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Mozilla Moves Into 2002? Maybe.
alanjstr writes "MozillaQuest reports that Mozilla 1.0 has been pushed back into 2002 (from Oct 2001) in its latest schedule update. Since the end of 2000, the rate of new bugs being submitted has doubled (according to the pretty graph)." However, the Mozilla guys, whom our own HeUnique talked to have said that they are still on target, and that the 2002 story is not true. So - you be the judge on this one. Or not. Whatever.
Okay, I give in.... who is this guy? MozillaQuest sounds very important and it certainly had me going for a couple of minutes, but then look at the front page.... over 20 articles, and all written by Mr. Angelo.
Trying to be self important but having nobody to listen to you. The site looks quite sad, to be honest.
I thought MozillaQuestQuest was funny when it first came out. Then I read this "article" at MozillaQuest and it became clear that the parody just can't be as funny as the real thing. The title is just so ludicrous to anyone who has the slightest knowledge of the Mozilla project it simply defies taking the piss out of it. And the right sidebar! I haven't laughed so hard in ages. Someone sign this guy up to write for Slashdot!
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
The other alternative browsers (Konqueror, Opera, etc.) are really making progress. Opera is VERY usable on both Win32 and Linux.
I've never had the problem of it using 70% of the CPU. I get the normal spikes I'd get with any other program, but no steady use over 5% from Mozilla, even with 7-8 windows open. The only web-page that hasn't worked correctly for me is the MSNBC front page, but all the news article pages on it work fine. I haven't had any problems with any other webpages with 0.9.2. Flash works fine, I can even get the embedded video working good, and Java of course works good. This is a fine browser as is as far as I can tell. I'd love to see more innovation in the interface, but since Microsoft isn't really innovating in that area (*cough*no competition*cough*cough*), why complain?
I don't use newsgroups, but I have been using the Mozilla e-mail program as my primary e-mail proggie at home, and it's been doing a decent job. The interface stinks, and it's rather inflexible in folder creation, but I haven't lost any e-mail, and it doesn't crash on me.
Go Lakers!
The incoming bug rate is NOT DOUBLING. I don't know if that is some figure you got from MozillaQuest (reason enough to discount it) or if you actually went to the source (bugzilla.mozilla.org) but someone got their queries/reports confused. The bug charts show that the rate has been pretty much steady for a long time. The only interesting thing about this graph (that the person reporting the doubling nonsense obviously was confused about) is the rise in New and the drop in Assigned. Bugs start out as New and get marked Assigned when a developer decides the bug is his. In late 2000 we stopped sending out a 'nag' email that urged developers to accept their New bugs. When we stopped sending that mail the Accepting dropped off. The incoming bug rate has not changed significantly and neither has the fix rate.
--Asa
Point here is that 1.0 has meaning to me, should it be fairly robust I will encourage my friends to use it and install it on a bunch of machines that I don't update with every release.
What if Mozilla 0.9.8 is "fairly robust"? Will you not encourage others to use it because it is not called 1.0? What if the plans for 0.9.9 and 1.0 do not include any improvements in the "robust"ness of the app? Is is useful to hold off recommending it until the magic number 1.0 happens? What if we had never moved from the Mx Milestone naming scheme? We'd be at about Milestone M26 now. Would you wait until it hit M30 or M50 or maybe M100 before encouraging others to use it?
Of course, they are not going to fix 1500 bugs by v1.0
Actually, we average about 1500 bugs fixed every Milestone (about every 5 to 6 weeks). So I sure hope we can fix at least that many in the Milestones we have between now and 1.0.
BTW, I appreciate the sentiment of your comments. Don't take my nits as anything but nits and my questions as genuine curiosity.
--Asa
I'm going to agree with this. I've been a Mozilla basher for almost 2 years now, happily using Konqueror and, before that, an older Netscape.
But even though I gave the Lizard below-average marks up until now - and deservedly so, I think - since I downloaded 0.93 I couldn't be happier. On my RH 7.1+ boxes it runs much faster than Konqueror. The ability to kill off unwanted banner advertisements and the fine-grained control over cookies is a godsend.
So, after 2 years I now recant everything bad I said about Mozilla. More importantly I can now recommend it to everyone I do business with! It's about time!
> 1. Mozilla is a massive project, whose (main) goal is a natively running browser on multiple platforms, this is no small task and they have done well thus far. I don't think anyone can point to a browser that runs on as many different platforms as well as Moz does.
Lynx. You asked for it.
More seriously, you are absolutely right. I switched to mozilla a few month ago, and I love it. Not because it is fast (it is not). Not because it is slim (it is not). Not because it is bug free (it is not). Not because it nice (it is not). Not because it is well integrated (it is not).
But because:
1/ It is free software (ie: I can consider it as beeing mine, I can invest time understanding how it works, because it will still be avaliable in 10 years)
2/ It is multi-platform. I use the same browser on Mac OS 9, Win2K, Mac OS X (even if fizzilla have, well, issues...), and freebsd. If I decide to try BeOS or the HURD, I know that I will still be at home for a large number of tasks.
3/ It incorporate XUL, which means that apps built on mozilla will be avalaible on every platform too. I started using the mozilla mailer and news reader. Not the best one out there, but they work on every platform I need.
4/ When something don't work, you can fill a bug, and track progress.
I impatiently wait for 1.0, just because at this time new features will be accepted in the moz tree. I'd really need PGP and roaming profiles.
Cheers,
--fred