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Mozilla 1.4 Released

Phil writes "MozillaZine is reporting that Mozilla 1.4 has been released for Windows, Mac OS and Linux. The new version is pretty similar to today's Netscape 7.1, which is based on the same code, but lacks Netscape's proprietary features. More information can be found in the release notes. The release can be downloaded from mozilla.org's releases page or via FTP. From here on, mozilla.org's focus shifts to Mozilla Firebird and Mozilla Thunderbird." The official release news is now up on Mozilla's main page, so let the downloading begin.

17 of 421 comments (clear)

  1. hmmmm by deadsaijinx* · · Score: 3, Insightful

    not to be an ass, but is it really news worthy every time Moz makes a release? Didn't we get headlines for 1.4 RC2 and RC3? I use moz exclusively, but even I don't think it's news worthy everytime Moz has a new release (reminds me of the nightly releases news for Phoenix a while back).

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    YOU SUCK BALLS!
    1. Re:hmmmm by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      "not to be an ass, but is it really news worthy every time Moz makes a release? "

      You're not being an ass. I agree with you, it's certainly not front page news. If they had a Mozilla area that they blasted every little bit of news about I wouldn't complain, though.

      I guess I've got a bit of a chip on my shoulder, though. The Mozilla fanatics are an irritating bunch. It's a good browser blah blah blah but to dedicate a social class to it is a bit overboard. It's not the only good browser out there. Opera anybody?

      Maybe Slashdot should have a browsers subdomain or something.

    2. Re:hmmmm by Arker · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The RC posts are great. They attract stress-testers and help the debugging process move. If you don't like em, don't click the freakin link.

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  2. Re:Must be browser day by Bonker · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Since Netscape and Moz are based on the same code, it's only realistic that the production relaeses of both apps should be released simultaneously.

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  3. Re:Nice improvements, but.... by sremick · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Maybe when Microsoft integrates Mozilla into the OS. Most of what makes up IE loads when Windows starts, due to MS making IE the default interface to every fricken part of the OS. Double-clicking on the "e" icon simply loads the last 10% or so (prob not even that).

    You can use "Quickstart" in Mozilla or NS to enable to same behavior, but honestly I find the whole idea of an app sucking up RAM when you aren't using it to be pretty stupid. Like leaving your car running all night just so you don't have to waste the 5 seconds in the morning to start it.

    I mean, really: compare the startup time to how long you spend actually ON THE NET. Do a few seconds really matter??? Isn't it nice to close it and have it be GONE FROM MEMORY (unlike IE)?

  4. Proprietary "features" by Ikeya · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The new version is pretty similar to today's Netscape 7.1, which is based on the same code, but lacks Netscape's proprietary features.

    Uhh... and it's a bad thing that Mozilla lacks these "features"? I personally like Mozilla with less crap. Oh well. To each their own...

    ikeya

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    ---- Move SIG...For great justice!
  5. Mozilla - Firebird by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful
    I've been using Firebird as my primary browser for a while, and I do quite like it.

    But I'm a bit concerned. Firebird's developers have now made me very, very reluctant to download nightly builds so that I might try to find and report bugs.

    This for several reasons :

    • The "tabbed browsing extensions" has been unusable on more than a few of the nightlies I've downloaded recently.
    • If you report a bug that they determine belongs in an extension it gets zapped and I'm not sure it ever gets reported to the extension writer. Further, I've had a few rude responses when I've reported bugs in extensions - they don't want to cope with bugs that belong in mozilla or in extensions. And I'm supposed to determine that by ESP?
    • Starting in the last few weeks, I've been having Firebird just hang completely on me. Often it keeps running and starts to sop up all the CPU time it can grab.

    I hate griping about OSS developers - but Firebird has become such an important tool to me that I'd like to help - even if only by reporting bugs - and when that process seems not to work, it gets a bit frustrating.

  6. Re:Problems I have with Mozilla 1.3 by swordgeek · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Can't believe that you got modded down as flamebait. Must be an idiot with moderator points.

    At any rate while I have sympathy for your points, consider it from the point of view of mozilla. There is an internationally agreed-upon set of standards on how to write HTML. A website that doesn't follow those standards is broken, in the same way that a PCI card that requires a nonstandard voltage is broken. If you got a card that didn't fit in any PCI slots other than the ones on motherboards made by the same manufacturer, it's pretty hard to blame the other board makers for following standards, even though you can't use this particular PCI card in their boards.

    Ultimately, it's a lost cause. People see websites that are broken because Microsoft promotes broken websites (and renders them the way the creators intended, rather than correctly), and blame Mozilla for behaving properly.

    Try dropping a message to netflix. I did that to Toyota Canada a year ago, and within four months they had a site that worked 100% with mozilla, opera, and IE. (Furthermore, they had a note up indicating their intentions to implement this no more than three weeks after I emailed them! Good on Toyota.)

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    "People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
  7. Re:Problems I have with Mozilla 1.3 by mu_wtfo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It could also be argued that IE is the most broken browser out there. Specs *are* important - no specs mean a fragmentation of the web, different vendors just randomly inventing 'html'. That means that page development time goes up exponentially, as developers now have as many different targets as there are browsers, instead of one target, the w3c spefification.

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    If all the world's a stage, anyone who says they want better lighting spends far too much time in a dark theatre.
  8. Re:wow, bug-city! updated! by Tumbleweed · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Nope, still font weirdness, though it is different now. There are a mix of serif and sans-serif fonts in each listing, though the columns are still mislabeled, and I have to have it select 'serif' fonts to get the 'sans serif' font I want.

    The button label weirdness is, however, gone. Yay! Thanks for the advice. I'm temping on a piece of crap laptop and it had some old profiles laying around (though not Moz itself). Whew, stinky.

    So, it's still got problems, and the installation of Moz is still pretty ridiculous if things like this can occur. What's it gonna take to get this stuff fixed? These problems have been around since the beginning of the project! Unbelievable. No wonder MS thinks they can get away with not updating IE anymore. *shaking head*

  9. Re:Yes, it is. by LarsG · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Mozilla is one of the 'pillars' of OSS software, along with GCC, the Linux kernel, KDE, GNOME, and Apache (I'm probably forgetting some too).

    Glibc, XFree and Samba.

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    If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
  10. Why is Firebird that wonderful? by jbs0902 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I hate to say that the Emperor has no clothes, but ...

    I haven't bothered to update from Moz 1.2.1 because it works and I am happy with it. I don't see how the browser (the only portion I use) has improved significantly. From the 1.3.x and 1.4 release notes, it seems most improvements have come to the newsgroups/mail.

    As for Firebird (a.k.a. the browser formerly known as Phoenix), is it just me or is this the most IE-clone, kiddie like browser. I know we're all supposed to say how much better Firebird is, but I don't feel like an adult while using it. Most of the settings are only reachable (unless I am missing something) from the about:config screen. The preferences (under the Tools menu, just like IE) is so icon centric. Maybe Firebird is trying to reach out to the mom/pop crowd, but could I have an option to put it in advanced mode? In addition, NONE of my XUL/XPI/whatever plug-ins/skins work. The plug-ins and tabs are what makes Moz worth running in my opinion.

    Yeah, the bloat comments have legitimacy, but I have HDD and CPU speed to waste (except when gaming). The only thing I am concerned about is the way Win Moz 1.2.1 seems to memory-leak.

  11. Re:No it's not by molarmass192 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Given this is an AC post, it's probably a troll but I'll bite. I disagree with you wholeheartedly.

    If you want to use IE, Opera, or Konqueror, good for you. However, I roll my own Mozilla, have several code changes that I wrote (wallet and javascript functionality) and some 3rd party diff patches (spellchecker and menu enhancements). I optimize the hell out of the code using every compiler option available to me and it takes just shy of 20 minutes to compile. The result? My self-built Mozilla puts IE and Opera to shame for speed and flexibility. Memory use is slightly higher (~20M) but for 10M I have the Ferrari of browsers, customized and faster even than Opera 6 when it was at it's peak. On a reasonably fast site like Yahoo, uncached pages render a full second faster than in IE 6.0 (under W98/Win4Lin) and about 1/2 second faster than Opera 6. Now, compiling code is not for everybody but if you know how, you cannot beat Mozilla.

    Also, you're confusing contributors and those with CVS write access. AOL controls almost all the CVS write accounts but there are PLENTY of unpaid non-AOL contributors who submit code to be checked-in. While I'm at it, Bugzilla was created because the original Netscape developers hated the 3rd party bug tracking system used there. So, to correct your parting shot: "Bugzilla - because 3rd party closed source bug tracking systems are so crappy."

    Now, let me turn the tables. Have you looked at the code? Have you ever compiled the code? If not, then I'd counter that even you don't know why you aren't using Mozilla.

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    Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
  12. Re:BitTorrent by Dahan · · Score: 4, Insightful
    This reminds me... shouldn't Mozilla provide checksums and/or PGP signatures for these files? While I'm not 100% trusting of files on mozilla.org (servers can, and have been, compromised and files trojaned), I don't trust software from random .torrents at all...

    FWIW, this torrent is probably fine--it's identical to the one on www.mozilla.org. Checksums are:
    MD5(mozilla-win32-1.4-installer.exe)= 28cb37dfe56476fe0c5a74689cdc0063
    SHA1(mozilla-win32-1.4-installer.exe)= c46336c7ceeeaa349f2546c1009f53271b186213

    But you shouldn't take my word for it... Mozilla should be providing checksums; their distribution build instructions even recommend making a MD5SUM file.

  13. Re:Yes, it is. by mnemonic_ · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The GIMP, Blender, Ogg Vorbis.

  14. Re:Where's the sourcecode? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I'm currently downloading it via. CVS.

    http://www.mozilla.org/cvs.html

    The branch is: MOZILLA_1_4_RELEASE

  15. Re:Same as RC3 by Deven · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Not only are there no major changes, there are no changes at all. The files are exactly the same. 1.4-RC3 is 1.4.

    This is the way release candidates should always be handled, yet it seems they rarely are. How many times have bugs snuck into an official "stable" Linux kernel release that weren't in the preceding "pre" kernel? A strict policy of only releasing final versions as re-releases of release candidates would reduce this danger...

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    Deven

    "Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay