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Mozilla Branches For 1.0 RC1
At the end of last month, the Mozilla Project closed the tree for what will become Mozilla 1.0. Now jkeiser writes "Mozilla has branched for 1.0 RC1, which is the first last step to a final Mozilla 1.0! Mozilla has spent four long years getting the browser standards-compliant, fast and solid. Cross your fingers for a rockin' final release around the corner." Reader whovian points to the just-modified roadmap, too.
I can't wait to see 1.0.
It's going to be the best (and only, really) open-source browser.
When I first started playing around with Mozilla (mid-99) I figgured they would *never* have a usable product. The thing just plain didn't work.
.0 that means something, as opposed to most commercial vendors (and a lot of OS projects) that usually wait until 3.x to begin getting things right.
And while they are a bit behind schedule. 4 years for a 1.0 doesn't sound bad when you realize that this is a
Good job guys.
(posted on 0.99)
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
It has become a quite good app; the same could be said of many open-source products. I was thinking about this the other day....I'm in my fifth year of college, and I graduate next month. When I started, I couldn't do my work on Linux without either spending loads of $$ for ported commercial products, or constantly grinding my teeth. Two and a half years ago, I went pretty much linux all the time, using StarOffice as my suite. Still, I was stuck with Netscape 4.x as my browser. But now, I'm able to do all my work in a pure open-source environment (I'm not a CS major...I'm one of those social science types). It's a big change. Mozilla is a very good product. Congrats, and thanks folks.
--typing this on Galeon, one of the many Mozilla kids.
Anyway, now that the tree has branched (which is really cool, by the way) the only drawback that I see is that I won't get my Mozilla fix every 5 weeks (5 weeks in Mozilla development-speak is more like 7 :o). Their release schedule has changed to 13 weeks.
Well, hopefully it will be 13 chronological weeks rather than 13 mozilla release weeks, hehe.
But anyway, once I've been weened off my Install-Newest-Version-of-Mozilla addiction, I guess I'll appreciate that all the serious bugs have been ironed out (i haven't noticed a single one since an early 0.9.x), it's so fscking customizable, and the performance is far better than anything except perhaps Opera. [I'm not even going to mention lynx - whoops. Damn]
Hey, I said I was biased (^&
I don't wanna come off like a whiner here, but Mozilla is not going to find much of an audience unless freetype support is _standard_
Cheers
Bowie J. Poag
Ohh, And here I thought we have a RC1 available for download. Dang. Never mind, I didn't realize Mozilla is such big news that /. publishes even plans to have a beta build :-)
.92 and moved toward the point I'm at right now, which is about 95% mozilla and rest for IE. Usually the culprit is some kind of fancy menu-system or dysfunctional scripting gimmick. The important thing is, however, that for majority of the sites Mozilla works just great!
I've been using Mozilla starting around
I'm just feeling a little odd about thinking it'd be a good thing to have AOL use Gecko so that we'd get standards-compliant web sites. Who'd have thought of it, AOL as a force for the white hats?
This is why real companies don't release pre-1.0 products to the general public. Think how buggy your favorite piece of software is and imagine what people would think if they saw something before even the final codefreeze.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Tabs are only a different workspace containing your browser display, a window manager designed/configured to give a tab-style effect could be just the same. It`s a pity the more innovative window managers are often overlooked in favour of plain "straight sides and a title bar" window managers.
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I'm stoked about 1.0. I think the browser is solid as hell.
HOWEVER, the included Mail and Newsgroup app has a LONG way to go. There are many, many outstanding (and often show-stopping) bugs with the Mail reader.
I have been testing it recently with the hopes of deploying it throughout our company as the standard mail client. The Windows version is horribly broken. It often hangs upon startup and you cannot print many messages without first double-clicking them and opening them up in their own windows, and printing from these. For kicks, I tried the test with several different builds (including 0.99rel) on several different computers. Same results all around. Our mail server runs Courier IMAP and works great with every other mail client I've used (Pine, Mac OS X Mail.app, SquirrelMail, Mulberry, Eudora, Netscape 4.x, etc., etc.)
just goes to show how much dignity oss community has.to them, 1.0 actually means a good product, which is important, because it also means they are trying to just make their product better instead of stealing money from unbeknownst consumers.
lets just hope this particular trait of oss remains and does not become corporate like competition.
QED
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
From the announcement "The trunk is now open to 1.1 alpha work, on the road to 2.0!" I don't think this is quite the time to open the trunk, but rather the time, as is done with the linux kernel, to get everyone even more focused on the final product.
Keeping the trunk closed says "No, you can't checkin your uber-widget yet, go find something to do on 1.0 for a while first."
Obviously, a closure like this can't last too long, maybe until RC1 or RC2 is released. However, mozilla has recently benifited enormously from what seems to be a real focus on the important things in the puch towards 1.0. A few more weeks of this could really make a tangible improvement in the final product.
Really, there have been two browsers developed in 4 years. The intial project used the NS4 code as a starting point and eventually abandonded it as unusable. So, if you take out that initial time, you're probably looking at closer to 2 or 2.5 years. Really not bad when writing a product from scratch.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
Mozilla is open source, why don't you help fix it?
I have been galled, if not suprised, to observe the pattern of most comments regarding the Mozilla project over the years at Slashdot.
/. over the years anyway. It's not like, say, abot 80% of comments were completely unconstructive, nooo....
In the early days, it was:
"My GOD, this will NEVER be a usable product! Blah! Mozilla bites!"
This attitude has prevailed (morphing to nitpicking) even with the most recent 0.9.x releases:
"My GOD, Mozilla doesn't cook my bacon and eggs, and make my bed in the morning! Blah! Mozilla bites!"
Now with 1.0 days away, we finally see many more encouraging messages:
"Way to go Mozilla! We were with you all along! Hooray for the glories of Open Source and Free Software!"
I guess I'm being a bit cynical, but it's a good thing that most of the Mozilla developers probably ignored