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.

Comments

hahaha

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:hahaha

[CynicTheHedgehog]

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.

Newspeak

[Mr Guy]

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"

Built for IE!

[hkhanna]

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

Re:Built for IE!

[stefanlasiewski]

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.

Re:Built for IE!

[gambit3]

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.

Re:Built for IE!

[Elwood P Dowd]

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.

Funniest line in the Cnet Review

[vjmurphy]

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

Uh. Well. Duh.

Re:C-Nut review is narrow minded

[nuggz]

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.

Make Mozilla Cooler in MacOS X 10.1.5

[toupsie]

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.

Re:Mozilla ain't that great.

[rainwalker]

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.

This is not realistic

[ColGraff]

"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?

Re:This is not realistic

[Tack]

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.

Mozilla did as well as IE in the ratings

[dlevitan]

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.

Neglected to mention security

[Trolocsis]

"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.

Re:On first glance....

[brsmith4]

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.

best thing never mentioned: keywords for bookmarks

[tswinzig]

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.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:it doesn't surprise me that CNET gave a 7

[denshi]

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.

Re:Don't submit

[gambit3]

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.

Get the latest beta of America Online

[yerricde]

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).

Re:Mozilla: useless for the intranet

[John Fulmer]

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.)

Re:best thing never mentioned: keywords for bookma

[snake_dad]

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.

Re:Mozilla: useless for the intranet

[jonabbey]

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