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First Reviews of Mozilla 1.0 Roll In
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.
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!
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.
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.
"The bad: Incompatible with some sites built for Internet Explorer"
Uh. Well. Duh.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
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
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
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
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
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.
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).
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"
"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.
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
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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
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.
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.
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.
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.
% s
E.g. I have this bookmark for dictionary.com:
http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=
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
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Al Qaeda has ninjas!
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
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
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.
and... connect the fucking dots.
Look! A puppy!
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?
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.)
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
Sucks for you.
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