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.

Comments

Re:It figures....

[bonzoesc]

We see that with a lot of open-source software - as the version numbers get higher, they change by less, never reaching 1.0. Go look at all the .99s on sourceforge for many laughs.

Re:I must admit that i didn't think it would happe

[McLaLa]

I also remember having some serious problems in the early years, but the wait has been more than worth it. I have been using mozilla as my primary browser since about 0.9.2, and there have been little annoyances etc etc since but the thing has been stable, reliable and most of all the performance is now fantastic.

There are so many nice things about mozilla that make it so much easier and enjoyable to use than any other browser ... probably the most significant thing for me is tabbed browsing man one window multiple web pages, where has this feature been, must admit it makes older versions of netscape and ie seem almost impossible to use.

Another really sweet features of mozilla is UI pleasing to the eye and intuitive to boot, if you don't like it download an alternative theme, don't like any of these roll your own. I know, I know not a new idea but it has been done well.

All in all a fantastic product. Much thanks and much respect to all involved in producing such a great product, and one thats free too :)

More Testers!!!

[Screaming Lunatic]

[rant]

[plea for help]

Now is the time to increase the testing effort. Everybody out there, please download the latest nightly build. Get out there and test and submit bugs to Bugzilla.

You can poke fun as much as you want about the release timeline, but these Mozilla guys really work their asses off to get this product out to you at no charge. The least we can do as part of the open source community is help out by testing.

[/plea for help]

[/rant]

PK

P.S. Posted using April 9th Mozilla nightly build. A testament to how well it works and the stability of the nightly builds. I install a nightly build almost every morning and never had to revert back to using an older build because something major was broken. I always install the Linux tarballs, but of course YMMV for other platforms and installation methods. But I don't expect anything would be different for the Windoze and Mac builds.

more bugs?

[natmsincome.com]

One of the things that really bugs me is when people look at the bug cound and say hay there were 21 000 bugs in X version but there are now 22 000 bugs in Y version so X version must be buggier than Y version.

Generally most of the bugs in that were found in version Y were already in X but they weren't found. That is there aren't more bugs just more that are found.

Another thing is have you read some of the bugs submitted?

Check out these(5 new bugs picked at random):

*Bugzilla Bug 78633 [console] photon port should not print to console for opt builds (maybe)

*Bugzilla Bug 35419 solaris/gcc should use -shared instead of -G in configure.in DSO_LDOPTS

*Bugzilla Bug 108476 Error with XML

*Bugzilla Bug 56179 Broken mozilla.org links

*Bugzilla Bug 9185 Gtk command-line args crash viewer

It may just be me but none of these are show stopper bugs in my mind. The truth is if the bug database wasn't open then people would be talking about how much more stable the new mozilla is instead of how many more bugs it has.

It a couple of people went through the 22 000 bugs and removed the redundant bugs and fixed the trival bugs that most people don't care about chancers are that after one or two months the bug cound would be down to something more like 3 000 bugs BUT mozilla would be almost exactly the same.

Re:I must admit that i didn't think it would happe

[Bnonn]

The tabbed windows, I believe, were around in Opera before Mozilla. I use Mozilla for testing compatibility on my website (sometimes what looks good on Opera can look a bit wrong in other browsers) but I find that while it does have some really great features I'd love to see in Opera, it's missing a bit too that makes it inconvenient for me to use. One of the main things that I still haven't figured out (and I have looked) is how to go to the address bar using the keyboard. In Opera you hit F8. In IE you hit Alt-D. I'm sure Mozilla must have this really obvious feature or people would go insane, but I just can't seem to find it.

The other thing that's a bit annoying, though has improved greatly since I first tried the 0.9.3 release, is the feeling that Mozilla is a little sluggish. I don't know if it's actually slower rendering an average page than Opera is (perhaps a tiny bit), but it feels slower. Opera seems to get everything worked out in the background before drawing a page; Mozilla seems to draw it as it goes. I know this is a crap reason to not use a browser, but it's that F5, <pause>, white screen, page-draws-down that bugs me.

There are, of course, other minor annoyances, like the rather slow loadup time (but I have my browser open nearly 24/7 anyway), but those two things are probably what I still find the worst. Oh yeah, and I'm sure Mozilla supports them, but there doesn't seem to be a way to turn on mouse gestures through the preferences.

Please note that I'm speaking purely from the point of view of someone who is using Opera, and before that IE. I find Opera's keyboard shortcuts and the ability to turn off Javascript, images etc with a single pulldown menu (F12) to be really great; I imagine you can do similar things in Mozilla, but they're not as easy to find in my experience.

On the other hand, Mozilla has a fabulous preferences system that is much easier to use than Opera's. It has a prettier interface too, although Opera certainly isn't ugly. And while it doesn't have mouse-wheel window switching, it also doesn't keep focus on the old window tab because of it. Don't think I'm bashing Mozilla because I'm not. I imagine that if you were someone accustomed to Netscape, Mozilla would seem far better than Opera. Opera seems to try to be more like IE. If Opera wasn't around, I'd use Mozilla, and I'm pleased there's a really decent alternative to Opera--both because competition promotes innovation, and because if Opera ever goes under or their browser just goes to shit, I can switch to Mozilla. I'd like to make a completely redundant statement now, and say kudos to everyone involved with the Mozilla project. Awsome work guys; I may not use your browser, but I'm still behind you 100%.

My list of showstopper bugs

[The Cunctator]

Mozilla has been my browser of choice for a while now, but it still has some serious bugs. So consider this criticism based in love. It's also encouraging that all these bugs have a real chance of being fixed. Even I could theoretically fix them.

There is a huge bug with bookmarks:

51683: Unable to have 2 differently named bookmarks for the same url.

This is more than a bit ridiculous, since the bug was submitted September 2000.

Another, less serious bookmark bug:
85469: Bookmark select/cut/paste operation is sensitive to order of selection

This is a major meta-bug:
73812: Browser doesn't fit with Mac OS X UI Specs

Anyone who uses a Mac uses it because of the user interface--having a program that doesn't comply with the guidelines is extraordinarily frustrating. But they're definitely getting closer.

128658: Typing in textarea really slow

Large textareas overwhelm Mozilla. This makes editing in WP, for example, very frustrating. Totally unacceptable.

However, it's great watching bugs get steadily fixed. So vote for the above bugs, get them fixed, submit patches, hooray. The rendering engine really is marvelous.