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Mozilla 0.9.9 Released

Posted by michael on from the 0.9.9.9.9.9-right-around-the-corner dept.

OSSMKitty writes: "Mozilla.org has released the next version of Mozilla, version 0.9.9. Highlights include MathML enabled by default on Unix and Win32, and TrueType font support on Unix. Read the release notes and then download a binary to test on your platform."

3 of 629 comments (clear)

  1. Re:tabbed browsing by Teferi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So what if they do? Good ideas deserve to be implemented, no matter by who.

    --
    -- Veni, vidi, dormivi
  2. GUI still too basic, counter-intuitive by Michael+Wardle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Tabs are a nice idea, but they're still quite immature in Mozilla. For instance, they don't close in the correct order, so they're no substitute for real tabs or MDI, as found in Galeon or Opera.

    I accept that Mozilla is still in development, but many good ideas that make the GUI work better (like this one) are actually being turned down.

    Something else that reminds me of this is there is no Apply button in the Themes Preferences dialog box.

    I'm getting into many bad habits using Mozilla's interface, and when I go to use something that works properly I find myself doing what I would've done in Mozilla, and it doesn't work (and nor should it). It's a bit like people who double-click on web links. :-)

    It seems to me that Mozilla's GUI is made to pacify Netscape 4 users, rather than making it as usable as it should be. I think this is bad for several reasons, not least because Netscape 6 still has a smaller market share than Netscape 4, so Netscape 4 users aren't migrating at all! To me this means that:
    a) some users are sticking with Netscape 4
    b) some users are moving to Internet Explorer or something else, because they're better, regardless of the menus being somewhat different

    Maybe this shows us that open-source projects really need to spend more time on proper GUI guidelines, because as much as I hate products made by certain other companies (that one that makes Windows in particular), I find their apps much easier to use (when they don't crash, etc.).

    I think I'm going to end up using Galeon or SkipStone, because the Mozilla rendering engine seems quite good -- it's the GUI holding Mozilla back (regardless of how pretty the "Modern" theme is!).

    Having said this, I'm still downloading 0.9.9 :-)

  3. Salon Article on Mozilla by twjordan · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Check this article out. In it Salon's Tech Editor describes his 180 turnaround on mozilla.


    Before:

    The last time I tried it, a year and a half ago, it was so buggy, slow and lacking in features that I gave up in disgust after a week of software pain. Ever since, I had dismissed as overly idealistic advocacy the mumbling I kept hearing from various developers who touted each new Mozilla "milestone" release as incrementally better than the one before.


    Now:

    As I write these words, I've been running Mozilla for Windows for almost five hours. While that's obviously not enough time to make a detailed technical appraisal, I can say that Mozilla has already become my default browser and that it is as fast and slick and full-featured as I want.


    Nuff said!