Slashdot Mirror
DHTML Bug Found in Mozilla 1.2
joyoflinux writes "The people at Mozilla have announced that Mozilla 1.2 contained a bug that caused sites that use DHTML to fail (more on the front page). They have pulled 1.2 from the releases page, pending a 1.2.1 release."
I'd have to say that Mozilla has less show-stopping bugs and fewer exploits than IE.
Until I hear different, that's my impression, too. But personally, I think the Phoenix project based on Mozilla has a lot of promise. It is a blazingly fast browser and is quick to startup, too. Amazing!
At least this bug today wasn't a security-related bug, like *cough* IE *cough* Outlook *cough* windows *cough* *cough* *cough* *cough* *cough* goddamn! *cough* *cough* Microsoft
feck
*cough* *cough* *cough* must... hit.. submit...
proof that Mozilla is well on the way to becoming the world's best browser
The points about spin have already been covered, so can I ask how many banking sites you have tried to use recently?
Just spent half an hour trying (unsuccessfully) to persuade Mozilla not to reduce all the pages on a French government site to 4 point text (why would this be a feature for anyone unless your name is Stuart Little?).
Most of my regular customers have learned how to do ctrl-alt-esc just to kill zombie Mozilla windows. The Mozilla-on-remote-X bug is so longstanding that there is now a lobbying campaign to get it fixed...
So, yes, it's a great bit of software, but it would be more useful if it worked with more than half of the Internet, or if it worked over a network.
Virtually serving coffee
To follow links in this message you will need to copy and then paste them in the HTML bar since Bugzilla won't let /.ers through directly.
Usually I'm delighted to hear when Mozilla releases a new browser as, up until recently, Mozilla was my browser of choice. But when I heard about the Mozilla 1.2 release I was just disappointed.
The Mozilla team had been alerted to major bugs which only recently appeared in the browser like this one and some of these (the latter link also has the comment in which a few poeple suggest Mozilla 1.2 should be unreleased) and yet still the team proceeded with this release. I'm not pretending that it's everyone's experience, but certainly as far as my own experience, Mozilla 1.2 is the first Mozilla browser to step further backwards than forwards - and I know I'm not the only one who thinks that. IMHO, it's a shame that such a great browser which was really beginning to show its potential had to make such a disappointing release. And for all that, I have to wonder what were the critical changes that led to all the aforementioned bugs (the implementation of type ahead searching!?!).
It's too late for me, I've stopped using Mozilla on my Mac (still using the Gecko-based Chimera though) and have halted upgrades of it on my PC, so I guess all there is to say is better luck next time and hopefully we'll be fortunate enough to never see a release as bad as this one ever again.
An important reason to use Mozilla is security. An important concern for anyone trying eCommerce on the web is security. eCommerce web sites often use cookies and they should use https.
The bug is reported in Bugzilla but it appears that some people can circumvent this with script preferences. Regrettably I can't. See also the slashdot thread from the original 1.2 announcement here.
I have kept my 1.1 installation under Linux and still have IE under Win 2K.
See my journal, I write things there
Long story short, a patch got checked in on the trunk before we branched, it caused problems, we noticed it and asked that it got backed out on both the trunk and the 1.2 branch. It got backed out OK on the trunk, but somehow it didn't get fully backed out on the branch...
From the bug: "It looks like the 1.2-branch backout was done incorrectly. The 9 was not changed to an 8."
I missed that day on Slashdot, but I just read that BBC piece, and that article doesn't support your argument. Your argument is that IE has more security flaws than other browsers. While that may or may not be true, the BBC article simply states that IE should be avoided because it's the most targeted: "The easiest way to avoid parasite programs, he says, is to stop using Internet Explorer because it is targeted by many of the adware and spyware companies." This advice is akin to saying that one shouldn't buy a Honda because they are targeted by thieves -- it's not saying that Hondas are easier to steal than other cars. Likewise, the article doesn't say that IE is more vulnerable than other browsers but merely that it's more targeted. IE is definitely more vulnerable than other browsers, but the article doesn't argue it for you.
Neither does that other article. I actually read the whole whitepaper and the article isn't about how Unix is better than Windows (in fact, right in the abstract of the paper, it says that Windows provides much better throughput and slightly better performance than Unix!). Rather, it describes the process by which Hotmail was migrated from Unix to Windows. There are advantages and disadvantages to both platforms and it discusses them well. It describes in good detail how it went about converting the platform and the challenges as they were presented and resolved. It criticizes Windows where appropriate, but it doesn't say that Unix is the better OS as the Slashdot headline and blurb suggest.
I was ok with your post up until you referencing the other articles because they make no sense.