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Eight Tenths Of A Lizard

Posted by timothy on from the use-it-love-it-live-it dept.

Palin was the first of many like-minded souls to write with this news: "On my weekly check of Mozilla's status, I ran into version .8 of Mozilla, which seems to have been released yesterday. What a nice Valentine's day gift that was. :-)" And Alphix points to the thing itself, and suggests some things to read." Mozilla is my daily-use,pH-balanced Web browser of late, so I'm glad to see that it can finally allow users to avoid the degrading spectacle of endlessly cycling animated .gifs.

5 of 283 comments (clear)

  1. The last blocker bug... by redpants · · Score: 5

    I think before anyone posts to slashdot, they should read this bug report:

    http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6897 4

    Relating to slashdot's troubles earlier to-day.

    1. Re:The last blocker bug... by WasterDave · · Score: 5

      We can't possibly consider releasing Mozilla 0.8 until they are back up and running, so that lots of Linux zealots and armchair coders can log on and slag off our hard work in a specially-prepared forum.

      Fuck, that's funny. So, go on: 95 posts saying that its bloatware and why can't we have a lighter browser; 47 pointing out the obvious and saying that Netscrape 4.7.2 leaks memory; 22 posts on the subject of IE being better; At least some figting pointlessly over whether the UI stinks, or it's just that we don't understand how important XML is...

      Good work, Mozilla dudes.

      Dave

      --
      I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
  2. New question... by pb · · Score: 5

    I had a great time using Mozilla 0.7; it has gotten a lot better, and so much better than the original Netscape code they were using. However, I don't think that's the issue anymore.

    The real issue is, what will happen to Netscape? They aren't losing the browser war now because of Mozilla. Now it's because of AOL, who makes every stable Mozilla release into a horribly patched, rushed Netscape release with extra annoying commercial features and bundling that none of us want or need.

    Also, despite the benefits Mozilla has seen due to Open Source development, I doubt it will do as well without Netscape, as gutted as it is. JWZ said that the benefits gained from opening a project like that is about 30%, which means that 70% of the work has to be done by AOL/Netscape/Time Warner, and if AOL loses this war to Microsoft, we might lose a lot of developers.

    Also, it sucks seeing a great team of people turn into a large impersonal entity that no one really likes. As the Open Source community is already developing other browsers, it isn't clear how much work will be put into Mozilla, and how much will be spent reinventing the wheel.

    I only hope that a truly impressive, usable browser comes out of all this: one that doesn't annoy me and show me ads, but rather lets me tell it what I want it to do. Being able to set a level of HTML compliance would be nice, as well.
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

    --
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
  3. Animated GIFs and Interface Design by Gorobei · · Score: 5
    Animated GIFs illustrate one of the big problems of complex GUI apps: the cure for the pain is no where near the source of the pain.

    I've watched naive users (e.g. my parents) use a browser. When faced with an agonizing animated GIF, giant blink text, or horrible background, they move the mouse to the offending item, and try to turn it off. This is, of course, in keeping with the GUI concept: select the item, then manipulate it, perhaps with a right mouse click. This corresponds deeply with reality: if a mosquito is biting me, I focus on it and take action.

    Browser interfaces are often counter-intuitive because the cure is hidden in deep menu items, e.g. edit->prefs->advanced->.... Users rarely find these things, and if they do, don't know what they do. My dad doesn't want to disable all Java apps, he just wants to stop the pain he is experiencing on the page he is currently visiting. To make a browser great, watch your new users very closely.

  4. Pop-up disabling now possible by jpatokal · · Score: 5
    If they could put an option to disable those !"/$£@23$ javascript popup windows without disabling javascript.

    Well, then it's time to switch to Moz. Quoting the 0.8 release notes:

    There are several new hidden prefs (UI will be added eventually) to turn off various annoying features on web pages:

    // Use configurable security policies to override popups, see
    // http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/component s/configPolicy.html
    // Turn window.open off for particular sites:

    user_pref("capability.policy.popupsites.sites", "http://www.annoyingsite1.com http://www.popupsite2.com");
    user_pref("capability.policy.popupsites.windowinte rnal.open","noAccess");

    // Or turn it off everywhere:
    user_pref("capability.policy.default.windowinterna l.open","noAccess");

    // Override popping up new windows on target=anything
    user_pref("browser.target_new_blocked", true);

    Cheers,
    -j.