The Mozilla 1.0 Definition

The Evil Beaver writes: "Here we go. Mozillazine is reporting that Brenden Eich, mozilla.org's Technical Bigshot, has released the criteria to what is to be the 1.0 milestone. The 'manifesto' also explains why 1.0 is so important to reach, and why it isn't just another milestone, either. The Mozillazine article is here and the definition document here.

Comments

But....

[sheriff_p]

Where's the "World Domination" item?

/. effect or a conspiracy?

[Hektor_Troy]

Could it be, that what we're seeing isn't the infamous slashdot-effect, but in fact a conspiracy preventing anyone not using the latest build of Mozilla on the latest build of the linux-kernel from entering the page?

Its not a game you know..

[onion2k]

Better-than-any-competition standards compliance

There in lies a bit of an issue. The standards aren't done yet. Nor will they be. Standards are an evolving thing. The big issue of the Netscape/IE wars in the late 90s was that both parties tried to predict where the standards were going, and tried to go straight to the final standard without waiting for them to be ratified.

And they both failed.

We had 'non-complient' browsers, different object models, different CSS models, IE and NS specific tags.. it was a right old mess. Trying to be 'most standards complient' implies an attempt to out-do the other browsers, which is precisely where NS particularly, and to a degree IE, fell down. It gave everyone a right old headache.

The problems arise when the web designers find a new feature they happen to like a bit (CSS colour control of scroll bars being a current example), that doesn't work in all browsers, and theres a great big shift toward the browser that does the 'coolest' things.

Yes, be standards complient. Be 100% standards complient hopefully. But just remember that it has nothing to do with how complient the others are.

Re:Its not a game you know..

[StupidKatz]

Here's the REAL issue: "Standards are an evolving thing." They *shouldn't* be, and true standards do not evolve much, if at all.

Imagine if a kilogram was 2.2lb one day, then 4.3lb the next. Not much of a "standard", is it?

The major browsers were all "compliant" with ... HTML 1.0 and such base stuff, but web designers are trying to make the WWW do things it was never designed to do, and *that* is where this horrible mess of Javascript kiddies, broken CSS, and browser specific "features" came from. I don't know about you, but I'd rather not see all that flashy crap on a web site. Web sites need to contain *content*, not eye candy. :P

Re:Its not a game you know..

[onion2k]

Not quite what I meant. HTML 'standard' is set by the W3C, but it evolves. Its currently at 4.3 (I think). So does the Moz team work toward that? After all, by the time they're done it might be at 4.7. This is the trap into which NS and IE fell. They tried to code for a standard that they hoped would be *the* standard by the time they shipped. Both missed the target. But had they written for what was at the time the current standard they'd have been releasing browser that, while stable and complient, would have been miles behind the competition in terms of features. Which is why writing a standards complient browser should be undertaken by someone who isn't trying to make money. Delibrately being behind your competition would be suicidal.

As for the content of web sites, I'm still a 'content is king' web master. As are many of us. But when we probably aren't the web surfing majority. People want flashy gimmicks and toys on sites. And more and more web 'designers' are all too willing to give it to them.

Re:Its not a game you know..

[CptLogic]

>>Imagine if a kilogram was 2.2lb one day, then 4.3lb the next. Not much of a "standard", is it?

That's not the "standards evolution" that happens here. It's about new functionality and methods of providing it being ratified, upgrades to existing standards such as CSS, not changing what CSS does, just expanding it's repertoire. Hence the Standard Model, to borrow from the world of Physics, keeps getting larger, so a browser needs to support more features to comply with *all* the standards.

Now they only want to be the most standards compliant browser out there, but what happens if a "feature" of another brower model suddenly gets ratified as the best way of doing things, and that "standard" gets updated to reflect this?

Standards compliance is a worthy cause, but, ultimately, a lost one. They need to sit down, pick the standards they want to use as they stand *now* and make it comply with those.
Any newer standards can be included in version 1.1 or something.

Chris.

Re:Its not a game you know..

[Peejeh]

Actually the current HTML spec is XHTML 1.0 Revision 2 released last week.

Re:Its not a game you know..

[MartinB]

The standards aren't done yet. Nor will they be. Standards are an evolving thing. The big issue of the Netscape/IE wars in the late 90s was that both parties tried to predict where the standards were going, and tried to go straight to the final standard without waiting for them to be ratified.

Actually that's mostly not true. The engineers from MS (predominantly but also the NS ones) were part of the forum which defined the standards (CSS1 in particular). They went back to their home companies and implemented something different.

Yes, standards evolve, just like software. But where a standard exists, it should be followed - when you're defining software behaviour, you should follow all ratified standards up until that point.

Adding stuff on top (with the intent of influencing standards) is OK, as long as the core is followed, and you recognise that your new stuff may be in conflict with future standards, and at that point, will have to be deprecated.

If there is a ratified standard for a feature, you should follow the standard or not implement the feature.

Re:Its not a game you know..

[hiroko]

The current and last version of HTML is 4.01. HTML is no longer being developed, having been superceeded by XHTML, based upon XML. These are (two of) the standards mozilla team is working to, and future standards will build upon them.

Moz does use its own extensions to the standards, and features of draft standards, but has implemented them in a manner that states them clearly as mozilla (a "moz-" prefix I think).
These extensions are not being encouraged as "wow look at this great feature" but developed to fulfill needs such as assisting the themes capability, or because a developer is particularly interested in it. The advance work is not enabled in all builds, but will give an advantage when the standard is reccommended (complete).

The point of mozillas approach to standards is to get the existing standards working fully and correctly, anything else is a bonus.

(skipping moderation duty to comment :)

Re:Its not a game you know..

[rutledjw]

People want flashy gimmicks and toys on sites

Say's who? The only flashy toys and gimmicks are those obnoxious "flash" ads... It's amazing how much more I enjoy surfing without Flash installed. *aaahhhhhh*

The only people who want that crap are the marketing drones who think it helps them get "clicks"...

Re:Its not a game you know..

[Red Avenger]

I really hate it when people try tp put things in a simple little box. The web is so much more than just "content." Thats like saying the linux kernel shouldn't end up in watches or in other devices because that wasn't what it was originally designed to do.

Don't be so close minded. The web is a constantly changing organism and I don't think there is any real appropriate definition. You can't label something that is constantly changing.

And I assure you there is much more to the web than just text. Art, music, games, and yes eye candy all exist on the web.

I for one am glad that they do.

Re:Its not a game you know..

[jdcook]

"They *shouldn't* be, and true standards do not evolve much, if at all.

"Imagine if a kilogram was 2.2lb one day, then 4.3lb the next. Not much of a "standard", is it?"

Of course, the "standard" of the kilogram evolves too. As posted on Slashdot six weeks ago, NIST is seeking an electronic kilogram rather than a hunk of metal.

Saying something changed doesn't indicate if it got better or worse. Merely that it is different. I think the purpose of a standard is to enable people to know that if they want to accomplish X, following steps 1, 2, . . . n will do that. But if they want to do Y or if there is a better way to do X, the standard needs to change. The point of having standards is to do other things. If all you care about is the standard, you can just use tautologies: "A light year is the distance traveled by light in a year."

Re:Its not a game you know..

[WNight]

"A light year is the distance traveled by light in a year."

That's not really a tautology, it's a definition.

The tautology is to then use that definition to attempt to define the original.

"Light travels one light-year in a year."

Is a tautology.

The only reason it's not really clear is that "Light Year" is a phrase which is pretty straight forward and doesn't need a lot of explaning so the definition sounds a bit redundant and circular.

Re:Its not a game you know..

[HamNRye]

(Our scene opens in a conference room at the W3C standards meetings. Reps from Microsoft (Ms) and Netscape (NS) are in attendance.)

Ms Guy: We ned colored scrollbars in the standard.

NS Guy: But we need themes... We don't force folks to use our boring scrollbars.

Ms Guy: Yeah, but we force 90% of the world to use boring scrollbars, it should be in the standard.

NS Guy: Jerk.

Ms Guy: Hey, like it or not, IE 5.5 will support colored scrollbars, and you'll implement them eventually because you have to, standard or not.

NS Guy: Like hell.... We still haven't implemented the marquee tag. Or page transitions.

Ms Guy: Wow, people actually use your piece of crap???

NS Guy: Look here Monopoly boy, if you've ever read Slashdot you know these people want to be reading ASCII in Lynx. You can tempt them with your "eye-candy" and "formatting", but if it ain't Courier New, it just plain blew.

Ms Guy: Yeah, whatever, Nutscrape. Aren't you glad we don't make IE for Linux?

_END_

The sad fact of it is that Microsoft can and will set the standards for a while now. It didn't occur to me until 2 days ago that colored scrollbars are not supported. Not that it makes that big of a deal, but it can help the look of your pages if you use alot of inline frames.

Microsoft already sets the font standards. (Because it's what you can expect to be on the client machine)

Netscape has to go out and do everything MS can do, and then some. Linux has to do everything Windows can do and then some.

When MSIE 1.0 came out.... But they caught up. Then they did everything Netscape could do, then they did more.

P.S. Mozilla still takes too damn long to load up.

~Hammy
http://www.nothing4sale.org

Re:mozillazine ?!?!?!?

[Chainsaw]

No, that's Mozillaquest.

Promesing

[TheMMaster]

"* A set of promises to keep compatibility with various APIs, broadly construed (XUL 1.0 is an API), until a 2.0 or higher-numbered major release. All milestone releases and trunk development between 1.0 and 2.0 will preserve frozen interface compatibility. Mozilla 1.0 is a greenlight to hackers, corporations, and book authors to get busy building atop this stable base set of APIs."

I must say that I find this a very "mature" perspective and this is clearly showing that the people of mozilla know what they are doing and how they should do it!
Mozilla for world-domination (using mozilla since 0.6 BOY did THAT suck!!)

The fear of version 1.0

[collar]

People have been complaining about the time that it has taken mozilla to reach version 1.0, but from a developers point of view finally stamping "1.0" on the thing is a very hard thing to do. You cant say "oh that will be fixed in the next version" and "that feature is coming soon". Well, you can (and do) but people dont tend to respect you as much...

I'm glad that they have been taking the time to get 1.0 to standard necessary, for some reason AOL saw fit to release netscape 6.0 when they did, which I think was a huge mistake. Lets be glad that the mozilla folks are not so keen to release a product before it is ready.

Open Source goes back into the Cathederal

[MosesJones]

* Is fixing this bug vital to web content developers, Mozilla distributors, Gecko embedders, or others who will depend on 1.0 for stable code and a minimal set of frozen APIs?
* Is there no alternative to fixing the bug that frees people to work on other 1.0 bugs?
* What goes wrong if we don't fix the bug, and just live with it for 1.0?
* What do we give up from 1.0 in exchange for fixing the bug?
* Can you stare down slashdot and C|net together and at the same time, and argue credibly that the bug is a 1.0 stop-ship problem? While we are not yet at the "about to ship, why should we take any more risk" stage, this question can help us prioritize and avoid unpleasant surprises later, when 1.0 is within our grasp.



Now that is proper requirements management, unusual in most open source projects. These are the 4 basic rules on requirements management.

Full on for them in doing this. They are running it like a proper project and trying to control requirements creep.

Open Source goes back into the Cathederal ?

Re:Open Source goes back into the Cathederal

[The Pim]

Now that is proper requirements management, unusual in most open source projects.

The difference between the cathedral and the bazarre is not the presence or absence of project management. This is one of the most misguided readings of Raymond's paper, as he himself makes clear.

What "The Cathedral and the Bazarre" argues (and this is frankly no great insight on Raymond's part) is that good project management doesn't require formal rules, processes, and bureaucracy. Ideally, it is based on talented leadership, shared vision, and a spirit of collaboration. This strategy is not fool-proof, of course, and is perhaps riskier than traditional management. But when it works, it demonstrably produces amazing results.

Maybe this can't work for mozilla. It wouldn't be all that shocking, since mozilla is different from most free software projects: large, built on a traditionally proprietary codebase, run largely by a major corporation. But that's no reason to slam all the projects for which it does work.

The two methods are always combined to a degree, of course. But they are not entirely compatible, so you can't just say "let's do both". Bureaucracy diminishes the importance of a leader, subjugates vision to process, and dampens enthusiasm. So I'll take bazaar management any day.

It's a platform, so 1.0 is essential

[Khazunga]

Mozilla is more than a browser. It's a development platform, a software layer that runs on top of a number of hardware/OS platforms, and masks the differences.

In this light, an essential feature of Mozilla is backward compatibility between minor revisions. So, 1.0 means: "We're done with the APIs. Please come and hack away with them, we won't break your software".

Re:1.0 is artificial anyway...

[Uggy]

I don't think 1.0 is artificial in this case. The Mozilla devel team has posted very much in advance a specific roadmap... it's not like everybody else... hmmm, 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, oh what the hell let's call the next 2.0. (ahem cough cough KDE) Mozilla has proceeded in an extremely ordered and thorough manner with a specfic and detailed roadmap. I think this 1.0 will be what 1.0 are supposed to be, stable, mature, and a platform to build on if you are a developer without it changing out from under you because of a whim.

I give the Mozilla team muchos kudos for sticking to their guns and applying rigor in a age where rigor is sorely lacking.

Wow, this definition document is amazing..

[brunes69]

"Unable to connect to SQL server"

Is this some new HTSQL standard being reffered to here? WOw, I didn't know they were working on making a XUL Query tool, thoug it wouldn't surprise me...

:o)

Re:Wow, this definition document is amazing..

[cetan]

http://www.necrosys.net/mirrors/mozillazine-moz1.h tml

mirror

Manifesto

[Root Down]

... but will the workers control the means of production?

(The question is more important than it might initially seem.)

Re:Manifesto

[ethereal]

For once, entirely apropos:

"When you program open source, you're programming COMMUNISM."

Re:Manifesto

[DonkPunch]

Please allow me a moment to point something out....

It is well-known amongst the "Powers That Be" that this is your 700th post.

700 posts is a significant threshold by any standard short of Signal 11.

Even more remarkable is you have achieved this with a higher-than-400,000 user id.

By way of comparison, there are users at the 30,000 level who have only made approximately 600 posts. You have posted far more than users who have been here far longer. Indeed, you must be posting multiple times per story, per day in order to achieve this respectable sum.

And given this remarkably promiscuous posting pattern, one would think you might be contributing a great deal to the discussions.

Yet this does not seem to be the case.

Therefore we are collectively considering the possiblity that you might have a psychological disorder akin to obsessive/compulsive behavior. Do you fell uncontrollably compelled to post? Do you wash your hands after each post? Does posting give a feeling of relief similar to, say, a bowel movement?

If so, please consider seeking help. You cannot keep up this pace for long without it seriously impacting your career, studies, and social life.

If it is not an obsessive/compulsive disorder, then we are left with only one possible alternative to explain your behavior.

Specifically, you are something of a wanker.

Re:1.0 is artificial anyway...

[Pretor]

No the 1.0 is not artificial read the 1.0 definition!

The 1.0 marks the Mozilla API as a stable compatible API.

This means that users and developers can be sure that applications developed for the 1.0 version is compatible with other 1.x versions.

Just look at Galeon for a example of the problems following the Milestone releases.
For each new milestone Galeon stops working until it's updated to use the new API. After the 1.0 version is released this will no longer be an issue.

--
Pretor

Karma whoring

[Per Wigren]

Go straight to the original article instead! Mozillazine seems to be down...

1.0 is symbolic, not artifical

[jedrek]

Hm... I look at the 1.0 release a little differently. It's a few things:

* Feature/interface freeze. A time to stop adding features. Features are being added as we speak, like the tabbed interface in 0.9.5.
* Removal of all debugging code during the release.
* Symbolic 'ready for prime time' version.

I think that the first is the most important to developers. How many skins and plugins have been made that break on the latest milestone?

For the end users the most important thing is the feeling that they're not using alpha or beta quality software, but they're using a *stable*, completed application.

This is one of the reasons that Netscape pissed me off with 6.0. It's a totally unusable browser branched of a Mozilla release that wasn't too usable itself. Then it was crudded down with Netscape's own crap. I think that this turned a lot of people off, and Netscape will pay for it down the road.

Especially on Windows. The Windows world is not the *nix world. People don't wait for the .1 or .2 release, they expect the .0 releases to work as they should. Netscape lost a lot of die-hard fans (including corporations) with the release of 6.0. I think the Mozilla team has taken this lesson to heart and the 1.0 will be rock solid.

At least I hope it will.

(btw. 0.9.5 is *really* good, I'm using it right now and find myself using MSIE 5.5 SP2 much, much less often.)

Re:1.0 is symbolic, not artifical

[the_2nd_coming]

btw. 0.9.5 is *really* good, I'm using it right now and find myself using MSIE 5.5 SP2 much, much less often.)

I don't know, is it just me or is .9.5 slower than .9.4?

Re:1.0 is symbolic, not artifical

[Khazunga]

The Windows world is not the *nix world. People don't wait for the .1 or .2 release, they expect the .0 releases to work as they should.

Ha! Yeah, how many people do you know who have really used Windows 1.0, Word 1.0, Excel 1.0 or Windows CE 1.0? If there's a company which never gets it right the first time, it's Microsoft. I'm willing to bet that the Xbox will crash often (console crashes are very rare, you know).

Re:1.0 is symbolic, not artifical

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Was there a Win1.0? Earliest I ever saw was 1.03 (and I've still got the 360K floppies to prove it!).

Re:1.0 is symbolic, not artifical

[Heem]

I don't know, is it just me or is .9.5 slower than .9.4?
I also have found 9.5 to be much slower than previous versions - yet it could be related to the fact that about the same time as i upgraded i started getting hit with 15,000 nimda packets a day.

Re:1.0 is symbolic, not artifical

[aozilla]

This is one of the reasons that Netscape pissed me off with 6.0. It's a totally unusable browser branched of a Mozilla release that wasn't too usable itself. Then it was crudded down with Netscape's own crap. I think that this turned a lot of people off, and Netscape will pay for it down the road.

Hell, if I ran AOL, this would be my intention. Why waste money on an open source browser when you don't make any products for any platforms which can't use IE? They probably had committments to continue to release products, so they release a piece of shit as 6.0, so what? 99% of the world was using IE already anyway, and the other 1% were either on platforms that didn't have IE or were too anti-microsoft to use IE no matter how shitty netscape is. Netscape doesn't make AOL any significant money, why not leave it to the pie-in-the-sky dreamers to do all the work for them, for free.

best standards compliance among compeditors

[mark_lybarger]

they claim to want to have the best standards compliance among compeditors. first, who are the competition? all browsers? all free (beer) browsers? all open source browsers? secondly, why such a need for the standards compliance? in the past (and still currently afaik), browsers were build on loose compliance, and extending the standards to where they see the standards going into the future (css).

on a side note, it is good to see them put a loose timeframe on the release. their schedule has mozilla 1.0 in about 6 months, so we should expect it in about 9 realistically (sp). I can see their desire to want to lock down api's for a while on the 1.x version. We're seeing .x releases of mozilla almost every month. Won't we expect to have .x releases every month after the 1.0 release? maybe every other month?

all i want for christmas is a one point oh, a one point oh, a one point oh... :)

Re:best standards compliance among compeditors

[jgerman]

secondly, why such a need for the standards compliance? in the past (and still currently afaik), browsers were build on loose compliance, and extending the standards to where they see the standards going into the future (css).

Which is why we have the piece of crap system we have today. MS extensions don't work in Netscape and vice versa. I find it hard to believe that you are apparently agruing the importance to standards. It's called opening up the window of choice in operating systems and applications. When you know that any application can handle the same file formats or whatever, you have much greater flexibility in what you use to do your work, and it makes it convenient to work with others who haven't made the same choices as you.

Re:best standards compliance among compeditors

[NutscrapeSucks]

I think there's the greater issue that AOL/Netscape doesn't really have any future vision or direction for the project (except using it as a bargaining chip for AOL client negotiations with Microsoft.)

The Netscape browser began as free advertising for the (now gone elsewhere) enterprise server products that was going to make Netscape Communications a big player.

Netscape 4 (shipped in 1996) was a 'kitchen sink' project -- intended to be the client-server platform of the future -- including every imaginable feature, and a complete rebuff to the W3C with all sorts of proprietary Netscape-only interfaces, all of it implemented in an enormously buggy fashion.

Mozilla seems to be mostly an attempt to rewrite NS 4 from scratch, except this time healing the wounds by making it standards compliant and non-buggy. And add the sidebar that didn't make it into NS4.

The end result of Mozilla 1.0 seems to achieve the goals of 1996, not of 2002. It's 6 years beyond the point when "standards compliant" and "non-buggy" would be enough to attract a significant number of users. When you get right down to it, Mozilla doesn't *do* anything all that all that interesting to the end user in this day and age.

I think that's why you get tabbed browsing and other features coming in -- it's sorta an "Oh shit!" moment over at Mozilla when they realize that their work might go for naught unless they are proactive about drawing end users in to their web.

If I were them, I'd start thinking outside of the little box that they've let the W3C define and start looking at what it will take to make people want to use their shit. Yes, this means embracing and extending a little, but I think they with their supergood compliance, they can afford it.

+ Throw in every value add feature that you can get stable -- mouse gestures, Jabber, etc etc.
+ Clone corny MS features that people like - styled scrollbars, etc.
+ Prove to us that Mozilla is really a platform and not hot air. Give me something that I can use to create an application on my intranet.
+ Stop pretending the W3C DOM is usable all by itself as an API and start looking ways to add value. One prime example is the style object that IE has (it provides runtime information about element style).
+ Make sure that the Javascript/DOM environment is solid enough that I can code a heavy DHTML interface with it. Just rendering cnn.com, etc isn't good enough.
+ Ship the Fucking Manual already -- w3c.org is not a programming guide by any means. Find the people that wrote the excellent 4.x documentation and put them back to work.

Re:best standards compliance among compeditors

[BZ]

> One prime example is the style object that IE has
> (it provides runtime information about element
> style).

This would be the getComputedStyle() function from DOM2 Style in Mozilla. And it's buggy at the moment for most properties. And it's being worked on (by me, as it happens) and should be much better in a month or so.

> Ship the Fucking Manual already -- w3c.org is
> not a programming guide by any means. Find the
> people that wrote the excellent 4.x
> documentation and put them back to work.

Being worked on by some volunteers. You want to do it? :)

> Make sure that the Javascript/DOM environment is
> solid enough that I can code a heavy DHTML
> interface with it. Just rendering cnn.com, etc
> isn't good enough.

Um. The whole browser UI is in Javascript/DOM. It's fairly solid. :)

I18N And L10N?

[LeftHanded]

I didn't see any mention of internationalization (I18N) or localization (L10N) in any part of this list. Although the Mozilla site has a section for I18N, L10N and BiDi issues, these parts of the Mozilla site seem especially quiet. The Mozilla Team has obviously been working hard on these issues; you can tell that by the features in the latest 0.9.x releases. It just seems surprising that it wasn't mentioned in the 1.0 statement. They do want World Domination, right?

Re:I18N And L10N?

[Gerv]

We'll work hard to co-ordinate with l10n teams as we near the release, so that language packs are reached simultaneously. However, bugs in the i18n area are not "come back and bite us in the butt" bugs.

If we don't work in Thai at 1.0, we don't work in Thai. But not working in Thai at 1.0 doesn't stop us working in Thai in 1.2.

BiDi should be in and working now.

Gerv

Re:I18N And L10N?

[SurfsUp]

I didn't see any mention of internationalization (I18N) or localization (L10N) in any part of this list.

I didn't have to tell Mozilla anything or do anything special, and I can read sites in Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Check it out, here's a four-language site. I don't know how I'd go about typing CJK text though.

Could be some time..??

[cybaea]

Given the size of the dependency tree for the 1.0 milestone target it looks like 1.0 could be a little way off??

Does anybody want to take a stab at a date? Does anyboy even want to count the number of bugs on that page? ;-)

Re:Could be some time..??

[riggwelter]

Does anybody want to take a stab at a date?


From the document:
we need to develop a schedule that converges on a stable, useful release in at most five milestones, preferably fewer (but likely no fewer than four).

Now, milestones tend to appear every 4 - 5 weeks, so that would be 16 - 25 weeks time (4 - 6 months)

From the document:
If things go well, we'll be within a milestone of 1.0 after 0.9.9. If 1.0 seems to continually recede as we approach it, our definition of 1.0 in terms of bugs to be fixed is broken. Therefore we will continually review the schedule and the outstanding bugs. If it takes an extra milestone (0.9.10), but 1.0 is reached soon enough, so be it -- but no one should count on an extra milestone. There won't be two or more extra milestones, or again, we will have failed to converge on a short-term stability branch and release within six months.

This would seem to confirm that timescale

On a related note...

[MSBob]

Since Mozilla is beginning to look rather slick these days I have a quick question to someone enlightened. Is the new AOL (7.0?) interface based on Gecko or does it still use the IE control? Anybody in the know?

Re:On a related note...

[aozilla]

7.0 is a marketing number. It is by no means a major release. In fact, if you have 6.0 you can upgrade to 7.0 online without downloding the whole new program. Needless to say, they still use IE (which they will almost certainly always do).

Undefined Definitions

[CptLogic]

>>Good performance and memory footprint.>If things go well, we'll be within a milestone of 1.0 after 0.9.9. If 1.0 seems to continually recede as we approach it, our definition of 1.0 in terms of bugs to be fixed is broken.

What are the definitions of bugs that need to be "fixed" before a 1.0 version can be approved?

"not too many non-crash bugs and misfeatures"

Again, what counts as "not too many?"

Reading this defintion document, I don't see any hard targets to hit, or even any tolerances, just a vague commitment to tighten the code already in existence and to hit moving "standards" targets.

Judging by these criteria, I don't see how you can then stamp a *FINISHED* label to it and "ship it" as a 1.0 version.

At some point they're just going to have to decide that an arbitrary bug fix is no longer version 0.9.10 or whatever, they're just going to have to bite the bullet and call it version 1.0

As any filmmaker knows, "Nothing's ever finished"

Chris.

Re:Undefined Definitions

[Gerv]

I don't see how you can then stamp a *FINISHED* label to it and "ship it" as a 1.0 version.

Who said anything about a FINISHED label? It's not like we're all going to give up and go home when 1.0 is done.

Gerv

Managing scope creep

[aegilops]

I'm sure 1e5 Slashdot readers can give their two penneth in advice for project management, but suffice it to say that nailing scope for your project is a major win. Get stakeholders or key significant people to agree to what you are trying to achieve, what you include in scope, and specifically, what you exclude as out of scope.

Then, for each product or deliverable (something you can touch, or something that now exists when it didn't before etc) that you need to produce, classify them via the acronym MoSCoW:

Must

Should

Could

Won't (i.e. not in this release)

Helps to focus the mind on priorities. Otherwise, an excellent idea and full marks for the announcement so far.

Aegilops

Polish?

[cybaea]

I love Poland but is it really essential to fix the Polish language bugs for a 1.0 release? Aren't there more important priorities? Isn't 1.0 about a stable API (and product!) and such, and if so, couldn't fixing spelling mistakes in the Polish language pack wait until 1.0.1 or something?

The document outlines some really good principles for managing software, but this entry confuses it for me. Any Polish people here to explain why it is critical? :-)

Now I can put mozilla-developer on my resume

[Odinson]

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=100309

Hey, all the team needs to do is ask.

Yes.

[dinotrac]

I was so excited when Netscape opened the code.
A long, long, time ago.

And that's the problem. I'm not sure that Mozilla even matters any more, but I think that it does. If nothing else, Microsoft's ham-handedness with product activation, etc. may re-open the window of opportunity.

The 1.0 approach Eich outlines is exactly what the project has needed for the last 18 months, if not two years.

There comes a time when you stop saying "It'll be ready when it's ready" and start asking "How do we make it ready?"

Eich's memo is the answer to that question.
Good luck, guys.
You can do it if you set your mind to it.

Re:Yes.

[dinotrac]

Sure - if it's ready.

The reality is that IE is 85% of browsers today.

And that's what the push to 1.0 is all about.
Making something that all of the folks who would put Mozilla in those places can use with confidence.

Re:Yes.

[gorilla]

There comes a time when you stop saying "It'll be ready when it's ready" and start asking "How do we make it ready?"

I'd say that's day 1. If you don't have a plan for getting ready, you just spend forever doing side tasks and non-important stuff. Obviously on day 1 won't be detailed, but you should evolve your plan as the project progresses.

Re:Yes.

[dinotrac]

I'd say that's day 1.

You'll get no argument from me.

I hope this whole experience teaches that there is some value to planning and prioritizing. Meeting goals isn't be a matter of saying "screw the bugs, send it out the door", even if some (too many?) treat it that way. It's a matter of saying "These are the things we can do now, those are the things we can do later."

It still goes out "when it's ready," but you have an idea of what "when it's ready" means.

at the bottom of the buglist

[zerocool^]

At the bottom of the buglist we see Bug #100309

Description:
Opened: 2001-09-18 08:55

we need preparation as well as a good place to have the biggest & coolest party
ever!

that's a good bug to have

~z

Re:at the bottom of the buglist

[kchayer]

At the bottom of the buglist we see Bug #100309

we need preparation as well as a good place to have the biggest & coolest party ever!

These two Slashdot-related bugs amuse me:

Bug #68974

Description:
Mozilla 0.8 cannot be released until Slashdot is ready

Bug #73658

Description:
No Slashdot story for Mozilla 0.8.1 release

It seems like there was another more recent one about not being able to release 0.9.something until Slashdot was ready and working properly, but i can't seem to find it... Maybe it was just the 0.8 one above.

Re:1.0 is artificial anyway...

[pointwood]

it's not like everybody else... hmmm, 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, oh what the hell let's call the next 2.0. (ahem cough cough KDE)

KDE 3 will break binary compatibility - don't say that isn't a good reason for a new major number!

Galeon can continue to function.

[dmaxwell]

I used the version of Galeon that went with 0.9.3 Mozilla and upgraded to 0.9.4. Galeon popped up a dialog that basically amounted to "Wrong Mozilla. Bad Things might happen." It continued to work well for me until Galeon was updated to match. Of course, I only view a limited number of sites.

-1 (Offtopic)

[An Onerous Coward]

I have a question regarding a problem I've had with every release since I first downloaded 0.9.1 (Win32)*. I'm a 14m3r who relies heavily on Yahoo! Mail. But whenever I hit the "Send" button to fire off an email via Mozilla/NS6, the browser simply hangs there, doing nothing. It doesn't even have the courtesy to time out. I end up having to fire up NS 4.7 or (shudder) IE.

I haven't been able to find anything about this on Bugzilla, even though it's something that would surely garner some notice. I'm afraid to submit it to Bugzilla myself, since it's possible that I either have some setting wrong or Yahoo! is using some non-compliant tricks that break their form. Either way, there's nothing Mozilla could do about it.

So, is anyone else here having this problem, and 14m3 enough to admit to having a Yahoo account? More important, does anyone know why? (I've sent this question to the Yahoo people, but haven't gotten a response).

* Sorry.

time to 1.0

[RestiffBard]

I've been thinking about the length of time its taking to get to 1.0 and must admit that i have been critical of the dev process for Moz in the past but no more. it just occurred to me that one of the reasons that we've been so bitchy about how long its taking is the fact that development of Mozilla is taking place in the wide open. it was a daunting task when they began and it still is. there tons of closed projects that take years to get done but we never hear about them until they are done. we've been following moz from the beginning and so the whole thing seems to take longer than it should. maybe I'm just late figuring this out but i just wnated to make sure it was said.

Reversing the speed factor

[ACK!!]

Listen I have been using Mozilla on and off since it began to be bundled with various distros.

When it first came out I swear the pages it could render came up as fast as anything I saw from even Opera but the program loaded really slowly. In other words, when it finally came up it was really fast unless it crashed.

Now, Mozilla can handle most any page Netscrape can handle and loads faster but the page rendering seems to be slower on regular html pages not nearly as fast as when it came out initially. I was impressed by the .94+ version I am using right now and use it for most of my work. However, I do wish the thing was quicker in rendering pages. Any thoughts on this? Is it just my perception of the program?

Re:Reversing the speed factor

[tswinzig]

Is it just my perception of the program?

Why don't you do a scientific test instead of going by perceptions. Download one of those early builds you are talking about, and time it loading pages. Then install the latest build, and time it again.

Re:Reversing the speed factor

[pi_rules]

One thing that can be noted... FORM rendering is much faster now. Ever try loading a Bugzilla bug entry page on a M18 build? It was horrid. I'd shift away desktops and go back to coding for a bit while I waited. Ability to render tables quickly improvement/degredation is minimal compared to the gains done with the widgets. Extremely impressive when you consider they had to do this for OS after OS, or was it part of XUL?

Oh, and I'm running it on Linux, dunno if the Win32, MacOS or other ports were this slow early on.

Re:Reversing the speed factor

[cgleba]

I've noticed the same thing. It seems as if it used to render faster (albeit, some pages were displayed incorrectly at that time, though).

Mozilla rocks, but the thing that has kept me away from it over and over again is speed. I keep trying to 'convert' to it, but the UI speed kills me. It feels like I'm selecting menus while I'm drunk.

I've used Galeon and that's better. I just wish that they could do somthing about the UI speed in Mozilla, though. I've read many bugs about it and at least around the 0.8 version the developers 'dismissed' the UI speed 'bugs' as platform issues. They would say: "Linux redering is inherantly slow. . .Mozilla seems fast enough for me. . .", etc.

The UI is slow on ALL platforms that I've used. Perhaps it will never be sped up because of the inherant problem of using their own GUI toolkit which in effect is a platform issue (their platform) that will never get fixed :(.

Re:Reversing the speed factor

[dimator]

This is the pertinent bug:

bug 60787: Mozilla should display pages before downloading them

You are sugar coating the past...

[Carnage4Life]

They tried to code for a standard that they hoped would be *the* standard by the time they shipped. Both missed the target. But had they written for what was at the time the current standard they'd have been releasing browser that, while stable and complient, would have been miles behind the competition in terms of features. Which is why writing a standards complient browser should be undertaken by someone who isn't trying to make money. Delibrately being behind your competition would be suicidal.

Both these companies tried to strongarm the W3C into accepting their versions of standards by going ahead and implementing them anyway. This began with Netscape and it's "time to market" fiasco where they felt major versions of their software had to be released at "Internet time" which lead to them forcing such travesties as Javascript, Javascript CSS and a number of other nonsensities on the web users while not fixing basic aspects of their implementation of the HTML spec like rendering tables.

Thankfully, it seems that now the major browsers have realized the errors of their ways and no longer see "time to market" as being more important than standards compliance. The Mozilla team has been doing excellent works with regards to implementing a number of the W3C standards and Microsoft has now gone as far as to start deprecating some of their own technologies in favor of the W3C versions (e.g. XDR -> XML Schema and XSL -> XSLT).

Re:You are sugar coating the past...

[dillon_rinker]

Thankfully, it seems that now the major browsers have realized the errors of their ways

The "major browser" is internet explorer. They don't worry about time to market because there's no need to out-feature the competition...because there is none. I wouldn't be too thankful for that.

possibly a good start?

[niall111]

If the 1.0 release turns out to be something with rock solid stability/compliance, would it be possible that ISP's would start suggesting their customers use Mozilla, instead of IE? This would cut down on support costs associated with the bugs in IE, which i'm sure any ISP would be happy to do.

Re:possibly a good start?

[ReinoutS]

Regardless of the stability/compliance level, a move like that would only increase the number of phone calls to the helpdesk, at this moment in any case. Why? Many braindead websites are tested only to work with IE/NS4, or simple refuse non-IE clients. Look for Tech Evangelism bugs (there are 924 of those as I write this) for a few examples.

Looking Good

[SomeOtherGuy]

Can't really speak for the whole Lizard....But the newest Galeon has been making me very happy as of late. Version 1.0 does not have to be perfect....Keep up the good work....

Re:release 1.0 is a bug!

[abischof]

That is funny (+5) they admit that the release of 1.0 [mozilla.org] is a bug.

I think you may misunderstand Bugzilla. It's an issue-tracking system, where each issue happens to have the term "bug". So, for instance, bugs are even filed for feature requests.

Starkly fantastic name

[Syberghost]

Brendan of the Eich. Clearly a highly-ranked Boskonian.

Re:error going to article

[cetan]

http://www.necrosys.net/mirrors/mozillazine-moz1.h tml

mirror

Bugzilla Slahdotted?

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Mozilla developers dilemma....

Story on Slashdot:

GOOD: Keep people interested in the project, debate and possibly come up with good ideas.

BAD: They generally have a Bugzilla link, gets Slashdotted, and makes one of your primary developer tools slow to a crawl for a few hours.

Mozilla.org outages as a result of this article

[zachlipton]

I just wanted to keep everyone informed about what is happening to mozilla.org on the server side right now. Bugzilla has currently been shut down as a result of large amounts of database queries, etc, I have talked with those running the servers and this probably wont be up right away, but you never know. Mozillazine.org is also somewhat down (the sql server is dead), but a mirror of the article is availble at http://www.necrosys.net/mirrors/mozillazine-moz1.h tml. www.mozilla.org is still up and should continue to serve out Brendan's words of wisdom.

Please stand by,

It still matters.

[pi_rules]

I do some web development, and I get clients calling our customers saying X feature isn't working on their browser. Know why? It's a buggy build of IE either on Win32 or a Mac almost all of the time. My suggestion to them is to grab the newest build of Mozilla and try it out. I can't say for certain they actually did it, but I've never gotten a complaint from a person that I told to use Mozilla again. I'm going through this right now with somebody trying to print complex HTML out on a Mac - - it's just not working. Try Netscape, if that fails, try Mozilla. I'm hoping word spreads.

Re:Expect Mozilla to beat IE

[Gerv]

When Mozilla is recommmended by Slashdot.

You over-estimate your own importance, dude :-)

When Mozilla is 100 percent compliant to all standards including IEs broken ones.

Oh well. Looks like we'll never beat IE, then. Because we'll implement its extensions when hell freezes over.

Gerv

What about S/MIME support?

[the_olo]

This is an essential feature Mozilla Mail should have - S/MIME support.
It's a widely accepted standard for digital signatures and encryption of mail messages an PKI (Public Key Infrastructure).

Re:Is SVG in Mozilla 1.0?

[BZ]

If the frigging licensing issues with libart (which is necessary for the svg code) get resolved, there is no reason it could not land in the next two milestones....

Thank You Slashdot Editors...

[GroundBounce]

For not inserting a snide insult after the poster's comments this time; they do get
rather old.

Not True

[Ars-Fartsica]

IE and Netscape got into trouble by trying to do an end-run around standards altogether. Features included in the 3.x series of both browsers were simply not part of any standards proposal.

Re:I do it as a matter of principle.

[aozilla]

I don't like MS corporate tactics, thus I don't use their products.

And you like AOL's corporate tactics, so you use their products instead?

Re:multiplying the speed factor by .003

[BZ]

erm. There are solaris test machines. But they are _expensive_ so there are not many. And some of the bugs you are seeing are likely GTK bugs on solaris....

Re:Expect Mozilla to beat IE

[Gerv]

Where by 'we' you mean the Gecko team, mozilla.org, or yourself?

The last two. mozilla.org has consistently expressed an unwillingness to aid Microsoft in its quest to dominate web standards.

I don't see a carefully done patch that implements IE extensions without breaking existing standards being rejected.

I do. If there's a W3C way to do it, and an IE way to do it, we implement the W3C way only. If there is no standard in that area, we consider doing what IE does (e.g. innerHTML.)

Gerv
(gerv@mozilla.org)

Keep your beer cool...

[Khopesh]

Yes, somebody has taken a stab at the date. Accodring to the manifesto, we will see a few more releases (0.9.6-0.9.9) followed by 1.0 or 0.9.10 then 1.0. there will be NO other milestones. The document claims we have about half a year until the 1.0 release. This is the first firm forecast I've seen so far.

here's the big bug holding Mozilla 1.0 back; basically a collection of extremely important bugs. Also of tremendous importance, a dependency of this bug, the Party bug ... yes, we need a party for the release!

there is apparently more than one funny bug(here's the list) on Bugzilla.

about your sig

[Hektor_Troy]

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

Is this why /. is so "powerful"?