Slashdot Mirror
mozilla.org Releases Mozilla 0.9.8
asa writes: "Today mozilla.org released the Mozilla 0.9.8 Milestone. New to this release are improved Address Book functionality, page setup(for printing), MNG/JNG support, native-style widgets on winXP and OS X, dynamic theme switching, improved BiDi support, speed, stability and footprint improvements, and much, much more. www.mozilla.org and www.mozillazine.org have the full scoop." The build I'm posting with (2002020305) is a little crashy, but most aspects are shaping up very nicely.
Of course, you can't have an announcement of Mozilla without a complaint about the slowness of Mozilla development, so here's something one up on that: a link to Joel on Software, so here it is.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
Does anyone have a solution to this, or should I take this up with Macromedia? Whenever a page with flash attempts to load, it halts mozilla til the flash plugin can get a handle on the audio hardware, regardless of whether or not the plugin is actually going to play sound. I absolutely abhor flash, but the flash virus has spread so much that I can't use certain sites without it (and their admins refuse to present a flash-less page, or even understand that their programmers are using a non-standard method for their site design).
Michael
Intel transfer the difficult from Hadware to software, for get more power, programmer need more technology. -- chinaitn
Which version of OmniWeb are you running? I'm using 4.1sp36 on my iBook and very rarely does it crash on me. I'm going to take another look at this new Mozilla, but the thing that kills it for me is that the keyboard support sucks. If you have two windows or tabs open, switching between them using the keyboard doesn't take the focus with it, so you have to click the mouse somewhere in the pane before you can use the arrow keys to scroll. Little things like that make a big difference.
BTW, I agree with you about IE, it's pretty nice. The only things I don't like about it are the slow rendering of big tables that you mentioned, no popup-blocking, and the Carbon text doesn't look as good to me as the Cocoa text that OmniWeb uses (especially for serif fonts).
Anyway, get the latest OmniWeb and give it a spin. Be sure to clean out any junk in ~/Library/Application\ Support/OmniWeb/ first, corrupted history files have been known to cause problems.
...wearing a skin-tight topless leather jumpsuit, with cutaway buttocks and transparent crotch panel.
The compromise was to ignore no-cache for speed purposes on http requests but don't ignore it for https requests.
The full gritty details is in big 112564.
Better yet... try Pornzilla. It is a Mozilla distribution optimized for porn.
I *love* Mozilla: I love tabbed browsing, the beautiful rendering, popup control, and all the other goodies that come with it.
BUT I don't think I'll ever be able to use Mozilla as my primary browser. I tried multiple times to migrate to it, yet every single time my humble computer kindly let me know that it can't keep up.
I'm not trying to start a flamewar, I think Netscape is bloated as much as the next person, but at the same time I can't see why Mozilla is so slow and resource crazy either.
All in all, if Mozilla doesn't get *much* faster by 1.0, I won't be using it for a while.
---
Geez, I wish it didn't take so long between the release of the new version and the .deb package update.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Am I the only person who looks at ads after clicking a link to another page? If a site screws with IE's back button, they get about 50% fewer clicks from me. Also, if I scroll down before leaving the page with the ad (and then hit Back), I won't see the double-counted ad because it is still scrolled off the screen.
Advertisers should penalize sites that use no-cache to increase ad impression counts. It slows down browsing, doesn't increase the total nubmer of times a user sees ads, and annoys users who are actually interested in the ads. And, now, the double-counting effect is harder for advertisers to account for because some browsers (eg Mozilla) correctly ignore no-cache for the Back button in most situations.
The shareholder is always right.
http://www.mozilla.org/performance/Performance_Pro ject.html
This is a complete list of performance stuff that they're working on.
I've been watching it for a while because I like Mozilla but just can't use it because the GUI is so damn slow it feels like I'm browsing drunk.
I'm a sysadmin (yes, Windows :P ) and I've actually started rolling out Mozilla with new workstations instead of our standard Netscape 4.7x (I will never encourage our users to use I.E. for political and security reasons). I'm finding that Netscape 4.x is becoming a hassle to many users as they're often finding sites that it can no longer handle. Rather than drift into I.E., I'm trying to give them a solid alternative.
I've been impressed by the reception so far... only one user has rejected it wholesale, but the first question after I loaded on Netscape for him was, "Now how do I turn off pop-up ads in this one?". That seems to be the most-loved feature so far, as many websites now have pop-up ads (I wouldn't know, as I turned them off at 0.9.4!).
IMHO Netscape has made a very bad name for itself by releasing 6.x too early from buggy Mozilla builds, and loading them up with advertising and AOL stuff to boot. I've found that telling clients that Mozilla is a new browser based on Netscape is a good way to go.
I've actually found that the few problems users have had have been minor, and the mozilla bug tracking site almost always has workarounds for those show-stopper bugs...
Anyhow, just something to think about; this is a nice foothold that open source software can make in your office workplace. It's kind of the Apache of desktop software I suppose...
People shape laws. Not the other way around.
irony_nazi wrote:
> Can anybody add anything to my list? I haven't heard of many other
> graphical OS X browsers. I figured that OS X would have plenty of
> great web browsers since the web designers tend to use it.
There's iCab. It is a Mac only browser (has an OS X native version), kind of shareware ($29 once it is released) that is currently under developement and nearing its first release. http://www.icab.de/info.html lists some of the features. It seems to work fine at Amazon and other eCommerce sites. It's a champ at stopping pop ups, pop unders, and other advertising nasties. It has a kiosk mode, the ability to read (aloud with voice synthesis) web pages to you, and can check web sites for errors. I used to love its printing capabilities because I could make it print pages the way I wanted them printed. Now it mostly just crashes instead of printing. Still, it is a pretty good browser, considering it is about where Mozilla is (pre-first release), only it is based on all new code, not on a browser that has been released before.
Please make sure that if you get iCab, you get Preview 2.7.1 or later. Preview 2.7 has a nasty habbit of chowing down on your bookmarks (and hiding them in other folders deeper in the tree). Preview 2.7.1 doesn't seem to have that problem.
BTW, is Mozilla fully OS X native (ie. Carbon or Cocoa), or are they just displaying an aquafied look in Classic?
OS X: the Apple of Mothra's Aqua eye.
The 'y'-down thing only works if you've typed it before ;-)
Hmm...when I type a word without the .com or www., Moz tries to resolve word, and then automatically tries www.word.com if word doesn't resolve. And you don't even have to hold down a key... ;-D
DennyK
I have to say I am very impressed - I have been meaning to try it, never getting around to it - then saying "Well, maybe at 1.0". But, I kept hearing and reading good things about it, and so I decided, after seeing how simple the install was, to go ahead and give it a shot.
I love it - I suppose it will "compete" with my Netscape install now. I think I might install it on my Winders box at work (yeah, it sucks).
Wow - a new set of fun!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon