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Mozilla 0.9.5
agotneja writes: "Check out mozilla.org for details :) Another fine (hopefully!) release." For whatever reason, 1.0 still seems really far off.
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... until people start feeling grateful for 0.9.5 ;)
.9.5 now, but .9.4 is sweet.
Or call it "one point oh beta minus initial release testing phase DANGER DANGER WILL ROBINSON use at own risk edition, AKA 'only 4 more points'"
At any rate, I'll grab
Tim
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
... " DANGER DANGER WILL ROBINSON use at own risk" is not to say that it's actually risky :) In fact, I find Mozilla (recent nightlies) closer to crash free than most other software I use, certainly on a per-hour browser, since I spend most waking hours in it of late.
...
:) Greetings to all from the KongreBhalle :)
I just mean, if the "one point zero" is that important, maybe the wrong things are being evaluated. I bet every release is tempting to call one point zero, but Hey, aren't "point zero" releases supposed to be unstable / expected-to-be-updated anyhow? When 1.0 comes, wait for the "why only 1.0?!" flame
Mozilla developers, please ignore silly number flames.
timothy
p.s. time to break in 9.5 in Berlin
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I really like those new "Opera-Style" Features. And of course the new one is a bit more stable.
But the E-Mail Client is still something to work on (stability/speed), I like KMail a hundred times better... maybe in the next version...
X
Boycot? Blackout? Subscriptions?
I don't care!
Changelog:
* The History and Mail&News applications now allow you to reorder columns with drag and drop. For instance, if you prefer to have the date listed first in your mail thread pane, drag the Date header onto the Subject header and the Date column will move to the first position.
* Warnings in the JavaScript console now show the text of the offending line.
* Venkman, the JavaScript Debugger is now available in complete installer builds. Remember to choose 'complete' install, instead of 'typical'. Start the debugger under the Tasks/Tools menu or from the command line with mozilla -venkman.
* Mozilla has a new experimental Tabbed Browsing feature. Press Ctrl+T to open a new tab. (Bug 101973.)
* People who like tabbed browsing may also like the mozilla gestures add-on, Optimoz now available at mozdev.org.
* SOCKS proxies (both v4 and v5) can now be used with all protocols (Bug 89500) except MailNews. Using socks with MailNews is covered by bug 44995.
* Mozilla has a new Site Navigation Bar for navigating sites that use the element (like Bugzilla buglists.) Choose the menu item View | Show/Hide | Site Navigation bar | Show As Only Needed to make the toolbar show up automatically when you visit pages that use the element.
* The View Source window now has a context menu with items for Find, Copy, and Select.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
just a heads up for anyone else out there letting OS X monopolize their time like i have been. omniweb is nice, but so unfinished it makes mozilla look like oracle, Opera beta 5.0 b1.327 rocks very hard, but is just a weeeee too scandi-alien for my tastes - oh and it quits at the first sign of trick xml.
(yeah IE 5.1 is rock solid... but it makes me feel so dirty...)
Right now no Browser even compares in terms of speed/power ratio.
Sure its debateable that Opera is faster, But Mozilla is more powerful, Its Debateable that IE is more stable, but Mozilla is faster.
Right now, in terms of speed and power Mozilla is the BEST browser you can have.
However if any Mozilla coders are reading this, what needs to be done now to make Mozilla even better, is to start intergrating tools into it, I know all the people on their 486s will scream "BLOAT" But this is what the average user wants, not the average geek.
By intergration i mean, why not tie winamp into Mozilla itself in the same way flash and quicktime are tied in so when someone clicks on an mp3 file the embeded winamp loads and plays it.
Intergrate ICQ + AOL into mozilla all on ONE list, I dont mean jabber but i mean OFFICIAL clients, Mozilla afterall is owned by AOL.
This sounds like feature bloat and yes it could be, but Most windows users have ICQ open and Mozilla open wasting vast amounts of ram, Intergrating these tools in a good way would be nice.
Mozilla also needs better memory management, I know its fast now, its as fast as it can be, but it seems they have stopped focusing on improving the speed, I say they should keep trying to make it as fast and as optimized as possible, this is for the linux using crowd, and the geeks, We want it to be fast and use LESS ram yet remain powerful. Difficult yes, but theres still room for improvement.
Some other features i want, when i download an mp3, or a file, i want to actually SEE it on the desktop or directory its downloading, i dont want to download it to a temp directory and then transfer, Some people like to open files before they are 100 percent complete, such as mp3s.
Last but not least, better and more intelligent cache, I know mozilla is fast right now, but some of us have broadband connections, while our browser is sitting idle we should have an option to allow pre caching of entire websites while we are reading that long article.
Once again, when more people get broadband it will be more important to pre cache websites by downloading BEFORE people actually click it, this gives them the illusion that things are faster because they dont have to "wait" for a page to load, its already loaded. For people on 56k i can see why they might complain, but please put some broadband options into Mozilla.
Theres alot of features i like, but Mozilla needs to be more innovative, I dont think its good enough for them to go around stealing all of IEs features, taking the old Netscape features, and stopping there.
Example, the password remember feature is nice, when i log into hotmail it gives me a list, but what if i dont want someone looking to see all my user names? How about auto complete in the username section to fill the username when i type "Han(autocompleted) HanzoSan and password autocomplete for people who cannot remember their password fully.
Thats just one useful feature that they COULD do that no one else has done. will they? I doubt it but maybe someone is reading this and will add some of these features.
Mozilla is the best browser, but in order to stay the best they need to innovate not copy Opera, IE, and others.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
What I like best about Moz 0.9.5 is its better support for the tag. It's really about time the more browsers started to actively support this tag considering its great utility and vintage.
I don't like trolls and mod against me if you like, but I'd prefer if you'd reply.
I want to see the Mozilla team create NEW features, I tried to give some ideas, such as username and password autocomplete, another thought would be a shielded password and username autocomplete which uses stars to hide both the username and password.
This way someone looking at your keyboard cant look at your hands and see your password because its set to autocomplete.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Seems like OS X is constantly a late release, if it gets released at all. Note that this doesn't just apply to Mozilla. Now, I know there are lots of people out there who will say that it is because OS X (stinks, sucks, fill in your description of choice), but all I can say is that it rocks, especially when compared to the "Classics" not to mention winders. Mebbie the OS X sucks crowd just hasn't tried 10.1 yet.
Seriously, though - I have ran up against problems like a screwball linker in OS X just as much as the next guy. But how many broken versions of, say, GCC have been released? I have to say that it must be due to a bunch of dedicated coders that any OSS works at all - and it works great! But I'd like to see the dev community work more on this platform. Just my 2c.
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
SSL is handled by PSM. When you install Mozilla, also install PSM to get SSL working.
stability speed and power are all ratios.
Having too much speed and not enough stability is a problem.
Having too much power and not enough speed is a problem.
Having too much stability and not enough power is a problem.
Having too much speed and not enough power is a problem.
Opera = too much speed not enough power.
Lynx = too much stability not enough power.
IE = too much stability not enough speed.
Mozilla = just enough speed, power, stability, its good at everything, but not the best at anything, well rounded software is usually best.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
now I just have to wait a couple of days for the new galeon. ;-)
Mozilla blows - Gecko rules
'Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson...'
It's lightweight, fast and damn stable.
Is it really that hard to type:
export CVSROOT=:pserver:anonymous@cvs-mirror.mozilla.org: /cvsrootcvs
cvs co mozilla/client.mk
cd mozilla
gmake -f client.mk checkout
gmake -f client.mk build
I Am geting box chars as I write this. I think some one messed up Gecko in tyhis release....I can not even see what I am typing.....not to mention the home page of /. is messed up as well
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
I just don't look forward to downloading the new tarballs over my 56.6 modem at home.
*Sigh* I suppose by the time I get that one downloaded there will be 0.9.6.
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
Truly it shouldn't be that difficult seeing as it already builds for so many other platforms.
Let's first implement the existing useful standards (of which the tag is certainly one) before we start to "innovate".
Anybody knows a good place to find Mozilla themes? The new x.themes.org isn't up yet, and the stuff on the old site, x.classic.themes.org , doesn't seem to work anymore.
The first thing you should do is pull down the source and reconfigure and build with --disable-debug "--enable-optimizations=-O4 -finline -fno-omit-frame-pointer -march=pentiumpro -mcpu=pentiumpro" in addition to what ever components you want.
You would n't believe how much more snappier it makes mozilla run, for example the java sdk framed docs index pages goes down from 2.5sec to 1.5sec's on my athlon 850.
Also add this line to your prefs.js file:
user_pref("nglayout.debug.disable_xul_cache", false);
This speeds up loading time by using the pre-compiled versions of the javascript controls.
- You can't select several messages by a mouse click-&-drag (I do this all the time);
- Huge fixed non-scrollable real estate occupied by message headers (*completely stupid*);
- "View all headers" still doesn't work ("view source" is a painfully slow substitute);
- Silly quote style using solid bars. These break after two levels or so, and anyway, a message's body is *plain text* so display it as such, with >'s and all, dammit!
(And yes these are all in Bugzilla, but assigned for who-knows-when.) So my browsers of choice remain:- on Mac OS 9: Netscape 4.x
- on Mac OS X: Omniweb
- on LinuxPPC: Dillo
(As to Dillo, see the reasons here -- and thanks to the AC who recommended it in answer to that message. It rocks, and now that version 0.6.1 does tables, it has all you need to go browse for RPMs or tarballs, on those low end boxes for which Konqui, kfm or anything Gecko is not and never will be lean enough. Kudos to the Dillo team for making good on the promise that Linux can revive old hardware.)Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
Please note that political arguments about open-source software are not what I'm looking for. The typical Windows user isn't going to listen to this.
What about features, speed, reliability, etc.? The things that I could tell users.
For all of you using the new tabbed interface of mozilla, its just a simple copy of what the multizilla guys did
[http://multizilla.mozdev.org/] This is a much better interface with many many more features. Give it a try, and report those bugs.
The goal of computer science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.
Every feature adds bugs. Some are probably crashs, some of them might even be security bugs.
Also, the more time you spend on features, the less time you have for bugfixing the rest.
I know this sounds pretty stupid, but one thing that I like about IE is the google search toolbar you can add. Is there a way to have this in Mozilla?
Why is it that people always forget the Konqueror?
I don't think they do. Konqueror is my preferred browser by far. It's not perfect, there are areas where it needs a little work (Javascript and Netscape plugin handling for instance) but the overall feel of the browser UI and rendering engine is unmatched. It's quick, full of useful features, relatively light on resources and renders well. In short, everything I want out of a web browser.
There are a few reasons people have stopped making much noise over Konqueror recently:
I think that the 'battle' between Konqueror and Mozilla to be the most successful *nix browser is a little like the 1970's 'battle' between UNIX and Lisp machines. Lisp machines (perhaps like Mozilla) were designed by people whose emphasis was on the 'right way' and completeness above all else. If that meant a very large and complex system, then so be it. UNIX (perhaps a bit like Konqueror) was designed by people whose emphasis was on the 'right way' and completeness but ABSOLUTELY NOT at the expense of simplicity.
We all know now who won that 'battle'.
There's more about this subtle difference in design philosophy here. Yes, notice where this is hosted - Jamie Zawinski's site. Ironic? Perhaps not, given jwz's resignation from Netscape and Mozilla. You be the judge.
Most Windows users use AOL, ICQ, and Winamp, these tools should all be intergrated into a package.
I dont mean crappy intergration like what was done with Netscape 6 either.
I mean GOOD intergration, example, you have a feature where you go to a website and you see all the other AOL and ICQ users on the site and can even initiate a group chat with them.
Imagine going to slashdot with this feature and getting into a debate with serveral people, pushing a button and ICQ chat opens up and all of the people are now in an ICQ chat with you where you can continue your debate.
Also Imagine the file sharing possibilities, of going to a site and deciding to send files to people on the site via ICQ in annonymous fashion.
Imagine embeded winamp to play your mp3s as they download similar to how quicktime works.
Imagine AOL instant messager people and ICQ people all being able to communicate via the MOzilla instant messager, which basically connects to both, all your important windows tools on one menu, Mozilla.
This is how Microsoft beat Netscape, and its how Mozilla should beat IE.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
And Galeon only gets its entire browsing engine from these guys.
Dissolve... Resolve... Evolve...
I have about 5 or 6 IMAP accounts configured plus a couple news servers. Switching between folders and bringing up an email would lag - sometimes severely. Wow, what a difference 0.0.1 makes! :) I find the mail client to be MUCH faster. VERY nice!
I've been using MultiZilla (the tabs) a lot in 0.9.4 - love them! Glad to see much of it got into the stock 0.9.5!
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
I have known many people who have stability problems after upgrading IE.
AFAIK, IE is integrated into the kernel and replaces the file manager. Swapping out portions of the kernel, especially for something as whimsical as a browser upgrade, is just insanity.
One has to hope that a shipped WinME/2000 is (somewhat) stable when the codebase goes on the shelves of the retailers. The service packs and browser upgrades have much lower standards; users can't return the OS to the reseller years after purchase because a Microsoft patch made the system unstable.
Remember this Windows Update mantra: critical updates yes, browser updates never! If you want the latest browser features, use Mozilla.
The problem is that you need a basic background in computer science to understand what I just said.
If you can't seem to get the Java plugin to work, please read the instructions in the release notes:a
http://www.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla0.9.5/#jav
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
First there IS NO standard Window manager in linux.
Correct. However, KDE is the de-facto standard. Of the major distributors: Mandrake, SuSE, Caldera and (now) Turbolinux use KDE as the default. Only RedHat uses GNOME as default. Debian has no distinction between the two (at least in the forthcoming Woody release) - and previous releases have used WindowMaker as the default.
I dont know any distro which comes with just KDE.
Caldera? Big name in 'business' Linux desktops. All the major distros ship both KDE and GNOME apart from Caldera, which only ships KDE.
Konq will never be an IE because it will never be standard because there is no standard Linux Browser.
If you keep saying it it might not happen. But look at the evidence: All but one of the major Linux distros use KDE by default. Konqueror is the default browser for all those KDE desktops. Isn't that how IE got popular? It was just the first browser that new users came across. Unless a seismic shift occurs in the Linux desktop world, Konqueror is going to be the first browser that most new users discover. Sorry. Perhaps the mozilla team could push the distros a bit harder to get included as the default? (KDE doesn't have to use Konqueror as the browser...)
Konq is not the fastest at rendering, Opera and MOzilla absolutely destroy it in terms of rendering speed, I tested myself.
Are you sure? Subjectively, Konq seems the fastest browser I've used, but I think that is mostly due to its incremental rendering of tables and the visible relayouting it does. Some people hate that. I really like it. It's particularly useful if you read a lot of slashdot over a modem link - no waiting for the whole page to load before it's rendered. :)
Konq is not powerful enough, its years behind Mozilla, and its on the level of say Opera.
In what way?
KHTML renders the vast majority of sites at least as well as Gecko - in some cases better, especially on brain-dead sites that rely on IE quirks to look right. Where's Gecko's anti-aliased font support on X11? Where's the UI to change User Agent? Ok, Konqui doesn't have a password manager. That would be nice to have. Please, be more specific on what is missing from Konqueror.
Because jack of all trades = master of none, A browser should be the best BROWSER
Then tell that Netscape, who decided Mozilla should be an email client, news client, IRC client, instant messenger and HTML editor as WELL as a browser. If that's not being a jack of all trades, then I don't know what is. Using that as an argument for Mozilla over Konqueror is total hypocrisy.
There's an option you can add to your preferences file that will disable javascript window popups that aren't the direct result of a mouse click. I think it's the following line (from my prefs.js), but I'm not totally sure. Check mozilla newsgroups or the /. discussion for 0.9.4 for more info...
user_pref("dom.disable_open_during_load",true);
Yes! That guy!
And Galeon copied it from Netcaptor, which has been around for a few years on Win32.
About the GPG/PGP support: This is bug 56052. Even if you cannot help, you can vote for it.
but it does take some room away from the web pages.
So does the navigation bar. On the other hand, it makes a whole lot more room on your OSes taskbar.
What's your point?
Gerv
As it happens, it does (although that's not really why it was implemented.)
Gerv
The back button and cnn.com is bug 103978. You can vote for bug 103978.
Does Mozilla include SSL
Yes, and TLS. And it has done so for months. The only time you don't get it is if you are silly enough to uncheck it in the installer.
Gerv
Let me know when it compiles out of the box on OpenBSD
It'll do that when you, or someone else who runs OpenBSD, start submitting patches to make it do so. If you don't care, why should non-OpenBSD users care to make it run on your platform for you?
It already compiles out of the box on Linux, MacOS 9, MacOS X, Windows, OS/2, Solaris, HP-UX, OSF1, VMS, Linux/ppc, BeOS and BSD/OS (whichever BSD that is.). See here.
I'm sure more than one of those bugs will allow arbitrary file execution
Is that just FUD, or can you back it up? Why don't you say this about any other browser?
Gerv
I mean, it's clear they're planning to go all the way to 0.9.9.9.9.9.9.9.9 before releasing 1.0. Or did I not have enough decimal places there?
They should start at that many decimal places in the first place instead of suddenly having to add them in order to avoid a 1.0 release. =P
-Kasreyn,
who thinks the first release of ANY software should be 1.0, and it starts to get good around 3.2.
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
Anyone else notice a problem with 0.9.5 dealing with CNN's page?
Known issue.
Gerv
Heard of the GPL?
;-)
Sure I have. What's that got to do with Mozilla?
Until the relicensing is finished, Mozilla is effectively under only the MPL.
Gerv
I realise that these features you want could presumably be turned off. BUT, why would I want the overhead of a web browser if all I'm doing is running ICQ (yes, I know recent builds of ICQ actually take up more memory than most web browsers).
.05 seconds to open winamp and start streaming the media when it came in, which winamp will do anyway. It is just a manner of pointing winamp to the file where you are saving the data.
The integration that quicktime does with the browser prompted me to swear off EVER installing it on any of my machines. Sorenson may be great, but I'll pass, thank you.
What's wrong with clicking on an mp3 and using a default program to open it. Presuming I want to listen to an mp3 repeatedly, I'll typically actually save it. A web browser should browse the web, that is it. It doesn't introduce a whole lot of hardship to open a dedicated to the task at hand. The user interface issues alone make it a tough task. Would the instant messaging client be docked inside the browser somewhere, or outside, what kind of controls would it have, would it be sleek, like you can force ICQ to be with some twiddling, or would it have the bulk of a web browser (typically what happens when you try to do things like this). On a fast enough machine (most of them now), IE opens instantly, mozilla nearly so (I'm not turning on the cache feature), ICQ usually sits there since I want it around all the time, as does AIM. Winamp opens instantly, and is usually docked somewhere anyway out of convenience. PERHAPS, including a link on audio files with a right click that says "stream from this location" would be a good idea, it would take the
There was an instant messaging client that did what you are talking about, Odigo (is it still around?), I tried it for a day, the first time I went to a website and it showed everyone else with an Odigo client browsing the website, it freaked me the hell out. I dont need the entire internet knowing I'm browsing goat porn, thanks.
The more I try to talk to people online, the more I find out that I really don't have a whole lot in common with most of them. My ICQ list is reserved for friends that I've met in real life, and people in the few channels I hang out in on IRC. I dont want Joe in Utah messaging me because I happen to be looking at google.
I realise I'm saying this as a geek, but I also come from a background of a couple of years of ISP tech support. In addition to currently being a sysadmin, I do desktop support for decidedly non tech savvy users in my department, and such features wouldn't be useful or wanted by them, either. Right now, if icq or aim, or winamp screws up (We dont care what is installed on their machines as long as they get their work done and don't completely hose the os, most users have admin on their machines, until they prove themselves incompetant), it gets deleted and reinstalled. I dont want to have to completely uninstall a web browser simply because the AIM component screws up.
This wasn't intended as a flame but I think the way things work now is the best way. I'm not scared of change, I just dont like integrating everything, only to have a mess that isn't even remotely as useful as the individual parts.
Starting with release 0.9.4, I have been using Mozilla exclusively, both on my Windows and on my Linux PPC machine, without even knowing it! I mean ... originally I used to come across sites that had problems with mozilla and had to use IE or Opera, but now, without even realizing it, mozilla has become my default browser of choice.
... with 0.9.5 tabbed windows! It just keeps getting better and better.
...'. Mozilla 0.9.5 proves them wrong.
I suspect it has something to do with the 'Quick Launch' feature. Without this feature enabled, I had to wait almost 10-15 seconds before mozilla even started up, while IE almost loaded instantly. And I was unwilling to leave mozilla running all the time since it was such a memory hog. But with the 'Quick Launch' feature, I am pleased to say that mozilla loads as fast as IE on my machine and works better too! Plus, I don't have to keep mozilla running all the time.
I love certain features, e.g. being able to turn off those annoying javascript popup windows, and now
I definitely have to disagree with people who claim 'There is no such thing as a free lunch
I actually use Galeon, not Mozilla directly, and as far as I'm concerned, Galeon is 1.0 quality and beyond. It is definitely rock solid from my experience.
So what's really keeping Mozilla from 1.0? If the whole Mozilla browser is anywhere near as good as Galeon, I don't see what should be keeping them. What are the major issues?
In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
...the first release of ANY software should be 1.0, and it starts to get good around 3.2.
My thoughts exactly, as a NeXTSTEP 3.3 user!
No, I imaginve after 9.9 it'll go to 9.10.
Those aren't decimal points there.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
The source tarball normally lags behind by a few days. You can either pull it from CVS (tag: MOZILLA_0_9_5_BRANCH) or be patient :-)
Gerv
Can't we geeks have at least ONE fucking browser for ourselves?
What you mean is: "Waah! Why won't someone write the browser _I_ want?"
You're a geek. Go do a Mozilla distribution for geeks. Add in all the patches like gestures and PGP. Do a new, cool skin. People will love it. That's what the code is for. mozilla.org wants to see that happen.
Or quit whining.
Gerv
In the mozilla startup script add:
LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5
export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL
before you launch the binary.
Or type it in sh before you launch Mozilla from the command line.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
I just downloaded the "talkback enabled" tarball, as I really don't care for RPMs in some cases. But one thing I've noticed is that each Mozilla release seems to install more smoothly. It wasn't three minutes from the time I found this article to the time I was re-reading it in a new "tab"...
Mozilla has really come a long way, and IMO on Linux, there simply is no better alternative right now (Konqueror included).
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
And not only that, but there is (yet another) unadvertised pref. Adding:
, true);
user_pref("browser.tabs.opentabfor.middleclick"
to prefs.js, or better, user.js, allows you to open a new tab by clicking the middle button on a link.
Average users dont see the internal, they see the features THEY can use.
And what "features" do most people use? Hardly any. Most people just use the basic functionality that has been provided by browsers for years. You want to see something cool, then use the 'tab' feature that was recently added. It lets you do things Opera style, or you can just use Mozilla as usuall like IE. Will regular people use this? No, because most people don't even use most of the features of IE.
Despite the announcement of the 0.9.5 milestone being reached, Mozilla seems to have seen many regressions and user interface issues recently. Mozilla's stability tends to come and go in waves, but at the end of each cycle the high water mark is much further along.
Give it a week or so and try the nightly builds and I think you'll see some pleasant improvements.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
why use CVS for Mozilla when you can't update the sources without checking out all modified files ?
Er... what other way is there of updating the sources apart from getting all the modified files?
You can cvs update in most subdirectories of mozilla/ and that'll work.
Gerv
Mozilla is being built as a successor to Netscape Communicator, and so includes a bunch of tools to take advantage of a variety of open Internet standards, including POP,IMAP,NNTP,LDAP, and IRC. Mozilla also includes a web page editor (Composer) which can be used to create mail and news posts as well as web pages, if you're into that kinky HTML stuff. This makes Mozilla vulnerable to the (misleading) bloat charge, for those who don't like flexible tools, but it also gives you a one-stop tool that can take you all over USENET as well as the web.
One of the most important benefits that I can see on Windows is that Mozilla comes with support for using Sun's recent, vastly improved, Java VM's integrated into the browser. Yes, people can write HTML for Java applets that will work on IE and Netscape 4.x using the Java plug-in, but Mozilla automatically uses the Java plug-in for all Java code, with significant benefits in performance and stability. If you have any use for Java in your browser, Mozilla will support things better.
There's also things like themeing, the sidebar, the improved cookie management, and the lack of operating system exploits that IE and Outlook seem to continually fall prey to.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
It'd be nice to be able to drag a link to an existing tab and that link would then be rendered in that tab's space. I really don't see any ways to open a page in an already existing tab, but think drag-drop of the link would be the best way.
I have used Mozilla 0.9.3 and it's mostly pretty nice... but there's one show stopper that I don't think is being addressed.
My office uses Lotus Notes for mail (ugh!). Its Domino server lets me read and send mail from a browser, so I don't have to pollute my home PC with that godawful "client". Of course I have to get through the firewall to get there, but at least on Windows they gave me the necessary IPsec client (Nortel) that works with the SecureID card. (That's another reason I can't depend on Linux so far, but that subject it off topic.)
The Domino mail client uses Java to provide useful menu items like "next message" and "reply". This works on Netscape 4.7x and on Internet Exploder, but not on Mozilla. Obviously there's something different about their Javas. Maybe Domino uses an older version and the one in Mozilla isn't backwards compatible?
So until Mozilla can talk to Domino, I'll still need the unstable but well-understood old Netscape client. Suggestions for fixing this are of course welcome. (Flames about still using Windows for anything are not. My current problems with Mandrake 8.1 are off topic too.)
At work, I switched from Eudora to Mozilla Mail (for Windows) recently. I've got three complaints w/ Mozilla Mail:
1) When the Mozilla browser crashes, my mail dies with it
2) When I have several Moz windows open, I can't distinguish mail from other browser windows in my taskbar (a different icon would be nice).
3) I can't set up multiple Eudora-style "personalities"--if you've got aliases configured on your mail server (say for a multitude of mailing lists, etc.) pointing to one account and you want to be able to respond as one of of the aliases (essentially to be able to change the "From" header) you can't in an easy way in Mozilla.
Are these issues for anyone else?
I kept downloading and trying Mozilla. I didn't know what people were talking about. The performance was awefull. Then I tried on Windows and found it works pretty well. I actually use it as my regular browser on NT. But X Windows on Linux performance still stinks. Netscape 4 works fine over X. Is there something fundamentally different about the UI that causes Mozilla not to paint over a remote X session. Running programs over X remotely is a huge plus in Unix development environments. A lot of our people work over Exceed on NT.
OK, so I was mistaken. Google don't provide a toolbar, they provide a sidebar tab. Install it here.
;-)
But a toolbar would be pretty easy to do too
Gerv
Is there a way to make it so that clicking the middle mouse button on a link opens it in a new tab,
There's a hidden pref for this. Check some of the other comments.
Gerv
Anyway, I still think it's a bad thing to not release binaries and sources at the same time. All other OpenSource projects do that.
:-) It'll be up on Monday.
So you want the build engineers to work until midnight Friday night? Have some patience, dude
Gerv
actually mozilla doesn't support the blink tag...
Let me know when it compiles out of the box on OpenBSD then I'll believe that it isn't a horrible product.
Not very portable? Consider the large numbers of basic architectural differences among Unix/X, Windows, MacOS, MacOS X, BeOS, and OS/2, and the fact that it compiles out of the box for all of them.
0.9.4 had released versions for Win32, Mac Classic, MacOS X, Linux, AIX, BeOS, Irix, OpenVMS, OS/2, HPUX, FreeBSD, NetBSD, BSD/OS, Solaris, and Tru64 Unix. That's fifteen operating systems, including multiple BSD variants.
The reason it isn't around for OpenBSD is that no OpenBSD person or group has bothered to get involved with Mozilla. That's fine, but it isn't a defect of Mozilla.
IE is themeable???
I think you'll find it is impossible to create a theme that is even close being as cool as skypilot in IE.
Bad programmers get really excited about features. It's true that Mozilla has many features that IE does not have but this is really secondary to design.
Comparing IE to Mozilla is like comparing McDonalds to fine cuisine. Both are food but one is crap and one is fine cuisine. Microsoft does a pretty good job making adequate software. But they seldom get the details (especially user interface details) right. They say that the devil himself is often found hiding in the details.
(And by the way, if you don't care about code/technology you are reading the wrong web page)
actually mozilla doesn't support the blink tag...
Hixie, have you read html.css recently?
blink {
text-decoration: blink;
}
There was a bug that broke it, but it got fixed recently. I campaigned to have that line taken out, but you (IIRC) were fighting to keep it!
Gerv
Actually, yes I would, because Mozilla's performance on my machine (K6-2 400) leaves *much* to be desired under Unix, while it runs as fast or faster than Exploiter under windows. (albeit very unstable... that might have had something to do with how unstable windows was on my machine before I "replaced" it shortly after buggering my drives)
I thank you very much for the tip. :)
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
One of the real bothers for me about Moz is that no one really seems to be writing themes for it. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I've only found a few here and there and none of them seem to take the concept very far.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
Actually, the MultiZilla guys asked Mozilla to do this one. More recent releases of MultiZilla are extensions to this, rather than a complete re-implementation. Most likely, MultiZilla itself will be folded into Mozilla, eventually.
Of course, what I'm really waiting for is for MozGest to get integrated. Gesture-based navigation rules.
But, of course, Opera could never be bloatware. And it isn't. On Linux, where it doesn't have half the features and doesn't display anywhere near as well as the Windows client.
Opera is one of my primary browsers on Windows and Linux. I use it all the time. But please do not try to pass off that if you want "just a browser" you should be using Opera.
Oh, and why is it that nobody seems to include the concept of a Custom Install? I can get "just a browser" with IE and Mozilla that way.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Not only doesn't it hurt, it doesn't work under Win2K. Or doesn't as of the nightly I'm using, anyway...
Ctrl+F4 to close a tab works fine, though...
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
Is it possible that they could make it all the way to 1.0 without a simple spell check feature?
Perfectly possible, and extremely likely.
surely there must be open source dictionaries they could implement?
Probably. The trick is finding someone to do the implementing.
Can't they use netscape 4.x's dictionary?
No. It's proprietary.
I'm too ashamed to recommend Mozilla to my friends
...because you know they can't spell?
Gerv
I heard that, but then someone told me that it was wrong - it records the time you start the app then, when you first crash, asks permission to send that info to the Talkback server.
Gerv
I incredulously told her "Too fast!?
Thereby continuing the view of the general public that geeks are arrogant, snobbish and cliquey. Nice one, my son. You really put her in her place, right? These stupid normal human beings shouldn't be let near a computer. They aren't worthy, and their little brains can't cope.
Gerv
I'm not as worried about #1 (Mozilla hardly crashes on me anymore) 2 & 3 are valid concerns. #2 is easy - I'd really like to see a mail icon too. #3 - like another poster said - create dummy email accounts - not perfect, but it works fine. I just name them 'ID Holder #x' Note that sigs DO work well with different accounts - in 0.9.4 if you were in account A and hit reply, but changed your from to Account B, the sig changes with it - very nice touch.
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
Mozilla runs on any Unix that can build it. This feature is one that average people can use...
Dude, average people do not use UNIX. If there's one feature that is clearly just-for-programmers about Mozilla, it's UNIX support.
Tim
A PORT is not 'out of the box'. If you have to rewrite the browser for every platform, then it is the OPPOSITE of portable.
There is lots of complex software out there now that was not designed to, but DOES compile on OpenBSD. That is the software the was written correctly, using proper programming practices. Such software runs more effeciently (we all know how effecient Mozilla is) and has few bugs/exploits.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
...writing a script that slogins to each machine and runs pkg_add with the auto-download options? Just a thought...
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Netscape is owned by AOL, Most Mozilla staff are Netscape staff. Aol owns the staff thus they own Mozilla.
You are correct, and AOL also calls the shots. They have not been particularly interventionist so far, it appears, but some public information has come to light on (for instance) milestone dates being changed to accomodate AOL demands, and the head of Mozilla being removed by AOL.
Take a look at the WHOIS entry for Mozilla.org and compare it with the contact address for Netscape. Both are in Mountain View, hmm, but that could mean anything. Now look at the map to Mozilla.org and the map to Netscape. Hmm. Mozilla.org seems to be based in a Netscape building.
Independent? I don't think so.
Tim
milestone dates being changed to accomodate AOL demands,
:-| ). This building has the greatest concentration of mozilla.org staff, and so it makes sense that it be our mailing address.
mozilla.org chooses its milestone dates in cooperation with all the companies who are using our code (several of whom are still operating in quiet mode.) This is called "being responsive to customers."
and the head of Mozilla being removed by AOL.
This is simply not true. Mitchell Baker is still mozilla.org's Chief Lizard Wrangler. AOL merely chose to stop paying her to work on Mozilla. This has happened to quite a few free software developers recently (although it doesn't mean it was a smart move on their part - it wasn't.)
Mozilla.org seems to be based in a Netscape building.
Yes, we are. I'm sitting in it (on a Saturday night..
Gerv
A "hidden pref" is one with no UI. If Mozilla had UI for everything you could configure about it, there would be several hundred panes in the prefs panel, most of them incomprehensible.
Gerv
the only way that I could have made my instructions any easier for this particular individual would have been to drive to her house and install the stupid program myself!
...or perhaps by speaking slower, like she'd asked.
My patience ends where the end user's wanton and deliberate ignorance begins.
Or alternatively, they have more important things in their life than computers.
end users who have hostile attitudes towards computers to begin with.
Would they be as hostile if, every time they had to deal with them, they found someone who was friendly, helpful, patient and generous to a fault?
Gerv
Wow, that's too bad. Any bug that disabled the blink tag would be a feature, in my opinion.
-Paul Komarek
If anyone wants "just a browser", use lynx. If you want integrated mail, news, chat, and html editing, use emacs. =-)
-Paul Komarek
You can always take it out of your personal copy of html.css. Open up the jar files in your Mozilla install using some Zip tool until you find it. Edit the file in-place (decent zip tools can do that) to remove the part that references blink.
Gerv
Netscape 6.x releases based on Mozilla include a spell checker.
Most browsers use a 1.1 Java VM. One of the interesting things about the 1.1 VM is that the verifier which checks the validity of class files, does not run by default. Unfortunately many obfuscators (programs to make your code hard to decompile) take advantage of this fact by inserting invalid data into the class file. When Sun released Java 2 (versions 1.2, 1.3, and the new 1.4), they turned the validator on by default to increase security. The result was that all these programs that used the obfuscator programs that insert bad data no longer work. The solution is that the vendor has to recompile their code and use a better obfuscator.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Just got around to finally upgrading my home machine from 0.9. I've been using 0.9.4 at work, but I didn't upgrade my home version because I had some problems with text box focus in 0.9.3 and I wanted to wait till they fixed 'em (they did ;) ).
;)
;) Maybe I'll play with the gestures one day, but I'm not all that interested..."type'n'click" works just fine for me, thanks. ;)
;-D Not everyone uses Linux, ya know...though I'm fairly sure I will be using it more often as soon as I move to a bigger place and have room to set up more than one computer. (I can't give up Win98 because many of the games I'm addicted to aren't ported and wouldn't run right in an emulator...but I do not plan to upgrade to a newer version of Windows in the forseeable future, so it looks like it's gonna be Linux or bust for me in a few years. ;) )
0.9.5 seems to start a little faster and run a little faster than 0.9, though it's still slower than Netscape 4.77. What decided it for me, though, was that the annoying "right click disables keyboard" bug is no longer happening in 0.9.5. That bug was the primary reason that I didn't use Mozilla much from home (I use the context menu all the time and for some reason, the bug, which supposedly happens when you "double right click", was being invoked about 75% of the time I used the context menu...). For some reason, the bug didn't affect my work install on Win2K. Now that 0.9.5 doesn't have the bug, I think I'll be using it as my primary browser from now on, unless something well-hidden but very annoying somehow pops up...
Can't say much for the tabs or the gesture module, because I don't use 'em and don't plan to. I only used Opera once because at the time I tried it, the tabbed layout was the only choice, and I hated it. I already have a taskbar. I don't need two of 'em taking up unneccesary space...
A note to that fellow who wants Mozilla to include tons of extra "bundled" apps...bundling is not the best method of software design and distribution. Small and specialized is better, to a certain point. A modular design is the best way to go, because it lets those who want to add all sorts of features and extra stuff, while those who don't want them don't have to bother with them. Why would I want to waste the time, disk space, and RAM downloading, storing, and running "bundled" programs and apps I have no use for? When I want to do a task, I know exactly what program I want to use to do it. MP3 files? Play 'em in Winamp. Instant messages? ICQ99b. Watch MPEG movies? WMP 6.4 works fine for me. Check my email? Pegasus, of course. Sure, if I run all this stuff at the same time, it takes up more RAM than an integrated program would...but not that much more. And when I'm not running all these at the same time (which is 95% of the time, BTW), the ones I'm not using are not running at all. If they were "integrated" into my browser, they would be running all the time, wasting precious resources, even when I'm not using them. Not to mention the fact that, since I already HAVE software that does all of the above and I have no desire to switch to other software, if Mozilla came bundled with all that stuff, it would be a complete waste of space and resources for me, because I'd never use it. I've always been an advocate of keeping software seperated. If it's a web browser, let it browse the web. If it's a chat program, let it chat. If it's a media player, let it play media files. There's no need for all three of them to do everything. Is it cool if they can interact with each other? Sure...but that can be done easily without making them integral parts of each other. It seems to me that modularity is the best design for software, because it allows the most freedom and the best experience for the end user, since they get (almost) exactly what they want or need, whether it's a barebones utility or a full-fledged suite.
BTW, just a note for you browser warriors...I'm sure Konq is a great browser, but it has one small flaw...it only runs on one platform. Mozilla runs on my Windows machines as well as it does on your *nix boxes
Dennyk
Huh? You want a spell check feature in a web browser? What are you planning on doing? Playing "spelling nazi" with other people's web sites?
I am certain that GUI functions are integrated into the kernel for speed.
While I may be wrong in asserting that HTML-handling functions are not in the kernel but in the shell, the GUI integration is then unquestioned and agreed by all.
Since the Windows kernels are closed source, the only people who are truly authoritative on this subject are under NDA, so I doubt that you can prove that no HTML influences are there.
It is a general goal in kernel design to keep as much as possible in user space for security purposes. Microsoft violates this goal to squeeze extra speed and functionality, with demonstrated effects.
I did not mean to come off as pompous, but merely to point out that good cs administration practices and what Microsoft advocates with their update agents are often diametrically opposed.
And I say again: for the best stability under Windows, never update IE because of its heavy integration with OS functions.
p.s. Stop envying my uid; it's unseemly.
Even so, most (i.e. 99%) will compile with no problems, but there is stuff such as the low-level XPConnect assembly stubs that is platform specific; someone will have to port the existing FreeBSD stubs (if they're in anyway similar) or write some new ones. There are likely to be configuration issues to ensure it builds with the switches in the portable runtimes library and the crypto too.
Either way it represents a modest, not insurmountable one-time amount of work. If OpenBSD wants it, all the code is there. Mozilla.org simply doesn't have the resources to support every platform in existence. If the OpenBSD community wants Mozilla, someone will have to step forward to support it.
Dude, my entire school has a Unix-based network. Any student here _has_ to use Netscape; IE is not even supported on Windows/Mac due to bugs in its handling of .
And trust me, as far as computers go there are lots of "average people" here who just want the damn things to work (I know that sounds unlikely, but it's true).
"bugs in handling of "
:)
I should preview.
There will be a spell-checked when someone has the time to find one that's libre and hook it up using the Mozilla spellcheck interfaces. Wanna do it?
Um, which is it? The whole network is UNIX-based, or some use of Windows and Macs is allowed? Sounds more like the latter.
I know lots of computer science and engineering departments require UNIX. That's not my definition of "average people."
Tim
mozilla.org chooses its milestone dates in cooperation with all the companies who are using our code (several of whom are still operating in quiet mode.) This is called "being responsive to customers."
And of course, some customers are more equal than others. If AOL tells you what to do, you have to do it.
Mitchell Baker is still mozilla.org's Chief Lizard Wrangler. AOL merely chose to stop paying her to work on Mozilla.
And to stop treating her as its liason to the project. The title is so meaningless you can continue to give it to her if you want, but the fact is she is not in the same position. Her continued "Chief Lizard Wranglership" is the same kind of fiction as Mozilla.org's independence from AOL/Netscape.
My biggest concern with this kind of fiction is that it serves to convince people (falsely) that work they contribute to the project is not uncompensated work for AOL. It seems the truth about the relationship would not be quite as palatable to many of the volunteers,
This building has the greatest concentration of mozilla.org staff, and so it makes sense that it be our mailing address.
So you do uinderstand what that means with respect to your claims of independence (he asks, expecting the answer no)?
Tim
And of course, some customers are more equal than others.
We'd be acting very strangely if we gave the distributor of Beonex equal say in running the project as Netscape (even though Beonex is a great project.) Influence is approximately proportional to the number of developers you provide. This is true of any open source project, because the people who write the code decide what code gets written. If more companies and people contribute to Mozilla, Netscape's influence will decrease.
The title is so meaningless you can continue to give it to her if you want,
Quite the reverse. Mitchell continues to do all of those bits of her old job that she really enjoyed - being a figurehead for the project, working out its future direction, and being a liaison to all the other companies which are using our technology. She just doesn't have to deal with Netscape internal politics any more. As I understand it, she's having a great time.
that work they contribute to the project is not uncompensated work for AOL
It's just as much uncompensated work for Red Hat, Beonex, Nokia, and all the other companies who use our code. If you work on an FSF project, you have to assign copyright to your changes to the FSF. (mozilla.org doesn't ask for that.) So is all that work "uncompensated work for the FSF"?
Free software licences put everyone on a level playing field. The code belongs to everyone to do with as they wish, all equally respecting the license terms.
It seems the truth about the relationship would not be quite as palatable to many of the volunteers,
And you, of course, are the wise sage who can see what all those people who are actually working on Mozilla can't see, because they are blind fools in desperate need of your wisdom. Right?
What insight do you have into the Mozilla/Netscape relationship that a Mozilla volunteer does not?
So you do uinderstand what that means with respect to your claims of independence
You think we should get a PO Box? Come on - where our mailing address is has no effect, in itself, on our level of independence.
Gerv
All these promising suggestions, it almost makes me weep! ;-)
-Paul Komarek
hawk
But seriously ... its hardly surprising that much of what is developed is a bit geeky really.
Programmers left to their own devices will tend to create software for programmers. Making software that is suitable for the average end user is a different proposition, and it requires money, time and discipline that are hard to come by in the open source world. Where it is happening at all, it's because companies are pumping in millions for strategic reasons to thwart Microsoft dominance (e.g., AOL funding Mozilla, Sun funding GNOME and OpenOffice) -- and even there, the results still don't really seem quite ready for prime time.
Most people in the third world haven't even used a phone let alone a pc and you think that a web server is not an innovation?
Um, I did say that the web browser and web server together constituted an innovation. I think citing httpd by itself as an innovation is stretching it, though, since it's not a particularly innovative protocol or server in itself. It's really just a utility that supports the real innovation, which is the browser.
Tim (proud to be unfairly down-modded, since that means I hit a nerve...)
>>Then again, since it is aimed mainly at geeks, there should be little problems.
What gave you that impression?
I can assure you that Mozilla takes non-geeks very seriously. Most of the work on Mozilla until recently has been done by AOL which specializes in creating easy to use software.
Really? You could knock me over with a feather. I could swear that the bug that crashes Mozilla with any excessively long URL has been around for several months, and several versions now.
Just like microsoft, the Mozilla project is adding only those things that will increase market share. Bug Fixes aren't flashy to most people (at least in the short term) so they haven't bothered with fixing them.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant