Mozilla 1.1 Beta Out And About

asa writes: "Today mozilla.org released Mozilla 1.1 Beta. New to this release are full-screen mode for Linux, BiDi Hebrew improvements, Arabic shaping improvements for Linux, and significant improvements to Venkman, the best cross-platform JavaScript debugger on the planet. Binaries and release notes available at http://www.mozilla.org/releases/. You can read more about this release at mozilla.org and mozillazine.org and if you want to see how this release fits into the overall 1.1 development cycle there's a pretty picture available at the Mozilla Development Roadmap."

Comments

Mozilla

[blackula]

Could 1.1 be the version that AOL integrates with their client software?

Native SVG?

[Anonymous Coward]

So when should we expect native SVG support?
The last time I checked, the holdup was the license on mathlib.

yipee...but

[tanveer1979]

I would like to see better flash support, a better java, and more speed(i dunno aout linux but on my solaris it is slow :-( ). But overall a good package and if we iron out the rough edges it is the best browser there is. :-).

Re:yipee...but

[x-dj]

Well as a designer I would really love for mozilla to rid themselves of the (netscape created) embed tag, it has been removed from XHTML 1.0 specs. The problem is for Mozilla users to view a flash movie the embed tag needs to be there.

There are ways around this such as creating your own DTD, but the w3c validator does not do custom DTD's. or using this hideous workaround. http://www.outofthetrees.co.uk/resources/flash_ver sus_standards.php

Please Mozilla spare us from the embed tag.

Netscape profile-trashing bug still present

[Animats]

The infamous profile-trashing between versions bug is still present. Comments indicate that it has to be fixed before Mozilla 1.x goes out as Netscape, or Netscape won't coexist with itself.

Hebrew Support?

[Erwos]

Actually, I've had really good luck with Hebrew support in Linux, much more so than Windows. I don't visit all too many Hebrew sites, but it seems to me everything's been rendering fine for a while now. The spacing is a little dodgy, though, and that could be what was fixed. That'd be nice.

In case any of you are paticularly interested in seeing an example (even if ya can't read it), check out:
http://www.haaretz.co.il

Conversely, a good check of Arabic support is at:
http://www.wafa.pna.net/AraText/arabic.htm

I can see that using Moz 1.0rc1, some of that Arabic is _definitely_ not rendering correctly. I'm not a speaker of the language, but it's pretty obvious some stuff is being rendered incorrectly.

I linked both an Israeli web site and a Palestinian web site to keep accusations of political bias away. It seems there's always _someone_ who would complain if I just gave an Israeli website in both Arabic and Hebrew. Everyone happy?

-Erwos

Re:Great on OS X

[Anonymous Cowrad]

Yeah, but there's no way I can see to disable font smoothing. I understand that most people thing font smoothing is the best thing since gravy fries, but I can't stand it in a browser.

Oh, well, back to 1.0.

Yes, I am too stupid to fill out a bug report.

The best debugger until you have to use it

[nkyad]

First, let me assure you this is not a troll. I have been using Mozilla as my main browser for more than a year now, both under Linux and Windows. Nowadays it is my sole browser, and I open IE only when I need to test an application or check a page design.

Venkman may well become a good debugger one day, but the version that comes with Mozilla 1.0 is a little more than a toy, a nice menu entry to have under "Web Development". It is absolutely unusable under real world situations. And the traditional lack of real documentation only adds to it uselessness.

So, calling Venkman "the best" anything is just streching reality a little too far, even for people like me who gain their living mostly developing under/for/with Free Software.

New bookmarklets for Mozilla

[jesser]

Bookmarklets are bookmarks containing javascript code. Instead of taking you to another page, bookmarklets do things with/to the current page. Here are some bookmarklets for Mozilla that I have added since Mozilla 1.0:

"Fixing" annoying web sites:

• Zap event handlers: removes event handlers, including those responsible for blind links and exit pop-up ads.
• Zap embeds: removes java, flash, background music, and iframes from a page.
• Zap colors: makes text black on a white background, and makes links blue and purple.
• Zap: combines "zap embeds", "zap colors", and "zap event handlers".
• Test styles: type in CSS rules to experiment or to create a temporary user style sheet.

Web development:

• View Style Sheets
• View Scripts
• View Script Variables

Other:

• Toggle checkboxes
• Transfer cookies: creates a bookmarklet you can use to move cookies from one browser to another.
• Number rows in each HTML table

Several of these bookmarklets also work in IE 5.5, to the extent that IE supports DOM Level 2 and doesn't make me go too far out of my way to accommodate its quirks.

Re:Making it red?

[crisco]

Quick and dirty version at http://files.cothrun.com/red-mozilla-lizard.jpg.

There is some fringing around the 'captured' butterfly and the hue shift to red made the eye area green, I should have pulled that area out of the selection. The purple underbelly is a little disturbing as well. Maybe I'll revisit this after I've had some sleep.

Mad props to the original poster who owns all copyrights and such.

Misconceptions in Corporate Environments

[havardi]

Maricopa Community Colleges in Arizona is soon to be moving from Netscape 4.x to Internet Explorer as it's supported official browser. Much to my frustration, cited reasons for the move are things like "there has been no indication of a Netscape Communicator 5.0 release. AOL has dropped support for LDAP in 'Netscape Navigator 6.x' which is not as robust as the communicator product was. Overall lack of development and support"

I think Netscape shot itself in the foot when it released Netscape 6.0 w/o LDAP support. The clueless leaders haven't even heard of Mozilla, and they don't know LDAP support has returned, and that roaming profile support is in development. So now they are back in Microsoft's pocket, going to Outlook w/ Exchange to replace the LDAP features they think are missing in Netscape (Navigator?) 6.x. Yeah, they don't even realize it is just "Netscape" now, and should be called "Communicator" if anything else.

No SVG!

[oever]

Now that MathML is in Mozilla, we're all waiting for SVG. Too bad it's not in the beta.

There is a SVG enabled build for Windows, but not for Linux )-;

XFT and new Mozilla versions?

[thesolo]

I'm currently running Mozilla 1.0 with XFT (Available here: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/nightly/experim ental/xft/Red_Hat_7x_RPMS/1.0/SRPMS/), and it is just excellent. The font smoothing provided by XFT makes Mozilla look just amazing. (if you've never seen it, there is a nice screenshot available here) So, here is my question:

Is there anyway to upgrade Mozilla while still keeping the XFT core?? I think even doing a rpm -Uvh will overwrite the XFT portion and give me a nice, new 1.1b with crumbly looking fonts again, which I don't want to do. If anyone has any idea on how I can do this, please let me know. Thanks!!

Installer :-(

[Anonymous Coward]

There's just something that still bothers me... Why does he have to remove the /usr/local/mozilla? (net installer at least) He could at least remove everything, but not the plugins directory...
If someone forgets to save the plugins, it's a little bitxy to go over and search for them again...

Re:Performance on Linux?

[dmnic]

not just Linux. on Windows 2000 Pro(sp2), Linux is extremely memory AND CPU hungry. even more memory hungry if you use the "quick start" function....which in all honesty, doesnt speed up the mozilla start process like it says it should.

I peronally dont mind the somewhat slower page rendering times, mainly because I love the tab features.

but for my gateway(router, ftp, apache, furthur s/ling) I'm still using IE5 as my browser(IE6 is horrible)