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Mozilla 1.5 Alpha Available
An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla.org released Mozilla v1.5 alpha today, with flavors available for Linux,
Mac OS X, and Windows. Some of the new features include Composer enhancements, Chatzilla logging, multiple tab window closing confirmation, and quicksearch support in about:config. A more detailed rough changelog is also available. In a somewhat related note, Mozilla 1.4 has been downloaded over a half million times in the past 3 weeks (not counting mirrors)."
Has the Mozilla crew ever thought of quit making the browser as one giant, bloated super-applicaton and separate all the components into distinct, different programs in the spirit of IE/Outlook/FrontPage as well as Safari/Mail/iCal?
I know Firebird/Thunderbird/Dodobird exist but they seem like separate distinct projects, and the apps are definitely not as stable as stock Moz; trust me, I've used em all.
I mean, does my web browser REALLY need an IRC client?!
At this rate, Moz 1.6 will have an included oral sex plugin.
I don't know if I'm the only out there who's noticed, but, Firebird development has slowed considerably with all the Mozilla fuss. The next FB milestone (0.7 Indio) is going to be late almost two months in a few days. Meanwhile we've had the Mozilla 1.4 RC1, RC2, Final and 1.5 Alpha come out.
CVS checkins to the Firebird suite have also lagged behind. Personally, I would like to see FB development accelerated instead of put on the back burner.
I have a grotty old PII 350 with 64mb on win98 (not SE - for some absurd historical reason that I no longer believe and I don't expect anyone else to either) and I use Moz exclusively for tabbed browsing and spam filtering goodness. It's faster than IE from my perspective and, unlike IE, doesn't fall over more often than a one legged man in a falling over competition.
Of course it's going off the rails. How else is it ever going to fly?
I think you may be underestimating the innovation behind some of these alternate browsers. IE is just not keeping up. I have a seriously hard time using it anymore. Features like tabbed browsing and mouse gestures are now an itegral part of my browsing experience. They almost feel like...essential OS components.