to enable screen readers that use that mechanism.

Re:BlOAt

[FattMattP]

Why the hell does Mozilla need an IRC client?? Whatever happened to the idea of doing one thing and doing it well? If I want an IRC client, I can find a good one that works and fits my needs!!

This comment shows that you don't understand Mozilla. Mozilla isn't just a browser; It's a new development platform that happens to have a powerful HTML,CSS,XML,etc rendering engine at its core. Your comment is equivilent to asking why Linux needs an an IRC client.

The IRC client was written by outside developers. There are games written using Mozilla, also by outside developers. Are you going to complain about that, too? If you don't want the IRC client, then don't install it, just like you wouldn't install an IRC client on your system if you didn't want it.

Re:*sigh*

[Petrophile]

I've seen the problem on Windows and Mac, so it wouldn't shock me if Linux/Unix versions had it too. (The Linux version has other troubles, of course.)

What's up with Beonex 0.6?

[stesch]

It's a bit confusing these days with Mozilla/Gecko.

Beonex 0.6 was announced on Feshmeat
yesterday. But i was released just around
the release of Netscape 6 (first final).

Now we have Mozilla 0.6 and a first fix for
Netscape 6 a few days ago.

And don't forget Nautilus and Galeon!

I think I'm getting old. This is too much
for me. :-)

Re:Mozilla requires 64MB of RAM?

[diamondc]

no, it's true.. M18 is a RAM hog and on my home p200mmx computer with 64mb of RAM it's just barely usable with menus appearing 2 seconds after I click them. At my computer at work though, with a 11/27 RPM nightly and 128mb of RAM, Celeron 500 it flies.

Re:*sigh*

[Petrophile]

After Netscape 4.0, 4.01, 4.02, 4.03, 4.04, 4.05, 4.5, 4.51, 4.51, 4.52, 4.53, 4.54, 4.55, 4.56, 4.6, 4.61, 4.62, 4.63, 4.64, 4.7, 4.71, 4.72, 4.73, 4.74, 4.75, and 4.76 (none of which were particularly stable), what on god's green earth would make you think that a Netscape 4.80 would be a stable program? Did you just start surfing the web yesterday, or did you just somehow miss the last 4 years of the horrid quality of Netscape browsers? What is left to patch?

Mozilla speed

[lient]

To get the fastest mozilla ever send all output (stderr and stdout) directly to /dev/null. All that crap it spits out really slows it down.

Re:Netscape 6 <= Mozilla 0.6!

[bartok]

Actually, Mozilla is made up mostly of Netscape engineers. You can't blame them for management decisions.

can't even keep keyboard focus...

[drok]

(on Windows...)

okay, once I click in the main window upon start-up so that I can hit space-bar to get through the page, going to any other page causes it to lose the keyboard focus for the display window (space-bar and page-down do not work for example), but backspace works to go back to the previous page.

I have to click in the main window begin for each page to be able to use the standard page display keyboard controls? How f****** bogus is that?

Three years and they cannot even release something that keeps the keyboard focus appropriately?

You want more keyboard fun? Go into preferences, go into advanced/proxies, click on the radio button for manual set up, then tried to tab into the fields that you want to edit. Once you make it into a field, tried navigating through the filled using the left and right arrow keys and watch the radio buttons cycle as well...

(yes, I would submit a bug, but last time I went to do that I found it too be way too onerous... why should I, who knows nothing about the project internals, have to pick a sub project for the bug to be assigned to?)

-Robert

Hahahahahah

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahaha hzhahh ahahahahaha hahzhahaha A browser that requires 64 MB of ram?!? I'm still laughing, and probably will be for days to come.

Re:Long release notes

[MOPyvis]

try ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/releases/mozilla0.6 and pick your favorite OS

Re:*sigh*

[Hard_Code]

Um, the whole point of XUL was to have a cross-platform GUI. With that came "free" skinnability. People who skin and program aren't necessarily mutually inclusive! There are plenty of artsy graphics people who love to skin and show off their work, who haven't touched a line of code in their life. And there are plenty of programmers who will continue working hard on mozilla, and not spend their time working on skins. It's not like everybody on the Mozilla project has now decided "Hey guys, this skin stuff is really cool. Drop everything! Let's create skins instead!". And while skins may have the potential of creating confusing user interfaces, they also have the potential of creating much better, or customized ones. Instead of bitching over some programmer's brain-dead UI, you can make your own, or rely on some Really Smart UI or graphics guy to make one for you. If you don't like skins don't use them! That's why there is such a thing as "default" skin. Many people probably won't even change this skin, let alone realize that they can.

Re:Java runtime for Linux

[jck2000]

I have also had problems downloading and installing the Java plugin. One "dummy" way to do this, however, is to (i) download the official Netscape 6.0 version with Java, (ii) copy the plugins directory to a safe place, (iii) delete NS 6.0 (which is not as good as the more recent Moz versions and is filled with advertising-related links, etc.), (iv) download Mozilla (w/o Java) and (v) copy the saved NS 6.0 plugins directory over top the Mozilla plugins directory. This has worked fine for me on a number of post-M18 nightlies. I haven't checked on Moz 0.6 yet, but will undoubtedly do so tonight.

One Java plugin issue: When applets launch, System.out messages are spilled into the applet box, which is probably regarded as a "feature" by many /.'ers (including me, when I am putting together my own applets), but I think most non-Java-programmer users would regard this as a "bug".

Anyway, Mozilla is excellent and I highly recommend that everyone check it out. I am ready to delete NS 4.73 in its entirety.

Re:Where to get it

[ajs]

The announcement points people to the nightly builds directory. Someone on the mozilla site should change that!

Thanks for the info, and perhaps someone should moderate your comment up so that it shows up right under mine for people who are threading.

Re:Another pathetic milestone reached.

[jilles]

I really hate it when systemadministrators fuck up good machines like this. You can use the plugin on IE just as well. The default jvm included with netscape is just about the lousiest version out there (the IE version is way better than that) so I don't follow your argument. As far as standards are concerned netscape 4 implements the html 3 standard pretty well (not perfect though). It might even outcompete ie 3 in that area. However, the rest of the world has moved on and netscape 4 is pretty lousy at all the other relevant standards.

I agree that Netscape (or really mozilla) did the right thing by kicking out their crappy JVM. If they had done that four years ago, applets might have actually become popular.

Re:Woot!

[wunderhorn1]

Maybe it has to do with the word 'root'?

Like, say you're a 1337 h4x0r d00d, and you told all your buddies on #h4x0ring that you are trying to own microsoft's box© When you succeed, you say to them "w00t!" so they know you got root©

That's just a theory©
I like the word just because it sounds like an expression of pure joy©

w00t!


-the wunderhorn

IRC is part of the internet

[Galvatron]

I think it's absolutely a good idea to have a single program that can handle everything on the internet. I'd go nuts if I couldn't follow ftp links on the web, and I bet you would too. Integrating IRC is a good idea too, I think. Likewise, integrating mail is useful for following "contact me" links. Sure, it can be handled by third party plugins just as easily, and I could see people arguing in favor of that, but having a web browser with no ability to handle anything beyond pure http is just ridiculous. If that's what you want, there are projects available for that (Galeon, for example).

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:*sigh*

[Hard_Code]

Erm, NO! I mean mutually INclusive: The set of people who skin and the set of people who program aren't necessarily mutually INclusive. Which was the assertion the poster was trying to make: that since these people are one in the same, skinning necessarily means taking time away from programming.

"Yep. You do."

I know you are but what am...oh nevermind.

Re:Java runtime for Linux

[DeadSea]

I have yet to see java working in Mozilla under Linux. I periodically install it, but I always get errors starting up. Today when I tried I got the following error:

There was an error trying to initialize the HPI library.
Please check your installation, HotSpot does not work correctly
when installed in the JDK 1.2 Linux Production Release, or
with any JDK 1.1.x release.
Could not startup JVM properly!
java_vm process: could not start Java VM
INTERNAL ERROR on Browser End: Could not read ack from browser
System error?:: Resource temporarily unavailable

Now I'll have to go and delete it from the plugin directory. Anybody else have this experience? Does anybody know what I need to do to fix this? It looks like it may be trying to use one of the other java runtimes I have installed rather than the one that it installed. I couldn't find a bug report about it.

Not a Milestone release

[pawal]

This version is not a Milestone release, it is a Netscape/Mozilla compatibility release, for developers doing stuff that is supposed to be compatible for both Mozilla and Netscape versions.

Re:Not a Milestone release

[DaSyonic]

It actually is.
Take a look at the Mozilla Roadmap to see what releases are planned, the time frame, and all that good stuff.

Re:Not a Milestone release

[Anonymous Coward]

How did this get modded up? it says on the Mozilla home page that its a milestone. It says so in the About dialog in the Help menu "Mozilla 0.6" instead of the previous "Milestone M18"
You quotes this from the homepage, yeah, ALL mozilla releases right now are aimed for developers, its still not for everyday use. You went to the homepage, cut and paisted a quote, and got modded up for bs. incredible. dirty little karma whore

Re:Not a Milestone release

[pawal]

Here is the quote sent through the mozilla announcement list to prove my point:

"The Mozilla 0.6 release does not contain many of the features or bug
fixes which can be seen in our current daily builds. Our most recent
daily builds are available at
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/nightly/lates t/ "

Re:Interesting...

[6j3]

(try a slashdot comments page fully threaded)

I had problems with doing just that on a Windows machine running Netscape 4.76. I turned off error control on the modem and lowered the buffers. Since then, I have not had problems reading /. pages threaded.

Re:Woot!

[wunderhorn1]

Thank you, whoever modded my previous post (the parent) down. I love it when people piss on a valid discussion. I mean, that post was obviously a flame, and a troll, and harmful to all readers of slashdot, and was certainly not worthly of the +1 that normal posts get.

Moderators should definately be modding the bad down, and not wasting their precious points on promoting the good!

I apologise for my lapse of good judgement.

-the wunderhorn

Re:Interesting...

[FatOldGoth]

...and have yet to find a browser that has the features I want.

telnet www.foobar.com 80
GET / HTTP/1.0

--

Fixed it - Re:Edit|Preferences [...] else?

[Malc]

I found the problem. I hadn't deleted my profile, which was buried in that really annoying "Documents and Settings" tree.

Bugzilla bug 62592

Grrr!

[shippo]

The last major thing I downloaded was Netscape 4.76, which took some time. Now this appears!

Doesn't matter as I have to reinstall everything anyway. My root filesystem went belly-up on Sunday, causing many major things to either disapper or become corrupted. May be due to an IDE/DMA bug, a hardware failure, or dual-booting into Windows. I'll be doing a thorough disk scan tonight,

Re:Grrr!

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I recommend installing the "Windows 95" product, by Microsoft?

You'll find it combines security with stability, and high performance.

Thank you

Re:Grrr!

[shippo]

I've been dual booting this Windows 98/Linux combination for 3 months. Windows is used for games and MIDI, linux for everything else.

The only thing Windows wise that may have triggered this was a DirectX 8.0 upgrade. Surely DirectX can't have smashed my hard drive?

Re:Grrr!

[Psiren]

This would be the same Windows 95 that when booting on a new motherboard I bought, completely trashed the BIOS? Twice. Linux worked fine. Go figure.

Re:A note on the ESPN thing

[jvj24601]

For ESPN, I always load (for any browser) the slightly-faster 30 index page (which I think was created for IE 3.0 users).

http://espn.go.com/index.30.html

Amen

[green pizza]

Exactly how I feel. 4.76 sure ain't like the good old days of 1.1N, but it's one of the best things available today. If Mac OS X and OmniWeb 4 ran better on my old G3, I'd use that.

I'm happy to see Mozilla work and all, but I still can't get over its sheer size and requirements. I thought it was going to be a step ahead. MSIE 4.5/5.0 for Mac OS Classic and OmniWeb 4 for Mac OS X are both pretty decent examples of almost-written-from-scratch browsers that have very impressive (read: small) requirements. What happined to Mozilla?!? Is there hope for the long-term? My P233MMX and my Dual PPro 200 machines (both equiped with SCSI drives) are quite zippy for everything but Netscape and Mozilla. They even handle the GIMP quite well. As it stands, the only un*x box that runs a browser well for me is my SGI Octane. Most of the time I just have fire up my G3 or boot into Windows on one of the PCs.

*sigh*

Not a true Mozilla milestone release

[Platinum Dragon]

As another poster mentioned, and as pointed out in the Mozilla roadmap, Mozilla 0.6 is a build from the Netscape branch, not the Mozilla trunk. It's something for people who want to extend or develop for Netscape 6 with some added fixes and updates from the trunk.

I'm personally going to stick with Mozilla trunk nightlies, considering the mess that was the NS6 release. I imagine Moz0.6 incorporates many fixes, but the trunk nightlies are just beautiful at this point. Speed is nearly (if not already) equal with IE5 in Win9x, and the speed under Linux seems to be increasing slightly. At this point, there seem to be more regressions than new bugs cropping up.

Go to the nightlies directory and grab the latest build for your platform. Scroll down to get the absolute latest build for your platform, and be amazed. I should note that, at least in my experience, using the installer seems to allow some strange bugs to creep in - grab the main tarball/zips if you can and be blown away. It's become a good browser at this point.

Re:A browser story,and nobody mentioned konqueror

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

Ah, I was wondering if somebody'd get around to comparing Konqueror with it...

Having to occasionally deal with pages with gigantic (not necessarily even nested) tables which takes Netscape forever to put on the screen, I've been very impressed by Konqueror's ability to render the tables on the screen as the data comes in rather than making me wait a minute or two before putting the whole thing on the screen in one mass like Netscape does.

Javascript support seems to be still a little bit lacking (I do mean "a little bit" - Lately I only occasionally run into limitations e.g. theonion.com has some "javascript:onion_pop(URL)" links, which Konqueror still doesn't support...

Oh, and it looks like the "won't let go of URL" bug may not be COMPLETELY gone, but I've only run into it once so far in the last day of heavy use, so it no longer seems to be an issue most of the time. I'm now able to use it for about 90-95% of my browsing.

To get back on the official topic, though - I'd still like to try Mozilla again, but I'm waiting for a relatively easy-to-build "browser only" version. I've no interest at all in a gigantic "do-everything" application. (Anybody know if there is already a 'just the browser' version available with more reasonable resource requirements?)

A vote for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for Evil.

Perhaps a Mozilla developer can explain, comment?

[green pizza]

I've been using browsers since the novel days of Midas and Viola (gotta love ORA), and more recently with Mosaic, Netscape, and MSIE. I was as happy as could be in the "golden era" of Netscape 1.1N. Sure it would crash every now and then, but for the most part it was a great performer. Netscape 2.X brought about plugins and animated gif support, that was about the point where I began to see the start of BrowserBloat. Some versions of Netscape 3.X were downright scary with their sheer number of Java bugs and overall slowness, quite happy when MSIE 3.X and newer version of OmniWeb (for NeXTSTEP and Openstep) came out.

In the NS camp, here we are today with Netscape 4.76, Netscape 6, and Mozilla 0.6. Of the three I use 4.76 on a regular basis on my SGI Octane for browsing and email. It's not as fast as it could be, but it has been almost rock solid (compared to the daily segfaults I was getting with 4.70). I've tried all three on my linux boxes (a P233MMX and a dual PPro200) as well as my Mac G3... Mozilla is certainly faster and does a much better job at rendering, but why on earth does it gobble up so many resources? RAM, disk, and CPU cycles (when rendering, compared to other browsers). Folks rightfully 'dis 4.X, but as far as I know and have seen, 4.76 finally works and works pretty well (at least as good as any Netscape browser since 2.02). Mozilla is certainly an improvement, but not as much as I had hope (or as much as folks claim). The sheer footprints are quite a bit higher than other similar written-almost-from-the-ground-up browsers (such as Mac OS MSIE 4.0-5.0 and OmniWeb 4.0). My two PCs are great performers, especially the dual PPro, but Netscape & Mozilla bring them to their knees while a complex data set in Vis5D works without a hitch. GIMP is quite snappy with large files. And Matlab has been great.

Congratulations on the sucess with Mozilla, but please keep working and perhaps consider branching off with an even more revolutionary, "lighter" browser.

Re:Running on Windows

[mrfiddlehead]

I'm in windoze now, and I can say that it definitely loads more slowly than IE5.5. The delay in opening windows is almost annoying enough to prevent me from using it. The quality of the browsing experience (tm) offsets the delays. Be ready to close and open the beast regularly though because it still eats ram like a ... a ... ram eating app. With three browser windows and a mail window open I'm over 45MB now ... just opened another window and it took about 8 steamboats ... memory now at 47.5MB ... it's almost enough from keeping me using. I'm so fscking sick of Netscape 4.7x though and I'm loathe to switch to IE so I guess I'll just stick wit it.

Re:*sigh*

[Petrophile]

Know your history! Netscape wasted at least a year trying to hack the Communicator 4 codebase into something that was Fast/Stable/Standards-Compliant for the planned Communicator 5 release.

The codebase was just too hacked up already -- They determined making NS4 into a working browser wasn't possible, so they started from scratch on Mozilla/Netscape 6. That means Netscape 4.7 is a dead end, and you'll just have to deal with it.

Why no release builds outside of Mac/Linux/Win?

[softsign]

This is something that has bothered me for some time now. Arguably, Netscape's biggest userbase is probably in the Unices now - since IE is clearly a far superior browser (free, don't start spouting Opera propaganda at me) for everyday use in Windows and Mac. Hell, the Mac IE is probably the best browser I've seen, bar none.

However, Netscape has yet to release a Solaris build, or an HP-UX build, or anything aside from a Linux 2.2 build. Now I see that the Mozilla folks are taking the same approach - which is disappointing.

Is there any reason for this? I mean, they're building a Solaris 2.6 nightly every day and it works beautifully (on 2.7, for me). Are they ever going to officially release a version or is the onus going to be on admins to compile their own version for anything other than the 3 big platforms? This kind of approach seems awfully shortsighted. I thought part of the whole point of Mozilla was platform independence and the ability to easily build a new port.

I'm not flaming the Mozilla folks here, I recognize quality work when I see it, but I'm just curious why they don't have a Mozilla 0.6 (or a Netscape 6 - yes, I realize that's a different story) for Solaris.

--

Re:Why no release builds outside of Mac/Linux/Win?

[softsign]

I see... thanks!

Now the question is, do I run the PR3 for Solaris, or a Mozilla nightly? =)

I've seen the final product for Windows and it is not ready for prime-time.

--

Re:Why no release builds outside of Mac/Linux/Win?

[Tet]

However, Netscape has yet to release a Solaris build, or an HP-UX build, or anything aside from a Linux 2.2 build.

That's only half true. While Netscape themselves are only offering Windows, Mac and Linux, they're still supporting Solaris and HP/UX, but you have to contact Sun and HP to get it. See here.

Re:How its going so far

[On Lawn]

what was probably meant as something funny has hit a trigger with me.

Netscape does crash on you, and it does it well. Better than any browser I have used. Long live open source.

A crashing well requires at least the program doesn't take anything else with it. Thats been the longest standing reason I switched to Linux back in 1994. NT does a reasonable (but not near as good) a job at this, but it didn't really arrive (in a marketing sence) until 4.0 some time later.

So you really might be making a joke, but *yes* it is features like that are quickly adopted into open source that make me a life long fan. If a project is in development it better at least crash well.

(I also hereby take a neutral stance in the mozilla advocacy. I still think mozilla is a good idea and will be great for all involved, but it does have to meet up to some pretty high standards. Those standards are more individual, and so I decide if mozilla is right for me, not idiots and zealots.)

On the Mac, also

[update()]

Like a lot of Mac users, I found Mozilla versions before M17 utterly useless on MacOS. They have made tremendous progress since then, and recent versions are reasonably usable. (The browser, at least. I haven't tried the mail or news.) I'm suspicious about the people who respond to every criticism of Mozilla with "Oh, but the latest nightlies are much better!" but users who are disappointed with M18 should try recent nightlies, which are much better.

When you find Mac-specific bugs, report them!! My impression is that for all the emphasis on cross-platform, the Mozilla core only really pays attention to Win32. and to a lesser extent, Unix. If users don't report and vote for those bugs, they'll never get noticed or fixed.

Re:Another pathetic milestone reached.

[Tralfamadorian]

Arch, you're a troll, right? In case you're not, I feel that I should tell you that in your quest to attack Linux and its users and its software, you have become a zealot yourself. Only you're a zealot for Microsoft (I've seen this common theme throughout your posts).

But let me tell you that Linux supports more of my hardware than 2k does (I have a Pinnacle DC10plus which doesn't have drivers for 2k, but DOES work in Linux). Plus, some of us like a command line, and as far as command lines go, 2k's absolutely sucks.

Well, since you don't actually build software on windows, it would be wrong to compare building software daily on linux to when you installed the whole OS. You would have to compare how often you install software, or upgrade software on your system.


He who knows not, and knows he knows not is a wise man

There is Netscape 6 for Solaris

[linuxci]

Sun is helping them with the porting for it:
http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/netscape/

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Mozilla requires 64MB of RAM?

[Noodles]

The release notes (link in the story) say Mozilla requires 64MB of RAM. Of course it doesn't really require that much. Are they trying to scare people off?

Re:*sigh*

[trb]

Skins are the software equivalent of accessorizing your car. You know those cars that have furry dashboards, blackout glass, chain link steering wheel, longhorns on the hood, playboy bunny mudflaps, neon lights under the chassis, rotating bezel lights around the license plates? If those strike you as odd, maybe you should step back and take another look at your desktop.

Re:Another pathetic milestone reached.

[Tralfamadorian]

This is true, because since AFCArchvile doesn't need it, NOBODY needs/uses it.

Screw worshiping Linus, I'm getting a new God, and his name is AFCArchvile.

AFCArchvile, do you see any use for Perl, Python, or Ruby? Surely, since as a Computer engineer you won't need those, so why would anyone?


He who knows not, and knows he knows not is a wise man

Re:Web Standards Project Applauds Netscape 6

[Kook9]

I wouldn't say they've "changed their minds". This seems like pretty basic carrot/stick diplomacy to me.

Kook9 out.

How its going so far

[DaSyonic]

Mozilla has really come along way. Ive been using the nightly builds for the past 3 months (upgrading daily, missed very few builds) and the quality of Mozilla is really improving

Ive now just gotten .6 and tried it out. The first thing I tried to do is install the Java plugin from netscape. Amazingly enough, went without problem. This has been kinda tricky, even in the last few nightly builds. PSM (to enable SSL) installed nicely, but thats nothing new. Then I fired up Mozilla mail and the filters still work (my filters died for some reason a few nights ago)

In conclusion, Mozilla is very stable. Its not perfect, it might just crash on you, but it does it, and does it well. I have not used any other browser in several weeks. I get all my email (including a subscribtion to linux-kernel mailing list among others) through mozilla mail, and it filters it nicely and loads the spool (sometimes over 1500 messages) quickly. Even if your not ready to throwout Netscape just yet, give Mozilla a try. Im glad that this Milestone is stable, the past Milestone (M18) was really awful, and I recommended against it and told others to just use the nightly builds. This one seems to finally be the one to work, and work well.

Re:How its going so far

[Anonymous Coward]

In conclusion, Mozilla is very stable. Its not perfect, it might just crash on you, but it does it, and does it well

So Mozilla is very stable, but then again, it crashes on you. However, it crashes so well it doesn't matter?

Re:How its going so far

[drok]

you know, reading over the release notes is really scary... how has this major data loss bug, first submitted almost four months ago, been allowed to make it into the release versions:

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=49180

(It seems that nobody has looked at it in the past six weeks from the sudden stop to the discussion.)

I just hope all the keyboard shortcuts work appropriately on Windows, since I need to use assistive technologies, that has really been a difficulty. Wouldn't be so bad if it was using native interface widgets...

-Robert

Re:How its going so far

[hyoo]

Mozilla has really come along way. Ive been using the nightly builds for the past 3 months (upgrading daily, missed very few builds) and the quality of Mozilla is really improving.

IE has really come a long way. Ive been using the final release builds for the past 3 years (upgrading semi-annually, missed very few upgrades) and the quality of IE is really improving.

Its not perfect, it might just crash on you, but it does it, and does it well

I agree. Netscape does crash on you, and it does it well. Better than any browser I have used. Long live open source.

Re:Correct english used

[lambda]

I'm flattered. I really am.

Re:Another pathetic milestone reached.

[^chuck^]

This is a pile stinking fetid dingoes kidneys. I installed a linux nightly build about a week ago, installed the java plugin and others which I keep locally on my harddisk as I am a compulisive nightly builder. I can say it runs better than ever, especially if you don't install the java. The reason loading times are so long with java are the same reasons why it took forever with netscape 4. Once that damn java is loaded though, no wait times on any web page with it, unlike IE which starts crunching away. But linux users don't shut things down, now do they?
As to flash, runs fine, don't know what your talking about.

and the last part of your argument, well thats just mean man! If you find this sort of stuff irking you, don't run it! or if you care, which its obvoius you do, then try to help in some way, either by downloading nightly builds and submitting bug reports, or actually changing the code to your liking (i don't, but i don't whine about useless things and complain when they don't get fixed when all the tools are laid out before me either)

Re:*sigh*

[ChristianBaekkelund]

All I want is a Netscape update of 4.76 which:

• Is far more stable. I mean 4.76 still crashes like CRAZY for me on almost every platform I've used it on.
• Is far faster. Comparatively, it's still slower than I somehow seem to feel it *should* be. Especially after using IE every once in a while.

If Netscape released a MUCH faster and MUCH more stable version of Netscape 4.76, I'd love it. Three more minor feature requests to make it "perfect":

• Had better bookmark management.
• Was Navigator-only. I never use all the mail/newsgroups/composer/address book fluff. I got better apps for all that stuff on my win98 box (Eudora, Agent, DreamWeaver, and Outlook, respectively). I know I used to be able to just download Navigator, but didn't seem to see such last time I checked (could be wrong though).
• "skin"-ability might be nice, too.

Netscape 6 <= Mozilla 0.6!

[gburgyan]

If you think about it it's pretty amazing -- what Netscape considers good enough for release barely makes a blip on Mozilla's charts. Makes you wonder what Netscape was smoking when they shipped.

Re:Netscape 6 <= Mozilla 0.6!

[Petrophile]

Netscape needed to get out there with a mostly usable browser, yes. But they didn't need to ship the horrid, bug-ridden mail and news piece. It wasn't ready, and it' embarassing.

Re:Netscape 6 <= Mozilla 0.6!

[Kool Moe]

Pointless, but yes, mail/news need BIG improvements.
It's really sad to release this as a final Netscape product when things just don't work (much less missing shortcuts and such).

Re:Netscape 6 <= Mozilla 0.6!

[Shimbo]

Netscape 6 needs to be out there with a product. You could build a flawless browser and it would look crap on 50% of sites.

People are fixing their sites to work in Netscape 6 where they wouldn't have bothered with Opera or Mozilla. And hopefully, after a while, designers will not have to bother going through hoops to work with NC4.

Every site that gets cleaned up will work better with Opera, Konqueror, whatever. There may be better browsers but Netscape is the most likely to give web developers a clue about designing cross-platform pages.

Web Standards Project Applauds Netscape 6

[Chuck Chunder]

In related news it seems that the WaSP have changed their minds about Netscape 6.

Re:Interesting...

[Doc Hopper]

My gateway machine at home is a Pentium 133 with 128 MB RAM. I downloaded .6 last night before the news appeared on Slashdot; although rendering speed is not quite as fast as Netscape, start-up time is noticeably faster. Also lots of visual glitches with Netscape on Linux are gone. The Preferences screen on a 133 is pretty slow, but not intolerably so as it was in previous releases. There are some noticeable weirdnesses comparing Mozilla on my faster machine versus this, but I cannot say with authority that it is due to the speed difference.

Matt Barnson

Re:Skins

[seanmeister]

View > Apply Theme > Classic
Sean

Slow machine

[Kohath]

Sometimes I don't understand. Why should a brand-new browser run well on such an old machine?

"ok" hardware

[green pizza]

>>on my dual-466/256MB RAM. This hardware is okay, but I wouldn't call a dual 466 anything to screem home about anymore.

Heh, I remember when a blazing fast Linux box was a 486/100, and that was in the days of folks running Windows on P90s. Sorta sad how even the Linux camp sorta expect its users to be no more than 18 months behind the bleeding edge of the technology curve.

Re:Edit|Preferences screwed up... anybody else?

[big.ears]

Those are mail/composer/newsgroup prefs. I have them fine. Maybe you didn't install the full version.

Re:Unacceptable limitation

[Karora]

The Debian packages manage to avoid this problem. I think it's probably just easier for them to say this than to write the installer stuff to work around it.

No doubt you can get RPMs somewhere which bypass this as well.

Certainly, the nightly builds, which I have been using for at least six months, and which have been my only browser for the last three, write user-related settings into your home directory, with the software itself just needing to be "on path" somewhere.

Similarly, the Windows version which I use on NT installs in a perfectly fine multi-user way, with my settings associated with my profile, and the executables in a shared location.

Andrew.

Re:*sigh*

[Throw Away Account]

Mozilla 0.6 has skins for one and only one reason -- to make porting easier. By rendering the widgets with the browser's page renderer, you don't have to write a whole new batch of front-end code for Windows, X, Mac, OS/2, Be, etc.

A side effect is that it makes it easy to replace thw widgets with a new set, since your widgets are in a browser-renderable format instead of your OS libraries. Thus, with a dozen lines of code to create an interface less clumsy than copying over interface files, you wind up able to easily skin Mozilla.

In short,"'skin'-ability" didn't cost developer time in Mozilla, it saved time to focus on security, speed, and actual functionality.

Re:Mozilla with shockwave flash

[kramergr]

I've been using the Mozilla nightly builds for months and www.jibjab.com works just fine. This site uses lots of flash animation. I've just done the install by hand of the flash files into the mozilla plugins dir.

First Experience's w M6

[cuijian]

Well, just installed M6 and I can't get the thing to start! The mighty mozilla intro picture comes up and then the program freezes.

I've been using the nightly builds all along and have been pretty happy and life has been progressing nicely. When Netscape 6 came out I took it for a spin and had the same freeze problem, I wrote that off as the fault of those Netscape idiots and never worried about it. Now its obvious that the same N6 code that was causing me problems has found its way into M6.

Does anyone know what might be going on? How can I fix this? I'm going to have to go back to an older install in the meantime, but I want my M6 fix. I'm having this problem w a Win 98 laptop. Thanks for any advice (and let me know what board I ought to be turning to for this help outside of /.)

Re:First Experience's w M6

[tweek]

go to the start menu and run profile manager from the seamonkey menu option. It'll start fine after that. I was having the same problem on my work machine until I tried that.

Re:Java runtime for Linux

[DeadSea]

Installation doesn't appear to be the problem. The installation goes fine and when I'm done I have a javalib...so file and a java2 directory in the plugins folder. Seems to be exactly what one would expect and what you would get from the Netscape release....

Re:Initial experiences - posted from .6

[Kool Moe]

Does anyone know if the new version allows import of Netscape email folders and messages? I've not been able to find out how to accomplish this as of yet.

I installed Netscape 6, cause M18 rendered mail/news horribly here (Win98) and N6 did much better.
I simply copied the contents of my mail/news/local folders from the Netscape User folder to the Mozilla folder and all worked fine. Be aware the Mozilla Users folder is installed to
C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Mozilla\Users50
and there doesn't seem to be a way to change that, despite where you actually install N6.

[complaints]
mail.news is still buggy. 'Unread' arrows on threads do not refresh properly.
The mail/news window blanks out on me if I scroll too quickly.
Randomly, messages do not render correctly if composed in HTML- clicking a different folder, then back to the problem one, fixes that temporarily
Memory usage is insane- Mozilla disappoints in a big way here
Too many kybd shortcuts left out- most noticably, ctrl-return doesn't send messages anymore. Argh!
[/complaints]

Otherwise, it definitely renders faster and is more stable. AND, BIG PLUS, I don't get cache/HD churning with it like I do with 4.x

Overall, great, but needs more work (not a coder, so can't help other than bug reports!).

Re:Advise

[Cheetahfeathers]

Because I don't want to use KDE or be forced to load KDE libs for one app. I don't like either KDE or Gnome. Make it so that you can use it without having to touch any bit of KDE and I'll look at it. :)

You like Konq? Great, use it. I don't want anything tied to any window manager, even if it's not a sucky one like KDE.

Re:Unacceptable limitation

[amorsen]

RedHat 7 versions of nightly builds are available. There are also builds for RH6 there, and those work on at least Suse 6.4.

Benny

Re:*sigh*

[Petrophile]

My memory is fine. I don't overclock. I run with the latest version of NS 4.7.

But, yet, yesterday I managed to create a HTML page which caused Netscape to instantly crash with a memory access violation. Was my page bad? Yes, but that sort of behavior is inexcusible.

And then, last week, I ran into the links-stop-working problem which has existed in Netscape 4 for how many years? Don't tell me you've never seen it.

If you don't see these things, you're the one smoking stuff, or maybe just an old stick-in-the-mud who likes Netscape because you've always liked Netscape.

A note on the ESPN thing

[luge]

There is a bug filed on the ESPN stuff- it looks like it is slightly bad code on ESPN's part (which of course ESPN should fix) that is dealt with in a particularly ugly way by Mozilla (which of course Mozilla should fix.) So, it is a known problem, and Top Minds Are Working On It.
~luge(who goes to ESPN about 10,000 times a day with mozilla and gets irritated too)

Re:A note on the ESPN thing

[luge]

Yeah, but the problem isn't in the main page (which renders fine, on either version.) It is in the new sub-pages, most notably the college football page. They do some very funky style-sheet stuff that is placed within scripts, and subsequently (when used according to the w3 spec) don't work quite right.
~luge

Unacceptable limitation

[rknop]

From the release notes:

If you are installing Mozilla on a multi-user operating system such as Linux, Unix, or Windows 2000, you should install it separately in the user directory of each user who plans to use Mozilla.

Forget it, I'm not even going to try this. The last thing I want to have to do is have a HUGE program installed once for every user on the machine. Sure, at home, I'm mostly the only user, but not entirely. And at work, we can't afford that kind of disk space in everyone's home directories.

Why is it so hard to get a Mozilla with SSL working with a true multiuser install? I mean, hell, Quake 3 has a true multiuser install nowadays. Older browsers never had trouble with it. I like what I've seen of Mozilla, but I'm not going to consider it a viable option until the thing works on my Unix system like a Unix piece of software, not like a hacked-over piece of Windows 95 or MacOS 7 software.

-Rob

Re:Unacceptable limitation

[dalutong]

really guys... chmod 777 /usr/local/mozilla -R
/* where I put it */

it is not THAT bad to have a chmod'd dir for a regular system... no one is going to use mozilla to kill your system.

(Or you can install it for everyone individually)

Re:Unacceptable limitation

[swordgeek]

"but I'm not going to consider it a viable option until the thing works on my Unix system like a Unix piece of software, not like a hacked-over piece of Windows 95 or MacOS 7 software."

That "Win or Mac" comment is hardly fair--this sort of behaviour is unacceptable on any platform for any software. Mozilla just sucks, plain and simple. It's stuck in a perpetual alpha-test stage.

Re:Unacceptable limitation

[the Atomic Rabbit]

I've been running Mozilla from a non-world writable directory for ages. It lives in /usr/local/mozilla, which is owned by root. Unprivileged users can run it with no problem. All you have to do is get root to run Mozilla *once* after installing it for the first time. Basically, the first time you launch it, Mozilla needs to generate some codepages and write into the mozilla directory, which only root can do.

Re:Unacceptable limitation

[BZ]

The problem is that the current SSL is a binary-only kludge. It is being modified to rid it of licensing issues (now that the patent issues are gone) and integrated into the Mozilla source tree and build environment. Then SSL will work fine for a multiuser install.

Re:Initial experiences - posted from .6

[n0rm]

There are small rendering glitches, such as when writing this text in the "Comment" textfield on slashdot. If I fill out a line, ending a word exactly on the last character in the field, then the "space" before the next word will be in the beginning of the next line. It looks funny, but is hardly annoying.

It looks funny, but it this isn't actually a glitch. VI does the same thing.

Re:Initial experiences - posted from .6

[cyroth]

Wow, first there was OpenOffice and now a decent browser. Who says Linux has no place on the desktop.

Where to get it

[ajs]

The site doesn't do a good job of telling you WHAT to download (it just points you to the uber-confusing nightly download directory).

Here's what I know. The build comments page points you to a Linux, Mac and a Windows version. These all live in the same download directory from 12/6/2000.

Hope that helps people out.

Re:Where to get it

[havardw]

Stable releases (like 0.6) live in the "releases" direcory, try http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/releases/mozill a0.6/

Contradiction

[arnald]

"...the functionality of Netscape 6..."

Now there's a contradiction in terms if ever I heard one! :-)

Fixed link (I hope)

[Chuck Chunder]

here (Mozilla screwed that up, not me. Honestly!)

Have they fixed XDnD?

[wowbagger]

(and I don't mean some strange version of the TSR game....)
Have they fixed the X Windows system Drag and Drop protocol? I use an external program to do my downloads, and with NS4.7x I could drag a link to the program and start the download. Mozilla M18 won't do this: It copies the data to the X clipboard, but then doesn't notify the target application that it needs to read the clipboard.

Re:Have they fixed XDnD?

[ResHippie]

Speaking of Drag and Drop, have they got that working with the bookmarks under the address yet? IE has it, Netscape has it, but if I try to drag the icon down, and make it a shortcut, nothing happens. (in M18)

Re:Have they fixed XDnD?

[hexix]

Yeah, I too use an external program for downloading (Gnome Transfer Manager) and I had the same trouble you speak of with the nightly builds of mozilla. This version however works perfectly, I can drag the links to files to the gtm applet (or gtm window itself) and the file will start downloading.

YES

[Cplus]

nt

Skins

[green pizza]

Is there a skin for 6 yet that looks like stock Netscape 4.7X? Or perhaps like HotJava 3? I really like the GUI of those two. I don't care much for the most of the new wiz-bang skins nor can I stomach the "look what I did in 2 minutes with xpaint" default skin of Netscape 6.

A browser story,and nobody mentioned konqueror yet

[cyberdonny]

Done.

The new 2.0.1 version looks real nice. The jittery display while loading Slashdot is gone, it now understand E*Trade's protocol-less relative URLs, and no longer gets confused by localhost:10000. Give it a try.

Oh, and for those who wonder: yes, it does Java, Javascript and NS compatible plugins. And it handles those mazes of nested tables from hell perfectly well, unlike netscape.

Re:Advise

[macro]

Ok, Konqueror renders pages almost as good as IE5 does. The only thing why I dont use Konqueror is coz its loading time 10 times slower than 10 netscapes being started simultaneously.

Re:Interesting...

[DrXym]

Any substantial piece of software written in the last 3 years will run like a dog on that sort of configuration. I'm afraid the answer is to upgrade or stick with the stuff you're running now.

Even a memory upgrade can take away some of the pain. I have a P133 with 84Mb at home and it manages to run NS 6 on Linux. The UI (especially the menus are) a bit slow but page rendering is acceptable. I reckon it would be possible for someone to knock together a 'lite' skin for Moz/NS6 without any graphics or clever CSS that worked fine on lower end machines.

Re:Another pathetic milestone reached.

[Shimbo]

Well, that's probably because I have IE5 that was already installed for me when I installed Windows 2000. Therefore, the 4.5MB argument is moot.

Well, yes. Still, the 1.1 JVM that ships with IE is so out of date as to be worthless, and you have to download the Sun plugin anyway.

No wait, I've just got a message from Bill telling me that nobody needs Java 1.2 or greater.

Re:Java runtime for Linux

[Psiren]

He's not whining you arsehole. He's just stated that it doesn't work for him. Do you think he just typed in that error message for the hell of it. Get off your high-horse.

Screw 0.6 - You're Still Better Off With Nightlies

[Ungulate]

Remember the whole controversy about the mozilla trunk being branched in order to rush Netscape out the door, and how they didn't incorporate Really Important Bugfixes from the trunk? 0.6 is another release from that branch. Its purpose is to provide a basis for Netscape 6.0x If you're a mozilla enthusist who likes to see contnued bugfixes and improvements, keep downloading the nightlies.

*sigh*

[green pizza]

All I want is a "Netscape 4.8X". A slightly more stable version of 4.76 (which is a LOT better than 4.70) and with some of the motif gui bugs fixed. Then I'd be set for life... or at least another 18 - 24 months.

Re:*sigh*

[Angst Badger]

Why do we care if we can change the skin on a software package?

We (that's you and me and others like us, buddy) don't, but the vast unwashed masses do. As in all things, but especially in software, most people don't have the knowledge to understand the underlying substance, nor do they care. They want flash. Apple understands this -- look how many millions of dollars they've made from colored plastic and, looking forward, a GUI that simulates colored plastic. Microsoft sure as hell understands this, too.

Yes, it's stupid. But fashion ain't exactly a new force in human affairs, and until we outgrow our primate brains, it isn't going anywhere. Personally, I'd be happy if the designers of too-hip-to-live programs would just provide a compile-time switch to leave out all that skin code so I can get on to the important stuff without wasting RAM and CPU cycles.

Of course, I'm being completely hypocritical here. I'd pay attention to skins more if someone would cook up an XMMS skin that looks like a Wyse 60 greenscreen terminal display so I could get rid of the Wyse 60 terminal I use to launch mpg123... :)

--

Re:*sigh*

[vherva]

What are you all smoking?

Of all (GUI) browsers I use (IE 5.5sp1/NT4SP6, Opera 5/NT4SP6, Latest Mozilla nightly /NT4SP6, Netscape 4.76 /NT4SP6, Latest Mozilla nightly / Redhat7.0, Konqueror-2.01/ Redhat7.0, Opera 4 beta3/ Redhat7.0) or have used (IE 5.0, IE 4.0, Netscape 4.5, 4.0, 3.0 (NT/Linux), Opera 4, 3.6 /NT)
Netscape 4.76 is ABSOLUTELY the most stable one. On both Linux and NT. It doesn't crash even once a month.

All the other browsers crash or hang (IE) every now and then - many of them don't do that annoyingly often, but more often than 4.76 anyhow.

Mozilla is perhaps the least stable (after Opera 4beta3 for linux) - but is definetely improving.

And the 4.7x series have been stable for me for long time.

4.76 IS slow and memory hungry, but Mozilla is MUCH more so (and Mozilla has other problems like missing shortcuts and mouse disturbing problems).

Guys, run memory test for your computer. Check your processor fan. Don't overclock. And if you using Win9x... just forget it.

Re:*sigh*

[Bob Ince]

If Netscape released a MUCH faster and MUCH more stable version of Netscape 4.76, I'd love it.

But web authors wouldn't. The only reason Netscape 4 is usable for you at all is that authors have spent a lot of time painstakingly working around the bugs and inconsistencies 4.x brings.

Please let it die now.

Was Navigator-only.

Damn right. I can't see what a web browser and a newsreader have in common that dictates they should live in the same app. Smells like more marchitecture.

--
This comment was brought to you by And Clover.

Re:*sigh*

[ftobin]

Why do we care if we can change the skin on a software package?

The sad part is you are probably as dumb as you sound. I suppose you've never changed how an application looks; you've never changed how your shell prompt looks, the colors for your windows, your desktop background, where your buttons are, etc. Different people require different interfaces; this is the whole point behind HTML, to provide semantic meaning, and allow the end user to decide how that information is presented.

Re:*sigh*

[rabidcow]

yeess... skins are nice. i like being able to change how things look, but they should be a function of the OS.

If I want to change the way programs look, I don't want to have to do it AGAIN and AGAIN for each app. I want to be able to do it ONCE for EVERYTHING.

'course you can't even do that with the system colors. Too many (well, a few) stupid programmers hard wired in colors that expect gray (#C0C0C0) as the background color. It's worse than AOL web sites.

Re:*sigh*

[voop]

All I want is a "Netscape 4.8X". A slightly more stable version of 4.76 (which is a LOT better than 4.70) and with some of the motif gui bugs fixed. Then I'd be set for life... or at least another 18 - 24 months.


So what you want is Mozilla .6. My experiences thus far is, that if you stick to the www-browsing part, it surpasses Netscape in stability. The pages I have tested thus far (which usually crashes Netscape 4.76 giving one of those "Xvidget size incorrect" or whatever messages) have not managed to kill .6 - yet.

Re:*sigh*

[MidnightLog]

And then, last week, I ran into the links-stop-working problem which has existed in Netscape 4 for how many years? Don't tell me you've never seen it.

I run Netscape 4.73 on Windows 95b at work. I have seen the links problem far too many times. I also have had Netscape lock up on me far too many times. Usually I can Ctrl-Alt-Del and kill it from the Close Program window, but not always.

Today I installed Mozilla 0.6 on this PC. So far so good. It displays pages faster than Netscape and hasn't crashed yet. It is distressing how sluggish the renderer is when repainting the Preferences dialog, but its great for web pages.

Re:*sigh*

[scarlet manuka]

As an interface developer, I feel that Netscape 6 has been a giant leap backwards for mankind from 4.7. The claims of standards compliance are a joke (that being given the reason for not supporting DHTML layers and the like), when it still inherits table backgrounds through all internal cells! This was one of the improvements I was looking forward in N6 that just never happened. Perhaps more time should have been spent on solving these types of issues, rather than on chickee babe stuff like skins.

PNG Transparency!

[Jeppe Salvesen]

Mozilla supports 255 alpha layers in PNGs. Once the web designers find that out, we'll see a major leap when they design for Mozilla.

Maybe IE should catch up on that one too?

RAM Requirements Deemed Harmful

[n8ur]

40MB of RAM??? To run a web browser??? Why do we tolerate such bloated programs?

Interesting...

[b0z]

I'll download it and give it a try. I'm just concerned that it will still run slow on my machine, as it is a P133 with 32MB of RAM. I have been using Netscape 4.x for years now on AIX, Solaris, Linux, Windows95, NT4.0, and have gotten extremely used to it. I've tried IE and Opera and a few others that are not worth mentioning, and have yet to find a browser that has the features I want.

As far as performance, does anyone here have experience with previous versions of mozilla on old equipment like I have? I want to see what others say before I install it.

Re:Interesting...

[Ma�djeurtam]

IE 5.0 for MacOS is superior to IE 5.x on Win32 on many aspects. It is often cited as an the best browser ever made.

It's standard-compliants, stable, etc. It still has some bugs though (it's a .0 version and, almost six months after it's release, I'd be happy to see a .01 revision) and it is slow as hell when rendering some document (try a slashdot comments page fully threaded).

If MS releases IE for Linux, chances are it will be a POS. But chances are equal that they will do quite a good job on it. I know what they did for Solaris (a fuzzy port of the Win32 API to make the Win32 source work on it), but for the Macintosh, they wrote a whole new application from scratch. Pray ! ;)

Stéphane

Re:Interesting...

[richieb]

I've just downloaded M-0.6. I was using M18 before this and the new version seems a lot quicker. Now I'm running on a dual-PIII/750MHZ machine with 256M. But still the new version is quite a bit faster.

...richie

Re:Interesting...

[BZ]

M13 and M14 sucked, yes. And the browser has become amazingly better since then. I use it as my primary browser now, and I'm quite happy with it.

Re:Interesting...

[Perdig]

Well, I tried the Mozilla Milestones 13 and 14, along with a lot of Nightly builds on my old Pentium 133, with 40 MB Ram, but I had no success at all. Everything simply hanged, and all I could do was press CTRL+C at my konsole prompt to cancel that big beast.

I was able to launch it sometimes (specially when I wasn't using KDE2.. :) ), but even still it was too slow... the interface took forever to update, and it was impossible to do any serious browsing.

Now I'm quite happy using Konqueror on KDE2 on this computer. Not fast as Opera under windows, but still better than Netscape.

Other Packages

[hodeleri]

I've created a Links Panel for Mozilla (works with nightlies, Moz0.6 and NS6) and I've wrapped up the History Panel RFE from bug 32594

Other packages/projects can be retrieved from mozdev.org and a very cool forum reader called Forumzilla

Enjoy!

--
Eric is chisled like a Greek Godess

Re:UNIX support???

[etrnl]

So what, Linux isn't a UNIX variant?

Christ, ye people...

-=-etrnl-=-

Edit|Preferences screwed up... anybody else?

[Malc]

Does anybody else have this:

I have five top level nodes in the edit preferences dialog:

* Appearance
* Navigator
*
*
* Advanced

The ones between Navigator and Appearance have no labels. When I open them, the child nodes have no labels. When I select any of these, I seem to get random widgets on the panel to the right (well, maybe it's the controls with no labels).

Is this common?

Re:Edit|Preferences screwed up... anybody else?

[Malc]

In fact, I'm seeing this problem in many places. The mail client has blank menus, including the pop-up context menu!

Isn't that great for me.

[dasunt]

I tried mozilla (win32 binary) about a month ago, I wasn't impressed. I have an older machine, a Pentium 100 OC'ed to 125 mhz, 32 megs of memory, and a monitor that refuses to display any sane resolution, which limits me to a working resolution of 640x480. Yes, I know, the machine is a POS, but hey, I'm broke. :( The OS is Windows 98SE, normally a stable machine, a BSOD is very rare for me, and entire system crashes aren't freqent either.

On the lower resolution the windows build of mozilla has some problems. Boxes for settings tend to flow off the screen, hard to grab, move, remove. They have a tendency to 'persist' even after they are supposed to be gone. Mozilla itself is a memory hog, not to mention a CPU hog, and it crashed my system a few times. Argh! Tried the built-in IRC client, ran screaming back to mIRC. Newsgroups and mail were okay, but nothing to praise. In the end, I left mozilla installed, but gave up on using it, due to the stability problems.

I now stick to Opera and IE, with IE being used most of the time. I'm sorry, but Netscape and Mozilla are not at all stable on low-end windows machines.

mozilla IRIX build now works!

[kels]

Another mozilla landmark was reached recently, at least for those of us who use SGI's IRIX. There is finally a working IRIX build, after being broken for about a year. Check out this page for a script and the latest information, and go get an IRIX mozilla at long last.

Posted with nightly build ID 2000120521 under IRIX 6.5. Haven't tried .6 yet.

Mozilla really getting better . . .

[RealSalmon]

The last couple of milestones have really been great. Anybody who hasn't tried the last 2 releases should really give it a go!

Waiting on .deb . . .

-B
benjones@superutility.net

Re:Another pathetic milestone reached.

[cybrthng]

Actually Internet explorer doesn't come with a jvm, it is a 4 1/2 meg download ontop of the 18+ meg download that entails the whole "Internet Explorer".

To be on the safe and official side i have replaced all IE boxes with Netscape 4.76 and Java plugin 1.2.2 because that is the only standard that works. Ever try running a real Java application under IE? It doesn't work! It will crap out, cause problems or simply run slow or not at all.

The move to a true JVM is a blessing, it just shows ignorance on your part in that microsoft re-packages it. Would it make you feel better if netscape renamed it to javigator and installed it for you?

Re:Lynx is fastest...

[Knos]

and w3m is still lynx done right!

Mem-Eater

[Eloquence]

The main problem I have with Mozilla is that it is a huge memory-eater. Whereas my Netscape 4.7 eats 12-20 MB with 10 windows open, Mozilla right now eats 32 MB, with a single window open. At startup, it "only" takes up 20 MB, but once you open and close a few windows, it's up at 32. There are some huge leaks in there.

--

not a mozilla, more like a netscape milestone

[ChristTrekker]

Am I right in reading the roadmap? This is the Netscape branch, not the Mozilla trunk. Basically this is Netscape 6 with some more Mozilla stuff that didn't make it in time for the original branching. So I think I'll wait for Mozilla 0.9, unless they snuck in the fix for bug 2800 when I wasn't looking. I'm sure Mozilla is farther ahead than N6+some recent bits.

Running on Windows

[pigpogm]

I know no-one here admits to running Windows...

I've just installed this on my NT machine - it installed first time without problems, and seems to work pretty good on the whole. Not had time to do much real testing, but i'm impressed so far. It copes with /., Blink, Microsoft.com and MSN.com (just to add it to their logs ;).

Quicker than i'd been lead to expect too - i can't say as i can tell much difference in speed from IE 5.5.

(-1: Admitting to running Windows)

XLink

[Njal]

Mozilla 06 has support for XLink, MSIE still refuses. Anybody know (guess) when IE will have support for XLink.

Re:Another pathetic milestone reached.

[AFCArchvile]

Still, the 1.1 JVM that ships with IE is so out of date as to be worthless...

Well what do you think they're doing with IE6? Probably getting rid of the inefficiencies in the JVM, just like they did in IE4 and IE5.

However, if you're not just running into webpages with Java applets/scripts, and you absolutely NEED to have the most updated JVM, then go get JGUI and Sun's official JDK, yadda yadda. Personally, I won't be using Java when I program for two reasons:

Java lags. That fact is undeniable. That and the fact that the class files are so big and bloated, and the fact that they MUST be loaded into the system RAM to run correctly, et cetera.

I'm going into Computer Engineering, so I'll only be programming drivers. And I certainly won't want to be churning out drivers with Javalag(TM).

Javalag(TM) is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc., LLC, CRAP, etc.

Figures

[ResHippie]

I just got around to installing M18 last night. Now they have a new version. Then again, who knows how stable .6 really is?

btw, is there a way to only get the browser for mozilla? I don't need, or want anything else.

Re:Figures

[tweek]

btw, is there a way to only get the browser for mozilla? I don't need, or want anything else.

This is going to come across as rude but everyone is griping about how big the mozilla downloads are.

Are you people just stupid or do you only want to bitch? I've been downloading the nightly installers for weeks now and installing ONLY the browser portion. No talkback, no mail and no news. I'll stick with Pan and mutt for the other stuff I need.
In the directory where you downloaded mozilla there is an installer that actually says mozilla-buildFOO-installer.BARplatform.compression extension.

Re:Figures

[cyber-vandal]

Depends on what OS you have. Try here for Linux and here for Windows. Both are tiny browsers based around the Gecko rendering engine.

desktop assignation.

[saintlupus]

Who says Linux has no place on the desktop.

the people who make the computer buying decisions in any home. the kids, who want to be able to play games on mom and dad's new machine.

c'mon, loki, i'm pulling for you here.

--saint
----

congrats to mozilla / netscape

[small_dick]

Look forward to trying this...congratulations mozilla and netscape (and others) for keeping the dream of freedom-based computing platform alive.

Mozilla Nightly Install HOWTO (was Re:Where to...)

[Tool-Man]

Here's a HOWTO I wrote on getting mozilla nightly builds installed on linux, including getting the Personal Security Manager installed and working for non-root users. The install instructions never worked as written and I never found a useful HOWTO when searching. Maybe I'm alone, but in case I'm not, here's the HOWTO:

http://tool-man.org/docs/HOWTO/Mozilla-Nightly-Ins tall-HOWTO

Java runtime for Linux

[mtsirkin]

Hi! To get Java running, you need the java VM plug-in. And the Nescape page linked to from the Mozilla release notes does not seem to work in netscape nor explorer (maybe they want me to use Nescape 6? :)
Anyway, download JVM plug-in here:

• windows
• Linux

Mozilla with shockwave flash

[Calle Ballz]

Mozilla is great and all, but every version I run into problems with Shockwave flash files. I am a frequenter of the simple humor on www.joecartoon.com and it Never loads the site correctly. Has anyone else run into this problem?

Minimum System Requirements

[Planesdragon]

N6 asks for a *minimum* 200 mhz and 64 MB of RAM.

M.6 asks for 233 w/ 64 MB RAM.

If you don't have at least these, feel free to use the browsers--just don't whine if they aren't as fast as your simple, small, 'ancient" browsers.

I use N6 on a 200 mhz K6 with 64 MB of RAM, and the speed is about what I'd expect with minimum-spec hardware. I'm upgrading this week, though, and it should be better.

I've got to agree with you about the features--Outlook *still* can't handle messages as well as Netscape Messenger can. I'm with N6 because of those features, and I'm happy enough with the performance (nothing I've seen is more buggy that I'd expect with a not-for-profit x.0 release based on a pre-release open source browser with bad PR.)

Re:How to Replace Nescape with Mozilla

[GSEXR]

As a home user, why not just log in as root install the plugins and then all of the users will have them.

Initial experiences - posted from .6

[voop]

Wow! I managed to get Mozilla .6 just before it was announced on /. and before the servers are /.'ed.

Anyways, contrary to previous milestones and nightly builds, this version installed smoothly on my laptop (running Debian) - and seems to run moderately fine. I have tried on some otherwise troublesome URL's, which look surprisingly good.

There are small rendering glitches, such as when writing this text in the "Comment" textfield on slashdot. If I fill out a line, ending a word exactly on the last character in the field, then the "space" before the next word will be in the beginning of the next line. It looks funny, but is hardly annoying.

The browser looks slick, as does the mail&news component. However mail&news seems to be something I will leave with pine for a while. I tried to connect Nozilla .6 to my local leafnode (no, don't bother...it's behind a filtering router). Nozilla read fine the grouplist, I subscribed and even read 3-4 postings. Then everything got stuck, mozilla eating up all the cpu-time it possibly could and I had to -9 it. I tried a few times with roughly the same result. I didn't bother to check the mail functionalities.

So while it may not be ready for prime-time on all fronts, then it cirtanly seems to have replaced Netscape as my browser. Ohh, wait - Mozilla IS netscape. Nevermind, it is a fine product thus far.

Re:Woot!

[Rakarra]

Like, say you're a 1337 h4x0r d00d, and you told all your buddies on #h4x0ring that you are trying to own microsoft's box© When you succeed, you say to them "w00t!" so they know you got root©

I just sounds extremely childish. Then again, there's a reason people call them "script kiddies."

Long release notes

[beebware]

Phew - very long page of release notes (and quite difficult to make out the relevant information).
Seems there are still quite a large number of bugs in it, but I can't give first-person results as I couldn't see a download link. Can anybody point me in the right direction?
Richy C.
--

Re:Another pathetic milestone reached.

[cyber-vandal]

Hah! A Microsoft troll complaining about Linus adding extra features and bugs to his code. How long did W2K take to come out, and how many open issues did it have? Would the kettle please refrain from commenting on the colour of the pot. Thank you.

Re:Advise

[pranalukas]

Not true. Konqueror is faster than Netscape. The only graphic browser I know that has a lot of functionality (don't talk about Lynx) and is faster than Konqi is Opera.

Nested tables is NOT the problem w/ NS

[Reziac]

The "nested tables from hell" is NOT the problem with Netscape. The most insane nested tables by themselves will render just fine. I've been following this particular problem for several years and have it pinned down pretty solidly. The bug (which has likely been in all Netscapes since at least 3.04, but to my knowledge has only *seriously* _manifested_ in 3.04 and 4.6x) is actually this:

If you have a lot of links *inside* tables, and IF those links consist of a lot of characters, then it triggers a resource leak which can become fatal. If you cut down on the number of links inside the tables, or halve the number of characters in each link, the leak doesn't occur.

It wouldn't surprise me if the bug is in Mozilla as well (since it's apparently in the rendering core) but only manifests in certain builds.

Re:Nested tables is NOT the problem w/ NS

[Reziac]

I forgot to mention since I run NS on Windows, but I've found the bug is also in Mac versions of Netscape.

Re:Nested tables is NOT the problem w/ NS

[BZ]

Um. Rewriting the rendering core from scratch was the first thing the Mozilla project did. I have not seen Mozilla crash on any of the table-heavy pages that kill Netscape 4.x

Seems fine - nioghtly builds are still better..

[benmhall]

I doenloaded the Linux version, it seems fine. I'd like to say that the nightlies are still better.

I had Mozilla 0.6 crash on me a time or two trying to import my Netscape profile and then installing Java. I don't have this problem with the nightlies.

Here's a tip: I got a nightly working perfectly with Flash, Java, SSL, etc., now I just untar the new nightlies over the old one. That keeps my themes and plugins intaact.

I use Mozilla for 80% of my browsing, and Konqueror for the other 20% (Like when I know I'm going to hit a pdf file - konqueror is just amazing with its plugin architecture.)

Mozilla's REALY fast now, I honestly don't notice much dofference between the speed of Mozilla and Galeon/Skipstone anymore. It's also roughly equivalent to the speed of Netscape 4.76 on my dual-466/256MB RAM. This hardware is okay, but I wouldn't call a dual 466 anything to screem home about anymore.

Anyway, the nightlies are awesome, mozilla is great. I never use Netscape anymore. Honest. Is it ever nice to have a standards-comliant Open Source web browser. It really makes Debian complete. And at the rate Konqueror is moving forward pretty soon we'll have 2!!

Cheers,

Ben

It's still a pain on low colour displays

[wangi]

It's still a pain on low colour displays - the interface grabs every last colour and the rendering is poor when few colours are free.

Netscape had the -install option to install a custom colormap, and IE autdetects this...

This really makes Mozilla unusable on 8 bit displays (i.e. like on my Ultra 5).

More votes on bug #22337 might help...

How to Replace Nescape with Mozilla

[HomerJ]

For those that want to finally kill off Netscape 4 and use Mozilla. Actually, it's alot easier then people make it out to be.

1. untar the package somwhere. (duh!). But here's the tricky part. If you want to install software though it(plugins, themes, etc.) you have to have write acess. So do two things. Install it in /home/username , if you're the only one that uses your machine. Or make a mozilla group.

2. set two envioment variables. MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME and LD_LIBRARY_PATH. Both should point to where you installed Mozilla, eg. /home/username/package

3. copy mozilla-bin to /usr/bin , or somewhere in your path. Then make a symlink called netscape that points to it.

Have fun. I've been running nightlies for awhile, with varying success. Some are really good, then you get one the next day that's just dog slow. Then three days later it's ok again, with a couple more bugs fixed. So if you get another nightly, don't delete your old mozilla install before you try it for a few minutes.

Moz does some things 4.x can't

[etymxris]

Take for instance boxofficereport.com. The images load correctly in mozilla, but they don't load at all in netscape 4.x.

Pop-up Windows in Mandrake 7.2

[emac]

This isn't a specifically Mozilla problem, since it seems to happen with 4.7x too... in Mandrake 7.2 I find that anytime the browser pops up a window, it comes up the full size of the initial browser, and not as a properly sized 'dialog box' sized one. Means that annoying "Netscape 6 Now Available" on Netscape's site is even more annoying since it takes up my whole screen.

Anybody know how to get around this?
--

an offtopic point

[dalinian]

If you want to get yourself buried with the details as much as you seem, Linux really does not need an IRC client. I mean, my kernel is pretty fine as it is without any extra cruft like that.

Re:Another pathetic milestone reached.

[jmahler]

small point here, figured as an mcse i was obligated to point some stuff out.

linux hardware support seems spotty to me- on the one hand, you have wonderful support for many archaic or not-so-common devices which are not supported by ms, but on the other hand, the number of devices supported isn't quite as large. this seems to be changing, what with the device manufacturers recognizing linux users as having buying power previously thought to be nil.

other point - w2k does use a cli, and somewhat extensively in some cases. in fact, if you load up in directory services restore mode, you are forced to a cli. in class the other day we started a damned effective dhcp, dns, and active directory global catalog server on the same box from the cli. it ran nicely, but not so pretty. i know, in comparison to linux, it is not a cli system that would be preferable to use, but hey, i've got a p3500... why not show some pretty stuff on the screen? :)

i guess why i like w2k boils down to a few small things- it's pretty, it works, and it's pretty. :) actually, check it out if you haven't... it's ms' first truly deccent os, as far as i'm concerned, since DOS. (or nt3.51, MAYBE)

but back to the subject at hand- what the hell was it? damn. i forgot.

Re:Another pathetic milestone reached.

[JWW]

Maybe as you strive to be a computer engineer, you could try to write better Linux video drivers
;-)