Mozilla 1.2.1 Released

I shouldn't be allowed to work before coffee- I posted this at like 8:20 and must've forgotten to click that all important 'Save' button. Hey, Everyone's favorite web browser besides Chimera has released version 1.2.1. The fix includes security patches so it probably wouldn't hurt to snag it if you're running it.

Comments

FP

[Anonymous Coward]

First Mozilla 1.2.1 Post

Re:FP

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW, that FP was posted using Mozilla 1.2.1 which proves its simply the fastest.

Re:FP

[Anonymous Coward]

so fast it SLOW hahaAHA

fuk u grammar asses

in your asses

ass ass ass

Re:FP

[Anonymous Coward]

which proves its simply the fastest.

Your message makes no sense.

Re:FP

[Anonymous Coward]

YOU == STUPID
PARENT == FUNNY

uNF

[Anonymous Coward]

uNf uNF!!!

Lame

[Anonymous Coward]

At this rate Mozilla will catch up with Netscapes Numbering in.. oh.. 3 days.

First post

[Anonymous Coward]

...possibly

Re:First post

[Anonymous Coward]

haha, not only did i get FP, I posted it with Mozilla 1.2.1

Slashdotted already!

[Anonymous Coward]

Use a mirror!

What does that mean in english?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell?

Yay first post

[Anonymous Coward]

did i get it?

Whee

ruckerz

Chimera

[Anonymous Coward]

best web browser ever!

Re:Chimera

[Ponty]

It might be worth consideration if the text boxes worked *vaguely* like proper Mac OS X text fields. No spell checking, completely bozofied text selection (try double-clicking and dragging or triple clicking.) It's a nice try but it'll never replace OmniWeb for anything other than fancy DHTML or JavaScript sites that don't work in OW.

Is it

[Anonymous Coward]

YES!!!!!

First Poist

FIRST PENIS POST

[Anonymous Coward]

(_)_)===(,,,)===D ~o ~o ~O I hope this post doesn't look too much like ASCII art...

I found the problem...

[mschoolbus]

I posted this at like 8:20 and must've forgotten to click that all important 'Save' button.

Well maybe that is the problem, editors keep accidently hitting the save button throughout the day... I am sure we will see this story yet again... =P

Re:I found the problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe 1.2.1 will fix that problem where it somehow makes people post duplicate data throughout the day?

I'm excited!

Glad to see...

[Smelly Jeffrey]

that mozilla is quick at fixing their software when problems arise. Too bad that the DHTML bug came up in the first place. But I say "good job moz" for their fast repairs.

Re:Glad to see...

[Havokmon]

that mozilla is quick at fixing their software when problems arise. Too bad that the DHTML bug came up in the first place. But I say "good job moz" for their fast repairs.

Yeah, it almost seemed to big for them to miss. But when I was browsing the bug # referenced in Buzilla, it looks as if the patch for that issue and some other patches just didn't get committed for some reason.

Re:Glad to see...

[greechneb]

I have to agree. I've been using the nightly builds of 1.3a for about 3 weeks or so, and they are as reliable as IE6 SP1 is. I won't make any comments about what that implies though...

anyway, good job mozilla team, and keep up the great work!

Re:Glad to see...

[Anonymous Coward]

Since it was such a small fix the reason why it took so long for the fixed version to be released is that Mozilla is a monstrosity, and it took SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO long to build it.

That's why I use fast and small browsers, like this browser and another great browser on my systems.

Re:Glad to see...

[ceejayoz]

I must have gotten a bad build... Mozilla used up 260 megs virtual memory, slowed my comp to a crawl.

Back to 1.2 beta for me... downloading 1.2.1 now :-)

Re:Glad to see...

[Sex_On_The_Beach]

Gee MS would've released a fix/patch faster than you can say "SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS"

Re:Glad to see...

[rapidweather]

I tried to download the installer yesterday, prior to the DHTML repair, and on a machine running Mandrake 8.0, 128 mb ram, it crashed a couple of times, then wouldn't do at all. Then I tried to get the tarball, and that bogged down too. I'll try again...

Re:Glad to see...

[MntlChaos]

funny. I installed 1.3a (today's build 08) and crashed within 5 minutes. fine since then though. hmmmm....

Re:Glad to see...

[audities]

Yea, 1.3(x) is the one to use. NEWSFILTERS!!

Yay! Mozilla!

[stratjakt]

Whats that again?

Re:Yay! Mozilla!

[rocket97]

A web browser... I hope you were just kidding but just in case thought I would tell you.

Re:Yay! Mozilla!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a cross between your mom and Godzilla.

Re:Yay! Mozilla!

[MadAhab]

It's a cross between your mom and Godzilla.

That is to say, it's like your mom, only prettier.

Re:Yay! Mozilla!

[Anonymous Coward]

When it's 8pm and you're at work, your message SI TEH FUNI! I LAF!

Ps. deadlines suck.
Pps. Yes I know the irony of "a deadline is approaching and I am reading Slashdot"

dupe!

[Anonymous Coward]

reported here yesterday

DHTML Patch

[rherbert]

Since the story didn't mention it, the only difference between 1.2 and 1.2.1 is the fix for the DHTML bug (#182500).

Re:DHTML Patch

[Anonvmous Coward]

"Since the story didn't mention it, the only difference between 1.2 and 1.2.1 is the fix for the DHTML bug (#182500)."

Good thing this made front page news, eh? Heh. You know how version 1.2.1 of any piece of software is sooOOOoo highly anticipated.

Piece of advice for story submitters out there: Not every single person on Slashdot gives a rootin toot about Mozilla. Consider putting a little background in your posts. A little blurb like "This is significant because 1.2 was pulled due to a bug that 1.2.1 now fixes." would prevent people like me from making sarcastic comments (like the one above) about the importance of the news.

Re:DHTML Patch

[Anonymous Coward]

Piece of advice for arrogant n00bs: most story submitters don't give a damn what you think regarding "importance of news".

granted this was a dumb story, but your post was dumber.

Uh oh, Taco is high

[StandardCell]

"I shouldn't be allowed to work before coffee- I posted this at like 8:20" For a minute there, I thought he said he posted this on 420...

security fixes? not really

[aromanos]

From the release notes: "The only difference between the two releases [1.2 vs 1.2.1] is the fix for this bug (Bug 182500)." And it was a DHTML bug, not a security bug. -- Andrés

Re:security fixes? not really

[szo]

The security fixes are in 1.2 (and hence in 1.2.1) compared to pre-1.2 versions.

But I'm sure you already knew that!

Szo

Re:security fixes? not really

[jilles]

I installed 1.2 as soon as it was released. I appreciate the quick update but must say I didn't notice anything wrong with the pages I visited. Apparently, this bug mostly affected some advertisements on some sites (cnn amongst others). You'd almost consider it a feature because of this.

Re:security fixes? not really

[ospirata]

Well, there is another difference, at least at the release notes. The Mozilla staff recomends us to upgrade our Macromedia Flash version to Beta 6. They say that it fix the crash when openning Flash content on a remote display.

Re:security fixes? not really

[DaemonGem]

I agree, I didn't have any problems either. I remember the 1.2 beta version was horrible. After about 10 uses of Mozilla Mail, the program would just stop opening. Thankfully, I haven't had that happen with 1.2 so far. I downloaded 1.2 when it came out, and I downloaded 1.2.1. I figure that whatever it fixes, it's better to have, than not to have. On the other hand, I don't visit CNN ;-). -Dae

Re:security fixes? not really

[vsync64]

I said this elsewhere. I also pasted a tangentially related rant about Smart Tags.

Re:security fixes? not really

[BJH]

I already tried this (with The Browser Formerly Known As Phoenix), and it works fine.

Trolling avoidance FAQ V1.1

[gazbo]

Changelog:

V1.1 - Added Appendix-A for general posting guidelines suggested by AC (almost verbatim, minor html changes only)
V1.0b - First revision

Introduction:

Greetings Slashdot. I have noticed that trolls on Slashdot are having too easy a time recently, with the most random gibberish getting modded up and many child comments (bites) attached to it. This recent trouble can only realistically be due to an influx of newbies, so I have composed this FAQ to bring newbies up to speed and recognise trolls for the scum that they are.

On clichés:

I have deliberately elected to avoid the greatest cliché of FAQs, by not actually answering any questions, frequently asked or otherwise. Instead this will be an informative guide.

The FAQ:

Moderation :
This section gives guidelines on when to/when NOT to moderate.

• Groupthink moderation: When deciding whether to moderate a post, take no cues from existing moderations. It is well known in the trolling (often referred to as 'trollerizing') community that the first moderation is critical; if somebody spots you as a troll, all subsequent moderations are likely to be troll. If, however, the first moderator mistakenly thinks it is insightful, then the rest of the moderators will think it is insightful too. Avoid this mentality and ignore current moderations entirely. Judge a post solely on its merits, ignoring what others think.
• Follow the links: Related to the point above, a comment with links (often purporting to be a mirror or further information) will often get moderated very highly. It seems the mentality is that the comment has informative looking links, and is moderated as insightful, so it must be insightful, right? Wrong. All it takes is one moderator to assume it is legitimate and moderate it up, the rest of the moderators then partake in groupthink moderation. You will not. Click on all the links and read the linked articles. If they are informative, mod them up. If they are 'ghostsee links' (a horrific image of a distended anus) then mod them as trolls. If you do not wish to follow the links, then don't moderate the post. Simple.
• Check the facts: If a post produces a mass of information, be it figures, quotes or whatever, check his sources! It may be that the figures are made up off the top of his twisted head; if no sources are offered and Google doesn't turn up anything, the chances are that it is made up. Scientists wouldn't believe a paper with no cited references. Follow the rules that should be becoming clear: if the information checks out and is informative, mod him up. If it totally doesn't check out and seems to be made up, mod him down. When in doubt? Don't moderate. And remember the golden rule - other people's moderations are no guide to veracity. Avoid groupthink moderation.
• What's in a name: Do not moderate people up based on their name. There are two facets to this:
  1. If somebody writes a shit comment, it deserves modding down. Just because Alan Cox happened to write it makes it no more insightful than if 'Peg Troll' wrote it. Do not moderate up famous people.
  2. ...And it probably isn't them. Does $famousPerson even post on Slashdot? Are you sure that's how they spell their name? Does the name say 'Alan Cox' or 'by Alan Cox'? The latter of the two is very hard to spot in context. Check their UID - then check their posting history. Check that they are who they say they are. Even if they are, you should generally not moderate them based on their fame unless it is because they are commenting on an area in which they have specialist knowledge.
• What's in a name revisited: Do not moderate them up because they are female. Firstly, they are almost certainly men pretending to be females exploiting this weakness that I am now advising you of. Secondly, even if they are female, even if they would like you because you modded them up, moderation is ANONYMOUS. Remember, moderate up the quality of the post and trolls are scuppered from the start.
• Opinions: Feel free to moderate up personal opinions - just don't do it solely because they agree with your point of view. If it is well argued, eloquent, mod it up. If it is badly argued, a stereotype taken to extremes, mod it down. If it takes things too far but happens to agree with your point of view, it is likely a troll looking for your kneejerk mod. Even if it's not, it doesn't deserve modding up as it takes things too far.

Commenting :
This section gives guidelines on when to and when not to reply to a comment. This will cover several of the points made in the moderation section.

• Groupthink moderation: You see a comment at +5 Insightful and yet discover it is a 'ghostsee link'. It may be appropriate here to post a simple reply warning people of this fact. Do not criticise the groupthink moderation else you will be modded down yourself. It will also cause delight for the troll who knows that your voice will be drowned out by being modded down, whilst his post is sitting comfortably at +5.
• Check the facts: Much the same as with moderation. If the facts don't check out, ignore him; he is a troll. Don't point out it is made up, it is up to the moderators to remove noise from the strong signal of Slashdot. If it gets modded up, that is not your problem; the moderator needs guiding to this FAQ. If you cannot draw conclusive evidence either way, simply ask for sources - if he's a troll he'll not reply. If it's a genuine post and he can't come up with any then he is too stupid to discuss with. If he comes up with sources then proceed to post an equally well reasoned argument and continue the well constructed debates that makes Slashdot what it is.
• What's in a name: Do not reply to somebody because they are famous. A vacuous response to Alan Cox will not get you recognised in the community. He will not reply with "Here's a crazy idea, why don't you help maintain the VM?" even if he is the real thing. You will look like a foolish fanboy, especially if it turns out it was a troll.
• What's in a name revisited: Same as above. Nobody has ever got a shag on Slashdot by replying to a female, especially by pathetically defending 'her' against all attacks. Remember - 98% of Slashdot is male. 80% of the remainder do not comment. 80% of that remainder will not have a clearly identifiable female name. If you are talking to a female name, it is almost certain it is a male troll. And there is nothing more satisfying to troll than seeing a clueless 'slashrobot' trying to socialise with a woman they've never met based purely on gender. Especially when the gender is wrong.
• Opinions: If their opinions are completely wacky and over the top, even if they agree with you, do not reply. They are almost certainly trolls and even if they weren't it should be clear that you will not have a rational argument.
• Factual inaccuracies: If someone makes a host of simple mistakes, it is probably a troll and needs no correction. For example, if somebody is discussing the inner workings of the Linux virtual memory system and they refer to Linux 8.0, it is a fair guess that they know the difference between a kernel and a distribution. This means that the post is a troll; do NOT correct him, that is what he was after when he wrote it. Here is a list of things to look out for:
  • Linux 8 - as discussed, there is nobody on Slashdot who doesn't know the difference between the kernel and Redhat.
  • Lunix - nobody posts this accidentally. Yes, we all know that there is a different OS called Lunix and you pointing it out is not clever - the troll will be even more happy with this than a plain correction.
  • O(log n) - if someone gets the big-o expression for an algorithm or process wrong, think how that came to be. They made it up off the top of their head. People can have opinions on many things, but they cannot be of the opinion that the TSP is O(n log n) - it is just wrong. The only exception is if somebody tentatively suggests that they vaguely remember that it might be O(...) but they aren't sure.
  • Dijkstra - this man was a genius, but even he could not invent as many algorithms as trolls attribute to him.
  • GPL - Anybody asserting that their lawyers told them X about the GPL where you know X to be wrong. If this man had really consulted lawyers, do you think that the lawyers would get wrong that which you got right?
  That was just a sample - I hope to come up with a more definitive list sometime in the near future.

I hope that helped, any contributions will be gladly received as a reply to this comment. One last rule:

Never EVAR start a comment with "I know you're a troll but..." This is trolling gold dust. Nothing is better than somebody saying that they are too smart to be fooled by you and then writing a 1000 word point-by-point rebuttal.

Appendix A: General posting guidelines by AC

You are not funny if you post these "jokes":

• All your base are belong to us
  
• Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of these
  
• Natalie Portman and hot grits
  
• 1. something
     
  2. something
     
  3. ???
     
  4. profit
     
  
  
• If someone says, for example, "please stop posting 'All your base' -jokes", don't respond with an 'All your base' -joke
  

Don't post Microsoft bashing comments on stories that have nothing to do with Microsoft. Also, if you talk about Microsoft, write Microsoft or MS, not Micro$oft, M$, MicroShit, MicroShaft, MickeySoft of any variation of these.

Learn the difference between its/it's, there/they're/their, effect/affect, your/you're and ridiculous/rediculous. Just by learning those five groups, you'll be able to avoid 90% of the annoying Slashdot typos.

Re:Trolling avoidance FAQ V1.1

[spuke4000]

I know you're a troll but.... shouldn't you also know the difference between evar/ever? I wait, have I just been tricked??? Now I see how foolish we all truely are. Thank you master.

Re:Trolling avoidance FAQ V1.1

[Anonymous Coward]

wait, have I just been tricked???

Don't worry, you didn't post a 1000 word point-by-point rebuttal, so you're safe on that point. But you just posted a speling flaim, which itself is a punishable offense. Now, go sit in the corner, and spend half an hour looking at the goatse guy!

What I dont understand...

[gamorck]

Is why a revision point release of a browser is all that big of a deal. I understand this is /. and open source is pretty much the life blood around here - but is it that slow of a news day that the editors are digging for App BLAH has released Version ?.?.x ...? Perhaps /. should do a story on the European Online hate speech ban or be so kind as to give us /. readers an update on the DMCA FatWallet scandal (which has become a lot more interesting IMHO)

Anyway I guess my point here is to say that I think that instead of relying 100% on submitted news items that /. editors may want to start doing a bit of poking around on their own (beyond the woefully overhyped Anime DVD releases that Taco raves on about). I think that the content of slashdot could be improved a great deal with very little effort on the part of the staff.

Afterall, isn't there more to "journalism" than reguritating content back to the viewers who told you about it in the first place? That seems logical enough to me. If you want a better browsing experience I suggest you take a trip to http://www.arstechnica.com - while they may not post as many stories - they are far more carefully choosen and presented in such a way that doesn't alienate 50% of viewers by the second sentence (Hint: Check out any Anti MS story here and then check out the browsing statistics for this site)

Thanks for your time,

J

Re:What I dont understand...

[Julius X]

The reason that this is "that big of a deal" on /. is because the full release of 1.2 was pulled last week because of a DHTML bug.

This is essentially the full release of 1.2, just patched and with an added .1 on it =)

Cheers.

Re:What I dont understand...

[ekrout]

Is why a revision point release of a browser is all that big of a deal.

In all honesty, I would normally agree with you. Point releases for nearly any software project aren't really deserving of front page Slashdot linkage.

However, in this case, it is deserving because the latest 1.2 release of Mozilla had a huge error that caused improper rendering of any Web page that contains DHTML-specific code.

Re:What I dont understand...

[Zelet]

This is not a troll... it is insightful. I wish I had mod points when I wanted them.

Re:What I dont understand...

[stratjakt]

Because zealots need a soap box, and these articles are it.

Re:What I dont understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

Since 1.2 was yanked due to the DHTML wazzit, the announcement of 1.2.1 is actually more important than the original 1.2 announcement.

Slow news day? Sheesh.

Re:What I dont understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Is why a revision point release of a browser is all that big of a deal.

The Mozilla team pulled the 1.2 release from their site because of this DHTML bug which could cause a lot of web sites to be unviewable by Mozilla or at least result in a lot of errors. (Never had problems myself, though.)

Thus, I think it's OK to announce that the fixed version is up now.

Greetings.

Re:What I dont understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm... lessee...

1. It's about Mozilla. Not about IE. We love to see the little guy win and we love to see MS lose.

2. MS already squished Netscape, so this is kinda like sticking your tounge out at Bill. pbbbbbbbbllllllttttttt! It just feels right to diss MS.

3. We are largely anti-establishment. MS is de facto establishment. The conclusion is left for the graduate student.

4. Mozilla is cross platform, so don't go pulling that alienation crap. Unlike normal crap, it won't float around here.

Overall conclusion: This article is perfectly aligned with /.'ers news postings. It is stuff that matters. {insert obligatory sucking up noise here.}

Re:What I dont understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

So why don't you go over to arstechnica.com and stop posting junk like this here? This argument has been done over and over and over again. Stuff like this is posted here because a large portion of the user base is interested in this news, and then users can comment about mozilla, what features they would want, etc. If you're not interested in the article, please skip over it, and don't fill it up with worthless comments like this.

You see, for every person like who doesn't care about this little piece of news, there's at least one other out there that WANTS to see this posted. And because slashdot is not psychic, it just has to post what it thinks will interest its readers, including articles like this, which some people care about. It's hard to please everyone.

Re:What I dont understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not a troll...

Correct, but you sir, are offtopic. Shut up and let the moderators think for themselves *gasp*, comments aren't supposed to be a voting booths.

Re:What I dont understand...

[MrWinkey]

Is why a revision point release of a browser is all that big of a deal. I understand this is /.

I belive they posted the story due to the story Saturday about the bug and the new release would fix it. AKA new release is out. Please refrence the older slashdot article.

Yea I know I'm probably feeding the trolls but what the hey....

Re:What I dont understand...

[gabec]

I see your point, but instead of trolling about it why not submit appropriate articles to /.? If they're that fascinating I'm sure they'll get posted.

This particular entry is a follow-up to a previous /. story where they announced the DHTML bug--which is why it's important to note that they fixed it, and quickly (the first /. story was posted only 4 days ago)! It could be cited as a "isn't Open Source turn-around quick?" Just because you don't initially see the merit in the story doesn't mean it doesn't have one.

Re:What I dont understand...

[NighthawkFoo]

This person speaks the truth - Ars Technica is well worth your time.

Re:What I dont understand...

[jhylkema]

Of course it's a big deal on ./ because it's not Microsoft.

It may be a convoluted piece of slow, bug-laden bloatware, but it's not Microsoft, so to the /. crowd, it's God's gift to software. By sheer number of bugs, it's buggier than Win2K!

Before you mod me troll, I'm using Mozilla to type these words. After school is out, I'm going to back up my remaining data and low-level format my existing Win2K partition. Why do I use Mozilla? I use it because there are few alternatives out there. Konqueror? Please. Opera? If I wanted spyware, I'd stick to Windows. Galeon? Then I have to run Gnome, I'll keep my Afterstep, thank you. Chimera? Don't have a Mac (yet - got my eye on a PowerBook G4.) Guess that leaves . . . Lynx. Or (retch) Netscape. Or Mozilla.

Re:What I dont understand...

[MrWinkey]

Of course it's a big deal on ./ because it's not Microsoft.

This is only a big deal becaues the previous version has a bug and this version fixed it.

It may be a convoluted piece of slow, bug-laden bloatware [slashdot.org], but it's not Microsoft,

Ok this is where I lose you. That link says that Mozilla is going to provide spam filters. How is that bloatware? Trolling? Got me.

so to the /. crowd, it's God's gift to software. By sheer number of bugs, it's buggier than Win2K!

Agian ya lost me. I use Mozilla every day. I havent found anything major. Well besides the bug they just fixed.


Before you mod me troll, I'm using Mozilla to type these words. After school is out, I'm going to back up my remaining data and low-level format my existing Win2K partition. Why do I use Mozilla? I use it because there are few alternatives out there. Konqueror? Please. Opera? If I wanted spyware, I'd stick to Windows. Galeon? Then I have to run Gnome, I'll keep my Afterstep, thank you. Chimera? Don't have a Mac (yet - got my eye on a PowerBook G4.) Guess that leaves . . . Lynx. Or (retch) Netscape. Or Mozilla.

Ranting??? School? Get a life. At least your school runs opensource. (maybe judging from the rest of your post)

I really should stop feeding these trolls

Re:What I dont understand...

[jhylkema]

Ok this is where I lose you. That link says that Mozilla is going to provide spam filters. How is that bloatware? Trolling? Got me.

Well, doesn't have the kitchen sink yet, but I hear they're working hard on that. What does it have? Let's see here, web browser, email fetching, filtering, and sorting; news client, chat client, HTML design frontend, contacts manager, banner ad blocking, the list goes on. This all culminates in 20MB or so of source that took six and a half hours to compile on my Duron 800.

Last time I checked, all of this comes very close to the textbook definition of feature creep and bloat. And now, coming to a Mozilla near you, spam filters! They're not fixing any of their nearly 12,000 bugs. In other words, yes, it's buggier than Win2K, but by God, it filters spam! I included the spam filters link to illustrate the Bill-worthy feature creep Mozilla suffers from.

Lest you think I'm the only one saying this, JWZ, one of the principal authors of Netscape, resigned from Netscape and Mozilla.org over these very issues.

I've spelled it out for you this far, might as well carry on until the bitter end. My ultimate point was that if Mozilla were a Microsoft product, the righteous wrath of /. would be brought to bear on it for all of these reasons. But since it's not, it can commit all of these Gatesian mortal sins and escape such scrutiny.

Agian ya lost me. I use Mozilla every day. I havent found anything major. Well besides the bug they just fixed.

Read my post - I use it all the time too. And quite often, I find that it doesn't work right. It tries to load forms as perl scripts to save on the HDD. It doesn't handle Java well at all. Plugins take forever to load. It randomly eats my SMTP server entry. My point is, there is much room for improvement. But no, they've taken the Gatesian approach of kludging feature upon feature atop a buggy, marginally-usable codebase.

Ranting??? School? Get a life. At least your school runs opensource. (maybe judging from the rest of your post)

Wrong as usual. My school does not run open source. They got taken in by the slick-talking outsourcing salesdroids and are now firmly wedded to His Billness. But what the hell, did you expect anything different just across the bridge from Redmond? Be that as it may, the only reason I brought it up was to say when I intended to nuke Windows from my computer, and that only to show I'm not a trolling Microdroid evangelist.

I really should stop feeding these trolls

Re-read my previous paragraph. Carefully. Again. And again. And think hard before you hit submit next time.

DTML...

[peterprior]

Just for my own reference, examples of sites which died with the DHTML bug? Do lots of sites use DHTML? What the hell _IS_ DHTML ? :)

Re:DTML...

[greechneb]

dynamic HTML

Dynamic HTML is a collective term for a combination of new Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) tags and options, that will let you create Web pages more animated and more responsive to user interaction than previous versions of HTML. Much of dynamic HTML is specified in HTML 4.0. Simple examples of dynamic HTML pages would include (1) having the color of a text heading change when a user passes a mouse over it or (2) allowing a user to "drag and drop" an image to another place on a Web page. Dynamic HTML can allow Web documents to look and act like desktop applications or multimedia productions.

The features that constitute dynamic HTML are included in Netscape Communications' latest Web browser, Navigator 4.0 (part of Netscape's Communicator suite), and by Microsoft's browser, Internet Explorer 4.0. While HTML 4.0 is supported by both Netscape and Microsoft browsers, some additional capabilities are supported by only one of the browsers. The biggest obstacle to the use of dynamic HTML is that, since many users are still using older browsers, a Web site must create two versions of each site and serve the pages appropriate to each user's browser version.
The Concepts and Features in Dynamic HTML
Both Netscape and Microsoft support:

* An object-oriented view of a Web page and its elements
* Cascading style sheets and the layering of content
* Programming that can address all or most page elements
* Dynamic fonts

Re:DTML...

[Anonymous Coward]

For us old schoolers DHTML = HTML + javascript.

More modern incarnations allow you to add delete (hide/unhide) parts of a webpage on the fly via javascript/css (DOM blah blah) - tada: dynamic html

Re:DTML...

[joycea]

From one of the bug dependencies at bugzilla...

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.2) Gecko/20021126
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.2) Gecko/20021126

If an input filed with type set to hidden is not preceded by either the body
open tag or text it will be displayed as a text field, but will not have it's
default value set.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Save the following in a file:
<html>
<form action="/listings/update.php" method=post>
<input type=hidden name=test1 value=value1> :test1<br>
test2: <input type=hidden name=test2 value=value2><br>
</table>
</form>
</html>

2. Load the file in Mozilla

Actual Results:
An empty text input field apears before the test ' :test1'

Expected Results:
the field should have been hidden and kept its value.

Workarounds are trivial, the <body> tag or any text, even a period, prior to the
hidden input will cause it to behave normaly.

Re:DTML...

[cheezycrust]

In this case, Mozilla ate the first characters of a print() function. Many ads are constructed using print() statements, and if the first characters are lost, you don't get to see the advertisement (which could be good), but you also end up with strange html (which is bad).

Re:DTML...

[jdkincad]

I've been courious about this myself, I've been using Mozilla 1.2 since it was released and have yet to have a problem.

Re:DTML...

[denisbergeron]

A good exemple of DHTML is www.bmw.ca (choose english or french), choose products, motorcycle, enjoy the bug !

Re:DTML...

[mark_lybarger]

it's nice how the value is so nicely "hidden". display="none" might be a little more intuitive.

so writing the document using "standard" html fixes the problem, eh?

out of curiousity, shouldn't the values of attribures also be enclosed in quotation marks?

Re:DTML...

[Anonymous Coward]

Zales.com is a site that was broke before the fix

Re:DTML...

[defaulthtm]

That particular bug is still present in the 1.2.1 release

Re:DTML...

[Anonymous Coward]

so your "bug" is that wildly invalid html doesn't work properly?

here's the fix, fire the ass who mistook your example for html.

Re:DTML...

[C14L]

Or for short:

DHTML = HTML + CSS + JavaScript

Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

??? I am not using "so many caps", I am using abreviation! What the heck...

Re:DTML...

[Andreas(R)]

http://www.alltheweb.com/ didn't render properly for me with Mozilla 1.2.0. Most of the text on the page was gone.

Re:DTML...

[greed]

"display" is a CSS thing, which would mean 'style="display:none"' in this case. "hidden" is a type of input widget, along with "text", "password", "checkbox" and has been in HTML for ages, at least since 2.0. (I didn't do any work with forms in older versions of HTML.)

If you rely on CSS to hide your hidden field (I've used them for session IDs on generated pages, instead of using cookies), then it will "unhide" on non-CSS aware clients. Also, when unhidden, it will probably also be input-able; readonly is pretty new. "type=hidden" gets all the semantics right all at once (style="display:none" type="string" readonly), and it is valid HTML 2.0.

Graceful degredation and all that. Of course, one must also fail to trust the client, so be careful what goes in anything the client sends back to you, hidden or not.

(And you can omit the quotes on attribute values in certain cases; check http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/intro/sgmltut.html#at tributes.)

Re:DTML...

[mark_lybarger]

Of course, one must also fail to trust the client, so be careful what goes in anything the client sends back to you, hidden or not.

i guess this was my major point. it's not really hidden at all, it's just not displayed. you're saying "here client, can you hold this value(s) for me because i can't or don't want to"

Re:DTML...

[denisbergeron]

Mayby we'll see an 1.2.2 soon :-(

Re:DTML...

[SquadBoy]

An HR app that we used at work died. As did a couple of banking sites that I use.

Re:DTML...

[jonadab]

> (And you can omit the quotes on attribute values in certain cases;
> check http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/intro/sgmltut.html#at tributes.)

I believe that option has been rescinded in newer versions (since
XHTML 1.0 at least) and that all attribute values are to be quoted
these days. Of course, actual browsers are somewhat more lenient
than the standard and will let you get away with all sorts of stuff,
if you don't care about forward-compatibility.

Re:DTML...

[jdfox]

And DTML, in case you were wondering, is the old, deprecated markup language of Zope, now largely replaced by TAL, TALES and METAL.

Chimera?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, hello, try Phoenix. k, thx.

Re:Chimera?!

[asdfjilk]

Phoenix is a mock-up of Chimera ;)

Re:Chimera?!

[teamhasnoi]

I run Chimera at work and Phoenix at home, and I have never been happier with two browsers! Tabbed browsing at home and work that uses the same commands? Rules. Speed? way over Mozilla and IE.

Now if I could just download OS X for x86.

1-2-1

[product byproduct]

Sounds like the bust-waist-hips measurements of the red lizard mascot in decameters.

Re:1-2-1

[Anonymous Coward]

then shouldn't it be more like 3-2-3 or something? =D

Re:1-2-1

[Anonymous Coward]

Who said the monster had ideal measurements? He has no breasts, a large belly, and no hips.

Hot grits and spam!

[Anonymous Coward]

Natalie Portman
Born June 9th, 1981 Jerusalem, Israel
photos
Actress - filmography

1. Star Wars: Episode III (2005) .... Padmé Amidala Skywalker
2. Star Wars: Episode II (2002) .... Padmé Amidala Naberrie
3. Zoolander (2001) .... Herself
4. Film-Fest DVD: Issue 3 - Toronto (2000) (V) .... Herself (Interviewee)
5. Better Living Through Circuitry (2000) .... Herself
6. Where the Heart Is (2000) .... Novalee Nation
   
   
7. Stars of Star Wars: Interviews with the Cast, The (1999) (V) .... Herself
8. Anywhere But Here (1999) .... Ann August
9. Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) .... Queen Amidala/Padm Naberrie
   ... aka Phantom Menace, The (1999) (USA: short title)
10. Mars Attacks! (1996) .... Taffy Dale
11. Everyone Says I Love You (1996) .... Laura
12. Beautiful Girls (1996) .... Marty
13. Developing (1995) .... Nina
14. Heat (1995) .... Lauren
15. Lon (1994) .... Mathilda
    ... aka Cleaner, The (1994)
    ... aka Professional, The (1994) (USA)

Re:Hot grits and spam!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a shame she's ugly as fuck.

Odd?

[dolo666]

It seems like they only just released a version a little while ago. Am I the only person who finds this somewhat annoying?

I love mozilla, but I'm curious why the rapid update? Zilla says it's because of a DHTML fix but How do errata sneak into progs like this? It's shameful, imo.

This is our latest stable release and users of all previous versions are
encouraged to upgrade to this release for features, as well as performance,
stability, and security fixes. It contains the fix for the DHTML bug that
prompted us to pull Mozilla 1.2. See the release notes for more
info.

Re:Odd?

[swordgeek]

It was a screwup. Plain and simple, a bug slipped into the 1.2 release candidate. It happens, and the whole Mozilla project has a better record than most at creating stable releases which actually are. This is, to the best of my knowledge, the first release they've ever pulled. Any idea how many firmware and kernel patches Sun and HP have pulled on their OS?

Give them a break, and if you want stability, never download ANYTHING in the first week.

Re:Odd?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you're obviously a troll, but I guess I'll bite anyway. That's what your kind seem to get the most enjoyment out of.

Let me see if I can explain something to you..it might be a difficult concept to grasp, but try your best. Human beings write software. Following me so far? Well, let me try it another way. All those fancy windows on your screen now, like the one you're reading, a person "told" the computer how to do that.

Now, unlike a computer, sometimes people make MISTAKES. And sometimes those mistakes are in the software. Big deal. Let's see you produce a few hundred thousand lines of perfect code on the first go, wise and mighty troll, I'd be quite impressed if you do.

Nice jab with the "shameful" part there too, by the way. Would you rather that, say, the development team decided to ignore the flaws for a few months or more, and then eventually get around to fixing it..maybe..with the resulting fix sometimes being completely ineffective? That's the way Microsoft's been doing things for quite a while now. Would that be less "shameful" to you, troll?

Personally, I find assholes like yourself a lot more annoying than an update that returns functionality to a piece of software I use, with a quick turnaround. That's just me.

Re:Odd?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course he doesn't have any idea. Take a look at his site, which he pretty much pulled his lousy comment from..didn't even have the intelligence to cook up a new one, just cut and pasted it right over. It's bad enough to be a troll, let alone a lazy bastard of a troll too.

Re:Odd?

[dolo666]

Well, you're obviously a troll

This wasn't intended to be a trolling post at all. I was not trying to poo-poo mozilla in any way. People make all kinds of mistakes, and likely my post was living proof of that, but this 1.2.1 release still strikes me as being suspicious, and sad.

I guess I've been on projects before when things have gone wrong and the package was released too soon, with missing files. The whole team pays when that happens, when it usually is someone's fault.

OF course slashdot mods would say "you troll", when someone tries to express some kind of disappointment with the way something has gone. Of course you could say that... but you'd be mistaken.

I'm trying to say that it's shameful to the team. Mozilla had to pull 1.2 so what is un-shameful about it? Don't be so quick to lambaste someone because you *think* you might know what they mean. The whole Mozilla team is likely kicking themselves over this, and it didn't have to happen. Did they do the right thing by posting a quick fix? Of course... they had to. But it's still a shame.

It is a shame this has happened and I'm not afraid to say it. Call me an asshole if you want. I don't care... it doesn't change the fact that I'm right and you're likely right too, about certain things.

I think you took me out of context without consideirng what I meant, rather than what you thought you saw. You know, I didn't say that they did the wrong thing by releasing this fix. I said it's shameful they had to do it. And it is.

So what's your problem, buddy? Are you the guy on the team who forgot the big chunk of code in 1.2?

Likely...

Re:Odd?

[dolo666]

Where's your site, coward?

Re:Odd?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have one. But if I did, I'd steal news from other sites, then troll the comments from said sites, just like you!

Re:Odd?

[Anonymous Coward]

Likely? Not really, no. Not unless Mozilla was written entirely in Java, being that it's the only language that I know. Nice try though, troll, nice try. Accuse me of being the guy that produced the bug to try and save a bit of face for yourself. Very good. Where'd you learn that little tactic, fifth grade? I think that's when the civilized world STOPPED using it, but then most trolls aren't part of the civilized world -- now are they?

I both know exactly what you mean, and exactly what you are. I need no clarification as to your purpose, because your purpose is simply to garner a negative reaction from others. And hey, you got one..two or three in fact, if you really want to be strict about it. So enjoy your ill-gotten gains.

Re:Odd?

[Anonymous Coward]

I love mozilla, but I'm curious why the rapid update? Zilla says it's because of a DHTML fix but How do errata sneak into progs like this? It's shameful, imo.

I'll bite.

Basically, after 1.2 branched, it was discovered that a recent patch needed to be backed out. This is quite common and occurs when a patch doesn't quite work right or has other undesirable effects (e.g. increased start-up time). The patch was backed out okay on the trunk but for some reason it wasn't backed out correctly on the branch (specifically, a 9 wasn't changed to an 8 or something like that). This wasn't noticed until after 1.2 was released.

It's all to do with timing. The patch was backed out late in the release cycle so the error wasn't noticed in time. Normally, of course, backing out a patch is a perfectly safe thing to do even late in a release cycle (it returns you to a previous state that worked better) but it went wrong in this case. It's a bit of a freak occurrence, really.

Re:Odd?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its too bad when the next flavor of the month supervirus starts to spread like wild fire, half the /. comments will be bitching about the "lazy morons" that didn't download the fix that microsoft finally got off their candy asses to make 2 days before the virus went wild. I know I'm not the only person that doesn't want his computer going thermonuclear because microsoft's idea of testing is to compile to CD and wait for complaints.

Re:Odd?

[dolo666]

So confrontational of you, sir. Ziprasidone could help... or perhaps psychotherapy. Seek help.

Re:Odd?

[dolo666]

This is an excellent reply, and it explains the whole situation clearly. It's too bad stuff like that has to happen, but reading this clears it up a bit for me. So the problem was with the DHTML part of the backout, or it was the DHTML that caused them to try and back out of the patch, which caused the 1.2 mishap? I confused. :?

will I be able to run it.

[r_arr]

I installed 1.2 on my XP machine and it just kept freezing up. The Beta worked properly. Once I saw that I didn't even try and install it my linux laptop.

Re:will I be able to run it.

[a_timid_mouse]

Works for me. Installed 1.2.1 on my WinXP laptop at home this morning. No problems. Works on my RH7.3/8.0 Linux boxen too.

Re:will I be able to run it.

[gid]

I've never had a problem with 1.2 at all, I'm still running it now as I'm just waiting for the 1.2.1 debian packages to be released. If you still have the same problem with 1.2.1 then you should probably file a bug here: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/ You have to copy and paste that link in a browser because bugzilla has a redirect if the referer is /.

Re:will I be able to run it.

[HawkinsD]

Dude, I had a similar experience. Suggestion: kill your preferences folder, as there may be something nasty in it. You'll find it in
C:\Documents and Settings\your-name-here\Application Data\Mozilla\Profiles .

Of course, you'll lose all your bookmarks, preferences, settings, etc.

Disclaimer: I don't know a damned thing about Mozilla's guts. I just really, really like it, and when it broke after I upgraded it, I was desperate, and this (rather extreme) fix worked for me.

Re:will I be able to run it.

[SiO2]

Your computer's freezing and you're running XP, right? I think you just identified the problem.

Re:will I be able to run it.

[jilles]

Of course you can save the more essential stuff like bookmarks, cookies, mailfolders etc. by making a backup copy. This is how I upgraded from 1.0 RC1 all the way to 1.2.1 (via 1.0 RC2 1.0, 1.1a, 1.1b 1.1, 1.2b, 1.2). It would be nice if the mozilla setup would automatically migrate stuff that can be migrated rather than just dumping everything ontop of the existing setup and hoping for the best.

Re:will I be able to run it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla crashes in Linux, too! It's crossplatform and all...

Re:will I be able to run it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone capable of installing linux on a laptop would know more about computers than this. Do not pass Go, do not collect your Microsoft Marketing FUD payment.

This is a fix release.

[Penguinoflight]

As the post said... this is a fix release. If you got to sites that use DHTML, or couldn't get Mozilla 1.2 installed (It had a nasty permissions bug on UNIX, which kept it from being run by a normal user). Basically, get this release, but dont expect any cool features... it's just a bug fix release.

Re:This is a fix release.

[pointym5]

There was no "permissions bug" on Unix. It worked just fine for my non-root user ID.

Re:This is a fix release.

[Anonymous Coward]

There was no permissions bug, you fucked up.

Re:This is a fix release.

[Penguinoflight]

Yes, there was a permissions bug. Bug 163524 would mess up the permissions in the components directory if a earlier version had been installed. This would cause any non-root user to not be able to run mozilla, at all. Most distributions come standard with mozilla, so it's very hard to get a installation without it... making the release a hurdle for practically everyone.

Re:This is a fix release.

[mfago]

There _still_ is a permissions bug. Hasn't been fixed (for me anyhow) in 1.2.1.

Should be simple to fix?! Why isn't it?

Re:This is a fix release.

[Anonymous Coward]

Works fine in Slack 8.1. What did you install it as? Or, why not just use the tarball like an honest person.

Mike Cho

Re:This is a fix release.

[Jeppe Salvesen]

Not at all. The distributions typically come with pre-packaged moz in standardized locations. The default moz installer puts itself into /usr/local/mozilla. So - there would be no problem, but the user would be likely to find the old version of moz start up after clicking on the icon. (Since the moz installer by default doesn't tinker with that sorta thing).

Re:This is a fix release.

[juhaz]

Which is why most of the people should not use the installer but packages compatible with their distribution. Dunno about the debs, but RPM packages are right there on main Mozilla download site.

No permission bugs in those.

Re:This is a fix release.

[shellbeach]

Most distributions come standard with mozilla, so it's very hard to get a installation without it... making the release a hurdle for practically everyone.

Well, I don't know how you install it, but the easiest way under Linux is to forget all that installer crap and (as root) just replace your old mozilla directory (eg /usr/local/mozilla ) with the un-tarred directory. Don't forget to back-up any global preference files that you've changed (and you'll know if you've done this, because you you have to alter these by hand, as root :) It's much faster (one command vs multiple installer steps) and you know exactly where the software's gone.

Install mozilla this way, and you'll find that there were no problems - at least that's how I installed mozilla 1.2 a week ago and it's been fine!

And judging from the fact that heaps of other users have been posting about using Moz 1.2 without problems, and /. is not the kind of place where people run browsers as root, I'd say I'm not the only one to figure this out :)

blah blah blah

[Anonymous Coward]

im more richer than you, so im going to mention I have an ibook/powerbook blah blah blah.

Re:blah blah blah

[Anonymous Coward]

you should use some of that wealth to get some english lessons.

Work before coffee!

[Chester K]

shouldn't be allowed to work before coffee- I posted this at like 8:20 and must've forgotten to click that all important 'Save' button.

That's ok, I'm sure we'd have seen the story the next two times it's going to run on Slashdot.

the bug

[Anonymous Coward]

it seems like the main problem was that document.write() would eat some inital characters which caused a lot of DHTML sites that used document.write() to break.

Why so much bigger than 1.2?

[CodeWheeney]

Looking at the release notes shows that the only change from 1.2.1 to 1.2 is the fix for the DHTML bug, but the installation images (Win32) went from 10.81 MB (11,339,472 bytes) to 10.95 MB (11,491,024 bytes). Anyone know why it got so much bigger? Was the fix that involved?

Re:Why so much bigger than 1.2?

[Dog and Pony]

Since when is that much? Depending on the compiler, and how it optimizes, it is quite possible to *remove* code and end up getting a slightly bigger executable.

And the word we are looking for here is indeed "slightly".

Re:Why so much bigger than 1.2?

[Anonymous Coward]

that's less than a 1% increase in size. Since when is 1% a lot?

Re:Why so much bigger than 1.2?

[mst]

Was the fix that involved?

To my (faint) understanding: Maybe :-)

Looking at the bug page of bug #182500 on bugzilla.mozilla.org (sorry, direct links blocked from slashdot), the list of associated bugs has 32 entries, and is a result of an incorrect backout of way too much code at some point just before the 1.2 release.

Somebody closer to the mozilla project could surely give more detailed / accurate info on this though.

Re:Why so much bigger than 1.2?

[egoots]

The 1.2 release also had a build problem where some of the changes checked into the branch did not get pulled for the build.

Specifically, from an artical on www.mozillazine.org they say that "the 1.2 release tag was not complete so builds created from that tag may have additional problems"

I suspect that the difference may be due to this

Re:Why so much bigger than 1.2?

[dbaron]

The fix to bug 182500 was a single character. An 9 was changed to an 8. There was not a backout of way too much code.

The problem was that a checkin that added a value to an array was incorrectly backed out. The size of the array was written explicitly instead of using sizeof and preprocessor magic, and the change to the size wasn't backed out along with the value added to the end of the array. The incorrect size caused whatever random data was stored after the end of the array to be read. (The array was in the HTML parser, containing a list of the types of things that are valid children of the HEAD element. Thus, I think the bugs can be traced to things that should have been in the BODY ending up in the HEAD.) Depending on the compiler, this caused different behavior, so the bug was worse on Windows (with MSVC 6.0) or on gcc 3.2 (on x86 Linux) than it was with egcs 1.1.2 (on x86 Linux).

So, in other words, the size of the binaries shouldn't have changed. That's odd.

Re:Why so much bigger than 1.2?

[rabidcow]

Since when is 1% a lot?

Since 1% is 150k for a minor fix.

Re:Why so much bigger than 1.2?

[juggy]

Actually, if I remember correctly, there was something stated about the talkback not included in the releases. I wasn't able to find it again though.

However, if that was the case it would easily explain the different file sizes.

Keep missing that save button please!

[a_timid_mouse]

I was actually able to download *both* the Windows and Linux binaries in their entirety WITHOUT waiting several hours for the process to complete. I attribute this feat entirely to the slashdot editor who forgot to press "Save". THANK YOU! KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!

Re:Keep missing that save button please!

[jandrese]

thank your lucky stars it isn't a Redhat mirror.

Seriously, I just downloaded the complete Windows Talkback build in a little less than 15 seconds a couple of minutes ago. Mozilla is hosted on fast servers.

Re:Keep missing that save button please!

[Mitchell Mebane]

So you're saying that, due to Slashdot not posting the Mozilla update on the main page, there were actually more people who were able to download it?

Re:Keep missing that save button please!

[Binome]

It's a reference to the slashdot effect. Although I think mozilla's servers can handle a slashdotting.

Side note: I was expecting the red lizard on the front page, not the newspaper and glasses. My world has been shattered. I'm going to go collapse in a heap of goo now.

Re:Keep missing that save button please!

[Mitchell Mebane]

Sorry, I forgot the tag.

</sarcasm>

Mozilla for OpenBSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is Mozilla for OpenBSD?

Re:Mozilla for OpenBSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

At the same site where you can download Mozilla for MS DOS.

A few solutions

[ultor]

If the new release appears to cause problems, be sure to remove/move your profile directory. This is one of the things I always forget to do when installing a new release because most of the time it doesn't make a difference. Also, although the source tarballs aren't posted, I was able to steal one out of the Redhat SRPMS that appears to be authentic (using rpm2tgz/rpm2targz and there's another tarball inside). Now why couldn't they just post the tarball first?

1.2.1 does have better security than 1.1 or 1.0.1

[asa]

Actually, the headline isn't completely wrong, Mozilla 1.2.1 only contains the "can't write to dynamically created elements" fix that was breaking some DHTML and page layout. Mozilla 1.2.1 also contains everything that the 1.2 release contained when it was released and then unreleased last week. That included new features, improved performance, better stability and security fixes. So if you're using _any_ oler Mozilla releases you really should upgrade to get all the new 1.2.1 goodness, including improved security.

For the folks that just downloaded Mozilla 1.2 last week, if you're not having any problems (and it seems like the DHTML issue is a lot less visible on linux) then there's no pressing "security" reason to upgrade to 1.2.1 but you might as well get it for this DHTML fix which is likely to eventually cause you some pain at some site somewhere.

--Asa

So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Big fat fucking hairy deal! Who gives a shit? Use fucking IE like the rest of the world, you fucking smelly hippy linux cunts! Take a bath!

Hmmm ...

[SuperDuG]

Since over half the slashdot crowd uses IE, should there not be stories out when MS releases new versions of it?

Re:Hmmm ...

[squaretorus]

The problem is ... even MS dont know when MS release a new version of IE.

Re:Hmmm ...

[stratjakt]

That, of course, would destroy the illusion that only open source projects get bugs fixed.

Besides, it's easy enough for IE users to find an update.

Re:Hmmm ...

[NineNine]

Well, except that you forget... IE is evil, and Mozilla should be worshipped. This is completely arbitrary, and isn't at all based on quality of the programs, bloat, features, bugs, rendering capability, or usage statistics. Damn, man! Remember where you are! This is Slashdot, where facts and objectivity are meaningless!

Re:Hmmm ...

[gosand]

Since over half the slashdot crowd uses IE, should there not be stories out when MS releases new versions of it?

Sure - but when was the last release? Way back in September. Have there been any bugs reported since then?

Do you follow the progress of IE? What are they working on now? Are you able to download beta code? Report bugs that get fixed in a timely manner?

That is the difference between a community and proprietary software. Maybe you can do these things with IE, I don't really know. I only use it when I am forced to, and more and more that is less often.

Re:Hmmm ...

[bziman]

Why bother? The Machine will just automagically update your system whether you want it to or not. With Moz we get a choice.

(I'm kidding, laugh.)

Re:Hmmm ...

[weave]

IE 6 was released, when, over a year ago, right? Microsoft has no need to innovate IE anymore since they now dominate the browser market.

Now if other browsers start re-gaining some share, expect IE 7 in a hurry, with nifty new features like tabs!

Re:Hmmm ...

[stratjakt]

I think the nifty feature of WORKING and actually displaying virtually every page on the web is good enough for most of us 'dumb sheep'.

Not taking a half hour to start up is handy too.

Tabs are fine, but 5 tabs full of broken pages is pretty much useless.

Yeah, yeah, it must be standards. Mozilla is right and the whole world is wrong. I still say OSS needs to adapt the 'embrace and extend' model if they want to make some real headway.

Re:Hmmm ...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just that IE releases don't exactly come per-month. Every story related to IE and it's insecurities will always find a way to the Slashdot frontpage, where have you been?

Re:Hmmm ...

[Nothinman]

Funny, I've got 5 tabs with perfectly rendered pages in them right now.

Re:Hmmm ...

[Dan Ost]

When was the last release of IE?

It seems to me that MS has let it stagnate now
that they think they have no real competition
in the browser market.

Or maybe they're just taking a real long time...

Re:Hmmm ...

[Ashyukun]

Actually, I'd love to see what the numbers look like between during the day (when most of us are at work) and in the evening (when we're, presumably, at home). My company's systems only let us use IE, so I have no choice but to do so if I want to read /. during the day. On computers that I actually own (and can install software on, as importantly), I'm running Mozilla.

Re:Hmmm ...

[jilles]

Why can't kernel compiling linux users figure out how to use the control panel? It's not that hard. It was designed to be useable by idiots. It's not completely idiot proof, but then what software is?

Re:Hmmm ...

[jazman_777]

My company's systems only let us use IE, so I have no choice but to do so if I want to read /. during the day.

That's funny. Your company thinks, "they can only use IE, things are under control" and you're off reading /., you loose cannon you.

Re:Hmmm ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, YHBT

Re:Hmmm ...

[version5]

> should there not be stories out when MS releases new versions

Er, no. Look at the top of the page. It says Slashdot. Slashdot is about open source. This story isn't supposed to be an announcement. If you jumped on the 1.2 release and installed it, chances are you already know about both the problem and the fact that there is a new release.

Re:Hmmm ...

[ftobin]

Just because concepts and qualities such as Free Software are subjective doesn't make them irrevelant.

Re:Hmmm ...

[Anonymous Coward]

What part of "I'm kidding, laugh" did you not understand?

Re:Hmmm ...

[dr_canak]

I'm not a big fan of IE or MS, but I use both regularly. While its true that there hasn't been a major release of IE in quite some time, there are quite frequent security patches that one can update quite easily through their TOOLS--->WINDOWS UPDATE option.

You have to read exactly what the recommended updates are, and be sure to select only what you want (for example, it defaults to upgrading to IE 6.0 if you're running 5.#), but it does work quite well.

And while I certainly don't need to see Slashdot post an announcement everytime a security fix is out there for MS/IE, I think it would be in people's best interest if they knew about these things and took care of problems on a more regular basis.

Re:Hmmm ...

[Jucius Maximus]

" Since over half the slashdot crowd uses IE, should there not be stories out when MS releases new versions of it?"

Because MSIE is not a community project. There are many, many slashdot readers who contribute to mozilla in terms of code, bug reports, add-ons and so on. There's a whole community of people surrounding this project and many of them also congregate here.

You can't say that about IE. There is no development community. It's all privately developed by a corporation.

The mozilla updates are announced so much more than MSIE because they are important because they are developed and perpetuated by members of this community.

Re:Hmmm ...

[Flower]

That's ok. We're sure to post a story everytime a hotfix for it comes out. So it gets more than it's fair share of coverage in the end.

TCO

[krray]

What's the Microsoft sponsored study on the TCO for using Mozilla vs. Explorer? Is it WORTH it?

Mod: TROLL :)

Linux-2.4 RSN!

[Jacek Poplawski]

Now I am waiting for Linux-2.4 news.

Solaris?

[The Salamander]

How come the solaris releases are always days or even weeks behind?

Re:Solaris?

[asa]

How come the solaris releases are always days or even weeks behind?

mozilla.org makes binaries for Mac9, OSX, Linux, and Windows. All other builds (sometimes as many as a dozen or so platforms) are contributed builds.We release when we've got the four major platforms done and then the Solaris and FreeBSD and OS/2 and BeOS and all the other builds arrive later.

--Asa

Re:Solaris?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh. The Solaris build sucks anyway. It requires Sun's own version of GTK+ libraries, installed in Sun's own special place. Yeah, that's the ticket: I'll re-install Sun-special versions of perfectly good libraries that I already have and every-fsckin'-other-thing knows how to use.

Reason NNN as to why my next box may not be a Sun Solaris box :(.

Oh, and Mozilla people: it would be Real Nice if the link to the download provided by Sun mentioned that requirement.

Re:Solaris?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a KDE as a windowing evironment. I build 1.2 form source dude.

The binaries submitted are from people running standerd builds. Just like the RH builds are compiled on standard RH builds dude.

You want to roll your own you have made yourself the man. There is lots of real stuff to piss and moan to sun about but this aint one.

Strange shit...

[haggar]

They have not fixed the bug I submitted (even though other people have confirmed it as they experience it, too), yet they have not listed it in the "Known problems".

Should I resubmit it?

Re:Strange shit...

[peterprior]

Might be nice to know what the bug was that you submitted.....

Re:Strange shit...

[mykmelez]

No, only a small subset of known bugs are listed in the "Known Problems" section of the release notes. You should check bugzilla.mozilla.org for the status of the bug report you submitted, and if the bug is marked fixed, but you are still experiencing the problem, then reopen the bug report.

Re:Strange shit...

[realdpk]

is it the bug with Mozilla's resolver? because that one is affecting several people i know, too, and is in bugzilla.

gethostbyname() is good enough for me.

Re:Strange shit...

[haggar]

No, it's with the ThinkPad (all models) trackpoint behaviour.

I saw what the problem is: they have it as "UNCONFIRMED". I didn't think it would be so hard to find a ThinkPad, but what do you know.

I tried to submit a notice that the bug still exists in 1.2.1, but I get the message from Bugzilla that only the owner, submitter or user with necessary privileges can do that. Strange again, since I am the submitter.

Too bad, because the behaviour is so irritating as to prevent me from using Mozilla on my laptop.

Re:Strange shit...

[Anonymous Coward]

Glad to know that bug is in there because having just started using Mozilla it seems absurd that it can't actually manage to do a lookup on a new web server correctly but instead continues to send requests to the server I accessed previously. It's not like an IP lookup is a hard thing to do, is it?

Uh, but, then again, IE doesn't always get it right either. In the meantime I'm sticking to Netscape 4.7, which does.

Another victory for the Bugzilla software

[ekrout]

People, we should be rejoicing here; this is excellent news!

Bugzilla has allowed developers from all over the world to collaborate via TCP/IP and a standard Web interface in hopes of creating a superior browser for users on all computing platforms.

The identification, analysis, design, implementation, and testing for this latest DHTML fix would simply not have been possible using anything other than Bugzilla. Bugzilla allows simple collaborative tools, regression testing, notes, attachments, and dependencies to be tracked automatically. As we all know from being coders, it's sometimes difficult to isolate problematic code for such a large-scale project as Mozilla is.

We should be proud that Linux 2.6 is utilizing the Bugzilla software as well for its bug tracking database. Without it, Linux would probably contain more holes than your proverbial slice of swiss cheese.

So, I'd like to give a hearty "Thank you" shout-out to the Bugzilla team for their great invention, and also mad props to the Mozilla developers for producing a fix so quickly.

I wish development were this easy on the Windows side of the fence!

Re:Another victory for the Bugzilla software

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod this asshole down where he deserves, thank you.

Moderators, check poster's history before modding up.

Re:Another victory for the Bugzilla software

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, checked the poster's history...

Last three of their posts were 5s.

What's your point?

Threaded e-mail, wouldn't that be handy?

[abischof]

Mozilla is a threaded e-mail client, eh? So far, so good. However, it doesn't actually remember the Expand All Threads state.

So, suppose that you turn on threading and tell Mozilla to Expand All Threads. You now have a nice tree-like view of mail threads :). But, next time you load Mozilla, it'll be back to compressed view again (but still sorted by threads). If threaded mail sounds useful to you, you may want to vote for the bug (of course, you'll need a free Bugzilla account to vote).

Re:Threaded e-mail, wouldn't that be handy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you download the source and fix it?

Re:Threaded e-mail, wouldn't that be handy?

[The AtomicPunk]

Why would you unload Mozilla? Are you running Windows and rebooting? :)

Re:Threaded e-mail, wouldn't that be handy?

[abischof]

Why would you unload Mozilla?

Well, I tend to exit Mozilla each time before upgrading to the latest daily build ;).

J0|_| 1337 |-|4X0|7...

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess someone's been reading CmdrTaco's access.log file again!

Maybe it's just me...

[bziman]

But isn't the Mozilla installer on Windows just as bad as any other windows application? It insists on "updating" all of my registery settings and putting crap on my menus. Why can't it just put the damn application in C:\usr\mozilla and count on the fact that I'm smart enough to do the rest? Couldn't that at least be an option? Argh....

And when are they going to fix the damn quick launch and the plethora of mail bugs that keep me tied to Communicator for mail.

I love Moz, but geez, this stuff has been pushed out since 1.0RC1 (which was a fine application EXCEPT THIS STUFF).

</rant>

Re:Maybe it's just me...

[Lukey Boy]

Just grab the Talkback-enabled ZIP file, skip the installer altogether.

A Simple Guide to 8 and 4

[SweetAndSourJesus]

8 looks like this: 8

4 looks like this: 4

I hope this has been an enlightening lesson for you.

Annoyance

[Anonymous Coward]

I get really annoyed every time I install a new version of mozilla. Perhaps I'm doing it wrong somehow, but every time I upgrade all my plugins disappear. The first page I have to visit after an upgrade is optimoz.mozdev.org to get my mouse gestures back.

Is there some way to preserve these plugins that I don't know about?

And why oh why do I have to be root to install mouse-gestures under linux?

Re:Annoyance

[Spacelem]

Simply go to your old Mozilla plugins folder and copy all the plugins except npnul32.dll and put them into your new Mozilla plugins folder. Unless the plugins are broken with the new version, this should just work, even if Mozilla is still running.

Re:Annoyance

[billbaggins]

Is there some way to preserve these plugins that I don't know about?

Install to a new directory each time. What I do is install to /usr/local/mozilla-$version and then symlink /usr/local/mozilla to that. Then, once you've installed, copy the plugins directory from the old version to the new one (though you'd probably better leave libnullplugin.so alone; easy way to do this is 'cp -iR mozilla-old/plugins mozilla-new/plugins' and say 'no' to the overwrite request. (And remember to change the symlink!)

And why oh why do I have to be root to install mouse-gestures under linux?

Well, were you root when you installed mozilla? If not, I don't know... but if you were, then there's the problem! I think there's some sort of script thingy you can do that might help with that though. Check with someone who knows more than I do.

The problem that I'm running into here is that the installer segfaults while it's trying to install the EN-US language pack. Anyone else have any idea what's going on here?

Re:Annoyance

[alistair]

You shouldn't have to install mouse gestures etc. as root, as long as you installed Mozilla as a non root user. This morning I downloaded mozilla and installed as myself, and then installed Multizilla, Mouse Gestures, Pie Menus, A spellchecker and my own toolbar, all as this local user.

Plug-ins such as Flash and Java can be restored as described above. Mozdev extensions such as mouse gestures tend to write their data to the ~mozillainstalldir~/chrome directory. You can try backing this up before the new install and then restoring it, it should work between 1.2 and 1.21 and is something I always do when installing a nightly release of Multizilla or similar.

Re:Annoyance

[felipeal]

I think someone posted a hint about that here on slashdot sometime ago. I took note of it, but haven't tried yet. Anyway, here it is:

You can share bookmarks amoung all your installs of Mozilla, Phoenix, and probably other Gecko browsers (untested). All you do is add the following command to your prefs.js file:

user_pref("browser.bookmarks.file", "C:\\Documents and Settings\\userdude\\Application Data\\Mozilla\\Profiles\\default\\wx4vqyna.slt\\bo okmarks.html");

In addition, you can share plugins by adding the following line to your environment. Her is an example of what I did on my Windows box:

MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH = "C:\Program Files\mozilla.org\Share\Plugin" (in Environment Variables on Win2k)

Really helps so you don't have to redo plugins all the time and you can share one bookmark file for all!

Re:Annoyance

[=weezer=]

The methods mentioned above will keep your dll plugins (Shockwave Flash, Java, Quicktime) but not your Extensions (Mouse Gestures, RadialContext, Tabbrowser Extensions). I haven't found a way to solve this problem when it comes to extensions, so what I do is have a "Mozilla Extensions" folder with the original XPIs for all the extensions. So, when I install a new version, all I have to do is drag the XPI to the Mozilla window, and it'll install the extension. I'm not sure how this would work in Linux , as I'm running Moz on windows but I'm assuming the process should be somewhat similar.

The problem with the extensions stems, as far as I can tell, from the fact that although the .jar files might still be present in the chrome folder, they aren't registered with Mozilla and hence not recognized (dragging the tabextensions.jar file into the chrome folder, for example, has had no effect in my attempts). If there's a way to manually register extensions without reinstalling them...well, I haven't found it yet.

Re:Annoyance

[The J Kid]

even if Mozilla is still running.

Noooooooo! DON'T!!!!

I speak from experience..... :(

Re:Annoyance

[matt-fu]

Just go to a command prompt and type "format c:".

Re:Annoyance

[shellbeach]

... or just keep all your plugins in a separate directory and symlink that to mozilla/plugins! Saves on multiple recursive links at the very least (since mozilla-new/plugins/* <- mozilla-old/plugins/* <- mozilla-older/plugins/* <- mozilla-even-older/plugins/* ... and it could get really annoying if you've been occasionally adding in new plugins at different stages!! :)

As for the installer segfaulting ... just get the tar.gz and bypass the installer completely! I mean, you're already doing a fresh install by installing to a new directory, so just copy the whole untarred directory to mozilla-new instead. Works fine ... there's nothing that moz installs anywhere else, AFAIK, and if there is then I'd still just copy the directory!! The last thing I want is software leaving cruft all over the place ...

Re:Solaris? HA!

[teamhasnoi]

Try waiting for the Beos version.

Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick.....

IE is still better

[Anonymous Coward]

side note: linux licks balls

Re:IE is still better

[Library Spoff]

>> side note: linux licks balls

really ?
What all releases ?
or just the crack-ho's build.

Now I know what open sores is all about...

Where's the tarball?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

I usually download the source rpm for Redhat, but since I still run 7.3, and the current srpms are for 8.0, they didn't compile.

With most projects, the tgz'd (or bz2'd) source file is in plain site, but I can never seem to find the one for Mozilla. Sure, I can extract it from the SRPM, but I want the real deal. And please, no "real men use CVS" comments, okay?

(Posting as AC, as I feel lame for having to ask this quesiton.)

Re:Where's the tarball?!?

[asa]

With most projects, the tgz'd (or bz2'd) source file is in plain site, but I can never seem to find the one for Mozilla.

Mozilla source tarballs are _always_ a day or two later than the release binaries. We only have so many people working on this and so many machines to make this all happen. We release when we've got the four primary platforms built and a release tag created. That's usually late at night and when it's done we go home and the next day get to work on creating the source tarball. If you can't wait a day or two then pull MOZILLA_1_2_1_RELEASE from cvs.

--Asa

Re:Where's the tarball?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, I don't want to seem ungrateful -- you guys do a fine job. But that seems odd (from this layman's POV). Don't you need a proper tarball to even make an RPM (I'm asking, as I have no bloody clue how to build rpms)? Even if it weren't so, it seems like there'd be much less effort in the tarball than binaries.

Okay, I rummaged through your CVS page. I've got the steps running for a fresh, brand-spakin' new CVS checkout. How do I know which version it'll be pulling (or, how do I force MOZILLA_1_2_1_RELEASE to be pulled)?

Sorry, didn't mean to bitch. Just anxious.

Re:Where's the tarball?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you grab the srpm you can build on a 7.3 system if you just edit the .spec file and change gcc296 and g++296 to gcc/g++. At least, thats what I did :>

Re:Where's the tarball?!?

[tweek]

I've got a checkout running right now on MOZILLA_1_2_1_RELEASE. I do have a question that I didn't see answered on the cvs page.

Do you guys have a pref on compression or any request regarding that?

Re:Where's the tarball?!?

[tweek]

I'll have some SRPMS available tonight hopefully for 7.3 in case no one is willing to wait.

Here's the result of my build of 1.2b:

Mozilla 1.2b + Xft + Gnome2 on RH7.3

BOMB!!

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL Dudes!!1!1! Me am Brazil!!!11!

IN SOVIET RUSSIA...

Mozilla Updated 1.2.1 ....Oh wait...That dosen't work...

Da*n

Ack my Themes!

[blonde rser]

"Themes are Mozilla version-dependent; thus, themes created for Mozilla version 1.x will not install on Mozilla version 1.2, and above. The same is true with using version 1.2 Mozilla themes on earlier versions of Mozilla."

has this always been true or is this new to 1.2... I don't remember my themes not working before but it may just be my memory that's not working

Re:Ack my Themes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Always been true.

Re:Ack my Themes!

[jazman_777]

has this always been true or is this new to 1.2... I don't remember my themes not working before but it may just be my memory that's not working

Is it just me, or does it seem that there are only a paltry number of themes available for Mozilla? Is it so hard to make them that hardly anyone's doing it? BTW, I do like the Orbit3+1 theme.

Re:Ack my Themes!

[Anonymous Coward]

>Is it so hard to make them that hardly anyone's doing it?

No, I just think developers would rather wait until they can be assured their theme will work for more than a month.

Imagine if the basic C language changed every month. It'd be as popular is intercal.

Re:Ack my Themes!

[stefanlasiewski]

For Version numbers (1.0 1.2, etc) I think this has always been true.

This time the upgrade really sucked... I was running Mozilla 1.0.1, upgraded to 1.2 and everything worked.

Then I installed 1.2.1, and couldn't get mozilla to load. Uninstalled, deleted the c:\program files\mozilla.org, reinstalled, but Moz still frezes on install...

By reading other comments, it's probably still the themes that freeze Mozilla upon load. I need to find and remove some registry setting somewhere...

Now I'm back to 1.0.1, and it all seems to work just fine. Think I'll hold off on 1.2.1 for a bit...

So if there's just been one bug fix...

[yoz]

... how come I now can't have both my mail and browser windows open at the same time? Worked fine in 1.2 final. Now the mozilla process won't even die when I close all the windows (well, all one of the windows, since now, in an obvious bid to Highlander fans, there can be only one).

Let me demonstrate where I am with Mozilla:

start of tether [----------------|--] end of tether

Don't tell me to bug it, I've already filed loads of bugs (very few of which have even been looked at, let alone fixed), and I haven't the time. 1.1 kept crashing on me, the 1.2 beta was worse, and you can forget about using the nightlies if you don't want to hit completely random regressions every other minute.

No, I know I'm not paying for it, and I know it's a community effort, whatever. Let me just have five minutes of rage. (Actually, let me have the original 1.2 final installer back, because at least that one seemed to work, and minor DHTML bugs are something I'll put up with if they let me read the web and my mail at the same time)

-- Yoz

Re:So if there's just been one bug fix...

[asa]

(Actually, let me have the original 1.2 final installer back, because at least that one seemed to work, and minor DHTML bugs are something I'll put up with if they let me read the web and my mail at the same time)

No one ever took it from you. If you deleted it after the install just go back to ftp and download it again. I'd recommend that you do an uninstall and remove any traces of the Mozilla install directory then try a reinstall of 1.2.1. There should be no problems with a clean install. If that doesn't work then try creating a new profile and see if that works (you can copy your old profile data over to the new profile if necessary). I'm surprised you're having this difficulty and hope that one of the steps I suggested would fix it. The chances of 1.2.1 introducing a problem that didn't exist for you in 1.2 are about zero so I suspect that some other problem is at work here, possibly cruft left over from a beta install. Like I suggested above, removing the entire beta install directory should clear up any problems if it was a beta build problem that's manifesting in the final release. Good luck.

--Asa

Re:So if there's just been one bug fix...

[Anonymous Coward]

... how come I now can't have both my mail and browser windows open at the same time? Worked fine in 1.2 final.

Works perfectly well here in Win32 1.2.1. Sounds like you've broken your install.

Re:So if there's just been one bug fix...

[themassiah]

That's funny. My current fortune on slashdot is as follows:

"The UNIX philosophy basically involves giving you enough rope to hang yourself. And then a couple of feet more, just to be sure."

Re:So if there's just been one bug fix...

[mbourgon]

Hey, Asa, someone brought up a good point - why not just release a patch or delta or something? I haven't gotten it yet, so maybe it's more complicated than that, but if only a couple of files have changed, why not release that also?

Re:So if there's just been one bug fix...

[alistair]

At the risk of stating the obvious, I can't see this bug on either 1.2 or 1.21 on Windows or Linux. Running KDE is dual screen mode I normally set Mozilla to open one window for email on the right hand screen which I attach to all desktops and keep a web browser window open on the right hand screen, generally opening only one window since I discovered the wonderful Multizilla extension.

I do think the mozilla mail client is one of the most underrated part of the suite. It's IMAP compatability puts Notes and (to a lesser extent) Outlook and Outlook express to shame. The new filter after after the fact functionality is very useful, I have around 10,000 emails in an archived mailbox on my local machine which I have finally been able to quickly organise into useful categories. I even managed to find a UK english spellchecker for it the other day ... :-)

Re:So if there's just been one bug fix...

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, your rig blows!

Re:So if there's just been one bug fix...

[Omnifarious]

That's just bizarre. I've used Mozilla for a long time, and for the last year or so have had it only crash 4 or 5 times. And I tend to leave it running for days on end. *puzzled confusion*

Also, all the features have generally worked. I Have many windows open right now.

How do you generally install it? What platform are you using?

Re:So if there's just been one bug fix...

[yoz]

Thanks for the advice! I did a complete uninstall and reinstall, no luck. Then I moved my profile dir elsewhere, and then it worked fine.

So now, being faced with having to rebuild my profile from scratch, I wasn't entirely happy, so I took a different route: Backed up my profile and thought about what I could delete that would solve the problem fastest while still keeping the majority of my data and preferences.

Most obvious was registry.dat, but it's over a meg and I probably have lots of important stuff in there. So after some looking around, I killed chrome/chrome.rdf.

Bingo! Works fine now.

How odd.

Still not entirely happy about the experience, but, as you suggested, I've been trying nightlies so that may have introduced the cruft. (I've a sneaky feeling it may have been the Orbit skin, though, in which case that's a nasty bug)

-- Yoz

Re:So if there's just been one bug fix...

[yoz]

I depend on the mail client for my IMAP stuff, and while I have a few irritations with it (most notably the IMAP-specific one I filed: 136579) it's pretty good. Easily my favourite feature is the search bar, I use that the whole time. (Mainly because my inbox is 33,000+ mails big - it's a bit of a bugger over IMAP, but Moz handles it okay) The search window, on the other hand, sucks, though I've heard it's better in 1.2 - haven't tried it yet. Apparently 1.3 will have virtual (query-based) folders of some kind.

UK English spellcheck? Oooh! Where?

-- Yoz

Re:So if there's just been one bug fix...

[yoz]

That's just bizarre. I've used Mozilla for a long time, and for the last year or so have had it only crash 4 or 5 times. And I tend to leave it running for days on end. *puzzled confusion*

Really, honestly, 1.1 was crashing on me something like once every couple of days. Every time a page asked a bit too much of it (usually involving Java or other plugins) it was BANG! Hello, Talkback! 1.2 also did it to me this morning. (Maybe it'll stop now that I've deleted my chrome.rdf, but I doubt it. I should probably rebuild my profile from scratch)

-- Yoz

Re:So if there's just been one bug fix...

[Omnifarious]

Ahh, that may be the difference. I purposely don't go out of my way to make plugins work because I don't like them. If it can't be said in HTML and possibly some Javascript, I don't need to hear it.

Yes, many of the few times my browser has crashed have been when I had Flash working and I was looking at a Flash page.

I'm not sure, but I think plugins run in the same adress space as the browser, so it becomes difficult to tell which one did the evil thing that caused your browser to crash.

Re:So if there's just been one bug fix...

[_xeno_]

I've been playing around with creating a Moz chrome and was able to cause the same problem you described. (It's a Tetris game written in DHTML - worked without the DHTML fix, BTW.) It seems that it's possible for a newly added chrome to somehow cause the internal state to get all messed up, and prevent new windows from openning until the certain bits of the profile get reset (not necessarily just chrome.rdf, in my experience).

Bottom line is that I'm not going to try and get the game working as a chrome any time soon, but I might try and release it somewhere as an example of what can be done with Mozilla using JavaScript, the DOM, and CSS. (If anyone is willing to volunteer, that is - I don't have webhosting available anywhere.)

Over all, I've been quite happy with Mozilla since somewhere around the 0.9.6 release or so. It's grown into a very nice and useful browser.

Re:So if there's just been one bug fix...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is open source. You're supposed to fix the bugs yourself.

Re:So if there's just been one bug fix...

[MarcQuadra]

I've been using Mozilla since late '99 and it only gets better in the long run. Same with the Linux kernel, or KDE, Windows NT, or any large complex project has bumps in the road to success. These are REALLY BIG projects, little stuff goes awry all the time, but in the big picture it gets better and better. It should be standard operating procedure to remove any Moz installs before upgrading, anything less is asking for trouble.

I submitted it too!

[stratjakt]

Here's the response I got:

"Dear Sir,

'Slow as hell, shitty, and does not display half the pages properly, if at all' is not a bug.

If you cannot display the Bank of America online banking page, that is your fault for being a capitalist swine who cares more about his finances than open source.

Thank you,
Mozilla Team"

Re:I submitted it too!

[haggar]

At least they cared enough to provide an explanation :->

I can't make it work with BBC News, but I can put up with that. But the jerky mousepointer on the ThinkPad is no go. Sorry Moz.

What you don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

is Slashdot is the cash cow for a group of friends that are all overweight, undersexed and generally not far from their mothers. They all live in BFE, Michigan, and any ambition is directed to the big tin of Oreos for Friday Night Anime.

Once you realize this, everything else makes sense.

Re:What you don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

It all makes sense.

Re:What you don't understand

[krow]

Pizza and Sushi are probably the case actually.

Hey Taco...

[DraKKon]

Don't speak for everyone... Mozilla and Chimaria aren't my favorite browsers... Opera is.

Galeon

[bombdotcom]

Uh, hello, try Phoenix. k, thx.

Try galeon, OK? Its a great, fast browser.

Re:Another victory for The People's Bugtracker!

[DwarfGoanna]

I definitely agree with everything you said. I really do. Bugzilla, and Moz itself, both kick much ass.

But for some reason, this post sounds like something Mao would say if he were a 21st century geek. C'mon, doesn't it? =)

font smoothing in KDE?

[Skyshadow]

Okay, maybe I'm just having a slow start to my Tuesday, but why can't I figure out how to get Mozilla 1.2 to go ahead and smooth fonts in KDE on a RedHat 8 system? I can't even find anything useful on Google, which is bizarre.

Re:font smoothing in KDE?

[tuffy]

Did you download the experimental xft version? The regular version doesn't have the smoothing code, so that one won't work.

Re:font smoothing in KDE?

[Wylfing]

why can't I figure out how to get Mozilla 1.2 to go ahead and smooth fonts in KDE on a RedHat 8 system

You have to build Mozilla yourself to get the XFT font-smoothing goodness. Compile with the

--enable-xft

option. I haven't tried this yet myself. You have to get the code from CVS until the source tarballs are out later in the week.

Re:font smoothing in KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

why can't I figure out how to get Mozilla 1.2 to go ahead and smooth fonts in KDE on a RedHat 8 system

If that does not work, you can always try the old "vaseline rubbed in the eyes" trick. Looks about the same.

Re:font smoothing in KDE?

[silvaran]

Mozilla.org now has xft RPMs available for RH8. Check a mirror (mozilla.org is slow right now), but in any case it should be around /mozilla/releases/mozilla1.2.1/Red_Hat_8x_RPMS/xft /RPMS/i386

You can replace "xft" with "vanilla" if you want (to get the non-xft support), and RPMS with SRPMS if you want to build RPMS from source (perhaps for a different arch, remove the i386).

Note that Mozilla isn't exactly dependent directly on KDE. To get smoothing, you actually use XFT, with is unrelated to KDE (KDE uses it through QT, but neither are a part of each other).

Another poster mentioned the xft support is experimental. He's probably right, so ymmv. I've been running the RPMS I mentioned above for a few hours with 0 problems on RH8, and it looks absolutely gorgeous.

Re:font smoothing in KDE?

[shellbeach]

All this garbage about requiring an XFT-enabled build for aa fonts is just plain and utter crap. You can use the vanilla 1.2 release and do it ... hell, I've had aa fonts since 1.0 :)

If you don't care about using XFT (which is prob faster) but just want aa fonts, you just have to edit the global preferences/unix.js file in your mozilla directory. Make a backup, and then use a text editor ... don't be afraid - all the features are commented.

I'm posting this from work, where I'm forced to use windows, but if you need more info than that reply to this and I'll post a patch of the vanilla 1.2 unix.js file.

Minor release patches?

[beeblebrox87]

Why must Mozilla always release only the full version, even for minor fix releases like this one. I am on a satellite connection, so it took me hours to download 1.2, and now I will have to download almost the exact same thing all over again. Can't they release both a full version and a patch for the previous version?

Re:Minor release patches?

[M1000]

You might want to compile from source and sync to their cvs...

Re:Minor release patches?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone's favorite target, Java, has the ability to do this. Without having to local compile.

Java Web Start is a great thing. Maybe someone will take up the idea for other software.

Re:Minor release patches?

[Dixie_Flatline]

I agree, but for a different reason.

Every time I get a new Mozilla, I have to uninstall and reinstall the entire thing. Trying to install on top inevitably leads to problems (not that I don't try to make it work.) For instance, this time, the Bookmark Sidebar couldn't load my bookmarks. When I uninstalled (and eliminated the resources) and reinstalled, they worked again.

Of course, this is under Windows. I never had problems like this undir Linux.

Anyway, I think that a Windows patch would probably leave enough alone that I'd be able to go along my merry way without this much hassle.

Re:Minor release patches?

[gr0ngb0t]

on windows 2k @ work, i just download the new version and run the install - as I have been doing since M18 - with no problems at all until i did it today and had to get the pinball skin again, but that wasnt any major drama. this box is as stable as any other windows box, its hasnt crashed or needed to be rebooted in the several months since I got it. I am quite amazed by its stability...

at home, my linux box is still running 1.1, but i'll probably do just the same thing when i eventually upgrade that to 1.2.1

I dont use the sidebar or any of that shit though, so cant comment on the specific things you mention - who wants to clutter up your browser window with IE-esque crud?

Re:Minor release patches?

[Dixie_Flatline]

Actually, it's something that I never use in IE (can you actually do that?) and something that I picked up from Opera. Those sidebars are quite handy, since most of what I do at the browser is going to bookmarks and searching on Google.

As for installing over top of stuff, I've had troubles for a while, but it may be due to the fact that I also like to run Multizilla to handle tabs (which is much better than the default) and the Optimoz pie menus. And this is under XP. Who knows what kinds of problems that alone is causing? :)

in soviet russia

[Anonymous Coward]

in soviet russia the security patches fix you!

DHTML bug @ ebgames.com?

[Malc]

So, was the DHTML bug the reason why the image map (top right: Help|My Orders|etc) on the EB Games wasn't working for me in 1.2? It seems to be okay in 1.2.1.

Opera Still Beats Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using Opera 7 beta and it just screams. Even for a beta, it's more stable than Mozilla ever has been, and the interface is cleaner without a lot of unnecessary glitz.

From the horse's mouth

[aWalrus]

From CmdrTaco's journal:

Icing on the mornings cake: I got up on time, drove to work, posted a story, and then forgot to press *save* on the goddamn web form. So for hte next 2 hours I keep deleting submission after submission about Mozilla 1.2.1 thinking "geezus, are people blind?" and not realizing that no, I am in fact stupid. Of course, why so many people submit a bug fix release of a web browser is beyond me. Some stories I'd rather not post, but sheer volume of submissions really makes it impractical to ignore them
--

Re:From the horse's mouth

[ftobin]

Never underestimate The Power of Stupid People in Large Numbers.

Re:From the horse's mouth

[Jucius Maximus]

"So for hte next 2 hours I keep deleting submission after submission about Mozilla 1.2.1 thinking "geezus, are people blind?"

So Rob is basically admitting that he doesn't even monitor the homepage that frequently. No wonder there are so many dupes.

Re:From the horse's mouth

[1029]

Hah! Well thats just Democracy in action for ya. Oh wait...

Re:From the horse's mouth

[limbostar]

People submit the stories so much because they know that every minor release will always have a story to go along with it, and they want to be the person that submitted it.

If you don't want to post them, STOP POSTING THEM. Jesus, have a fucking spine and be an editor like you're supposed to be.

Re:From the horse's mouth

[CmdrTaco (1)]

Yes, I have better things (watching Sailor Moon) to do than constently reload the frontpage unlike all the trolls here. I leeve it to Michael to go through the postings but he prefere bitchslapping threads to checking for dupes.

Re:Another victory for The People's Bugtracker!

[ekrout]

People:

We are for superior, free software. But so long as U.S. imperialism refuses to give up its arrogant and unreasonable demands and its scheme to extend aggression, the only course for us as Open Source pioneers is to remain determined to go on fighting. Not that we are warlike. We are willing to stop the war at once and leave the remaining questions for later settlement. However, U.S. imperialism is not willing to do so. All right then let the fighting go on. However many years U.S. imperialism wants to fight, we are ready to fight right up to the moment when it is willing to stop, right up to the moment of complete victory for the Open Source and Free Software peoples.

Down with Microsoft; long live Free Software!

-- Eric "Mao" Krout

New versions of IE are usually ...

[burgburgburg]

in eventual response to some major security flaw which will have been discussed a few months earlier on /. when it was first discovered. And when they are released, normally there will be a /. article about the ridiculous new EULA provisions ("In the name of computer safety, we reserve the right to purchase, sell, trade, barter or dispose of at our convenience your first born child") so we are informed, in a way.

Chimera...

[Junta]

I'm sorry, but for all that Chimera is hailed, is is a piece of crap browser. I've been using it and it just crashes constantly and lacks a lot of features. Features that I sorely miss from mozilla/phoenix while using Chimera are:

Smart Bookmarks (searching from location bar very convenient, am using what I feel is a kludge of a javascript monstrosity set as my search page to search by selection or pop up a dialog if there is no selection, decent, but still not as cool).

Type-ahead find: very nifty feature.

Ability to have hrefs that request new windows open in tabs. I like tabs and don't like sites breaking my preferred usage paradigm.

Freaking close buttons on the tabs. I hate having to right click, control-click, or click and hold to close a tab that is not the active tab. Just annoying.

The first is to me the biggest issue. I just had to rant that Chimera is not 'all-that'. If it didn't crash so much and at *least* had smart bookmarks, then maybe. OmniWeb and IE are just too feature barren, Opera misrenders some important pages to me, and Mozilla is too slow. Phoenix has been decent, but middle-click doesn't work and sometimes it gets a bit confused in the MacOSX builds... Well, enough of my rant..

Re:Chimera...

[Znonymous Coward]

Never crashed on me. What version are you using?

Re:Chimera...

[demon]

Middle-click pasting works fine in the location bar, just not in the main window. I noticed that myself, and had gotten kinda lazy about doing that, but after using Phoenix for a few days, I can't say that I really mind it. I've started using Phoenix pretty much exclusively on hme workstation and my home system, and am very happy with it.

Re:Chimera...

[GrayArea]

I've seen a couple of crashes with the latest 0.6 release but otherwise it's been stable for me. Flash and Quicktime run just fine, though RealOne Player is not running as a plugin yet. I prefer it Mozilla 1.1 on Mac OS X at this point. BTW, Mozilla popup menus look real ugly on OS X, with thick black borders. What's the deal with that?

Re:Chimera...

[marmoset]

Check your Flash plugin version. A recent (but not the latest) release of Flash caused constant crashes in Chimera.

Re:Chimera...

[Junta]

Flash player 6, and actually, none of the sites I typically am visiting have any flash content or ads... Strange but true. Trying a nightly now to see how it goes...

Re:Chimera...

[marmoset]

You want the beta:

31 October 2002: For those of you experiencing crashes when loading sites with Flash, check out the beta of the Macromedia Shockwave Flash plugin. This plugin fixes an issue that causes crashes in the latest mainstream Flash release.

Re:Chimera...

[bnenning]

Features that I sorely miss from mozilla/phoenix while using Chimera

You did notice Chimera's version number, right? Quite a bit less than 1.0. If you want to point out missing features, that's fine, but calling it a "piece of crap" is completely unwarranted.

Everyone?

[mindstrm]

I'm curious as to where you got the idea that mozilla was everyone's favorite web browser.

It seems most of the world uses IE, or netscape, or opera.. before mozilla.

new topic please...

[bje2]

can we please have a new slashdot topic for something like "minor releases" so i can filter these stories out...

Re:new topic please...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we please have a filter so I don't have to waste a nanosecond scrolling by these messages complaining about news items on slashdot?

NTLM proxy fixed?!

[Atomizer]

I didn't see that the NTLM proxy problem was fixed on Bugzilla (23679), but I am sending this from Mozilla 1.2.1 and it is going through my company NTLM proxy! Before I had to run a python script that I found on Freshmeat (Python Script) in order to get it to go through. It now appears that Mozilla finally has it built in.

Moz 1.2.1 Destroys Palm User Accounts

[Admiral Mouse]

BEWARE---Installing 1.2.1 can destroy your Palm user account.

Aside from that, Palm address book sync is in... but there still seems to be lots of issues with it. Categores don't seem to sync well, it resets the "Show in list" field every time something changes, secondary address books don't always sync, etc.
Classify as Not Yet Ready for Prime Time(tm).

Re:Moz 1.2.1 Destroys Palm User Accounts

[CormacJ]

As long as you don't uninstall 1.2 or 1.2.1 it will be fine. The problem is caused by the uninstall, bot the install

What a difference a character makes

[endico]

You'll be amused to know that Mozilla 1.2.1 differs from Mozilla 1.2 by one character.

Ok, not exactly. It actually differs by 34 characters. The bug fix itself was a one character change (changed a '9' to an '8'). Changing the version string in various places from "1.2" to "1.2.1" took 33 characters.

Re:What a difference a character makes

[nule.org]

s/1.2/1.2.1/g can't take 33 characters, it's an integer change involving an even number of characters.

Just thought I'd be annoying. :)

Re:What a difference a character makes

[Anonymous Coward]

one of the changes didn't require a period

Re:What a difference a character makes

[Anonymous Coward]

not as big of a deal as the SSH off-by-one bug, which was the "one remote hole in the default install" in OpenBSD "in nearly 6 years"

it does not end

[Anonymous Coward]

You people can't even put in a trailing slash on your link to Mozilla.org? You can't even give us a good deep link?

How pathetic.

Save the .xpi file

[whterbt]

I get around this problem by saving the .xpi file (from mozdev or elsewhere) to disk, instead of allowing it to install immediately. I keep all my .xpi files in a separate directory. Then, when I get a new Mozilla installation, I open them (File -> Open) and install them at that point.

Slightly OT: Chimera Roadmap

[Anonymous Coward]

I love Chimera, but there seems to be no roadmap. Any idea when Chimera 0.7 will be out?

Potential feature?

[truesaer]

One thing that is really keeping me from using Mozilla is the fact that I can't use my google toolbar. I've become dependant on it, to be honest. So, it would be cool if Mozilla could emulate IE somehow or another to fool Google and be able to have IE style custom toolbars. Not sure if this is possible....

Re:Potential feature?

[fawadhalim]

Check out the mycroft project at mozdev. Goes waay beyond the Google toolbar. If you really want the GOogle toolbar, get it from here.

Re:Potential feature?

[alistair]

There is an excellent browser toolbar for mozilla which emulates the googlebar at;

http://googlebar.mozdev.org/

This seems to be having problems with the Linux build at present but two other projects linked from this page are Mycroft which has plug ins to allow you to search over 170 different search engines (check it out) and Easysearch which allows you to search google and others.

While exploring the mozdev site, check out Mouse Gestures, Pie Menus (both under Optimoz) and the Multizilla toolbar. These, for me, have made browsing fun and efficient once again.

If you are keen, there is an easy to follow tutorial on building your own toolbars at;
Building a toolbar for Netscape 7 (applies to Mozilla too). I used this to write a toolbar to search our Corporate Directory, Intranet and Google, It took me three days to write from scratch but is now quite widely used.

Re:Potential feature?

[Malc]

I haven't tried under 1.2.1, but GVdP's instructions worked for me under 1.2 on both Win2K and WinXP.

Re:Potential feature?

[scrytch]

Check out the mycroft project at mozdev [mozdev.org]. Goes waay beyond the Google toolbar. If you really want the GOogle toolbar, get it from here [mozdev.org].

I don't see how. No keyboard shortcut I can seeno button to toggle term hilighting or skip to the next term, no buttons to flip between searches. In fact its own documentation makes it look like nothing more than a bunch of search engines that can be plugged in to mozilla's already sub-par search from the address bar feature (which is still broken if you hit CR before selecting the search option, then select the search option).

Re:Potential feature?

[kennylives]

Aside from the highlights (that I rarely used anyway), I don't miss the Googlebar. I just set the search engine to be Google, enter my search terms in the address bar, tab, enter, profit. Is there some additional functionality (of the Googlebar) that I'm missing?

Re:Potential feature?

[Anonymous Coward]

the mozilla address bar IS a google search bar

Re:Potential feature?

[truesaer]

Well yes. I use highlighting very frequently. I search the page by typing in items and clicking on the box to skip from term to term. I use the 'search site' button constantly. I look at the pagerank indicator to see how popular the site I'm on is...etc. etc. I'm going to check out the mozbar though, hopefully it will satisfy my needs!

Re:Potential feature?

[truesaer]

Thanks...I'll check them out and be a mozilla user within a few days with luck. I'll probably also need to replace my form filler. Any suggestions?

Do we really need this?

[nochops]

Honestly folks, do we really need a front page story every time a new version of Mozilla is realeased? I'm sure there's other applications that are more deserving than a web browser.

Mozilla 1.2.1 Released

Mozilla 1.2 Unleashed

Mozilla 1.2 Beta Released

Mozilla 1.2 Betas Start Flowing

Mozilla 1.1 Hits The Street

Mozilla 1.1 Beta Out And About

And that's just from the first two pages of search results. I know we all love our Mozilla, but I'm sure there's something else a little more newsworthy going on today.

Re:Do we really need this?

[Anonymous Coward]

just go to your user preferences and disable the mozilla box. Don't bitch to us about it.

Re:Do we really need this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Notice the # of cmts that Moz topics get? 600+ usually. That means lots of hits on /. and lots of ad $$. Hmm. you think it could be a factor?

Coffee...

[RAMMS EIN]

``I shouldn't be allowed to work before coffee''
Indeed. Since when is fixing document.write() to not drop characters a security fix? I'm snatching this one, though. Ater coffee, though.

Maybe...

[Pac]

Maybe because when Microsoft releases a new version every technology site plus almost every other site including online book stores, online lingerie stores, online food delivery sites and gramma's blog run reviews, praisings and articles about it. Such an event is usually also covered by all newspapers, magazines, high-school student papers and church bulletins in the world. It is not like without Slashdot we would all be ignorant of Microsoft new releases...

No source yet?

[tweek]

The directory for src is empty:

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/releases/mozil la 1.2.1/src

I really want to start this building whilst I'm at work but I can't find the source!

Anyone know which nightly this was built from? I can just download that one.

Re:No source yet?

[sconest]

As usual, source tarballs will be released some days after.
In the meanwhile, get the source from CVS (The tag is MOZILLA_1_2_1_RELEASE)

Re:No source yet?

[tweek]

Hehe. Did just that. It's downloading now.

Standards are important

[Anonymous Coward]

If I wrote a C program and started it as

void main(void, void)

it is perfectly permissible for the compiler to complain. This is almost as bad as writing

struct person {char * name; time_t date_of_birth; colour_type eye_colour; long double height; long double mass; int google_pages;}
main(struct quaternion {long double real, i,j,k;} argc, struct train_schedule {unsigned int stations; struct stationtime {struct station {char * name; long double longitude, latitude;} station; time_t due_intime, due_outtime;} * station_list; unsigned int carriages; struct carriage {int first_seats, second_seats,third_seats;} * carriage_list;} ** argv)

which is clearly absurd (even with a previous typedef colour_type uint32_t, even with time.h and stdint.h included and even if there isn't a syntax error somewhere).

If web designers insist on writing web pages which either do not conform to standards or which misuse deprecated elements (such as <font face="symbol">&yen;</font> (or with an absolute code) for &infin; (Slashdot won't display certain characters, so I've had to literalise them to prevent them being stripped out completely) when many systems don't have a Microsoft symbol font - I see this problem far too often (although that site does warn users)), they should expect their page to fail somewhere.

Of course, the DHTML bug is bad because with it, Mozilla 1.2 is not a conforming implementation of the HTML 4.0 standard and so no company will dare use it (just as few companies (excluding Microsoft) will dare use GCC (any version) due to lack of C99 support.

And you forget the most important problem of Microsoft Internet Explorer - it does not work at all on any Unix system (the Solaris and HP/UX versions have been withdrawn), on any GNU system or indeed on almost all operating systems. Mozilla has the virtue of being somewhat more portable (for example, ports to BeOS and OpenVMS are in the pipeline).

Re:Standards are important

[jweatherley]

And you forget the most important problem of Microsoft Internet Explorer - it does not work at all on any Unix system

Here's a link to a UNIX version of MSIE.

Mildly Disappointed In Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

I finally went to the trouble to downloading the tarball, building and installing Mozilla just this last Sunday. (A Ghod-awful download time, 3+ hours to build, and make install took longer than most packages take to freekin' build!</rant>) While I must admit it looks pretty slick and has some nice features (tabbed browsing and the side-bar are two of my favourites), it's got some serious issues that're going to keep NS 4.79 my browser-of-choice for a while, yet. For one thing: font rendering is very poor compared to NS 4.79. And what's up with Moz' menus? I click on Appearance and then, say, Fonts and the thing just sits there thinking about it for a bit before the config window changes. The menus are mostly all like that. Additionally: while I know my bookmarks file has gotten way out of control: Moz takes much longer to deal with it than NS 4.79 does. Gecko's vaunted rendering engine really doesn't seem to be all that much faster than what NS 4.79 does. And what's up with Moz and 8-bit displays? Rendering looks like crap (sorry, but it does).

So I'll continue using NS 4.79 for my average, daily needs. I'll use Moz for checking my own web work (particularly for what CSS stuff does) and for those rare sites that don't work (correctly) with NS 4.79.

And wait for a stable release of the browser-previously-known-as-Phoenix. Maybe at least the performance issues will be addressed.

Where's the Mirror??

[OzPhIsH]

Ack, I can't get the main rpm with XFS support now. (Slashdotted?) I know someone out there has these files mirrored. Would be greatly appreciated..

Flamebait?

[Anonvmous Coward]

Flamebait? If I had said "THATS NOT NEWS!!!" I'd understand a flamebait moderation, but "how about a little backstory for the uninitiated?" request is not exactly the type of thing that'll have people out for my blood.

Re:Flamebait?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop bitching. No one likes a whiner.

Must be you 'cos

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had no problems whatsoever in RH 8.0.

Re:Must be you 'cos

[denny_d]

ditto
moz 1.2.1 / RH8 no problem, picked up all my prefs EXCEPT my plugins other than that no prob.

My 2 big gripes about Mozilla

[vasqzr]

1 - Tabbed browsing is cool, but you should get a confirmation that you'd like to close the main browser window when you have 23 tabs open

2 - CTRL-SHIFT-L to open a web address. Make it CTRL-O.

Re:My 2 big gripes about Mozilla

[dd301]

1 - Tabbed browsing is cool, but you should get a confirmation that you'd like to close the main browser window when you have 23 tabs open

It doesn't help that C-q is right next to C-w.

CTRL-SHIFT-L to open a web address. Make it CTRL-O.

F6 should work as well.

Re:My 2 big gripes about Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

alt-d now also brings you to the address bar.

I was tired of using ctrl-shift-l to open an address.

Get a clue.

[Anonymous Coward]

We hate Micro$haft! We LOVE Moz! And there are many reasons for that.

Get a clue! For real. Or go throw yourself in front of a train.

Strange characters in Mozilla?

[Vote3rdParty]

I installed Mozilla 1.1 a couple weeks ago on Mandrake Linux. Apostrophes and quotes no longer resolve correctly -- appear as umlaut y or something like that. I've looked around for the easy answer, not yet found one. I doubt upgrading to 1.21 would correct this. Any ideas or resources?

Re:Strange characters in Mozilla?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try upgrading to IE if you want to ever see a web page rendered properly. Sad, but true.

Re:Strange characters in Mozilla?

[Anonymous Coward]

Character coding.

Check View|Character Coding

It's probably mis-set.

Re:Strange characters in Mozilla?

[Drakonian]

Thanks AC! Mod this up. On Phoenix, I set mine to Western (Windows 1252) and this fixed the apostrophe problems I was having.

Re:Strange characters in Mozilla?

[kc8apf]

Who the heck thought modding this flamebait informative was a good idea?

Use the Net Installer for smaller downloads

[ChrisCampbell47]

I see your point about just getting a patch, but you should also know that you can just install using the Net Installer, which gives you a 200KB program to select the exact configuration you want to install, and THEN it downlaods and installs.

http://www.mozilla.org/releases/

Scroll down looking for "Net Installer" .

Re:Use the Net Installer for smaller downloads

[beeblebrox87]

I do use the net installer, however it still downloads all of Mozilla while installing, even if only a few components need updating.

Favorite browser besides Chimera?

[norweigiantroll]

Who the heck cares abuot Chimera? Don't you still use Linux, Taco? Anyway my favorite browser is Konqueror, second Galeon ...

RPM's

[zogger]

--if anyone from redhat(or someone else knowledgeable) would care to comment if/when they'll be official RPM's available for the 7.x series releases, I'd appreciate it. Thanks in advance!

Re:RPM's

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm waiting rh 7.x rpms too....

Re:RPM's

[thecombatwombat]

There will probably never be official rpms for the 7.x series, the way I understand it, redhat never releases new packages except for bug/security fixes, you'd have to get 8.0 for new features. If I'm wrong here please go right ahead and say so.

However, I bet ximian has perfectly fine mozilla 1.2.x packages available or on the way, along with lots of other desktop related updates.

Re:RPM's

[anonymous cupboard]

There were rpms for 7.x (I think x > 3) when I downloaded my 8.0 rpms yesterday. Even better there were also rpms for 8.0 against xft. This really, really looks better under Linux.

Re:RPM's

[zogger]

--hey thanks! You are correct, the 7.x series rpms are on their ftp site but not listed on the main web page. Downloading right now!

To see it in action...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're still using 1.2, you can see the bug in action at nextel.com

Popup Blocking

[RebelWebmaster]

Where did the popup blocking go in the final 1.2 and 1.2.1 builds that was in the 1.2 beta builds? All I see for blocking popups now is under the Javascript prefs, but I'd rather have the option to do it on a site by site basis (or more preferable, create a whitelist of trusted sites and block the rest). Anybody?

Re:Popup Blocking

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Check Bugzilla BugID 166442, comment 104 (no URL given to help keep a few casual Slash clickers off BugZilla).

Basically scrapped for 1.2 becuase they couldn't get it in right, on the plate again for 1.3.

The actual problem

[yoz]

... turns out to be bug 144027.

Cheers to the Mozilla bugspotters for pointing me in the right direction!

start of tether [--|-------------] end of tether

-- Yoz

The highest bandwidth possible...

[emil]

...is still a UPS truck full of CD/DVD-ROMs.

Re:The highest bandwidth possible...

[Anonymous Coward]

"bandwidth"...

The latency is too high.

topic?

[an_mo]

shouldn't this be a mozilla topic rather than news?

Flash 6 Beta Plugin

[ospirata]

One thing that differs from the Mozilla 1.2 and 1.2.1 release notes is that it encoureges us to upgrade Linux users to Macromedia Flash 6 Beta

It says that Mozilla 1.3 may not support previous versions of Flash.

I have not tested it yet, but they say that one of the bugs from Mozilla that annoyes me most was fixed: mozilla crashes when openning flash content in a remote display

what terrible timing!

[Anonymous Coward]

I finally got around to compiling the source, and
here there's a bug fix release out. what a waste
of cpu cycles.

Re:1.2.1 does have better security than 1.1 or 1.0

[the-matt-mobile]

> 1.2.1 does have better security than 1.1 or 1.0.1

That's if you don't consider pre-fetching being on by default to be a potential security risk. I'm probably a little paranoid, but I'm sticking with 1.1 until Phoenix gets a little less beta (which doesn't seem like it'll be too much longer) or until pre-fetching is off by default in Moz (and yes I know I can turn it off myself... it's the principle darn it).

The Threads Icon

[frooyo]

Why doesn't this thread use the Mozilla icon instead of the news story pic? I know it is picky but this is MOZILLA news not general info

Keep plugins (was Re:Annoyance)

[tialaramex]

If you're on a single user (or more or less single user, e.g. you and a couple of family members, housemates etc.) Unix system then there's an alternative way to disentangle plugins from the browser itself.

Create a directory ~/.mozilla/plugins
(that's right, beneath Mozilla's own dot directory)

Then move plugins you want into that directory (but only real plugins, not the null plugin or any other Moz-provided stuff)

This works for me, YMMV.

1.2.1 vs. 1.2beta: pop up manager is GONE!

[jerryasher]

Arggh! I upgraded my 1.2beta and will probably roll it out.

They have removed the new pop up manager saying it will return when it's ready for prime time. Damn! I thought the pop up manager was terrific as it is.

They also, but I can't find the bug report now, seem to have removed the middle-click kills a tabbed window behavior, another behavior I use all the time.

Hey, for me, 1.2.1 is much worse than 1.2beta.

Re:1.2.1 vs. 1.2beta: pop up manager is GONE!

[rherbert]

I just middle-clicked on my Slashdot tab, and it closed the tab. I don't know about the pop-up manager, but if it's gone, it was probably removed in the official 1.2.

Re:1.2.1 vs. 1.2beta: pop up manager is GONE!

[vsync64]

Middle-clicking should not close a tabbed window. It used to, and I considered it a bug. Thankfully, it now loads a URL into a tab when you middle-click on it, just as middle-clicking in the document window loads whatever URL is the current selection.

Re:1.2.1 vs. 1.2beta: pop up manager is GONE!

[vsync64]

Sadly, I am incorrect. I just tried it, and middle-clicking into a tab loads the URL into the current tab, not the one clicked on. I wish they'd fix this.

Re:1.2.1 vs. 1.2beta: pop up manager is GONE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sexual Asspussy.

anything wrong with version 1.0?

[Junkstyle]

I've been using version 1.0 ever since its been released. Have had no problems yet. What am i missing?

WHAT ABOUT ALL THE OTHERS?!?!?!

[xo0m]

good job, mozilla team, for fixing the dhtml bug...just one bug out of the many tho :(

better fix

[i don't care]

Copy the plugin files (except npnul32.dll) to a directory called plugins created in the same directory as your Profiles/ directory. For win2k this is %USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Mozilla\plugins

I really don�t see what all the fuss about tabbed

[fldvm]

After reading 61% of slashdot readers use Windows but only 49% use IE. I decided to give this Mozilla thing a try.

I really don't see what all the fuss about tabbed browsing is about; It really just does the same thing as opening a new window in IE (I have more ram than I know what to do with when just surfing the net).

I do like the idea of blocking pop up windows and other adds but I had problems accessing one of my favorite sites (tv.yahoo.com) and quickly got tired of having to open IE when Mozilla didn't work.

I am willing to give Mozilla another try but do I really have to uninstall 1.2 to upgrade to 1.2.1 on windows?

Do you know a good site for Mozilla newbies?

No this is not a troll, I really am just starting to use Mozilla, and not impressed with tabbed browsing.

Severe performance problem with 1.2.1

[mrawl]

AFAIC 1.2.1 is almost unusable. On my home machine (dual 450MHz PII) it takes up to 3 seconds every time I close a browser window. During this period it hammers the disk viciously. This was not noticeable prior to 1.2. Something has changed drastically, and it is making the browser very hard to use. Are they doing cache cleanups every time a window is closed? What the...
(I know, log a bug, fix it myself. Yeh right, like all the users are responsible for these regressions...)

Re:Severe performance problem with 1.2.1

[skt]

There has been a bug in the turbo feature for a while. If you close the last mozilla window, mozilla will basically restart which will cause thrashing on lower memory systems. The workaround seems to be not closing the last window..

Re:Severe performance problem with 1.2.1

[mrawl]

Thanks for the info, but it's any window - first, last, inbetween, makes no diff. Isn't everyone seeing this? It's painfully obvious. Go on, try it, open some new windows, just a few simple ^Ns, now try closing them. The only way to avoid the annoyance of it is to try to launch everything into a new tab - it doesn't happen when you close a tab. But if you let it launch into a new window, watch out! You're better off minimising windows than trying to close them, because while it's thrashing and gagging on the severely difficult function of closing a window, it is pretty much totally unresponsive to all other input. Happens on all my machines too, so it's nothing to do with my set up.

CVS Slashdotted

[Luke-Jr]

I can't appear to pull the source from the CVS... Has it been /.ed???

It's getting faster...

[Lispy]

...and faster...soon i might consider switching from Opera...i just upgraded from 1.0 to this build and it's really getting useable. It also starts wayyyy faster on my slackbox now. And since it's the only real, free alternative around (i don't count konqueror since i don't consider it a full featured browser although it's neat) i will give it another testdrive...

cu,
Lispy

Information Patch

[LinuxGeek]

Piece of advice for story submitters out there: Not every single person on Slashdot gives a rootin toot about Mozilla. Consider putting a little background in your posts. A little blurb like "This is significant because 1.2 was pulled due to a bug that 1.2.1 now fixes." would prevent people like me from making sarcastic comments (like the one above) about the importance of the news.

Translation:

Anything that you are not completely familiar with or disagree with is subject to ridicule. Any flaws in your ridicule are the responsibility of those that only partially informed you, therefore maintaining your perfection and absolute right to ridicule. ...End Translation...

Damn, sorry we all forgot to fully inform you. We must have been mistaken when we assumed that you had the responsibility to inform yourself before engaging your sarcastic wit. This release of Mozilla clears up all of the problems I have had with 1.2b, now that you know what it is, try it and enjoy. Don't forget to check out tabbed browsing.

Re:Information Patch

[Anonvmous Coward]

"We must have been mistaken when we assumed that you had the responsibility to inform yourself before engaging your sarcastic wit."

Not a very effective news reporting strategy if the users have to go do all the research themselves. Heh.

Re:Information Patch

[LinuxGeek]

Not a very effective news reporting strategy if the users have to go do all the research themselves. Heh.

I was alluding to you making sure you know something about what you are talking about or ( like most reasonable folks) curbing your tongue until you do know. That is the way that people who do not wish to appear foolish conduct themselves.

Mozilla is a fairly frequent article subject on /. and on the web in general. A quick search turns up many relevant articles. It would be difficult for the editors to summarize 5 years of Mozilla development in each story header.

Re:Information Patch

[Anonvmous Coward]

"I was alluding to you making sure you know something about what you are talking about or ( like most reasonable folks) curbing your tongue until you do know."

Doh! I misread that, I'm sorry heh.

"Mozilla is a fairly frequent article subject on /. and on the web in general."

Perhaps, but that doesn't mean that it's religiously followed. I don't use Mozilla. I'm quite happy with Opera and a little annoyed that it doesn't get more press. So when I see announcements for the release of Mozilla 1.2 and 1.21, but I don't see that Opera 7 has entered beta, it makes me feel like Slashdot's biases are really crowding the main page. It's the same with the anti-MS crap that keeps making it's way to the front page.

It was really starting to look like that every little minor update to Mozilla was going to be blasted on the main page. But if they had just said "this is a followup to a previous article..." or something like that, it'd be more understandable.

I agree with you that my frustrations with this topic are partly my own responsibility, but that doesn't excuse the poster from not considering that a little modifications to their article could make it interesting to the uninitiated.

Cheers

IOU

[Anonymous Coward]

one +1 Insightful.

ctrl-L

[mbrubeck]

CTRL-SHIFT-L to open a web address. Make it CTRL-O. Have you tried using the plain old ctrl-L command? I can no longer use browsers that lack this feature. (IE5 for Mac was the first place I saw it.)

Re:ctrl-L

[bwt]

More importantly, if I have highlighted a plain text URL, then place it in the text box for me, so all I have to do is hit enter.

Re:ctrl-L

[skt]

He's probably referring to the old Netscape 4 shortcut of CTRL+O to open a new URL, which is exactly what CTRL+SHIFT+L does in mozilla. Relearning keyboard shortcuts isn't much fun :( But, after you press CTRL+O a few dozen times in mozilla and get the File open dialog when you really wanted the open URL dialog.. you'll start learning CTRL+L pretty quickly.

Re:ctrl-L

[nijhof]

More importantly, if I have highlighted a plain text URL, then place it in the text box for me, so all I have to do is hit enter.

In the Linux version, that feature is available, but slightly differently: just middle-click (as in 'paste') anywhere in the browser window!

Jeroen Nijhof

Re:ctrl-L

[juhaz]

... and it rocks.

Wonder why windows version doesn't have this one.
Those small, nifty things are just what it makes so much better than IE...

Anyone notice

[TheKubrix]

Just how buggy (using Win version) this thing is?

Re:Anyone notice

[mikefoley]

I like Mozilla, but at the moment, this version is hanging on startup on Win2k. Sigh.

Why is it...?

[l1ghtfoot]

In all seriousness, why is it that if your run-in-the-mill user submits this kind of tidbit the night it's released, it's rejected, but when an editor figures it out the next morning, his is the one on the front page?

hey i liked those

[vsync64]

From the release notes:

and the removal of the confusing toolbar grippies.

How do I get these back?

Re:Solaris? HA!

[Flower]

And I thought it might be funny to mention OpenBSD. You win.

Standards are nice and all but...

[KalvinB]

When is Mozilla going to recognize the "border" tag for tables? And why does background=#444444 only work in IE? IE recognizes both "background" and "bgcolor." Would it hurt Mozilla to do the same?

It seems like a no brainer and yet the Mozilla team for some reason has decided not to implement it. I needed a solid border for a recent web project and I ended up having to use a spacer graphic (since the cells were empty and would collapse without it) and a background color to create the border out of excess cells. That's absurd.

A table with borders, what a concept. Some little "extras" that IE has are really nice. If you could get off the anti-MS parade for a moment and oh I dunno, implement some of the basic ones, that would be great.

Mozilla nice and all but it's the little things like that which are just annoying so I stick to IE and only use Mozilla when checking compatibility with my site.

Ben

Re:Standards are nice and all but...

[jonasj]

> When is Mozilla going to recognize the
> "border" tag for tables?

Already does.

> And why does background=#444444 only work
> in IE?

Because that attribute doesn't exist.

Seriously, why are you not using CSS?

Re:Solaris? HA!

[SCHecklerX]

Yeah, and then there's that other dead OS, OS/2...Oh, wait

Re:I really don�t see what all the fuss about tabb

[sharph]

Let me explain.

Some people go way overboard on the number of webpages they have open at once, and tabbed browsing is a lot more pleasent than a bunch of individual browsers on the taskbar.

A good site for mozilla newbies would be MozDev. More specifically, OptiMoz. Try installing the plugins here and you might/will be impressed.

Re:RPM's - Don't need em

[sharph]

Try downloading Mozilla in tar.gz. Uninstall mozilla with rpm -e mozilla mozilla-mail mozilla-psm, and run the installer.

After that, everything will be all nice, except if you want it to be in your $PATH, you can link it, with

ln -s /usr/local/mozilla/mozilla /usr/bin/

DQSD Windows IE Search Tool

[pipingguy]

For Windows 95 and later users with IE5.5+, also see Dave's Quick Search Deskbar.

'Missing a feature you need? If you know HTML and want to add your own functionality, you can - it is distributed under GPL and is available at SourceForge.'

Re:Mozilla 1.2.1 Released

[Bob Bitchen]

Just upgraded after using 1.1 and 1.2.* is giving me
a lot of problems. But I guess that's progress. I'm surprised at how much worse this version is than 1.1 and I've only used it for about 10 minutes. First time I tried starting nothing happened, I saw lots of mozilla processes but no GUI. Something's definitely funky about this version.

Re:Opera (offtopic)

[bobv-pillars-net]

I don't use Mozilla. I'm quite happy with Opera and a little annoyed that it doesn't get more press.

I use Opera, too (paid for it, even). And if it weren't for several really annoying bug/features, I'd quit using Mozilla altogether:

1. Opera doesn't work with the often-used <a href="Javascript:void()" onclick="the-real-url.html"> construct.
2. On Linux, Opera still won't load some java pages, such as jigsaws and the MindTerm SSH applet
3. Cut-and-paste doesn't work consistently between Opera and other X-apps.

But the main reason that Opera doesn't get as much press is because, heck, they're making money. If the Mozilla programmers build a better browser, kudos from the open-source press are likely the only payment they'll see for their efforts. But if Opera builds a better browser (and in a lot of ways, they have -- witness their domination of the embedded market) they'll get paid in cash.

Have to disagree...

[zen parse]

Over 4 months to get security patches into mozilla is fast?

They fixed a bug that should've been detected ages before 1.2 was released within a few days, and you CONGRATULATE them?!?!?!?

I have to say that mozilla/netscape are among the WORST developers I have ever worked with getting security bugs fixed.

Unfortunately because security issues tend to happen behind the scenes, people often get the illusion bugs get fixed really fast.

Re:Have to disagree...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh please! Seems quite clear to the rest of us who the worst actually is.

Another victory for Ekrout Troll

[ekrout troll]

The Ekrout Troll has suceeded! Eric "The Kuro5hin Troll" Krout has finally been defeated. The moderators have realized the fault of their ways and Eric has been taking down to his proper place, 0, Troll. Eric, if you'd like to discuss your defeat call me at (956) 789-5158

P.S.: Fuck you faggot

Re:1.2.1 does have better security than 1.1 or 1.0

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, no, you're not a little paranoid. You are fscking-gone-nuts-paranoid.

It's been said bazillion times here in slashdot when the feature was first announced and I will repead bazillionth and first time:

There's nothing malicious that can be done with prefetching that could not be done with 1x1 image or hidden IFrame. There are lots of beneficial things that it can do that they cant.

Get it?

Attention: Ekrout is a known troll

[ekrout troll]

Attention: Ekrout is a known karma-whoring Slashdot troll

For the uninitated, erickrout is the kid who crapflooded Kuro5hin for months on end with at least a half-dozen accounts. For a long time, he dominated the Hidden Comments page with an interminable list of racist, sexist, homophobic, and completely self-absorbed comments.

Eric Krout lives behind the protective mask of EricKrout.com but in reality is a professional slashdot troll only posting for unknown evil. Eric has been spotted on trolltalk attempting to be added to "troll back", a daily newsletter that rates how well various trolls have posted and karma-whored on slashdot.

Whatever EricKrout might tell you in his posting is not true. He merely puts on a different facade for every article attempting to rack up mod points for no other reason than the fact that he is a self-absorbed punk kid.

In conclusion, if you are moderating or replying to this comment, I caution you, it is 100% untrue.

--the eric krout troll
"revealing the unrevealed since 2002"

Re:Opera (offtopic)

[Anonymous Coward]

But if Opera builds a better browser (and in a lot of ways, they have -- witness their domination of the embedded market) they'll get paid in cash.

Myself and many others would pay even more than they charge if I could see some fucking source code. Until then I won't even consider it.

Re:Opera (offtopic)

[bobv-pillars-net]

So you already sent your $100 donation to the Mozilla project, then?