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Run For Cover; It's Mozilla 1.4 Alpha
asa writes "Mozilla 1.4 Alpha is out.
This release features dynamic image and table resizing in Composer, smooth scrolling (see release notes for enabling this feature,) and usability improvements to spam filtering. In addition to these feature improvements, 1.4a also contains fixes for performance, stability, standards support and website compatibility. This is an alpha release so expect bugs, and don't use it unless you are willing to live with the risks inherent in such a release (ie. crashes, data loss, etc.). More information is available in the release notes."
Not on by default? What's up with this? Those less technical users who value eye candy like this are the ones that don't know how to turn this thing on and they wouldn't know that such a thing exists, either...
I'm confused as to why you didn't do an incremental deployment or a test deployment. Seems like either would of easily caught this, with even the most modest of testing.
For 15 minutes, it blows you away. After 30 minutes, it fades into the background. After an hour, someone convinces you that they slow you down. After two weeks, you realize that they provide you with visual clues that make you faster, because you know what is going on without thinking, because that "eye candry" is a useful part of the UI...
Alex
"p.s. Taliban controlled areas? I thought the Taliban had been defeated."
What made you think that? So far they've failed to even achieve their primary reason for attacking Afghanistan: capturing Osama bin Laden.
It all began in January of 2002, when the decision was made here to move from NT on desktops and NT 4 domain controler to XP on desktops and 2000 server and Active Directory on servers. The plan was to test the environment in vmware machines and get bugs worked out between January-April of that time period, change the servers to AD between semesters in May, then deploy XP desktop to some end users during the slow summer months, then do the deployment in August.
We had used Netscape 4.7 for web and mail client during the NT days and had some nifty logon scripts to edit and install prefs.js and a netscape profile so users didn't have to configure squat. The profile locaton was changable by a simple registry change. It worked very well, the masses were happy.
As anyone in academia is aware, it's a chaotic environment and crap kept being thrown on my team left and right, keeping them from working on this project. You have to understand that most faculty are primma donnas. Getting them to understand that a project of this scope requires a bunch of techs to basically disappear for months and not available to handle their pet projects, grants, and last minute crisis, escapes them. "We are here for the students" is the common mantra (which is true, but often they are best served by, ah like, decent planning).
My pleas for understanding went on deaf ears. "We just signed a contract to provide xxx training and need this lab up in two weeks" for example. "Drop everything and do it."
Now, understand, I'm a manager, not an administrator. I don't get to ask too many questions, I'm here to implement upper decisions and to take the blame when things fail.
So, come May, we're not ready to move to Active Directory. I announce that we won't meet the August changeover date. I get my ass reamed. "Textbooks for XP have been ordered, syllabi changed, we can't go back now."
So, panic kicks in and a lot was done with little testing. We also had hoped to roll out Netscape 7 but it didn't come out until the first week of classes, so we went with Mozilla 1.0.1 instead.
Overall, the deployment was quite a success except for the Mozilla issue. I got lucky in a lot of areas. But people only see the things that fail.
So yeah, in an ideal world, I could have avoided it through proper planning. And I got shafted due to decisions and situations beyond my control. Can you realize how frustrating it is to see decisions being made that will doom your project to failure, have no one care, and then when they do fail as you predict, you are the one who gets the blame? There is a reason why Dilbert is such a popular comic strip.
And if you think CYA memos would have helped, they don't. I do them all the time, remind people of my dire warnings, and you just come off like a whining bitch.
But I am the manager, and it's my job to take one for the team, so thanks for reminding me of my place...
(Note to self: Never post to slashdot hoping to share real-life knowledge again. Everytime I do, I regret it. Just like I'll regret this one since it'll get picked apart and criticized further. It's like being in an abusive relationship. I know I should leave this place, but keep coming back for more abuse for some reason...)
What is it going to take to get them to add the spellchecker from mozdev to the main Mozilla CVS. Smooth scrolling, great fantastic but where's the spellchecker?!?. I'm getting really tired of the "oh ... next release" promises. Stop adding menial improvements and get this moved to the main!!! Even Slashdot is a perfect example, imagine ... right click, check spelling your posts. It's certainly a hell of alot more important than "oh look, the redraw is somewhat less jerky when you scroll", wow, fantastic. Come on, somebody with a say get this moved in PLEASE!
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
It's interesting/annoying that since version 1.2, Mozilla only supports Mac OSX, especially given that a large portion of the Apple community is unwilling to move to the new system.
This shouldn't really be so surprising. With OSX replacing MacOS, there really are just two major operating system platforms out there, Windows and unix, of which OSX is one of the many varieties of the latter. It's unix underpinnings make OSX much easier for developers to port their projects to.
MacOS for all its good features is a very unique and hence more difficult to support operating system, at least from the standpoint of cross platform compatibility. Impossible? Obviously not. But since MacOS is no longer under active development, it shouldn't surprise anyone that it isn't really worthwhile for the "official" project to continue to develop for it. There are only a finite amount of development resources out there so it makes sense to develop for the platforms with the best prospects moving forward, namely Windows and unix.
I'm half sure that someone will probably take up the banner and try to port the more recent versions to MacOS. And that's one of the great things about open source. But there is a cost to remaining with older code bases. You take the risk of being left behind. That is among the reasons I no longer run OS/2, Windows 3.1, MacOS and a few other operating systems I've used heavily over the years. Eventually the costs of not switching become tooh great. Apparently for many Mac owners they aren't at that point yet. But they will be sooner or later. It's inevitable. The maintainers of the mozilla project simply recognize this fact and chose to deal with it now rather than later.