Slashdot Mirror


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."

39 of 354 comments (clear)

  1. Also, 1.3.1 by friedegg · · Score: 5, Informative

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

    --
    Google doesn't index user sigs, so stop trying to "Google Bomb" with them.
  2. son of a ...... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    I just installed 1.4a on Friday.

  3. New Phoenix/Firebird builds too by Patik · · Score: 5, Informative
    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.

    1. Re:New Phoenix/Firebird builds too by pipegeek · · Score: 5, Informative

      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).

    2. Re:New Phoenix/Firebird builds too by fishbert42 · · Score: 5, Informative
      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. 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.
    3. Re:New Phoenix/Firebird builds too by Orion_ · · Score: 3, Informative

      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?

    4. Re:New Phoenix/Firebird builds too by ncc74656 · · Score: 4, Informative
      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).

      --
      20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
  4. I used to follow mozilla by Knife_Edge · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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?

    1. Re:I used to follow mozilla by GuNgA-DiN · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    2. Re:I used to follow mozilla by rmohr02 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

    3. Re:I used to follow mozilla by rodgerd · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

    4. Re:I used to follow mozilla by Apreche · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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!
    5. Re:I used to follow mozilla by Jucius+Maximus · · Score: 4, Interesting
      "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.

  5. Re:Still Beta? by noda132 · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  6. Loosed? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  7. Re:support for NTLM authentication by Lieutenant_Dan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Wearing pants should always be optional.
  8. image blocking by rock_climbing_guy · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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.

    --
    Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
    1. Re:image blocking by Phroggy · · Score: 4, Informative

      Is this what you're looking for?

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

      --
      $x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
      $x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
  9. NTLM is good for some people by koh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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 ! :)

    --
    Karma cannot be described by words alone.
  10. Re:NTLM for Linux? by mr_goodwin · · Score: 5, Informative

    Check out the NTLM authorization proxy server here.


    That's what I use.

  11. Try typing about:mozilla in address bar... by dubious9 · · Score: 4, Funny

    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)

    --
    Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
  12. Re:Now if it was just little faster... by Phroggy · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

    --
    $x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
    $x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
  13. Re:fuck by CausticWindow · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.

    --
    How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
  14. Re:Phoenix (turns into Firebird) w/ e-mail by draziw · · Score: 3, Informative

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

    Ryan

  15. Re:support for NTLM authentication by buckminster · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  16. FYI: How to make firebird start faster (windows) by draziw · · Score: 4, Informative

    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

  17. Re:NTLM Authentication prior to 1.4 by ceswiedler · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  18. That's wierd... by no+reason+to+be+here · · Score: 3, Funny

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

    1. Re:That's wierd... by sepluv · · Score: 3, Informative
      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.

      --
      Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
      [This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
  19. The most annoying installer yet by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Informative
    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!

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  20. Re:SVG Support by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  21. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Informative

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  22. Re:support for NTLM authentication by lostchicken · · Score: 4, Funny

    Secured?

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

    --
    -twb
  23. XBL security change by jesser · · Score: 4, Informative

    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."

    --
    The shareholder is always right.
  24. Because... by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

  25. Re:Okay so... by damiam · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    --
    It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
  26. Re:support for NTLM authentication by darinf · · Score: 4, Informative

    > 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

  27. Re:speed and memory management by Dominic_Mazzoni · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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?

  28. Re:Does 1.4b do download manager ? by db48x · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.