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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."
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?
Slashdot, the site where everything's made up and the points don't matter
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.
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.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
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.
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.
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.
Why would a website clear your cache?
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.
Someone is wrong on the Internet!
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.
/. 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.)
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
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?"
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
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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 !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !