Slashdot Mirror
Mozilla 1.0 Officially Here
hhg writes "People of the world, rejoice! At last, the long awaited Mozilla 1.0 is released, and has emerged on the ftp.mozilla.org ftp-server. Let the release parties loose!" And there's even an Ann Arbor party now ;) Congratulations
to all the developers that contributed to the mighty lizard. And bahtama writes "The latest IE gopher hole patch is out! :) ... Check the release notes and then grab it from here."
As long as Mozilla has its foot in the door with a significant niche of web users, as long as it is Free software that can never disappear simply because a company goes under, as long as it guarantees a viable browsing solution for all the platforms Microsoft would rather you forgot, then it has won. It will prevent Microsoft from completely dictating web standards, from creating a world where only Windows can browse the web.
The problem Microsoft (and others of its ilk) has with Free software is that it doesn't go away. When Mozilla first came out, there was a huge hype, but that hype evaporated and turned (in some quarters) to derision when Mozilla didn't deliver right away. For most MS competitors, that would have been the end. But Mozilla kept plugging along, getting better and better...it never has to go back to square one with a new company and codebase.
...and the longer it holds on with the high quality it has demonstrated so far, the more companies will jump on to its bandwagon. Everyone except for Microsoft benefits from open standards, and almost everyone knows it.
If a thing is not diminished by being shared, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned & not shared. S. Augustine
I'm using 1.0 right now, and the only thing that is annoying me is that 1.0 still uses that same (IMHO tacky) splash screen!
I fortunately replaced the splash screen on my copy at work (in Windows, drop a file called mozilla.bmp into the Mozilla directory, and that becomes your splash!) before I showed Mozilla off to my boss. Had he seen the regular splash screen, I don't know if he would have taken it seriously.
Seriously, the browser is professional, the splash screen should be too.
I don't mean to deprecate your efforts, but I think this "Mozilla isn't about producing an end-user product" idea has always been wishful thinking--and is becoming less plausible every day. Mozilla is clearly destined to become the prominent browser in the free software community and the web development community, and a popular browser among computer users at large.
I'm not saying it's a bad idea in principle to separate the development of the engine and the finish; I just don't see how it can happen in this case. The core features and the user interface of a browser are not separable enough. In order for Mozilla to produce a browser for testing purposes going to want it to be a good user interface. The evidence bears this out: users file usability bugs in bugzilla, the developers take them seriously, and as a result, vanilla mozilla has an overall better user interface than any earlier Netscape browser.
The Mozilla developers seem to agree on the value of a reference user interface, in order to prevent excessive variation in the interfaces of derived products. For example, they insist upon limiting the number of user-configurable variables, which would not make sense if they were only about the basic technologies. In order for their reference interface to be credible, they have to invest resources in usability. The way I see it, the "reference interface" position amounts to a committment to an end-user product, even if they don't realize or admit it.
On top of this, Mozilla already has all the visibility in the free software and web development communities. If Mozilla refuses to provide an end-user product, it will mostly create user confusion. Mozilla has all the developers. Mozilla has all the infrastructure. It only makes sense for Mozilla to do the last 10% and provide an end-user product. Maybe someday beonix or galeon or someone else will overcome this barrier (just as GTK and QT have finally displaced athena as free widget sets for X), but it will take a long time.
Of course, in some markets, vanilla Mozilla won't be the king. Among Joe PC, it will a Netscape or AOL branded version. Users of embedded systems will get whatever modified version their manufacturer included. But even the popular computer press reviews Mozilla, so the message that it is not for end-users doesn't seem to have gotten through. And among the slashdot demographic, Mozilla is it. Let's face it: how many of us will download Mozilla 1.0 to "test" it? Most of us want to use it! Mozilla is already a great end-user browser, and will keep getting better.
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.