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Mozilla 1.1 Alpha Released

theBrownfury writes: "Mozilla.org has released Mozilla 1.1 alpha, the first post 1.0 milestone. This release has been in the works for almost 2 months now incorporating over 1700 bug fixes and more than a dozen new features. Including: Quartz rendering for OS X 10.1.5 users, new layout performance enhancements targeted at DHTML, faster startup times and more. Here are the release notes and the link to the releases page or FTP for downloads."

29 of 380 comments (clear)

  1. excuse me but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    This was released days ago. I _do not_ mean to troll, but this really is rather latesom.

    Mz 1.1 is quite stable really. Only one crash in the several days I've been using it.

    Btw, you need to go into the preferences and turn pipelined http on - it's off by default. In my experience, it increases speed by about ~25%. Very good stuff.

    1. Re:excuse me but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      If it's one of 'those' sites that positions everything with 300byte gifs, it loads alot faster than 25%.

      I benchmarked it against IE on one of my p0rn sites, it loaded the page in under a second, IE took over 4, every time.

    2. Re:excuse me but by The+Smith · · Score: 2, Informative
      on my blazing slow 28.8* I have found that it is neither faster or slow than non-pipelined browsing

      In that case your connection will just about always be saturated, and you'll get no benefit from `pipelining', which works by downloading several files at a time. It's only useful if you usually have some unused bandwidth.

    3. Re:excuse me but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative
      Btw, you need to go into the preferences and turn pipelined http on - it's off by default. In my experience, it increases speed by about ~25%. Very good stuff.

      Just so people know: Not all http-servers support pipelining properly. While these semi-broken servers wont crash Mozilla you may sometimes notice http-headers spilling on to the screen. See bugzilla entry #144574.

    4. Re:excuse me but by asa · · Score: 3, Informative

      Mozilla 1.1 Alpha was not released "days ago". It was released on 2002-06-11 in the late afternoon.

      --Asa

  2. Re:Java Problems... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    You can't run Java applets when you don't have a Java Virtual Machine installed. By default, Mozilla doesn't have one installed.

    Head over to:
    http://java.sun.com/products/plugin/index.htm l

  3. Well done to the team (again) but.. by wackybrit · · Score: 2, Informative

    Once again we have to say well done to the Mozilla team for finally delivering a very usable product. It's great to jump between Linux and Windows and to have the same browser. Some people have complained about its memory use, but if your machine is halfway decent, it's really a simple Web browser that gets the job done.

    However, there are several things that stop me from using it 100% of the time. I still stick to IE for about 25% of sites, because.. of all the little bugs! I'm hoping some have been cleared up in this Alpha. They include:

    * Keyboard not responding sometimes when you open a new Mozilla window (this is in Bugzilla)

    * When you click on some links, it doesn't go to the destination.. and it just displays a picture off of the current page! Hit Refresh and you finally go on your way.

    * Mozilla is less system tolerant than IE. Mozilla is often the first application to lose its icons and its interface starts falling to pieces. This is probably because of my memory or the CPU overheating.. but IE remains stable until the last minute.

    * Mozilla often bawks if you're loading large JPEGs into it direct from hard disk.. and it just displays a blank/white screen with scrollbars.

    * Many sites still don't display well in Mozilla. This is the Web developer's fault, but still.. Mozilla can do all of those DHTML menus and stuff, yet I still run into problems on sites that use them. An optional 'IE compliancy' patch in Mozilla would be very very useful!

    1. Re:Well done to the team (again) but.. by 1010011010 · · Score: 3, Informative

      * Selecting text for copy/paste is difficult. I often have to select more than I want, and then trim it down.

      * In the Windows browser, selecting text will even do strange things like go back the the previous page, or close the browser window! It may be the gestures getting confused, but it's highly annoying.

      --
      Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
    2. Re:Well done to the team (again) but.. by Cally · · Score: 5, Informative
      * "IE compatability mode" -- if you do View / Page info, you'll see that pages without a DTD at the top are rendered in "quirks" mode. This tries to cope with broken HTML of the sort that litters the web.

      Tobe honest, I don't see the other problems you mention. When you say "mozilla is often the first app to lose its icons and its interface starts falling to pieces..." -- well this just never happens to me, on NT4 or Linux. Are you trying to use win9x or something? If so, I suggest you nuke that PoS first, install a real operating system (I'd count NT as "real", others may disagree ;) and a pound gets a penny most of your issues will clear up.

      The other major cause of issues is installing over a previous version. Try nuking your ~/mozilla (on Windows: %SYSTEMROOT%/profiles/[username]/Application Data/Mozilla ) and reinstalling.

      --
      "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
    3. Re:Well done to the team (again) but.. by delphi125 · · Score: 3, Informative
      They also include:

      * Not supporting my (home) wheel mouse. Telling users they need new drivers is not an option!

      * Losing an entire folder of bookmarks being dragged. The bookmark section in general needs a fair amount of work

      Despite that, the pop-under tabbed browsing is the best thing since er the wheel mouse. I just want 'em both!

    4. Re:Well done to the team (again) but.. by stang · · Score: 5, Informative

      this is one of the main complaints I have about IE, stoping a selection mid-word is almost impossible using it.

      I just figured this one out the other day.

      To select a portion of the word, drag your cursor so that the next word is highlighted, then back up. IE extends the selection word by word, but retracts it character by character.

      --
      "200 Quatloos on the newcomer!" "300 Quatloos against!"
    5. Re:Well done to the team (again) but.. by Perl-Pusher · · Score: 2, Informative

      Not supporting my (home) wheel mouse. Telling users they need new drivers is not an option!

      How many times have people had to go to a hardware company's support site to get the latest drivers for their hardware? Or even the latest version of ActiveX to support the new game they want to install? In windows this has been a fact of life for years and this is not a mozilla only problem. At least you have an option of getting a new driver, most hardware companies are completely oblivious to anything but windows.
      I've been using mozilla for almost 2 years. I've never had a problem with the wheel mouse. I've installed it on both linux & windows machines. And I've used several brands of wheel mice including the genius net mouse which is'nt even a wheel but a toggle switch really. And they all worked perfectly. You need to give alot more information.

    6. Re:Well done to the team (again) but.. by Neil+Watson · · Score: 5, Informative
      When you click on some links, it doesn't go to the destination.. and it just displays a picture off of the current page! Hit Refresh and you finally go on your way.


      If you are using a proxy like junkbusters then This will solve your problem:


      10.3. I'm using a transparent proxy (such as Junkbuster) and I'm having weird browsing problems. What's happening?

      Some transparent proxies (including some versions of Junkbuster) do not handle HTTP/1.1 properly. The first thing to try is to go to Edit | Preferences | Advanced | HTTP Networking and select 'Use HTTP 1.0'.

    7. Re:Well done to the team (again) but.. by sab39 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Huh. I've had antialiasing in mozilla since about 0.9.9... I don't know exactly how it was turned on because I use the debian packages, but those packages give you a nice little option at install time of whether to enable antialiased fonts.

      Admittedly I needed a bit of hackery to set the font in the UI, because by default the UI font uses a non-antialiased font (it picks up the GTK setting and there's no GUI to change that). But you can even override that easily by putting the following in a file called userChrome.css in your profile directory:

      dialog, window, menu, menuitem {font-family: sans-serif !important}

      That last remaining issue will go away when the port to GTK2 is completed because GTK2 will allow an antialiased font to be the default. Alternatively, you *might* be able to pick a truetype font as your default GTK font and have it work now, but I haven't tried that so I'm not sure.

      Stuart.

    8. Re:Well done to the team (again) but.. by Hector73 · · Score: 2, Informative



      this is one of the main complaints I have about IE, stoping a selection mid-word is almost impossible using it.

      I just figured this one out the other day.

      To select a portion of the word, drag your cursor so that the next word is highlighted, then back up. IE extends the selection word by word, but retracts it character by character.


      Like it or not (and I am in the "not" camp) that's the Microsoft usability standard. All their apps
      (except Office which has its own set of usability standards) do this. Makes using WordPad as a source editor quite difficult...

  4. Re:Java Problems... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Mozilla needs at least Java 1.3.1_02 on Windows and Java 1.4.0_01 on Linux for applets to work properly.

    Even then, lots of applets are MS pseudo-java (and only work in the Microsoft VM) rather than real Sun/IBM/etc. Java. AFAIK the games.yahoo.com used the MS-Java specific crap (for no good reason) last time I checked.

    Applets actually written for Java 1.3/1.4 work brilliantly, I find, and the fact that 1.4 applets get the DOM of the page they are embedded in is cool, too. Next step: drag-n-drop applets in Composer :-).

  5. roadmap: Re:This is a milestone by leuk_he · · Score: 2, Informative

    and to fill in the next mozilla realaes lets look at the roadmap:

    1.1alpha 12-Jun-2002
    1.1beta 17-Jul-2002
    1.1 09-Aug-2002

    Security fixes in mozilla 1.0 not included here.

  6. Re:Java Problems... by BabyDave · · Score: 1, Informative
    In my experience, when you have installed a Java VM there are numerous problems, ranging from slight display glitches in the applets, to the occasional random browser implosion. These problems don't occur when you're using IE.

    [For reference, this is with Mozilla 1.0 and Sun's JRE, either 1.3.1 and 1.4.0_01. YMMV with other VMs]

  7. Re:Java Problems... by GnomeKing · · Score: 2, Informative

    I was playing dominoes on games.yahoo.com just last night - on mozilla 1.0

    I had a lot of trouble installing java on moz 0.9.8 a while ago, but when I did a full reinstall with 1.0 it went without a hitch, installed, and runs absolutely perfectly...

  8. Re:DoS in Mozilla/X by kyhwana · · Score: 2, Informative

    Well, the DoS doesn't happen in any of the other browser for X, so it'd be nice if mozilla could handle it the same way.

    --
    My email addy? should be easy enough.
  9. Re:1700 bugs?!?!?! by DrXym · · Score: 5, Informative
    I'll bite.


    So how many bugs are open on IE? How do you know it's 10x as many bugs? For that matter, how do you actually raise a bug on IE if you find one? Microsoft do their best to hide that kind of information.


    The fact is Internet Explorer is closed source. You have no idea how many bugs are open on it, how many are fixed between builds, the quality of patches, the quality of the code or even what features are being worked on at any given time. Mozilla allows you to do all which consequently means a lot of people are motivated to find and reports bugs and often submit patches.


    Besides, a lot of the so-called bugs on mozilla are covering feature work, more deal with embedding and API cleanup, more are dupes, more are issues restricted to specific sites and more deal with issues on specific platforms. They might all be labelled "bugs" but the number of crash/non-functional/quirk issues are actually a subset.

  10. Re:Java Problems...Solution by PoiBoy · · Score: 2, Informative
    Previously I had just copied the entire plugins subdirectory over to the most recent Mozilla release. For the past few versions, whenever a Java app tried to launch it's own window, Mozilla would completely crash.

    Here's the solution: cd over /usr/local/mozilla-1.0/, remove all Java-related files and the java2 directory. Then go to java.sun.com and reinstall.

    Everything now seems to work fine. Don't ask me why it works, though.

    --
    Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
  11. Re:why mozilla still sucks by Christopher+Whitt · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you check mozilla.org you'll see that 1.1a is Mozilla 1.1 ALPHA! The roadmap clarifies more:

    The mozilla 1.0 stable branch will continue as 1.0.x, and the 1.x series will continue as test milestones for evaluation of the latest features added to the trunk development. Each release cycle will be about 13 weeks long, consisting of 5 weeks work then an ALPHA release, another 5 weeks then a BETA release, then a week or so freeze before the milestone.

    This release is 1.1 ALPHA. Lots of nice things in there for those who are following Moz and don't mind the shortcomings, but if you just want to complain, stick to IE.

  12. Poor mozilla font rendering in Red Hat 7.3 by jonabbey · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually, I found that the biggest problem with Mozilla in RedHat 7.3 was that I had installed the AbiWord word processor when I installed the system. AbiWord happens to have some really poor quality fonts named according to the Microsoft convention.. Arial, etc. So any web page that gives you something like

    <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">

    will cause Mozilla on X to go and find the lousy AbiWord fonts, no matter what you try and do in the Mozilla font preferences.

    The solution is to comment out the reference to the AbiSuite fonts in /etc/X11/fs/config from finding the AbiWord MS-named fonts.

    Mozilla on RedHat 7.3 was totally unusable until I did this.

  13. Re:Java Problems... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative
    Java 1.4.0_01 on Linux for applets to work properly

    Both Mozilla 0.9x and 1.x on both Linux x86 and PPC run most of applets published on the web perfectly, being installed with Java 1.3.x. So, relax your Java requirement for Linux platforms.

    Moreover, Java 1.4 has lots of compatibility issues with software written for Java 1.3.x For example, Tomcat, JBoss and PostgreSQL JDBC both fail to work with Java 1.4. So, don't recommend java 1.4 once it's broken.

    Does anyone know when Sun is going to fix broken compatibility of Java 1.4.x ?

  14. Re:SVG support? by MauricioC · · Score: 2, Informative

    That's --enable-svg

    The reason is a licensing issue related to libart, AFAIK

  15. Re:how do i???! by shadowofdarkness · · Score: 2, Informative

    It is as simple as

    ctrl+t

  16. Re:Plugins by RealityThreek · · Score: 2, Informative

    Quit being ignorant.

    Mozilla is not meant as an end user application. It is meant as a resource for developers and bug testers. The fact that you even thought it was for end users shows how good of a job they are really doing. This point as been mentioned numerous times, and it's even stated when you download Mozilla.

    There are distributions of Mozilla meant for end users. Netscape 6.0+, Galleon, hopefully AOL soon. =)

    --
    :wq
  17. Re:Argh by maXter · · Score: 2, Informative

    Select the text in your xterm. Click the middle mouse button anywhere other than a link in the browser window. Voila.

    --

    Ryan Patrick Harris (maxter)
    http://maxtersbox.net University of Michigan