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Mozilla Project Turns 5

GreyWolf3000 writes "As this notice in tinderbox shows, Mozilla turns five years old today. A great testament to the ability of open software models debunking the myth that while the community can hack a kernel or compiler together, we can't build a large scale project designed for everyday folks to use. The trunk is feature frozen for the upcoming alpha release for 1.4. Can't wait to see what's in store next!" Read on for another odometer reading -- Mozilla's 200,000th bug report, perhaps just as auspicious a landmark.

zzxc writes "The 200,000th bug has been filed in Mozilla's bugzilla, MozillaZine reports. It was filed at 5:11pm EDT. (21:11GMT) The bug, which is already 'verified invalid,' is 'MailNews crashes after extremely long 'joke of the day' html spam mail.' This comes on the 5 year anniversery of the release of Netscape's source code, also reported by MozillaZine. Bug 100000 was opened on 9/16/01 after three years of development, while bug 200000 comes in less than 19 months from the previous milestone."

283 comments

  1. Wishing Mozilla well... by ChaoticChaos · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    I wish Mozilla well, but Opera 7 is an upgrade from any browser. ...and IE is the "cheap seats" of surfing.

    1. Re:Wishing Mozilla well... by damu · · Score: 1

      Couldn't agree more, Moz is great, but Opera is hands down the fastest, most configurable, lightest browser I have ever dealt with. Perhaps a joint venture could emerge, I shall call him Mozera.

      --


      Useless sig.
    2. Re:Wishing Mozilla well... by sconest · · Score: 5, Informative

      Most configurable ? Have you ever seen the about:config page in Mozilla ? ;)

      --
      Guvf vf abg n EBG zrffntr
    3. Re:Wishing Mozilla well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Have you ever, ummm... tried to rearrange the frickin toolbars in Mozilla? Impossible :-)

    4. Re:Wishing Mozilla well... by Tarqwak · · Score: 1
      > Have you ever, ummm... tried to rearrange the frickin toolbars in Mozilla? Impossible :-)

      Have you got like some weird must-constantly-rearrange-toolbars fetish or brain tumour or somesuch? :|

      |Back| |Forward| |Reload| |Stop| | about:blank | |Go|

      26 px high buttons with no text labels, IE 5.x theme... perfect!

      And as far as I'm concerned every other button and arrangement can go fuck themselves!

      And if you don't like it then u got the XUL, tweak it and STFU!
    5. Re:Wishing Mozilla well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      i don't care if you think that every other button arrangement can go fuck themselves. not having a configurable toolbar is a _major_ point, and is not something that should require tweaking a XUL file.

    6. Re:Wishing Mozilla well... by adamruck · · Score: 2, Funny

      why does vimacs come to mind?

      --
      Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.
    7. Re:Wishing Mozilla well... by fstanchina · · Score: 1

      ...or maybe Oprilla.

  2. Wow... by zzzmarcus · · Score: 3, Funny

    That's only 109 bugs a day! Just goes to show you open source software IS less buggy than commercial!

    1. Re:Wow... by molarmass192 · · Score: 1

      I know you're joking but for those that haven't had the thrill of working a debug queue, 200000 is the number of bugs submitted. However, a lot of these are duplicate submissions, not bugs, fixed etc. Not to say there AREN'T bugs in Mozilla but I'd bet any amount of money anyone is willing to put up that there aren't 200000 distinct bugs.

      --

      Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
    2. Re:Wow... by VanillaCoke420 · · Score: 1

      Well, there aren't enough lines of code for 200,000 bugs, first of all!

    3. Re:Wow... by BZ · · Score: 1

      Mozilla + webtools + whatever (which is what the "200000" number refers to) are about 7 million lines of code or more. So plenty of space for 200000 bugs. ;)

    4. Re:Wow... by BZ · · Score: 2, Informative

      Of the 96 bugs filed so far today, about half are already marked DUPLICATE or INVALID... Of the rest, at least 2/3 will be marked so as well, it'll just take a few days.

      So yes, that's 109 bug reports a day, most of which are useless.

  3. Don't forget.... by I_am_Rambi · · Score: 3, Funny

    The kitchen sink that is now also included in Mozilla. Story here.

    1. Re:Don't forget.... by sconest · · Score: 1

      Nope. It's not in yet.

      --
      Guvf vf abg n EBG zrffntr
    2. Re:Don't forget.... by gr0ngb0t · · Score: 1

      Just to clarify that the kitchen sink is not actually included in mozilla...

      from the linked story Please note that this is not actually included in the browser package, so it doesn't add to mozilla's bloat. Instead, about:kitchensink directs the user to the xml document on mozilla's website

    3. Re:Don't forget.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      As said by jesus_x@mozillanews.org in that story... (reposted as AC)

      "Look, this got way too much coverage. I'm the originator of the bug and the sink. The r= and sr= were removed until someone fixes the patches so this builds only in Mozilla. about:kitchensink will not work in ANY Mozilla distribution yet. Nor will it unles it's fixed.

      As for IE sucking a log on this, well, it's 100% valid XHTML and CSS with decent DOM use, so I'm not surprised IE won't view it."

    4. Re:Don't forget.... by blibbleblobble · · Score: 1

      "The kitchen sink [about] that is now also included in Mozilla"

      Also try clicking on the 'hidden' menu item underneath Tools::Web Development for the gekko picture. (This on Moz1.1 and some others)

  4. pre-emptive phoenix question by weebler · · Score: 5, Interesting
    "But what's happened to Phoenix?" I hear you ask.
    0.6 is meant to be released RSN, they're going to announce the new name shortly, in fact.

    Just have some patience, and hopefully it'll be worth it!

    1. Re:pre-emptive phoenix question by obotics · · Score: 1

      Phoenix is a great browser. The milestone releases are bug driven, not date driven. In other words, the milestone will not be released until all of the bugs targeted for that release are fixed. To see the list of open bugs targeted for 0.6, see this list. Currently, the Phoenix developers are estimating an April release.

    2. Re:pre-emptive phoenix question by evronm · · Score: 1
      "But what's happened to Phoenix?" I hear you ask. 0.6 is meant to be released RSN, they're going to announce the new name shortly [mozilla.org], in fact.

      Well, actually, according to this page, they've already released 0.7, and its new name is "Camino".

      I just upgraded to Mandrake 9.1, so I'm going to be playing with that for the next couple days. After that, Camino 0.7 here I come!

    3. Re:pre-emptive phoenix question by bsharitt · · Score: 1

      Camino is the new name for Chimera, the Mac OS X Mozilla browser. Phoenix is still Phoenix.

    4. Re:pre-emptive phoenix question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      They've gone through lists of names, but virtually everything is taken. Apparently the only one left, and the name they're going to announce, is "ClownPenis.Fart".

      It's depressing, but I guess it's what happens when the USPTO makes it so easy to register trademarks and when commerse has reached a saturation point. If you think that's bad, there's one Linux distribution out there laboring under the unfortunate monekar "Gentoo".

    5. Re:pre-emptive phoenix question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I wonder what's going on with Pheonix. The last couple weeks' daily builds have been terrible. Random crashes all over. Several second delays nailing the CPU when a page is loaded (now fixed thankfully). The crash bug on auto-complete popup is BACK (most annoying). All kinds of redraw problems when moving windows on top of the browser... I hope they're wholesale replacing huge swaths of code, cause any other explanation indicates Pehonix is getting less stable by the day.

    6. Re:pre-emptive phoenix question by Coolio · · Score: 1
      Announcement: After months of speculations, the new name has finally been decided. Phoenix will be called Phallus.

      That and the fact that the page information says "Modified: 04/01/03" kind of leads me to believe that the new name "Phallus" might just be some sort of April fool's joke! =)

    7. Re:pre-emptive phoenix question by MenTaLguY · · Score: 1

      I hope they're wholesale replacing huge swaths of code

      Yes, actually. Mozilla just merged a huge pile of changes, and since Phoenix is in the same tree the code more or less changed under them. It'll be a little bit before they're caught up again.

      --

      DNA just wants to be free...
    8. Re:pre-emptive phoenix question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The new name for Pheonix, "Phallus," means penis. Its a joke.

  5. Failure? by Musashi+Miyamoto · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This project has proven several things about large scale open source projects:

    - Open source doesnt necessarily mean "instant development". It took over a year before anything useful came of the project.

    - Just because you release something as open source, doesnt mean that thousands will flock and provide free development. Though thousands did flock, as soon as they saw that the code wasnt nearly usable, they gave up immediately. But, now that there is a small core of developers working on it, it is a useful product.

    - Now that it has made some progress, it is more difficult for a closed-source company to compete with it. It exists, and will be difficult to eliminate... There is no company to go out of business to cause Mozilla to disappear.

    1. Re:Failure? by damu · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think this can be said about most open source programs, they will take longer to be designed, developed, and distributed. A lot of these projects are not being chased by hard datelines, downsizing, higher up pressure. These projects are most for the love of open source, and most importantly the availability of time from the coders.

      --


      Useless sig.
    2. Re:Failure? by imsabbel · · Score: 1

      Well, the "core developers" were mainly netscape (now sun?, dont know who bought them) developers beeing paid for their job.

      --
      HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
    3. Re:Failure? by bsharitt · · Score: 1

      Netscape is still a part of AOL, although I think Sun is somewhat interested in Mozilla just a browser to complenent Star/OpenOffice.

  6. Re:Yeah, it only took 5 years ... by Bryan+Weatherly · · Score: 0

    A software company that took this long to do something would have been long dead by now.

    Is this a praise or an insult for Mozilla/open-source?

  7. Yeah, it only took 5 years. by giel · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Uh, and how long did - or will - it take Microsoft to release a descent operating system?

    --
    giel.y contains 2 shift/reduce conflicts
    1. Re:Yeah, it only took 5 years. by ChaoticChaos · · Score: 1

      Actually, Windows 3.1, 95 and 98 were all OS "descents". ;-)

    2. Re:Yeah, it only took 5 years. by giel · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      s/sc/c/

      --
      giel.y contains 2 shift/reduce conflicts
    3. Re:Yeah, it only took 5 years. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mozilla is not an operating system, though it is taking on many characteristics of emacs.

  8. Cool.. by nother_nix_hacker · · Score: 1

    It was about then I started to build it! :)

  9. But no "common people" use Mozilla by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Sorry, but very few "normal" people use Mozilla. It's the geek world (including windoze geeks) at this point...

    And it still is slow.

    1. Re:But no "common people" use Mozilla by hhawk · · Score: 1

      Isn't Netscape 7.02 based on Mozilla? Ok not the most popular of browsers but still in reasonably wide use.

      --
      http://www.hawknest.com/
    2. Re:But no "common people" use Mozilla by neurostar · · Score: 1

      Sorry, but very few "normal" people use Mozilla. It's the geek world (including windoze geeks) at this point...

      But it is gaining more widespread acceptance. I've converted a couple people in the past few weeks. And I'm sure more will follow. Pop-up blocking is the major selling point so far.

      neurostar
    3. Re:But no "common people" use Mozilla by grasshoppa · · Score: 1

      Well, I don't know what normal is, but I'm converting all my clients to it. So that'll make 50-100 computers using it. I wouldn't call it slow, it's nice and zippy on my 1gig t-bird. Hasn't crashed once, and I'm doing quite a few odd things with it. *shrug*

      --
      Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
    4. Re:But no "common people" use Mozilla by Lord+Prox · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I run a small computer consulting business and every machine that goes out the door has Mozilla and OpenOffice.org.

      Every costomer I visit gets an introduction to Mozilla and OpenOffice.org.

      Every support call I get about an "email" virus gets the "it's not an email virus is't an outlook virus" lecture. try Mozilla.

      About 1/3 of the people I talk to blow me off for one reason or another. Ya know familar with IE+LookOut. Don't like change. Hit a website/use software that needs IE+LookOut.
      But the next 1/3 (approx) at least use Mozilla or OOo on a semi regular basis with MSoffice and IE+Lookout.
      The last 1/3 uses either Mozilla or OOo as their primary tools. :)

      I have found that Home/small office users are the most convertable, for easy reasons. If it is a larger office they have funny, industry specific software that needs IE+LookOut or have dropped big $$$ for several copies of MSoffice and don't want to abandon the "investment".

      So for all you evangelists out there your best bet for conversion are SOHO/Home users. Get em before they are brought into the fold.

      OK so not exactly earth shattering statistics, but at least helpful, I hope. If anyone has further info pls post back.

      Doin' my part to restore balance to the force.

    5. Re:But no "common people" use Mozilla by neurostar · · Score: 1

      Agreed. I exclusively use OpenOffice and Mozilla. I'd also be using exclusively linux, but I've got some issues with programs necessary for school (Matlab, Mathematica, etc...) as well as a printer that only does Windows. :-/

      neurostar
  10. Community or company? by m00nun1t · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "...debunking the myth that while the community can hack a kernel or compiler together, we can't build a large scale project designed for everyday folks to use..."
    Not wanting to rain on their parade, as I agree that Mozilla is a great project, but isn't the only reason they have succeeded building a "large scale project" because of the significant backing of one company (Netscape/AOL)? While the community certainly had a very significant contribution, I think we might be giving it a little more credit than it is due.

    1. Re:Community or company? by javilon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The guys at KDE have written their own browser with no company backing them...

      --


      When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
    2. Re:Community or company? by anarxia · · Score: 1

      good one!

    3. Re:Community or company? by Fuzzle · · Score: 1

      And it has only really come to the spotlight since Apple adopted the KHTML renderer. Granted, this is a testament to the efforts of the KDE team, but most geeks I knew didn't know that KHTML existed.

    4. Re:Community or company? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Give credit where it is due? But that would mean facing reality! And that's the one thing the open source community cannot do.

    5. Re:Community or company? by fodi · · Score: 0

      KHTML? Nice one. What you meant was XHTML.

      -geek

    6. Re:Community or company? by zilly · · Score: 1

      Nope. I think the parent meant what he said.

    7. Re:Community or company? by crazyaxemaniac · · Score: 1

      I know at least a few of them were employeed by Mandrakesoft throughout some of the project. Of course they're bankrupt now...

    8. Re:Community or company? by .com+b4+.storm · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The guys at KDE have written their own browser with no company backing them...

      Indeed. When you think about it, they've actually gone the opposite direction of Mozilla in that sense. Mozilla was initiated by a company, and picked up by the open source community. Konqueror was initiated by the open source community, and picked up by a company. :)

      --
      "Wow, you're like some kind of superhero able to ward off happiness and success at every turn."
      -- Ryan Stiles
    9. Re:Community or company? by error0x100 · · Score: 0

      And it has only really come to the spotlight since Apple adopted the KHTML renderer.

      Bollocks. Hits from Konqueror browsers have been (relatively) significant in my web site stats (typically 3rd or 4th most used, behind IE, Netscape/Moz and Opera) from MUCH longer ago than when Apple "adopted" the KHTML renderer. It may be more in the PUBLIC eye more recently, since Apple got involved, but Konqueror has been (quietly) in fairly wide use for quite a long time now. In other words, just because YOU hadn't heard about, doesn't mean it wasn't significant.

    10. Re:Community or company? by BJH · · Score: 1

      No, what he meant was KHTML.

    11. Re:Community or company? by phanki · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Accepted that moz had the backing of AOL, but that does not mean that it survived only because of AOL. There has been a marked contribution of mozilla to the open source world in specific and to the browser world in general.

      I think that as an organization and community the mozilla.org deserves the credit - they were able to see themselves through the dot com bust, the economic recession and ofcourse the increasing share of IE , to go on. They had the spirit and tenor to go on.

  11. Bloat bloat bloat bloat bloat.... by Bonker · · Score: 0, Troll

    I'd much rather use Phoenix. I mean, really, what serious chatter uses an in-browser IRC client?

    Moz may be good for the public, but I'm glad that I can get the same Gecko quality in a lite-sized package.

    Now if only they'd release a .6 milestone.

    --
    The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
    1. Re:Bloat bloat bloat bloat bloat.... by trippcook · · Score: 1

      It's as easy as unchecking the "Chatzilla" box on install, man. YOu can install the browser alone and, for my money, it rocks Pheonix. Phoenix is buggy, and many, many, many of the preferences still aren't available (except as manual hacks). Sure, I don't mind getting down and dirty with my software, but my parents and my girlfriend (whom I moved over to Mozilla) wouldn't be into that.

      Besides, I'm sure most people have a system nowadays that will barely register the tiny fraction of a second or the small bit of RAM that Phoenix saves them.

    2. Re:Bloat bloat bloat bloat bloat.... by nelsonal · · Score: 1

      I've been using both for a few months now, as just browsers, nothing additional for Moz, and it seems like the nice things about Mozilla outweigh the speed of Phoenix. I like them both, quite a bit, it has completely replaced IE on my Windows box, but Mozilla just seems more polished. I'm sure Phoenix will rapidly improve, but it just doesn't seem like it offers much of an advantage. If I were still on my old Pentium Laptop, I might have a different opinion, but for now, I'm sticking with mozilla.

      --
      Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
    3. Re:Bloat bloat bloat bloat bloat.... by BrookHarty · · Score: 1

      I upgraded from Netscape 4.7x as my email client. The email client had all the features I wanted, and everything worked great. I decided to upgrade to Mozilla 1.2.x and most things have worked. Grabbed the spellchecker plugin and gpg, all set.

      Only problems I have now, is I want to use Mozilla 1.2.x for email, and also run 1.4 to support and bugcheck. Pain in the ASS. Trying to switch back and forth is a headache. And I dont want to move my data from 2 different versions.

      Onto my work machine. (laptop w/docking station aka slow hd)

      Mozilla uses way too much resources compared to IE. So I use Crazy Browser. An IE wrapper that ads tabs and popup control, freeware too.

      I thought Phoenix would be worth switching from crazy browser, but It still has too much Mozilla bloat at the moment. (I'm sure they will lean that puppy down, but its a work in progress...)

      The pre-temp save bug is annoying and locks mozilla while its busy. Windows says its "Not Responding". Bug 129923

      But on a fast PC, Mozilla rips IE apart. I added them to my user.js incase anyone is interested.
      - // This one makes a huge difference. Last value in milliseconds (default is 250)
      user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0); // Enable pipelining:
      user_pref("network.http.pipelining", true);
      user_pref("network.http.proxy.pipelining", true);
      user_pref("network.http.pipelining.maxrequ ests", 64); // Specify the amount of memory cache in kilobytes:
      user_pref("browser.cache.memory.capaci ty", 10240); // Click on throbber to go to Phoenix Help:
      user_pref("browser.throbber.url","http://ww w.googl e.com/"); // Change to normal Google search:
      user_pref("keyword.URL", "http://google.com/search?btnG=Google+Search&q="); // disable target="_blank" (open in same window):
      user_pref("browser.block.target_new_wind ow", true); // Stop reusing active windows:
      user_pref("advanced.system.supportDDEExe c", false);

  12. Which makes me...uh-oh... by Otter · · Score: 4, Funny
    It seems like it was just yesterday I was sitting at this desk, reading about it on Slashdot (Over 50 comments! Wow, Taco, your site has really taken off!).

    Ohmigod, where the hell has my life gone?!?!?!?!?!? I'm still even using the same freaking monitor!

    1. Re:Which makes me...uh-oh... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Chips and Dips rocked. Taco's Gerbil movie scarred me for life though.

  13. Re:So, um, yeah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    they did a long time ago, as someone already stated. IE is the cheap seats in surfing

  14. Re:Yeah, it only took 5 years ... by giel · · Score: 1

    I should have asked that question before I repsonded, or better, waited for the answer...

    --
    giel.y contains 2 shift/reduce conflicts
  15. Re:So, um, yeah by ChaoticChaos · · Score: 1

    http://www.opera.com

    Seriously.

  16. 5 years and version 1.3 by Billly+Gates · · Score: 0, Troll

    Pretty impressive for just a browser don't you say?

    I wonder if any Gnu/Hurd code is in there?

    1. Re:5 years and version 1.3 by jaavaaguru · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I agree. Much better than having the difference between version 6 and version 7 being significantly less than the difference between version 4 and version 6.

      Seriously, it's like a race to see who can have the highest version number sometimes. That doesn't impress me. This is almost as bad as the MHz myth. Internet Explorer is still at version 6, and people like it.

  17. Funny... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It takes about 5 years to load for me in Windows.

  18. Re:So, um, yeah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If opera didn't render like complete crap still, it would be useful. Sure its fast and looks fruity and easy to use, but a good majority of pages I see look great in IE and Mozilla yet extremely crappy in Opera, almost as if Opera is trying to emulate the NS4 rendering style.

  19. Not really much to say by RLiegh · · Score: 1

    outside of: "Tabbed browsing r0}{!!!"

  20. Celebrate by converting people by PovRayMan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Lets see who have I converted...

    My Dad. Hated popups. Instead of giving him a popup blocker for IE I just installed Mozilla for him and switched his Outlook to Mozilla Mail/News. It did a fine job of importing his contact list. He got nimda through an email which infected his machine when he was using Outlook, so I explained to him that with MozMail he'd be ok. After several months use he loves it. No more bad popups for him while browsing, and email has been just fine.

    That's my only personal success story, maybe if I got out more often ;-). I did turn a few people online to Phoenix and Mozilla with some luck though. I guess it's easier to convert those you personally know... so go celebrate 5 years and convert some more people over!

    1. Re:Celebrate by converting people by trippcook · · Score: 1
      I know what you mean. My parents, my friend in med school, my girlfriend, my sister. All of them gave me the "Why should I?" bit and griped when certain pages wouldn't load right. They suspected I was screwing them over with my personal techno-experimentation side. MOstly, they stayed for the popup blocking. Now, esp. with Tabbrowser Extensions installed, none of them would ever go back to IE in a million years. Similar success with Eudora, I must say.

      But, I agree with you 100%! Keep turning people on to it!

    2. Re:Celebrate by converting people by SquadBoy · · Score: 1

      Various friends and family members and many people at work.

      When I first got here there where several websites that people had been having problems with and had been blaming "the network". Well of course on my first day the first thing I did was install Mozilla. After that we where testing with the problem child websites and for whatever reason Mozilla worked *much* better than IE, no one before me had thought of testing with it. With that wedge in the door I started testing with and promoting Mozilla every chance I get. We have gone from a shop that developed only for IE and for the most part only used IE to a shop where Mozilla is included in the official image from MIS.

      Yes I am proud of that one.

      --

      Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
    3. Re:Celebrate by converting people by His+name+cannot+be+s · · Score: 1, Informative

      BULLSHIT.

      Nimda is not transmitted thru email. It's a Worm which is solely propigated via unsecured/unpactched IIS installations.

      Mayhap you should turn off IIS and/or patch his machine before he gets nimda again.

      --
      "...In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true..."
    4. Re:Celebrate by converting people by megazoid81 · · Score: 1
      OTOH, Mozilla's performance is abysmal on Windows. It takes long to start up and responds slowly to mouse clicks. This is the case not only with my computer but also that of my friends. I get instant response and rendering from IE. It could well be that Windows somehow hampers Mozilla's functioning. Or it could just be that the XUL/JS combination in Mozilla's UI needs to be speeded up. I wish I could use Mozilla with the same speed and for the same purposes that I use it on Linux, but I have no idea why performance is such an issue.

      I would like to have success stories similar to yours above. I have asked my ('doze-using) friends to use Mozilla, but they say that Netscape 6/7, which is based on the same code, works faster and has the same perks (such as popup blocking), so they have no incentive to switch. Does anyone here have similar experiences with Netscape 6/7 performing better than Mozilla on a Windows machine?

      What would you think are the biggest incentives to use Mozilla vs. newer Netscapes for ordinary end-users (i.e. not open-source zealots)?

    5. Re:Celebrate by converting people by PovRayMan · · Score: 1

      Thanks for calling bullshit, but I must be mistaken then. He DID in fact get a virus through email, nimda was the first thing that sounded familiar though. Whatever it was, it was one of those "popular" (read: highly infected around the world) email trojan/virus things.

      He doesn't run IIS on his machine, it's just a simple desktop he uses to surf the web, do some work on, and do email.

    6. Re:Celebrate by converting people by flacco · · Score: 1
      Lets see who have I converted...


      About 300 people in our department :-)

      --
      pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
    7. Re:Celebrate by converting people by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 2, Interesting
      I'm a network administrator.

      I run a network of 300 workstations and 10 Linux servers. IIS is a dirty word, and no installations are allowed to exist. Indeed, it has NEVER been installed or activated.

      I spent most of last week cleaning Nimda A and E off the network after my dipshit users double clicked on an attachment that spread through the network like a disease, over the file sharing system.

      Oh no. It's not spread through email. It's spread through stupidity. (And network shares.)

      (On a side note, I do clean attachments out of email. These numbnuts were using an outside email provider.)

      --
      "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
      --Dr.W.Edwards Deming
    8. Re:Celebrate by converting people by Grelli · · Score: 2, Informative
      I call double bullshit!

      Symantec seems to think differently than you as to how nimda spreads itself.

    9. Re:Celebrate by converting people by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 1
      My wife is a computer tutor, specializing in Seniors. Usually the first thing she'll do in install Mozilla.

      Between blocking popups, and making the web not look like any other window, it seems to be a lot easier for older folks to use. Most of her clients are loaded and call her after being completely stumped by XP, so performance is rarely an issue.

      --
      "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
      --Dr.W.Edwards Deming
    10. Re:Celebrate by converting people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah I converted my dad too. He asked to upgrade Netscape 4.7x since it wasn't working on a banking site. He seems to like the tabs, but I have sneaked in ad and pop-up blocking.

    11. Re:Celebrate by converting people by PovRayMan · · Score: 1

      Oh yes, the tabs! I forgot to mention how I showed him how they work. He loves that instead of having a bunch of IE windows open. He has caught onto tabbed browsing quite well and control of opening mutliple news stories to read.

    12. Re:Celebrate by converting people by PovRayMan · · Score: 1

      Please check my reply to the initial bullshit call. I must have been mistaken, but I am not lying about my father getting some virus/trojan through Outlook.

    13. Re:Celebrate by converting people by Malcontent · · Score: 0, Troll

      " OTOH, Mozilla's performance is abysmal on Windows. It takes long to start up and responds slowly to mouse clicks."

      Liar. Mozilla preloads at startup. It launches faster then IE in most cases.

      " I get instant response and rendering from IE."

      Liar. For most web sites Mozilla renders as fast or faster then IE.

      " What would you think are the biggest incentives to use Mozilla vs. newer Netscapes for ordinary end-users (i.e. not open-source zealots)?"

      Faster loading, faster rendering, no popups, tabs, gestures, better customization, skins, bookmarklets.

      --

      War is necrophilia.

    14. Re:Celebrate by converting people by RedWizzard · · Score: 1

      Have you tried Mozilla 1.3? It's noticable faster than earlier versions. There is no way that Netscape 6/7 is faster than Mozilla 1.3.

    15. Re:Celebrate by converting people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, you are the liar, the original poster is correct. Mozilla is such a pig it makes the pig of IE look like a lean mean browser!

    16. Re:Celebrate by converting people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Stay calm, there is no conflict here. He was backing you up, in a way.

      The link he provided shows that Nimda does indeed use email to spread. It's just not using one of the 'autoexec' style exploits.

    17. Re:Celebrate by converting people by ModsOnCrack · · Score: 1

      Liar. Mozilla preloads at startup. It launches faster then IE in most cases.

      You're the liar. Mozilla doesn't necessarily load on startup, only if you keep that crappy tray icon activated. And that slows down the startup procedure something chronic. So you get to pick where you want your slowdown - when you start the computer, or when you start the browser. I prefer the browser option, since it's a bit more 'honest' about where the speed problems are.

      Also, Mozilla *is* very slow to respond to mouse clicks - any mouse click that opens a new window has a very noticeable delay before the new tab opens. Working within the same window has no noticeable penalty, but for me, opening in the same window is the exception, not the rule.

      Mozilla on linux is not entirely free of this speed problem either, although that could be related to any of a thousand things on an individual linux setup.

      For an honest comparison, compare Opera 6 or 7 with Mozilla on the same windows machine. Opera under linux is none too snappy with it's new windows either.

      For the record, I haven't tried Moz 1.3. I am testing out the stub installer (so I don't need to download any cruft), and I'll reply to this post with a more up-to-date view. I'll also be trying Phoenix (whatever the new name is).

      --
      The mods are on crack
    18. Re:Celebrate by converting people by mcrbids · · Score: 2, Informative

      You administer a network of this size, and you haven't heard of anti-virus software?

      Really, everybody knows Mcafee and Norton/Symantec, but F-prot blows these out of the water.

      It's current.

      It's fast (you can run on a P-200 and still have a usable computer!)

      It's cheap. ($2/workstation, $300/server)

      It runs on Windows, Linux, BSD, AIX, DOS, etc.

      We use it on our Linux mail servers with excellent results as a free service to our clients.

      -Ben

      --
      I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
    19. Re:Celebrate by converting people by damiam · · Score: 1
      Mozilla preloads at startup.

      Only if you explicitly enable it.

      For most web sites Mozilla renders as fast or faster then IE.

      In some cases that's true, in others it's not. Don't call people liars because they're describing a scenario which you know nothing about.

      no popups, tabs, gestures, better customization, skins, bookmarklets

      Netscape 7 has or is capable of supporting all of those features.

      --
      It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
    20. Re:Celebrate by converting people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "most of her clients are loaded"
      Drunks are the best users.

    21. Re:Celebrate by converting people by Stardate · · Score: 1

      Mozilla or Phoenix are just plain better because they have and still are EVOLVING. There''s one reason MS hasn't added many new features to IE since 5.0... because they haven't had much competition since then, and they spend all their time now fixing security holes TWO TWO reasons MS hasn't added many new features to IE since 5.0... 1) because they think they're top shit, and 2) they're too busy cleaning up security holes, and of course they just don't give a shit THREE THREE reasons...

      --
      "... I declare our city to be a free and independent state to be named Tri-Insula!" --Fernando Wood, Mayor of NYC 1861
    22. Re:Celebrate by converting people by ModsOnCrack · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I hereby eat my own words. Moz 1.3 does indeed have much of the responsiveness issue fixed - opening new tabs is no slower than opening subwindows in any other application. I think I will have to re-evaluate Mozilla for daily use.

      Two Opera features I wish Moz had (if anyone can point out add-ons, I'd be thrilled):

      Saving windows - if Opera crashes or is closed accidentally, it can save all the windows you had open and re-open them all. This is great when you have twenty windows open, and accidentally close the browser instead of a sub-window, or when your browser crashes due to memory leakage (happens to all browsers I've ever used)

      Opening multiple bookmarks - If I have five news sites I visit listed in their own bookmark folder in Opera, I can select "Open all folder items", and it opens each bookmark in a new tab. Great for online comics, checking in on message board threads, news sites, etc etc.

      I'm not wholly converted yet, but I'm certainly impressed enough to give it another go.

      --
      The mods are on crack
    23. Re:Celebrate by converting people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Liar. For most web sites Mozilla renders as fast or faster then IE.

      Who the fuck cares how fast a page renders? I think I can wait the extra 250ms. The original statement was about RESPONSE. I've had many issues with Mozilla and Pheonix taking FOREVER to bring up the right click menu, or to go back a page, or to restore from minimized state. IE doesn't have any of these issues. IE feels very snappy. Always has (well, since 5.0 anyways). Moz/Pheonix feel sluggish, and the UI couldn't even suck donkey balls if it tried, it's so slow.

      THAT's the problem, not whether a pages takes a couple more clock cycles to render. The reason for this slowness should be obvious. I got 3 letters for you:

      X. U. L.

    24. Re:Celebrate by converting people by Malcontent · · Score: 1

      "You're the liar. Mozilla doesn't necessarily load on startup, only if you keep that crappy tray icon activated. And that slows down the startup procedure something chronic. So you get to pick where you want your slowdown - when you start the computer, or when you start the browser. I prefer the browser option, since it's a bit more 'honest' about where the speed problems are."

      IE does the same thing what's the big deal? The only difference is that you have no choice with IE. You have to load it up with windows.

      --

      War is necrophilia.

    25. Re:Celebrate by converting people by Misch · · Score: 1

      Saving Windows: Not implemented as I'm aware of.

      Opening Multiple Bookmarks: Not nessecairly implemented in Mozilla yet. Phoenix has "Open In Tabs" for folders on the quick link bar. Mozilla and Phoenix let you put groups of tabs on the quick link bar. As for the bookmark window, I don't believe that's implemented. (But, I could be wrong.)

      --

      --You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
    26. Re:Celebrate by converting people by arkanes · · Score: 1
      On my machine, Mozilla takes around a minute to load, even with the preloader. And the stupid preloader slows down my shutdowns because it doesn't close itself properly. IE loads in under 12 seconds, usually. (Unless I'm doing something like copying files in explorer. Fucking shell integration)

      I haven't done any formal testing of render speed, but the UI speed is lower with Mozilla, although by just a hair.

    27. Re:Celebrate by converting people by FedeTXF · · Score: 1

      I'm a teacher's assistant in a Computer Science cource at college, we teach the web, HTML, JS, PHP, use apache, MySQL. Student's allmost allways use IE and OE cause it came with windows.
      I show them Mozilla and/or Netscape 7.x and some of them (the ones that care and pass the tests) learn why it's better. I also teach them standars vs propietary and show them the W3C way...
      I also allowed my brother reading e-mails in my computer thanks to the profile support in mozilla, and converted 1 friend at work (used Eudora before).

    28. Re:Celebrate by converting people by Malcontent · · Score: 1

      "Netscape 7 has or is capable of supporting all of those features."

      Netscape 7 is simply an oldr version of Mozilla. Why would you ever use it instead of the latest version of Moz? Makes no sense.

      --

      War is necrophilia.

    29. Re:Celebrate by converting people by jesser · · Score: 1

      Opening multiple bookmarks - If I have five news sites I visit listed in their own bookmark folder in Opera, I can select "Open all folder items", and it opens each bookmark in a new tab.

      Middle-click on a folder on your personal toolbar in Phoenix. Or left-click on the folder and select the "Open in tabs" link at the bottom.

      --
      The shareholder is always right.
    30. Re:Celebrate by converting people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      IE does the same thing what's the big deal? The only difference is that you have no choice with IE. You have to load it up with windows.

      I know IE does the same thing. That doesn't mean I have to like it. I certainly don't USE it (except in situations where MS has decided a web browser is a much better way to, say, view files on my hard drive).

      I mostly use Opera, which is a fantastic browser, and doesn't seem to suffer from these speed issues. It also doesn't need to 'pre-load' large segments of itself to look better.

  21. Birthday Cake by MMaestro · · Score: 1

    What kind of a cake would a computer program want? Strawberry flavor?

    1. Re:Birthday Cake by binaryDigit · · Score: 1

      What kind of a cake would a computer program want? Strawberry flavor?

      It wouldn't want a cake, it'd want a cookie of course :) (and no, I'm not referring to a browser cookie either).

    2. Re:Birthday Cake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'll bring the chips.

  22. Happy here. by jlrowe · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I see some negative comments, and I guess I expect some here. But I am quite pleased with Mozilla. It has some nice features, and it has them for free. Spam filtering, pop-up stopper, and on and on.

    The fact is, I needed a browser and email client that is *more* than spartan to replace what I was using, and for mail that was an OS/2 program. With all that Mozilla Mail has, the OS/2 program still has a feature or two I'd like to see added to Mozilla.

    But the bigger thing is that for Microsoft to be displaced to any degree, the software that does it *has* to be blessed with good features. I has to be more than spartan. And like IE, which really isn't free, Mozilla not only gives the impression of free, but *is* free. And 'free' is also required for sucess.

  23. 5 years, and no crash free browser? by Vellmont · · Score: 1
    A great testament to the ability of open software models debunking the myth that while the community can hack a kernel or compiler together, we can't build a large scale project designed for everyday folks to use.
    Don't get me wrong, I really like Mozilla since it's finally become 1.0, and having switched from IE I wouldn't go back. But (and here's the catch) it still crashes on me a few times a week. After 5 years you'd think they could make a program that's actually stable.

    I keep hoping the bugs will be fixed in the next release, but so far no joy. The biggest feature I'd like to see is stability. Type ahead find is a really cool feature, but I'd trade it in a minute if the damn program didn't crash every couple days.
    --
    AccountKiller
    1. Re:5 years, and no crash free browser? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most of Mozilla features in my opinion are stupid, sorry. (Read: _Personal_ opinion)
      I'd like to see less "kitchen-sinks", skinning-crap, etc.. and LESS footprint..
      I could say it's quite stable here.. its' major problem is the memory usage.. sluggish behavior.. major leakage..
      Apart from that.. its the nicest browser around :) ..and oh.. "200.000" bugs? I hope it hits 300.000 next month, it means it's being widely used, so people are really contributing (read: testing). :)

      The sluggish behavior of mozilla plagues my favorite IDE.... you know.. running 2 mozillas isn't funny at all.. it gets worse when one of them is based on a older version of moz.. uh.urhghhh.. But it's worth the pain. :)

      Da-lhe Mozilla!

    2. Re:5 years, and no crash free browser? by Sayjack · · Score: 1

      JavaScript is an ill-conceived hack. 90% of my crashes are due to some problem in JavaScript.
      While Netscape made many great contributions to the world of software, JavaScript was not one of them.

      Mozilla has the burden of having to be backward compatible to alot of cruft I'd just as soon see go away. I'm pretty sure this contributes to the crash rate you experience here.

      --

      -- Good judgement comes with experience. -- Experience comes with bad judgement.

    3. Re:5 years, and no crash free browser? by Micah · · Score: 1

      That's just strange. It *hardly ever* crashes for me, and I usually have at least 5 or 6 tabs open, sometimes other windows too. It crashed once last week, but I think that's the only time in the last month or so.

    4. Re:5 years, and no crash free browser? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I would say that 90% of my Mozilla crashes are due to some problem in Mozilla's JavaScript. (as in the exact same standard-compliant code runs fine in IE.)

      The JavaScript core was one of the few "ill-concieved hacks" that was ported over from Netscape 4 rather than rewritten. It might be for some other reason however.

    5. Re:5 years, and no crash free browser? by mixmasta · · Score: 1

      My mozilla hasn't crashed in 6 months, and before that I cant remember how long.

      --
      #6495ED - cornflower blue
    6. Re:5 years, and no crash free browser? by Gerv · · Score: 1

      I'd trade it in a minute if the damn program didn't crash every couple days.

      You are, of course, using a talkback build so the Mozilla team find out about your crashes?

      Gerv

    7. Re:5 years, and no crash free browser? by FedeTXF · · Score: 1

      Moz 1.0 crashed some times. Some betas I used, too.
      since 1.2.1 and now with 1.3 I never even have to restart it to fix any malfunction.
      I have mozmail open from 9 to 19:00, looking for mails every 10 minutes, I open and close the browser many times a day, use tabs, load local and remote pages with flash, java applets, and anything I find on my way.
      I don't use any strange additions.
      It never crashes. Maybe you have that cool plugin you got to make mozilla spin and turn and the version is pre alpha 0.001. Keep that in mind.

  24. Re:So, um, yeah by Eslyjah · · Score: 1

    How about releasing an IE-killer sometime?

    I think that's exactly what Phoenix is. Everyone I've introduced to Phoenix has adopted it, including a few non-techies in their late-40s. Pop-up blocking/whitelisting and tabbed browsing are "killer" features, and IE will eventually adopt them or face a serious reduction in usage.

    The Mozilla suite is great and all, but, IMO, the primary benefit of the project is as a codebase for other projects, such as Phoenix, Camino, Minotaur/Thunderbird, etc.

  25. Remember when? by Blaine+Hilton · · Score: 1

    I remember back then when Netscape was a powerful company and had more users then MSIE. Those were the days...

    1. Re:Remember when? by Unregistered · · Score: 1

      yea, the world was in black and white. i had to walk 10 miles uphill to school through the snow (In the ATL, no less) and i used wiondows and liked it

    2. Re:Remember when? by tindur · · Score: 1

      Yes but in those days geeks wouldn't use it. They would use Mosaic instead...

    3. Re:Remember when? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I remember when I used to use Netscape because it was _better than_ IE.

      That was a pretty long time ago, though.

  26. Slow progress by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    5 years and they haven't even reached 1.4? In 5 years Microsoft went from 3.0 to 95. Pick up the pace, people.

    1. Re:Slow progress by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      3.0 to 95? You DO realize that Windows 95 was, in effect, Windows 4.0? (NOT WINDOWS NT, EITHER!)

      Hence the version numbers of 4.00.95.0 etcetera.

    2. Re:Slow progress by Misch · · Score: 2, Funny

      But where was the improvement? At least Mozilla got better. ;-)

      --

      --You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
    3. Re:Slow progress by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For you, humour is just something that happens to other people, isn't it?

  27. Also Al Gores B-Day by Dajur · · Score: 3, Funny

    He must have invented mozilla to celebrate.

    1. Re:Also Al Gores B-Day by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      1. Make joke about Al Gore inventing stuff
      2. ????
      3. Profit! PROFIT!
      Besides, isn't it the GNU/Internet?
  28. Mozilla is a development model failure by DeadSea · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Mozilla is a great success, but it is also a great failure. When Netscape first open sourced Mozilla development they were disallusioned. They assumed that developers would flock to the open source development effort. Netscape was looking to win the browser war without spending any money. Not being able to compete against a free product, they were looking at ways to make their product free. It didn't work. Mozilla has only succeeded today becouse Netscape (now AOL) continues to pour money into the project. Most development on the browser is still done by paid employees.

    Mozilla's successes have almost all been side effects. An open bug database is one of the most revolutionary development practices that I have ever seen. Because of Bugzilla, Mozilla has far more useful features than it otherwise would have. If users hadn't been able to get through to developers I doubt that Mozilla would have popup and image blocking.

    Mozilla's release schedule with nightly builds has also been a huge sucess. Mozilla has more people testing very recent versions than any other peice of software I know. Mozilla is now the most stable browser I have ever used, and I don't doubt that the nightly builds (and some talented developers) are the reason.

    Hopefully now that Mozilla is very popular it will attract enough outside developers so that Netscape's original dream of no cost development to win the browser war. There are still some hurdles for developers though. Mozilla is a complicated project with a significant learning curve. It relies on some specific technologies such as XUL and XCOM which don't yet have large numbers of developers.

    1. Re:Mozilla is a development model failure by binaryDigit · · Score: 2, Interesting

      They assumed that developers would flock to the open source development effort. Netscape was looking to win the browser war without spending any money.

      They didn't assume, they hoped, big difference. They also weren't looking to _win_ the browser war, they were looking to keep from being completely flushed away. It was an act of desperation. In certain ways it has succeeded as someone else mentioned, it is at least in a position of it's existence not being totally tied to a single company (i.e. now that there is viable OSS alternative, it can continue assuming enough interest from the developer community).

    2. Re:Mozilla is a development model failure by DeadSea · · Score: 1
      Open sourcing Mozilla was an act of desperation, and I'm sure glad Netscape went ahead and did it. After 5 years, Mozilla has a number of outside developers working on it. I read interviews with the thinkers in Netscape that were expecting to have their browser developed for them by open source developers and considerable cost saving. It certainly hasn't happened easily or quickly, but I think that Mozilla is at a point that it wouldn't die even if AOL pulled all support and funding from it.

      For better or worse, other companies looking to open source their products have a data point. I'm hoping to see many other closed source products become open source and I'm hoping they have learned from Mozilla. It's not an easy road.

    3. Re:Mozilla is a development model failure by Malcontent · · Score: 1

      "It's not an easy road."

      No but it's stil better then burying your product forever. This way you can at least throw it into OSS and hope that one it becomes a thorn in your competitors (read MS) side. In other words it's the final finger before MS kills you and eats you.

      --

      War is necrophilia.

    4. Re:Mozilla is a development model failure by binaryDigit · · Score: 1

      For better or worse, other companies looking to open source their products have a data point. I'm hoping to see many other closed source products become open source and I'm hoping they have learned from Mozilla. It's not an easy road.

      But one of the reasons that failing companies DON'T go this route is that usually one of the few assets they have that might be attractive to a suitor is their code. To open source it at that late a stage usually will guarantee that no one will buy you out (just try getting that one past the board).

  29. Don't forget that Slashdot != reality by BZ · · Score: 3, Informative

    There is no kitchen sink in Mozilla and there will not be in the foreseeable future. Read the bug.

  30. Exactly. by Ageless · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    A great testament to the ability of open software models debunking the myth that while the community can hack a kernel or compiler together, we can't build a large scale project designed for everyday folks to use.

    This is exactly correct. It's a great testament. Unfortunatly it's not one in favor of Mozilla, but in favor of the "myth".

  31. Boy, that joke's not tired yet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    About as funny as jokes about Clinton's infidelity, or cigars, or blue dresses.

  32. Reasons Why 200,000 Bug Reports != 200,000 Bugs by kirun · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Somebody always steps up to be the point-missing point-misser, so for their information, some reasons bug 200,000 isn't as bad as it sounds:
    • Bugzilla carries bugs on the whole mozilla project, including issues with the webtools, etc.
    • Sites which don't work in moz are still tracked by Bugzilla if it's the site's fault.
    • Common bugs gain a large number of duplicate reports
    • A lot of bug reports are RFEs rather than problems
    • Bug reports are also used as trackers for groups of bugs
    • Most of these bugs are fixed or closed, so they don't reflect current Moz quality
    • A large number of bugs are small problems / single platform / hard to reproduce and most users never hit them
    --
    I'm scared of numbers that can't be written as a fraction. It's an irrational fear.
    1. Re:Reasons Why 200,000 Bug Reports != 200,000 Bugs by hhawk · · Score: 1

      When I had a issue with Netscape 7.02 I was able to check the Bugzilla database and find a solution to my problem without wastign anyone's time and without having to play for support.

      --
      http://www.hawknest.com/
  33. Don't forget that Slashdot == OLD reality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    By the time Slashdot got around to posting the kitchen sink article I submitted, it was already rejected by drivers...

  34. It's been great! by grylnsmn · · Score: 1

    I've loved Mozilla since I first used it 2 years ago.

    However, with 1.3, I've found one problem. It seems that the "Open Unrequested Windows" option for javascript (used to block popups) is missing now. I haven't been able to find it on new installations to turn it off.

    If anyone knows where it moved to (or if I'm just hallucinating), please let me know.

    1. Re:It's been great! by 10sball · · Score: 2, Informative

      Preferences > Privacy & Security > Popup Windows

      --
      [place .sig here]
    2. Re:It's been great! by Yosho · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yep, they moved it. It's now under Privacy & Security/Popup Windows.

      The way it works has been changed slightly, too; now you can choose to either allow or suppress popups, and provide a list of exceptions. Whenever it suppresses a popup, it displays a little icon in the bottom right that you can click to allow it. I find this to be a little annoying, because I've really found that the only popups I ever got with the "unrequested" option were ones I wanted anyway, and now I have to allow them all...

      --
      Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
    3. Re:It's been great! by athakur999 · · Score: 1

      Privacy and Security -> Popup Windows

      You can whitelist/blacksite specific sites now, which is nice.

      --
      "People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
    4. Re:It's been great! by jsoderba · · Score: 1
      I find this to be a little annoying, because I've really found that the only popups I ever got with the "unrequested" option were ones I wanted anyway, and now I have to allow them all...

      The "Block unrequested popup windows" option does exactly the same thing as unchecking "Allow unrequested popup windows" did when it was under Advanced. You only have to use the white/blacklist if there are some onLoad popups you want to allow... or have I missed the point of your post?

    5. Re:It's been great! by Yosho · · Score: 1

      Hm, that's strange... Although I can't think of a specific page at the moment, I know that I've seen it block popups that it allowed through before. Could be a bug, next time I encounter it I'll file a report.

      --
      Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
  35. Sweepstake Winner by Gerv · · Score: 4, Informative

    The following message should be appearing in the Mozilla newsgroups any time now:

    A few minutes ago, at 13:11 PST on 2003-03-31, the 200,000th bug was filed in http://bugzilla.mozilla.org:

    http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2000 00

    Rather fittingly, it was filed by Chris Hofmann, head honcho of Netscape's embedding team and staunch Mozilla supporter, and is titled "joke of the day spam mail crash". (Note: please don't mess with the bug.)

    Consulting my records, I see that the closest guess to the actual date and time was made by:

    1st: 2003-04-01 00:00:01 bradangelcyk@hotmail.com (10 hrs, 50 mins)

    a mere 10 hours and 50 minutes out. Congratulations to him; he wins a Mozilla 1.0 CD if he sends me his address.

    Runners-up:

    2nd: 2003-04-02 10:15:36 coch@myrealbox.com (45 hrs, 05 mins)
    3rd: 2003-04-02 16:12:44 crisscott@netzero.net (51 hrs, 02 mins)

    coch@myrealbox.com wins the I-have-a-Bugzilla-account-and-so-am-not-a-random-S lashdotter category.

    Not every entry had an equal chance of winning the prize. Nine people submitted dates which were before the contest started (clue: this year is 2003, chaps, not 2002), and several people thought we were going to file 20,000 bugs in a matter of about a week. One person thought that he'd get away from the crowd by guessing a date in the 13th month of 2003 (what does he know that we don't?), and the furthest out two guesses had us still struggling towards the mark this time next year.

    Thanks to all who took part :-)

    Gerv

    1. Re:Sweepstake Winner by nogoodmonkey · · Score: 2, Funny

      1st: 2003-04-01 00:00:01 bradangelcyk@hotmail.com (10 hrs, 50 mins)

      Woohoo! I won, but *sigh* how much spam am I going to get now?

    2. Re:Sweepstake Winner by caino59 · · Score: 1

      well, being a hotmail user, im sure you wont notice the minor flood, given what you probably already deal with...

    3. Re:Sweepstake Winner by Tadu · · Score: 1
      One person thought that he'd get away from the crowd by guessing a date in the 13th month of 2003 (what does he know that we don't?)
      That may either be a typo or the simple fact that he used a different date format than you expected. Now it's 2003-04-01, but that's 01/04/2003 somewhere and 04/01/2003 somewhere else.
    4. Re:Sweepstake Winner by Gerv · · Score: 1

      The date given was 15/13/2003. Any ways up, that's strange :-)

      Gerv

  36. Re:So, um, yeah by Linux-based-robots · · Score: 1

    http://www.konqueror.org http://www.apple.com/safari Seriously. Do you work for Opera Software or something? Your other post was also a plug for Opera. Opera is proprietary software, which I'll never use since I value my freedom. Even the "free" (as in beer) version comes with a huge frickin' banner ad built into it, which is a true sign of scumware. It also isn't the fastest browser anymore, and has never been the most capable. And Mozilla is an IE killer in my opinion. It has some great features than IE lacks such as popup blocking and image blocking. It just isn't my absolute favorite (though still great!)

  37. lessons learned by bhny · · Score: 1

    1) don't throw out the old code and start again.
    -if they had built on the old Netscape code things would have proceeded faster. an open source project needs at least something to build on, or tear apart.

    2) don't expand the scope of the project before you have something that works.
    -using the browser to also do the interface instead of using system widgets. who's idea was that?

    i like mozilla. i used it for over 2 years before Safari came along.

    1. Re:lessons learned by bazmonkey · · Score: 1

      1) Making Gecko was probably the most beneficial thing Mozilla did. Netscape's rendering engine probably wasn't embeddable (sic?), and as much criticism as it gets, Gecko ain't half bad. An open source does not need something to build on, apparently. And, Galeon, Chimera, Epiphany, Phoenix and K-Meleon are all tribute to the Mozilla team *not* learning that lesson.

      2) What system widgets would you use in X? System widgets are all used differently, don't always have comparable features, etc. Say, for example, the Mozilla team decided to use qt (God forbid). Mozilla would not be the de facto browser in GNOME, or KDE (konqueror). If they used GTK, they'd have lost most of the KDE crowd. It was probably the idea of someone who realized that implementing XUL everywhere was easier than using everyone else's system widgets elsewhere.

    2. Re:lessons learned by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      don't throw out the old code and start again.

      Opera rewrote the code for version 7, it is fast and stable and it took only about a half a year.

      -using the browser to also do the interface instead of using system widgets. who's idea was that?

      I think it was poorly implemented. Opera 7 has skins and they work nicely.

    3. Re:lessons learned by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1) Using the old html renderer would probably led to a non standards compliant browser. Anyone trying to do DHTML or CSS in NS4 out there could tell you a few things.

      2) Using XUL lets you code for every platform, even extensions (like prefbar)

  38. success? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Success? Have you actually used that thing? Pages take 2x to load as IE.

  39. We'll can continue using Mozilla going forward by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny



    Computing power doubles every 18 months? Is that the correct quote by the Intel dude?

    Thanks to the increasing computing power, and the 4 GB memory chips coming out, we'll be able to continue using Mozilla for a while.

    I was worried about nothing. Phewww!

  40. Re:Slashdot staffers arrested in Michigan riot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ooh, this troll deserves mod points for originality.

  41. Error in story by Azar · · Score: 1

    The trunk is feature frozen for the upcoming alpha release for 1.4.

    While a minor mistake, the Mozilla is in feature freeze for the 1.4 BETA release, it's already in "alpha".

    1. Re:Error in story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, the nightlies are marked as 1.4a because they are building up to an alpha release. The last "release" was 1.3 final. The day that 1.4a is released, the nightlies will be changed to read 1.4b but it does not mean that the v1.4b is ready yet.

    2. Re:Error in story by Micah · · Score: 1

      no, 1.4a hasn't been released yet. It's not on the release page anyway.

      Speaking of that page, I'd like to know why they keep old 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 alpha and beta releases around. Shouldn't they take those down after the final releases? I mean, who in tarnation is going to download 1.1a? Even if you want to keep them on an FTP server somewhere, at least take them off the Releases page.

    3. Re:Error in story by captainktainer · · Score: 1

      Some people may like the speed, or corporations may have standardized around a single release. It also makes for better bug reports; if you can quickly download and test an old release as a reporter, other people don't have to do it for you. The branch may differ enough from the trunk present at that point to be worthwhile.

      Honestly, I agree, but you might as well not bother bringing it up; other vendors do the same. It's SOP for a lot of freeware/OSS sites, whether it makes sense or not.

    4. Re:Error in story by Pastis · · Score: 1

      Keeping old releases around is indeed necessary.
      It is not always feasible to rebuild a specific version of mozilla, especially when it takes hours to do so.
      And you need to have old builds in order to find when a regression occured. That allows to narrow down a problem to some specific checkins, and that helps a lot!
      In fact there are some who archive ALL old nightly builds in order to help with this process.

  42. Too bad we can't count Windows bug reports... by crashnbur · · Score: 1

    "Microsoft made history today, when the total number of bug reports for the various versions of the Windows shell and operating system eclipsed the total population of the planet..."

  43. One thing I hate.. but I can't all it a bug by Bluefirebird · · Score: 3, Insightful

    One thing I hate.. but I can't all it a bug is that when I open a link in a new window or tab and it fails to connect, the browser shows a stupid dialog box and the URL of that page is about:blank.
    This way I can't refresh because I lost the URL.
    Sometimes I open several tabs and I need to know which links correspond to the failed windows so that I can reopen.
    I think IE tries to connect twice before failing.

    --

    Fear is the mind-killer.

    1. Re:One thing I hate.. but I can't all it a bug by 10sball · · Score: 1

      And I can tell you with no uncertainty that your complain is already one of the 200k+ bugs that have been filed. Just do some searching if you wanna find it and track it :)

      --
      [place .sig here]
    2. Re:One thing I hate.. but I can't all it a bug by Thing+1 · · Score: 1
      One thing I hate.. but I can't all it a bug is that when I open a link in a new window or tab and it fails to connect, the browser shows a stupid dialog box and the URL of that page is about:blank.

      This bug has already been reported .

      Note that you'll have to cut-and-paste the URL; Mozilla doesn't allow links into Bugzilla from Slashdot.

      --
      I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
    3. Re:One thing I hate.. but I can't all it a bug by usotsuki · · Score: 1

      Predates Mozilla. Nyetscrape 4.79 does it too.

      -uso.

      --
      Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
    4. Re:One thing I hate.. but I can't all it a bug by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The solution should be a selectable option of:
      A: Display the blank page
      B: Blank page with your URL set as a link
      C: No connection page but still has your URL in the location bar.
      D: Some fancy page you would like; in particular a search engin with the URL in the search field. This should be customized so you can say the web form variable X will contain the URL or better yet be able break it down to some componets as well.

      just a thought

    5. Re:One thing I hate.. but I can't all it a bug by Enrico+Pulatzo · · Score: 1

      You just lost your rights to complain about bloatware.

      Not every frickin' thing needs a pull-down menu!

    6. Re:One thing I hate.. but I can't all it a bug by Bluefirebird · · Score: 1

      I'm glad this is considered a bug, and a pretty annoying bug I might say. I hope they fix it soon, like the other 200k bugs.

      --

      Fear is the mind-killer.

    7. Re:One thing I hate.. but I can't all it a bug by jesser · · Score: 1

      Why are so many users reluctant to call clear-cut usability problems "bugs"? Is it because you're not sure what the best behavior is, even though you know the current behavior is incorrect?

      You're hitting 28586, 103720, 104778, 123913, and 121209. Two of those are unarguably bugs.

      --
      The shareholder is always right.
    8. Re:One thing I hate.. but I can't all it a bug by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is it just me, or does anyone get seriously depressed scrolling past the months/years on the timestamps of each passing comment?

      Well, I would have helped except I can't code a lick, so I'll shut up now.

  44. *sigh* Do you remember the good old days by rutledjw · · Score: 1
    When mozilla was 100%, pure, un-cut vaporware? Everyone (including myself) looked forward to it with stary-eyed hope. I have to admit that I didn't think much would come of it. I was also kinda annoyed with the "kitchen sink" scenario of mozilla, although otherwise I liked the tabbed browsing and cookie & pop-up blocking.

    then came Phoenix. Much smaller, I think somewhat faster and it works with sites that mozilla (for whatever reason, I don't know) wouldn't work with - First USA online was my personal pet peeve.

    Just have some patience, and hopefully it'll be worth it!

    I think .05 is already worth it. I haven't really run into many issues personally. What's new in 0.6?

    Posted using Phoenix 0.5 / Linux (RH 7.3)

    back to work...

    --

    Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
  45. Mozilla still best on the Mac. by itistoday · · Score: 1

    I don't know about you guys, but for me and my OS X Box, Mozilla is #1. Safari is too buggy and doesn't support squat, Chimera is also too buggy, Opera is a joke, and IE is even worse. Try the nightly's of Mozilla, at least for me they are fast, bug free, and support virtually everything.

    I don't know what you guys are talking about, cause other than it's laughable email-client, Mozilla is an IE killer.

  46. Netscape by miketang16 · · Score: 1

    I love how Netscape, since they own the rights to the Mozilla code, uses it directly for their browser... except like a year after Mozilla implements it. They're like the older, slower brother.

    --
    -------
    "In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
    -- George Orwell
    1. Re:Netscape by asa · · Score: 4, Informative

      "I love how Netscape, since they own the rights to the Mozilla code, uses it directly for their browser"

      Netscape doesn't "own the rights to the Mozilla code". They are the copyright holder to some of it. But so are scores of people not employed by Netscape. Mozilla is available under the terms of the MPL, the GPL or the LGPL and that means that anyone can use and modify the code and the kind of ownership you're suggesting just doesn't exist or doesn't matter.

      --Asa

  47. Re:So, um, yeah by Yosho · · Score: 4, Interesting

    http://www.apple.com/safari

    Where's the non-Mac version?

    Opera is proprietary software, which I'll never use since I value my freedom.

    That's your choice, but I don't understand how somebody making proprietary software infringes on your freedom.

    Even the "free" (as in beer) version comes with a huge frickin' banner ad built into it, which is a true sign of scumware.

    The banner is only "huge" if you're running at 640x480... And it's not scumware, either; the browser reports no information about your computer to Opera. You can also customize what types of banners are shown; in fact, I have a friend who paid for Opera and actually keeps the banner on because he frequently sees banners for products he's interested in.

    It also isn't the fastest browser anymore, and has never been the most capable.

    I can't say about Safari, since I can't use it, but Opera 7 is still the fastest browser I've used, and 6 is only marginally slower. "Capable" is a relative term, but I've yet to see another browser that has features such as integrated mouse gestures (gotta have a plugin for Mozilla), a quick-preference menu (pressing F12 brings up a list of the most handy preferences), and an easy way to fake the browser ID string (possible in Mozilla only if you're willing to manually edit config files).

    It also has better user-defined CSS support than other browsers I've seen. It even comes with a number of pre-defined CSS layouts that do interesting things such as emulate text-only browsers, outline structural elements on a page, remove tables, hide only non-linking images, and so forth. Also, in the event that it crashes, it can re-open all the tabs you had open previously (I believe one of the Mozilla offshoots can do this, but I haven't seen any other browser).

    --
    Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
  48. A little whack from the perspective stick... by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    " A great testament to the ability of open software models debunking the myth that while the community can hack a kernel or compiler together, we can't build a large scale project designed for everyday folks to use."

    It took nearly 5 years to get to version 1. At that rate, a few monkeys accessorized with keyboards could have accomplished that.

    Don't get me wrong, Mozilla's a wonderful tool for the interent. I'm glad to see IE getting a run for its money. I just don't feel that any myths were shattered here.

    1.) It took aaaaaaaaages.

    2.) For the most part, the hard work was done and the tough decisions were made. Mozilla wasn't exactly paving the way for the internet as we see it today.

    3.) It was necessary. Linux needed a AAA browser. If a good browser for Linux wasn't in demand, how far would it have gone?

    I guess what I'm saying is that it's a logical evolution, not necessarily a challenge for the community. Get the community to put together an ambitious game, then we'll shatter a few myths.

    1. Re:A little whack from the perspective stick... by Malcontent · · Score: 1, Troll

      "It took nearly 5 years to get to version 1"

      So what? It was usable way before it got to 1.0. Why do you care so much about version numbers?
      Is windows 2000 1996.5 times better then nt 3.5?

      --

      War is necrophilia.

    2. Re:A little whack from the perspective stick... by Rutulian · · Score: 1

      It took nearly 5 years to get to version 1. At that rate, a few monkeys accessorized with keyboards could have accomplished that.

      Well, yes...but some things to keep in mind.

      (1) The original Netscape code was thrown out and rewritten from scratch.
      (2) Mozilla is much more than just a browser. It is a suite of programs (Browser, Mail/News, Composer, Java Tools...)
      (3) ...it is also a development environment.
      (4) ...it is also cross-platform.
      (5) Version 1 is when it was officially declared stable, but Mozilla was perfectly useable by the later Milestone releases.
      (6) Gecko, the rendering component, was coded in ~1.5 yrs. IIRC

      As far as I'm concerned, Mozilla is an awesome project and a hallmark of open source development. Also, it took a while to get to version 1, but look at how much farther it has come since then (less than a year)!!

    3. Re:A little whack from the perspective stick... by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 1

      " Why do you care so much about version numbers?"

      Because it wasn't at a state that they were comfortable with yet, that's why.

    4. Re:A little whack from the perspective stick... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Not only that, virtually all serious development was done by (*gasp*) paid engineers working full time for Netscape/AOL. The only reason this project got anywhere was because a large corporation was dumb enough to give away free development time. If it had been strictly volunteer-only, it would still be at version 0.0.0.1pre-alpha.

      And everybody knows it.

    5. Re:A little whack from the perspective stick... by Malcontent · · Score: 1

      Again why do you care? I have been using since version .6 something. It was usable back then and it's great now.

      --

      War is necrophilia.

    6. Re:A little whack from the perspective stick... by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 1

      "Again why do you care? I have been using since version .6 something. It was usable back then and it's great now."

      Faulty logic. Just because it was usable to you doesn't mean it was ready to ship. They obviously care or they wouldn't have waited so long for v1 to ship.

      Why do you care about a single detail that doesn't nullify my point?

    7. Re:A little whack from the perspective stick... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      You must not write or run any JavaScript. Mozilla was very crash-happy with DOM stuff until 1.0.

    8. Re:A little whack from the perspective stick... by error0x100 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It took nearly 5 years to get to version 1. At that rate, a few monkeys accessorized with keyboards could have accomplished that.

      Version numbers don't mean much. Look at it in this light: even though Mozilla is "version 1", it is functionally / feature-wise pretty much on par with Internet Explorer "version 6". And the stability of the one or two years worth of betas leading up to version 1 was also not all that different to the stability of IE version 5 and 5.5.

      Personally I think they should have just called Mozilla 1 "Mozilla 6". At least it would provide a more accurate representation of the level of quality of the product as compared to other similar products, to all those people out there who seem to think a version number means anything ("What? They're only at version 1 now? Ha, IE is at version 6").

    9. Re:A little whack from the perspective stick... by error0x100 · · Score: 1

      So what? It was usable already. If they were Microsoft, they would have just slapped a "version 5" label on it, and then a "version 5.5" label on it, at equivalent stages of development. In fact, thats exactly what Microsoft did. If you really think that a "Version 5.5" from MS means more than a "version 0.9.3 pre-release" from the Mozilla team, then you place way too much stock in version numbers... version numbers are just for marketing in this industry, don't place so much importance on them.

    10. Re:A little whack from the perspective stick... by Malcontent · · Score: 1

      "Faulty logic. Just because it was usable to you doesn't mean it was ready to ship. They obviously care or they wouldn't have waited so long for v1 to ship."

      It is not a product. It is not for sale. It never shipped. It's an open source product. You use it if it's useful to you. To me mozilla was useful two years ago and it got better and faster with every release including the latest 1.3 version.

      It is you who has faulty logic. This is not a product it's a project.

      --

      War is necrophilia.

    11. Re:A little whack from the perspective stick... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      (1) Throwing all your code was probably a stupid decision.
      (2) Everything except the browser ranges from mediocre to pure crap
      (3) A development environment which nobody asked for and is poorly documented and supported. If there's one thing people don't lack, it's widget toolkits.
      (4) Runs on OS/2 and OpenVMS. Woo! The best Mozilla branches are the platform-specific ones like Camino and Galeon.
      (5) It had huge speed issues, bot OK.
      (6) See (1).

    12. Re:A little whack from the perspective stick... by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 1

      "It is not a product. It is not for sale. It never shipped. It's an open source product."

      Hence the five year development cycle.

      Thank you.

      Good night.

    13. Re:A little whack from the perspective stick... by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 1

      "... version numbers are just for marketing in this industry, don't place so much importance on them."

      Actually, they're a collection of milestones. When they design a piece of software, they have a list of features they want to be completed. When they are complete and stable, they reach the designated version number.

    14. Re:A little whack from the perspective stick... by Quixotic137 · · Score: 1

      When they design a piece of software, they have a list of features they want to be completed. When they are complete and stable, they reach the designated version number.

      Yes, and the Mozilla people chose a high standard for their 1.0 milestone. What the other poster is saying is that Microsoft would have set that milestone much earlier. Does that make their product better?

    15. Re:A little whack from the perspective stick... by Quixotic137 · · Score: 1

      3.) It was necessary. Linux needed a AAA browser. If a good browser for Linux wasn't in demand, how far would it have gone?

      While I agree that browsing on Linux was terrible before Mozilla, I doubt that had much to do with how far it has gone. The real question is, how far would the original Netscape 4.x code have gone without AOL/TW funding the Mozilla project?

    16. Re:A little whack from the perspective stick... by error0x100 · · Score: 1

      When they are complete and stable

      Ah, I see the mistake in your reasoning now. With only a few exceptions, PC software is NEVER released when its "stable", thats a somewhat naive view. "Stable" has very little to do with a decision to release software, if that were the case, most software would probably take about 30% longer to release. "Relatively stable", yes. "Fairly stable", sure. But NEVER actually "stable"; any reasonably sized software project (e.g. IE or Mozilla) is always going to have in the order of thousands of KNOWN bugs at release time. The difference is that Microsoft's standards are lower than the Mozilla team's, so their definition of "stable" is different, that is, they will release as a new version with far more many known bugs in it. Mozilla 1.0 was definitely more stable then IE 5 (and I'm still more likely to get IE crashes than Mozilla crashes even with IE 6 in spite of using Mozilla much more (although other peoples MMV of course)).

      For software development organizations, its never a question of "whether or not the software is complete and stable", but rather a question of "how many bugs are we willing to tolerate in a product with our name on it".

      The IE buglist is not available to the public, while the Mozilla buglist is. So some people see this huge Mozilla buglist and say "wow what crap". But just because you can't see the huge IE buglist, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. "But IE is stable when I use it", you might argue, "how can there be that many bugs?". Well, Mozilla is stable too when I use it. I can't name one single bug off the top of my head. And yet they have a large buglist. If I wasn't aware of its existence, I might also be fooled into thinking that Mozilla was "complete and stable".

      Companies like Microsoft don't wait for their software to be "complete and stable" when they release a new version, they also look at a number of other marketing-related and strategy-related factors.

    17. Re:A little whack from the perspective stick... by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 1

      "Yes, and the Mozilla people chose a high standard for their 1.0 milestone."

      They set their standard higher because the standard was already set. They were playing catchup to IE. It isn't very hard to copy what somebody else has done and make minor improvements to it.

    18. Re:A little whack from the perspective stick... by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 1

      I wasn't talking about bugs, I was talking about feature completion and whether or not the majority of the customer base can use it.

      BTW, we're not even on the same planet as my original point.

    19. Re:A little whack from the perspective stick... by Quixotic137 · · Score: 1

      I'm still not quite sure what you're saying here...

      A quick search on Google shows that Microsoft started working on IE in 1995 (and released IE 1.0 in 1995 as well), after buying Mosaic code from Spyglass. Another search shows that the first release of Mosaic occurred in Nov. 1993. Presumably they had some development time prior to that, but even setting that as the start date for IE, the 1.0 release came about 1.5 years after the start of development.

      The Mozilla project started on April 1, 1998. I have heard before that they dropped the Netscape code and started over after about a year, but I couldn't back that up so I looked at the history on their page. I didn't look too hard, but their "Mozilla at One" page says that they did drop the old NGLayout rendering code. Anyway, what we know as Mozilla today arguably started in 1999. According to their news page, they released Mozilla 1.0 on June 5, 2002 -- approximately 3 years (or 4 if you count work on the Netscape code) after the start of the project.

      In the end, we're looking at a 1.0 release that took about twice as long as the IE 1.0 release, as we're estimating Microsoft's work on IE too.

      However, the other poster and I have both said that we don't put much stock in the numbers of the releases. Mozilla 0.6 was released on Dec. 6, 2000. Netscape based their Netscape 6.0 release on that code. You said that low version numbers indicate that "it wasn't at a state that they were comfortable with yet". Apparently Netscape was comfortable enough with it at that point to release 6.0 (which is essentially the "New Netscape" 1.0, as it isn't based on the same codebase as their old releases). That was about 1.5 years after they threw out the old NGLayout code.

      So what am I saying? You can argue as much as you want with release dates and version numbers on both sides. Try comparing features with release dates for IE and Mozilla and see what you come up with.

    20. Re:A little whack from the perspective stick... by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 1

      " You said that low version numbers indicate that "it wasn't at a state that they were comfortable with yet" [slashdot.org]. Apparently Netscape was comfortable enough with it at that point to release 6.0 (which is essentially the "New Netscape" 1.0, as it isn't based on the same codebase as their old releases)"

      Mozilla != Netscape. To be perfectly honest, Netscape's standards are not universally accepted as high. Afterall, they're responsible for releasing the least stable browser ever. (No, I'm not talking aobut Mozilla, so keep your MoZealousy in check.)

      BTW, we're nowhere near the original point I made. The only reason this version number point is being argued is that it's felt that I'm attacking Mozilla. "Dammit, he's not singing the praises of Mozilla. Well the only way I can defeat his logic is to play semantic games with a detail I think I can nail him on! Oh rats. It's not critical to his point. So I better blow it out of proportion! Yeah! I'll make it sound like he's obsessed with version numbers, then I'll compare it with IE which nobody likes, and I'll kick his butt! I just hope he doesn't try to bring me back on topic, I couldn't argue with what he said there..."

  49. Darn it... by Sayjack · · Score: 1

    I was going to say something really inspirational and uplifting here but my darn browser crashed and I lost my train of thought. Trust me...it was profound.

    Anyway, kudos to the Mozilla team. Long live Mozilla! Cross platform browsers rock!

    Hey...I know this is probably a bad venue for a bug report but the new Junk mail filtering doesn't seem to work if you're using movemail. Can you guys take a look at this please :-)

    --

    -- Good judgement comes with experience. -- Experience comes with bad judgement.

  50. dropped ball by minus_273 · · Score: 1

    i think mozilla while a great engine in geko dropped the ball.. the fact that apple chose khtml over geko is really something they shoudl think about. The mozilla team should have focused on getting something that *works well* out then adding features and not the other way around. oh yeah and the red star communst logo is really sad.

    --
    The war with islam is a war on the beast
    The war on terror is a war for peace
    1. Re:dropped ball by Gefd · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think the fact that apple chose khtml over gecko speaks more to apples goals than it does the the comparitive quality of the two engines. Though I agree that mozilla's development focus should be more toward quality than 'quantity', I happily use mozilla, and it *works well* for me.

      - Gef

    2. Re:dropped ball by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just a note: A small part of the code in Safari is copied out of Mozilla.

  51. Bugzilla must be 32-bit by mrm677 · · Score: 3, Funny

    At my previous job at a Fortune-100 company, the proprietary bug database we used kept track of the Bug ID with an unsigned 16-bit number.

    Yep, to the surprise and dismay of many, we overflowed at bug# 65537

    1. Re:Bugzilla must be 32-bit by anto · · Score: 1

      But how did you log the bug? :)

    2. Re:Bugzilla must be 32-bit by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 1
      Heh, I seem to recall reading that the Windows 2000 bug database was "full up", so every time they wanted to file a new bug, they just throw away an old one.

      Is that the right fortune 500, or is this bug tracker just popular with the big corps?

  52. -1, Sig Reply by pyrrho · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Computer Science is Applied Philosopy...

    I couldn't agree more. As a software engineer with ~15 years experience... and a BA in Philosophy.

    Indeed, I worked my way through school as a programmer and chose philosophy on purpose because I found that's where the logic courses were.

    (I also took a lot of physics and math which no doubt helps, but the degree is philosophy) I feel the study of various logical abstractions helped widen my perspective. Not to mention you are trained to diagram any set of concept/relationships, which is also quite useful. My diagrams have consistent grammer, and I'm sure this is because I was trained how to create a legend that maps directly to real concepts (e.g. an arrow means something, and is only used for truly identical relationships. Of course, the arrow might mean different things in different diagrams, but within a given diagram: consistency). I'm not sure all Philosophy programs are so rigerous about logic... but it is the one thing, the only thing, that philosophers have any agreement over.

    --

    -pyrrho

    1. Re:-1, Sig Reply by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      My diagrams have consistent grammer
      ...but not your posts, huh?
    2. Re:-1, Sig Reply by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      grammar and spelling are two different things.

    3. Re:-1, Sig Reply by pyrrho · · Score: 1

      that's spelling stoopid.

      no offense.

      And anyway... that's right, I was talking about diagrams, not posts to slashdot.

      suprisingly my professional work is worthy of proofreading and precision... slashdot posts, not.

      --

      -pyrrho

  53. Doom and Gloom by Washizu · · Score: 1

    It's awesome we're even still talking about Mozilla considering the doom and gloom that was spewed because it didn't result in an instant competitor to IE.

    Mozilla isn't perfect, but we're all better off living in world with a valid browser alternative.

    --
    OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
  54. /me Steps into the Abestos Suit by Hangtime · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    This is my own view of the Mozilla project, and lord help my karma. I feel the Mozilla has been a complete failure. Lets go back six years ago. The year was 1997 and I was interning in a Marketing department (hahhaha) and updating the company website. The only thing we used was Netscape. Netscape had 80% of the market. Six years latter Netscape/Mozilla is pushing what 10% to 15%? Netscape when it open sourced Mozilla gave the Linux community and finally yielded a very nice browser, however, at best Linux users (not servers) make up 5% 15%, you can't argue with that. If better how about 70% ---> 25% still awful. Happy Birthday Mozilla, sorry nobody but a few showed up this year maybe you will make some new friends next year huh? Maybe AOL will finally incorporate you huh? Oh, no, you don't think so...well your still pretty special. Oh, you render pages just the same as IE, but more "standards-based." Oh that's great, that's what makes you different. Oh, people don't care for different? Well, sorry, look at the time, gotta go, Happy Birthday.

    1. Re:/me Steps into the Abestos Suit by mrkurt · · Score: 1

      The way I see it, Mozilla and Opera fills a valuable role as the browser that comes out with leading edge/bleeding edge features first. Netscape incorporates what's in Mozilla shortly after they're proven, and then MSIE scrambles to catch up with Mozilla. I'm not disappointed that it doesn't have a big chunk of the desktop; what I'm disappointed in is the courts and the government, who haven't done the job of restraining Microsoft in its attempts to wreck the competition. Anyhow, I am loving Mozilla 1.3: have been enjoying tabbed browsing for a while now (coming soon to IE, I hear), and am just loving the popup suppression in this latest version. I run it as the default browser on all of my desktops, and the xft font package on Linux looks fantastic. I am patient enough to wait for the rest of the world to follow.

      --
      Always look on the briight side of life! (whistle, whistle)
  55. to the developers by pangu · · Score: 1

    I'd just like to say thank you.

  56. Re:Yeah, it only took 5 years ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well, it's the time it took Microsoft to make Windows 2000, if I remember correctly? I wonder if there's any big differences in size and complexity between Mozilla and Win2K? :-D

  57. Success! by g4dget · · Score: 1
    Open source doesnt necessarily mean "instant development".

    What makes you think it ever meant that? GNU C and GNU C++ took years to catch up with the respective standards. Emacs 19 took so long to come out that it was a standing joke. So what? That's not the point. Open source software development is slow, but it's steady, and an open source software package keeps on living as long as it has users.

    Just because you release something as open source, doesnt mean that thousands will flock and provide free development.

    What makes you think open source has ever been about "flocking"? Many open source projects have tightly knit, small developer communities that you couldn't become a part of if you wanted to. They do their stuff at their own pace and share the results with others.

    Of course, because Mozilla started out as a closed source project using "professional, industry-standard development practices" it really started out as much more of a mess than an equivalent open source project. And the extensive support for proprietary platforms like Windows and Macintosh also greatly complicates Mozilla. Konqueror is a much better example of open source at work, and it matured much faster than Mozilla.

    Now that it has made some progress, it is more difficult for a closed-source company to compete with it.

    Good. That will mean that we don't get the same madness we had with Netscape vs. IE, with each company out-featuring the other. I'm glad to see, actually, that Mozilla isn't rushing out to copy every misfeature IE has introduced.

    It exists, and will be difficult to eliminate... There is no company to go out of business to cause Mozilla to disappear.

    Yup, that's the whole point. Now, if only IE went away as well, we'd all be better off.

    The most relevant fact in this whole discussion is that Mozilla still exists. If Netscape software had remained closed source, it would have disappeared with AOL's absorption of Netscape. Keeping software available long after the initial creators have disappeared is what open source is all about, and no matter what you may think of Mozilla technology, that makes Mozilla an unqualified open source success.

    1. Re:Success! by axxackall · · Score: 2, Insightful
      If Netscape software had remained closed source, it would have disappeared with AOL's absorption of Netscape.

      That's exactly what's happened to Netscape servers (former "Fast Track", Later "iPlanet"). Their code is closed and their usages is limited by AOL and Sun. If Netscape would open the source code of servers as well, today it would be much broader used web-server platform with lots of money due to potential demand for support.

      Those days Netscape web application server has been beating IIS and other, while Netscape Mail, Calendar and Directory (LDAP) servers have been beating MS Exchange of those days. Besides, they have been multi-platfom originally (I used them on Solaris). Being opensourced they would beat today WebSphere and many other today's behemoths.

      --

      Less is more !
    2. Re:Success! by asa · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Konqueror is a much better example of open source at work, and it matured much faster than Mozilla.

      Really? Konqueror supports more of the standards and the existing web than Mozilla does and they did it in a shorter period of time? Got measures?

      How old is Konqueror. I see posts about KHTML from dev newsgroups going back to at least 1998.

      --Asa

    3. Re:Success! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Netscape's plan from the beginning was to give away the client, sell the servers. Had they opensourced the server suite, they would have no business plan whatsoever.

      Instead AOL was able to sell that software to Sun for millions of dollars, which is the only profit the Netscape division has ever made for them.

      (Furthermore your assessment of the desirability of Netscrape's server software against IBM and Microsoft offerings is fairly optmistic. They couldn't give it away, and they tried.)

  58. Re:And some thanks are in order by symbolic · · Score: 1


    I don't see many situations where people actually SAY they appreciate all the effort behind the code, but since Mozilla was released with tabbed browsing, it has become probably the one app that I use the most. It's not 100% perfect (nothing really is), but it's a damn fine job. *I* appreciate it. : )

  59. MOD PARENT UP was Re:Wishing Mozilla well... by usotsuki · · Score: 1

    -1 Flamebait? This doesn't look like a flamebait or a troll to me...and I used IE for God knows how long. *g*

    -uso.
    In Soviet Russia, all our base are belong to YOU!

    --
    Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
  60. I just reported a real humdinger of a bug... by Wraithlyn · · Score: 1

    Everytime I try to view one of Google News's subsections (World, Entertainment, Business, etc), Mozilla locks up, and takes down the entire operating system too (seems like the entire file system stops responding after a minute or so), forcing a hard reboot. Every single last time.

    I'm using Windows ME, and the latest version of Mozilla (1.3).

    Does this happen to anyone else?

    Here is a link to the World section you can try (SAVE YOUR WORK BEFORE IN CASE!):

    http://news.google.com/news/gnworldleftnav.html

    Google News is pretty plain as web pages go.. wtf is going on here? Is Moz messed up or do I have midget monkeys in my box pissing on the CPU?

    --
    "Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
    1. Re:I just reported a real humdinger of a bug... by seanb · · Score: 1

      Newp. No problems at all using Mozilla 1.3b on Windows 2000. I think your problem might be midget monkeys.

    2. Re:I just reported a real humdinger of a bug... by archen · · Score: 1

      In my opinion Moz is capable of doing some weird stuff. I used to have a problem with Mozilla where the browser would start acting "peculiar" then would stop responding. Once you closed the browser the OS (win2k) would instantly reboot my computer - after which my entire profile (bookmarks/mail) would be FUBAR. This happend across many versions, and oddly enough once I switched motherboards, I never had the problem again. Now granted some would say "that's a hardware problem" but I've never had that problem with ANY other software EVER. According to browsing on Bugzilla, Moz isn't capable of bringing down win2k (eh... right), so I wouldn't completely discount the pissing midget monkeys theory.

    3. Re:I just reported a real humdinger of a bug... by tupps · · Score: 1

      Try blowing away your cache, I have found that sometimes lesser OS's have problems with a particular file and cause all sorts of bad things to happen when they are accessed. It just so happens that web browsers caches are a prime candidate for these are there are so many file saves/deletes in the directory.

      --
      Go out and get sailing!
    4. Re:I just reported a real humdinger of a bug... by Jahf · · Score: 1

      It's happened to me, too ... in fact, that's why I'm running 1.3 ... I had 1.2.1 running and one day, close browser, go boom! It trashed my prefs, bookmarks, etc. Luckily, this is just my gaming box, so nothing tragic was at stake. I cleaned it all off and downloaded the latest (1.3 had just been released).

      However, to the parent of this thread, I can load that Google News page fine on Win2K and Moz1.3.

      --
      It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
    5. Re:I just reported a real humdinger of a bug... by urmensch · · Score: 1

      golden showers all around,
      this sounds like a what just happened to me. I installed 1.3 and though mozilla didn't stop responding, 2k rebooted when I closed it(moz) and all my bookmarks were reset. That said I didn't change any hardware, so I think you can rule that out. I'd never had that problem before with any version of mozilla.

    6. Re:I just reported a real humdinger of a bug... by damiam · · Score: 2, Informative
      Uuggh. ME has to be the worst OS MS ever made, and that's saying something. It works fine for me (1.3 under XP Pro).

      However, if you can consistantly reproduce this, report it to Bugzilla, where it has a far better chance of getting fixed than on Slashdot.

      --
      It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
    7. Re:I just reported a real humdinger of a bug... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Judging from Bugzilla, a large portion of bugs are fixed by deleting and recreating your profile.

      Conculsion --> something is funky about how Mozilla upgrades profiles.

    8. Re:I just reported a real humdinger of a bug... by captainktainer · · Score: 1

      It's not happening to me, either, and I'm running Windows ME on a damn unstable box. I'm willing to bet it's OS-related or hardware related, because it definitely isn't standard behavior. Your mention of the filesystem suggests operating system; WinME has problems with filesystems like you wouldn't believe.

    9. Re:I just reported a real humdinger of a bug... by Tarential · · Score: 1

      I'm running Mozilla 1.3 on Redhat Linux 8.0 under KDE. I accessed the site with no difficulties, and have had no problems as described by other users, ever. Mozilla handles my bookmarks, profiles, and other such preferences flawlessly.

    10. Re:I just reported a real humdinger of a bug... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Everytime I try to view one of Google News's subsections (World, Entertainment, Business, etc), Mozilla locks up, and takes down the entire operating system too (seems like the entire file system stops responding after a minute or so), forcing a hard reboot. Every single last time.

      The correct solution to this problem is to use a real operating system that doesn't fall over when one of the applications running on it does.

      In other words, WinMe is a piece of CRAP! Don't use it!

    11. Re:I just reported a real humdinger of a bug... by archen · · Score: 1

      Actually I did that a lot and it still didn't fix it. I mean once your profile is nuked why not just start all over? As of 1.3 luckily Moz wont just trash your stuff anymore, but will at least make a copy of your bookmarks before overwriting them.

  61. funny by dfj225 · · Score: 1

    A great testament to the ability of open software models debunking the myth that while the community can hack a kernel or compiler together, we can't build a large scale project designed for everyday folks to use.

    hahaha....like a kernel isn't a large scale project designed for everday use.

    --
    SIGFAULT
  62. Case in point - that prefs toolbar by Tackhead · · Score: 1
    > Now that it has made some progress, it is more difficult for a closed-source company to compete with it. It exists, and will be difficult to eliminate... There is no company to go out of business to cause Mozilla to disappear.

    It'll also be harder for closed-source to compete on a feature-by-feature basis.

    I used 3.01 (!) for years because it was vastly easier (but still required a dropdown) to toggle image loading and Javashit; the options required a dropdown and single-tab menu. Inconvenient, but not too bad.

    When I saw those options buried under a hierarchical menu in 4.x (presumably as an attempt to dissuade folks from turning 'em off - more ad revenue, more popups, and who cares if the browser crashes every time some malformed Javashit decides to blow it to smithereens), I regarded 4.x as a downgrade, not an upgrade.

    It wasn't until I saw the XUL-Planet "preferences toolbar" with Mozilla 1.x that I had the kind of user control that - for all intents and purposes - should have been available in 1996.

    On one hand, I'm still ch33z3d that it took seven years to fix a usability "bug" first introduced in 4.01.

    On the other hand, looking at the trend towards adware and bannerware in closed-source software, I'm pretty sure that were it not for Mozilla, there'd have been no fix for that UI misfeature - ever.

  63. 5 years old.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    and its a still a dinosaur....

  64. product for end users? Think again... by swordgeek · · Score: 1

    "...a large scale project designed for everyday folks to use."

    Mozilla is a lot of things, including my primary browser across three platforms.

    However whenever I point out the lack of "completeness" especially with regards to documentation and formalisation of a product, I'm reminded (usually quite gently, bless the developers) that mozilla isn't and never was intended to be a complete browser. I'm told it's intended as a code base, a core for others to use, but it's not supposed to be a feature-and-document-complete browser.

    So while I admire the team greatly and use the code constantly, it's not really a product for average users.

    --

    "People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
  65. To Mozdev: Keep Mac Classic Builds Alive by gnatware · · Score: 1

    I run a two-school network with all kinds of fussy Apple client management software, and IE will no longer cut it for me--it is constantly crashing and freezing many computers. Mozilla, however, is much more stable, configurable, and has more of an educational message behind it (yes, middle schoolers, one day you too can be given CVS check-in permission on a project like this). Happy 5th birthday. Please keep the Mac Classic build going for another year.

    1. Re:To Mozdev: Keep Mac Classic Builds Alive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...it is constantly crashing and freezing many computers.

      You mean... behaving like every other bit of software on a classic OS Mac? That's what happens when you don't have protected memory! Face it, OS 8 and 9 were at least 5 years behind the cutting edge, when they came out. If you want stability, Mozilla ain't going to give it to you. OS 10.2 might.

    2. Re:To Mozdev: Keep Mac Classic Builds Alive by Gerv · · Score: 1

      Please keep the Mac Classic build going for another year.

      Mac Classic would still be alive if someone came forward to maintain it. But no-one has.

      Gerv

  66. The Last Known Bug is dead.! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Long live the Last Known Bug!
  67. Re:So, um, yeah by MasterD · · Score: 1
    That's your choice, but I don't understand how somebody making proprietary software infringes on your freedom.

    It is not them making proprietary software that infringes on my freedom. It is me using proprietary software that infringes on my freedom. I don't have the freedom to understand what it is doing. I don't have the freedom to bug fix or modify it. And with most EULA's, I lose even more freedoms.

    Also, in the event that it crashes, it can re-open all the tabs you had open previously (I believe one of the Mozilla offshoots can do this, but I haven't seen any other browser).

    Galeon does this. Although it rarely crashes, if it does, you can resume right where you left off. This is also nice if you log off a machine. When you come back, all the pages you were last at come right back. Galeon is the gnome browser based off of gecko. Galeon also has bookmarklets, quick proxy config, quick buttons to modify popup blocking/java/javascript. One of my favorite features is the smart bookmark toolbar which has quick links to google search, dictionary lookup, stock quotes, etc.

  68. AAA? Not for something as big as mozilla by yerricde · · Score: 1

    It was necessary. Linux needed a AAA browser.

    A grade of "AAA" means "full combo, all perfects". That is, no bugs. The only way to guarantee bug-free software is to prove its correctness against the specification. At the current maturity level of software architecture, proving the correctness of a system as complex as a web browser is not feasible.

    --
    Will I retire or break 10K?
  69. Matlab for Linux by neurostar · · Score: 1

    Well, I just found out that there is Matlab for linux... I guess I've just got to get this printer working...

    neurostar
  70. Re:So, um, yeah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Opera is a gigantic, steaming pile of smegma.

  71. Not failure, but certainly not success yet. by Faust7 · · Score: 1

    Now that it has made some progress, it is more difficult for a closed-source company to compete with it.

    What competition? Netscape and Opera have about the same market share as Mozilla with respect to Internet Explorer, i.e. not much at all.

    It exists, and will be difficult to eliminate...

    There has to be something to eliminate first. As of right now Mozilla isn't infringing on Internet Explorer's territory in any way that is either worrying Microsoft or causing a sweeping change in the way websites are designed.

    I'll wait until the market shares are comparable before I think about Mozilla "competing" with anything.

    1. Re:Not failure, but certainly not success yet. by error0x100 · · Score: 1

      As of right now Mozilla isn't infringing on Internet Explorer's territory in any way that is either worrying Microsoft or causing a sweeping change in the way websites are designed.

      The first point here doesn't bother me so much as it would have some years ago, but the second point is bothering me. Looking at the browser stats of visitors to my two websites, I'm seeing a wider variety of web browsers than ever before. This is a good thing, and is something we wanted five years ago, but better late than never. But with all the new browser choices appearing, you'd think we'd start seeing web developers realise that they can no longer go around assuming everyone is using IE. But its almost as if they just don't want to know about it, because they're too lazy to learn how to make their site non-IE specific.

      Now, IE has, on one of my sites, 80.3% "share". I'm guessing the general average of IE users is about 90%. So 1 in 10 browsers is NOT IE. And yet we still have huge numbers of idiot web developers who somehow think its OK to turn away 1 in 10 people who visit their sites, almost always for no good reason other than to have some stupid little animated effect somewhere, or something else similarly pointless. Can you imagine a store in a mall turning away every tenth customer that tried to enter? Thats ridiculous. These web developers with their "optimized for IE" sites make me sick. Perhaps its time to start reviving interest in all those "made for any browser" campaigns that used to be so popular.

    2. Re:Not failure, but certainly not success yet. by error0x100 · · Score: 1

      What else annoys me, is if you speak to these web developers and their answer is that "people should just use IE". "IE is the standard" they say. They actually seem to get annoyed at their visitors for not using IE, because it makes more work for them.

    3. Re:Not failure, but certainly not success yet. by jhigh · · Score: 0

      I agree totally. I work for a local government entity, and we recieve lots of grant money from the state to manage various web projects (basically we just host the servers, etc). The problem is that in every case where we are not given a choice about what software to use, the software works exclusively with IE. This is quite frustrating, considering that I manage our Windows network from my RH 7.3 machine. It's actually at the point where I have to keep a Windows computer in my office solely for those times that I need to do something with one of these projects.

      It's getting better, though. We recently received a grant to do a map server project, but were given control of the software that we use. We originally planned on using ESRI's ArcIMS, priced at about $12,000 at the time. We even went to the training and started looking at hardware. Then I found out about the MapServer project. Mapserver is an open source internet map server, with all of the usual features: it's free, it's more secure, it's faster, it's more stable, etc, etc, etc. So rather than buying a Win2K server (that's the only thing ArcIMS will run on) and ArcIMS we bought a Redhat server and installed Mapserver. Saved my company about $17K, and our mapserver is faster than any ArcIMS-based server I've looked at.

      The best news, though, is that this has brought about a significant change in thinking in my company. Before, our Controller thought Linux was a "toy". She used to say, "If it's free it can't be any good." All the usual stuff you expect. Now, we have one Linux server, a Linux firewall, two Linux desktops, and plans to add two more Linux servers in the next 6 months. They also sent me to take my RHCE about a week ago, but I bombed the Installation section. I'm going back May 19.

      What half of that has to do with Mozilla I'm not sure. Just thought you guys might like to hear a nice story on Monday morning.

      --
      Social Engineering Expert: Because there is no patch for stupidity.
    4. Re:Not failure, but certainly not success yet. by blinkylights · · Score: 1

      I'm a web developer, and I can tell you that I don't get annoyed by people not using IE, I get annoyed by people who still use IE3.

      If you've never built a site where you weren't worried about legacy browsers... well, it's a whole lot easier. Given how much CSS puts within reach, there's just no way to justify shutting out non-IE users for some IE-only shortcut.

      The only thing that would make it nicer is if IE6's standards compliance were as good as Mozilla's and Opera's.

  72. Don't Let Facts get in the Way of Delusions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hi, don't let facts get in the way. The Google Zeitgeist shows a graph "Web Browsers Used To Access Google."

    Don't let facts stand in the way of your delusions.

    In that graph, that red line goes up.

    And the yellow line goes down.

    Don't let facts stand in the way of your delusions.

    1. Re:Don't Let Facts get in the Way of Delusions by Gerv · · Score: 1

      In that graph, that red line goes up.

      And the yellow line goes down.


      Could that be because Mozilla-based browsers are now numerous to have their own (albeit misnamed) category? :-)

      Gerv

  73. Rome wasn't built in a day or for free by hayden · · Score: 1
    Open source doesnt necessarily mean "instant development". It took over a year before anything useful came of the project.
    It took six months to realise what they'd been given was shit and that'd they'd need to start again.
    Now that it has made some progress, it is more difficult for a closed-source company to compete with it.
    For evidence compare IE 6.0 and OE (whatever) with Mozilla 1.0.ish which is where they were about a year or 18 months ago. Now compare IE 6.0 and OE (whatever) with Mozilla 1.3. Throw in the fact Mozilla is much more multiplatform than anything MS has released and see the demise of IE.
    --
    Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
  74. It's the real reason 64-bit windows is out by hayden · · Score: 1

    They're running out of room in 32 bits

    --
    Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
  75. Mozilla question: can I relocate the Home button? by Anonymous+Cowdog · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    It sure would be great to get rid of the "Personal Toolbar" and still have the home button easily accessible somewhere.

    OK, I'll have to start using Alt-Home more. But that requires yet another place for my hands to have to wander off the querty keys. I still want a single click button (which also rules out the Go->Home menu entry).

    Is there any way to add a Home button to the navigation bar?

    I get a sneaking suspicion Home is kept in the personal tool bar just to encourage people to have "The Mozilla Organization" and "Latest Builds" right their in their faces. A bit of self-promotion on the part of the toolbar coders, perhaps?

  76. Re:So, um, yeah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Galeon has most of those feature, and looks even better than the crap that is Opera on Linux, with it's stupid usage of QT.

  77. Dos 5.0 by CoolGuySteve · · Score: 1
    Uh, and how long did - or will - it take Microsoft to release a descent operating system?

    I 'm pretty sure you only needed DOS 5.0 to run Descent but 6.0 had a lot of neat utils like memmaker that helped. DOS could do more than just play Descent but not much and not well, so it really was just a Descent operating system. DOS Quake was good too though.

    It's also strange that none of the replies to your excellent post interpretted it correctly.
  78. Re:So, um, yeah by nfg05 · · Score: 1

    If Mozilla further bloated its installer by including the features you mentioned, I don't see what would change. Now it's "integrated" into the browser, but everyone who doesnt want it gets to download it anyway and god knows mozilla is too big as it is. The extension system makes sense, download what you want and nothing else.

  79. 2e5 and proud by noctrnl9 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I think 200,000 is a good thing because this means:

    -people care about the application;
    -the application is held to a high standard;
    -there will soon be 200,000 things anout which we do not have to worry.

  80. 5 years for what ....? by p0rnking · · Score: 1

    Mozilla has been around for 5 years, with Netscape, and 100s (if not thousands) of developers behind it, and what have we really gotten out of it?

    IMO, NOTHING!

    Ya, Mozilla might be an alright browser, but not for 5 years worth of work. Everytime I've tried it, I've had nothing but problems with it.

  81. So that's it.. by destiney · · Score: 2, Funny


    The truth is out now.. Mozilla was originally an April Fool's Joke? But on who? M$?

    Hehe..

  82. Long release time has me worried for... by bnet41 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The long time in between releases of Internet explorer has me a bit concerned for Mozilla. It just seems odd that they haven't even come out with 6.5 yet, let alone 7.0. I have heard rumors and the like, but I don't but a lot of faith in those. What I fear is Redmond is sitting back, and watching every move the Mozilla community makes. Then the popular stuff, they are putting into their browser. I would be shocked if that haven't added tabs to the development code yet. On my XP machine I.E. is my primary browser, and I do like how it runs on Windows since it really does run most websites best. I agree many are poorly coded, but there isn't much I can do about that. On my Powerbook though I use Camino and Safari.

    1. Re:Long release time has me worried for... by bnet41 · · Score: 1

      ooops....small laptop keyboard, big hands, not a good combination. I hit send accidentally, anyways, my point was MS will probably take all the good comments being said and build them into the next version of IE. I know many of you probably doubt wheather they would actually put a pop-up blocker in, but they will do anything to make sure they keep their lead. I hope Aol starts bringing the Mozilla and Gecko code into more of their projects, and hopefully give MS some real competition.

  83. 1.4 ! ? or no... by demiurg · · Score: 1

    I'm still using 1.3a because 1.3 is buggy piece of junk. I'm afraid 1.4 will be even worse. Are they treying to catch up with IE or what ?

  84. Re:So, um, yeah by StrawberryFrog · · Score: 1

    ), and an easy way to fake the browser ID string (possible in Mozilla only if you're willing to manually edit config files).

    Well nope, not only. there's a pluggin for Mozilla that puts the User Agent string as a dropdown on the toolbar: http://www.xulplanet.com/downloads/prefbar/help/in dex.html

    --

    My Karma: ran over your Dogma
    StrawberryFrog

  85. Re:So, um, yeah by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 1
    http://www.konqueror.org http://www.apple.com/safari Seriously. Do you work for Opera Software or something? Your other post was also a plug for Opera. Opera is proprietary software, which I'll never use since I value my freedom.

    So why did you include a link to Safari, which is likewise proprietary software?

  86. Re:So, um, yeah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They did. Time for a story, about which everyone can flaim me for spreading lies. Anyway, I can attest that this is true and as acurate as possible. Here goes.

    I run Linux at home. Currently running an old Mandrake 8.0, KDE 2, a few packages and libs updated. I don't care to try and keep it upto date; any security holes are taken care of by a small iptables script which drops anything nefarious. Its good enough for me. Before that, it was Redhat. Its now a 1.1Ghz Duron, 256Mb, nVidia GeForce 2. Nothing fancy.

    Anyway, I have been using Mozilla on it from the old 0.8.x (I did try some of the earlier milestones, but always ended back on Netscape 4.x) It was slow, then it got faster. But it never felt much faster than the computer I use at work. Dell 1Ghz, 512Mb, ATI Rage, running Windows 2000 and IE 5.5 Again, nothing special. The windows box was always faster than Mozilla, though.

    Then I installed Mozilla 1.3 on the work computer. I actually only really wanted tabbed browsing, but I could be sure that Mozilla would work, and would not be carrying something bad.

    The difference in performance is very noticable. Pages render much much faster than they did in IE. Most everything else is comparable, though (Apart from getting tabbed browing, popup killing and fine grained Javascript control) But the part that matters is that it is much faster.

    It could be that IE 6 is faster again, but I won't be installing it because I just like tabs too damn much.

  87. Mozilla was NOT made by the community by CGameProgrammer · · Score: 1

    It was made by Netscape.

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    ~CGameProgrammer( );
  88. The day by Hudjakov · · Score: 0

    I'll take a risk and belive the story is'nt April's joke. This time I got nothing to lose.

  89. Happy birthday!! by n0dez · · Score: 1

    Happy birthday, Mozilla! :)

    n0dez

  90. 200,000 bugs is a good thing by timothy · · Score: 1

    Even if they were all bugs.

    That Mozilla has been and is robust enough to triage that many reports at all (all bugs, all duplicates, all RFEs, some mix of these -- not the point) is the thing that most impresses me.

    Considering that many if not most *are* duplicates and generally get quickly marked that way is proof of how well it works.

    My mention of 200,000 bugs was an admiring one -- they've built a project so good that (so far) has inspired users nearly a quarter of a million times to point out a flaw or suggest an improvement. That says they're doing something very right :)

    timothy

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    jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
  91. Best IE wrapper (was Re:Bloat bloat bloat ...) by rcharbon · · Score: 1

    The best IE wrapper is Avant Browser [avantbrowser.com]. Crazy Browser just isn't as good. Try both and see for yourself.

  92. Re:I just reported a real humdinger of a by Wraithlyn · · Score: 1

    "WinME has problems with filesystems like you wouldn't believe."

    Oh man, tell me about it. MS has been developing OS's for like 20 years, and they still have persistant problems crop up with such basic operations as deleting and renaming. Blows my mind.

    Still.... google is just text and small simple graphics. Mozilla does just fine on everything else for me, so hard to believe something like google could cause such a cluster fuck.

    Thanks for all the feedback though guys, now at least I know it's uncommon.

    --
    "Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
  93. Re:Stupid Nitpick by hageshii · · Score: 1

    we overflowed at bug# 65537 I'm sorry, but I just gotta. It would actually overflow at 65536 since unsigned 16-bit numbers only go from 0 to 65535. Again, I'm sorry -- obsessive-compulsive-ness is bad.

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