Mozilla 1.4b Loosed

An anonymous reader writes "The fine Mozilla folks have decided to bless us with the release of Mozilla 1.4b this weekend. Highlights include support for NTLM authentication, usability improvements, and lots of performance, stability, and site compatibility fixes. As always, the release notes have more detailed info on changes."

Comments

Also, 1.3.1

[friedegg]

Mozilla 1.3.1 (bugfix update for 1.3) was released this week, too.

Re:Also, 1.3.1

[Anonymous Coward]

If I understand correctly, 1.3.1 only fixes an OSX bug (the installer). Am I wrong?

Re:Also, 1.3.1

[friedegg]

Yes, that seems to be the primary reason, but Mozillazine mentions "a few security fixes" too.

Re:Also, 1.3.1

[admbws]

Asa Dotzler made a post with a full list of fixes when he released the release candidates.

http://groups.google.com/groups?as_umsgid=3EA4E244 .5060100%40mozilla.org

Re:Also, 1.3.1

[BrokenHalo]

You're pretty much right. I'm going to be slow to take up the 1.4beta, though, as Mozilla now works so damn well, it's getting hard to improve on it. With the exception of smooth scrolling, most of the recent features are candyfloss as far as I'm concerned. This is really brought home to me every time I have to use IE at my university. IE just sucks. Big-time.

support for NTLM authentication

[Anonymous Coward]

support for NTLM authentication

Gah!!! Mozilla has been assimilated!!!!!!!!!!!!

Re:support for NTLM authentication

[Lieutenant_Dan]

Actually, that could be a good thing. It may lead to a deployment of Mozilla within an organization that has resources secured by MS server packages (IIS, SQL Server, etc).

In my opinion this shows the Mozilla team being a bit more agressive in making inroads into the corporate (sometimes MS-dominated) world. Good for them.

Re:support for NTLM authentication

[buckminster]

This is actually a great thing. I frequently work with clients who run IIS on their intranets. As it stands now I have no choice but to switch to IE when accessing areas that use NTLM authentication. This is one less reason for me to fire-up IE.

Ultimately this could contribute to a wider deployment of Mozilla in corporate environments.

Re:support for NTLM authentication

[aboyce]

bah.. I was almost excited.. until I noticed that NTLM was only for windows.

NTLM in linux.. now that would be sweet... esp for those sites which refuse to write web front-end systems that are actually cross platform.

Re:support for NTLM authentication

[lostchicken]

Secured?

Don't ever use that word again when talking about a MS server product...

Re:support for NTLM authentication

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you mean 'that has resources "secured" by MS server packages'.

NTLM was dropped by MS themselves for WinXP because it's intrinsically flawed and breakable.

Re:support for NTLM authentication

[Narcissus]

I've been running Mozilla through our proxy server for the last few months thanks to the 'NTLM Authorization Proxy Server'. Admittedly it's a little more hacky than directly integrating it, but it works a treat, and I can now use it for all the other apps (generally open source ones) that didn't work, either (CDex comes to mind).

If anyone has any problems with NTLM proxies, I can highly recommend this little app.

Re:support for NTLM authentication

[jlrowe]

This is a good thing. I have used Mozilla for some time, but also had to use IE to access some pages on the company intranet.

But now I can use Mozilla to access those same pages. I know it works, because the NTLM authentication actually was working before this latest beta. And I am quite pleased.

In order for Mozilla or any non MS browser to gain users in corporations, this was a must.

Re:support for NTLM authentication

[onenil]

I work as a web developer in exactly this type of environment. The entire network is Microsoft based, and have personally found that the one technical reason for web apps to be IE specific is that its the only browser supporting NTLM.

Hallelujah! Finally I might be able to get away from IE here at work, just like I have at home. It (was) the only thing stopping me from using Mozilla all the time.

(Now to download the win32 binary...)

Re:support for NTLM authentication

[nathanh]

NTLM is good in that it extends the idea of how HTTP authentication works

NTLM is *not* good and it does *not* extend HTTP auth. In fact, NTLM completely *breaks* HTTP auth. Read the SQUID docs on nlanr.net for more details. The short and sweet summary is that NTLM makes assumptions about state between successive HTTP connections; that's a big no-no.

There are other nasties (IP addresses embedded in the challenge/response). Basically NTLM is a heaping pile of shit. It is better than BASIC but that's not saying much.

Re:support for NTLM authentication

[aboyce]

NTLM is fine.. if all you use is windows. Imagine a campus network where a grade reporting and class material server is protected by an NTLM auth system. Then imagine that there are equal parts windows, mac os (many versions), solaris, linux, and other random flavors.

NTLM is not a solution in this environment. If MS was truly trying to make it a standard, they should do just that.. and then let others use it to.

And now for the requisite 4 steps:
1) Come up with a good idea
2) ?????
3) shoot self in foot by being greedy
4) profit?

Re:support for NTLM authentication

[panaceaa]

I doubt Mozilla team members are adding NTLM in foresight of corporate usage. Rather, NTLM support has been one of the most requested features in Mozilla since 1.0 was released. It's one of the top-10 bugs in their Bugzilla database. Hundreds of people (including me) list it as one of their 10 requested bug fixes. I don't think NTLM support would have ever been added if it wasn't for its visibility on Bugzilla and the many repeated feature requests for it.

It was a lot of work to add NTLM, though. It required a redesign of a lot of core ideas, and the adding of trusted domains in the preferences panel. I'm not suprised it took until 1.4 to add all the necessary related features, without which NTLM would be insecure.

Re:support for NTLM authentication

[darinf]

> Standard HTTP authentication is hideously broken. It's plain text. Period. That's all there is to it. It's goddamn plain text.

Bogus. See RFC 2617 section #3, which outlines Digest (MD5) authentication. Digest auth is far superior to NTLM auth because it uses stronger crypto. The only reason to support NTLM is for compatibility with older microsoft products.

Darin

Re:support for NTLM authentication

[BrokenHalo]

Thank you for your creative use of font handling in your post. My browser wasn't doing it well enough.

Re:support for NTLM authentication

[Steve Cox]

Actually, this is great. Now when I click on a link to my companies Intranet from within Outlook, I won't get told that I don't have permission to access it.

Previously I would have to open up IE and copy'n'paste the link from the source of the email (the people that send these corporate emails typically send them as HTML with a ton of useless clipart).

Steve.

Re:support for NTLM authentication

[root 66]

We're currently developing a webbased helpdesk/trouble ticket system for our company.

In order to make it easy for the users to log in (i.e. using their regular usernames/passwords), we used the smbauth module for apache which authenticates the users at the NT PDC.

Works very nice.

To avoid clear text traffic, we use https, of course.

Re:support for NTLM authentication

[arkanes]

Woo! I do the same thing - Intranet based web app stuff, and IE is the standardized platform. This means I can use Mozillas vastly superior JavaScript and DOM debugging! Although it won't work with the IE only javascript. Sigh.

Re:support for NTLM authentication

[CleverFox]

It's a _real_ good thing in our coporation. We can finally use the NTLM only IIS sites around here with Mozilla. And since there is zero chance we will get rid of IIS, at least we can get rid of IE.

Re:support for NTLM authentication

[Alsee]

Don't ever use that word again when talking about a MS server product...

Note that he said "the Mozilla team being a bit more agressive in making inroads into the corporate (sometimes MS-dominated) world. Perhaps he meant it in more of a military/conqured sense.

Microsoft server packages have secured several important company resources. They were then liberated when mozilla implemented NTLM support :D

-

Still Beta?

[suchire]

Is this version still beta then, since they didn't number it 1.4.1?

Re:Still Beta?

[noda132]

Mozilla 1.4a is "alpha" (hence the "a"). Likewise, Mozilla 1.4b, the version being mentioned in this article, is "beta" (hence the "b"). Once Mozilla 1.4 is finished, it will be released as simply "Mozilla 1.4" and that'll mean it's stable.

Then a few months later some minor bugs will be ironed out (or in a few minutes some major bug will be) and that'll be Mozilla 1.4.1. By that time, Mozilla 1.5 may very well be starting its own release cycle.

Re:Still Beta?

[pipegeek]

Yep. As a matter of fact, there has yet to be a 1.4 release. That little b on the end of the version number (1.4b) stands for beta. 1.4a, by the same token, was (at least nominally) an alpha. The actual release is still a ways off.

Re:Still Beta?

[Pastis]

This is slightly incorrect:

• 1.x.1 releases are not the norm, they hopefuly should not happen in 1.4. 1.2.1 and 1.3.1 were made to fix important bugs that were not found/fixed before the expected release dates. These extra releases drain resources from development on the main branch. Help out identifying the important bugs by using 1.4b and you will NOT have a 1.4.1 (and a better 1.4).
• 1.(x+1) release cycle starts BEFORE 1.x release is done. E.g. 1.4 will be frozen, then branched. When branching occurs, the main tree will be opened again for 1.5a checkins.

See the roadmap.

son of a ......

[Anonymous Coward]

I just installed 1.4a on Friday.

Re:son of a ......

[Anonymous Coward]

1.4 beta came out on Wednesday, Slashdot is just late.

Re:son of a ......

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't bother upgrading. 1.4b seems to have this little problem with opening the Preferences window: it doesn't. (At least, that's the case compiling from source for GTK1 under Linux.)

I know it's just a beta, but seriously: How the hell did this slip through?

Re:son of a ......

[berzerke]

The linux pre-built binary opens the preferences window just fine for me.

Re:Phoenix

[Anonymous Coward]

0.5 came out... long, long, long ago. 0.6 is the long awaited release with the new name.

Re:Phoenix

[vslee]

I meant Phoenix 0.6

New Phoenix/Firebird builds too

[Patik]

It's been updated a lot since the 0.5 milestone, I suggest you check it out. There are several new features and UI enhancements.

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/phoenix/nightly/latest-t runk

Also check out all of the extensions, most of which still work on the latest nightly build.

Re:New Phoenix/Firebird builds too

[suchire]

I am very confused with the naming system now. Is Phoenix the same thing as Firebird? What about Thunderbird? What's the difference between them and SeaMonkey?

Re:New Phoenix/Firebird builds too

[pipegeek]

Is Phoenix the same thing as Firebird?
Yes. They renamed Phoenix to Firebird due to some trademark dispute.

What about Thunderbird?
Thunderbird is a new email client which is (I believe) being written to accompany Firebird.

What's the difference between them and SeaMonkey?
Seamonkey is what Joe User would know as "mozilla". It's (I believe) the codename of the current mozilla app suite, which is based on XPFE. These new projects (Firebird and Thunderbird) are designed using new, faster toolkits (and are themselves much smaller and more streamlined) but they still make use of Mozilla's gecko rendering engine. These two projects are slated to replace seamonkey in mozilla 1.5 and all subsequent releases. They are, however, currently available as standalone programs (though, from what I've heard, Thunderbird is still a bit not quite there).

Re:New Phoenix/Firebird builds too

[fishbert42]

You should check out the new Mozilla branding strategy. It should answer your questions. In particular:

Before defining how we talk about something and how we want to present it to the world, we should talk about what we're actually producing. Right now we have two basic projects:

1. 1. SeaMonkey: The SeaMonkey project is also called the Application Suite or "App Suite." It's largely the same as the old Netscape 4.x Communicator brand. It has more or less the same functionality and branding as that the old 4.x product and we've done little to counter that association.
   2. Firebird/Thunderbird: These are the basis for the second generation mozilla products. They split our application into two separate applications with separate identities: a web browser and an email program. In talking about these projects, we should allow them to have their own identities.

Re:New Phoenix/Firebird builds too

[fishbert42]

Or, you could wait for a few days and just download the new Mozilla Firebird 0.6 release when it's ... umm ... released.

Re:New Phoenix/Firebird builds too

[whovian]

At first I thought "So what?" -- I already get tabs in Mozilla, so Firebird doesn't win points selling that as their first feature. But on reading further, I found listed the one feature I've wanted in mozilla for a long time: tab navigation.

It works similarly to Multi Gnome Terminal where you can switch between tabs using only the keyboard. I love it.

I'm going to try Firebird now.

Re:New Phoenix/Firebird builds too

[an_mo]

You want tab features? Get the multizillaaddon to mozilla

Re:New Phoenix/Firebird builds too

[Orion_]

Er, you can already switch tabs using only the keyboard in the standard Mozilla client, with Ctrl-PgUp/PgDn. Or are you talking about something else?

Re:New Phoenix/Firebird builds too

[Anonymous Coward]

ctrl+tab and ctrl+shift+tab work for me... as do ctrl+pgup and ctrl+pagedown.

Re:New Phoenix/Firebird builds too

[whovian]

That's exactly what I was looking for! Thanks to all who responded.

Re:New Phoenix/Firebird builds too

[Anonymous Coward]

ctrl-tab works as well (finally)... at least in windows.

Re:New Phoenix/Firebird builds too

[ncc74656]

Er, you can already switch tabs using only the keyboard in the standard Mozilla client, with Ctrl-PgUp/PgDn.

Ctrl-Tab works, too, and it's less awkward (only needs one hand to type).

Re:New Phoenix/Firebird builds too

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope no one adds that binding under Linux.
Both KDE and Gnome often use that to switch between desktops.

Re:New Phoenix/Firebird builds too

[pangloss]

is there a way in phoenix to have middle-click open a link in a new window (as opposed to a tab)? like you can in mozilla....

it's driving me batty.

Re:New Phoenix/Firebird builds too

[AsparagusChallenge]

One warning though, it probably has to be disabled on the window manager since it's often the "change viewports" binding.

Re:New Phoenix/Firebird builds too

[ncc74656]

One warning though, it probably has to be disabled on the window manager since it's often the "change viewports" binding.

With Windows apps, Ctrl-Tab changes between open documents in an (instance of an) app. Switching tabs in Mozilla is analogous to switching documents in an MDI app.

Re:New Phoenix/Firebird builds too

[divec]

Ctrl-Tab works, too, and it's less awkward [than Ctrl-PgUp/PgDn] (only needs one hand to type).

Err, can't you use the right Ctrl key together with PgUp/PgDn? I.e. just with your right hand?

Re:New Phoenix/Firebird builds too

[ThaReetLad]

No. My right hand is busy elsewhere.

Re:New Phoenix/Firebird builds too

[ncc74656]

Ctrl-Tab works, too, and it's less awkward [than Ctrl-PgUp/PgDn] (only needs one hand to type).

Err, can't you use the right Ctrl key together with PgUp/PgDn? I.e. just with your right hand?

I learned typing on a keyboard (that of an Apple IIe) with only one Ctrl key, so it only gets hit with my left pinky. (It was enough of a pain switching from Ctrl next to the A to Ctrl in the lower-left corner.) Besides, the right Ctrl key on the IBM Model M I'm using now is remapped to the menu key and the right Alt key is remapped to the Windows key because the keyboard is old enough that it doesn't have those keys.

Re:New Phoenix/Firebird builds too

[kenthu]

And CTRL-SHIFT-TAB to move to the tab on the left. Yes I know, it should be obvious, but in retrospect, CTRL-TAB should have been obvious in the first place, and I've been uncomfortably using CTRL-PgUp and CTRL-PgDn this whole time.

Re:New Phoenix/Firebird builds too

[captainbajoo]

Ah, the benefits of one-handed typing and wankers, all at the same time!

I used to follow mozilla

[Knife_Edge]

Much more closely than I do now. After 1.0 the improvements seemed less noticeable to me. I suppose this means the software has matured. Is anyone really excited about the new features? Are they interesting from an end user perspective?

Re:I used to follow mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

The non-browser components are still continuing to mature. I didn't find v1.0's email too useable, but since 1.3 it's quite a bit better.

Re:I used to follow mozilla

[GuNgA-DiN]

Definitely! I love tabbed browsing, and the popup and cookie features are far superior to IE. Mozilla has become my primary browser. I've been investigating the calendar feature too. I plan on proposing that we implement it company-wide at my work. Mozilla has matured greatly and it's only getting better. You should check it out again.

Re:I used to follow mozilla

[rmohr02]

The biggest feature I've found it "Type Ahead Find". I start typing the text of a link when on a webpage, and it takes me to that link. It's still a little buggy, but not too bad.

Also, I find the new features that keep coming in MultiZilla to be worth much better than those introduced by Mozilla.

Re:I used to follow mozilla

[rodgerd]

As someone trapped behind a firewall with only an NTLM enabled proxy for Internet access, the NTLM feature is *very* interesting. I suspect there are tens of thousands of Moz users in the same boat.

Re:I used to follow mozilla

[superkjell]

You can configure the "Type Ahead Find" to search plain text, too. Got to like that.

Re:I used to follow mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw a lot of layout bugs get fixed around the 1.2 era. It was only around 1.4 when some of the obscure layout bugs that I filed seemed to fix themselves.

Re:I used to follow mozilla

[IamTheRealMike]

Yeah, I'm the same way, I used to follow each release and even the nightlies. I'm not so bothered these days. BUT (and i'm sure you're all sick of hearing this yet i don't care) Firebird on Linux totally owns. Get the Firebird GTK2/XFT2 builds, google for them (NOT the official ones) and you'll get a pretty, visually integrated very fast browser with extensions coming out the wazoo. When I saw the list of available extensions I felt I was in candyland. You should try it! It's the future of Mozilla, that's for sure.

Re:I used to follow mozilla

[wossName]

The coolest new feature in 1.4 for me was the ability to specify a group of tabs that opens with the first Mozilla window, but not further windows or tabs in the current session. This enables me to start Mozilla with my regular news sites, and have empty windows when I press ctrl-n.

And I also use "type ahead find" quite often now.

Re:I used to follow mozilla

[Apreche]

After 1.0 the improvements in Mozilla are less noticeable. That's because all the noticeable and useful improvements are happening over in the Phoenix/Firebird department.

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/phoenix/why/

The biggest reasons I choose it over moz are

a) Tabbed browsing is implemented better
b) Smaller, faster, lighter, better
c) extensions and themes are cooler
d) my computer is slow and crappy
e) I prefer birds on fire to dinosaurs

Re:I used to follow mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you don't need to configure anything. To search through text instead of just links just type a / (forward slash).

Re:I used to follow mozilla

[RedWizzard]

I found that 1.3 was significantly faster than earlier versions. And now that I've got tabbed browsing I will not go back to a browser without it.

As for the 1.4 features I do find the "open new window/tab as copy of current window/tab" to be useful. The image blocking improvements might be good too.

Re:I used to follow mozilla

[Ramze]

I've begun using Mozilla about 10% of the time because of it's pop-up blocking and ad-blocking features (you can block images from some servers -- which I use to block anything from ad-only servers hehehe). If Mozilla would create context menus for it's bookmarks (favorites) where I could right-click and delete or rename them, I'd use it a LOT more often -- especially if they auto-hid seldom-used links like IE does. Mozilla is a lot faster than IE and loads pages that IE sometimes won't on my cable modem connection (don't know why -- maybe IE isn't as good at rendering some pages or there's a timeout issue that mozilla handles better b/c I can click reload a few times and get IE to view things properly if it doesn't want to, but Mozilla loads the page instantly w/ no trouble while IE might take a few reloads to get it right).

Mozilla has come a long way, but I won't use it as my primary browser until it fixes the bookmarks and perhaps has the ability to block FLASH animations from servers :-)

Re:I used to follow mozilla

[mobets]

I love that feature, but I have one prolbem with it. I haven't RTFMed, but is there a simple way to get it to jump to the next instance of matching text? I usualy just highlight something after the current match and start typing again, but that means I have to take my hand off the keyboard...

Re:I used to follow mozilla

[BadBrainDay]

CTRL-G

Re:I used to follow mozilla

[poulbailey]

> CTRL-G

Or simply F3. Type Ahead Find is the greatest invention ever.

Re:I used to follow mozilla

[rowanxmas]

especially if they auto-hid seldom-used links like IE does.

This is one of the worst features MS has. Back when I used office I turned it off immediatly. I memorize where my bookmarks ( favorites? wtf? most of mine are stuff for work, hardly my "favorite" ) are so when "smart" (i.e. really frickin annoying )software hides them I am up shit creek withou a paddle. Also don't tell me that you don't like being able to open up an entire folder in tabs.

Re:I used to follow mozilla

[Jucius Maximus]

"Definitely! I love tabbed browsing, and the popup and cookie features are far superior to IE."

Agreed! And there is a great improvement in these features that I have just noticed in 1.4b and I never saw in 1.4a. There is a little icon in the corner next to the 'lock' that appears if the site uses cookies or popups. Obviously I have popups disabled, so when I see the little popup icon, I get this lovely warm feeling inside knowing that at least 1 pop-up was annihilated. It's so much more gratifying than seeing nothing at all.

Furthermore, you can click on that little icon and change the cookie or popup blocking customisations for that particular site. This way, if a useful popup was identified as 'unrequested' then you know it was killed and you can easily re-enable it.

Re:I used to follow mozilla

[Slack3r78]

From what I can tell (I'm too lazy to read the release notes :)) they've made some definite improvements to the popup blocker for 1.4. I have a hard time remembering exactly when changes get implemented sometimes since I tend to use whatever the latest test release is (ie: Alpha, Beta, Final, not quite crazy enough to run the latest nightly), but things like the popup manager in the tools menu make life a lot easier, since you can just tell it popups are ok on certain sites (Fileplanet comes to mind) without having to go to Prefs, disable blocking, get the popup you need, then go back and reenable it every time. Very cool stuff, indeed.

Re:I used to follow mozilla

[OMEGA Power]

I don't follow it as closley as I used to but I still download a new build about once a month. As for new features the junk mail filters (something I've been waiting for for a long time) seem much improved in 1.4b over the last version I was using (a nightly build released shortly after 1.4a)other than that it seems pretty much the same.

That said, Mozilla is still far better than IE and has become the default browers on all my systems (both Linux and Winblows)

Re:I used to follow mozilla

[goonerw]

I'm running 1.3 and I have that little icon near the padlock that tells me if popups have been blocked. You can also click on it to for more options.

Re:I used to follow mozilla

[HereTheDogIsBuried]

Just start typing ahead with a / and it will search text too.

The type ahead feature is great, it enables me to surf with the keyboard only. I just need to find out the keys to get to the url bar to type another url.

Re:I used to follow mozilla

[BJH]

Ctrl-l (that's an "L", not a "one").

Re:I used to follow mozilla

[derF024]

. If Mozilla would create context menus for it's bookmarks (favorites) where I could right-click and delete or rename them, I'd use it a LOT more often

Phoenix/Firebird does this. Firebird's bookmark handling (such as drag-n-drop bookmarking of urls to subdirectories in my bookmarks menu) is the main reason that I use that now instead of mozilla.

Re:I used to follow mozilla

[AndrewRUK]

Mozilla does have a context menu for bookmarks, with (amongst other things) rename and delete.
So, what's broken about Mozilla's bookmarks?

Re:I used to follow mozilla

[tmasman]

no configuration needed...
preceed your searched text with a "/"
It then searches plain text...
hit [F3] to find the next occurance...

just my 2...

~ tmasman

Re:I used to follow mozilla

[Ramze]

I meant specifically within the bookmarks menu -- I dispise the sidebar & I don't care to go into the bookmark manager... I'd rather be able to edit what I see when I click on the bookmarks menu -- another poster mentioned Pheonix/Firebird allows this and has a drag 'n drop interface for sorting them like IE. Sounds good to me since Mozilla is looking to use it instead in future releases! :-)

Re:I used to follow mozilla

[Ramze]

Well, it depends on your use of it, really. Often, I'll be doing research and just bookmark every site that I come across that seems interesting & that'll take up a lot of the main bookmark list space. Those bookmarks would be just temporary and for only one project, so it wouldn't be worth it to me to create a subdirectory and store them all under that just to delete it later. Often, I'll be working on as many as 5 projects at a time & will have several dozen links that I only want to use once or twice while I'm writing a paper or working on a project, so... Being able to find them isn't a necessity & sorting into subdirectories would be a bit of a pain. I prefer to have them auto-hide after a few days of non-activity & just scroll down to them as needed. (Which is why I'd prefer to have a right-click context menu to delete bookmarks as I go).

I did find the auto-hide annoying at first with XP's start menu, but it "grew on me" & it seldom interferes with my ability to find what I want & actually helps me by not displaying seldom-used system settings and such so that my nephews won't see them, ask what they are, and/or play with them while I'm not looking! lol...

Also, it makes the bookmarks appear less cluttered by removing bookmarks and submenus that I don't regularly use -- which makes finding what I regularly use much simpler.

As for the tabs feature, I find it as useless as the sidebar. I don't see any reason to open a webpage in a tab when I can open it as a new window and click on the start menu "tab" just as easily as I could click on the tab within tabbed windows. It just wastes more screen space by adding the tabs. A program "DeadAIM" that I use with AOL's IM also allows tabbed interfaces. I know a few people that uninstalled it b/c they didn't know that the tabs could be turned off. But, I suppose that's apples to oranges b/c most people enjoy having multiple IM windows open and sometimes have one above or below the other.

Re:I used to follow mozilla

[Ramze]

Really?? I've heard such good things about Pheonix/Firebird. I'm really looking forward to Mozilla using it in future releases (I think starting in release 1.5?). This particular feature was requested in Mozilla about 3 years ago. I'm sure there are other things that required their attention, but I look at it as a user-interface design flaw b/c IE has had it so long, people just expect it to be there.

Thanks for the info! Downloading my first copy of Phoenix/Firebird as we speak! :-)

Re:I used to follow mozilla

[AndrewRUK]

Context menus on menus?
Noooooooooooooooo...........
It's not right, I tells ya, it just aint right...

Re:I used to follow mozilla

[rowanxmas]

As far as tab usage goes....
my desktop looks so much cooler without a big nasty bar at the bottom, since Enlightenment doesn't have one anyways.

Re:I used to follow mozilla

[Ramze]

I agree -- I use auto-hide for the taskbar :-)

Re:Phoenix

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but but Phoenix doesn't support provide an email module.

So, there... Your desire for speed over flexibility is strictly a matter of prerference.

Thanks for sharing.

Re:Phoenix

[Anonymous Coward]

More specifically, you wanted to get fp AND (+4,informative).

Mozilla 1.3.1 was also released

[admbws]

Let us not forget that stable Mozilla 1.3.1 was released at around the same time, so those of us too wimpy to use a potentially unstable beta version are well catered for there ;)

Included are several important stability and security fixes. See the list.

Loosed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla 1.4b Loosed

Good lord, when you people learn, it's LOSE, not LOOSE! LOOSE means to "let loose, to free, to release", and LOSE mea...

Erm.

Never mind. You got it right this time. Carry on then.

Re:Loosed?

[Anonymous Coward]

It would have been "lost", past tense and all.

You're no spelling nazi at all, are you?

Re:Loosed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it loosened?

Re:Loosed?

[saints-in-hell]

It should be "released". The verb associated with "loose" is "loosened".

Re:Loosed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Set loose.

Re:Loosed?

[TC (WC)]

Unless, of course, you're talking about the verb 'to loose'... in which case the verb is quite obviously loose and the past participle is loosed.

Re:Loosed?

[ThaReetLad]

No, loosed is correct if a little archaic. Loosed is to release of let go, as in "Loosed an arrow".

Hope they fixed the clear-cache problem

[GuNgA-DiN]

If I was on a site that set cookies and cleared my cache, Mozilla 1.4a would crash. I kept submitting feedback reports and I hope they fixed this. Off to download now......

Re:Hope they fixed the clear-cache problem

[Brandon Sharitt]

Why would a website clear your cache?

Re:Hope they fixed the clear-cache problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Read what he said again. Carefully. He said if he went to a web-page that set cookies, and -he- cleared his cache, it would crash.

Re:Hope they fixed the clear-cache problem

[thegoldenear]

if you can it would be even more useful if you filed a bug for Mozilla problems you find in Bugzilla to go along with the feedback reports (referencing against a Talkback report number if possible). this way it will be more noticeable to engineers working on Mozilla - bugs in Bugzilla get assigned to individuals and Talkback reports provide a more general view of whats breaking that can be analysed statistically, or provide tangible data when referenced against a Bugzilla bug report

NTLM for Linux?

[bytes256]

When will they support NTLM on Linux? That's one of the few reasons I still have to dual boot. (A web site required for my job uses NTLM authentication.)

I would think it would be possible using part of Samba. Am I mistaken about this?

Re:NTLM for Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I've read, they just hooked it up to the windows dll's that handle the calls. They haven't programmed a cross platform version of it.

Re:NTLM for Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

When will they support NTLM on Linux? That's one of the few reasons I still have to dual boot. (A web site required for my job uses NTLM authentication.)

The NTLM authentication feature is Windows only because it uses Window's own SSPI API. See this MozillaZine article for more details. Bug 23679 (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23679 - you'll have to type it yourself, they don't allow links from Slashdot) deals with NTLM on other platforms.

Re:NTLM for Linux?

[mr_goodwin]

Check out the NTLM authorization proxy server here.

That's what I use.

Re:NTLM for Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

> I would think it would be possible using part of Samba. Am I mistaken about this?

Either use SAMBAs winbindd (a daemon that proxies requests), but is somehow not favoured by the SAMBA team, or hack together NTLM code yourself, which is possible but messy.

Re:NTLM for Linux?

[Stormie]

I was just about to jump in and recommend Dmitry's NTLM Authentication Server, when I noticed you beat me to it. To the original commenter: all this proxy needs is Python installed, so it should certainly work for you under Linux. I use it under Windows and apart from it crashing once (in 2 months+ of heavy use) it's never failed me..

Not gonna get it..

[tka]

..I'm pretty happy with Mozilla 1.2.1 that came along with RH. There's no radical improvements that would effect greatly on my surfing experience. Maybe 1.4 final or the 1.5 serie will something that I will waste small bandwidth on.

Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate the work that Mozilla development team has done. Thanks For Them!

Re:Not gonna get it..

[91degrees]

I recently upgraded from 1.0 to 1.3. It seems most of the improvements are in the mail and newsreader, and composer. The browser seems fairly stable.

Re:fuck

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh... the poor boy didn't get first post with his half-assed comment, so now baby is really upset and does not want to play anymore!

(And please give that an '+1,informative', '+1,insightful' or maybe a '+1,ThatSuckerDeservedIt')

Spring cleaning

[potuncle]

Mozilla??? I just got a Flowzilla 1.4b and I can't wait to try it next shower.

Loosed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you mean "lost" or "loosened"? Or what?

I'd donate, if only they would put the money towards an editor's salary.

image blocking

[rock_climbing_guy]

Image blocking/disabling is now more flexible and users can "view image" to see blocked or not loaded images.

I have an idea for image blocking. Now that Mozilla uses a statistical technique to identify spam, presumable with some sort of set of words to begin the database before it is trained with our spam messages, perhaps we could apply some sort of guessing technique for image blocking.

A central database of crap ( read Doubleclick.net ) images could be maintained. Images could be checked against the database and then blocked or allowed based on that. Perhaps the domain that the images come from could be taken into account as well.

Re:image blocking

[Phroggy]

Is this what you're looking for?

Shameless plug: if you run Squid, here's mine.

Re:image blocking

[Anonymous Coward]

From my squid.conf:

acl block_hosts dstdomain "/etc/squid_block.conf"
http_access deny block_hosts

From my /etc/squid_block.conf:
.doubleclick.com
.doubleclick.net
.doubleclick.org
.ivw.de
.ivwbox.de

Others just add the banner-spitters to their /etc/hosts ...

Re:image blocking

[i.r.id10t]

Easy enough to do with a userContent.css file in ~/.mozilla - (and yes, it works on Win32 as well). There are a few out there avaialable, just google for 'em. Works wonders.

Re:image blocking

[superkjell]

I'd like to be able to enter adresses to block manually, and use wildcards. Entering just ad.* and ads.* would eliminate most of the images I want blocked. :)

You could always do it with iptables, but this would be more convenient.

Re:image blocking

[steeef]

ahem. see the post in this thread about userContent.css, which does exactly what you describe.

Re:image blocking

[Anonymous Coward]

Your just taking about ad blocker or something ..however it uses a local database. For some reason I never found it effective

Re:image blocking

[Anonymous Coward]

http://adblock.mozdev.org/

Re:image blocking

[superkjell]

I didn't mention it in my post, but I would really like to have the browser NOT download images from the specified sites. The CSS-file would just make it invisible, I presume?

Being stuck on a 56k dialup makes reading the newspaper online a tedious experience.

Re:image blocking

[fireman sam]

A simple way is to place entries in your hosts file (or caching name server) for the above list to point to 127.0.0.1 and you can then serve up your own banner adds. I find a 1x1 transparent png works very well

Re:image blocking

[steeef]

Good question. The statements in my userContent.css file hide iframes, image links, and images with the "display: none" command. It's a good bet that the banners are still being downloaded.

Re:image blocking

[be-fan]

Huh, just had a thought.

Definition of masochist: Someone who serves himself his own banner adds because double-click's aren't annoying enough.

Re:image blocking

[Dracos]

No, all we neeed is this in preferences:

[X] Block images not originating from domain of the page being displayed.

Easy. Bayesian image filtering would probably be too much of a performance hit, anyway.

They can leave it disabled (or even a hidden pref) to keep the pixel spammers at bay.

NTLM is good for some people

[koh]

Many people will consider NTLM support as superfluous pro-MS bloatware and another useless addition to Mozilla.

I'd like to point out this is just plain wrong. There are many developers that are forced to use IE to do their job just because the company's product runs on IIS and uses NTLM.

Mozilla supporting NTLM means better ways of testing software for these developers, as well as giving a better idea of the web homogeneity of the product.

Free myself from IE at work ! Go for NTLM, Mozilla ! :)

Re:NTLM is good for some people

[zmooc]

I've never really used NTLM but from what I understand it's extremely convenient. Does anybody know if there's an open equivalent for this?

Re:NTLM is good for some people

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

I've never really used NTLM but from what I understand it's extremely convenient. Does anybody know if there's an open equivalent for this?

Yes. Kerberos.

Re:NTLM is good for some people

[nutbar]

I'd like to point out this is just plain wrong. There are many developers that are forced to use IE to do their job just because the company's product runs on IIS and uses NTLM.

Yes... I tried to use Mozilla to "do my job" but I couldn't log in to the company's proxy server. Thank goodness I can "do my job" at work now without using IE.

After all, I suppose your job is whatever you spend the most time at work doing...

Re:NTLM is good for some people

[Anonymous Coward]

HTTP Digest Authentication

Re:NTLM is good for some people

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to point out this is just plain wrong. There are many developers that are forced to use IE to do their job just because the company's product runs on IIS and uses NTLM.

I just can't figure out why people use IIS and NTLM to cause the IE requirement.

Re:NTLM is good for some people

[abell]

You could try NTLM Authorization Proxy Server. It works as a proxy performing NTLM authentication.I have been using it for the last year without problems.

Re:NTLM is good for some people

[MeerCat]

It's mostly useful for large corporate intranets.

If you're writing scripted pages using ASP (I use PerlScript under ASP) on IIS, and you turn on NTLM authentication only, then when your page executes it executes with the rights of the browsing user - you don't see this happen, it just occurs. The equivalent of an SU to the appropriate user (normally it executes under the identity of a system account).

This means that you can easily write web pages where you know the user is who they claim to be on an NT based system, and your web pages can do things like browse local files (ie on the server) and know that you won't be opening any security holes, as your webpage script will open be able to open a file/directory if that user has permission to see it.

I used this to make a web-based front end to a large file server that let people attach comments to files, personalise comments, search for files by comments etc. and I didn't have to worry about the admin of the permissions on the server as it all just worked. Makes it much easier to prove to IT Security that your web apps are not exposing files to inappropriate users (inside investment banks there are quite stringent requirements for showing chinese walls exist to prevent insider trading and similar).

NTLM Authentication prior to 1.4

[diatonic]

Mozilla on Windows now has support for NTLM authentication. This enables Mozilla to talk to MS web and proxy servers that are configured to use "windows integrated security".

In the past you could still authenticate against NTLM services, though you had to type authentication information.

Username was entered as domain\username and Password was your domain password. Perhaps now it is transparently passed by a Mozilla browser logged into an NT domain. Cool.

.:diatonic:.

Re:NTLM Authentication prior to 1.4

[kingkade]

I may be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure that to use NTLM authentication (over http) you have to implement the challenge response algorithm over special http headers (in addition to "NTLM" being specified as the authentication method). So I don't know what you mean by 'you could always do this.'

Re:NTLM Authentication prior to 1.4

[buckminster]

You are incorrect. Prior to this release of Mozilla you could NOT authenticate against an NTLM service w/Mozilla. If you were doing any authentication at all against IIS it would have been basic authentication.

Re:NTLM Authentication prior to 1.4

[ceswiedler]

No, domain\username only worked for standard 'clear text' http authentication, which on IIS servers maps domain usernames like that. Actual NTLM authentication is a different protocol altogether. If a server enabled NTLM authentication but not clear-text, you were out of luck. Also, I believe that NTLM allows for transparent authentication, where your current user/domain login to Windows is used (without having to type anything), though that may just be an implementation detail of IE.

Re:NTLM Authentication prior to 1.4

[JaseOne]

Unfortunately it doesn't look like Mozilla's implementation of NTLM has gotten as far as the transparent authentication like I was hoping.

It prompts for the login information and logs in fine but all management will say to that is MSIE does it automatically so we'll stick with only supporting that.

J.

Now if it was just little faster...

[rxed]

I realy don't care anymore about its features. Its a fine browser as it is, however launching it on a Linux or Mac boxen takes long time -- compared to Opera or IE (on a Mac). I wish they could make Mozilla a little faster and lighter, than add features to it.

Re:Now if it was just little faster...

[Anonymous Coward]

not entirely true

IE is already loaded in memory, hence the slow startup time. Mozilla doesn't have this feature on linux I think.

Re:Now if it was just little faster...

[the_consumer]

Have you tried Firebird(or Phoenix, whatever)? I don't have a Mac, but on my old 350 PII box it Firebird loads much faster than Moz (and NS 7). Not as fast as Operas and IE, but it doesn't take forever.

Re:Now if it was just little faster...

[Phroggy]

I wish they could make Mozilla a little faster and lighter, than add features to it.

They're working on this. Mozilla is currently one big app that does everything (browser, mail and news client, HTML editor, IRC client, etc. etc.). It's being split into 1) the Gecko rendering engine, 2) a browser code-named Firebird, 3) a mail client code-named Thunderbird, etc. Each application will be able to be installed separately. Once this is done, it should be easier to optimize each component for speed.

Re:Now if it was just little faster...

[Waffle Iron]

IE is already loaded in memory, hence the slow startup time. Mozilla doesn't have this feature on linux I think.

That feature rocks. I recently got SuSE 8.2, and I figure KDE must now be pulling the same trick as IE. Konqueror always used to be about twice as fast launching as Mozilla, but now it blows it away. On my Athlon 1800+, Mozilla takes about 2.5 seconds to pull up (the second time, with its pages already swapped into memory). Konqueror launched from a terminal is a little over 1 second, but Konqueror launched from any KDE GUI control is less than 0.1 seconds; I can't even perceive the delay. I've got a system-wide hotkey to pull up the browser, and it's there before I can pull my finger off the key.

The LCD sub-pixel font rendering also works in Konqueror. If Mozilla has it, I can't find where to turn it on. The bar keeps getting raised; Mozilla used to look jaggy, now it looks fuzzy.

I'm also a total drinker of the KDE integrated file manager-browser koolaid.

IMHO, the only advantage Mozilla has is that some web designers actually test against it, so it comes in handy on the 3% of websites that barf on Konqueror.

Re:Now if it was just little faster...

[kotj.mf]

The LCD sub-pixel font rendering also works in Konqueror. If Mozilla has it, I can't find where to turn it on. The bar keeps getting raised; Mozilla used to look jaggy, now it looks fuzzy.

Amen. I'd rather that they didn't even try to implement antialiasing at all than the halfassed way they've done it. Verdana looks like complete crap, and the point sizes are all fucked up. I've gone back to the default Butt Ugly Helvetica until I can find some way to fix the problem. Is Phoenix any better?

Then again, Konq's got the AAing right, but the fonts are huuuuge. Maybe I'm just completely screwed.

Little help, anybody?

Re:Now if it was just little faster...

[norweigiantroll]

Then again, Konq's got the AAing right, but the fonts are huuuuge.
Can't you just change the size in Prefernces -> Configure Konqueror -> Fonts ?

Re:Now if it was just little faster...

[Anonvmous Coward]

"Glad somebody said it. I'm surprised Opera's not more popular around here. "

I love it when moderators mod me as overrated when they don't like what I have to say.

Re:Now if it was just little faster...

[CronoCloud]

Yes, if your box is older, slower or doesn't have a lot of RAM phoenix/firebird is better. Mozilla is slow on my 294 MHz R5900 box, but Firebird is usable. Admittedly, speedwise, Dillo kicks all their butt's but Dillo does not support Javascript or frames. Firebird could still use a bit more optimization though.

Re:Now if it was just little faster...

[Mooncaller]

Thats the least of its problems. 250M + resident memory footprint, and I've seen 470M. When it tries to use more memory then is available ( shit I have only 128M RAM on my maxed PPro) it crashes. During the active part of the conflict in Iraq, I was trying to save some of the excelent pictures being published. It normaly took about 30 seconds to save a picture during which time Mozilla was completely unusable. It would not even do a redraw of a moved window. This is unacceptable. Responce time to user input also needs to be improved. While scrolling through a menu, Mozilla tries to render any submenu that gets highlighted. When this happens, it stops responding to changes in mouse possition ( at least it alows the mouse possition to be updated). This means that the selection sticks. It takes several seconds to catch up to the mouse for short menus, but much longer for things like bookmark foldrs. The workaround is to not use drag-release and to explicitly click on the menu item disregarding highlighting. But this is ridicules. As far as I can tell, Mozilla has gotten worse with each release. I could care less about useless features. Just give me a browser that WORKS!

Re:Now if it was just little faster...

[be-fan]

Unlike Mozilla, Konq measures fonts the proper way: in points. Make sure your DPI setting is correct, and that the point size is something sane like 10-12pt.

Re:Now if it was just little faster...

[kotj.mf]

Uh... yeah. Yeah I can.

Jeebus do I feel like a maroon.

Re:Freshmeat?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well... someone is bitching about something... so this must be Slashdot.

Try typing about:mozilla in address bar...

[dubious9]

And the beast shall be made legion. Its numbers shall be increased a thousand thousand fold. The din of a million keyboards like unto a great storm shall cover the earth, and the followers of Mammon shall tremble.

from The Book of Mozilla, 3:31
(Red Letter Edition)

Re:Try typing about:mozilla in address bar...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a hyperlink.

Re:Try typing about:mozilla in address bar...

[Brandon Sharitt]

Try it in IE, and all you get is a blue screen. I guess the browser wars live on.

Re:Try typing about:mozilla in address bar...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, so *that's* what Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf
ended up doing ...

Re:Okay so...

[Anonymous Coward]

source availability?

personally , opera doesnt exist. it may be a great product. but i want open source software. mozilla fullfills that for me, and a huge number of other people. i am willing to wager more people use mozilla/phoenix/gecko whatever (moz's core) than opera

You don't like "loosed"?

[timothy]

Why not?

v. loosed, loosing, looses
v. tr.

1. To let loose; release: loosed the dogs.
2. To make loose; undo: loosed his belt.
3. To cast loose; detach: hikers loosing their packs at camp.
4. To let fly; discharge: loosed an arrow.
5. To release pressure or obligation from; absolve: loosed her from the responsibility.
6. To make less strict; relax: a leader's strong authority that was loosed by easy times.

timothy

Re:You don't like "loosed"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Verbing weirds language.

Re:Phoenix

[geeber]

Yeah, I am waiting for the Firebird 0.6 release, too. Mozilla is all well and good, but since I checked out the current nightly binaries of Firebird, I haven't looked back. Small, fast stable, tabbed browsing, blockes pup-ups. What more could you want!?!

Re:Okay so...

[volkris]

Opera's just a browser.

Mozilla is something much bigger.

Re:Okay so...

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera costs money. Mozilla is free. Nuff said.

Re:Okay so...

[NanoGator]

"Opera costs money. Mozilla is free. Nuff said. "

Opera's ad supported. No out of money support, and they sometimes show comics in there.

Nuff said.

FYI

[brunes69]

This has been around since Netscape Navigator 2.0 at least.. probably was in 1.0 as well.

Re:FYI

[Slack3r78]

Yeah, but as an AC pointed out, they've changed the text. I think this is a different version than was in 1.3, but I couldn't tell you definitively.

Re:FYI

[pinko-rat-bastard]

The about:mozilla has been the same (IIRC) since pre-1.0. However, Netscape 4.7 was different:

And the beast shall come forth surrounded by a roiling cloud of vengeance. The house of the unbelievers shall be razed and they shall be scorched to the earth. Their tags shall blink until the end of days.

from The Book of Mozilla, 12:10

Re:FYI

[Anonymous Coward]

This is also the text in 1.22 and probably earlier.

Re:Okay so...

[NanoGator]

"Okay.. so a minor version upgrade for Mozilla. Why exactly is this front page news? I wouldn't mind but the release notes don't exactly show anything particularly mind-blowing. Am I underestimating NTLM?

Pardon my cynicism, but Slashdot's love-affair with Mozilla is quite overrated. It's as if Opera doesn't even exist. "

I like how some Jackass can mod me down because I didn't sing the praises of Mozilla, but he can't answer my questions. Makes me think that there isn't a strong answer to my questions. Am I wrong?

Re:fuck

[CausticWindow]

If you get four first posts in a row, you will get editor privileges. That's how some of the present editors got their status.

Re:fuck

[WolfWithoutAClause]

What? Haven't you heard of first post mod bonus?

Actually, come to thing of it. Neither have I. ;-)

Re:fuck

[Phroggy]

What's the point of getting first post anyways? It's not like it give you more points or anything.

Years ago, the comment number shown for each message (such as #5931989 for yours) used to be relative to the article, so the first post was comment #1. When Slashdot only had a few thousand registered users, getting the first post was something of a status symbol to brag about (for people with way too much time on their hands). Now, the only people getting first port are the trolls who sit around waiting for a new article to be posted just so they can post stupid crap. Slashdot also has taken steps to make first posts less attractive, by changing the comment numbering (so early posts no longer have low numbers), adding delays before comments can be posted, etc.

Re:Okay so...

[NanoGator]

"source availability?"

Fair enough. However, source code availability is not everybody's big concern. A lot of us just want a browser with a good interface, and Opera provides just that. It's certainly better than IE and arguably better than Mozilla.

The big Pro for Opera here on Slashdot is that they've ported it to portable devices such as the Zaurus. They've done a lot of respectable work in that area. They may not be 'Open Source', but they are kicking Microsoft's butt in both UI and usefulness outside of PCs.

Ignoring Opera is heartbreaking. It's taken a number of steps in the right direction, it deserves more credit than it has now. I can't believe I got modded down for my earlier comment about it. "You must love Mozilla to enter".

SVG Support

[pchown]

Does anyone know what the current situation is with SVG? I see some of the Solaris builds support it. I heard that there was some licensing problem with libart, but surely they can work something out? They're both open source projects after all.

Re:SVG Support

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure why it's staying out of the binary releases, but you can check out the SVG trunk over CVS. It works fine for me, on Linux, but I've never tried it on Solaris. I'm sure they'd appreciate the feedback if something goes wrong, though.

Re:SVG Support

[Anonymous Coward]

SVG support is still very much incomplete; the browser won't recognise SVG that is embedded into pages using the embed tag (which is pretty much all SVG on the net, since that's what the Adobe plugin supports best). It also doesn't have support for the entire spec, although for basic static graphics, it is pretty much there. The libart licensing issue to which you allude is a simple incompatibility between the MPL/LGPL/GPL trilicense that Mozilla is released under and the LGPL of the libart library. That pretty much prevents mozilla including SVG by default at the moment. In addition, a lot of the SVG had a rewrite quite recently and, because no one has had time to review thousands of lines of new code, it's still living on a branch. That's important if you decide to compile Mozilla with --enable-svg set - to get the new code you need to pull the branch from CVS, otherwise you'll get the older, somewhat buggier code. For more details, including quite detailed build instructions, see http://www.mozilla.org/projects/svg/ If you think that duplicating cpu effort by compiling everything yourself is a waste of time, then there are regular svg-enabled builds contributed to ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/nightly/latest These come in two flavors, GDI+ (windows only) and Libart (Linux and windows). All svg builds have mathml-svg in the filename. If you're not on one of those platforms or want something cool like Xft and SVG, you'll need to complie yourself, I'm afraid. For more information, see the netscape.public.mozilla.svg newsgroup.

Re:Okay so...

[NanoGator]

"Mozilla is something much bigger. "

Ah! I see it all now! Mozilla will free us from the Matrix. May the prophets light our path!

Re:Phoenix

[Anonymous Coward]

email?

Re:Okay so...

[Anonvmous Coward]

"Ah! I see it all now! Mozilla will free us from the Matrix. May the prophets light our path!"

Hehe not very often one can work the Matrix and DS9 into the same burn. Good one!

I'm willing to bet, though, that somebody with mod-points and an over-zealous attitude about Mozilla won't see the humor in it.

Re:Phoenix (turns into Firebird) w/ e-mail

[draziw]

No, firebird will package with minotaur to provide e-mail.
Look at the roadmap for more information.

Ryan

Re:fuck

[CausticWindow]

While we're totally offtopic here, anybody else noticed the "Byu a Troll" banner ads here on Slashdot? I didn't click it, but there were three different mini ads on the top banner with "Norwegian Trolls", "Garden trolls" and a third one.

Joke?

Email Mozilla about this must have feature

[zymano]

AD blocking ! if anyone of you has kazaalite , you know about the server list that blocks ads.

Would be very cool if Mozilla implemented this.

No other web browser has done this. Not Opera either.

This could really seperate Mozilla from other web browsers.

Also a image blocking button on the gui interface would be good.

Re:Email Mozilla about this must have feature

[Kircle]

Is this what you are looking for? Install it for Mozilla or Mozilla Firebird

http://adblock.mozdev.org/

Re:Email Mozilla about this must have feature

[Politburo]

Moz/Phoenix has an internal list of servers not to load images from. Drop in the server list that kazaa uses, and you should have the same functionality, just not automatically updated.

Re:Email Mozilla about this must have feature

[TheRaven64]

if anyone of you has kazaalite , you know about the server list that blocks ads.

Yes, it's a hosts file which redirects any lookups to that domain to 127.0.0.1 where your local web server will pick it up and throw back a 404 error. It doesn't need any software support to work.

Re:Email Mozilla about this must have feature

[Ramze]

It's unfortunate that there is no way to block ads from certain sections of servers -- for instance, instead of blocking all images from www.whatever.com ,only block images from www.whatever.com/ads and all subdirectories. That way, sites which host their own ads can have their ads filtered without losing the images we want to see.

I'd also love to have a Flash - filtering feater! :-)

Re:Phoenix

[geeber]

Email is also available, in Minatour. I know, though. It's truly tragic that you will be forced to make a second download in order to get email capability.

FYI: How to make firebird start faster (windows)

[draziw]

Add a link to firebird in your start-up folder, with "-turbo". It will then rest in your toolbar. When you go to launce firebird for real, the window will come up much quicker.

Ryan

Re:Okay so...

[Anonymous Coward]

Get with the program you ass-pounder. So, you like Opera. Big fucking deal. Keep using it and stop bitching about shit on Slashdot. No one cares. You deserved to modded down as a Troll... possibly "Off topic" too. Go play with Opera.

Re:Okay so...

[NanoGator]

"So, you like Opera. Big fucking deal. Keep using it and stop bitching about shit on Slashdot. No one cares."

Gee, so you're not a big fan of zealousy. Suddenly my point comes into focus.

Re:Okay so...

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate ads. Why would I want to sit around and have banner ads flash in my face when I could download Mozilla for free? Do you work for Opera or something? I've known about it for years... I just don't like it. Mozilla works for me. Fuck Opera and fuck you too.

Re:Phoenix

[Mwongozi]

A mail reader?

Re:Okay so...

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy is a Troll if I ever saw one.

It's like walking into Mac World and yelling:

"Windows RULEZ!"

He's pushing Opera in a story about Mozilla.

Re:Okay so...

[Anonymous Coward]

when they give it away for free without ads... I'll think about it. why pay for something you can get for free? commercial use... sure charge the OEM's a license. but, why fuck over the home user?

nice but.....

[zymano]

not exactly. Thats more of a image filter. The ads are still downloaded. You want the ads not to be downloaded so webpages load faster.

Re:Okay so...

[Anonvmous Coward]

"It's like walking into Mac World and yelling:

"Windows RULEZ!"

Opera is not the mortal enemy of Mozilla. It's yet another choice for both Windows and Linux users to weaken IE's grasp on the net. It's also available on Linux PDAs. He's not saying Opera's better, he's saying Opera should be more appreciated.

"He's pushing Opera in a story about Mozilla."

Not exactly. He's pointing out that Mozilla's small update is not front-page news. I think he's even hinting at Slashdot's coverage of Mozilla as being rather propoganda-ish.

Re:Phoenix

[damiam]

Right here.

Re:ch-ch-ch-changes

[falsification]

If you're crashing, it's probably Java. Reinstall it. Get the latest. Also, make sure you have the latest Flash plugin.

Opera rules

[zank]

I prefer Open Source software but Opera is just so much faster than any other browser, I just couldn't use anything else.
I admire Mozilla's strive for standards compliance, but it's just so painfully slow compared to Opera (and Phoenix isn't much better). Maybe Konqueror with the new Apple patches can compete.

Re:Opera rules

[SCHecklerX]

If all you really care about is speed, use links. Opera does not impress me.

Re:Opera rules

[zank]

Yeah, links does everything a modern browser should do doesn't it?

Re:Opera rules

[TheRaven64]

Well, I recall reading about a patch for it that would render images in 16 colour ASCII art...

Re:Opera rules

[MrPink2U]

riiight... I really love that banner add on the top of my web browser. And you reply, "So you can pay for it and the banner goes away."

And I answer, "Why? I can get so many nice ones for free." I really like Phoenix and it seems to run pretty well on my system. I have tried Opera and am not very impressed. I don't like the feel. To each his own.

Re:Okay so...

[damiam]

Mozilla is considered by many to be theflagship open source browser, and thus of interest to the community of Slashdot. Opera is just another proprietary browser, which happens to have some advantages over Mozilla (and some disadvantages). Even so, /. announces Opera minor version upgrades too, so I don't know what you're bitching about.

Yep, but the text has changed

[Anonymous Coward]

The text has been changed though - IIRC, the text in Netscape 4 ended with "[...] and their houses shall be razed, and their tags shall blink until the end of days"

It was a much funnier version IMO :)

Re:Okay so...

[NanoGator]

"when they give it away for free without ads... I'll think about it. why pay for something you can get for free?..why fuck over the home user? "

Who says the user's being 'fucked over'? I've been using Opera since 6 came out. I thought the Ad support would bother me. It doesn't. It just sits up there unobtrusively. The only time it ever bothered me was when they had an audio ad. When people complained it, it disappeared. There are no popups etc.

Asking people to pay for software is not ridiculous. Yeah, it's okay that Mozilla's free and may end up in perpetual development. But what we've seen so far is a slow evolution with new features popping up here and there. That's a far cry from a team of people with profit as a motive working their hardest to come up with something new and interesting. Take a look at the difference from Opera 6 to 7. It's a HUGE facelife. Mozilla doesn't have the incentive to do anything like that until they find themselves behind.

I'm glad that Opera found a way to do not charge the customer and remain profitable. None of this PBS style pledge drives to get money to keep it going. (note: that comment wasn't directed specifically at Mozilla, just remembering a lot of discussion over the last coupla years about keeping free-software alive)

So no, I don't see it as the customer getting 'fucked over'. If Opera were using Kazaa style 'pop up all over the place' ads, then yes I'd agree that's a doomed product.

Re:Okay so...

[AvitarX]

Slashdot covers opera releases including major releases and minor ones for Linux. It is hardly ignored.

Perhaps if Opera had an open and transparent development prossess, and provided a free (as in free Godammit) rendering engine used in few other browsers. And built a cross platform GUI toolkit (ok this release is not too relovent to the last two) it would be get a front page story every time a developer farted.

As is Opera is a great browser that gets a fair amount of buzz on this site, but due its slower and opaque developement it does not get as much continual praise. /. is news for nerds stuff that matters, but it also unabashidly has an OS bias.

And it is a weekend on tope of that.

That's wierd...

[no reason to be here]

when I typed about:mozilla into IE all I got was this blue screen...

Re:That's wierd...

[fredrikj]

when I typed about:mozilla into IE all I got was this blue screen...

...of death?

Re:That's wierd...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's a blank browser screen with a blue background colour. It has been in IE for quite a while, presumabily it was meant to refer to that Microsoft will figuritively "blue screen of death" Netscape / Mozilla in leu of that the application runs on MS's operating system. MS has probably simply forgotten it was there.

Re:That's wierd...

[sepluv]

That is because about:mozilla on MSIE used to contain some poetry parodying about:mozilla (cannot find it now) with a blue background (some people say that it implies that NN & Moz cause BSOD's which is probs wrong). They removed the text from the page but left the function and page in.

You can see the about:* pages for MSIE and edit them in the registry at Hkey_Local_Machine/Software/Microsoft/Internet Explorer/AboutURLs.

Re:That's wierd...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow - when I type anything at all into IE, I get a blue screen...
Same goes for Windows in general actually.

Re:That's wierd...

[patriceCH]

See the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\AboutURLs to know why.

Serious bookmark problems in 1.4b

[wossName]

Careful if you work a lot with bookmarks, you might hit a bug where you can't delete or move bookmarks (in Linux) or the new bookmark folder setting doesn't work.

I'm looking forward to getting my bookmark functionality back in the next release...

Re:Okay so...

[Anonymous Coward]

>> I hate ads. Why would I want to sit around and have banner ads flash in my face when I could download Mozilla for free? Do you work for Opera or something? I've known about it for years... I just don't like it. Mozilla works for me. Fuck Opera and fuck you too.

You know what?

Real users of free-software know that free means liberty not zero-cost.

Ads are not the enemy; gargantuan monopolistic conglomerates are.

I very much suspect you're a Windows user trying to divide us.

You can say the f* word as many times your trolling heart wants you to do it... it won't work. You failed miserably.

Mozilla is great, but Opera rules on leaner machines. And just to keep you happy, I like the ads. I see them and click on them occasionally.

If Opera thinks they can make a living competing with MS, I think they're right.

phoenix/firebird bug

[sewagemaster]

i'm too lazy to register to file this bug, but the linux phoenix/firebird build has problems rendering the style sheets http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/index

the windows build have no problems with this.

Re:phoenix/firebird bug

[TheRaven64]

i'm too lazy to register to file this bug

Don't bother filing bug reports for Mozilla. If, after searching the Bugzilla for a while and failing to find the bug you do report it then your inbox will quickly fill up with flames saying that this bug is known about, and that a fix is in CVS (which it may or may not be) and that no one ever runs a release version anway, real people build their own copy daily from CVS. Yeah. Right.

That attitude was one of the reasons why I decided to try Opera. I've now more or less ditched Moz, and may even pay for Opera (Although I may not, the ads don't really bother me.)

Re:phoenix/firebird bug

[sepluv]

You expect any browser to display that "M$HTML" tag soup with crazy amounts of JS?

The so-called "webpage" is totally blank unless JS is enabled. I then enabled JS. Frankly, I prefered the version without JS enabled. Initial observations: some characters are replaced by question marks (as they do not exist in the default character encoding), the page has no useful content and the layout sucks.

No character encoding is sent with the page or included in the page and it has no doctype.

After working out the character encoding and putting in the doctype of HTML Transitional (as that is the most lax one and any old crap passes), I validated it. Enjoy! 621 errors including non-SGML characters (they exist?)

Now look at the CSS - yes all of the plethora of CSS - argghhh.

That is not a webpage. It is crap.

BTW, it looks like a bug has been filed. In fact there are hundreds of tech evangilism bugs for ESPN.

Re:phoenix/firebird bug

[Blkdeath]

Don't bother filing bug reports for Mozilla. If, after searching the Bugzilla for a while and failing to find the bug ...

I'm not sure about your experience (or query techniques), but I submit bugs to several projects, Mozilla included, and have never had this happen to me.

You might want to consider that it may just be something you're (not) doing that's causing these results before you give such sweeping advice in future.

Re:phoenix/firebird bug

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to say, this is just not my response with any bug submitting ever. And -definately- not with Mozilla, i had kind and information follups.

Re:Okay so...

[SN74S181]

Yeah, it's okay that Mozilla's free and may end up in perpetual development.

Anything not in 'perpetual development' is in 'decay.'

But what we've seen so far is a slow evolution with new features popping up here and there.

And your problem with this is?

The most annoying installer yet

[drinkypoo]

The 1.4a installer pops up a plethora of windows, which steal focus even when windows is set to prevent applications from stealing window focus.

Thanks, Mozilla installer team! You have successfully produced an installer that prevents me from ircing while Mozilla installs!

Re:The most annoying installer yet

[Anonymous Coward]

How many time a day do you install Mozilla?

Re:The most annoying installer yet

[rkz]

why the hell would you install it.
download the ZIP and extract, you can even write a script do wget the latest nightly and install it every day.

Re:The most annoying installer yet

[drinkypoo]

I like to only install beta builds, not nightlies, because the nightlies tend to blow up and corrupt my mailboxes and/or lose my user data. No thanks.

Nightlies more stable

[Plug]

There was a bug in Moz 1.4a (never actually searched for it so I can't give a link) but it would cause Moz to crash whenever I'd try and click on a radio button on a web page.

So, I downloaded a nightly from a couple of weeks ago, and it was great. Divine. No problems at all.

1.4b comes out, and then straight back into crashes at weird places (this time: if I tell /. to display some comments as nested, then reload, it will die without fail. Not sure what causes it - if I get time I'll try and figure out.)

But -- why are nightlies more stable than releases? Or perhaps that is best reworded as "Why aren't releases at least as stable as nightlies?"

Re:Nightlies more stable

[rmohr02]

I haven't noticed a difference between nightlies and milestones in terms of stability, and I'd definitely be using nightlies if getmoz was ever updated. It's too much of a pain to install a new version of Mozilla every day in Linux.

Re:Phoenix

[Anonymous Coward]

No, dude. I wanted to get fp AND (-1, Troll). I have no idea when Phoenix 0.6 is going to be released!

better late than never

[jark]

better late than never that this made its way here...

# 2003-05-08 11:10:34 Mozilla 1.4b Released (articles,mozilla) (rejected)

heh

Foreign Language bug

[GuNgA-DiN]

Everytime I hit a page that wants to install foreign fonts (like Japanese)... Mozilla 1.4a pops up a dialog box. You click "Cancel" and it comes back. Keeps doing it until you close out the window.

Image blocking is in the GUi

[cyman777]

...almost - if right click on an image "block images from this server" counts to be part of the GUI.

Re:Okay so...

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah... any day now Opera is going to overtake IE.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck you.

Re:Okay so...

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah your "Flaimbait" ass is wrong. Mwuahahahahaha!

long live the /. moderators.

Someone really write a Kerberos extension

[Anonymous Coward]

The only kerberos supporting web clients I've ever seen are a (very) dated version of Mosaic and plugin for netscape 4.x which I've never managed to get actual binaries or source for.

This would be fantastic for corporate web apps, particularly combined with LDAP. Strong authentication based on open standards. Yummy.

Java Server Side NTLM HTTP Auth Made Easy

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're running a 2.3 servlet container, drop in the jCIFS NTLM HTTP Authentication Filter. It's available here:

http://jcifs.samba.org/

but the latest jar is here (website a little broken):

http://users.erols.com/mballen/jcifs/

All you need to set is the domainController init parameter. There's also a base servlet for pre 2.3 containers that don't support filters.

Also take a look at the Davenport project which permits IE users (and I suspect Mozilla users now) the ability to browse the entire WAN using the negotiated NTLM pawssword hashes as a WebDAV folder or using plain HTML. Again, uses jCIFS.

Re:Java Server Side NTLM HTTP Auth Made Easy

[JaseOne]

I'd mod you up but alas I'm out of mod points when I actually see a post worthy of them, but you posted as AC so that don't matter :)

Gotta agree, struggled for ages trying to get NTLM authentication working in our own custom implementation within a servlet, then came across JCIFS and 5 minutes later I was up and running. Quick and simple, plus it is very well supported by the maintainers.

J.

Re:Okay so...

[UpnAtom]

Fair enough. However, source code availability is not everybody's big concern. A lot of us just want a browser with a good interface, and Opera provides just that. It's certainly better than IE and arguably better than Mozilla.

Mozilla still lacks quite a few of Opera's best features and will always be slow and fat in comparison. I'm happy to pay ten times the price of Opera for being able to use the internet the way I want to.

Yet I welcome any competition for Internet Explorer. Between Opera and Mozilla, Microsoft will lose control of the internet.

I can't believe I got modded down for my earlier comment about it.

But your comment criticised Slashdot's love-affair with Mozilla. I'd have thought you'd see it coming...

Re:ch-ch-ch-changes

[AvantLegion]

Done both. Even disabled Java, and the CNET page still comes crashing down. Funny how legitimate issues are "flamebait" - especially when I'm a big fan of the software outside of these issues.

Re:Okay so...

[Zebbers]

ya thats just what every web browser user wants, ads.
its not like we are all trying to escape from them

Re:ch-ch-ch-changes

[falsification]

I can get to Cnet.com without crashing. Try installing 1.3.1 or 1.4 beta to a clean directory, then try it. You're not using Phoenix/Firebird are you?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Okay so...

[Anonymous Coward]

The levels of irony here are wonderful.

Re:Phoenix

[Mwongozi]

1. How on earth is my previous comment Redundant?

2. Why bother installing seperate browser and mail components, both from the Mozilla project anyway, when I can simply install Mozilla and get both, integrated?

Re:Okay so...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Zealousy"? Any chance you could learn the
english language before you continue
posting?

Re:Now if it was just little faster... WHY?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Now if it was just little faster..."

Why is this important? Does your computer crash a lot?

I go weeks without bothering to quit my web browsers. Maybe laptop users will care--maybe--but desktop users certainly shouldn't.

--Richard

Java NTLM

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this mean that the Sun Java plugin automagically "inherits" ntlm support from mozilla?

If not, then I'm still stuck using IE + MS-JVM at work... Bah...

Re:ch-ch-ch-changes

[AvantLegion]

I can get to CNET. I get crashes when loading a story from a Google link.

I have both Mozilla and Phoenix. I've had the crashes with both. :(

I will give installing Java to a clean directory a try.

Re:Okay so...

[NanoGator]

"Anything not in 'perpetual development' is in 'decay.'"

Oooooooooookay. Choose between 'in decay' and 'slow to adopt'.

"And your problem with this is?"

What's wrong with a broswer that's perpetually behind the times?

Re:Phoenix

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares? I use Outlook anyway.

Great

[hikousen]

Suppose this time they could arrange it so we don't have to spend four hours rebuilding our e-mail accounts?

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about? And unless you're a double amputee (my sympathy if you are), why would it take that long to rebuild, even from scratch? I use the same profiles for several different releases- one profile for Linux, one for Windows- I even share filters and mail boxes between Windows and Linux and I've only had to rebuild my profile once (due to something stupid I did).

Yes, Mozilla can be a moving target, so every once in a while some content of profile files like prefs.js, which contains among many other things the names and setup of your mail accounts, will change, but that doesn't impact the contents of your Mail directory, which contains the actual mail. If you're really scared or have so many newsgroups and mail accounts it actually takes 4 hours to reconstruct them, even with fingers, you can see if you can't get the old prefs.js from prefs.bak or set your box up to have your profile directory backed up automatically.

Want to make some $$$$ writing a Mozilla feature?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a fair bit of money pledged to someone who can make this feature happen.....
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug. cgi?id=47838

Re:ch-ch-ch-changes

[falsification]

If you haven't done so already, try to install Mozilla to a clean directory. Sorry for the ambiguousness.

Re:Okay so...

[Anonymous Coward]

it would also help if Opera wasn't FULL OF BUGS!

XBL security change

[jesser]

Mozilla 1.4 beta includes a security fix to prevent web pages from loading XBL from file: URLs (bug 200691, fixed). Unfortunately, the fix also prevents user style sheets from making web pages load XBL files from file: URLs (bug 204140), which affects some users of my XBL Flash blocker (blocks Flash using a placeholder that you can click to play a particular Flash animation).

If you saved flash.xml to disk and used a file: URL for flash.xml in userContent.css, you need to change userContent.css to load flash.xml from a local web server or from the original location on www.cs.hmc.edu instead. Otherwise, Flash won't appear at all (not even a click-to-play placeholder), and you'll see this if you open the JavaScript Console:

"Security Error: Content at http://www.shockwave.com/sw/home/ [or another URL with Flash] may not load or link to file:///C:/.../flash.xml#obj."

Re:Okay so...

[hkmwbz]

Slashdot ignored 7.0 final of Opera didn't it? Anyway, I remember that it has ignored a couple of important releases of Opera, it doesn't really matter which. The fact is still that it gets far less coverage than Mozilla, which is a shame. More press for good alternatives is a good thing.

Opera 7 has a cross-platform GUI toolkit. Its own.

Opera's slower development?! Oh please. No one coughs up new and innovative features like Opera.

Mozilla is a damn fine browser, but Opera is not progressing slowly. If you think so, you are obviously not following the development of the browser.

Re:Okay so...

[hkmwbz]

Yeah, the download is about four times bigger than Opera... ;)

Re:Someone really write a Kerberos extension

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

Oh, I thought you were talking about a replacement for NTLM in general, not specifically for web browsers. I've never heard of a modern way to use kerberos for http authentication either, unfortunately.

Re:Okay so...

[hkmwbz]

Regarding "slower development", did you know that Opera 7 was apparently a complete rewrite, and done in a year and a half? How long did it take for Mozilla to get to a stage where they had a usable browser? When was the project started again, and when was 1.0 out?

Re:ch-ch-ch-changes

[AvantLegion]

Hey, no problem. I appreciate helpful comments, ambiguous or not. :) I probably should've realized you were talking about Mozilla, but the version numbers would've work for either! :)

I'm using Gentoo and typically just use the ebuilds. I'll give it a try on my own instead...

Re:Okay so...

[hkmwbz]

"Take a look at the difference from Opera 6 to 7. It's a HUGE facelife."

Isn't Mozilla now doing something similar by separating the browser from the e-mail client and so on? They are obviously making big changes, although maybe not on the same level as Opera 7 vs. 6.

Re:FYI: How to make firebird start faster (windows

[Anonymous Coward]

however, if you do that, firebird will always suck up memory, wether you use it or not

Re:Okay so...

[hkmwbz]

Who cares? If Opera can keep their business afloat by creating a competitive browser, more power to them. Opera doesn't have to overtake IE to be a viable alternative or a profitable business.

But anyway, Opera completely destroys IE in the embedded market. Even Microsoft is drooling over Opera and trying to get it for their embedded OS.

Re:Okay so...

[hkmwbz]

Opera is just another proprietary browser? Well, in that case, Mozilla is just another open-source browser. What is your point?

Re:Someone really write a Kerberos extension

[Anonymous Coward]

CMU uses kerberos now without any plugins required. Go here and click the "CMU Users" button to see the login screen.

Re:Okay so...

[hkmwbz]

What a useless comment - no wonder you are posting as an AC. All software is full of bugs. Just have a look in Bugzilla for a list of Mozilla's bugs.

Re:Phoenix

[Billly Gates]

Actually the 2.0x series of Mozilla is going to be based on phoenix. It will be alot more slimmer and faster.

Since they both can do the same things technically the only difference is alot of legacy netscape code is in Mozilla which slows it down.

Its time to dump it after 1.4 becomes stable.

Re:Okay so...

[Anonymous Coward]

Only on /.

That's why I love this place. A psychologist could get a thesis outta the nutty shit that happens here.

Re:fuck

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of slack-jawed, butt-scratching turnip-loving epsilon sub-morons moderated this as "Informative?"

Because...

[Futurepower(R)]

Because, if one component crashes, the other does also. They are that integrated.

Re:Phoenix

[Anonymous Coward]

your previous comment is redundant because of this comment made 15 minutes before you made yours: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=63865&cid=5932 197

Newest ver. still lock up on 1st website visited!

[cdn-programmer]

I run debian woody and was running the default mozilla because I was too lazy to get a newer one.

The default version locks up on DOZENs of websites including www.wikipedia.org

So I tried 1.3.1 - it locks up on www.wikipedia.org

So I tried 1.4b - it locks up on www.wikipedia.org

-----------

Alas - it is not ready for prime time even now!

The newer version is faster mind you... that is until it locks up. After that all versions of Mozilla run at the same speed (zero). The only way out of the lockup that I know of is kill.

Funny how a program can just hang on something and thereafter not respond to ANY events! I wonder how they did that. As a programmer - I'd have to work pretty hard to create a deadlock to do that I think!

I just wish the Mozilla people would use one fork/thread per window the way the Konqueror people do it. At least then a person can kill the offending thread. (I've had to do this to konqueror too - because there are websites that Mozilla runs and konqueror locks up on).

Does anyone else have this experiance? BTW - someone else can post this as a bug - I'm still receiving emails from the last bug I reported almost 2 years ago - it is apparently still on the todo list.

Re:Newest ver. still lock up on 1st website visite

[Cnik70]

works fine on my *nix box (running SuSE 8.1 on a Intel 1.8GHz Pentium III)

second

[Anonymous Coward]

Me too.

Our numbnuts MCSE sysadmin decided to throw NTLM on our internal web resources. It's so pointy-clicky easy!

[MANY expletives deleted]

Slashdot discipline

[roesti]

... resources secured by MS server packages (IIS, SQL Server, etc).

It takes a lot of discipline to read those words together without trolling.

Re:Okay so...

[Anonymous Coward]

WinXP & 7.10
Rightclick on title bar, nothing happens... gee how nice...

Map Alt+D to move to location bar and press it, yea sweet, nothing happens... Even the freaking F8 doesn't work half the times...

Go from one black background page to another and oh look what a cute white psychedelic flicker, I just love it don't you?

Open up a file:// URL and the sick bastard sticks a localhost in there, just have to be different eh

I wont bother going into rambling about DOM 2/CSS2 /ECMAScript support for DHTML... I HATE THIS PIECE OF SHIT!

Opera has so many in-your-face bugs that it makes me sick to see all the fanboys to cheer up & down for it.

Mozilla at least just works right(TM) and doesn't fart in your face with all this wannabe crap. Keep your precious Opera but STFU about it.

speed and memory management

[cdn-programmer]

IMHO if the mozilla developers organized one thread or one fork per window - they would be better off. If they are interested in doing this - then they should change the way malloc() is handled. Maybe they already have!

Instead of malloc() going off to grab whatever bytes they need for the object in question - they should do two (2) things:

1) organize a [possibly hieracharical] logical identifier for an allocation group. This could be mapped 1:1 to the window in question (window=fork=thread depending on how the code is organized). This requires at least one extra parameter to the code layer that interfaces to malloc(). If they are using "new" then they will need to define their own constructors / destructors but they are still doing the same thing. In essance they write their own mymalloc() and myfree() and add an extra paramter that is their logical grouping identifier (which can be heirarchical)

2) allocate a page aligned block of multiple pages each time an actual "malloc()" is needed. Thereafter - malloc()s can chew into the free space. It is very simle. We call mymalloc() and mymalloc() checks if there is space - if so it returns it and if not it gets space with malloc() but at multiple pages at a time. The amount of memory mymalloc() gets is a tuning parameter.

The job mymalloc() has to do is very very simple. It typically may have zero hunting for holes because it might just operate like a stack.

This accomplishes several things.

a) since all malloc()'s are taking place within a logical memory "object" then you can't have leaks because when the object is no longer needed (as when the window gets closed) then they all get blown away at once.

b) Usually many many pages of physical memory are needed to support the window and underlying fork()/thread() anyways - so the issue of allocating only in multiples of a the machines page size and on a page frame is basically irrelavant. If the memory is not needed now - it will probably be needed very shortly anyways.

c) By allocating memory in this fashion, it is impossible for the operating system to somehow co-mingle memory for a unrelated process or object in a given physical page. This means that if a window goes idle its memory can be swapped out. Only one single reference into a page from something other than the idle window will prevent the page from being elegable to be swapped.

d) An uncontrolled malloc() / new will usually comingle shit from all over the system - severly limiting the systems ability to swap pages out of RAM.

e) malloc() algorithms are actually usually rather complex and thus they tend to go off hunting for holes of the proper size. This hunting is probably more time consuming than many programmers realise. By grouping memory allocations into a logical organization that the programmer KNOWS makes sense - then unnecessary work is eliminated with the side effect, that deallocations might not even be necesary. IE. If say 90% of the objects persist until say the window is closed - then who cares about the other 10%. Leave it. When the window closes, blow away all memory associated with it and all of this memory is multipage allocations anyways. This makes life for the memory manager rather easy. Again - you can't have leaks either.

f) The programmer loses nothing in flexibility because if certain objects he/she is using are not logically associated - then those memory requests can just be left with the existing malloc() or new operators.

g) the time required to write a logical layer over either malloc or new is trivial and can be done in 1/2 a day (poor boy solution) or slightly more time if more sophistication is required.

The benefits far outweigh the costs.

h) I think if the Mozilla developers have not done something like this - then they really need to think about it. Things that fall into a "logical" grouping include the memory for a window. The memory for an ssl connection. The memory for a dialogue such as when somone clicks on bookmarks.

Re:speed and memory management

[BZ]

Mozilla uses arena allocation in almost all allocation-heavy parts of the code, as a matter of fact.

Re:speed and memory management

[Anonymous Coward]

h) I think if the Mozilla developers have not done something like this - then they really need to think about it. Things that fall into a "logical" grouping include the memory for a window.

They did for the most part. Perhaps read some code before posting a random screed derived from a CS 101 book?

Re:speed and memory management

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

IMHO if the mozilla developers organized one thread or one fork per window - they would be better off. If they are interested in doing this - then they should change the way malloc() is handled.

What do you mean by "better off"? Would it fix bugs? Improve latency? Or what?

Ever heard of profiling? If you think that something's slow, or inefficient, you profile it to figure out where the inefficiencies are. Believe me, if malloc showed up on the list, it would have been optimized long ago (and from what I understand, Mozilla already does some pretty clever things with malloc).

You're trying to suggest a solution, when you haven't even established a problem. Until you have some gprof or cachegrind output proving that more malloc kung fu is needed, I doubt any Mozilla developers will listen to you.

Besides, your original premise is that Mozilla needs one thread per window. What about the networking thread? Do you know anything about how a modern web browser is implemented or are you just making up random junk?

Re:Newest ver. still lock up on 1st website visite

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla Debian Package 1.3-5 on unstable handles www.wikipedia.org fine here.

Re:Okay so...

[hkmwbz]

Right-click title bar, from one black background to another, localhost in localhost documents (duh) - nitpicking - doesn't affect browsing at all.

F8 works all the time for me.

You won't bother going into rambling because you know you'll be shot down, AC.

Opera seems to work right(TM) as well. Anyone can mention three problems in any program.

Anyway, if Mozilla "just works right", how come my mouse gestures don't work in Mozilla? Oh, I have to download even more addons to get what is offered in a smaller package by Opera? Hmm. Whatever happened to "just works right" eh?

Note that I am not bashing Mozilla here. I am simply using your misguided tactics to talk nonsense about other browsers.

People like you - "my browser is better than yours" people - pollute the browser world and cause problems. Only problems. Browsers seem to be a religion to you.

Re:Newest ver. still lock up on 1st website visite

[cdn-programmer]

I didn't know Intel made a 1.8 Ghz PIII

Maybe this is a debian woody problem. Mozilla actually locks up on a lot of websites.

It would be nice to get to the bottom of the problem and if it is working in unstable then maybe it is not a mozilla problem.

Re:Newest ver. still lock up on 1st website visite

[Cnik70]

typo.... meant to tye P IV

Re:Okay so...

[damiam]

Mozilla is considered to be the flagship open source browser, and one of the strengths of the open source desktop lineup. Therefore, a lot of open source fanboys are interested in its progress. Opera is of interest to a far smaller subset of people, seeing as it has neither the standards compliance, platform support, or freedom (beer and speech) of Mozilla. I'm not saying Opera doesn't have it's strengths, but a lot of people are more interested in Mozilla than Opera.

Firebird is nice.

[flacco]

except for that flamboyantly gay "About" graphic. That's the gayest firebird I've ever seen.

WFM.

[SharpFang]

WorksForMe Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030507
Could you provide a minimised testcase and file a bug at bugzilla.mozilla.org ? /. is not really meant for that.

Re:Now if it was just little faster... WHY?

[Mooncaller]

No mozilla crashes a lot. Its flippen unstable.

Waitaminit!

[sharkey]

Mozilla 1.4b Loosed

This is Slashdot. Don't you mean Losed?

At what cost?!

[SharpFang]

The problem with Opera is that to achieve such a speed, it uses some really nasty hacks, worst of them I think, being any dynamic page content not being related to the rest of the page. Like, if you want to create a retraceable menu by changing 'span style="display:none'" ' dynamically, it won't work. The span becomes visible, its contents - not. Same if you want to resize a cell of the table. The cell will overlap the other cells, get beyond the table borders, onto other elements... the table won't change dimensions accordingly.

Just as if I told you to move your ass and you cut your buttocks off and put them aside...

I have the feeling...

[SharpFang]

I have a feeling that every time new Mozilla is released, old bugs I wanted to be fixed, will be fixed. Few are, but quite a few new ones are introduced as well, and most of old ones remain in place. Some people must feel just that way about MS Windows. It's just that I don't have to pay for that.

Re:Okay so...

[Anonymous Coward]

You dipshit. Anonvmous Coward and Nanogator are friends (or the same person). Tying to reason one about the other is impossible.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Phoenix

[Bander]

Maybe you want a kitchen sink with that browser?

If you want e-mail support in your browser, just use a mail to web gateway. There are many fine ones available. If you want a real mail client, pick one and download it.

Personally, I prefer to have a choice in e-mail clients, just like a I enjoy having a choice in browser software.

-- Bander

Re:ch-ch-ch-changes

[Anonymous Coward]

You live near me if you go to Fresno State. Are you a hot female?

also

[KnightStalker]

F6 toggles between page-focus and url-bar focus

Does 1.4b do download manager ?

[Taco Cowboy]

Just wonder - does the 1.4 Beta contain a fully working Download Manager ?

The 1.3 series's (including the 1.3.1) Download Manager cannot do "Resume Downloading".

1.4 alpha's Download Manager also failed to resume downloading.

Anyone here know the answer ?

Thanks in advance !

Re:Does 1.4b do download manager ?

[db48x]

It actually can, and has been able to since the feature was introduced. If you hit the properties button on the toolbar, you'll be able to pull up an individual download window, and then pause it. Terribly annoying, I know, but at least it's possible.

The fix involves more than just adding a button to the download manager window, however. You'd then have to add functions to the interface the manager uses for the button to call, which would then call obtain a copy of the interface the individual window uses for downloads and call functions on it to pause it. A better fix, of course, would be to finish the backend work to combine the two into a single working interface.

Re:Newest ver. still lock up on 1st website visite

[metallidrone]

Try creating a new profile. Run mozilla with -P and create a new profile called "temp" (or whatever). If it works fine there, maybe there's something weird going on with your profile.

Also, try downloading mozilla from mozilla.org and unpacking it somewhere (/tmp, $HOME, wherever you can write to as a user). Run it with -P and create a new profile with it (so as not to risk your real profile, since profiles are not always backwards-compatible).

Also, orthogonal to this discussion, it never hurts to back up $HOME/.mozilla from time to time: cd && tar cjf _mozilla-bak-`date -I`.tar.gz .mozilla

Clear All bug

[tqft]

Is anyone from the developers assigned the Clear All bug in Mozilla/Firebird reading this?

I have seen that it has been tracked back to Mozilla Code.

Am yet to see a workplan &/or timeframe for fixing this.

Love the concept, but the fact it does not work properly makes it almost worse than useless. You think you have cleaned up butt...

Any progress people? Anything I can do to help?

PS: I think the 4 May nightly has a serious memory leak, but capturing anything useful is hard when the machine dies hard. 4 hours surfing with 20+ tabs open is hard to repeat.

Re:Phoenix

[Anonymous Coward]

Why bother installing seperate browser and mail components, both from the Mozilla project anyway, when I can simply install Mozilla and get both, integrated?

Because I want my Web Browser to Browse the Web, and not handle my email? Look, I already have an Email client and it isn't Mozilla, so why do I want to download an Email client that I'll never use? If you want an Email client with Mozilla, download it seperatly.

Re:ch-ch-ch-changes

[AvantLegion]

You live near me if you go to Fresno State. Are you a hot female?

No, but I date one.

Re:fuck

[3.5 stripes]

tighten your buttocks, pour juice on your chin, I promised my girlfriend I'd learn to play the violin..

Best song on the avalanches cd. Especially the parrot scratch part.

There's a breezeblock and a live mix of their's available on most P2P networks, the breezeblock is incredible, mixing 80's electro with bob dylan can't be easy, but they seem to do it effortlessly. The live set rules too.

Re:Okay so...

[Anonymous Coward]

Real users of free-software know that free means liberty not zero-cost.

This is very true. But Opera is not Free as in "liberty", so it doesn't matter to "real" users of Free-software.

Besides which, free-cost with no ads is better than free-cost with ads which is better than not-free-cost. Yeah yeah, a lot of people like Opera, and pay to use it. Good for them, at least they're not using Internet Explorer. Many more of us prefer Mozilla though; either because it is Free, free with no ads or just has features which we prefer.

Opera users need to get over it. Sorry.

Re:Okay so...

[Anonymous Coward]

So what is Opera if it is not just another proprietry browser?

Its a browser, its proprietry. Whats the big problem you're having with this? Does Opera have the ability to cure cancer and solve world hunger, a feature that we are all currently unaware of? No? Then kindly shut up about Opera. We get it, you like it. Now go away.

Re:Phoenix (turns into Firebird) w/ e-mail

[levell]

I think Minotaur is a dead name. It's codname is now Thunderbird and once the app-suite is dead it'll get referred to as just Mozilla Mail

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and in other news you are waste oxygen and bandwidth.

Re:fuck

[CausticWindow]

Best song on the avalanches cd. Especially the parrot scratch part.

Yep.. the parrot scratching part is excellent. "Can you think of anything else that talks, other than a person? A bird? Yeah" Dj dexter is the man.

There's a breezeblock and a live mix of their's available on most P2P networks, the breezeblock is incredible, mixing 80's electro with bob dylan can't be easy, but they seem to do it effortlessly. The live set rules too.

Thanks for the tip, I'll check it out.

Re:It's starting to slow down....

[leuk_he]

It really points to:

http://wolf.cheats4us.org/pimptest/index.php

I dont know how he did this, but certainly is not the correct mirror.

Mod him away!

Re:Okay so...

[hkmwbz]

First, your claim about better standards compliance in Mozilla is simply absurd. Opera has better CSS support than Mozilla, for instance.

Now, we could argue over this for the rest of our lives, but let's break it down: Opera is a commercial alternative mainly available for Windows users, and as such, has a much bigger potential user base. Mozilla users who are also OS zealots are a minority because they use a minority operating system. Who has the biggest potential user base again?

Then again, Opera is available for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, Symbian OS, Mac, and so on. It is even available for QNX.

Your claim of a "far smaller subset of people" would be true if Opera operated primarily, or only, on open-source platforms, but it doesn't. Opera has its biggest users base on the Windows platform, and open-source zealots are a tiny little minority compared to the huge masses available as Windows users.

So your claims that there is a lot more interest in Mozilla than Opera in general, that Mozilla is more standards compliant, and is available for more platforms, can easily be argued against.

Re:Okay so...

[hkmwbz]

" Does Opera have the ability to cure cancer and solve world hunger, a feature that we are all currently unaware of? No?"

Does Mozilla?

"Then kindly shut up about Opera. We get it, you like it. Now go away."

I see no reason to do so. The whole point of this discussion is that Slashdot is pushing Mozilla heavily, but often ignoring other alternative browsers that more than measures up to The Browser (Mozilla).

In the interest of freedom, support open standards. Support browsers that support open standards.

It's the quality of the product which matters, right? And if it is even founded on good things like open standards, what difference does it make if it is closed-source?

It is available for a number of open-source systems, and quality commercial software is important for Linux to grow on the desktop side.

Multiuser install

[MirthScout]

The norm on Unix/Linux is for an application to be usable by all users on the system. Anything less is a severe bug. I'm very disappointed that 1.4 will still have this bug and still require the work around in the release notes for multiuser installs.

Once you get past that bug it is a great program. I love Mozilla.

hah

[Anonymous Coward]

mozilla sucks. ie pwnz j00.

whats wrong with a gay firebird?

[Anonymous Coward]

And obviously, you havent seen a lot of gay stuff, poor kiddo.

proxy Re:NTLM Authentication prior to 1.4

[leuk_he]

There was always(since a long time) a NTLM proxy available that was written in phyton. I am too lazy to type it in google and make a link: ntlm proxy

this will help the linux peokple.

I still had to log in into the proxy with my domain password. I understood from bugzilla it would do so automatically with the windows dll.

The auto configure proxy scripts actually works!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re: Phoenix middle-click tabbed browsing

[Anonymous Coward]

tools > preferences
expand the "Advanced" property
under that - click "Tabbed Browsing"

check the box for "Open a tab when middle-clicking a link in a Web page"

Re: Phoenix middle-click tabbed browsing

[Anonymous Coward]

typo:

meant "UNcheck the box" for ....

Re:Okay so...

[BZ]

> Opera is available for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD,
> Solaris, Symbian OS, Mac, and so on. It is even
> available for QNX.

Mozilla is available on all of those except Symbian OS, plus OS/2, BeOS, HP-UX, VMS, IRIX at the very least.

So in fact Mozilla is available for more platforms.

Re:Okay so...

[volkris]

Opera is just a browser. If I wanted just a browser I would consider Opera because it's arguably better at browsing the web than Mozilla.

Mozilla, though, is a platform. It's not bigger and (some say) slower than Opera for the fun of it, but because of the built in technologies that make it a platform.

The browsers are not comparable.

Re:Okay so...

[hkmwbz]

Opera is available for OS/2 and BeOS as well, by the way. And Windows 3 :)

But Mozilla doesn't actually completely trounce Opera in platform availability. Opera is available for quite a few platforms, which is a good thing, don't you agree?

Re:FYI: How to make firebird start faster (windows

[Alsee]

however, if you do that, firebird will always suck up memory, wether you use it or not

It's just a case of opensource copying a Great Microsoft Innovation!

-

Re:Okay so...

[damiam]

Mozilla is free (as in beer). That alone multiplies the potential audience by a factor of about a hundred. As for standards compliance, I don't know what you're smoking, but it must be strong. Mozilla has always had better CSS/HTML/JavaScript support than Opera. Opera has gotten better lately, but it's still not at Gecko's level.

Re:Okay so...

[hkmwbz]

As Opera proves, people are actually willing to pay for a product they find to be better suited for their needs.

And Mozilla has never had better support than Opera for CSS! HTML, they are about the same. JavaScript, nope. W3C DOM was the only problem in Opera 6, but Opera 7 has proper DOM support.

Re: Phoenix middle-click tabbed browsing

[Anonymous Coward]

no such options in my build (04/29).
tools->options
then...?
the only vaguely related option open links in the background.

Open Source Double Standards

[Anonymous Coward]

Classic. They suck up a bunch of memory at login/startup time to save time during app loading. Didn't Microsoft get shit for pulling that technique (by default, granted) with its Office suite and/or Fast Finder?! Oh, sorry, this is Open Source, so we should cut them slack for their BLOATED software that can't load itself on demand in any reasonable length of time?!

Re:Open Source Double Standards

[Anonymous Coward]

moz does this to compete with IE. Since IE is such an integral part of the OS, it is loaded at bootup, and sucks up memory even when you're not using it.

What would be far more interesting is mozilla -turbo mode that also unloads IE, perhaps exposing Gecko as an MSHTML compatible COM object.

Or you could just use Moz on X11.

Re:Okay so...

[viperblades]

Opera is great. I get tired of preaching zealots talking about how free as in price software is all they will use. I for one am glad they don't run hospital computer departments.

Re:Newest ver. still lock up on 1st website visite

[DarkBlack]

I'm running woody and Mozilla 1.3 and I am able to view wikipedia.org just fine, thanks.

Re:It's starting to slow down....

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is because when you mouse over the URL you only see the begining. By copying the URL and pasting it here:

http://www.google.com/url?google-cache&site =http://www.mozilla.org/download/mozilla/version/o ne/point/four/bee/dot/tar/dot/gee/zed/&q=http://wo lf.cheats4us.org/pimptest/index.php?x=61224&mirror =http://www.mozilla.org/

You can see what it really is.