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First Reviews of Mozilla 1.0 Roll In

Posted by timothy on from the jaundiced-eye-of-the-beholder dept.

Since the announcement of Mozilla 1.0's release, at least a few journalists have been quick to turn the beast over and poke its belly. Tina Gasperson's review over at NewsForge makes an interesting contrast to CNET's review; strange how they give a rating that would barely merit a "C-" after describing Mozilla's robustness, standards compliance, speed and convenience features.

66 of 846 comments (clear)

  1. hahaha by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
    CNET on popups:

    this function doesn't discriminate, so it may disable pop-ups you actually want to see, such as the video pop-ups on the News.com front door.

    Yeah fucking right CNET. Suck it!

    1. Re:hahaha by CynicTheHedgehog · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It does too discriminate (or can). You can disable all popups or only "unrequested" (for instance, onLoad) popups. You can also diable moving or resizing windows (take that hollywood.com!). It's granular and configurable, as the C|Net reviewer would have discovered had he done his job.

  2. Newspeak by Mr+Guy · · Score: 5, Funny

    From The CNET article Even stranger, both Mozilla and Netscape outran IE 6 in three of four tests.


    From now on, "strange" will be defined as "something you would predict off the top of your head"

    --
    Never confuse volume with power.
    1. Re:Newspeak by SoupIsGoodFood_42 · · Score: 3, Insightful
      When you expect that Quit will do something other than quit, all other bets are off. Funny how they didn't mention the only other menu item in that menu: Close. Wonder what that one would do, close the menu?

      Sorry, but thanks for playing. The debugger window is not really part of the browser...It's a debugger. Quit would logicaly quit the debugger, and not the whole browser. They shouldn't really have a quit button on there if they consider it part of the browser, just close. A child of the parent window shouldn't have command that can affect the parent in such a durastic way.

      This is where programmers tend to make the biggest mistakes. They that their way is right (I'm sure someone will tell me that I'm full of shit). But the fact is, the user clicked the wrong button. Given that the Cnet people aren't totaly newbies, it's the programmers fault that the user clicked the wrong button....They have misslead the user in some way.

    2. Re:Newspeak by rifter · · Score: 3, Informative

      Microsoft has, indeed admitted in open court that:

      1) There are hidden API's

      2) They refuse to disclose them as they feel it will negate a competitive advantage such nondisclosures afford them.

      As for URL's, for starters, /. had an article on this recently, though salon seems to have broken the referenced link and it has been tough tracking it down. I believe it is cached here.

      The fact MS API's are not documented is better documented than that, however. One should probably peruse the findings of fact. There was also an article on ZDnet (surprisingly) on this as well.

      I found a Microsoft KB Article on undocumented API's as well as a perl tool pertaining to them with just a cursory google.

      For the paranoid, I am sure a little more diligence would indeed turn up the very court documents in which the quotes were made, but really, the fact Microsoft hides code from developers has been discussed ad nauseum in the press ever since DOS, and has not only never been contested by Microsoft, rather the reverse, Microsoft has always said this is a necessary part of its business strategy.

  3. Reviewer Wrong? by _Quinn · · Score: 3, Informative

    Reviewer: "However, the release notes say you should not use your Netscape profiles, because you could lose your search settings or become the victim of an ever-growing bookmark file that might freeze your system. I've been using Mozilla 1.0 since the release announcement, with my Netscape profile, and haven't experienced these problems. Yet."

    Release notes: "Do not share a profile between Netscape and Mozilla builds."

    e.g., not in the same directly, not import, yes?

    -_Quinn

    --
    Reality Maintenance Group, Silver City Construction Co., Ltd.
  4. Built for IE! by hkhanna · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For one thing, Mozilla doesn't always render Web pages the same way IE does. Why does that matter? Many Web designers have built sites primarily for IE, and those pages look odd in Mozilla.

    This is what irks me. The web is supposed to be platform-neutral, not built for IE. Mozilla, IMHO is doing the right thing by not making its browser conform to the skewed standards IE has set. I say let those pages that are "built for IE" look like crap. Sooner or later, Mozilla will gain market share (we hope,) and people will have to begin building web pages that are standards-compliant not IE-compliant. Good job, Mozilla!

    Hargun

    --

    Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
    1. Re:Built for IE! by stefanlasiewski · · Score: 5, Interesting

      And I've been wondering about Apple. Many web designers still use Macs for web design.

      If Apple started to distribute Mozilla as the default browser instead of IE, it would also help Mozilla to gain market share.

      --
      "Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
    2. Re:Built for IE! by gambit3 · · Score: 5, Informative

      IIRC, and I think there was a Slashdot story about this, I remember reading that one of the conditions that M$ put forth as a requirement for them to continue developing Office for the Mac, was that Apple had to stop using Netscape as the default browser, and replace it with IE.

      --
      Watch the Teaser Trailer for "The Lightning Thief" Her
    3. Re:Built for IE! by Elwood+P+Dowd · · Score: 5, Informative

      That used to be the case.

      They made a deal that expired. There is now no deal, and no contract requiring Microsoft to produce Office:Mac. Kevin Browne of Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit keeps telling people that there's no reason MS is going to stop making Office:Mac. There doesn't need to be a contract. There just needs to be goodwill between the companies.

      Interview
      Keynote

      Of course, Apple switching to Mozilla might easily count as an end to the goodwill between the companies.

      --

      There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
    4. Re:Built for IE! by Gerv · · Score: 3, Informative

      (usually spacing in tables where there should be none).

      http://www.mozilla.org/docs/web-developer/faq.ht ml

      Question 2.

      Gerv

  5. Funniest line in the Cnet Review by vjmurphy · · Score: 5, Funny

    "The bad: Incompatible with some sites built for Internet Explorer"

    Uh. Well. Duh.

    --
    Vincent J. Murphy
    Spandex Justice
  6. Re:I think it's great. by mshiltonj · · Score: 4, Funny

    First open source stuff I've used.I'm running it at home on XP and at work on NT4.

    Welcome aboard, friend! Now, about that XP...
    ;-P

    --
    Software Wars
  7. You would think that CNET had competent authors by akiaki007 · · Score: 4, Informative
    But...once you are done with the full review and read "The Good, The Bad..." section...take a look at this.
    The bad: Incompatible with some sites built for Internet Explorer; chat client doesn't work with the big commercial IM systems, including ICQ, Yahoo IM, AOL IM, and Windows Messenger.

    Last time I checked. ChatZilla was a IRC client, not a friggin chat program to be used with AIM, ICQ, etc. While that would be something nice to add, it's already been done and I don't see why the author would mention this. IRC is much cooler than IM anyhow!
    --
    "Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
  8. CNET are M$ whores. by crovira · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Unless you want to read ass-kissing, don't go there.

    They can even write pap about desktop Video and FireWire without even mentionning Apple existence.

    They're strange that way.

    --
    MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
    1. Re:CNET are M$ whores. by I+Want+GNU! · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Actually, Mozilla had a 7/10 on their rankings, the same thing they gave to IE. And they noted how it was faster than IE. I'd like to see some other evidence of them being "M$ whores." I don't like MS, but I like actual evidence instead of baseless accusations and name callings (The $ in MS is just getting old).

      I think that if they considered security as well, Mozilla would beat out IE, but ignoring security and standards (both of which Mozilla beats out IE at) the browsers would be similar.

      Maybe it's just me though not wanting to give internet servers capabilities to read my entire hard drive (see jscript.dk).

    2. Re:CNET are M$ whores. by ywwg · · Score: 4, Insightful

      the evidence is their total lack of objectivity. when mozilla and netscape are faster than IE they call it "strange." When mozilla doesn't conform to ie's broken renderring and self-invented standards, they call it "incompatible." They assume that IE is the standard, rather than the w3c.

  9. Truly amazing! by ciryon · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I am thrilled beyond words. This is absolutely the best browser I have ever used. I had a tough time deciding which browser to use, but this is it. I especially recommend the Mouse Gesture Add-on.

    Ciryon

  10. it doesn't surprise me that CNET gave a 7 by peteshaw · · Score: 4, Informative
    Think about it. CNET has never strived to achieve a benchmark for impartial reporting, they collect advertising revenue. So one of there biggest caveats is to not piss off 'the industry' as they see it. So they give all these least common denominator reports that don't have any useful information. They just gave a Netscape a review, and gave it the lowest possible score they could justify given that it was faster, more stable, and more W3C compliant than the big IE.


    Think I'm wrong? By contrast, PCWeek, eWeek, and lots of other industry rags tend to be more impartial, and will generally call a turd a turd and a gem a gem, not vice versa.


    But then there's audience too to calculate in too. I dare say that if Microsoft were to behave nicely and come out with a superier product that was priced fairly, some one here would find something to bitch about.

    --
    www.avacal.com -- the home page of pete shaw
    1. Re:it doesn't surprise me that CNET gave a 7 by Bearpaw · · Score: 3, Funny
      But then there's audience too to calculate in too. I dare say that if Microsoft were to behave nicely and come out with a superier product that was priced fairly, some one here would find something to bitch about.

      Well, I'd be pretty pissed that someone transported me to an alternate universe without giving me any warning.

    2. Re:it doesn't surprise me that CNET gave a 7 by denshi · · Score: 5, Insightful
      But then there's audience too to calculate in too. I dare say that if Microsoft were to behave nicely and come out with a superier product that was priced fairly, some one here would find something to bitch about.
      Certainly. The platform, for one. Were you suggesting that M$ would come out with a 'superior product that was priced fairly' that ran on multiple platforms (PC, Mac, Un*x, Linux for start), operated in a relatively self-contained mode that didn't require extensive library rework on the non-MS machines, played fairly and constructively with other applications, talked on open procols and file formats, and was generally friendly to being controlled by scripts or broken into components?

      I'll believe it when I see it.

      The problem with M$, besides being convicted monopoly abusers and yadayada, is their refusal to interoperate with as much as they can get away with. They demand complete adherence across your network, and give interoperability only grudgingly, and frequently with lawsuits. To persons with or in control of large, heterogeneous networks, this behavior is rather irksome, as we grow rather risk-averse, where 'risk' is defined as: reinstalling everything in the building and tossing a decade of experience. Not fun, or worthwhile.

      Yes, we're a curmudgeonly audience who are almost totally opposed to Microsoft. But quite a few of us have valid, and very expensive, reasons.

    3. Re:it doesn't surprise me that CNET gave a 7 by tempest303 · · Score: 3, Informative

      try again, friend. ;)

      from the site:

      Longer bars indicate better performance, with the fastest browser scoring 100.

      The Java test was the only one that IE won!

      --
      The Free desktop that Just Works
  11. OK, but not all I wanted by AvitarX · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A while ago (M17?) I decided I was going to wait for 1.0 before I switched over to Mozilla.

    Since then I fell in love with Opera's gestures and tabbed browsing. I think that Mozilla handles Tabs Awsomly, but that its gestures are kinda lame.

    ex: in Opera I can right click hold and mouse wheel to change windows.

    and can go foward and back with just the buttons (no motion). In Mozilla I am stuck with holding a button that has another function and moving the mouse, and with my spazzy hand I fail half the time succeed.

    Amyway, I like Mozilla but it won't become my browser of choice anytime soon (I predict).

    --
    Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
    1. Re:OK, but not all I wanted by moonbender · · Score: 3, Interesting
      ex: in Opera I can right click hold and mouse wheel to change windows.
      Yep, that's what made me stick to Opera, too. But I'm sure Mozilla will be there, eventually, they've ripped most of the other good features of Opera so far. ;)
      --
      Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
    2. Re:OK, but not all I wanted by Violet+Null · · Score: 4, Funny

      and... connect the fucking dots.

      Look! A puppy!

  12. It has problems with ads. by peterdaly · · Score: 4, Insightful

    For example, we struggled with sites that use a technology called positioning to put ads on their pages. In IE, those ads temporarily hide part of the page, then go away. But in our Mozilla tests, the ads sometimes permanently blocked part of the page, and we had to reload the page until we got a different, regular, nonpositioning ad.

    ------
    The problem is not the browser...but the ad. When will these people wake up? Did you catch that TWO of their few complains centered around use of ads, or features to stop ads? When you turn pop-ups off, it may disable some aspects of cnet.com (news.com?) that you really want to use. Hehe...yeah.

    The ads causing a page to be non-function is a good reason to a) stop using the site and b) send the webmaster a poltite message telling them why you will never visit their site again.

    -Pete

    --
    Soccer Goal Plans
  13. The by Big+Stick · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In the CNET review,

    For one thing, Mozilla doesn't always render Web pages the same way IE does. Why does that matter? Many Web designers have built sites primarily for IE, and those pages look odd in Mozilla.

    This "criticism" seems to me to be rather absentminded. Specifically building sites for IE is a shortcoming on the developer side. And imagine a browser being criticised for rendering ads, of all things, incorrectly! Go figure. Personally I can't wait to update my RCx.

  14. Reviewer need's a lesson in HTML standards by Neil+Watson · · Score: 3, Insightful
    From the CNET article:
    " Beyond its skins and pop-up-killing abilities, however, Mozilla 1.0 doesn't do much more for the average Web surfer than Internet Explorer does. For one thing, Mozilla doesn't always render Web pages the same way IE does. Why does that matter? Many Web designers have built sites primarily for IE, and those pages look odd in Mozilla. For example, we struggled with sites that use a technology called positioning to put ads on their pages. In IE, those ads temporarily hide part of the page, then go away. But in our Mozilla tests, the ads sometimes permanently blocked part of the page, and we had to reload the page until we got a different, regular, nonpositioning ad."

    I seriously doubt this has anything to do with Mozilla. More likely, the web designer used the broken standards of IE and never bothered to test it with other browsers.

    --
    UNIX/Linux Consulting
  15. my faith restored by negativethirsty · · Score: 4, Insightful

    After becoming an employee of a "microsoft shop" in jan, I've used nothing but m$ and its products for 99% of my development tools(officexp/winxp pro/messenger/vis studio etc) and day to day work.

    So I took a chance on the posting yesterday and decided to give Mozilla a whirl. First impression wasn't that great due to the cheese splash screen on launch(which I replaced, and it actually listened to me!). However it didn't take long for me to be converted after that.

    Right off the bat, I turned off 90% of pop up adds, imported my IE fav's and even gave it a new look using the themes. i was and still am truely impressed by Mozilla. I can search my bookmarks, a huge deal for me. I can tell Mozilla how to behave...and it seems to actually listen!
    After realising how much I liked this new browser I suddenly became very aware of how far the 'net in general has gone down hill since IE's dominace. I realized how my work got further and further away from stds, focused on M$ and how they wanted things done. Most of all I was dissapointed how I had forgotten just how good the net as a whole used to be.
    Either way, if the Moz. dev team is listening, thank you. I can once again surf in peace.

    --

    thirsty*i^2

    "Ya I finished that last week, it just doesn't work"
  16. C-Nut review is narrow minded by d3xt3r · · Score: 4, Insightful
    This is the type of review that really annoys me. The review spends 10 paragraphs praising Mozilla for it's standards compliance, speed, reliability, etc and then has to go and ruin it all by saying "Good but no IE Killer."

    "Mozilla doesn't always render Web pages the same way IE does. Why does that matter? Many Web designers have built sites primarily for IE, and those pages look odd in Mozilla"

    What?!? So because a bunch of lazy web "developers" have written IE specific html, we should not just assume this means IE is the better browser? I think this is a really narrow-minded observation. Granted he may be right about the rendering, but it does not mean that Mozilla is not as good as IE.

    Seriously, IE simply renders pages more "correctly" because it dominates the market and lazy "developers" have written IE specific code.

    I guess this journalist also believes that Windows is superior to Mac OS X because there is more software available for it. Or maybe he just enjoys BSODs. Get real, this is not a fair way to compare browsers.

    One last thing... can someone please show me a page link to all these pages that don't render correctly in Mozilla? I use Mozilla exclusively and have not come upon any pages in the last few months that do not work correctly with Mozilla.

    1. Re:C-Nut review is narrow minded by nuggz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Most people want to use their web browser and see the site as it was written to be seen.

      If the browser shows the site nicely, it is a good browser.
      If the browser shows a garbled mess it is a bad browser.

      You can argue technical correctness all you want, but all most people care about is if it works as intended. The fact that the site isn't written properly doesn't matter to them, just that IE works and Mozilla doesn't.

      yes this could be flamebait, but really that is how people think.

  17. Re:What a shock.. by tempest303 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Actually, Linux.com editors seem to say even more nice things about the closed source, commercial Opera than they do any open source browser. I don't think I've read a browser review yet on Linux.com that didn't mention it, so if you're implying bias, go look again.

    --
    The Free desktop that Just Works
  18. Re:mentions the good, the bad, but never the ugly by SimplyCosmic · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Alright, I realise what we're talking about is more personal aesthetic tastes than anything else, but I just couldn't believe someone would describe Internet Explorer as "gorgeous".

    Functional, yes. Gorgeous, what?

    Regardless, if that's the biggest complaint, try any of the smattering of themes available. Now that 1.0 is out, I imagine they'll start growing in number soon, but at least try out Orbit Moz Theme

  19. IE 6 gets a C too by zmokhtar · · Score: 4, Informative

    Don't worry to much about the 7 out of 10. They gave IE 6 the same score.

    --
    Why aren't we told when editors moderate our posts?
  20. Re:mentions the good, the bad, but never the ugly by SurfsUp · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not to troll, but the front end of Mozilla is ugly as sin.

    You aren't using the classic theme, are you? In my opinion the modern (view/apply theme/modern) looks quite nice. Anyway, the big deal about 1.0 is that the interfaces used by themes are finally stable, so expect the floodgates to open.

    --
    Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
  21. Make Mozilla Cooler in MacOS X 10.1.5 by toupsie · · Score: 5, Informative

    Mozilla is nice on MacOS X but it does not take advantage of the Quartz type smoothing like OmniWeb or Chimera. However, if you install Unsanity's haxie program called Silk, it will allow Mozilla (or IE) to use the Quartz text smoothing along with your other Carbon apps. Well worth the download and it doesn't appear to slow down the system -- which I expected. With Quartz text smoothing, MacOS X becomes the most visually appealing, web browsing platform -- which it should be.

    --
    Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
    1. Re:Make Mozilla Cooler in MacOS X 10.1.5 by carlfish · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I used Omniweb for a while, and was sufficiently unimpressed to not register it. Don't drink the Cocoa kool-aid. (On the other hand, I did pay for Omnigraffle and OmniOutliner, because they're both way cool.)

      Omniweb's support for modern standards is well below-par, especially when it comes to CSS selectors, and the CSS2 box-model. This causes it to render CSS2-based sites really, really badly. It may render the majority of the web correctly, but that's because the majority of the web has been painstakingly designed to render correctly in Netscape 4.

      Even worse, Omniweb _pretends_ that it understands CSS, causing it to not degrade gracefully when it meets markup that it either doesn't understand, or misinterprets. Which makes a lot of pages that have perfectly good HTML unreadable.

      The more we support browsers with crappy standards support, the more we force web designers to make stupid concessions for dumb browsers.

      Charles Miller

      --
      The more I learn about the Internet, the more amazed I am that it works at all.
  22. Re:Mozilla ain't that great. by rainwalker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Have you EVER used Mozilla? And, as the above poster mentioned, may I please have some of whatever you are smoking? A few points-

    One example of this problem is Mozilla's extremely slow development cycle

    Have you compared the relative quality of IE 1.0 to Mozilla 1.0? Many people are comparing IE6.0 to Mozilla 1.0 in a favorable manner...certainly comparing the 1.0 releases of both products would be silly. The "slow" dev cycle is based on an entirely different design philosophy: the code is released when it is ready, not when some arbitrary date arrives.

    Mozilla has no paying customer or management to answer to, the browser suffers from innumerable problems. It's a RAM hog [...] Its default user interface emphasizes form over function [...] It does not support the current generation of Web-related standards. It's slow.

    On my current machine (Win2K Pro), Mozilla is using 21,272k. I am not worried about this, as I have a gig of ram in this box. However, I have *no* other apps open (even in the tray), and currently 181meg of my memory is being used. How much of that is IE? We will never know. Obviously iexplore.exe is not all of IE, as Microsoft has repeatedly informed us that IE is integrated into the OS. As to the slowness, you would be best to go peruse the reviews linked in the article. All of them show Mozilla being at least as fast as IE. Are you sure you have your l33t Solaris box configured properly? I used Mozilla and IE (where possible) on my 7 machines, which are a mix of Win2K and various flavors of Linux, and Mozilla is the same or better than IE on every single one. As to web standards, you have no idea what you are talking about. Go read some of the info on Mozilla's web site. Mozilla is the most standards-complaint browser on the market. The problems that you see are its incomplete handling of IE-specific extensions to W3C standards.

    But I think that the most laughable thing of the farse that is the Mozilla project is that no one said "no" to any feature requests [...] the project is so disorganized that basic web browser functionality was often ignored so that developers could work on their favorite "cool" features. A good example is the mail client [...] development on such a client should not have began until the browser was finished [...] I simply don't understand why Mozilla implements a completely custom widget set...

    This long, ranting paragraph basically says that you would have developed Mozilla differently. Apparantly, the people who actually worked on Mozilla (it is pretty obvious that you are not a developer, but merely a whiny user) favored certain features that you do not find useful. Please bear in mind that if you do not like how Mozilla was developed, then you certainly could have lent a hand, rather than criticizing the years of hard work that the devs put into Mozilla. Provided, of course, that you can be dragged away from your "Real UNIX Work" on your "Solaris Box That Cost More Than Slashdot Makes In A Year."

    And Windows users have even less reason to be impressed with Mozilla, because most of its "features" seem even more unecessary in a Windows environment. For example, the mail client is absolutely useless, because almost all Windows business users use Outlook or Outlook Express.

    Hundreds of virus writers worldwide are alternately laughing or thanking you profusely for your endorsement of Outlook.

    Gecko violates Windows user interface conventions, making it look more like some college student's "intro to VB let's see all of the cool buttons and colors that I can add to my app" project than an application that is actually intended for use in the real world

    If you don't like how Mozilla looks, go grab a different skin. I did (Lo-Fi). I only wish that I could make the rest of Windows look like my Mozilla skin, which I find simple, clear, and easy to use. Sadly, I can't change the look and feel of my Windows machines as easily as I can the Linux ones.

    Internet Explorer is superior to Mozilla

    Again, I have my opinions, so do many others, but I really think you should do some research before stating them as fact. Go read the reviews linked in the article.

    Mozilla has also lost on the UNIX platform. Internet Explorer is faster and more standards compliant

    Could you please provide a link to the GNU/Linux binaries for IE? Oh, wait, by UNIX you mean Solaris...and of course, Solaris is taking over the desktop market.

    In all honesty, this reply has been a complete waste of my time. You are obviously trolling here, more interested in spewing invectives about Mozilla than any useful discussion. In reality, noone is even going to see your reply, as it will be moderated down below 1. However, I hope that you will indeed take the time to reconsider your opinions and maintain a bit more of an open mind concerning your software.

  23. This is not realistic by ColGraff · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Sooner or later, Mozilla will gain market share (we hope,) and people will have to begin building web pages that are standards-compliant not IE-compliant."

    Sir, on the one hand, I think it is commendable that you believe so strongly in the platform-independant Internet. That is the way it is supposed to be, and IE's standard skewing is regrettable. That skewing is now the reality, however, and there is no way Joe User will keep Mozilla installed for more than 5 min once he sees that his pages look different - and standards compliance be damned. The average user wants their pages to look pretty. If mozilla doesn't do that, even in the name of standards compliance, most people will not use it. The only way to gain market share is to support the IE standards.

    For now. :-)

    But if Mozilla does grow more popular, then there's no reason it couldn't take a page from IE's book, and slowly stop supporting IE "Standards" in new releases. Once the user base for Mozilla is large enough - and remember, a period of IE compliance IS needed for this to happen - then if Mozilla starts adopting strict standards compliance, IE might be forced to follow suit. Might.

    It worked for microsoft - could it work here?

    --
    I'm the stranger...posting to /.
    1. Re:This is not realistic by Tack · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I can't quite understand all these posts saying "if pages don't render 'properly' [i.e. same as IE] users will not use Mozilla." I use Mozilla, and often I use IE. I rarely encounter a page that doesn't render usably in Mozilla. Sometimes it doesn't render the same as IE, but it never looks out of place.

      It's possible, yes, that some users won't use Mozilla because it doesn't render their favorite site. These people are a lost cause until those sites become compatible with the standards that exist for web sites. But for the majority of the people, I suspect they will either not notice any problems with Mozilla, or they'll not care much that the odd site does not render perfectly (because it uses IE extensions) when they consider all the added benefits that Mozilla does provide them over IE.

      Jason.

    2. Re:This is not realistic by JamieF · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Seriously, have you never heard of the Web Standards Project?
      http://www.webstandards.org/

      Web developers are sick of coding HTML, JavaScript, and CSS for one browser, and then debugging it for every other browser they have to support. Netscape 4.x and 6.0 are definitely high on the list of sucky browsers to have to support, but IE 5, 5.5, and 6 aren't perfect. Also, IE 5, 5.5, and 6 differ greatly, not to mention the Mac versions of IE which also differ. You can't just target one IE version and get 100% compatibility with the others.

      So, rather than looking at the ridiculous statistics that say stuff like "97% of browser users use MSIE" (which I just don't believe), start looking at stats about which browser AND VERSION your users are using. Surprise, chances are there are a hell of a lot of IE 5 and 5.5 users. Chances are there is no one browser+version that covers the majority of your site's users. Doh! So much for just targeting "one" browser.

      So, forget about this silly notion of "IE won, all web sites will be IE sites from now on." That's not financially viable, since IE is actually serveral products which must be QA'd for separately. The solution that web designers are rallying around is "code to the standard, and debug for supported browsers from there." Screw IE 5, make people upgrade to IE 6. Screw Netscape 4.x, make them upgrade to 6.2, 7.x, or Mozilla 1.0.

      Otherwise, why even bother with HTML at all? If you're going to target Windows only, you're wasting your time trying to get a good GUI user experience and robust application functionality implemented with tools as crappy as HTML, JavaScript and CSS. The only reason to use them is to get thin-client, cross-platform, cross-browser functionality with zero download time. Use Delphi or Visual C++ or Java or something if you want total control over the user experience and you don't care about porting.

  24. Mozilla did as well as IE in the ratings by dlevitan · · Score: 5, Informative
    strange how they give a rating that would barely merit a "C-"

    Actually, they gave it the same rating as they gave IE 6, Netscape 7 PR 1, Netscape 6.1, and one more than Opera 6. So in reality, Mozilla ranked as well as the "best" browsers from MS.

  25. Neglected to mention security by Trolocsis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Beyond its skins and pop-up-killing abilities, however, Mozilla 1.0 doesn't do much more for the average Web surfer than Internet Explorer does."

    Not true... Mozilla allows for faster turn-around times for security patches and updates. Cookies and images can be disabled in actual Emails, something outlook or outlook express fails to do.

    In a security consience world, Mozilla is probably better in security than IE, since Mozilla isn't apart of the OS itself! Granted, Mozilla will have a few security holes, but who would you rather fix them? Microsoft with a 4 week turnaround time, or Mozilla with usually a 1-2 day turnaround.
  26. Re:On first glance.... by brsmith4 · · Score: 5, Informative

    it uses 3 times the memory space as IE. I thought it was supposed to be more efficient?

    Yes... Do you know why??? Because most of IE is integrated into the explorer UI. Most of the bulk of Internet Explorer lies there. When you fire up mozilla, it has to start everything, the rendering engine, its own UI, etc. If you take that into account, Mozilla is far more efficient. Think of it this way: take the time that it takes the explorer shell to start and add the time that it takes for IE to start. Also, add the memory usage. Then compare to mozilla. Have a nice day.

  27. best thing never mentioned: keywords for bookmarks by tswinzig · · Score: 5, Informative

    The coolest thing in mozilla is that I can associate a bookmark with a keyword (even just a letter or two), and go to that bookmark through the URL bar with that keyword, even with search terms.

    E.g. I have this bookmark for dictionary.com:

    http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=% s

    For keyword, I have it set to 'd'. I can lookup a word by typing "d " on the url bar, and hitting enter.

    I do similar things for Google (http://www.google.com/search?q=%s), for IMDB (http://www.imdb.com/Find?select=All&for=%s), and especially for various customer searches with our database search engine at work.

    This feature saves me TONS of time every day. This alone is enough to keep me using Mozilla as long as it remains stable.

    Then you add in the oft-mentioned tabbed browsing, popup blocking, standards compliancy, skinnability, programmability, etc., and it just gets better.

    And don't forget, the perfect complement to tabbed browsing -- saving a group of bookmarks as one item ! Perfect.

    And what about how much more consistently Mozilla handles links for new windows? MSIE has two shitty behaviors to choose from, which drive me crazy. Either you open up a page in a new window each time , or it tries to re-use windows that are already open, usually picking the one I don't want. Even when clicking on bookmarks, it uses this bizarre behavior. I don't know when they added this 'feature', but it drove me bonkerz.

    Jeez, I haven't even gotten to the email client! All the things that drive me nuts in Outlook/Outlook Express are fixed in Mozilla's mail client. It only lacks a couple things I like (Eudora's "redirect" ability, for one).

    Finally a mail client that lets me use IMAP without constantly reminding me that I'm looking at a remote message. (What's this outlook crap with drawing a line through a deleted message? I like for the message to disappear, and the focus to move to the next message... thanks mozilla.)

    Not perfect, but mozilla is getting there.

    --

    "And like that ... he's gone."
  28. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  29. Re:Mozilla ain't that great. by nil_null · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's a RAM hog. It's slow.

    You can cut down the amount of RAM usage by going to Preferences->Advanced->Cache and then reduce the memory cache. Personally, I find its memory usage quite acceptable (I watch the virtual memory usage as well as the physical memory usage). I've heard that IE hides much of its mem usage. But I guess you're on a Solaris box so this is probably not the case for you.

    (You may have noticed that I seem fixated on Mozilla's slowness. [...] I have a Sun workstation that cost more money than Slashdot earns in a year. On this workstation, Internet Explorer takes x seconds to load, Netscape 4 takes 2x seconds to load, and Mozilla takes 15x (!!) seconds to load.

    You're comparing browser load times? If so, that's not a really an important issue, though I find Mozilla loads fast even without the preloading feature. What's important is page rendering times. According to the CNET article, Mozilla was faster in 3 or 4 tests (granted they don't go into detail and talk about other tests).

    In any case do want you want. Continue to use IE exclusively if you please. But many of us are going to be giving Mozilla and Mozilla-based browsers a chance. It has something that IE will most likely never have: it is completely customizable in that we have the source code.

  30. Re:mentions the good, the bad, but never the ugly by cjpez · · Score: 4, Informative
    Or even . . .
    • View
    • Apply Themes
    • Get New Themes
    :)
    --
    Al Qaeda has ninjas!
  31. Re:Don't submit by gambit3 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Thanks for the thought. I appreciate your advice and your honesty.

    However, I'm not going to do it because of propaganda. I'm going to do it because my first experience with an Open Source product (Mozilla), has been excellent. Especially the power to customize it to what I want it to do. This is the one thing that absolutely caught me off guard. I don't have to Beat It Into Submission like I've had to do with commercial to mold it to my liking.

    From what I've read about Linux users, that it also a strength of Linux, and THAT'S why I'll probably give it a try.

    --
    Watch the Teaser Trailer for "The Lightning Thief" Her
  32. BBC story by Brown · · Score: 4, Informative

    The BBC has a story on the 1.0 release of mozilla, including the background of Mozilla and the principles of OpenSource.

    It seems to be a generally favourable overview: "Mozilla is quick, stable, and virtually free of the default links to manufacturers' products that feature so prominently in commercial browsers". Also mentioned is the recent release of OpenOffice. Includes some quotes from Mitchell Baker of mozilla.org.

    Chris

  33. I would have liked to see... by Dixie_Flatline · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...the help documentation filled out before release. A 1.0 release shouldn't have vast gaping holes in the docs that say "Information to be filled in". There are actual things I'd like to know. For instance, is there a way to switch between tabs, using the keyboard? If I can't, it's arguably faster to have multiple windows open and cycle through them that way.

    It's all well and good that the browser has lots of features. They're pretty useless if I can't figure out how to use them.

  34. CNET reviewer is not that professional by Frag-A-Muffin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    First off, I don't use Chatzilla, but from what I read, it gave me no info. on Chatzilla itself.

    The editor reviews Chatzilla as a IM client? You can't really compare. That's like saying, "Computers suck, they don't cut my lawn well". It would have been wiser to perhaps compare Chatzilla to say, BitchX (my IRC client of choice), or XChat or *another IRC client* ??? :)

    --

    AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
  35. Mozilla: useless for the intranet by gblues · · Score: 3, Interesting

    At work, web access is controlled by a Microsoft proxy server. The MS proxy server requires NTLM authentication support. Guess how many browsers support NTLM? (See also: how many Internet browsers has Microsoft released?)

    Given that there is and has been PLENTY of information on the NTLM-over-HTTP authentication process, it is inexcusable for a 1.0 browser to not have support for this protocol.

    Nathan

    1. Re:Mozilla: useless for the intranet by John+Fulmer · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Hmmm. It is inexcusable for Mozilla 1.0, which tries to be a very standards based browser, to support Microsoft's proprietary, non-(w3c)-standard authentication scheme?

      And it is unexcusable for Opera, Konquor, lynx, wget, and every other http-based tool?

      MS Proxy server supports other authentication methods. The manager for the proxy server has chosen to only support NTLM authentication. I would consider *THAT* to be unexcusable, myself...

      If you REALLY must use NTLM authentication, there are installable local proxy servers that can fake out the NTLM authentication for you, like this one.

      jf

      (who manages proxy servers for a living...among other things.)

    2. Re:Mozilla: useless for the intranet by Fastball · · Score: 4, Funny
      At work, web access is controlled by a Microsoft proxy server. The MS proxy server requires NTLM authentication support. Guess how many browsers support NTLM? (See also: how many Internet browsers has Microsoft released?)

      Sucks for you.

    3. Re:Mozilla: useless for the intranet by jonabbey · · Score: 5, Informative

      They are still working on NTLM. Look up bugzilla bug 23679 for details. Or copy the following URL and enter it into your browser (to work around bugzilla's slashdot referer filter): http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23679

      --
      - jon

      Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
  36. Sometimes this is not IE's fault by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Now I haven't used Mozilla 1.0 extensively yet, what with it just having come out, but I can tell you that Netscape 6 and espically 4 have problems of just rendering HTML WRONG. Some examples:

    I was designing a site and, as I'm won't to do, doing the whole thing in a text editor and using IE to look at it. Now because my intention was compatibility, I strictly adhered to the HTML spec (using the W3's validator to check myself) and used only tags I knew that both IE and Netscape implemented. The result was broken in Netscape. It was a 3 column, expanding design somewhat similar to Slashdot's. The code was 100% compliant and rendered properly in IE 4, IE 5 and Opera (don't remember what the current version was then). In Netscape 4.7, half the right hand column failed ot display. It to a real hack ofa workaround to make it display properly on Netscape and still maintain standards compliance.

    Or another time, I was messing around with CSS and managed to create a neat little script that did text dropshadows. It took the length of the text based on font type and size (it only worked with one font) and calculated the correct offset for the top text. It worked really nice. Now I figured a neat trick like this was bound to be broken on anything but IE 6 since that was what I designed it for. To my plesant supprise it wasn't, it rendered great on IE 5 and 6 for both Mac and PC. Not on Netscape 4.7 or 6, however. The alignment was all off. Worse, it was off by different amounts on different platforms. I ended up just canning the idea.

    The problem I've had with Netscape up to this point is that many of the standard they impliment, they impliment WRONG. Now since I haven't used Mozilla much for design checking (I quit doing web design) I can't speak for it's release, but NEtscape 6 which was based form it's code still had some massive problems.

    1. Re:Sometimes this is not IE's fault by wishus · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Or another time, I was messing around with CSS and managed to create a neat little script that did text dropshadows. It took the length of the text based on font type and size (it only worked with one font) and calculated the correct offset for the top text. It worked really nice.

      It is possible to abuse a standard and still have a valid CSS. If your effect relies on a certain font, how is it going to look on a text-only browser like lynx, or a system for the visually impaired? What if the user is using IE, but doesn't have that font installed?

      The purpose of CSS is to separate the formatting of the document from the appearance. The style sheets cascade, meaning that a user could attach his own style sheet to your document to adjust for a disability, or lack of technology.

      You may have written valid CSS, but you abused the standard and tried to do womething it was not intended to do. So, from a certain point of view, you were not "standards compliant" at all.

    2. Re:Sometimes this is not IE's fault by JamieF · · Score: 3, Insightful

      > Now I haven't used Mozilla 1.0 extensively yet, what with it just having come out,
      > but I can tell you that Netscape 6 and espically 4 have problems of just rendering
      > HTML WRONG.

      Netscape 6 came out a *year and a half* ago. The excuse of "Mozilla 1.0 just came out" is totally bogus - Netscape 6.1 and 6.2 have been released since then, and are much better than 6.0. If you really wanted to keep an eye on Mozilla's progress, you could have downloaded nightly builds or stable milestone builds every few weeks, or months. The downloadable installers have been out there, 1 click away from www.mozilla.org, all along. Mozilla 1.0 RC1 has been out for over a month.

      Why not do this:
      1) download Mozilla 1.0 and see how your stuff works
      2) post a comment describing how good or bad Mozilla 1.0 is

      Nobody really cares how Mozilla 0.6 stacks up against IE 6 anymore.

  37. Re:I think it's great. by Asprin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Er, uh, have you tried Opera [opera.com] yet? They practically invented tabbed browsing.

    I love Opera, too, but the first browser *I* ever saw with tabs was the bundled browser from (IIRC***) the now-defunct GNN internet service.... in 1996!

    I'm just shocked it took that long to catch on, it was a pretty cool feature even in a time when IE didn't fully support TABLE!



    *** NOTE: It might have been SPRYnet, not GNN - it *was* six years ago, after all...

    --
    "Lawyers are for sucks."
    - Doug McKenzie
  38. Get the latest beta of America Online by yerricde · · Score: 5, Informative

    We need to find an ISP willing to distribute Mozilla instead of IE.

    Thirty percent of people who connect to the Internet do so through America Online. After AOL's contract with Microsoft (bundling IE in exchange for bundling an AOL icon on the desktop) expired, AOL switched CompuServe to Gecko, and the next version of the AOL client is headed that way as well (AOL keyword: beta).

    --
    Will I retire or break 10K?
  39. The thing I really like about Mozilla... by Trogre · · Score: 3, Informative

    ... is it's standards compliance.
    Try the cool demos, using nothing but fully w3c-compliant HTML/CSS code.

    Try that with IE. Honestly, IE still won't even support transpartent PNG's, effectively rendering (no pun intended) it useless as a serious web browser. No matter how popular it is.

    --
    "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
  40. Re:best thing never mentioned: keywords for bookma by snake_dad · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'd like to mention the possibility to create a bookmark for a group of pages, that you have currently open in separate tabs. Just open several tabs, load one of your favourite news sites in each of them, and create a bookmark, and check the "File as group" checkbox to be able to open all of them in one single mouseclick. I love it.

    --
    karma capped .sig seeking available Slashdot poster for long-term relationship.
  41. not as biased as you think? by dumbArtMajor · · Score: 3, Insightful

    As a web designer who uses OS X, I have no allegiance to M$ at all, especially IE. But I didn't really think the article was that biased, to be honest. I don't know very much about Mozilla, and it broke down the feature set pretty nicely.

    Granted, the comment about rendering differently than IE was just dumb, as anyone who knows anything about standards would tell you. And anyone with intelligence will see through his pandering News.com comment anyway.

    But I'm not sure I'm seeing the "C-" grade. Could it be you're all just a little too close to it, like an artist having his painting criticized? I think it seemed like he liked it for a 1.0 release and he'd like to see some usability improvements so the general public could get down and dirty with it. Maybe it's not fair to compare it to IE6, but that's life. Anyone who's looking for a different browser or just open-minded will get the feeling that this is a viable alternative, and at least you don't have to pay for it like Opera, while getting similar features.

    Bottom line: I downloaded it and I'll check it out.

  42. Re:I think it's great. by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 3, Informative


    Opera is not nearly as good. Apparently, you can start only one instance of Opera. You can start several instances of Mozilla. Each instance can have several tabs. You can save all the tabs in an instance in one bookmark (group bookmarking). That is an extremely useful feature.

    For example, suppose you are doing research on backup systems. You may load 10 or 20 tabs that show backup software reviews and manufacturer web pages. You can save them all and shut down your system. Ten days and many other research projects later, you can bring the backup research pages back by loading that bookmark.

    You can save multiple Opera windows to a file, but the interface is quirky, and the system is not nearly as useful.

    Here's how one person uses group bookmarks:

    When you have several tabs open, go to Bookmarks|File Bookmark... and check the box that says "file as group". Name your bookmark, and each time you open that bookmark all the tabs you had open will reopen. You can even later add bookmarks to the group as if it were a folder. I love that to read my daily comics I don't have to select endless bookmarks or cycle through a list, I just click on the item labeled "Comix" and a dozen tabs open up.

  43. quick question on possible bug by jbert · · Score: 3

    Am I doing something stupid, or does Mozilla 1.0 stop rendering a page at the first control-L (page-break) character?

    This causes me no end of grief since most/all/many RFCs contain embedded RFC characters - meaning I can't read them (e.g. rfc2060).

    Before I create a bugzilla account and report back there, can anyone reading here tell me if I'm missing a config setting/doing something stupid/etc.

    ta.