Mozilla 1.2.1 Released

Glad to see... by Smelly+Jeffrey · 2002-12-03 04:35 · Score: 5, Interesting

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... by Havokmon · 2002-12-03 04:37 · Score: 5, Interesting

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.

--
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)

DHTML Patch by rherbert · 2002-12-03 04:36 · Score: 5, Informative

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).

security fixes? not really by aromanos · 2002-12-03 04:37 · Score: 5, Informative

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 by jilles · 2002-12-03 06:03 · Score: 5, Funny

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.

--

Jilles

This is a fix release. by Penguinoflight · 2002-12-03 04:42 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

--
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14

Re:This is a fix release. by pointym5 · 2002-12-03 04:47 · Score: 5, Informative

There was no "permissions bug" on Unix. It worked just fine for my non-root user ID.
Re:This is a fix release. by Penguinoflight · 2002-12-03 05:18 · Score: 5, Informative

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.

--
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14

Work before coffee! by Chester+K · 2002-12-03 04:42 · Score: 5, Funny

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.

--

NO CARRIER

Re:DTML... by greechneb · 2002-12-03 04:43 · Score: 5, Informative

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... by joycea · 2002-12-03 04:47 · Score: 5, Informative

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.

Why so much bigger than 1.2? by CodeWheeney · 2002-12-03 04:47 · Score: 5, Interesting

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?

--
C8H10N4O2 | Developer > Code

Re:Why so much bigger than 1.2? by Dog+and+Pony · 2002-12-03 05:03 · Score: 5, Insightful

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? by dbaron · 2002-12-03 07:10 · Score: 5, Informative

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.

Keep missing that save button please! by a_timid_mouse · 2002-12-03 04:48 · Score: 5, Funny

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!

1.2.1 does have better security than 1.1 or 1.0.1 by asa · 2002-12-03 04:49 · Score: 5, Informative

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

Hmmm ... by SuperDuG · 2002-12-03 04:53 · Score: 5, Insightful

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

--
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed

Re:Hmmm ... by NineNine · 2002-12-03 05:06 · Score: 5, Funny

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 ... by gosand · 2002-12-03 05:13 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

--

My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Re:Hmmm ... by Jucius+Maximus · 2002-12-03 10:08 · Score: 5, Insightful

" 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:Solaris? by asa · 2002-12-03 05:08 · Score: 5, Informative

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

Minor release patches? by beeblebrox87 · 2002-12-03 05:16 · Score: 5, Insightful

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:Where's the tarball?!? by asa · 2002-12-03 05:19 · Score: 5, Insightful

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

From the horse's mouth by aWalrus · 2002-12-03 05:25 · Score: 5, Interesting

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
--

--
Overcaffeinated. Angry geeks.

Re:Annoyance by billbaggins · 2002-12-03 05:26 · Score: 5, Informative

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?

--
"The best argument against democracy is a five minute chat with the average voter."
--Winston Churchill

What a difference a character makes by endico · 2002-12-03 05:41 · Score: 5, Interesting

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:Potential feature? by alistair · 2002-12-03 06:06 · Score: 5, Informative

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.

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