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Mozilla 1.4RC2 Released
levell writes "Mozilla 1.4RC2 has been released. It looks like the final version of 1.4 may be out soon. It looks good although there are some problems with java on old linux systems (discussed here). 1.4 will be a long lived branch that some distributors will base versions of their own software on (e.g. Netscape planned release, codenamed "buffy"). 1.4 will be the last version of Mozilla released as a suite, after that the switch to separate browser, e-mail etc. applications will take place."
Interesting that the last great, stable RH is considered too "old" for mozilla...
Or am I just overreacting? I like my 7.3 boxes, dammit.
Don't sweat the petty things. But do pet the sweaty things.
Would it really come as a surprise if browser spoofing became a standard feature in future versions of Mozilla? After all, it already is supported in plugin form and (IIRC) in some browsers based on the Mozilla core.
So instead of monolithic systems that try to do everything, this sounds like a swing back in the direction of discrete programs that only do one thing. (And hopefully do it well.)
I very much like the idea of being able to install my web browser of choice without being forced to simultaneously fill my hard drive with "extras" that don't quite do what I want, but can't be removed either. And browsers and office suites are just two places I'd like to see a little less of the "Swiss army knife" approach. (Sure, it's cool, but do you really need a telephone that can take pictures, program your VCR and mow the grass?)
Don't get me wrong, I agree that interoperability is a Good Thing. I just don't want to be forced to take on the clutter of tools I won't use.
At least a crash of Mozilla on Windows doen't require an entire system reboot like another Windows browser that will remain unamed.
Are we still posting about every RC along the way? Granted, Mozilla is a great browser, possibly the best out there right now, but this version is just that: a release candidate. I don't see any reason why we need a story about every RCx that comes out... sure, the final release of 1.4, absolutely; but, until then, leave it to people that check the nightly release folder or the Mozilla start page.
From the release notes (emphasis mine):
Mozilla 1.4 requires Sun J2SE v 1.4.2 Beta to run Java applets
Why would they make a decision to make a browser dependent on an unreleased version of Java? 1.4.1_02 isn't good enough?
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
MathML. It's supported, but only in pure XML pages. This means that on legacy HTML sites, like Slashdot and K5, I can't fully get across the brilliance of my scientific and mathematical ideas, which is a lose-lose situation.
HTML doesn't support namespaces, which makes picking out your embedded mathml a little problematic. Ideally the <OBJECT> tag would support XML (or HTML). In the meantime, use an iframe -- true, it won't work on slashdot, but slashdot won't accept your mathml anyway.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Isn't that a really bad thing? Making the users pay the price for spreading the message of the developers?
It's not about giving you good programs, it's about spreading our message and fame... a Really bad PR move.
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You tell me how "whilst" differs from "while," and I'll stop calling you a pretentious jackass.
Don't take this personally, but mathematicians and physicists have been able to communicate their ideas for three hundred years without the benefit of MathML. Typography is convenient, but if you're creative, you can find ways around the limitations. And if you're posting on sitessuch as k5, you probably want to keep it simple for the masses anyway.
Ok, make the browser spoofing feature hit the same page (with the no-cache pragma, or whatever it takes to avoid any intervening caches) 50 times with the real user-agent for each page it loads with the spoofed user-agent.
Put that in your log and smoke it!
Sometimes when I am fishing I wonder if fish sometimes bite knowing they are going to encounter a hook. Anyway, I get tired of the "give us news, stuff that matters" rants.
There is an awful lot of information out here on the net. It is your job to sift through it all, determine what is of interest to you, and IGNORE THE REST. Along the way, if you feel you have something to contribute, please share.
Really, if this story is of no interest to you, move on to the next one. I think, as I'm sure many other people think, that announcing releases on a site with a high geek population is a good way to recruit quality beta testers who will fill out useful bug reports and help to drive the software development process forward. This means you get your free software faster and with less bugs. It's fine if you don't feel like taking the time to help out yourself, but give us the few tenths of a second it should take you to read the headline and decide to skip the story. Think of it as your way of helping to keep free software moving forward.
If you take the time to click on the headline, scan down to the bottom of the comments, and compose a mini rant about how you didn't feel you needed to know the information the story provides, people might get the impression that you just felt like whining.
It seems a bit hypocritical to rant about wanting stuff that matters within a post that almost everyone will consider noise, not signal.
Have a nice day.
You have got to be kidding me! If we want widespread adoption of mozilla, it just "has to work". Admittedly, many of the people who are using systems that would be effected would know enough about linux to be able to recompile, but they may not know that a recompile will fix this bug, and shouldn't be expected to.
I agree with many people who have said that for linux adoption both at home and in the workplace, it needs to STOP requiring you to know everyuting that's going on. If widespread adoption is a goal we want to pursue, and I think it should be, then this is a problem that we need to address.
To have incompatiblities in a program as central to a users experience as the web browser, is a problem that is especially dire. Things that should *Just Work* when installed are: some WM, email, browser, text editor. If we can't do that, then we have serious problems with the way we are addressing our users.
Won't the users pay the price in the long run when corporations see that 99.9% of their website visitors are IE users, and implement future IE-specific features that Microsoft has made sure alternative browsers are unable to implement?
As I see it, this is similar to other forms of discrimination -- people are being forced to look like the majority (in this case, IE users) so that they don't get treated differently.
He said it was his payroll service, not his bank. It's not like he can just tell the accounting department to "go use someone else" unless he's the CEO.
My company recently installed a time-reportin tool that requires Windows and IE, I still send my report card to a secretary since I don't have a computer with IE on it, it's either that or they can PAY me to come in in the evening to fill out those damn web-reports in IE, and I guarantee You that I will do this on high pay time.
You must have some unique skill that few other people have because at most companies they'd tell you to use the IE reporting tool or go find a job somewhere else. There are plenty of techs out looking for work that unless you have a specific unique skill you'd be out on your ear ASAP with that attitude.
You absolutely have a right to not cave in, and they have the right to hire someone else who follows company standards.
Opening in a new window is not "advanced". You shouldn't have to hack away at something that is only one step above a config file to get the browser to do what virtually every other browser does normally.
Maybe Mozilla could allow for site-based spoofing like they offer site-based image blocking and site-based cookie blocking. Then, for those few lowlifes that insist on finding ways to (break|torment|block) Mozilla for no good reason can be made to work, despite their best efforts to the contrary.
That may be contrary to Mozilla's philosophy... but, someone's gotta blink first or the users get caught in the middle.
Sorry, you don't have much of a case there. Your choice of browser is just that, your choice. Government cannot discriminate based on factors that people have no choice about (gender, race) or on factors that are considered beyond criticism (religion). (Private entities should have the right to freedom of association, but I digress.) But on matters of choice, they don't have to cater to your whims. If your choice of transportation mode is a bicycle, sorry, you can't ride it on the freeway, and this is not discrimination against bicycle-riders.
One may be able to make the argument that the government ought to conform to established standards rather than the arbitrary behaviors of any given product, so that any conforming interface would work with it. But this is hardly the same thing as discrimination.
In summary, what you're saying is correct. Validate the code, don't just design an IE-only page. Just don't cry "discrimination" so lightly.
Constitutionally Correct
Agreed. It is not Mozilla's fault that everyone spoofs Mozilla. IE started the evil trend of spoofing. This is just like blaming the victim of identity theft. Mozilla's identity is stolen when you spoof - that is not Mozilla's fault.
It may not even be fair to blame IE (or Opera, or anyone else). After all, MS was just responding to all the web dee-zine-urs who incorporated nonstandard golly-gee-whiz features into their pages and wanted a way to keep others from seeing their broken creations. When IE got up to speed, they needed a way to "get to the good stuff" without waiting for the dee-zine-urs to fix their browser sniffers.
Moral of the story? Designers: stop sniffing. Surfers: stop spoofing. The truth shall set you free.
Constitutionally Correct
So what about the fact they are helping a company violate anti-trust law? A huge portion of M$'s anti-trust violations were due to deliberately making M$ products not work with competing products. It doesn't look good when the US government assists them.
well, if the developers/company thought that they should write to the standard and leave it up to the client to render the standard.. then we wouldn't have this problem of hotmail, msn, whatever using the passed user agent to block access to people using client X. That is the point of this thread, those sites have a history of introducing rendering error into Opera/Mozilla (to name a few) to make it appear that the user is using a sub-standard product (IE renders correctly of course). Guess what, spoofing as IE makes the page render correctly in mozilla or opera..
Last time I checked, Internet Explorer crashing doesn't cause a system reboot either.
Mozilla isn't really intended to be an enduser product.. its primary purpose is for testing. However, because of its stability and major releases, it seems to be appealing to endusers.. but mostly tech-saavy power users IMHO. Netscape is the product for the masses, it will have a more polished interface than mozilla and it has name recognition. It will also undergo more testing (both bug and usability) than an average milestone of mozilla. Then there is the matter of application support, netscape7 will be supported more often than mozilla. Even though anything that works with NS7 should work in mozilla, name recognition and specific quirks with releases make this somewhat important.
Notice how NS7.02 is still based on a very early build of mozilla, the focus of Netscape 7 is on stability (in terms of the interface and functionality) and not on cutting edge features that are typically found in mozilla milestones. Most people do not need the features found in mozilla, which makes netscape 7 very appealing.
Well I don't actually use either, but it seems to me flash has no good Free editors. Since mng is so similar to png, and since the Gimp already does animated GIFs, I would assume the Gimp has decent support for it.
:)
Ah, and I don't download the flash plugin. Its a clever way to not have to look at ads. As long as IE doesn't support MNG, MNG will not be used for ads, and this is a good thing. It means its the image format that's used only for content, not for ads.
OK, this is something I flat out don't understand. I'm a partner in a design firm and we check each site in no less then 15 browser / OS combinations. Heck we check our sites in both links and lynx. On the 1 occasion that someone wrote us to tell us that a site we developed didn't work properly in their browser, we fixed it and added that brower to our list. BTW, the browser is this Malaysian Web Browser.
Creating a site that works in all browsers might take more work but it's about Quality and Respect, right?
Sean.OutaHere()
The only reason to use tabular layout (like Slashdot does) is to make things look good in Internet Explorer.
Come on, it wasn't *that* long ago that the best Unix browser was Netscape 4, and CSS was a Microsoft-only feature.
There's also no textmode browsers that grok CSS at all, much less CSS Positioning.
You're on crack, and I can prove it
Here's a simple example. Go check out Slashcode.com, and look at the cute little boxes on the left and right sides of the page. The HTML necessary to generate those boxes with a TABLE layout and no CSS is so long and convoluted I can't even post it because of the lameness filter. It's 30 lines long, 1700 characters not including content, and contains 55 HTML tags. That's not ecen the worst news, which is that all that shitty markup has to be downloaded once for each table -- 9 times for slashcode.com.
Following is the HTML necessary to generate the identical box using only CSS:
You need to specifiy some CSS rules for formatting. They might look like this, and you'd specifiy it once in a global style sheet that your browser will cache:Summary: you're on crack, and I just proved it. CSS is dramatically less markup-intense than tables and font tags.This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."