Mozilla 0.9.4 Released

asa writes: "Lots of bug fixes (1,467 at last count) since 0.9.3 including the ability to disable the JavaScript window.open() method during page load and unload events. You can find more information on what's new at the release notes and mozillaZine."

Comments

Mirror

[pete-classic]

I've got the new release mirrored at ftp://nerf-herder.net/pub/mozilla

-Peter

Re:Mirror

[Gerv]

The mozilla folks really ought to put up MD5s with the release.

Why? If they can tamper with the releases, they can tamper with the MD5s.

Anyway, the standard disclaimer we put on all releases applies: "If it doesn't melt your hard drive and send your tax evasion plans to the IRS, consider yourself lucky."
Gerv

Re:Mirror

[pete-classic]

Why? If they can tamper with the releases, they can tamper with the MD5s.

For mirrors. You get the MD5 (AFAIR, 128bits, conceiveably double that when including the filename ;-) from the "official" site and use it to verify that the bins on the mirror haven't been altered.

-Peter

Actually...

[bconway]

Disabling window.open has been around for a couple of releases now, it's just not the most straightforward thing to enable. I was most pleased to find that hitting enter after filling in a form will actually submit a request everyplace I tried it, assuming that's the intent of the form (i.e. a search engine). This seemed to be a hit-or-miss thing in previous releases.

Re:Actually...

[zachlipton]

This used to be a huge issue and something that prevented lots of people from using Mozilla before. Thank you to those who have fixed this!

Looking good

[boaworm]

Mozilla is turning out to be a really good browser nowdays. I missed a few features in 0.9.3 though, mostly that it tends to crash while at java-intense pages, as well as encryption.

Hopefully these things have gotten better, it is quite annoying when the browser crashes :-(

If Mozilla is going to be able to compete with the major browsers, it (IMHO) has to be a lot more stable. I can cope with a page being rendered badly, but not with a browser crash. IE is still a lot more stable. Or.. perhaps it is just bad Java Runtime integration ?

Thanks anyway Mozilla team, i'm off to the download zone :-)

Re:Looking good

[maggard]

If Mozilla is going to be able to compete with the major browsers...

What other major browsers? Opera? Lynx? The legions of other 1%'ers?

As far as most webfolks are concerned there's IE for Wintel, IE for Mac (they've different code bases and behave very differently), Netscape et al v.4x, Netscape/Mozilla et al v.6x then generic text-browsers for ADA compatibility. That leaves Netscape/Mozilla as one of the two major names and the rest lost in the "other" catagory*.

*Yes lots of browser-partesians will howl at this but for most web sites the vast majority of browsers hitting them regularly are IE or NS. No comment on quality or anything else, just reading the logs.

Re:Looking good

[chabotc]

From my experiances experimenting with java, it is mostly due to the fact that mozilla uses a java2 envirioment. (the jre1.3.xpi and sun java and blackdown java plugins for mozilla are all 1.3+ based).

Most of the applets you will find on the web will still be java 1 based. (This is what IE ships, duh)

There are some 'known' problems, leaking resources, threads and not relaunching applets when a java 1 applet is loaded in a java2 VM

big miss feature if you ask me, but in both sun's bug DB, and mozilla's bugzilla, its gotten marked as 'solved/wontfix', so don't hold your breath to see it resolved ;-)

Re:Looking good

[Lord Ender]

You get that info from looking at the logs? The logs are WRONG! Opera by default identifies itself is IE. There is a huge percentage of people who use Opera primarily. For instance, four of my non-techie friends use it all the time. My girlfriend uses it. I just showed them the basics of how to use it, then the cool feature only Opera has (like gesture navigation) and they were hooked. When reading the logs, remember this: a large percentage of those IE hits are really Opera .

Re:Looking good

[the way]

> If Mozilla is going to be able to compete
> with the major browsers...

What other major browsers? Opera? Lynx? The legions of other 1%'ers?

As far as most webfolks are concerned there's IE for Wintel, IE for Mac (they've different code bases and behave very differently), Netscape et al v.4x, Netscape/Mozilla et al v.6x then generic text-browsers for ADA compatibility. That leaves Netscape/Mozilla as one of the two major names and the rest lost in the "other" catagory*.

I'm so glad you can speak for "most webfolks"...

Although unfortunately I can only speak for myself, I can certainly say that we see quite a bit of Konqueror usage at our site. Nothing like competing with IE, or course, but certainly up there with NS/Moz. It is the default browser on a number of major distributions nowadays and has a similar feature-set to Moz and IE, so I think it's fair to call it a 'major browser'.

Re:Looking good

[krmt]

Your mileage may vary on this one.

For me, Mozilla is a hell of a lot more stable than IE. IE crashes on me not infrequently, and it usually means a reboot.

The fact that I use Mozilla a ton under linux and IE in those relatively infrequent times I boot in to Windows really swings it for me.

Re:Looking good

[Malcontent]

You'd think they would at least alter the user agent so that MS does not get credit. Why not say AOL borwser 1.0 or something. It would act as an advertisement at least.

Re:Looking good

[BZ]

Evey browser I know has "Mozilla" in the UA string. This includes IE. That's not really masquerading as Mozilla....

Re:Looking good

[Malcontent]

No it would not. You'd just have to accomodate one more browser. There are enough people on AOL to make a difference so you'd do it. Either that or you'd just stick to the standards which you ought to be doing anyways.

Really I think it's a good thing for AOL. Doing something seemingly minor while dramatically effecting the MS share of the browser market. Also it would allow them to change browsers easier too.

Re:Looking good

[Malcontent]

Once again.

AOL should chage their agent string. If nothing else they can overnight recude the market share of IE browsers and the statistics would be used to advertise the popularity of AOL. It would be an excellant marketing opportunity.

As for the standards I meant the HTML standard, the DOM standard, the javascript standard. Stick to those and let the chips fall where they may.

Re:Looking good

[maggard]

As some folks have pointed out most browsers mis-identify themselves as one of the big two in order to avoid being condemned to the "other" catagory.

This is well understood by anyone who trackes browser visits. This is not news, this is not a suprise and it doesn't change the numbers. Often it's possible to identify a browser by exactly what string it does give, othertimes a simple javascript is run or other behaviors are checked.

Any way you cut it; reading logs, actual testing or running surveys the numbers all come out it's IE, NS, then everything else, with the everything else ones pretty much lost in the noise.

Finally for those who continue to bleat out "Just write to the spec!" that'd be great if the browsers actually met the specs but they don't. Furthermore as folks are paid to work in the real world and produce results that are actually usable on their client's desktops they must use the tools available and that means a limited collection of very ideosyncratic browsers.

All of the browsers have their own quirks and strengths and most folks just try to write generic pages most of the time. When something is needed and is browser-specific then work-arounds are made and usually they cover 90%+ of the actual users of a major site.

It's always sorta funny and sorta sad to see how many /.'ers think that everyone else is stoopid and that they have unique insights into every situation. Again - yes browser misreporting is well known and is pretty much compensated for and for sophisticated stuff writing to the specs will get you as much trouble as often as not doing so will. Most web folks would LOVE to write to the specs, if only everything implemented them properly & consistantly!

Wow!

[zachlipton]

Wow, what a great release! I think that 0.9.3 really is a key step in the right direction for 1.0. See http://www.mozilla.org/roadmap.html for more details on the roadmap and plans for 1.0.

Also, as a mozilla developer, I would like to thank all those who have joined the project recently and done something to help. Even if you cannot code, there is still lots that you can do. I urge you to download 0.9.4 or even better, a nightly build, and to look at http://www.mozilla.org/start, http://www.mozilla.org/qa/help, and http://www.mozilla.org/get-involved.html. There are many things that you can do to help which will help get 1.0 out the door sooner and better.

Re:Wow!

[Gerv]

Wow, what a great release! I think that 0.9.3 really is a key step in the right direction for 1.0.

Has someone been cutting and pasting out of their "Slashdot comments" file? ;-)

Gerv

How to manage popup windows in the new Mozilla

[davidu]

Ok folks, here is a really cool feature: The Ability to manage, on a site by site basis, which sites can give you popups and which can't. A very effective way to manage pop up ads. Here's how:

No POPUPS whatsoever:
user_pref("capability.policy.default.Window.open", "noAccess");

But...if some sites need popups, make a zone for them like this:
user_pref("capability.policy.strict.sites", "http://www.evil.org http://www.annoying.com");
user_pref("capability.policy.strict.Window.alert", "noAccess");
user_pref("capability.policy.strict.Window.confirm ", "noAccess");
user_pref("capability.policy.strict.Window.prompt" , "noAccess");
... you get the idea....

It is very cool, and there is a lot of scripting and other trickery you can do with these prefrences.

Btw, this is all from: Configurable Security Policies

-David

Re:How to manage popup windows in the new Mozilla

[abischof]

UI for controlling popups is bug 75371. Feel free to vote for the bug, if that issue is important to you.

Re:How to manage popup windows in the new Mozilla

[Spy Hunter]

Actually, what is in Mozilla now is much cooler yet, which is the ability to disable 99.9% of advertising popups while letting 99% of wanted popups through, with no user intervention necessary ! No need to maintain a list of sites that need popups to function. It disables popups during page load and unload, but lets through popups that happen due to an actual mouse click.

Of course, if this feature ever gets widespread use we'll just see javascript links that open up advertisements in addition to their targets, but that won't happen unless IE gets this feature, which is unlikely. So download Mozilla and free yourself from evil automatic popups!

Re:How to manage popup windows in the new Mozilla

[iso]

I've put in my vote. Still, it's remarkable that people would even consider this a "feature" when you have to edit obscure configuration files to make it work. I've been a Linux user since 1995, but I think this is a good example of the major reason I've now switched to Mac OS X: Apple wouldn't dream of making a feature that didn't have a UI interface whereas with Linux it's the norm.

Apart from Linux, I've been using UNIX for over 15 years and quite frankly I'm done with text files. I've put all 10 of my votes for Mozilla bugs into UI bugs because in 2001 I shouldn't have to be editing text files if I don't want to. It's amazing that these features have been in Mozilla for months but still don't have even a rudimentary graphical interface.

- j

Re:How to manage popup windows in the new Mozilla

[drfireman]

"Apple wouldn't dream of making a feature that didn't have a UI interface whereas with Linux it's the norm."

I'm not a particularly savvy Mac user, but over the years I've made dozens of modifications to various system features via resedit and by downloading little hacks. I'm sure there have been hundreds if not thousands of such undocumented features. With OSX I'm sure there are easily thousands of features you can alter that don't have a nice interface. So I don't think your statement is well-supported. It would be much more correct to say that Apple wouldn't dream of documenting a feature that didn't have an interface. I don't think it's productive to fault Linux software for not taking this same shield-the-user attitude. People may be trying to make Linux more idiot-friendly, but I have yet to hear anyone suggest that it should also be made less geek-friendly.

Re:How to manage popup windows in the new Mozilla

[LordNimon]

This doesn't exactly work like intended. It also kills popups that are created when you click on a Javascript link. In other words, it completely kills the ability for Javascript to create a window. Unfortunately, the includes more than just "popups".

Re:How to manage popup windows in the new Mozilla

[edremy]

but I think this is a good example of the major reason I've now switched to Mac OS X: Apple wouldn't dream of making a feature that didn't have a UI interface whereas with Linux it's the norm.

So tell me: how do I move the Dock to the right side of the screen or make the disclosure triangles blue if the app is frontmost?

Both can be done, but only if you know the magic incantations to feed to a command prompt. Apple really needs to work on the Dock, although I understand pinning will at least be an option in 10.1

Eric

Re:How to manage popup windows in the new Mozilla

[LordNimon]

Can you tell me where this feature is available? I can't find it anywhere. The above prefs.js settings don't work, because they disable javascript-opened windows on a mouse click, which is a bad thing.

Re:How to manage popup windows in the new Mozilla

[Spy Hunter]

The article itself contains a link which apparently no one read that explains what you have to put in your prefs.js file.

user_pref("dom.disable_open_during_load", true);
That should do it for you, if you're using Moz 0.9.4.

Re:Hmm...

[Gerv]

Actually, it goes 0.9.9, 0.9.10, 0.9.11,...

Gerv

I love it!

[Brazilian Geek]

I've been using Mozilla's daily builds as my standard browser since M18 and as my email client since 0.8 and I've got to say that I love it - yes, it is a memory hog but I have more than enough memory to give a fsck.

I've been trying to evangelize the users from my work place into using Mozilla since 0.9.2 and so far I've managed to get 10 out of 90 to switch (from Netscape 4.75 of course, IE is a no-no acording to company security policy).

Way to go Mozilla Team - it gets better every single day, congratulations!

Re:I love it!

[BrookHarty]

Not sure what company you work for, but IT is almost m$ bought and paid for. Exchange, IE, IIS, Office2k, etc..

But in Operations (aka we make the money), we use mostly Solaris, Apache, Netscape 4.77 and Mozilla. Some of our admin tools wont even work on IE5. (Havnt tested IE6 yet...)

Re:Proxomitron

[Gerv]

Also make Mozilla reply as "User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)".

That's a bit silly, isn't it? You'll get served IE DOM content, and it won't render correctly.

Gerv

Re:Speed issues. Moz 9.3/9.4

[Gerv]

Lynx is probably faster still. But it doesn't mean you necessarily want to use it. This is not an excuse (Mozilla should be faster than it is), it's just an observation.

Gerv

Re:Proxomitron

[BrookHarty]

It comes in handy on a few sites, and the option is easy to toggle. In fact most sites that do bitch about a non-ie browser work just fine after I fake the user-agent.

Re:Proxomitron

[Phroggy]

Also make Mozilla reply as "User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)".

Please don't do this. It just makes life harder on web designers. How can we optimize our HTML code to render correctly in your browser, if you lie to us about what browser you're using?

Of course, there may be a few cases where it's necessary to do this temporarily, on a per-site basis, but please don't do this long-term.

mailer works a little better, too

[BillyGoatThree]

I've been using Moz daily for almost a year now for both web and mail. I downloaded a daily a couple days ago and it's getting better all the time. The most notable improvement: The mailer isn't a time-sink like it used to be. Even in 0.9.3 it would take me upwards of 1 or even 2 minutes to click "new msg", put in 3 recip addrs, type a subject line and then start writing the body. Luckily I only write about 3 emails a week...

Re:Speed issues. Moz 9.3/9.4

[BZ]

> I guess I'm wondering why the new versions are so
> much slower than the older versions of Netscape

Because it's still beta-quality code? There are many performance issues currently being worked on. Also, some things that NS4 does quickly (eg style resolution) take a lot more time to do _right_.

Oh Great!!

[throx]

Now, in the inevitable war between the annoying ad companies and the poor downtrodden browser users we'll get no more popups, but click-thrus or something even more insidious instead.

I can't wait for "This site cannot be viewed without the EvilPopupsAndPersonalInfoCollector plugin installed".

Don't get me wrong, this is a good interim effort but web advertising is going to continue.

<obtroll>
I also find it interesting that the /. crowd decries the use of Smart Tags (because they change content) but is more than happy to change content they DON'T like (popups and banner ads). Do I smell a note of hypocrisy here?
</obtroll>

Re:Oh Great!!

[cmowire]

Actually, I don't think so, at least in this case.

Loving Junkbuster to get rid of ads and hating Smart Tags because they change content is being a hypocrate.

But disabling popups is, at least the way I look at it, different. You are not actually changing the content, just preventing a response to said content.

I like the 0.9.4 version very much simply because I can cut off 99% of the annoying popups while allowing the one or two useful, or at least, impossible to avoid, popups. Like when somebody has a web app that sometimes pops up a tip window in response to clicking on a link instead of a whole new page.

I don't have a problem with people tracking my online usage with cookies, because I figure they are entitled to some information about my browsing habits in return for putting up their sites. I don't even mind banner adverts, even though the only ones I'd have a remote chance of wanting to buy based on a banner advert is Thinkgeek. I just hate popups.

Re:Oh Great!!

[roystgnr]

I also find it interesting that the /. crowd decries the use of Smart Tags (because they change content) but is more than happy to change content they DON'T like (popups and banner ads). Do I smell a note of hypocrisy here?

So I go to foo.com's webpage. I expect foo.com's software to give me the content they want to let me have, and I expect my software to display it based on my personal preferences. Nowhere does a third party need to enter into that transaction. This is not hypocritical, because I extend to Microsoft employees the same priviledge: to view what web sites they visit in the way they choose. If the Apache authors were to insert code that added a "Replace IE now!" button to the top of each webpage requested by Internet Explorer, I would find that just as offensive.

Re:Oh Great!!

[Eil]

Loving Junkbuster to get rid of ads and hating Smart Tags because they change content is being a hypocrate.

No, not quite. In fact, you're not even close. In both cases, (that is, detesting smart tags while installing junkbuster) it is the user's choice what he wants displayed in his web browser. Isn't it every person's choice to have a desire to see what information they want to see and block out that which they don't?

With Junkbuster, one has to make a conscious effort to install it and block advertisments from appearing on their computer.

If Microsoft (et al) had their way with Smart Tags, you would have no choice. You would see the links and if you clicked on them, you would be sent to a page that Microsoft wishes you to see, not neccessarily what you want to see or what information the content creator wanted to publish. The line is drawn at how you determine what "information" is. I do not consider any form of blatant advertising as information and I presume I'm not alone. Junkbuster gets rid of ads, smart tags modify information. It's really that simple.

Regardless, it all comes down to choice. Junkbuster is a choice for the user, smart tags are not. If you believe that smart tags are alright, then I presume you also wouldn't mind Microsoft adding dynamic animated GIFs to your Start Menu and the occasional pop-up reminding you to upgrade to Office XP everytime you opened a Word 97 document.

Re:Oh Great!!

[tester13]

not at all. I want to see what I want to see and don't want to see what i don't want to see.

I'm not averse to changing content per se. I just want to be the one changing it.

Re:Oh Great!!

[throx]

I want to see what I want to see and don't want to see what i don't want to see

My point exactly (even though it was a troll). In both cases the addition and deletion of content is user controlled, explicitly installed and optional. The only difference is turning off ads will deprive the web site of revenue from your hit, and the webmaster doesn't have the option to force you to view them (he has the option of turning smart tags off). If you don't mind ripping people off for their hard work then junkbusters and popup removers are certainly useful.

Re:Oh Great!!

[throx]

Wow - someone responding to the actual post and not the troll.

That's exactly what I'm afraid of - a "cold war" between the browser developers and the web advertisers. Slowly web ads will become so complex that getting any content will mean clicking on all sorts of advertisers, or running spyware plugins.

Like I said - it's not a bad thing that they've done this, just I can see the stakes being raised and things just getting ugly.

Re:Oh Great!!

[cmowire]

Actually, that is true that Junkbuster is also a choice, the choice not to load advertising banners. So I stand corrected on that.

I also think that, in order for Junkbuster to be really useful, it would have to heavily modify a page. Again, I feel for the site owners and figure that they have a right to put banner advertisements on their pages in return for putting it up for free, so I don't actively try to install Junkbuster. But then, I'm a pragmatic moderate who thinks that the web should eventually make money for people and doesn't mind some advertising.

And, no, I don't think SmartTags are allright. The and in my above message is a logical AND, not a conversational AND. If you both hate SmartTags and love Junkbuster, then and only then, are you running the possibility of being a hypocrate.

Re:Oh Great!!

[throx]

Don't be so freaking stupid. Sites get paid for the number of hits on the advert. If you use junkbuster then the ad never gets hit and the site doesn't get paid.

This has nothing to do with actually READING the ad, so strawman somewhere else, please.

Re:Speed issues. Moz 9.3/9.4

[zachlipton]

In my mind, I don't think of Mozilla or Netscape 6.x to be an upgrade to Netscape 4.x, I think of it as a completely different product. Any time that you rewrite 100% of the product, you can expect the new version to be slower, more infested with bugs, and just "feel" worse than the older version which has been tended for many years.

However, if Netscape decided not to do the 5.0 rewrite, disaster would be the only end. The old code was not mantainible and doesn't allow for the powerful new features and embedding that seamonkey allows for.

Speed is something that is being worked on and is significantly better than before. I won't mention full names here on /. without permission from the people involved, but someone at Netscape (d. hy.) did a lot of work on page loading and a new contributor did a lot of proformence work as well recently (jes.). Mail/news also uses the widget in the folder-paine, which has great speed increases as well.

So we are trying the best we can. As always, patches are welcome.

Zach

What's new in 0.9.4

[mbrubeck]

The difference in 0.9.4 is that you can disable popups on page-load/page-close only. This gets rid of most popup ads, while preserving less-annoying uses of popup windows (unlike 0.9.3).

See this newsgroup post for details.

Re:What's new in 0.9.4

[fobbman]

Long Live Pornzilla!!!

Re:Hmm...

[Salsaman]

Of course...they are reaching 1.0 exponentially :-)

Re:Speed issues. Moz 9.3/9.4

[BrookHarty]

Links is text based, renders frames, and has HTTP 1.1/keepalive support, color. It supports the mouse in terminals too, so you can just click links.

I perfer links over lynx.

Power

[HanzoSan]

Netscape 4.7 is older, WEAKER, of course its going to be faster.

Think about it.. the most powerful browser cannot be the fastest browser.

Re:Speed issues. Moz 9.3/9.4

[JoeBuck]

Konqueror does a much better job than Netscape
4.x of doing styles right, and it's a lot faster
than Mozilla. I wish the Mozilla people well,
but it's simply false to claim that the slowness
is required for a correct implementation.

Stop complaining about speed!

[HanzoSan]

Everyone who complains about speed doesnt know anything about how computers work.

New software is bigger, more powerful, and NEEDS a more powerful computer, RAM IS CHEAP, dont tell me Mozilla uses too much ram when you can buy a gig of ram for under $200.

Get a faster harddrive, if mozilla is slow you are most likely using cheap IDE crap.

Now, if you have a modern computer THEN you may use modern browsers and modern software, if you have a computer which was made before Netscape 4.7 was released, then you should be using netscape 4.7, your computer will never be powerful enough to run mozilla.

Re:Stop complaining about speed!

[WNight]

I've seen a few firewire drive enclosures that run IDE HDs, one-per controller, so they're all masters, and all seperated from everything else.

They're pretty zippy, and because the drive is 3rd-party, you can put in the fastest drive you can find.

The same drives released as SCSI could be released as Firewire, the same as they could release them as IDE. The reason they don't, more than performance, if that people with SCSI systems will pay a premium.

It's like hardcover/paperback. Some people will pay anything to have 'it' right now.

Re:Speed issues. Moz 9.3/9.4

[Gerv]

We'd be very interested to hear of pages Konqueror gets right, and Mozilla gets wrong. Please file bugs in Bugzilla here, and then quote the bug numbers. We'll get right on it.

Gerv

"Patches and/or help is welcome!"

[zachlipton]

Rather than sitting around and discussing how Mozilla should load pages 1.5ms faster than it does today, why can't we all get off the ground and help. mozilla.org has made it very easy to find the resources that you need to help out, espically with non-coding work. Yes, you did hear me say it: "You can help with Mozilla without coding!"

If you travel over to one of the following pages on mozilla.org, you can learn all that you can do to get involved. Confirming the unconfirmed (from page number 3 below) is a great way to get involved, doesn't take much time, and is of a big help when all the many bugs come in after a big release like this.

1. http://www.mozilla.org/start
2. http://www.mozilla.org/get-involved.html
3. http://www.mozilla.org/quality/help/

The browser is great, but where is the spell check

[(H)elix1]

Come on already.... lets get a spell checker folded into the email client. I need ALL the help I can get. I tried hacking the 6.1 checker in to the last build, but no luck. Is there any word on when - world acording to me - one of the most basic things about an email client will be included?

Snap mouse to default button in Windows

[abischof]

In Windows NT/2000, users can set in the mouse preferences for the mouse to automagically move to the default button in dialog boxes and alerts. However, Mozilla doesn't currently cooperate with this.

The bug has keyword "helpwanted", so if you know how to accomplish this functionality, please speak up :). Or, if you aren't inclined to programming, you can also vote for the bug (of course, you'll need a free Bugzilla account to vote).

Re:Snap mouse to default button in Windows

[Gerv]

Is there a reason for Mozilla to use anything BUT the standard Windows buttons, dialogs, etc?

Two reasons.
1) If they did, there wouldn't be any ports apart from possibly Macintosh (not enough time)
2) To get the things required by CSS 2 and 3 (animated background images on buttons, anyone?) you need to reinvent your own widget set. IE does the same thing. Having done that, why not use it for a cross-platform UI?

Gerv

Re:The browser is great, but where is the spell ch

[Gerv]

Netscape has a proprietary spell-checker which it ships. No-one has yet found time to write an open-source one. Obviously, no-one at Netscape would spend time doing it, and external contributors are busy on other things. The usual trick is to use a build close to a Netscape release and install their spellchecker.

It would make a good CS project for someone. Fuzzy logic matching isn't all that hard. The UI is open source, it's just the back end that's currently proprietary.

If you are interested, mail me and I'll point you in the right direction.

Gerv

Re: Mozilla user agent

[abischof]

Changeable user agents is bug 46029. Feel free to vote for the bug if that issue is important to you.

Re:Proxomitron

[noom]

Don't do this! Just write to the standard DTD and ignore everything else. Providing "optimized" content just makes the compatibility wars rage on, and if you optimize for IE, you're helping MS subvert the documented standards.

Would you mind posting the DTD for JavaScript?

Oops! I nearly forgot, scripting languages don't have DTDs!

And sure, some backwards people would prefer no scripts in their HTML, but the rest of us actually prefer the design flexibility... and it's just a fact of life that browsers have different, mutually incompatable bugs in their implementations, as well as "additional features."

-n00m

Re:The browser is great, but where is the spell ch

[BrookHarty]

I used netscapes 6 spellcheck.xpi with an early version of mozilla and it wored fine. It doesnt work with 0.9.4 (just tried) hopefully someone fixes this soon.

Re:The browser is great, but where is the spell ch

[abischof]

The bug for getting a spell checker into Mozilla is bug 56301. If you can help out with the effort, that would be fantastic, as the bug is somewhat stalled at the moment.

It used to be that you could install Netscape's spellchecker, but that is no longer supported.

PS Gerv: This message isn't directed at you, but primarily at the parent post to your post.

Re:Proxomitron

[damiam]

Oops! I nearly forgot, scripting languages don't have DTDs

They don't?

Re:First bug post...

[zachlipton]

Thank you very much for trying Mozilla and reporting bugs. However, this is not the right place to report a bug as there is no way to track it here with the hundreds of other comments.

Please travel over to http://www.mozilla.org/quality/help/bugzilla-helpe r.html and follow the instructions there to report bugs. Espically, please please please search for duplicates before you file a bug. After a release, the number of bugs filed jumps by huge amounts and many of these are duplicates. Please let us who are working on Mozilla work on code and not weeding out duplicate bugs.

Thanks

Re:&lt;button&gt; tag behavoir is whacky!

[Gerv]

Are they planning on keeping this awful behavoir?

Best way to find out is file a bug and see :-) If you don't like it, and it makes it into Netscape 6.whatever'snext, then if you haven't filed a bug you've only got yourself to blame.

Gerv

Re:Speed issues. Moz 9.3/9.4

[Ungulate]

The reason moz/nscp6 is slower than 4.x is that the entire user interface is built out of XML, CSS, and javascript (something collectively referred to as XPFE). This approach ensures that there's as little platform-specific code as possible, making mozilla available on a wide number of platforms that simply wouldn't have been plausible if everything was being done natively. It's been said many times that if not for XPFE, there wouldn't have been versions for anything but Windows and possibly Macintosh.

The good news is that UI responsiveness improves with each release, and I fully expect it to equal 4.x in time. However, I've read that GTK is a bottleneck of some sort, so that's why Windows has a performance advantage over *nix.

Re:The browser is great, but where is the spell ch

[Gerv]

but that is no longer supported

Well, the 6.1 spellchecker is not supported with current builds. But if you wait for the next Netscape release, the spellchecker will work with those builds and all following builds (until we break it again ;-)

Gerv

come on...

[green pizza]

Mozilla 0.9.4 still feels sluggish on my machine, a 1.1 GHz T-Bird w/ 512 MB of PC133. It feels sluggish under both Linux and Windows. Yet the GIMP and Photoshop (not to menton my games) never felt so fast. If I can shuffle AutoCAD projects with 5+ million elements with ease, I should at least be able to have a complete, yet zippy, web browser.

Granted, newer software is generally larger and more capable, and thus often requires more cpu cycles to do its job. Yet Mosaic and early (pre 2.0) versions of Netscape ran fine on my Sun SPARCstation 10 so many years ago. With advances in coding and cache techniques, not to mention the abilities of modern compilers and the speculative processes doen in the modern cpu -- why must a modern web browser run so slow??

My SPARCstation 10 had a single 50 MHz SPARC processor and 32 MB of rather slow ram. Has Mozilla gotten so far out of hand that even the latest 1+ GHz wizbang PC can't even handle it? Is Mozilla actually more demanding than my Maya rendering daemon??

I say finish up Mozilla. Release 1.0 'when it's done'. Then go back to the drawing board and start over. Bring in some of the old school coders, the folks that didn't have 4+ GFLOPS CPUs. Bring in the old browser folks... Marc Andressen, JWZ, etc.

Sure, Mozilla will be fine by next year when it hits 1.0 and when we all have 2.0 GHz PCs. Browsing will be great at that point. But I pitty the next advance in browsing, because Mozilla 2.0 will certainly bring back the slowness. It is time to start over and do it right.

Re:come on...

[Gerv]

Then go back to the drawing board and start over.

Are you committing to coming to help us if we do what you say? :-)

Gerv

Re:come on...

[dennism]

Have you really used Mozilla for any amount of time?

On a Celeron 700mhz Dell laptop, Mozilla .9.3 felt just as fast as IE, if not faster at times (when going back to a previous page, etc.). With the fast start feature, it's just as easy to start Mozilla as IE. On my iBook (366mhz, 320mb RAM), Mozilla is again as fast as IE on the same box.

I'm using .9.4 right now, and I'm pretty impressed. If 1.0 is optimized and relatively bug-free, then IE is going to be left behind (technical not market). This browser has given me some new hope in what was Netscape.

Re:come on...

[jchristopher]

We can yak all we want about why it's so slow, or whether it's slow on this or that system. Fact is, the benchmark is Internet Explorer. (Opera on some systems is also very fast).

So a better question might be, given that IE is so tightly integrated into Windows (lots of unneeded code for a browser to have) why can't Mozilla be faster than IE? I say lose the useless sidebar and other bloat and just build a BROWSER.

Re:come on...

[Jacek Poplawski]

>Mozilla .9.3 felt just as fast as IE
As far as I remember Microsoft software was always slow . Now I see many comments "something is almost as fast as Word, as Excel or as MSIE - that's great!". What the hell happened? Why this is fast today?
Even, if StarOffice is much slower than MSOffice - that doesn't mean MSOffice is fast! Dillo, links, gnumeric or LyX is fast, well written software. Mozilla (which I am using now), MSIE or MSOffice is not.

Re:come on...

[Gerv]

Yeah, but you've anonymous :-)

So, what's wrong with the codebase? I'm sure that, to make a statement like that, you have at least a passing familiarity with it.

Gerv

Mozilla vs. Communicator

[under_score]

I've been using Netscape Communicator 4.72 for the last X years. Why? I have over 82000 email messages that I have kept! I do not want the hassle of moving over to Outlook or some other platform for email - lots of filters to set up, _lots_ of folders to set up, and many many thousands of messages to transfer. So I've been waiting for Mozilla to mature. I have tried it a few times over the last two years - and always it has not quite made the cut. In particular, importing the huge number of messages and folders has been a real hassle (often crashing). I'm getting close to switching. This release seems much better. We'll see...


"Blade Runner" the Comic Noir, "Akira" the Film

Re:Mozilla vs. Communicator

[swordgeek]

Mozilla???

Netscape?????

These are web browsers. If your email is so important to you that you can't just archive (or trash) your 8200 messages and pick a new platform, why are you using a web browser for mail services in the first place? Here's a hint: They're not very good at it!

Re:Mozilla vs. Communicator

[J'raxis]

How are the messages stored? mbox format? Then the message files/folders are mostly portable between other email clients (Eudora, `pine`, etc., all use mbox). Most other email clients either use mbox format or can import from it.

mbox files look like this (if opened in your text editor). Each file serves as a single mailbox, containing all the messages as plain text:

From [user] [date]
[headers]
[body]

From [user] [date]
[headers]
[body]

[...]


As for filters, I dont know.

Re:Mozilla vs. Communicator

[under_score]

What would you suggest for an email client? This is really a legacy application problem. 82000 messages (not 8200) might be easy to transfer over if it was just a matter of the headers and content. But unfortunately it is also a matter of the folders and filters. I have tried importing into Outlook (both versions), but the process has been incredibly painful and I have been very happy that I backed up my email before I started the attempts. I'm not comfortable looking at a text-based client. Nor am I (currently) in a position to pay lots of money for an enterprise-quality solution. Please, if you know of a good email client that meets these requirements, let me know! Thanks.

Re:Mozilla vs. Communicator

[Metrol]

Here's a hint: They're not very good at it!

I seriously beg to differ. Netscape 4.7x is still my primary mail client after years of use. I have not run across a single other client that serves my needs nearly as well. I have looked too!

On Windows I tried Outlook out for about a weeks worth of use. Back to Netscape for a far superior handling of address auto fill. This is especially true when your addresses are coming in off an LDAP server. Tried Calypso, Eudora, Pegasus, and all of them missed some crucial feature I've grown to rely upon Netscape's Messenger for.

On the Unix side of the house the story isn't much better. Mostly using KMail instead of Netscape due to the fact the fonts are a lot more readable. Feature wise, it to just doesn't hold up to Messenger. The other *nix mail clients I've tried couldn't hold a candle to most of the cheesey shareware mail apps over on Windows. Every once in a while I really do like the ability to bold some text, or work a little HTML into my E-Mail. Nothing stable outside of Netscape can do that at this point.

I'm starting to really like the looks of Mozilla's Mail, but damn is it memory hungry. Still, I'd LOVE to have an E-Mail only client that offered the basic functions of Netscape's without all the rest of the browser thrown in.

Now I'll just sit back and wait for a troll to suggest that I need to go and code this.

Re:Mozilla vs. Communicator

[Eil]

I wish I could recommend some free ones, but (fortunately) I haven't used Windows in a few years. I used to use Eudora (a *very* nice and very capable email client) back when I was using Windows. The only downfall is that it is commercial software that you must pay for. I'd say if I were still using Windows, I would buy Eudora.

In Linux, I used to use KMail until the latest release of KDE... For some reason, loading any KDE application takes an eternity on every computer I've tried it on. So I switched to Mozilla's email client, which isn't much better but it gets the job done.

I'm going to try out newer versions of some of the popular GTK mail clients soon.

Re:Mozilla vs. Communicator

[swordgeek]

In Windows, I'd say Pegasus or Eudora, although there are other nice ones two. I'm looking at Unix clients now, and am moderately displeased, but Mahogany is looking promising.

My point on the 82000 (!) messages is _why_ do you need access to them all? Dump the whole directory tree to a CD or six, along with a copy of Netscape 4.7 (just so you can read them in the future), and then ignore them. I can't imagine needing ready access to many messages that old, even for a company that needs to keep seven years of records.

Re:Mozilla vs. Communicator

[swordgeek]

Don't worry. As a non-programmer, I have threatened to pummel all of the coders who say, "well I don't want it like that, so go write it yourself."

I haven't played with Mozilla mail since 0.8.1, but it was such an ugly outlookalike (hah! :-) then that I'm not interested in seeing if they've got it functional now. (which it wasn't then)

I'm looking at Mahogany right now. A friend who found that Eudora and Pegasus didn't have all of the features she needed is loving The Bat right now. Check those ones out.

Re:Mozilla vs. Communicator

[great throwdini]

I used to use Eudora (a *very* nice and very capable email client) back when I was using Windows. The only downfall is that it is commercial software that you must pay for. I'd say if I were still using Windows, I would buy Eudora.

Since the release of version 5.0 -- it's now at version 5.1 -- Eudora has been "free" in same same sense that Opera is now "free": embedded banner ads.

To be fair, Eudora 5.x has three modes of operation: light, sponsored, and paid. Feel free to read up on them at your leisure... might as well do a little reading on its feature set as well.

Re:Mozilla vs. Communicator

[Eil]

Wow, thanks for the info. I haven't been keeping up Eudora obviously, but if it's still quality software as it was before, it sounds like I might be recommending it to a few family and friends.

Re:Mozilla vs. Communicator

[Metrol]

You mention these features that other email clients don't have. Would you care to elaborate on what they are?

I thought I had, but I'll summarize my top can't live withouts.

1. Addressing. No other E-Mail client handles this half as well as Messenger. A seperate line for each recipient, with each of these being able to toggle to: cc: and bcc: independantly. The full name AND E-Mail address showing up in the address bar. Auto completion of names as you type.

2. LDAP Addressing. All of the above, with a seemless integration to a remote server running LDAP. Other clients have some LDAP abilities, NS handles it darn near perfectly.

3. Multiple address books. This didn't come around until later versions of NS, but when it did it was handled very well.

4. HTML composition and viewing. Pretty much every component of Composer can be utilized when putting together an E-Mail.

5. Threading that works properly.

Yes, I realize that Outlook handles some of these items, but not nearly as well as Netscape. As I personally reviewed these two Outlook came very close feature wise to Messenger, and beat it in certain areas like the handling of multiple accounts. In the final analysis for me, the addressing features won out over multiple account handling. That, and I found over some time that I just preferred the interface that NS provided.

On the *nix side of the house I haven't seen any clients deal with the above features nearly as well. I wish one did, as I really hate the UI on the *nix version of Netscape 4.78. Only thing I'm seeing come close is Mozilla, though I'd personally prefer a stand alone client that called to Mozilla for HTML rendering only. From the looks of things, that ain't happening any time soon.

Re:The browser is great, but where is the spell ch

[Gerv]

That won't be fixed. You'll have to wait until the next time Netscape releases a spellchecker.

Gerv

where is the popup disabling feature?

[jchristopher]

I can't figure out to use the new feature for blocking window.open() attached to OnLoad or onUnLoad in the latest build for Win32. Can anyone point out where it is?

Re:where is the popup disabling feature?

[Gerv]

Have you read the release notes? It details how to do it in there.

Gerv

Re:where is the popup disabling feature?

[Gerv]

OK, so maybe I screwed up the release notes.

Could you tell me what OS you are using, and what the results of searching your hard disk for a file called prefs.js are? Mail me if you like.

Gerv

good work

[Ender Ryan]

I have to say I'm am extremely impressed with the latest releases of mozilla, there has again been a very very nice speed jump.

As a submitter of bugs, it's good to see them getting cleaned up, at this point it's better than many browsers that call themselves 3, 4, 5, 6, 7... whatever.

Stability is getting really good, I haven't been able to crash the latest 0.9.3 nightlies or 0.9.4, even with java, javascript, and flash.

Really excellent work, my thanks goes out to everyone who has helped with Mozilla.

Re:Proxomitron

[Gerv]

(there goes my option of opening in a new window)

That's bug 55696.

Gerv

Re:Proxomitron

[Todd Knarr]

How about not optimizing your page code instead? Just write HTML 4.01 or XHTML 1.0 or CSS1/CSS2 or Javascript 1.2 or whatever according to the standards ( see www.w3c.org for all of them ) and make life easy on all of us. I find it annoying to go to a site and see "Sorry, Netscape 6.x isn't supported.", flip the user-agent string to IE5.5 and discover that the site renders perfectly in Mozilla 0.9.recent. To me it says that the site doesn't care what customers it annoys and that the designer doesn't know how to create HTML pages.

Re:And how about maximizing?

[Gerv]

Yep, you can prevent sites from resizing windows as well. It's possible in roughly the same way as popups, with the same level of control. You'd need to ask in the newsgroups exactly how to do it.

Gerv

Need to Reclaim Real Estate

[idonotexist]

Menu item spacing is larger for Bookmarks Menu. Vote for this bug.

Just wait until sites do this...

[Ryu2]

The obvious workaround for advertisers desparate to be as annoying as possible:

var w = window.open(...);
if(w == null)
window.location = "popups_required.html";

redirecting you to a message telling you that you need to enable popups to use the site

Re:Just wait until sites do this...

[Gerv]

In which case we hack window.open() to return a value indicating success :-) It may even do so already.

They can't win, you know...

Gerv

Re:Just wait until sites do this...

[scrytch]

In which case we hack window.open() to return a value indicating success :-) It may even do so already.
Until the popup itself contains a script that directs the actual site content to load in the original window. Or they just use an interstitial and use unique requests coded on the timestamps of the interstitial (thus defeating your cache while they're at it). Or they can put the ads in flash and use liveconnect to make the last frame of the flash load the page ... now you have to hack on flash (though you could probably have a filtering proxy munge the flash).

They can't win, you know...
They don't have to against the minority population of powerusers. Just Joe Average. But ultimately you can always vote with your feet.

Re:Just wait until sites do this...

[Malcontent]

The chances or this happening are low because the chances of IE implementing the same feature are zero. IE is designed to deliver advertising to windows users not to make your life easier. As long as the sheeple continue to use IE in massive numbers you can continue browsing without those annoying popups. Once again IE (and windows) is a kind of a stupidity tax.

Re:Just wait until sites do this...

[WWWWolf]

var w = window.open(...);

if(w == null)
window.location = "popups_required.html";

user_pref("capability.policy.default.Window.loca ti on", "noAccess");

Problem solved. =)

Re:Just wait until sites do this...

[Gerv]

Create the popup, then - just create it at coordinates 100000, 100000, and destroy it after 10 seconds.

Gerv

Re:Just wait until sites do this...

[lavaforge]

But ultimately you can always vote with your feet.

You mean by giving the advertisers a swift kick in the ass?

.94 & previous releases seem to have memory le

[ILoveMandrake]

This seems to have been a re-occuring problem among all of the releases, but even worse with .94 (.93 seemed to be getting better). Here are my specs : 1.2 ghz athlon w/ 266 fsb, 266MB PC133, gf2 ultra, sblive 5.1...)

I started mozilla having 136 MB with the buffers & cached memory. After about an hour or so of watching realplayer videos in cnn & abc and going to various sites I had only 85 MB free with buffers & cached memory included. I noticed a very aparent slowdown in the way programs loaded. I closed the window with realplayer with no ram gain. I then clozed mozilla. and my free memory went back up to 135 or so.

This may be caused by the fact that I have 4-5 windows open at once. I later tried using the "flush memory" option which only freed up about 5-10MB. The older versions seemed to have much less of this problem, but it was still noticeable. I use opera 5.05TP1 and it not only loads in a second or two, but is much faster at loading web pages and allows you to have up to 10 or more pages open at once in one opera window. This is quite nice for the way I browse. Unfortunately It does not have real player support, but id does have java & flash suport.

Speed ...

[konmaskisin]

This release takes 17 seconds to start up on a pII-233 (about 1 second less if you use a reall small bookmark file). Sure, that's a bit slow (given the Netscape 4 takes ~ 12 seonds and Opera takes ~ 7 seconds. But 0.9.3 took 24 seconds (constistantly) so thats about a 30% start up time improvement and there's more to come. I'm not sure what the estimates are but 4 seonds faster on my machine is likey possible and that's without the BRUTAL_SHARING stuff in mozilla yet (which will make it faster) or improvements in gcc, glibc and ld which will likely get startup to ~10 seconds or less on a machine like mine.

Rendering pages is extremely FAST but creating windows is SLOW. The main hitch I have right now is on new window creation (which takes a long time to do). For example on a test page that uses javascript to open and close 75 windows one at a time (see the super simple code at this URL and either copy and make you own test or click on the link on that page):

http://206.191.52.79/MozTester/pagebanger.html

On a P233 running Linux I get the following (you'll likely want to try this on a faster machine - it's the relative comparisons that are interesting).

* Netscape 4.7.* takes about a minute
* Opera takes about 15 seconds
* Mozilla takes about 5 minutes !! (actually I stopped timing it's so slow)
* KFM/Konqueror ?? (old version doesn't work try it with KDE 2.0)
* Galeon ??? (not timed recently - the sort of more "native" GTK GUI might be faster??)
* Embedded Moz etc.
* Other browsers??

On MS Windows the Mozilla GUI is likely faster (haven't tested) and IE of course is very fast ... However IE 5.0 seems SLOWER on rendering pages and only really flies better on creating new windows.

Some of the slowness is due to the server so I engourage you to create your own javascript tests that just openm and close blank windows or something ... but the main slowness in Mozilla comes in drawing its own GUI ... Other than that the performance and speed of Moz is pleasantly peppy even on old machines (though lots RAM is recommended).

Re:Speed ...

[ksheff]

I tried this with Galeon 0.11.4 and it took about 45-50 seconds to loop through the test. At the end of the test, the browser opened the last two windows and just sat there for a minute or so and didn't redraw anything. I had thought it crashed at first.

If one has the "Open Popups in Tabs" option set, the test takes about 7 seconds.

Re:Re-querying

[BZ]

This behavior is not optional because there is no API to request a cached load at the moment. This API is being added. It is not yet in 0.9.4. As soon as it's added, I'll change the view source code to use this API and the problem will be gone. There is an existing patch for "save" that with a few small changes will start working then too.

Re:The browser is great, but where is the spell ch

[BZ]

yes. now all you need is a way to call it from the browser and somehow usefully use its output...

Oh, and aspell/ispell is Unix-only,no?

That would be a good warning to me...

[Greyfox]

Not to enter the site.

It's amazing how much less irritating browsing the web is since I disabled popups and animation in Mozilla.

Re:Speed issues. Moz 9.3/9.4

[BZ]

> Konqueror does a much better job than Netscape

> 4.x of doing styles right

True. That's really not saying much. I've tried Konqueror and it's style and DOM support is pretty crappy as of last month...

Re:two things to make it my permanent browser

[ksheff]

If you have 192M of RAM on your laptop and you still feel that it's slow, the problem isn't due to lack of RAM. I've used earlier releases on machines with only 64M and it worked fine.

Re: tag submits forms?!

[BZ]

> Anyone else notice that this release's tag now
> automatically works as a submit button

What do you mean by that? Are you referring to the <button> element? If so, a <button> with no type specified is supposed to be of type "submit" per the HTML4 spec. If you want it to be type="button", say so in the tag.

Re:&lt;button&gt; tag behavoir is whacky!

[BZ]

The definition of <button>. Of particular interest:

type = submit|button|reset [CI]
This attribute declares the type of the
button. Possible values:
* submit: Creates a submit button. This is
the default value.

Mozilla's just finally gotten around to what is _very_ plain in the spec. use type="button" if you want it to be just a button.

Re:Mozilla plugin support?

[ksheff]

I have all of those plus the Crossover plugin and they all work fine, even in Galeon. The Java plugin for Mozilla is different than the one for NS 4.x. You may want to check to see what your system is using for the MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME environment variable. If you installed it using the rpms, that is set to /usr/lib/mozilla and the location for system wide plugins is going to be /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins. If you want to put them someplace else, I _think_ you can as long as you set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to include the directories where you actually installed the plugins.

Re:Hmm...

[Eil]

Erm, wouldn't that mean that 1.0 should have been hit on the 5th iteration? :P

Re:First bug post...

[Metrol]

What version of OS was Microsoft pushing when Mozilla got started anyway? I'm thinking it was Windows 98 first edition. In the mean time they've had 3 major upgrades to that, the last of which was a total overhaul.

Sorry, just something that occurred to me as I was reading this. As Mozilla has been working on this browser, it's primary environment has been a moving target. One of the downsides of how long this is taken I'd imagine.

why i'm not solely running Moz...

[xuvetyn]

note: i'm predominantly running windows lately on my desktop machine. don't start with me. it's the curse of being a gamer.

last year i ran in to NetCaptor (http://www.netcaptor.com), which, uses IE and, among other things, is "tab-able", and i simply can not go back now. (i'm addicted to tab-able apps. PowerShell rules! having 20+ windows open at any given time doesn't). so, my suggestion to developers is an add-on app that incorporates Moz for this. i'm sure i'm not the only one that would love to see this.

just my .02

Very little is UNIX-only

[yerricde]

yes. now all you need is a way to call [aspell or ispell] from the browser and somehow usefully use its output...

Pspell is a portable C library providing an interface between apps such as Mozilla and several varieties of spell-check backends (such as Aspell's English algorithm or Ispell's language-independent algorithm), along with command-line apps that call those functions. It's licensed under GNU Lesser GPL.

Oh, and aspell/ispell is Unix-only,no?

No. Pspell is a cross-platform library, and even though Ispell is tuned for POSIX systems, Cygwin provides a good POSIX layer on Win32 systems. With the port of XFree86 4.10 to run on Windows 98/ME and Windows NT/2K, it's very hard to call a piece of source code "designed only for UNIX systems" anymore.

Re:Very little is UNIX-only

[BZ]

OK. All we need now is someone to write something using Pspell to do spell-checking. :) You want to do this? I'm serious. This issue has been bugging me and I don't have the time to learn the spellcheck code while working on other phases of the project.

Also, is pspell easily portable to Mac? I don't know how MacOS Classic's POSIX support is.... and I don't know whether there is something like cygwin for it...

User-Agent: that tricks servers but not designers

[yerricde]

It just makes life harder on web designers. How can we optimize our HTML code to render correctly in your browser, if you lie to us about what browser you're using?

If your browser sends

User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.66; This isn't IE but really Mozilla 0.9.4)

then the server will send IE content, but the web designer will notice the satanic "666" in the User-Agent field of the logs and know something is up. A closer inspection reveals a Mozilla browser.

Re:The perfect feature...

[Salsaman]

Yes, and don't forget ctrl-Q, which will instantly close all windows ( in case of emergenecy ;-) ).

Re:Hangs on startup is probably sound "bug"

[rasjani]

This is typical error if you have flash plugin installed or possibly java (I havent really verified this).

Flash plugin opens /dev/dsp in initialization state and depending on your sounddrivers, it wont open if you have, for example xmms (or anything else using sound devices) running. Someone also mentioned that java does the same but i havent noticed this myself.

So, here's a list of what you can really do:

• get rid of offending plugins.
  
• Stop all sounds when starting mozilla
  
• Use esddsp to lauch mozilla
  
• Get Alsa. Oss that comes with stock kernel doesnt support soundmixing and thus, multiple instances cannot use /dev/dsp "simultaneously".
  

Re:don't be too excited about popups

[Gerv]

I'm not certain (check the newsgroup post) but I think it disables them during timer events as well.

Gerv

Re:turbo mode in 0.9.4

[Gerv]

It's turned on by default (in installer builds only) because we would like more people to test it. You have an option of turning it off in the installer.

Yes, we are trying to make the code more efficient as well - turbo is not a substitute for performance improvements.

Oh, and the mozillaquest.com article is full of it.

Gerv

Re:Moz/Netscape latest is a disaster...

[Gerv]

So what's Netscape 6.1 (released early August, to widespread acclaim) if not a product?

Gerv

Re:What?

[Gerv]

There's a sourceball on ftp.mozilla.org and you don't need the website unless you want weird build options. The command you are looking for is:

gmake -f client.mk build

Hope that helps :-)

Gerv

What is NOT fixed

[Tony Shepps]

There are a whole slew of bugs in textarea handling that make it very difficult and painful to compose posts in textareas. This is not so critical for people who don't, uh, participate in large discussion groups such as this one. But if you DO post to Slashdot etc., you may want to hold off -- until 1.0, which is the target for just too many of these bugs, IMO.

I won't link in the bugs since the Moz folks don't like us to /. their bugzilla, but I'm talking specifically about such bugs as 83650, 82151, 88024, 68331, 75629, and 74383. And, for example, as I compose this in Moz, I know that if I accidentally hit the right arrow button at the end of the post, the cursor will move to the top of the post. It's painful.

Using mutt with mozilla?

[Dwonis]

Does anyone know where I can find out how to set up Mozilla to use mutt as its mailto: handler? Google couldn't tell me anything useful.

Re:Using mutt with mozilla?

[Dwonis]

I have it installed (and I also have mozilla-mailnews installed, because some users on my system use it), and it doesn't do anything yet. Isn't there some per-user setting that needs to be made?

Re:Just tried 0.9.3 - Performance is TERRIBLE

[asa]

It's your codebase too should you decide to jump in and write some code. If you have performance insightss that you think warrant action please post them to Mozilla's performance newsgroup

--Asa

Galeon w/ Mozilla 0.9.4

[PenguinX]

Just so that everyone knows - it appears that the CVS variant of Galeon works fine with Mozilla 0.9.4.

Re:Proxomitron

[Todd Knarr]

What doesn't render correctly? As of now, IE4/5/6, NS6, Mozilla 0.9.3+ and derived browsers and Opera5 all render HTML4/CSS1/etc. per the standards. Some include proprietary extensions, but all of them handle standards-compliant HTML4 correctly. NS4 doesn't but then NS4 doesn't do HTML4/CSS1, having been designed and built before those standards were finalized. Now if you mean they render the HTML differently, that's true, but then they're allowed by the standard to render it differently. The basic idea is that the browser should render things the way they ought to be rendered on the client system, which can vary from system to system as look-and-feel differs.

Of course, you might be trying to do precise page layout and such. Don't. You don't know anything about the client system, so trying to do pixel-level control of layout or force page widths and such doesn't work. I hate pages that make me scroll horizontally because they were designed for a wider screen than I've got, and I hate pages that leave half my browser window blank because they were designed for an 800x600 screen and my system's 1600x1200 on a 21" monitor.

As for frames, I've seen more than a few pages that, when hit with Mozilla 0.9.3, tell me I need a frames-compatible browser. They do this because they've got a hard-coded list of browsers that support frames, and anything that isn't on that list is assumed not to whether it does or not. Worse yet is the site that requires frames but only uses them for a navigation/menu sidebar. Oddly, if I take that side, scan the source and put in the URL to the nav/menu frame manually, I can navigate the site just fine. I've got to hit the Back button to get the menu back to change areas, but it's entirely navigable and usable without frames even though it was designed to require it. And all it takes is one anchor tag in the NOFRAMES section, but the designer won't do it.

I asked for that a while ago..

[josepha48]

There was an article here on /. and people were talking about popup windows, and I said that it would be nice to be able to disable window.open on a per site basis. I wonder how they implemented this. If it was a global thing for all sites or per site. But this is cook.

Re:Hmm...

[jovlinger]

actually, if it were exponentially, it would be the zeroth generation.

And I suspect he meant monotonically asymptotic, but that is a bit of a mouthful.
</pendant mode>

junkbuster is even more "choiceful" than that

[hawk]

As shipped, junkbuster blocks nothing. It has no settings to block all banner ads, or to change content. As near as I can tell, it has *no* ability to change any content in any form.

What it *does* do is allow you to specify sites or pathnames from the root of any site that simply don't load. If it's an image, you get a broken image thingie. If it's a page, junkbuster tells you that the page is blocked.

It can also acti in a similar manner with cookies.
But it never, ever, changes things, and has no universal settings. They explicitly refuse to offer those (though they do tell you how to find sites where you can see what others have done).

hawk