Three New Releases (And Other News) From Mozilla

An anonymous reader writes "A couple of interesting releases by mozilla.org. First of all Mozilla 1.5 was released. This is supposed to be the last version of the old Mozilla suite. Mozilla Firebird 0.7, the stand-alone browser by mozilla.org was also released today. It includes many new features, e.g. Web Panels. For more information see the newly designed product page for Firebird. A third release is the stand-alone version of the Mozilla mail-program Thunderbird , which has now reached version 0.3. The Mozilla Foundation also launched new end user services, like CD Sales and Telephone Support. As an effort to target more end-users, a redesigned website was also created. As always MozillaZine has all of the stories, too. Give these new releases a try, but please use a mirror if possible."

Comments

I take it there's some incredible features in this

[ColourlessGreenIdeas]

mozilla.org is totally slashdotted already. Anyone got a mirror of the list of mirrors!

Thanks to all that mozilla.org folks

[BibelBiber]

As always they do a great job! Especially with Fire- and Thunderbird.

Re:Thanks to all that mozilla.org folks

[borus]

One of the most important tools in my day job is a Wiki (MoinMoin, that is). I am using FireBird since 3 months (I am reading joelonsoftware ...) and have never fired up Internet Explorer, Mozilla, or Opera (Lynx was never an option) again ...

If you need a lean, mean browsing machine, FireBird is for you!

mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[pbranes]

They've been saying that for a while, and I haven't seen any evidence of that. I really hope that 1.5 is their last integrated release, and they can focus on thunderbird/firebird. I use both of these at home and at work now, and I am very please with their simple gui interface and small download sizes (I'm on 56K at home).

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[localghost]

They've been actively working toward it. There's been a lot of work on getting Firebird and THunderbird stable. Once they get to the point where they're as good as Seamonkey, they will replace it as the new browser and mail components. From what I've seen of Firebird, it shouldn't be long now. (Though I still use Mozilla for the time being)

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[newbiefan]

Download a nightly build....
click on Help->About Mozilla
Marvel at the information:
Mozilla 1.6a
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6a) Gecko/20031012

I have a feeling that the team is not ready yet to promote Firebird (Mozilla Browser) as their flagship product (even though it is very usable). Heck, I don't even care much anymore... mozilla has been stable for ages and serves all my browsing needs.

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[jvervloet]

As I see it, there are (were?) two problems which make the switch from I.E. towards Firebird `frightening' for modal Windows users: (1) the lack of a Windows installer, and (2) the troubles for installing e.g. a flash plugin.

I don't know whether these things are fixed in the new release, but as long as they aren't, I will recommend Mozilla as I.E. alternative instead of Firebird. It would be a pity if Firebird users switched back to I.E. because of these little problems.

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I consider the lack of a windows installer a feature, not a problem. When I want to roll out a new version to all the machines on the network, write a script that deletes the old version's folder and copy in the new version. Done. I don't want to deal with installer bullshit.

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[jonadab]

> I really hope that 1.5 is their last integrated release

If it is, I'll be using it for a while. I've tried Firebird 0.6, and it shows
promise, but I got tired of installing extension after extension after extension
just to get features I've been taking for granted for months. Every time I
think I've got all the extensions I need I discover another missing feature.
Also, last I checked, some things I use aren't even available yet, though it
does seem to get better every time I check back. The long and short of it is,
even with *all* the extensions, Firebird isn't ready to replace Navigator yet,
and when it is, a way is needed to install multiple extensions all at once;
this nonsense about installing each one individually is crap.

Then there's Thunderbird... fortunately I don't have to be so eager for that
to shape up, since I use Gnus. But I get the feeling that if I was waiting for
Thunderbird to be a viable mailreader, I'd be waiting a while yet. (Then again,
I don't consider Messenger a viable mailreader either, so maybe I'm just being
picky in that regard.)

Are Firebird/Thunderbird/&c the future? Yes, absolutely -- and separating the
components out is something that has needed to be done for a long time. But
for the moment, the reality is that SeaMonkey is still the present. We look
forward to a day when it will be the past, but that day has not come yet.

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[Anonymous Coward]

what is so damn hard about unzipping it to C:\Program Files and creating a link for the executable in the startmenu and on the desktop...

maybe you should give up using a computer and stick with your Lazyboy recliner and remote control television...

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[mcbridematt]

Noo..... I still want my XPFE.

I swear that if mozilla.org stops distributing XPFE binaries off the trunk, I'll compile it myself until it breaks. I actually appreciate the "swiss army knife approach" that we have seen since Netcape.

Yes, Firebird is great, but the functionality of the XPFE app suite leaves FB in the dust in my opinion.

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[KillerLoop]

http://blackdiamond.mozdev.org

The Black Diamond project is a project to create a distrubution of Firebird with many of the popular extentions added.

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[jvervloet]

what is so damn hard about unzipping it to C:\Program Files and creating a link for the executable in the startmenu and on the desktop...

Indeed, for us, the Slashdot crowd, this is not difficult at all. But If I tell this to 90% of my friends, then they'll say that I shoud talk normal and don't use all this difficult computer science speak.

They don't know what unzipping is, they don't know how to find C:\Program Files. They don't know what an executable is, and how to find/recognize it. They don't know how to create a link to it, they even don't know what a link is. Nevetheless they aren't stupid.

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[Anthracks]

The bug with the Flash installer is fixed in this release (it's actually a problem in their installer, but it's such a deal-breaker than Firebird codes around it for now, until/if Macromedia ever gets their act together). There's also, finally, an installer in the works and the screenshots look quite nice. I believe it's due to land in the next milestone, Firebird 0.8. I'd give you a link, but MozillaZine seems to be slashdotted just now.

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[Captain Large Face]

Firebird has a Windows installer available here, and a flash player installer is available here. If you download Firebird in archive form, you have to make some registry entries for the Flash install to work seamlessly, but the executable version should be fine.

Have fun. :P

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think it'll be the last. I fully expect to see a 1.6 release. I've been using the latest 1.6 nightly builds for a couple weeks now, and they're great!

It's going to be a while yet before seamonkey is replaced.

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[tobybuk]

At last, someone who understands what a typical user needs. (And I thought only BillG did.)

I bet I get my ass whipped for saying this here, but I really think the problem with getting people away from Windows (to Linux) is the amount of knowledge required to actually use a machine. There is just no way I can expect my granny to do this kind of shit, so is she excluded from using computers? Does she have to know about PPP, Telnet, firewalls and vi?

I have very little experience of Linux myself. I have it installed under VMWARE (Suse), running KDE. I do consider myself to literate but for the life of me, I cannot figure out how to change screen resolutions. How is granny supposed to do it?

We need to lower the knowledge required to use a PC without outside help.

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[Anonymous Coward]

Im on 1.6 alpha now. somebody is fibbing. Not a single sign of lightening moz yet, still as bloated as it ever was. im glad Apple give the finger to mozilla, its a peice of overbloated archaine API crap.

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[caseih]

I always wonder why Windows users need an installer. Somehow Mac users have got along fine with it for years. Just unpack the dang thing to program files, drag a shortcut onto your desktop. How hard can it be? This is the number one feature of Firebird, in my opinion (ok, besides the tabs, the beautiful interface, etc). I unpack Firebird onto a usb keydrive and then I can run my favorite browser on any windows machine without having to install anything.

As for plugins, even though the plugin installers such as java and flash don't recognize Firebird, Firebird always manages to find them. Same for quicktime.

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[Jagasian]

I can't find "C:\Program Files". Can you help me. I keep getting this error: "bash: cd: c:Program: No such file or directory". Thanks!

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[Eccles]

If [1.5 is their last integrated release], I'll be using it for a while.

I say, so be it. If the goal is the split, then the longer they delay making it, the longer it'll be until we have the final viable result. I'd rather have 1.0 Firebird and Thunderbird sooner than have 1.6 Mozilla sooner. Get people focusing on making the fixes, tools, installers, etc. for what's going to be the long-term solution.

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[stickb0y]

It's not so simple. My experience with Firebird 0.6 and earlier has been that merely unzipping it over an existing installation breaks all the old plugin settings.

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[athakur999]

There have been some checkins recently which appear to be the first steps of an official installer, so hopefully soon we'll have one. It would be really cool if the installer could optionally go out and grab some common plugins like Flash and install them as well, as it would go a long away towards making it easier for Joe Average to figure it out.

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[hpavc]

Amen to that.

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right. They're not stupid.

They're ignorant and lazy.

Which is even worse.

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[Anonymous Coward]

Why make something more difficult than it needs to be? No installer is just a sign of lazy/user-unfriendly developers.

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[Peaceful_Patriot]

Thank you for pointing out what the Open Source Community needs to remember. "Is Linux ready for the desktop?" It depends on whose desktop it's on! Its ready for mine, but not most of the people I know.

As long as you don't have change anything from the default setup, it's no problem, but God help Joe User when it's time to install packages, figure out dependencies, command lines, change hardware settings, etc. My first year working with Linux reduced me to a quivering mass of frustration more than once. Yes, it's come a LONG way since then, but if we ever hope for Linux to truely compete against MS, we need to remember that most people just want it to WORK!

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[dtfinch]

I blame the Windows Registry, and the Microsoft campaign to convince developers to switch away from the proven method of using ini (or similar) files located in the same directory as the program they belong to. The result is that most programs cannot be installed simply by copying them to disk, and often cannot easily be moved once they've been installed. Plus there's the problem of having all your eggs in one basket. You can't backup just a single program and its settings anymore.

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess that means if you can't say, rebuild the carburator on your car or whip up a gourmet 8 course dinner, you must be ignorant and lazy.

Long ago, civilization developed a practice we call 'specialization' which means not everyone has to be good at everything...you can 'specialize' in something and trade that skill for the skills of others.

Just because someone doesn't choose to spend months learning how to use an OS, doesn't mean their lazy. Especially when they are using one already that 'seems' to work just fine.

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[BZ]

> They've been saying that for a while,

"They" being the slashdot editors? If you ask any actual Mozilla developer, they will tell you that the switch will happen when Firebird and Thunderbird are ready. I very much wonder where Timothy got his "this is supposed to be the last one" BS.

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[bhtooefr]

Firebird may not use an installer YET, but it would be DAMN easy to make one.

http://www.clickteam.com/English/installcreator. ph p - free, mentions that it was made with the free version, braindead installer building (I've used their previous installer product, and it was easy)
http://nsis.sourceforge.net/ - open source, not quite braindead, but easy, and looks like InstallShield (if you use the modern interface)

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[Mad Marlin]

I actually prefer the integrated suite of Mozilla to having all the components separate, although I can see how having the option of them being separate could be good for people who already use something else for one of the tasks. I am using Mozilla Navigator to type this in right now, I use Mozilla Mail for my e-mail, Mozilla Address Book for all my phone numbers and addresses in addition to just e-mails, Mozilla Calendar to keep track of when I need to do stuff, and I would like it if they kept the integrated suite. How hard would it really be to have a Thunderbird+Firebird+whatever suite, similar to the current suite?

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[jvervloet]

At last, someone who understands what a typical user needs. (And I thought only BillG did.)

I'm not sure that this is what a user needs, but it is what a user expects... It is what BillG made them expect.

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[Anonymous Coward]

Those wacky linux users and their crazy uptimes...

Try the magic bullet: reboot!

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[Trelane]

It would be really cool if the installer could optionally go out and grab some common plugins like Flash and install them as well, as it would go a long away towards making it easier for Joe Average to figure it out.

Amen! Recently, I had advised a user to use Netscape 7.0 that was installed on the machine rather than IE, 'cause IE didn't have the flash plugin. If Moz came fully-enabled to deal with most of what is on the Web, that would be awesome for the end-user. Esp. under Linux, where enabling the Java plugin can be a pain.

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[damiam]

An official installer for Firebird is in the works (there's an unoffical one already), and I've never heard of anyone having "troubles" installing Flash. What exactly doesn't work?

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[LousyPhreak]

well this shouldnt be 2 hard: just go to your next computer store and ask the seller for a software called windows. install it and there you go! ;)

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[Anonymous Coward]

It possibly is. Here's the text from you get when you enter about:mozilla in the location bar:

And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced. But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird. The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire and thunder upon them. For the beast had been reborn with its strength renewed, and the followers of Mammon cowered in horror.

from The Book of Mozilla, 7:15

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[Jucius Maximus]

"But If I tell this to 90% of my friends, then they'll say that I shoud talk normal and don't use all this difficult computer science speak."

I've actually seen a FAQ that informed users that they can still unzip files even though they haven't purchased a zip drive. Apparently it was a common question (!!).

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[ssstraub]

You need to delete the firebird folder. Not unzip over the top.

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[stickb0y]

Okay, but that doesn't solve the real problem, which is that you need to reinstall all the old extensions after upgrading.

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[ssstraub]

Actually, you shouldn't have to do that either. When you install them, they *should* ask you whether you want to install it in the program folder or profile folder and then have the option of OK or CANCEL. You have to actually read each one, because it's not very standardized yet and each entension writer just kinda does their own thing with that box. Some are OK to install into the profile and some are OK to install into the program directory.

I upgraded from 0.6.1 to 0.7 w/o having to install any of my 5 or 6 extentions.

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[juhaz]

I have very little experience of Linux myself. I have it installed under VMWARE (Suse), running KDE. I do consider myself to literate but for the life of me, I cannot figure out how to change screen resolutions. How is granny supposed to do it?

Dunno about SuSe or KDE, but RedHat and GNOME 2.x+ both offer nice windows-ish screen resolution changer thingie.

MozillaFirebird is the best

[Daath]

Even on my windows machines I use nightlies of MozillaFirebird as the default browser! It's simply just the best - The ONLY thing I have come across is that it sometimes crashes when you use back several times in quick succession (possibly when there are flash or java or the like on some of the intermediate pages).
Other than that, it's Firebirdlife is blissful ;) (not sure if I'm just ignorant, but that's a definite possibility!) :) Thunderbird is very cool also! (Also my default mail app!)

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[TheWart]

Amen to that.
It is hilarious when my friends come in and see that for some reason, I seem to see less ads and pop-ups (none, actually) than them in IE.

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[Daath]

Indeed! That is one thing that I cannot live without anymore! An efficient built in popup blocker :)
The AdBlock plugin is also nice, although it loads the ads and then hides them... Ideally it should just not load them ;)

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[jaf]

I agree. Can't believe people are still using IE.

First thing I usually do when I have to work on a new machine for a while is to download and install FireBird.

There's also a crash bug with form completion. Hope that's fixed with 0.7.

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[Mantrid]

The worst is when I have to switch to IE for the (very) odd site that doesn't like Mozilla - all of a sudden all these pop-ups appear and I remember just how annoying those things were!

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[Peer]

Ideally it should just not load them ;)

NO, it should load them, otherwise the site is able to detect you're blocking the ads, and may take precautions. (That's probably why ./ has those annoying text ads.)

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[Daath]

Hadn't thought of that, sounds plausible :)

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[Friday]

You should check out PrefBar. It has worked very well for me in the past when viewing "IE Only" sites with Mozilla.

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[etcpasswd]

Interestingly, Mozilla FireBird is much more stabler on my WinXP Pro at home than on Linux at work.

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[jandrese]

You guys must not be using the same web that I am. While I can still use Mozilla for most of my web browsing, there is still that 5% of websites that don't work. It is almost always a javascript issue, and almost aways listed as an "advocacy bug" in bugzilla. This drives me nuts. I can tell you right now that BBandT bank is not going to fix their website anytime soon. Wouldn't it have made more sense to implement those few "broken" features and pop up a warning about them being depricated/contact the webmaster? Once most sites stop using them, THEN you can remove them from the browser. My GF gave up on Mozilla because it just didn't work for her online banking and a few other sites she frequents. Yes, I told the webmasters about the problem, but most of the time they're just using some out-of-the-box web services suite and have no idea of how to fix it. In a couple of instances the original company is out of business (oh those .coms ) but they figure: why fix it, it works with everything here?

IMHO, advocacy bugs are one of the leading causes of "screw it, I'm switching back to IE".

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[NeoNormal]

So switch banks. Online services for BofA and Wachovia both work with Mozilla just fine. I don't support businesses that require me to use their tools of choice for doing business with them. I can take my meager $$ somewhere else.

Oh, and IE doesn't run on Linux so it's not an option for me, thank God.

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[TiggsPanther]

The worst is when I have to switch to IE for the (very) odd site that doesn't like Mozilla - all of a sudden all these pop-ups appear and I remember just how annoying those things were!

I never notice that when I have to switch back to IE. Then again, I use the popup-blocker on the Google Toolbar.

Oh well, now Mozilla 1.5 is out, I can do that fresh install of Moz, to see if it gets rid of my "downloaded files won't save" problem.
(which is what forces me to use IE whenever I want to download a file)

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[NevermindPhreak]

http://texturizer.net/firebird/extensions/#IE View(for Windows)

might be a bit slow, since the main site is taking a beatingfrom all the downloads of the newest builds of firebird/thunderbird. anyways, it adds an entry to your right-click menu, to open a link in IE. i rarely use it, but it comes in handy.

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[avdp]

Latest version (possibly a development version) doesn't. I downloaded and installed it yesterday. Don't even get that annoying second or so when the ads show then dissapear...

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[BigJimSlade]

You might want to install the new Google toolbar. It's nice when I absolutely have to use IE (usually just testing a web page in it after designing in the more standards-compliant Mozilla) Anyway, the latest Google toolbar has pop-up blocking for IE.

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[leifm]

I used to have site compatibility issues with Mozilla, especially with my banking site (Suntrust). However about 1.5-2 years ago my bank site started working fine with Moz, and anymore if a site doesn't load right with Moz it probably doesn't with IE either. With the exception of a few MS sites (Windows update), or some instance where you need ActiveX I have no problems with Mozilla.

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[Manes]

Exactly, it's too stupid to have things not work just because it's slightly out of whack with the standards. Take broken webservers that send text/plain instead of text/html as the content-type for .html files.

Is it wrong of the webservers to do that? Offcourse it is. Should I have to view it as text because mozilla follows strictly mime-types instead of filextensions?

Offcourse, the file extension concept is wrong, but it's how the world works, damnit.

I wish some people would take a reality check from time to time, you can't make utiopia and ignore the flaws of the real world. Not all the time, atleast.

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, let's just throw out standards so we can do what we want... for the next little while at least. Until the lack of descent quality standards makes development more of a nightmare than it already is... :P

Great short-term thinking that'll just make things tougher for everyone in the long run...

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[zebs]

Install the "Things they left out" extension, you can then change how Firebird/Mozilla handles MIME-Types.

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[Hieronymus Howard]

Maybe 2nd best. I use Firebird at work on Windows and Galeon at home on Linux. Of the two, I still prefer Galeon. I tried Opera, but couldn't configure it (in Windoze) to use the middle button to open links in a new tab. Without that, I refuse to use it.

HH
--

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[Rits]

Mid-click is configurable in Opera 7.20 and higher for Windows, and 7.11 and higher for Linux.

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[jandrese]

That doesn't help the damn internal websites at work that don't work with Mozilla. Besides, it's not like my GF just choose her bank becaues it was closest or something, that was the one she chose because it was the best in several important areas for her. Unfortunatly you can't test their internal webpages until AFTER you sign up.

I've also run into problems with surprisingly high profile sites, like buy.com. This is a problem since I run FreeBSD and have to pull out Netscape 4 to get it working, or sometimes even just wait until I get to a windows machine at work.

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[pebs]

That's too bad. Although there are times where Mozilla works and Firebird doesn't, and vica versa, I've never had to use IE for anything since Mozilla 1.0. Everyone I know who has switched to Mozilla/Netscape prefers to use it over IE.

Bank of America's page works great. Fidelity's page works fine. BBandT are stupid pricks for limiting who can use their site.

Sites that only work in IE are exactly the reason other browsers are sticking to standards, and should stick to the standards.

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[Hooded One]

Never mind that banks and other major websites *are* responding and are getting their act together. As more people start moving to Firebird, this will only increase.

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[pebs]

I wish some people would take a reality check from time to time, you can't make utiopia and ignore the flaws of the real world. Not all the time, atleast.

You can try. Why give up on your goals just because some shitty banking site doesn't work? If someone really wanted to, they could fork Mozilla and make it work with IE's non-standards. Mozilla is meant as a reference implementation of a standards-compliant browser. At least they are trying to help the situation.

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[protoshoggoth]

But it's a slippery slope. Once you 'oh-fficially' start down the path of using kludges and workarounds to coddle this broken stuff, where do you stop?

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[Jagasian]

Please report that bug that you mentioned... if it hasn't already been reported.

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[john_lewmanny]

The new version of Adblock, when finished, will indeed prevent Mozilla from ever downloading the ads.

It will also be able to block anything that has an URL (from iframes to plugins) instead of just blocking images. It will so fulfill the needs of Bug 78104.

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[pjrc]

Mozilla is meant as a reference implementation of a standards-compliant browser.

Hmm... the mozilla website's "Why You Should Switch" page seems to say things like "improving real world performance and increasing the value you get out of your time online" and "focused on the big picture". That hardly sounds like a reference implementation of standards compliance.

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[pebs]

Standards compliance is part of the big picture. I think Amaya is more of an official reference implementation, but my point is why should Mozilla deviate from its goals when that's not part of its purpose? They didn't set out to make an IE-compatible browser, they set out to make a browser that follows the standards.

You can argue whether or not following the standards strictly is good or not, but the fact is if someone wanted to break standards, they can fork Mozilla and add all the IE-specific features. But don't expect the Mozilla project to do that. In any case, I personally would not want them to waste their limited resources on this.

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[Overly Critical Guy]

Sorry, Opera is the best. It's just not free, unfortunately.

If Opera were freeware, I fully believe it would have conquered the web by now. Mozilla/Firebird is sloooow, clunky, and eats up my memory in ridiculous amounts.

Opera changes skins in milliseconds. With 20 tabs open it still only reaches up to a 14MB memory footprint. I love it.

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla has already officially gone done the path of putting in kludges and workarounds for Netscape 4 compatiblity.

Netscape doesn't exist any more, so Mozilla.org has get their head out of the clouds and produce a real world product, not a "reference platform".

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[edwdig]

Mozilla is meant as a reference implementation of a standards-compliant browser. At least they are trying to help the situation.

That was true back when AOL was funding Mozilla development. Mozilla would be the reference implementation, and Netscape and others would be the end user versions. But there is no more Netscape. Mozilla is now directly aimed at end users.

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[jovlinger]

Mozilla does this too. IT works by using regexps to identify inline ads (images and iframes -- good for flash) and setting their CCS display properties to invisible.

google search for mozilla ad-block userContent.ccs should find you the page on the mozilla website

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[FedeTXF]

With 20 tabs open it still only reaches up to a 14MB memory footprint

And what do you do with the rest of your GB of RAM?

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[NanoGator]

"If Opera were freeware, I fully believe it would have conquered the web by now."

I don't think it's the small ads that are preventing people from using it, I just don't think it's that well known. A lot of IE users can't fathom how a browser could be better. That's not because they're dumb, but because IE is pretty darn decent. I am amazed, though, at how quickly people adopt Opera after I show it to them.

And, I agree with you, Opera is very quick compared to Mozilla. Sadly, I think zealousy will prevent the two browsers from mingling.

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[Micah]

Text ads annoying?

I think text ads are GREAT personally. Especially the way Google does them. No annoying animations, Flash crap, or the wait to download graphics.

I wish all websites would use them!

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[BZ]

> the file extension concept is wrong, but it's how
> the world works, damnit.

No. That's how the Windows world works. There is more to the world than Windows.

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, you can filter the text ads, too, with a good filtering proxy. (Say, Privoxy)

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[Joe Tie.]

Unfortunatly you can't test their internal webpages until AFTER you sign up.

I just asked them before I signed up with mine. They were extreamly helpful, and after I asked about Mozilla even mentioned that their stuff worked fine with Mozilla in Linux.

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[Manes]

You'd think so, but as far as the browser world, there isn't, and believe me, as a devoted linux fan for nearly 6 years now, I'd like for it to be different.

Not having the OPTION to identify by filename extensions is just extremely inconvenient for most users, and although it's how it SHOULD be, it's not.

Another aspect of it, for example replay files for warcraft3 is stored as .w3g files, which most servers will return text/plain as the content-type for. IE ASKS what I want to do with it, mozilla fills my screen with garbage. Now, how many server admins do you think would realistically add a new content-type just for some replay files of a game they've never tried?

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[pjrc]

To recap....

In your original comment, you appear to have replied to "Manes (17325) who wrote "it's too stupid to have things not work just because it's slightly out of whack with the standards" and "you can't make utiopia and ignore the flaws of the real world".

Your (+4 insightful) reply was "You can try. Why give up on your goals just because some shitty banking site doesn't work?".

I pointed to a prominate page at mozilla.org which claims their goals are things like "improving real world performance" and "focused on the big picture".

In truely stubborn slashdot form, you insist "Standards compliance is part of the big picture" and then "my point is why should Mozilla deviate from its goals when that's not part of its purpose?"

Please recall that the original topic was wether to ignore the mime type text/plain from a misconfigured web server and treat the data at text/html when it is obviously an html document (by .htm or .html extension or by some other determination).

I'm sure you will continue to insist that Mozilla's mission is to strictly comply with standards, even in a "real world" case like this where the browser can easily detect that the web server is misconfigured. But if you read this reply, I challenge you to revisit that "Why You Should Switch" page, or other recently authored pages about Mozilla'a mission, and find language that supports your opinion. Perhaps you will find it, perhaps not. But until you actually find some recent (after firebird) public mission statement that supports your viewpoint, I'm going to conclude that you're hanging on to the old rhetoric of the mozilla project that emphasized standard compliance.... back in the days when they believed AOL and Apple would bundle mozilla/netscape7. In case you haven't noticed, things have changed now and the mozilla project now has to appeal directly to end users, and their entire mission (and public outreach via the website) has changed to emphasize what end users really want.

And by the way, virtually all end users simply want things to work. If standards compliance makes that happen, great. But if standards compliance causes something to not work, virtually all end users don't like that. You (and most other die-hard standards compliance advocates) probably know this. What you don't know (yet) is that the Mozilla project has changed its focus.

Re:I take it there's some incredible features in t

[Anonymous Coward]

don't worry Sir Haxalot will be around shortly ;)

What are the implications..

[adeyadey]

..of the recent software patent lawsuit (won against MS/explorer) for Mozilla?

Re:What are the implications..

[jonadab]

Well, considering that the changes to MSIE that resulted from the matter as
near as I can tell only involve Active-X controls, which Mozilla has never
supported (because they're not cross-platform-capable), ... I would *speculate*
that an impact on other plugins has not been established. But even if it were,
comparable changes to those in IE (the user needing to click to fire up a
plugin) should resolve the matter. I imagine this being like the Flash Click
To View feature in Firebird, but for all third-party plugins.

Re:What are the implications..

[rmohr02]

See Mozilla's opinion.

Composer and IRC-Client?

[twener]

What happens to the Composer and the IRC-Client after Mozilla 1.5?

Re:Composer and IRC-Client?

[nicolas.e]

They will still be there in 1.6 ;) (1.6a is already in developement) Seamonkey will be there for still a long time as it is meant to be a beta of Netscape7+ As of firebird/thunderbird, i do not think mozilla will make another composer/irc client.

Re:Composer and IRC-Client?

[Anonymous Coward]

A company being funded by Lindows (started by the previous maintainer of Composer) is starting/has started work on a stand-alone version of Composer. The IRC client has always been t3h suck, tho... imho, it never really left it's proof-of-concept stage.

Re:Composer and IRC-Client?

[cultyellow]

chatzilla is a plugin for firebird and composer is part of thunderbird

Re:Composer and IRC-Client?

[davetrainer]

ChatZilla, the IRC client, is available as a Firebird extension.

Re:Composer and IRC-Client?

[Hooded One]

Chatzilla is already an extention for FB, and Composer+ has been a standalone project for a couple of months now. Personally I think Chatzilla should go standalone as well. Anyway, Mozilla will remain complete after the big switch.

AA With X11

[nicolas.e]

The two releases have many new features which look good, However, the one i looked for the most, gtk2/xft is not included in the precompiled binaries. I can easily understand that some people can not use xft, but i think they are not the majority. It would be just great to download and just have these fonts. It is quite boring to wait for the 2-3 hour compilation of mozilla to look at the *great* antialiasing...

Re:AA With X11

[GarfBond]

You might want to actually look around every once in a while.

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firebird/releases/0.7 /c ontrib/MozillaFirebird-0.7-i686-pc-linux-gnu-ctl-s vg-xft.tar.gz

Granted, that's got SVG in it too, but it does support XFT. Nightlies have been compiled with xft for quite a while, it might be worth poking around the mozilla FTP servers when they're not being slashdotted.

Re:AA With X11

[Anonymous Coward]

Click on the Firebird throbber (that ugly thing in the upper right part of the browser that spins around when loading a page) - http://texturizer.net/firebird/ - Click on Download on the left under Home

Now, you're on http://texturizer.net/firebird/download.html - Scroll down to the tan box that says Testers.

There's a link there next to Linux: ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firebird/nig htly/latest-trunk/MozillaFirebird-i686-linux-gtk2+ xft.tar.gz.

Hope this helps. Also, be sure to install the Bitstream Vera fonts.

Re:AA With X11

[nicolas.e]

Well, I should have specified I was talking about SeaMonkey. I looked yesterday or so (before the site slahdotted), and the only xft builds were from July or so (very outdated in any case).

Re:AA With X11

[4of12]

...effort to target more end-users...

Granted, that's got SVG in it too

Really great SVG support, IMHO, is one of the necessary ingredients for making the web more exciting. This is the kind of innovation that is not just useful, but something the whole community can participate in.

• Vector graphics,
• independent of screen resolution,
• able to convey layout information, and in
• a standard format accessible to anyone who can download and read a specification,

would really help the web become a better place.

Mozilla's market share is so low that it is not regarded as a serious competitor to IE.

The only way Mozilla can gain broader acceptance is if it not only does the standard HTML rendering acceptably good, but if it offers exciting new technology that is not available in IE.

IIRC, an SVG implementation is already in IE, but there's little incentive for it to be further developed. Arguably there's incentive for SVG in IE not to be further developed by Microsoft because a robust successful implementation may displace competing product lines of their own and other partners (Shockwave, Adobe). There's a potential wonderful application area to be served, but it will require someone besides established big-names to develop.

Re:AA With X11

[smartin]

This link does not exist.

Re:AA With X11

[pfunkmallone]

Yup...I've been looking too...to no avail.

Guess I'll have to d/l source, and compile myself. Drats...

Re:AA With X11

[Anonymous Coward]

it gains broader acceptance by showing it to people. it is a competitor, becuase as soon as i show normal computer users mozilla/moz's email client. their eyes light up, and they immediately want it

most users dont like IE, they just dont know it yet. once they see something better, the flood of hatred for IE comes out and they pounce on the new thing.

IE is a feature poor, bug ridden, ugly browser. its circa 1999, and shows absolutely no innovation.

Re:AA With X11

[crisco]

Anyone doing current Windows builds with SVG?

Re:AA With X11

[Anime_Fan]

IIRC, an SVG implementation is already in IE, but there's little incentive for it to be further developed.

Actually, there are only plugins for IE. This means an -tag is required. This is the wrong way to do it. Mozilla seems to be getting a native () implementation. This is of course the right thing to do.

Sadly, it seems as if Opera haven't started trying to implement it yet. Not even a subset of SVG. SVG is huge and it is probably hard to make it right. It is however an incredibly nice format that we all wish to see more of.

The old extensions as non-root bug..

[Mr Smidge]

Crucially, have they fixed the bug in the Linux build that stops non-root users using some extensions properly?

I remember this being quite a task to solve..

Re:The old extensions as non-root bug..

[Anonymous Coward]

What extensions are that? I have been using Mozilla for a while, and I haven't needed to start Mozilla as root since 1.0 or maybe even 0.9.something.

Re:The old extensions as non-root bug..

[Mr Smidge]

I'm currently using Mozilla Firebird 0.6.1, and I installed Tabbrowser Extensions (an incredibly good plugin, I might add), but clicking on its settings when logged in as a non-root user causes Moz to lock up.

It's possible to set it up as root, but that's not the point. I read a bug report a while back that said it was due partly to Moz, but partly to extension programmers not considering that their extensions might not be run as root either.

Re:The old extensions as non-root bug..

[seanmeister]

That's not so much a bug as it is the choice of the extension author. A well-packaged extension, such as the Googlebar, will give the user the choice of a system-wide install or a profile install. Why more of the extension authors don't do this is a mystery to me....

Re:The old extensions as non-root bug..

[Mr Smidge]

You wouldn't happen to know of a well-packaged alternative to Tabbrowser Extensions, would you?

At any rate, I hope that they've managed to stop a 'badly'-packaged extension crashing the browser.. I hope to upgrade later on today.

Re:The old extensions as non-root bug..

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, the lockup is probably a Mozilla issue, but the real problem is the extension maintainer. I've had that problem with the All-In-One Gestures extension. Some extensions handle it properly and install to the user's home directory.

Re:The old extensions as non-root bug..

[Hooded One]

TBE *will* install to your profile. However, installing to your profile when you already have a global copy installed can cause problems, so TBE doesn't give you that option. Uninstall it (it can keep your settings for you) and upon reinstallation, you'll see the option.

Re:I take it there's some incredible features in t

[Anonymous Coward]

I have checked about ten mirror sites and haven't found it on any of them yet.

The mirrors haven't been updated yet...

[Anonymous Coward]

The mirrors don't even have 1.5 yet... great.. I guess I'll have to wait until the end of the day.

ghastly new firebird website

[pangloss]

it looks...awful. the new moz 1.5 beta site looks good, as does the thunderbird site, but the firebird site looks like a bad joke. i'm just waiting for a flash jobbie screaming "SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY". they ought to at least put up a link to the 0.7 release notes (maybe explain the new auto-download feature). ok enough ranting on the site.

anyway, i love the product. in fact, i'm posting this with 0.7. actually i'm just glad they fixed the form completion bug back with 0.6.1.

Re:ghastly new firebird website

[jonathan_ingram]

Have you looked at the source? It's invalid (no doctype, no charset), non-CSS (look at all the attributes on the table tags) and uses fixed pixel width tables. This sort of design hasn't been acceptable for *years*.

Re:ghastly new firebird website

[it0]

I think it is brilliant, as it is aimed at new users and not geeks/coders. I can imagine if I was to going to convince an IE user, then that the site is very accesible, and provides the information in an understanding way.

Re:ghastly new firebird website

[swusr]

Yup, not valid.

Re:ghastly new firebird website

[SeaEye420]

Maybe you should take the tour which explains the auto-download feature here.

I really like how they keep mentnioning how the new firebird browser 'eases media collection'.

I also like the new slogan in the screenshot here.

Re:ghastly new firebird website

[akorvemaker]

I think it is brilliant, as it is aimed at new users and not geeks/coders.

Unfortunately, to at least some geeks (me), it looks nasty. When I look at a webpage like that, I'm reminded of companies that avoid giving useful information in order to try to sell a product that sucks.

Having consistent view across the entire Mozilla site would be much more usable (in my opinion). It could be kept simple and clear (and still show some connection to other Mozilla products), but not look like a caffeine-induced all-talk-no-action sales pitch.

Re:ghastly new firebird website

[n-baxley]

I agree. The simplest solution would have been to integrate it with the thunderbird and mozilla sites so people see that the three are linked. Weird that they wouldn't.

Re:ghastly new firebird website

[Confessed Geek]

I couldn't agree more. The new firebird site is just fugly AND amaturish looking. I've been working hard to ween all the folks I support off of IE and onto Mozilla or Firebird. A site like that does NOT help convince professionals that it is a high quality project. I was also annoyed by the run around on trying to find the release notes. I'm just waiting for a bit more out of thunderbird, ran into some oddness when trying to move a boss over from mozilla.

BTW, while I'm on slashdot, anyone have any advice on getting cyrillic text to display correctly and "write" (enter text on forms) correctly on Mozilla? I have some russion postdocs that I'm trying to sway to linux but this is a big stopper.
Thanks!

Re:ghastly new firebird website

[Confessed Geek]

Hmm looks like someone agreed... the Flaming Firebird site is gone and the old one is back...

Guess it's not the last release

[martinde]

Check out the Mozilla roadmap. It shows a version 1.6 coming out in December 2003. Of course, it looks like 1.5 is several months "late" (an observation, not criticism) so I guess the schedule could be a bit loose.

BTW, for us who are too lazy to go find out ourselves, what makes firebird better than mozilla itself? I find mozilla to be quite satisfactory, why would I switch?

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[pangloss]

Compare! and Why? ;)

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[arvindn]

BTW, for us who are too lazy to go find out ourselves, what makes firebird better than mozilla itself? I find mozilla to be quite satisfactory, why would I switch?

From http://www.mozilla.org/products/firebird/compare/:

• Designed for Simple, Efficient UI
• Automatic Popup Blocking, right out of the box
• Tab Browsing, right out of the box
• Simplified Privacy Controls
• Integrated Search Bar
• Smart Form Fill
• Automatic Downloading
• Find As You Type
• Themes
• Extensions
• Full Screen Browsing
• Bookmark Panels
• Configurable Toolbars
• Easy Bookmark Management
• Password Manager
• Cookie Manager
• Based on Gecko(TM), for Best Standards Compliance
• Free from Ad and Spyware
• Actively Developed

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[cjpez]

Meh. The reason I don't like Firebird is most of the items marked "Yes" where Mozilla says "No." I hate integrated search bars (yes, I know you can turn those off), I despise Form Fill to no end (and it seems that Form Fill is impossible to turn off, which is what finally drove me away from Firebird last time), "Automatic Downloading" isn't something I feel deserves to be under the category of "features" ("bugs" is more like it)... Also, if the whole goal of Firebird is to be the friendly, easy user experience, then I shouldn't have to go into "about:config" just to get the browser to behave properly. It seems most of the configuration options I think are great are simply holdovers from the Mozilla codebase that they're going to axe once they get around to it.

For example:

• Why do I have to set browser.fixup.alternate.enabled just to turn off Firebird's damn "helpful" URL-rewriting "feature" (yes, I *didn't* mean to put a ".com" at the end!)
• Why do I have to set browser.tabs.autoHide to false just to have it keep the tab bar visible all the time like it should be doing by default (don't they understand it's *annoying* to have your whole window shift down whenever you open a new tab?)

There were other little minor annoyances, too, but I've forgotten those. Anyway, it's still Moz for me, all the way.

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[Anthracks]

The roadmap's a good bit out of date, a new one's been "in the works" for a while, but I think the focus has been on getting these three major milestones out the door. I'd expect an update in the next few weeks, which would be helpful in shutting down the rumor mill. I don't think that bit about 1.5 being the last version of the suite is confirmed or even likely.

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[jridley]

OK, editing that list so that it only answers the actual question (different from Mozilla):

# Automatic Popup Blocking, right out of the box
# Simplified Privacy Controls
# Integrated Search Bar
# Smart Form Fill
# Automatic Downloading
# Extensions
# Bookmark Panels
# Configurable Toolbars

OK, so take Mozilla, turn on the popup blocking, and you're nearly there. I'm not sure about some of these features. I actively dislike smart form fill so I turn that off whenever possible. I have the "prefbar" installed in Mozilla so I have a configurable toolbar. I'll have to try Firebird and see what the rest of these are, but it looks like the difference is pretty small.

I tried Firebird once a couple of months ago. It was missing some configuration stuff that I didn't feel I could live without so I went back to Mozilla. Hopefully if they're stopping development on Mozilla, whatever replaces it as a browser will have ALL of Mozilla's features in addition to its own features.

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm running 0.7, and don't have Auto Form Fill on. There is usually a little box that pops up and offers previously typed entries (like the location bar) though.

I'm using FB primarily because you can middle click on anything (and in particular the bookmark toolbar. The suite needs that feature, and badly!).

I also have Flash Click to View and the Download Statusbar installed.

Hmm, and I like browser.tabs.autoHide.

What's "Automatic Downloading," by the way? Is it actually *in* 0.7?

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[PzyCrow]

Don't just complain, do something!

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[arvindn]

I'll have to try Firebird and see what the rest of these are, but it looks like the difference is pretty small.

Try it. You'll find that its not one killer feature that separates the two, but rather several small features. For instance, nothing else handles bookmarks as intuitively as FB does.

It was missing some configuration stuff that I didn't feel I could live without

So did I, initially. But if there's configuration stuff you can't live without, I'm sure you're geeky enough to not mind editing user.js yourself or using about:config. That's what I did.

You'll also find that the stuff that isn't there in the options dialog is stuff that you change once and forget about. Then you'll find that being able to quickly find what you want in the options is a big plus.

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[cjpez]

Heh. You see, rather than "doing something," I've done something better. I've installed a superior product that already does exactly what I want. Why spend time and energy making something else function more like something that already exists and fits all my needs?

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[jonadab]

> BTW, for us who are too lazy to go find out ourselves, what makes
> firebird better than mozilla itself?

Currently, it's not. Hence, the 1.5 release is SeaMonkey still, and this is
what the store is selling on CD, and the main emphasis. Firebird's status is
still "Technology Preview".

What _will_ be better about Firebird? One thing is that by splitting the
components apart they allow the components to integrate better with *other*
components by third parties. For example, if you find (as I do) that the
Mozilla mail client does not suit your needs, you will be able to use another
mail client. You can do that now, but clicking mailto: links in the browser
won't work right and there are other minor issues. The Extensions mechanism
for Firebird also shows great promise, though it urgently needs the ability
for the user to select and install multiple extensions together as a bundle,
and certain things need to be made consistent. (For example, currently the
UI for selecting whether to install in the profile dir for just the current
user across all versions or in the app dir for the current version across all
users is not only unclear (i.e., the buttons read "Yes" and "No" versus some
more clear set of alternatives like "Install in Profile", "Install Globally")
but also inconsistent -- what is "Yes" for some extensions is "No" for others.
This *has* to be cleared up before Firebird can take its place as the primary
browser in lieu of Navigator. There are other little things too. Also, some
of the components of SeaMonkey -- and some add-ons for SeaMonkey such as the
Calendar -- are not yet available in the 'bird series. We'll still need to
have SeaMonkey maintained until those are all converted over.

But ultimately the 'bird product line will replace SeaMonkey. What you see
now is alpha stuff, and while some people are using Firebird and even in a
few cases Thunderbird as their regular stuff, those are the people who live
on the bleeding edge. You don't have to be ashamed if you prefer to continue
using the SeaMonkey suite for the time being; it's a mature product.

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[BigJimSlade]

I just checked... at least one of your concerns has been fixed. There is a checkbox in Tools->Options->Advanced for keeping the tab bar visible when only one tab is open.

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[cjpez]

I'm running 0.7, and don't have Auto Form Fill on.

Ah, but despite the fact that you've got it turned off, it is very likely that Firebird is *still* recording all of your form input. (Perhaps this has been fixed for 0.7 and just not updated in their Bugzilla, but I doubt it.) Give it a try; turn it on and you should see entries that you've been typing while you've had it off pop up on your screen.

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[thesolo]

Why do I have to set browser.tabs.autoHide to false just to have it keep the tab bar visible all the time like it should be doing by default (don't they understand it's *annoying* to have your whole window shift down whenever you open a new tab?)

Two points here:
1) As of 0.7, you don't have to go to About:Config for that. Go to Tools, Options, Advanced, and turn off "Hide the tab bar when only one website is open."
2) While I also keep the tab bar always showing, saying "it's *annoying*" is only your opinion, not fact. I know several people who want the extra screen space when they only have one tab open, so they keep the tab bar hidden. To each their own, and that's the whole motto of Firebird.

Essentially, it boils down to this: Everyone uses their software differently. What's annoying to you is not annoying to everyone else. This is why Firebird exists; instead of giving everyone the "kitchen-sink" SeaMonkey approach, give them a lean browser, with a good set of default preferences, that the end user can configure however they want.

Finally, Firebird (Especially as of 0.7) is MUCH smaller & faster than SeaMonkey Mozilla builds. It flies on this P3 733 system I'm on, whereas the Mozilla App Suite crawls, and is much less responsive. I can't wait for the day that Firebird fully replaces Mozilla Seamonkey!

P.S. Links to Bugzilla from Slashdot won't work, they have a referrer check set up on there.
P.P.S. I like Automatic Downloading ;)

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[Manes]

What I missed the most was the ability to ctrl+l to get the location bar, write something, then press a arrow key and enter to search on google for what I entered, quite efficient.

I couldn't get the search thingy to work as quick in firebird, all I needed was a hotkey or something.

he;lp

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[cjpez]

2) While I also keep the tab bar always showing, saying "it's *annoying*" is only your opinion, not fact. I know several people who want the extra screen space when they only have one tab open, so they keep the tab bar hidden. To each their own, and that's the whole motto of Firebird.

Well, right, that was basically my point. Mozilla has had an option to toggle that sort of behavior for some time now. Firebird has evidentally only added it in now with their 0.7 release; previously you had to dig around in about:config and know what you were looking for. Hardly a user-friendly approach.

This is why Firebird exists; instead of giving everyone the "kitchen-sink" SeaMonkey approach, give them a lean browser, with a good set of default preferences, that the end user can configure however they want.

See, this is precisely why I love Mozilla, though. Yes, there's a kitchen sink in there, but I've found it to be much more configurable, in the end, than Firebird is. Very rarely do I have to go into about:config. I don't use half the features in Mozilla, and I've got very simple options in the Preferences screen to turn those off. Whenever I try to change Firebird behavior, I have to struggle with about:config and digging around in IRC and on lists just to do what I want.

Links to Bugzilla from Slashdot won't work, they have a referrer check set up on there.

Ah, right, forgot about that...

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[BobGregg]

>>Why do I have to set browser.tabs.autoHide to false just to have it keep the tab bar visible all
>>the time like it should be doing by default (don't they understand it's *annoying* to have your whole
>>window shift down whenever you open a new tab?)

On Firebird v0.7, open your Options menu. Select "Advanced", and under "Browsing", uncheck the first option, "Hide the tab bar when only one website is open". Voila.

Bob

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[cjpez]

On Firebird v0.7, open your Options menu. Select "Advanced", and under "Browsing", uncheck the first option, "Hide the tab bar when only one website is open". Voila.

Yes, yes, yes. :) You are now the third person in this thread to let me know that this feature has been added in 0.7. I will concede that point and ask that others wishing to sway me to Firebird read the rest of the thread before becoming highly redundant.

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[flipdaddy]

Ctrl-K takes you to the search box, which I discovered when I meant to hit Ctrl-L. :-)

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[VargrX]

so sayeth thesolo:

Essentially, it boils down to this: Everyone uses their software differently.

Your absolutely correct.

What's annoying to you is not annoying to everyone else. This is why Firebird exists; instead of giving everyone the "kitchen-sink" SeaMonkey approach,

I'll take the kitchen sink approach, thanks.

give them a lean browser

Lean? Yes. So lean that it's bereft of the majority of the features that endeared Moz to so many people.

, with a good set of default preferences, that the end user can configure however they want.

Good? Not. And not even arguable, really. And oh yeah, the end-user can configure it any way that they like, if they don't mind spending 2 hours or so finding and installing extensions that may or may not work correctly, and then praying that the extensions aren't broken in one form or another.

Finally, Firebird (Especially as of 0.7) is MUCH smaller & faster than SeaMonkey Mozilla builds.

So what? You save what in load time, a possible 2-3 seconds? If someone's that impatient, I suggest that they get a rj45 jack installed in thier head so that they can plug right into the net...

It flies on this P3 733 system I'm on, whereas the Mozilla App Suite crawls, and is much less responsive.

a) see prior comment, and b) this almost sounds like a configuration issue (I have 2 p3733's here, and they are both lightning fast).

I can't wait for the day that Firebird fully replaces Mozilla Seamonkey!

And then there are those of us who value productivity over 'bells and whistles'....

P.P.S. I like Automatic Downloading ;)

Why am I getting the feeling that your a windows user???

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[PzyCrow]

If you are happy with the product you are using. Why spend time/energy beeing unhappy about a product you don't use?

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[cjpez]

Well, some time ago I used Firebird for a few weeks just to see if it *was* better, and eventually I just went back. I was posting in a thread which posed the question, "Why should I switch over to Firebird," and I was providing some reasons why, perhaps, one wouldn't want to. Woo! Discussion!

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[BobGregg]

Argh, I swear I was FR (first-response) when I started typing... :-)

Sorry about that. Anyway, I still appreciated your message, because I was somewhat unpleasantly surprised to discover that with Form Fill off, it is indeed still recording information. After reading the bug, I understand why it's currently that way... but I sure hope that gets changed by 1.0.

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[mysticgoat]

BTW, for us who are too lazy to go find out ourselves, what makes firebird better than mozilla itself? I find mozilla to be quite satisfactory, why would I switch?

I just completed a personal eval of the *birds and Moz, so I can speak to this from a subjective POV.

Ways in which Firebird is better than Moz (imo)

1. It is smaller. It loads faster, takes up less memory. I didn't need to use a quick launch option (not sure if it even has one). It does better at running concurrently with bloatware than Moz does (running concurrently with a word processor with several open documents and an image editor). Small is good.
2. It seems to render faster. I'm frequently doing research on amateur pages such as a hang gliding club or a scuba diving club would have, which means I frequently see good content presented in truly crappy ways. It's surprising how far people can deviate from good HTML and still get a page to display. Firebird handles an abused web page with more panache than Moz.
3. The tabbed browsing is more capable. I could open a bookmark into a new tab with one click. Very nice.
4. It allows direct editing of bookmarks (without having to go to the Bookmark Manager window).
5. The extensions approach let me add just those features I want, and also change or upgrade each one individually.
6. Partly because of #5, toolbar management is a lot simpler.
7. There are a lot of other benefits that others are listing for you so I won't repeat them.

For me, Firebird of itself is a more suitable browser than Moz.

But Firebird does not do mail or newsgroups. Thunderbird is the mail/news reader. I found Thunderbird to be good enough to recommend to most people. It is stable and integrates well with Firebird, seems to have all the basic features, and has all the promises of extensibility. However it is not yet a mature product and shouldn't be used in any mission critical way (and as the archivist for a couple of private mailing lists who has to collect and preserve several megabytes of messages, my mail handler is "mission critical").

Built into Moz is a pretty good web page editor and very good support for javascript development. Also other web development tools that I haven't explored as yet. These are lacking in Firebird, though some of them can be added in extensions, and others will become available.

I'm staying with Moz for now, because of the mail handling. Otherwise I'd make the change.

I expect in two or three years I'll be running Firebird/Thunderbird.

One of the really big long term pluses for all three of these apps is that they are all cross-platform. I can't say whether I'll still be using Windows or have moved to a Mac or Linux system in the next three years. I can say that no matter what OS I'm running, I'll be using Moz or the birds.

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[jrumney]

Finally, Firebird (Especially as of 0.7) is MUCH smaller & faster than SeaMonkey Mozilla builds.

Huh? The full install of Mozilla is 11Mb. Firebird is 7Mb, Thunderbird is 7.5Mb. That doesn't look MUCH smaller to me. And I haven't seen any speed problems with Mozilla since 1.1.

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[rmohr02]

There are many features Mozilla Firebird has that Mozilla doesn't, and there are some Mozilla has that Mozilla Firebird doesn't (I miss my download manager in a separate window). However, the main reason Mozilla is switching to standalone applications is that while the interaction between browser, email client, etc. was nice, there was too much of a price to pay for it: if one crashed it brought the others down, all had to be loaded into memory when starting, etc.

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[wastaz]

You forgot the most important one

"Loads up before you turn 80."

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[thesolo]

The full install of Mozilla is 11Mb. Firebird is 7Mb, Thunderbird is 7.5Mb. That doesn't look MUCH smaller to me.

Full install of Moz for Windows, according to Mozilla.org, is 11.9 MB. Firebird for Windows, also according to Mozilla.org, is 6.0 MB. So, that's about 50% smaller. Especially if you're on dial-up, that *is* MUCH smaller! :)

As for speed differences, try Firebird on a PII or low-end PIII system compared to Mozilla App Suite. Firebird is definitely quicker, and more responsive overall. It also tends to use less RAM on my systems, and does have a faster start time.

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[Anonymous Coward]

You are the biggest loser nerd dork in the history of loser nerd dorks. Eat it.

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[Overly Critical Guy]

For instance, nothing else handles bookmarks as intuitively as FB does.

Opera does it better, hands-down.

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[edwdig]

To each their own, and that's the whole motto of Firebird.

No, that's the motto of the Mozilla suite. Firebird is smaller because they're removing stuff, and making what's there less flexible.

with a good set of default preferences

Good defaults would be like Netscape 7.1 - have the tab bar always showing. Most people would never discover tabs on their own if its hidden. When I've upgraded Netscape for people to a release with tabs, they seem to be "yeah whatever" when I explain tabs. But since the default is for the tab bar to be on, they end up trying them, and soon can't live without the feature.

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[edwdig]

Full install of Moz for Windows, according to Mozilla.org, is 11.9 MB. Firebird for Windows, also according to Mozilla.org, is 6.0 MB. So, that's about 50% smaller. Especially if you're on dial-up, that *is* MUCH smaller! :)

Comparing a full install of Mozilla to a full install of Firebird is stupid. Either strip all the extra stuff out of Mozilla (which will reduce the size by several megabytes at least), or compare Firebird + Thunderbird combined at a minimum.

When Firebird and Thunderbird only require one copy of the Gecko runtime (which makes up the vast majority of the space they take up), then I'll consider them. But for now, using both leads to higher memory and disk space requirements. Considering the goal of the two projects is to great lean products, it defeats the point of using them.

Re:Guess it's not the last release

[juhaz]

Mozilla with Quick Launch enabled loads WAY faster than FB without. Sure, it's somewhat unfair comparison, and hogs up memory, but hey, nobody told them to exclude that from Firebird (yes, I know it can be turned on but it's not in a GUI etc.)

Eolas FYI

[Daath]

Read Mozilla's Eolas announcement!

Re:Eolas FYI

[Anonymous Coward]

That is completely not informative. Zero cheers for the politicians at Mozilla.

Looks don't make a brand

[Max Romantschuk]

The website redesign won't make Mozilla more successful. Advertising is what's needed, plain and simple. How the site looks won't affect people's awareness of Mozilla, advertising will.

Making the site UI more streamlined does make sense though.

Re:Looks don't make a brand

[Chris_Stankowitz]

The website redesign won't make Mozilla more successful. Advertising is what's needed, plain and simple. How the site looks won't affect people's awareness of Mozilla, advertising will.

Making the site UI more streamlined does make sense though.

Its all part of a joint effort. They are not just re-doing the website for shits-&-giggles. Its all an effort to look more "professional" as they offer new services.

Re:Looks don't make a brand

[3Suns]

Um, actually they often do. I still maintain that IE beat out Netscape solely by 1) being persistent and not getting uninstalled, and 2) having a more striking and recognizable icon.

Seriously, back in 1997 or so when IE was trying to overcome Netscape, most people had both browsers installed: Netscape because they were used to it, and IE because it came w/ the OS. People have crowded desktops, and they generally don't much care which browser they use. Which icon is going to stand out more, Netscape w/ it's square, busy, low-contrast "N" logo, or the bold, simple, stylized "e" for IE? Sooner or later people got used to IE, realized they didn't need 2 browsers, and got rid of the easier one to uninstall.

Re:Looks don't make a brand

[Deusy]

The website redesign won't make Mozilla more successful. Advertising is what's needed, plain and simple. How the site looks won't affect people's awareness of Mozilla, advertising will.

In attempting to be blunt, you've oversimplified the situation to the point that what you've said is frankly wide of the mark.

Point 1: A website is an advertisement. (As are all points that lie on the road to regularly using a product.)

Point 2: People, in general, are fickle. Advertising with the old web page would have been a battle.

Granted, a website redesign won't affect awareness. It's not an attempt to affect awareness. Awareness and impressions/usage are two very different things.

Advertising only works well when it holds newfound attention. The successful advertisement will take people straight to the next stop on the advertising chain: Mozilla's homepage. Here applies the age-old saying: First impressions last. The first impression you get is from the website - the point of entry for newcomers.

The old site was hackish. The main selling points from a user perspective were missed and there was no implied incentive to continue on to the download page.

The "midway design" (midway between the old and the new) was better but there was too much information on the one page. Developer information didn't need to be on the front page - developers know where they are going. And you can't describe every Mozilla product succinctly in one page like the "midway design" did.

The new design is an excellent front page. All the important points are immediately made to the reader. It sells Mozilla excellently and will get the attention of the user to a degree that even if their initial trials with Mozilla are unsuccessful they will return to what they perceive as a professionally presented project. With the old page, if it didn't work, it was probably forgotten.

A case in point would be the GNU project. They certainly aren't the most well known of organisations outside of tech circles but it isn't as if they haven't advertised themselves; GNU/Linux. Have you seen their website recently?

Re:Looks don't make a brand

[Anonymous Coward]

"Advertising is what's needed, plain and simple."

Surely you don't imply television/print advertising? Is it not enough that anybody setting up a new PC for someone knows to give them a decent browser?

Re:Looks don't make a brand

[martingunnarsson]

I think a professional looking web site is very important. I really don't like the old (current) web site. The new one has a much more "modern" feeling to it.
A local computer store re-designed their web site a couple of months ago, and I noticed that my whole picture of the company improved a lot. So again, I think a nice web site is very important.

Re:Looks don't make a brand

[Mr Smidge]

I have managed to convince a number of my friends to swtich to using Mozilla or Mozilla Firebird, but I always kept in mind that people are inherently lazy and non-techies often don't really care, so long as something is good enough.

The factor that has convinced them to at least 'try' Firebird has been popup blocking. But I've often found that it is *then* all the other great features (tabs, speed, simple configuration etc.) that make them stay. So go ahead.. when numerous people complain that their computer is slow, suggest it as an alternative.

"You could always use a different internet browser you know. I'll install one that blocks popup adverts and is much faster, if you like. And if you don't like it, I'll get rid of it for you" - 90% of people I've said that to have agreed, and probably a further 90% of them have stuck with it. Let's educate the masses!

Re:Looks don't make a brand

[Max Romantschuk]

In attempting to be blunt, you've oversimplified the situation to the point that what you've said is frankly wide of the mark.

I realize I was somewhat harsh, but making my point in an overly subtle way would have eliminated all the interresting replies ;)

Advertising only works well when it holds newfound attention.

I'm inclined to disagree. Advertising works when it's done right (won't comment on that, no expert on the subject), and there's a market in the first place.

The new design is an excellent front page. All the important points are immediately made to the reader. It sells Mozilla excellently and will get the attention of the user to a degree that even if their initial trials with Mozilla are unsuccessful they will return to what they perceive as a professionally presented project.

An excellent point. I do admit I should have refrased my original comment, since I don't think the site redesign is a bad thing. But I do think that in order to achieve critical mass Mozilla still needs advertising in more ways than one.

Re:Looks don't make a brand

[Rick Zeman]

Sooner or later people got used to IE, realized they didn't need 2 browsers, and got rid of the easier one to uninstall.

Err, don't you mean the one they could uninstall?

Re:Looks don't make a brand

[ThomasXSteel]

I agree the site redesign alone won't make it more successful, but you have to view things in context. Plain and simple, mozilla needs more than a site redesign and advertising to suceed. It needs better PR in general.

IANAPublicist, but I know that mozilla has a serious problem with its brand. There is absolutely nothing cool, new or sexy about it as far as 95% of the population is concerned, if they have even heard of it. Look at Coke and Pepsi. Pepsi's brand and marketing strategy revolves around Pepsi being the younger, cooler, sexier soda, as compared to the old and stodgy Coke.

It may be lame, but it gives Pepsi's brand an identity. Same with Mountain Dew. If mozilla could position itself like this, I think you would see a lot more people using it. Who wants to be old and busted when they could be new hotness?

As it stands right now, mozilla is like RC cola. Unknown and uncared about by most average people. (Sad, because I love using it and sincerely believe it's the best browser available)

It is the off the map of mainstream media. I read a lot of dead tree newspapers and magazines and have never seen a writeup or review of moz.

Any decent PR firm out there would (for a fee, of course) use their contacts to convince a mainstream journalist that mozilla is worth writing about. Any decent publicist would also be doing anything they could to sex up the brand and make it more appealing than stodgy old MSIE.

Sponsor a skateboarding tournament. Get an article in the NY Times. Change the red generi-godzilla logo to something with an attitude. Make an edgy commercial that gets people talking. Do something.

TXS

Re:Looks don't make a brand

[Anonymous Coward]

2) having a more striking and recognizable icon.

Bwahahahahahaha!

Nobody gives a shit about icons and logos and all that crap. IE is the most popular because most users:

1) run windows, where IE is the default browser
2) aren't aware there is an alternative, because they don't need one

The idea that people are aware of the choice of browser and the difference between them but then go for the Microsoft one because of a little blob of pixels in the corner is just breathtaking stupidity. You work in marketing, right?

Re:Looks don't make a brand

[Anonymous Coward]

Well at least, unlike you, he -has- a job.

Re:Looks don't make a brand

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it not enough that anybody setting up a new PC for someone knows to give them a decent browser?

On what fucking planet? Half the tech support calls I get are from people setting up computers, for themselves or for other people, and these guys can't even wipe their own asses without help.

Re:Looks don't make a brand

[Moofie]

...but I still don't like Pepsi. Why did they spend all that money again, getting Britney to shake her tits at me?

Re:Looks don't make a brand

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the "N" icon was quite reconizable. Netscape's decline and fall started when they switched to the Penis-like Communicator icon.

IE Icon -- Big Juicy Tit
Netscape icon -- Penis shooting jizz

Don't think this stuff doesn't occur to marketers.

Re:Looks don't make a brand

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla really needs all the advertising it can get, perhaps IBM can do and ad involving Mozilla?

In the mean time print out Mozilla bumper stickers!

Re:Looks don't make a brand

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think so. IE started beating Netscape when it was bundled. I think if broadband had been common place back then, we wouldn't be in the same boat. When people upgraded their computer to Win 98 or ME later, they didn't want to have to download Netscape (a large download over dialup) too. If it was a quick download, then I don't think it would have been much of a problem.

Basically dialup (especially limited-time dialup accounts that were popular back then) made it such that it just wasn't worth it.

Re:Looks don't make a brand

[flippet]

If you can count me as a normal person just for one moment (I know, sorry) I avoided Netscape and Mozilla for years because out of the box it was just so damn ugly! Huge great dark grey buttons, not a shiny icon to be seen... hideous it was.

Then someone showed me the Pinball theme... and I'm hooked... :)

Phil

Re:Looks don't make a brand

[Enzo1977]

Want to boost advertising and increase public knowledge of the Mozilla Project? Get AOL's new ISP Netscape to bundle a brand new browser with great features for customizing your web experience brought to you by AOL and the Mozilla Foundation (I'm being facetious, we all know Mozilla has been around, but most AOL users looking to migrate don't even know what Mozilla is, so why not sell your new product service as having new software features, add a **gag** AOL themed skin and hey, you've got a new browser). How could Mozilla possibly pass on an opportunity like this? Time to set aside the elitist notion that only 'real power users' are meant to use Mozilla, Firebird, Thunderbird, Phoenix, Flaming Chicken, Roasted Turkey, etc... and force your product down the throat of Joe Consumer by including it with Netscape ISP CDs ala AOL.

Re:Looks don't make a brand

[Wordsmith]

Don't question it. Just enjoy it.

Re:Looks don't make a brand

[Moofie]

I don't like fake tits, either. Maybe it's just me...

Re:I take it there's some incredible features in t

[tfountain]

"...please use a mirror"

None of the mirrors appear to have the new release yet - perhaps they should release them there first? Some of the ones I checked don't even seem to have FB 0.6.1.

The new Firebird site ain't great either, but not quite as bad as the Thunderbird one. Good job the browser makes up for it.

.torrents ?

[Kynde]

anyone?

Re:.torrents ?

[gordlea]

Yeah someone post a torrent please!

Re:.torrents ?

[an_mo]

security? How would you know you have the right file?

Re:.torrents ?

[ElleyKitten]

Guys, firebird is only 6megs big. It's faster to download it directly than to use a torrent.

Re:.torrents ?

[Slack3r78]

Not when the server's so loaded down that it's refusing connections.

Re:.torrents ?

[Anonymous Coward]

And whose fault is that, hmm? :)

Re:.torrents ?

[Anonymous Coward]

oh please, god no.

Re:.torrents ?

[Kynde]

security? How would you know you have the right file?

And you'd have better security by downloading it over http or ftp ???

Geeez, you should really check md5s even non p2p files...

Thurderbird needs a good spell checker

[Tanaka]

I like Thunderbird, but the spell checker is really bad, especially at guessing words. Wish they would use ASpell. What this e-mail client really needs in an inline spell checker.

Re:Thurderbird needs a good spell checker

[nicolas.e]

Aspell is quite good, but works only in english, as it uses language specific hints for guessing words. Ispell would be a better alternative (supposing it is included) as it works with any language. However, its guesses are not that good for badly misspelled words.

Re:Thurderbird needs a good spell checker

[Anonymous Coward]

Inline spell checking is a must IMO for e-mail clients. e-mails are usually short and quickly typed - a recipe for lots of typos!

Also, it's a pain having to have the spell check the quoted text. I don't want to correct the spelling of other peoples work! Thats why I like Evolution in this respect.

Re:Thurderbird needs a good spell checker

[Tanaka]

Evolution is pretty bad at guessing words too in my experience (I'm a bad speller). ASpell and Word are the best spell checkers I have ever used, although I have not seen any open source applications that combine Inline spell checking with Aspell.

Re:Thurderbird needs a good spell checker

[Anonymous Coward]

If an In-Line spell checker is where misspeellt words get underlined in red, then that gets my vote too. And how about a Thesaurus?

Re:Thurderbird needs a good spell checker

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you konw, taht if you jmulbe up the mdlile ltteres of any wrod, kepnieg the fisrt and lsat lttrees itanct, the biarn can sitll raed it wtihuot too mcuh dffifciulty?

Re:Thurderbird needs a good spell checker

[bay43270]

What this e-mail client really needs in an inline spell checker.

The browser needs it too. Having spell checking in forms on OSX is very cool.

Re:Thurderbird needs a good spell checker

[dominator]

Actually, I wish that they would use Enchant, so that they could let the user decide what spellcheckers to work with. This also lets them continue using and distributing MySpell if they so desire, as Enchant's MySpell backend is top-notch.

Also, Enchant has a FreeDesktop.org endorsement, of sorts.

(disclaimer: I wrote Enchant, and thus am biased)

Re:Thurderbird needs a good spell checker

[blonde rser]

although I have not seen any open source applications that combine Inline spell checking with Aspell.

How about gabber?

OHhhhhhh.....

[Universal Nerd]

That explains why the site stopped responding and my downloads fell to 1kb/s.

Thanks slashdot!

google cache of mirrors list

[klocwerk]

http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:_PnqbgP1GpIJ: www.mozilla.org/mirrors.html+&hl=en&ie=UTF -8
or
linky

Re:google cache of mirrors list

[DCowern]

Sadly, that list appears to be extremely out of date. I tried ~10-15 of those sites (including all .com/.net/.org/.edu mirrors) and the most recently updated mirror was several months out of date. :-(

All I want to do is *look* at the contrib tree for Firebird! Is that really too much to ask?? :-)

Mirrors arent't up to date..

[Natal VC]

Does anyone have a mirror for FireBird 0.7 ?

Re:Mirrors arent't up to date..

[Lerxst Pratt]

Yes... well, sort of. I checked the page source for the filename of Firebird 0.7 and stuck it into Google. I got one hit and it downloaded very fast. I hesitate to post the link because it's probably someone's home machine. However, anyone with sufficient skill will be able to duplicate my feat.

Re:Mirrors arent't up to date..

[Natal VC]

Thanks! (115 KB/s) :-)

Re:Mirrors arent't up to date..

[Anonymous Coward]

Hehe very nice - download speeds between 800 and 1500 kb/s ! (for a few seconds only obviously) Cool! Thanks.

Re:Mirrors arent't up to date..

[cetan]

The file is dated Sept. 29th.

Me thinks you have a pre-0.7 build.

Re:Mirrors arent't up to date..

[Lerxst Pratt]

You are correct. Do not use this link if you want to real 0.7 release. The actual execuatable was dated 25 SEP. I found and installed the correct current Firebird 0.7 and am happy as a clam!

Re:Mirrors arent't up to date..

[ant1832]

That worked great...thanks!

Firebird website burned my eyes

[JasonUCF]

Holy shit!

1. I use Firebird almost exclusively.

2. I (heart) 0.7

3. I (heart) everything those developers are after, even if they're naming their projects after cars ( COME ON! NOT A TROLL! )

4. The firebird redesign looks like it was done to appeal to 13 year olds! What the fuck! My eyes bled when I saw that page. My wife, a professional graphic designer, just shook her head and walked away. For such an awesome piece of software, you'd think they'd have a better piece of design on the webpage? Geeez... find a better pro bono designer! Mod me down, fine, but you shouldn't, because I don't want a flame war, I want to know what the fuck they were thinking. Kitsch is nice and all, but, geeeeeeeeeeeeezzzz......

Re:Firebird website burned my eyes

[unother]

MMM, yes....

...I had the same response.

I'll bet somebody decided they could "be a designer", "cos it's easy".

Why couldn't they have just done it in the style of the main homepage--at least it's sleek. This page makes Firebird look like Spyware advertised via Spam.

The "tour" thing...

[ryan_fung]

The "Take a Tour!" link reminds me of some sort of pay sites where you take a tour and get a preview of what you'll get after joining the site. Especially this censored one.

Re:The "tour" thing...

[fuzzix]

Ha ha! The hottest, sweetest young passwords await your hard, massive...
...*cough* Sorry, got a little carried away there.

The new Mozilla does not have MNG support!

[Anonymous Coward]

There is one major regression from Mozilla 1.4 to Mozilla 1.5: the support for the MNG image format has been removed. This means that all those who thought that they could replace the animated GIFs on their pages with the patent-free MNG format will have to go back to GIF or Flash. This also means that JNG, a subset of MNG allowing JPEG-style photgraphic images with full transparency, is broken as well since the release of Mozilla 1.5.

The worst part is how this was handled: support for MNG was dropped because the code was too large and there was no maintainer, but then it was never restored despite impressive reduction of the size of the code and the presence of several active developers.

For details, take a look at Bug 18574. The release of 1.5 without MNG support is a sad day for those who love open image formats.

Re:The new Mozilla does not have MNG support!

[Raphael]

This means that all those who thought that they could replace the animated GIFs on their pages with the patent-free MNG format will have to go back to GIF or Flash.

Note that MS Internet Explorer does not support MNG either, and Mozilla has a small market share in comparison to MSIE. But on the other hand, it is true that the removal of MNG is bad news for those who intended to use it inside their company, if their company uses Mozilla or other browsers derived from it.

I think that is is possible to restore a part of the MNG support by installing an XPI file for Mozilla. This is not a perfect solution because it requires every user to download a separate package for MNG support, but this could be a partial workaround for companies wanting to use MNG in their intranet.

For details, take a look at Bug 18574.

Heh! The links to Mozilla from Slashdot are disabled. So if you want to take a look at this bug, you have to copy this URL and paste it into a separate browser window (or tell your browser or proxy to drop the Referer header, if you can do that):
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18574

Please do not add a new comment to that bug report. Voting for it is probably equally useless, because this bug report has far more bugs than any other bug report in Bugzilla, but still nobody wants to apply the required patches that would revert the removal of MNG support. Instead, spend your votes on related bugs, such as bug #196670 or bug #204520.

Re:The new Mozilla does not have MNG support!

[nakaduct]

The release of 1.5 without MNG support is a sad day for those who love open image formats.

If you're the sort of person who can love an open image formats, every day is a sad day.

Re:The new Mozilla does not have MNG support!

[bartok]

Didn't the LWZ GIF patent expire a few years ago anyways?

Re:The new Mozilla does not have MNG support!

[Glenn R-P]

The LZW compression patent expired in the US in June 2003. In Europe,
Japan, and Canada it runs until next summer. GIF will always be technically inferior though.

Re:The new Mozilla does not have MNG support!

[gmezero]

So will VHS.

Re:The new Mozilla does not have MNG support!

[Anonymous Coward]

You could use MNG on the open 'net with some user_agent code to detect Mozilla with MNG support, and have two different versions, one MNG, one GIF.

It's not that dificult to do, especailly if you're already doing this to support text browsers, older browsers, and etc. On the pages without MNG support, you could also preach to use Mozilla, the same way that many MSIE only developers do *grrr*.

Re:The new Mozilla does not have MNG support!

[Anonymous Coward]

With the LZW patent expired in the U.S., and due to expire next summer in Europe, what's the problem with just using the GIF format? All this MNG whining is ridiculous.

Re:The new Mozilla does not have MNG support!

[Glenn R-P]

>what's the problem with just using the GIF format?

GIF only offers binary transparency and 256 colors. PNG/MNG offers 256
levels of transparency and millions of colors. For a comparison of
PNG and GIF handling of a simple drop shadow, look at
pmt.sf.net/opossum
You probably won't be able to see the JNG images there, but they
are visually indistinguishable from the PNG.

Torrent links?

[stevenbdjr]

Ugh, the main site is swamped, and none of the mirrors have been updated yet.

Anyone have a .torrent link for these?

Re:Torrent links?

[thenightfly42]

Mozilla Firebird 0.7 bittorrent, from the unofficial Mozilla BitTorrent page.

Re:Torrent links?

[thenightfly42]

... that's the Windows version of Firebird 0.7. Sorry I forgot to mention that.

Re:Torrent links?

[spinkham]

Now also has the linux i686 version of firebird, and working on getting linux thunderbird up there also. Go there now, and upload and seed more torrents if you can... Unofficial Mozilla BitTorrent tracker

I'm slightly confused..

[matth]

... Why would Mozilla stop development of the Mozilla series? Are we going to have to use two different things now? (mail/web) or are they going to be integrated?

Re:I'm slightly confused..

[shione]

In the next release Firebird will be renamed Mozilla and have Thunderbird (the mail client) integrated into it.

Re:I'm slightly confused..

[The One KEA]

They aren't stopping development, they're just changing the way they develop Mozilla and all the applications that are related to it. A good link that explains the entire modus operandi of the Mozilla development team is: http://www.mozilla.org/roadmap.html

It explains quite clearly how the Mozilla team are moving away from big, hard-to-maintain monolithic applciaitons suites and towards a modular system of components, like Firebird and Thunderbird, which can be worked on much more easily. It's a very good read, actually.

Re:I'm slightly confused..

[ViolentGreen]

From what I understand Firebird/Thunderbird are goign to be mozilla. Those are just the project names while the current mozilla is still active. I believe the goal is for a Mozilla Suite instead of one do-all app.

Re:I'm slightly confused..

[ocelotbob]

What's going to happen is that the programs are being taken apart so that they're smaller, faster, etc. Work's being done so that the mail component can act as a "plugin" for the browser. Don't have a link handy -- it's 5:40am, and I need to get to bed -- but they're working on that front. A small, quick browser for most people is extremely sexy, especially considering that most people browse more than check email.

Re:I'm slightly confused..

[gvc]

The Mozilla folks have done a very poor job of justifying the change in direction. All I've seen are nerdy discussions about footprints, streamlining, etc. These discussions all assume inside knowledge of the development process.

I'm not saying there aren't valid reasons. Just that they haven't been adequately communicated to the public. And perhaps that the impact on the public has not adequately been assessed. The move causes confusion, which is the last thing Mozilla needs.

As a Mozilla evangelist, I have no message to take to my congregation.

Re:I'm slightly confused..

[archen]

I used to think the same thing until Mozilla 1.4 . Mozilla is generally stable but every now and then when I hit the mail icon mozilla dies. Mozilla also reverted to falling over when you view too many images in stand alone windows. Now I just want two separate apps so that one doesn't take out the other. Getting them to talk to each other should be pretty easy, and I doubt we'd even see much of a difference (aside from UI changes).

Re:I'm slightly confused..

[Asprin]

IIRC,

"Firebird is just a better browser."
- The mozilla roadmap page.



(Apologies if I misquoted - don't have time to look it up now.)

Re:I'm slightly confused..

[gvc]

The roadmap is written for developers, not users. If Mozilla wishes the size of the latter set to exceed that of the former, it had better address that audience.

My {father, sister, acquaintance} will experience fear, uncertainty, and doubt if and when this change appears on their radar. Fortunately, Mozilla advertising is so poor that that won't happen for a while.

The message users need is: there will always be an easy-to-install, easy-to-use, backwards-compatible Mozilla suite.

Users have good reason to fear. The 1.4 Windows installation has a serious problem that if you install it over a 1.3 installation that has any components added to it, it will simply crash on start-up. If you report the problem (which is way beyond the ken of a typical user) you will be met with derision. (cf. http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=195600 )

The bottom line is that the Mozilla community lacks a general empathy for naive users, and that is hurting its adoption.

Re:I'm slightly confused..

[Fnkmaster]

Justification - most people don't like, want or use their web browser for email. Mixing the two up confuses people and dissuades them from using it. The slowness of Mozilla/Netscape made people try it and ditch it very fast, even though the rendering engine, Gecko, is quite fast and accurate.

People want web browsing to be smooth, and seamless, without popups and other annoyances or interruptions, and have their sites "just work" with their browser. People want a browser to browse the web, and that's it. People don't want 80000000 complicated configuration options - they want some isolation from complexity (but complexity should be available for the more sophisticated users, just hidden away a bit). Users want a browser that is aesthetically pleasant by default and doesn't look like some weird ugly ultra-futuristic thing - users DON'T want to have to use skins or themes or download or install stuff to make something look normal, and blend in with their computer.

These basic user responses and demands are the standard under which Mozilla Firebird is better than Mozilla. It doesn't mean it's a better browser for everybody's needs, it just means it's a better browser for most people's needs.

WHAT?

[jabbadabbadoo]

No Taurus yet!?!!?

Re:WHAT?

[jridley]

How about a Colt Vista? Nah, let's hold out for a Gremlin.

Firebird Rocks

[codepunk]

It has been extremely easy to convert the droids at work to Firebird. All I have to do is just get them to run it one time and the deal is sealed. The speed of it is simply amazing, orders of magnitude faster than any other browser in existance. The pop up blocker is killer and just works, etc etc. My only hope is that they keep the speed up instead of bloating it with to many features.

Re:Firebird Rocks

[Gyan]

If the new fancy features are confined as the optional extensions, Firebird will continue to rock.

Re:Firebird Rocks

[Anonymous Coward]

orders of magnitude faster than any other browser in existance

never used Opera I assume?

Re:Firebird Rocks

[Anonymous Coward]

"orders of magnitude faster than any other browser in existence"

Don't be such a zealot. That's not remotely true. Google for 'Dillo' -- may not be as featureful, but slaughters Firebird in terms of speed.

Tip: hyperbole make you look foolish.

Re:Firebird Rocks

[Shardis]

Once in a while... once in a while.

Might be interesting to see some speed comparisons with this new build...

Mirrors!

[GregWebb]

I would gladly use the mirrors, if any of them actually had 1.5 release available...

Oh well. 1.4's running just fine over here anyway.

Reasons for the slowness

[GarfBond]

For those of you wondering why the mozilla servers are swamped all of a sudden, it's because they just recently moved all the servers off of the AOL backbone onto a different host (one of the effects of AOL nixing Netscape), so we're no longer able to get oodles of bandwidth like we used to. Please be understanding while the servers undergo a slashdotting :)

Re:Reasons for the slowness

[blibbleblobble]

"we're no longer able to get oodles of bandwidth like we used to. Please be understanding while the servers undergo a slashdotting :)"

BitTorrent
Konspire
GNUNet

Re:Reasons for the slowness

[mraymer]

for god's sake someone please post a torrent...

Where are all the karma whores when you need them? ;)

Re:Reasons for the slowness

[horza]

Why don't people such as mozilla and mandrake now initially release bittorrents, and then via ftp/http a couple of days later? People will take the path of least resistance, and by initially only making it available as a torrent it will push a lot of people into adopting bittorrent which will benefit both the user (faster downloads) and the developers (lower bandwidth cost).

Phillip.

Re:Reasons for the slowness

[Mayk]

Maybe not needed anymore, but here's another mirror. Go ahead and slashdot it...
link

Re:Reasons for the slowness

[tanveer1979]

Not only that the main page links are broken. The Solaris builds are not existing. There are no files in the contrib directories.

Re:Reasons for the slowness

[Muerte2]

I was thinking the exact same thing. Seems like a no-brainer at this point in the game.

Re:Reasons for the slowness

[scottj]

Check the Unofficial Mozilla BitTorrent Site for torrents for ALL of the new releases! We need seeds!

Re:Reasons for the slowness

[scottj]

Did somebody say whore? ;-)

Torrents are here.

Re:Reasons for the slowness

[scottj]

This is probably the best idea I've read in quite some time WRT bandwidth suckage. I am in total agreement that this would work out very nicely for the bandwidth bills of open source projects. Plus we'd get our downloads faster. :)

Re:Reasons for the slowness

[BZ]

"contrib" means they are contributed by people OTHER than mozilla.org. So they are not existing because no one has built them yet. Are you volunteering?

Re:Reasons for the slowness

[Eil]

I like how the slashdot article prodded people to use the mirrors. The only downfall is that MOST OF THE BLOODY MIRRORS ARE MONTHS TO YEARS BEHIND or simply return some sort of 404 or invalid path error.

After dozens of clicks, I finally found that the French seem to have their stuff together:

http://ftp.oleane.net/pub/mozilla/

Happy Downloading.

Re:Reasons for the slowness

[Joe Tie.]

I don't use mandrake so could be wrong. But didn't they do their latest release a couple days ago, only through bittorrent?

can't find firebird 0.7 on the mirrors

[MoobY]

I've been using firebird for a long time now, and I'm pretty happy with it. I want to start 0.7 now, but none of the mirros is carrying it yet, and ftp.mozilla.org is currently being slashdotted (of course). Anyone know of a mirror carrying firebird 0.7 yet?

Maybe mozilla should start offering bittorrents too during the periods they expect flash crowds.

torrent seed??

[netnichols]

can some put up a seed? mozilla's swamped and none of the mirrors (that i can get on) have the new releases.

So does the website

[Compact Dick]

From the Mozilla home page:

The site has been reorganized and given a face list...

Mirror

[brejc8]

Mirror of firebird linux i686. If I can get the others I'll put them on the site too.

Re:Mirror

[brejc8]

There is also
thunderbird linux i686
and
firebird windows

Re:Mirror

[Lerxst Pratt]

There is a permissions problem with the Windows version.

Re:Mirror

[The One KEA]

Much better! Thanks for mirroring this. Here's to slashdotting your site! ;-)

Re:Mirror

[brejc8]

sorry bout that. fixed now.

Re:Mirror

[Lerxst Pratt]

Tanx

Re:Mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you! I am just trying to leave town and want to get the new release on my folks' windows PC before I leave. They're still on 0.5.

Re:Mirror

[michaeli]

Aye,

Thank you very much for the mirror--greatly appreciated.

Re:Mirror

[cetan]

http://www.phule.net/stuff/MozillaFirebird-0.7-win 32.zip

Here's another mirror for the Win32 build of Firebird 0.7

Re:Mirror

[cetan]

http://www.phule.net/stuff/thunderbird-0.3-win32.z ip

Win32 build of Thunderbird 0.3

It looks like the Mozilla.org ftp servers are starting to recover somewhat. Depending on bandwidth usage, I may have to remove these Win32 files after a day or so.

Re:Mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

150kbps - Thank you!

God...

[mschoolbus]

Ford has got to be pissed!

Re:God...

[Zog The Undeniable]

It could be worse...I hear Edsel 0.1 is in development ;-)

Dunno about 13 year olds, but...

[djeaux]

... I was restoring my 16 yr old daughter's laptop (after a particularly NASTY Kazaa episode) & decided to go with Firebird. In the past, she had told me that she preferred Netscape 7.1 to MSIE anyway, and knowing that Netscape was dead-in-the-water, I asked if she ever used the mail client. When she answered "no", I installed Firebird.

So last night, I ducked into her room & asked which browser she was using. She answered "Firebird ... and it is GOOD"...

I'll have to ask her opinion of the new Firebird homepage, though :-D

Re:Dunno about 13 year olds, but...

[Espectr0]

Can i borrow your daughter to do my file swapping ? ;)

Can't get mouse gesture working with Firebird 0.7

[farnulfo]

Can't get mouse gesture working with Firebird 0.7 :(

Arrrrrg

alt. link for windows firebird 0.7

[klocwerk]

http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail.php3?fid=1032 985422

linky

Re:alt. link for windows firebird 0.7

[Lerxst Pratt]

This "mirror" points back to the already /.ed ftp.mozilla.org.

Re:alt. link for windows firebird 0.7

[martingunnarsson]

Anyone got a mirror of this one? :-)

Re:alt. link for windows firebird 0.7

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a WORKING mirror (not ftp.mozilla.org):

http://wwwuser.gwdg.de/samba/windows/MozillaFirebi rd-0.7-win32.zip

Re:alt. link for windows firebird 0.7

[Brent_DS]

I found another source, at 10-20 kbps:
http://seb.mozdev.org/firebird/

RPMs anyone?

[The One KEA]

Does anyone know when RPMs will surface? I use the Dag-Apt RPMs for 0.6.1, and would like to know if anyone intends to make 0.7 RPMs.

Install instructions for Firebird 0.7?

[MacBrave]

Well I managed to grab the WinXP version of Firebird 0.7 at home before leaving for work this morning. With the recent slashdotting it might be a while before a grab the new version for my work machine.

The 'new' home page for 0.7 is pretty much lacking in useful information. It has no install notes or instructions like with previous builds. I assume I should just delete my old Firebird directory and profile and start new like with older builds, but this is not spelled out anywhere on the new page. Pretty much just an advertisement for people looking to switch from IE.

Re:Install instructions for Firebird 0.7?

[boy_afraid]

Yeah?! How do I keep all my preferences, passwords, themes, bookmarks (that I know, just make a backup copy and then overwrite), cookies, and what not when I upgrade?

What files do I need to make a backup copy of and then overwrite??

Re:Absolutely right, a question though....

[botzi]

I've been using Firebird since the 1/2 and I'm still stuck with Thunderbird 0.1. Absolutely right, that both are pretty good software. I have a question though. I'm running dual boot and on the Linux side Thunderbird loads pretty fast....... With Windows XP however I get a load time of > 15 seconds, this without any exageration. Did anoyone else experienced similar performence differences??? If yes, is ti fixed in 0.2/0.3???
(My machine is a 800mhz Coppermine with 384 Ram.)

Re:Can't get mouse gesture working with Firebird 0

[shione]

You use that? That is one of the first things I disable after installing the program. :)

please mod up for gtk2+xft people

[Ender Ryan]

nt - to avoid the lameness filter, i will type some junk. blah blah blah. please mod the parent up.

free software's great potential...

[alex_ant]

to take 5 years to release something that doesn't totally suck ass

Re:free software's great potential...

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this different than non-free software?

Re:free software's great potential...

[Anonymous Coward]

And what improvements has Microsoft made to IE during those five years?

Here's a hint -- almost none!

How about some RedHat RPMS of recent releases?

[Squeezer]

I'm still using Mozilla 1.4 because thats the latest that has RPMs for redhat. How about a recent release with some RPMs available please?

Re:How about some RedHat RPMS of recent releases?

[The One KEA]

Like I said elsewhere, I use the Dag-Apt Firebird RPMS, which are available for RH7.3, RH8 and RH9. Linkage: http://dag.wieers.com/packages/mozilla-firebird/

Unfortunately they only have 0.6.1 packages at the moment, but I'm sure they'll update to 0.7. I checked the apt repository at FreshRPMS as well and they haven't updated yet either.

Re:How about some RedHat RPMS of recent releases?

[damian]

I am trying to build rpms at the moment, but I think there is a problem with the source tar file.

Others are having problems too: bug 222241

it seems that

[code shady]

the mirrors have not been updated yet. i've been to a few, and the latest release s on all of them is only 1.5rc2, which i'm pretty sure is not actually the 1.5 i want.

anybody know when the mirrors sync up?

Broken

[Anonymous Coward]

Just loops back to ftp.mozilla.org (or at least, it does now)

damages

[Ender Ryan]

I don't know, but I hope it's difficult to claim damages from a non-profit. Of course, they could probably go after AOL/Netscape for starting the Mozilla project.

Personally, I hope Microsoft gets the patent nullified in the appeal. Of course, I'm also hoping that Al-Queda's next target is our patent office :) (yeah yeah, poor taste, I know...)

Re:damages

[AllUsernamesAreGone]

Just persuade Dubya that the patent office houses international terrorists (shouldn't be hard) and it'll be reduced to a pile of faintly radioactive rubble within a week.

Mozilla project is a good pointer

[pirhana]

Mozilla project and Mozilla Firebird especially is a pointer to issues faced by Free softares . Its amazing that still >90% people use IE as their browser, which is technically an inferior product. It shows how difficult it is to penetrate proprietory software market even with a better product. The barrier of entry against Free softwares are formidable. They are not technical mostly. But customer lock-in, incompatibility , patented technologies(e.g plugins) and above all sheer inertia from the user side. Success and future of Free software projects like Mozilla depends on tackling these issues also rather than merely being a "superior product techically". Not that they are doing a bad job. In fact they deserve big salute for the wonderful products they have given and kudos to them. But IMHO these issues are also limiting factors in the success of these projects.

Re:Mozilla project is a good pointer

[Punk Walrus]

*cough*BETAMAX*cough* Sorry... developing an allergy to devious marketing...

Re:Absolutely right, a question though....

[Anonymous Coward]

Something's wrong dude - I've a similar setup to you and Thunderbird loads within a second or two.

echo

[fleppir]

Amazing that Mozilla doesn't put up a seed themselves.

As an aside, how to fix some slashdottings

[ColourlessGreenIdeas]

For sites like mozilla.org, where most of the traffic is people who don't use mirrors downloading big binaries, how about this:

The site is split into 2 with separate servers, ISPs and so on. 1 site has the web pages, information, list of mirrors and other small stuff. The other site has the binaries BUT IS ONLY ACCESSIBLE TO MIRROR SITES.

That way people must use the mirrors, and the mirrors can update even when everyone is trying to download.

Mozilla beta site looks great

[lay]

This is the kind of site that the mozilla folks should focus on: an appealing product site that shows a different image from the "developer-oriented" or "cutting-edge-freak" current website.
This is a great advantage towards public perception of Mozilla as a very good browser. It shows maturity on a project. Congratulations to all the folks at the Mozilla team and thank you for providing us with a serious browser.

Re:Can't get mouse gesture working with Firebird 0

[Lerxst Pratt]

Apparently, you are talking about a completely different browser. Firebird does not have mouse gestures installed by default. Mouse Gestures is an extension that you have to install yourself. You can't disable what you don't have. ;-) Also, mouse gestures are AWESOME! It saves you loads of time if you're a frequent net browser.

Uh. Scrollbars?

[enigmae01]

I am the stupid type that downloads updates without truly reading if anything is changed....but where the heck are the scrollbars? Though adding speed-scrolling is indeed nifty, I'm rather weirded out by no scrollbars. Is it just me?

Re:Uh. Scrollbars?

[Asprin]

Have you changed the theme? I ran into a bug in the prerelease a couple of weeks ago where exactly what you describe would happen when using certain themes (others work fine). Switch it back to the standard theme and restart and see what happens. I think the themes all have to be updated to include proper skinning for the new releases. I also noticed that a few months back the developers implemented a sort of version-control system for themes and extensions that only allows you to see versions compiled for your release of FB on the main download pages. That's probably not an accident.

Re:Uh. Scrollbars?

[shadowmas]

yeah i also ran into the problem some time ago when i used one of there nightly builds. most of the themes havenet been updated to support the new system but luckily u can fix the theme file ur self (u have to do a simple search and replace) check the forums abt it.

Note to self -

[isoga]

Update mirrors before releasing a major new version of product

dave

--tech stuff

MNG plugins are available

[Compact Dick]

While I feel MNG's removal from Mozilla is unjustified, you may restore MNG support with these:

• MNG plugin for Mozilla-based Win32 browsers
  
• MNG plugin for Linux/x86 libc6

Re:MNG plugins are available

[Raphael]

you may restore MNG support with these: [...]

No, these plug-ins will not restore support for MNG in Mozilla. They will only add a different way to include MNG using the EMBED tag. This is different from native support using the standard IMG tag.

Have a look at these two pages, providing support for Mozilla and Firebird:

• MNG XPI for Mozilla (Windows, Linux, MacOS X, Solaris, OS/2)
• MNG Support for FireBird (Windows)

The second page contains a test image using IMG, EMBED and OBJECT. With version 1.4 of Mozilla, I can see all three versions of the animation. With the plug-ins that you are linking to, you will probably not be able see the first one (which is the one that most web designers should be using). I haven't tried Mozilla 1.5 yet and I doubt that I will upgrade because of these MNG problems, but expect that none of the animations will be displayed with 1.5.

With version 1.4 of Mozilla, I can also see all the images on the Opossum demo page, showing how JNG compresses better than GIF and provides a much better quality (full color and true transparency instead of 1-bit "all or nothing" transparency). I can also see various other test cases for MNG without any problems. I suppose that Mozilla 1.5 will fail these tests.

Re:Can't get mouse gesture working with Firebird 0

[Misch]

There was a change to one of the preference panels. You can find a to the bug here.

Hopefully they'll release a version that is more compatiable with 0.7 soon.

Working mirror on UU.net

[Anonymous Coward]

Courtesy of your unwitting friends at UU.net.

ftp://ftp.uu.net/tmp/MozillaFirebird-0.7-win32.zip

Re:Working mirror on UU.net

[pebs]

That UU.net link for Firebird worked. Thanks. Firebird 0.7 is really fast, I'm impressed. It may actually be able to compete with Opera in terms of speed now.

Re:Why Mozilla sucks ass, part IV

[zr-rifle]

>Because I don't live on caffiene, I don't play Quake, I don't read Slashdot, and I hate Linux.

If you don't read slashdot, why are you replying this news?

Will they be intergrated?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm all for making the browser load faster and having the peices be seperate (for those who only want the browser or email), but what if I want all of them? Do we now need to keep track of 4-5 seperate products and hope that different versions of each intergrate well with each other?

I know I'm not the only one who regularly uses *all* of Mozilla's features (meaning browser, mail, address book, composer, and chatzilla) on a regular basis. Will there still be a *bundled* package/suite like there currently is?

If this hasn't already been discussed, *please* bundle the seperate apps (firebird, thunderbird, etc) together in a nice and integrated package called "Mozilla Suite vX.x" (or something similar). There are more people using all of the features than you may think.

Just my $0.02...

-={ PyroGuy }=-
"Everything should be made as simple as possible..., but not simpler" - Albert Einstein

Firebird is too.. modular

[E-Prime]

I've tried Firebird (coming from the regular Mozilla) and while it technically may be the XSOP, it went straight out the door again here.

If you want it to do half the stuff Mozilla does, you have to install a ton of plugins, and none of these seem properly "coordinated" project-wise. So you end up much like with Miranda - tons of functionality, lots of duplicate settings and no grand master-plan as to how things should look or where they should be in the UI.

I mean, the whole concept of tabbed browsing is void if the top right-click menu item isn't "Close Tab".

I just hope they "fix" these useability issues before dropping the good old memory-hog ;)

Re:Firebird is too.. modular

[sh10051]

firebird, an optional java runtime, semi-optional flash plugin and mplayer plugin, what else do you need?

Re:Firebird is too.. modular

[Anonymous Coward]

pdf plugin? That's all I can remember needing and it took me maybe 20 min to find and install all of those.

Re:Firebird is too.. modular

[Artcfox]

Middle clicking on the tab will close it.

On *nix, you must first type about:config in the location bar, and change the setting called middlemouse.contentLoadURL to false, otherwise middle clicking on a tab will trigger loading of a URL that's on the clipboard.

Re:Firebird is too.. modular

[Anonymous Coward]

I would prefer a bit more options built into firebird directly as well, but 95% of what isn't already there that I care about can be achieved with Tabbrowser.

Re:Firebird is too.. modular

[Moofie]

Autoscroll, decent handling of tabs, the Google toolbar, and the ability to use ctrl-mousewheel to change the font size on the site I'm viewing.

I get 3/4. I don't mind installing plugins, but I don't know how to get the last one to work in Firebird, and it's an absolute deal-killer for me.

BitTorrent link for win32 here

[Lev_Arris]

I'm probably going to regret this but I've put a BT tracker, seed and .torrent file online anyway:

http://tcnnet.dyndns.org/do
wnloads/MozillaFire bird-0.7-win32.zip.torrent
MozillaFirebird-0.7-win32.zip.torrent

I only have the win32 version right now, I'll try to put the linux one online once it completes downloading (and post the link as a child to this posting).

Note: My link is very slow (thus the first seeding clients low speed) so it would be nice if you could help seeding if you can.

Re:BitTorrent link for win32 here

[Onanismous Coward]

I've beggun downloading it - not that fast so far but if more people join in that could get interesting.
Thanks dude !

Re:BitTorrent link for win32 here

[Lev_Arris]

Yeah, as I said my link is damn slow and I'm the only seed right now... expect the situation to grow much better as soon as some people finish the first chunks.

Re:BitTorrent link for win32 here

[ComaVN]

Just to make sure there's no sneaky virus/backdoor added by this friendly person, I downloaded the file both through bittorrent and through ftp.mozilla.org, and they're identical so it's safe to download. (Yeah I'm paranoid)

MD5 of MozillaFirebird-0.7-win32.zip: (I don't know why checksums are not provided by Mozilla, but ok)
8c363353b6529f50451091e6bface362

MD5 of torrent file MozillaFirebird-0.7-win32.zip.torrent:
b00ce8083e 1c3731602a94fd5cda24d0

At the moment there are 47 seeds and no leechers, so you should get pretty decent speeds :P

Re:BitTorrent link for win32 here

[hendrix69]

Great idea, thanks. How 'bout seeding the new ThunderBird too?

Re:BitTorrent link for win32 here

[Lev_Arris]

There already is one here but it's not mine so I won't vouch for what file you'll get from there.

Re:BitTorrent link for win32 here

[QuaZar666]

I'm having no problems at all with it. getting around 130Kb/s on it

Re:BitTorrent link for win32 here

[Anonymous Coward]

thanks for the torrent. downloaded it in less than 30 seconds.. was getting over 200kBps.. :)

Re:BitTorrent link for win32 here

[Anonymous Coward]

This torrent was fast! I think I just set a new speed record.

Thanks for doing /. and Mozilla such a wonderful service!

Re:BitTorrent link for win32 here

[Lev_Arris]

Don't thank me, thank all those seeders out there that leave their BT open and sharing the file. (On my measly DSL link you'd still be counting the bytes dripping in.) I just found it frustrating to see how the official FTPs performed (it took me 2 minutes just to get from connected to a state where I could change directory!) and as everybody and their brothers was asking for BT I quickly cobbled that one together. I have to admit, it also makes a nice experiment to see whether my old box running that tracker can support a nice slashdotting. ;)

Oh and for those who like stats: According to mine, the tracker has helped distribute about 6.5GB of yummy Firebird archives (something over 1000 downloads).

I only hope the guys from Mozilla.org will have the foresight to set up torrents for their next releases themselves (avoids the whole 'there might be a trojan in what this person distributes' issue). If any of them read this: feel free to contact me if you need any help in setting this up, I'd gladly assist you.

What about GRE?

[minkwe]

When will it be released as a separate module.
Galeon/Epiphany/Gnome users are waiting for the Gecko Runtime Environment. Currently one needs to install both mozilla and Galeon to use Galeon.

The beta site...

[thesuperjason]

doesn't render correctly in Konq 3.1.4... but maybe that's the idea!

Re:I take it there's some incredible features in t

[Anonymous Coward]

Because bittorrent sucks. I got better downloads with dialup.

Re:I take it there's some incredible features in t

[mcbridematt]

http://gila.mozilla.org/ .

Be nice and don't kill their old Sun based server. I might save them from a visit from SCO :)

I keep both around and here's why.

[davetrainer]

One word. Venkman.

If you've never heard of it, Venkman is the incredibly handy integrated JavaScript debugger bundled with Mozilla. Firebird has become my default browser but there are still times when I need Venkman, and that's why I keep Mozilla around. Firebird makes it available only as an extension, but it's stability is said to be dubious. (This is by no means a knock against Firebird and the decision not to integrate it, that's in line with it's spirit of un-bloatedness) But if that were to change, I would fully agree with you.

You should provide a bittorrent link

[halr9000]

right on the mozilla.org pages. This works VERY well on one of my favorite gaming sites, 3dgamers.com. Go to any demo download page, and the very first link on each one is an automatically-seeded torrent link, provided by 3dgamers' own tracker.

Re:You should provide a bittorrent link

[ElleyKitten]

Bittorrent's only usefull for large files (such as your games =) ). For something as small as Firebird, it would take much longer to download (because of the fact that you have to upload). I love bittorrent for large files that would take hours to download anyways, but I'ld rather just wait for mozilla to come back and then get Firebird .7 than have it take three times as long with bittorrent. =) ~Elley

Re:You should provide a bittorrent link

[Anonymous Coward]

IMHO it doesn't really matter how small the file is (as long as it's larger than the default chunk size of 200k) because it allows you to 'offshore' your bandwidth requirements. Whether you serve a file with a web browser or via BT initially makes no difference, but once people leave their completed downloads shared your link is automatically freed and your server stays available to serve requests.

Re:You should provide a bittorrent link

[emj]

Actually I got 144KB/s when downloading firebird from the torrent posted here, and I can't even connect to the mozilla.org. Now all I need is a good md5sum, because mozilla.org publishes their md5s on the FTP. Most people seem to get 8c363353b6529f50451091e6bface362 which is what I get as well on the bittorrent and the one from the uu.net ppl. Someone has the mozilla.org zip to do a md5 on?

Re:You should provide a bittorrent link

[koreth]

BT is no good for 30K GIFs or the like, but anything over a megabyte is much better off BTed than hosted on some overloaded central server and a set of possibly out-of-date mirrors. I almost always get over 100KB/s on my BT downloads well before they hit the 1MB mark.

Plus, it may well save the Mozilla Foundation some money on bandwidth charges, always a worthwhile thing.

Re:You should provide a bittorrent link

[ElleyKitten]

100kb/s on a Bt? Are you doing something special? It's rare for me to get over 10kb/s. Probably because my uploads are at 30kb/s. Does using the experimental client help? I heard that if you lower your upload speed it drops your download, which for me could easily go to zero, defeating the purpose.... This is why I'm not really fond of BT.

~Elley

(P.S. Yes, I do have DSL, if you were wondering.)

Re:You should provide a bittorrent link

[koreth]

I used to have that problem when I had my firewall misconfigured. If you're behind a firewall make sure it's configured to forward incoming BitTorrent connections to whichever machine you're running the client on. (The BT website has more details.) As soon as I did that my transfer rates shot up nicely.

Re:You should provide a bittorrent link

[Joe Tie.]

For what it's worth, on any torrent on slashdot I usually get at least 100kbs as well - both on the old and the experimental client. With no special configuration or tweaking on either.

Re:You should provide a bittorrent link

[_LFTL_]

Your upload is choking off your download. I know the BT docs I've read said that it detects this and will prevent it, but in my experience if you cap your upload your download will improve dramatically. LFTL

Tech Support

[vwjeff]

I understand that some people may need tech support but $39.95!?!?!?!
There are many free discussion boards out there.

Advertising

[Enrique G]

I've been a fan (somewhat forced!) of Mozilla since I changed to a Linux user. And when it became a Good Choice (~1.0), I recommended it to my Windows friends and family. My girlfriend evn uses it on a Win98 box and loves it. Once you go tabbed you never....wait that doesn't work. The popup blocking is great, too.
However the last couple releases of the Firebird browser have dissapointed me, not in functionality or stability, but in advertising. Amzaon.com no less.

Can anyone explain to me why Firebird opens to an advertising page?

And no, this has NOT stopped me from using Firebird. It's still wicked pissa.

Re:Advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

my only peeve with Firebird/Phoenix is it does not have the ability to forbid/stop/prevent animated gif images from animating like Mozilla does...

It has to be asked... (ESC key)

[Greg W.]

When, oh when, oh when will we be able to stop animations by pressing ESC? Netscape 3.x and 4.x used to be able to do it. Debian's mozilla packages can do it(!). But upstream Mozilla can't, and Firebird can't -- not even Debian's firebird.

I don't want to turn off animations forever. I don't want to set "loop once" -- because I load pages in the background, then don't look at them until 5 minutes, or 3 hours, later. I just want to have animated images do their animations until I tell them to stop.

Why is this so much to ask?

(My apologies if this feature is finally in mozilla 1.5 and/or firebird 0.7. I can't get them yet, for obvious reasons.)

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; HP-UX 9000/785; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030707

(Why doesn't that have the OS version in it? This is HP-UX 10.20, not 11.x. Yes, I know, it's past end of life....)

Re:It has to be asked... (ESC key)

[lukket]

"Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; HP-UX 9000/785; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030707"

You need to analyze it properly:
X11 means you're using the X11 window manager (X Window)
U stands for Unix
HP-UX 9000/785 means that you probably have a HP 9000 with OS build 785. Build 785 happens to be v 10.20
en-US means your language is English and that you are located in the US
rv is the revision of Mozilla (1.4 in your case)

It's actually the same on Windows. Windows XP is written as Windows NT 5.1 for example.

Re:It has to be asked... (ESC key)

[Anthracks]

I can't give you a rationale for it, not being a developer, but it looks like the "bug" (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19533 ) will not be fixed.

Re:It has to be asked... (ESC key)

[eyeye]

I miss that too.
It should stop any playing flash animations too :-)

Not that my (0.6x)FB can play flash, apparently some bug but it has its plus points too :-D

Re:It has to be asked... (ESC key)

[Greg W.]

HP-UX 9000/785 means that you probably have a HP 9000 with OS build 785.

Nope, sorry. 9000/785 is the hardware model number. Here's the whole "uname -a" output:

HP-UX imadev B.10.20 A 9000/785 2008897791 two-user license

And here's "uname -sr":

HP-UX B.10.20

... and there are still no HP-UX builds of mozilla 1.5 or firebird 0.7. :(

LOL

[mu-sly]

It's slower than IE, and doesn't display some sites correctly. That makes it worse than IE. Period.

Mod parent up: +5 funny

What planet are you on?

Thunderbird 0.3 ebuild here

[adrianbaugh]

I've made an ebuild for the other gentoo users out there. Yownload from the link above.

Re:Thunderbird 0.3 ebuild here

[adrianbaugh]

Or even download it, if you wish :-) Typos restricted to slashdot, the ebuild is building on my machine as we speak.

Re:Thunderbird 0.3 ebuild here

[adrianbaugh]

Hmm, while I'm happily replying to myself here I made a fairly pleasant icon for Thunderbird. At 64x64 it's designed for my WindowMaker dock but should work for other uses.

Re:Thunderbird 0.3 ebuild here

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice icon, thanks for the link!

Sooooo.....

[Snaller]

Does it MSIE javascript without breaking? Do they use a nonbloatware installer which only installs the application and not a load of other junk files which are only used by the installer? Have the made it so one can choose to have the config files in the install directory and not be forced to have them stuffed in the windows directory?

Re:Sooooo.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it MSIE javascript without breaking?

what the fucking fuck are you fucking talking about

Re:Sooooo.....

[rmohr02]

Run Mozilla with the -profilemanager switch and you can choose where to put settings for a new profile.

As for "MSIE javascript", Mozilla will attempt to run JavaScript as long as it is clear what the developer intends. The most common example is that you must use "getElementById(element)" instead of merely "element" in JavaScript in Mozilla. This is because if you just use "element", Mozilla doesn't know if you mean ID "element", class "element", or name "element".

There are many discussions like this on netscape.public.mozilla.wishlist.

They'll still be developed

[Anthracks]

Composer I know for a fact will still be developed, as outlined in this MozillaZine article. One of the primary authors, Daniel Glazman, has been hired by the Lindows company (seriously) to maintain it and he plans to check the code into the Mozilla CVS. It will be a standalone application like Firebird and Thunderbird, eventually using the shared Gecko backend that's in the works.

As for ChatZilla, it's available as an extension for Firebird, and I've heard talk of making a standalone app version too, although I can't find a link to back it up. But the point is, the developers of these projects haven't randomly abandoned them, they'll still be here in the post-SeaMonkey world. Or as another poster said, you can always just run SeaMonkey, although I happen to prefer the birds.

*embarassed*

[shione]

woops. you're right. I went from Netscape 7.01 to 7.02 and then to 7.2 just recently. But I also have Firebird installed on the computer.
What 'commands' do you do most with mouse gestures? I use alt and the arrow keys to navigate when I don't want to use the buttons. ctrl S to save, ctrl b for bookmarks, ctrl n for a new window. I think thats all that I use.

Re:*embarassed*

[skiflyer]

To the original poster... I used the all in one gestures package and had no problem on a clean install either... might want to try again.

To the parent, I use the previous/next tab mouse gestures, I use the scroll to bottom of page gestures, and I use the rocker navigation often.

Personally I either have both hands on the keyboard, or neither, so I love having the ability to use shortcuts for either setting.

For anyone on Windows...

[DCowern]

Linkage for (as of now) un-Slashdotted Firebird 0.7 Installers...

http://seb.mozdev.org/firebird/

Effect of the Mozilla independance?

[An Anonymous Hero]

I hope nobody will get this wrong, but I'd like to know if anyone has measured the effect of Netscape largely pulling out of the Mozilla project.

It was always my impression that netscape.com people provided a major part (if by no means all) of the code committed to the tree. Several of them personally fixed bugs that I reported. You had the feeling that they were tending to the house. To what extent are they, or others, now filling this role?

Having not been involved in bugzilla as much as I used to, it's hard for me to evaluate how the situation has been affected. I understand that all of them who remain at AOL (how many before/after?) are officially on other projects now. Is there any way one can measure the effect on bugzilla activity?

Re:Palestinian terrorists

[Deusy]

Ugh, 2 words for you: Issues, Perspective.

Deal with them and get some.

Or it could be because you don't have any mirrors

[SuperBanana]

For those of you wondering why the mozilla servers are swamped all of a sudden, it's because they just recently moved all the servers off of the AOL backbone onto a different host (one of the effects of AOL nixing Netscape), so we're no longer able to get oodles of bandwidth like we used to.

Perhaps another reason is that none of your US mirrors have the current releases, and several US mirrors don't even work period- one or two are broken URLs. Several of the mirrors don't even have the release candidates for 1.5,which shows them to be MONTHS out of date. Why didn't someone check this before the release?

Also, would it have killed you to do a BitTorrent, or make md5 sums available so that if someone else puts up a BT, we can check our downloads? I would have left open the torrent for a considerable amount of time to support the project.

Firebirds slow,IEs slow..Opera kicks their asses

[Anonymous Coward]

and its only a 3mb not like that "lite" bloated shit firebird.But you OSS cheapos wouldnt pay for better software in a lifetime...

Mozilla discouvers the benefits of white space

[RoLi]

Once upon a time, webpages were using the entire window, but who would want that if you can instead show columns of 800-pixel wide contents bordered by seas of white?

Re:Absolutely right, a question though....

[Decaffeinated Jedi]

I had similar problems with earlier releases of Thunderbird on my P3/500 with 128MB of RAM and Windows 98SE (yeah, yeah... laugh it up). Starting somewhere around the version .3 release candidates, however, Thunderbird's performance made a huge leap forward on my system. I don't know what they changed, but it seems to have done the trick. The program now loads and processes its tasks noticeably faster.

Your mileage may vary, but it's worth a shot upgrading.

"redesigned" web site

[Pope Raymond Lama]

And like more sites than I care to count, they do set the background color to White, and DO NOT set the foreground color to BLACK.

When you use custom colors to navigate (like me who likes yellow over dark blue), you get a clear color over a white background.

I hope they change it when I give them feedback on it. Most commercial sites simply ignore the issue.

Also the digest file, which I forgot

[adrianbaugh]

The digest file can be found here.

Hes talking about Opera fuckwad..

[Anonymous Coward]

and what he says is true BTW...whats with the 12mb d/l??

Re:Hes talking about Opera fuckwad..

[Anonymous Coward]

just because one non-oss is small doesn't mean all is, dickless. so so fucking what if opera is small.
Does it render pages as quickly as firebird? no
is it as customizable? no

Re:Hes talking about Opera fuckwad..

[Anonymous Coward]

-Does it render pages as quickly as firebird? Faster
is it as customizable? maybe not...

Ill use fb when it has half the features of opera.Crash recovery anyone? Specially with FB crashing on every little flash animation....

I for one hope the keep the Mozilla suite

[StressGuy]

Nothing against Firebird and Thunderbird, but I actually use Mozilla at work instead of Outlook/Explorer. I've even used chatzilla to go into a #python chat room when I've had a programming questions as I've been working on my pet aircraft fatigue analysis program (of course, I've also use zenirc from withing Xemacs for the same purpose). I think it would be neat to see Mozilla develop into a competitor for those programs.

I just hope I can still get the calandar add-on for the new version.

Re:I for one hope the keep the Mozilla suite

[cortez]

I assume/hope that they will make extensions available for these features...

Agree

[twocents]

While the benefits are not always immediately tangible, a good, clean design makes a better impression. It does take a bit more time, I know because I'm as guilty of sometime just throwing things up on the Web as well, but it's tough to think much of a product if you are new to the product and the Web site is terrible.

And the site certainly doesn't need to be fancy, just clean and informative.

I've been doing some work with ImageMagick of late, and I love the power this set of tools provides. I actually worked with the tools well before ever visiting the main Web site. To my surprise the site, while easy to navigate, is very stark and unimpressive compared to the tool-set. This is not a bash at all, but simply what I consider to be an example of a site that doesn't shine nearly as brightly as the product.

A contrast to the above is the Open Source project Gallery's Web site. This site is visually stimulating, which is great considering the product is a visually oriented product.

There are so many sites that have little or no content that keep piling on the Flash, piling on the glitz, so it's nice to see sites, such as the new Mozilla site, that offer something useful and look good.

Here's to presentation that equals the content.

Note: parent is Firebird only

[Lev_Arris]

I'm unable to get Mozilla 1.5 or even Thunderbird right now. Sorry, I know I should have put it into the subject right away. :/

help!

[mraymer]

too many new releases... i think i am OD'ing on mozilla, i see pretty colors and hear voices help...

just lemme install one more build, man... just one more and i'll quit, i swear. *twitch, fidget*

Is there such a thing as Mozilla Rehab?

I'm certain...

[Anonymous Coward]

If your wife volunteered; no-one would object.

Doesn't look like it

[Anthracks]

Extensions are actually supposed to give you the choice of whether to install to your profile (which is in your home directory, and obviously writable) or to the app dir. Many don't however, so this bug is still relevant unfortunately. If you want to follow its progress, the url is http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=204049 (bugzilla doesn't allow direct links from Slashdot). Cast a vote for the bug!

"Lean"??

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera is only a 3mb d/l..not this 6mb monster.AND the windows version is smaller...the linux version is 9mb hahaha...hows that for irony.
Opera kicks every browsers collective asses.But you OSS cheapskates wouldnt pay for better software in a lifetime

Re:"Lean"??

[Anonymous Coward]

that's the point - they don't

Re:"Lean"??

[angle_mark]

I'm guessing I'll rub some here the wrong way and I don't want to go agreeing with a troll but I hate to say it.. I agree with a point the parent makes. Opera is a leaner download. Its also a lot faster. Yes its not free, but its well worth paying for.

I used to use Mozilla Firebird a lot. Thats until I installed opera. Tonight I just downloaded Firebird 0.7 to give it a whirl and its simply still not as quick. Nowhere near in fact. In Opera I can do pretty much anything in as much time as it takes to think of it. This is due to the interface being of a damned clever design coupled with the program just generally being lightning fast.

Eg. want to check mail? Easy hit F4 and your new mail is there staring in you in the face before you know it. Opera's intergrated M2 mail client rules. Works very well with newsgroups too.

Want to open a new blank tab? Hold down right mouse button and slide down. There new window open.

Zoom a page? (both images and text) hold down control and scroll mouse wheel.

Also it has the Google search bar etc. I added the mouse gestures stuff to Firebird to try it out but like I said earler it just doesn't feel anywhere near as snappy nor as intuitive in general use. Also Firebird's 9 meg file is a pretty large download for a "lean" browser although I can understand the reasons why. Its also dissapointing that the Firebird page doesn't have a nice easily accessible XFT enabled build available. I hate those clunky X fonts. Don't get me wrong, Firebird is great and I hope it keeps getting better and better, it is by far the 2nd best browser. However a little bit of critisicm never hurt anybody.

Re:"Lean"??

[bhtooefr]

I'll have to agree, too. Opera might not be free, but it's REALLY nice. However, I've never liked M2, and I'm using Mozilla Thunderbird. It's spam protection is adaptive (Bayesian), and not solely rules-based, like Eudora's (I do prefer the Eudora UI, though).

Re:I take it there's some incredible features in t

[Anonymous Coward]

No relation to Darl I hope....

Torrent for the Mac OS X version

[McDutchie]

Here ya go. If needed, get BitTorrent for Mac OS X first. Enjoy!

Re:Or it could be because you don't have any mirro

[an_mo]

Why don't YOU do it? I trust you.

.torrent for Firebird linux

[Lev_Arris]

MozillaFirebird-0.7-i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.gz.torre nt

Same notes than for the win32 post apply. Good luck downloading.

Re:.torrent for Firebird linux

[oohp]

I got it but it's seems incomplete. I think the seed is a broken download.

Re:.torrent for Firebird linux

[Lev_Arris]

Arg... well I better pull the plug on that one then.

Release notes?

[Photon Ghoul]

Where are the release notes for Firebird? Where are they for Thunderbird? All that I see are outdated release notes for previous versions.

Anyon have a link or mind copy-pasting the notes here?

Re:Release notes?

[redtail1]

Thunderbird 0.3 release notes: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/releas e-notes.html Still can't find Firebird 0.7 release notes.

Re:Release notes?

[redtail1]

Sorry, I'll try that again. Now with formatting!

Thunderbird 0.3 release notes.

Re:Release notes?

[Photon Ghoul]

Thanks a lot. Odd how there are no release notes that I can see for Firebird 0.7. Guess someone was too busy on the new FB website....

Reason why my SO switched

[palad1]

Because she got _so_ tired of having her browser hanging while the mail client chocked on an imap problem.

She switched to thunderbird + firebird, separate processes, no more browser freezes.

me?
uh, fb+tb but that's because I'm l33t ;)

Help for former IE users!

[zero0w]

For Mozilla 1.5, there is a new section in the Help Menu: For Internet Explorer Users, which will guide former IE users to navigate thru in Mozilla. IE users should find it useful.

Yes, that's fixed

[Anthracks]

There was an oversight in early builds and, on Windows only, certain optimization flags weren't getting sent to the compiler. That version was much, much slower than Linux and Mac builds as a result. It's been at least a month since that was fixed though, and I encourage you to try the new build as it's really an incredible improvement over 0.1.

Re:Yes, that's fixed

[botzi]

Thank you for the feedback. I'm downloading tha latest build at the moment.

Check out the new about:mozilla string.

[abalacha]

Now it reads

And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced. But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird. The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire and thunder upon them. For the beast had been reborn with its strength renewed, and the followers of Mammon cowered in horror.

from The Book of Mozilla, 7:15

Rejoice and download the Firebird.

Re:Check out the new about:mozilla string.

[abalacha]

There is no 'Book of Mozilla' in the real world.

See this thread for some more details. Also, google is your friend.

-10 absolutely not fuckin funny.Nerd humour.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes...Idiot

Default Mouse Gestures

[Lerxst Pratt]

That's OK on the Netscape/Firebird slip-up. As for gesturing, I mainly use the equivalent of backwards/forwards navigation. I used to use the alt+arrows extensively as you do. There are also mouse gesture equivalents for everything else you mention, although the bookmark one is fairly complex. Here's a link to all of the default supported gestures. As an aside, I've noticed that you can open fresh blank tabs, by clicking and moving up without dragging over any links. Have fun!

Re:Sucks ass AND BLOATED!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm, actually I switched from Opera to Mozilla before switching from the suite to Firebird. I think all three of them are great browsers, but why pay for a product when there is a free alternative that you like just as well?

where's the SVG ?

[monkeyboy87]

when is the SVG support going to improve? seems that since KDE/Konquerer is moving ahead rapidly with SVG that mozilla should be able to "inherit" the advances made by the KDE's svg team. Is this a licensing or "NIH" (not invented here) problem?

Re:where's the SVG ?

[m00by]

I think it's an issue of kde/konq is not based on mozilla, thus, the benefits of their labour do not make it into mozilla stuff. IIRC they use the khtml rendering engine. but I agree...I want SVG support =D

Re:where's the SVG ?

[i_r_sensitive]

There are two builds so marked, one with XFT as well, the other built by gcc-2.95. Check the actual downloads page: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firebird/download/

Re:where's the SVG ?

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

Any idea why this:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firebird/releases/0.7/M ozillaFirebird-0.7-i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.gz
is 9.2MB

and this:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firebird/releases/0.7/c ontrib/MozillaFirebird-0.7-i686-pc-linux-gnu-ctl-s vg-xft.tar.gz
is 8.9MB?

(note I've not actually tried downloading these - I'm just going on what the web site says about the download sizes)

Re:where's the SVG ?

[monkeyboy87]

>but I agree...I want SVG support =D i think that in a year or so SVG will blur the distinction between standalone app and web application

Re:where's the SVG ?

[i_r_sensitive]

I'd cautiously speculate that maybe they did some optimizations, ripping out unnecessary fluff and such, but IANMD...

Now, this sucks big time!

[rokka]

Yesterday just after I made a complete reinstall of Mandrake9.1, guess what? Yeah that's right: Mandrake9.2 is out! And now, just when I finished installing Mozilla, firebird and thunderbird, guess what? New releases! Gaahaa... I hate computers. I hate the open source community. You can all goto Redmond.

mod this bittorrent link up!

[RebornData]

see parent- it's at 1, should be 5, given all those asking for a torrent in this thread.

Links swapped around?

[caluml]

Did anyone else notice the links on http://www.mozilla.org/website-beta/ ?

download:
Windows (http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firebird/releases/0.7/ MozillaFirebird-0.7-i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.gz)
Linux (http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firebird/releases/0.7/ MozillaFirebird-0.7-win32.zip)
Mac OS X (http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firebird/releases/0.7/ MozillaFirebird-0.7-mac.dmg.gz)

I think there will be a lot of confused Windows users soon, wondering where the setup.exe is once they've unpacked it.

Re:Can't get mouse gesture working with Firebird 0

[Lerxst Pratt]

I just did a fresh install of Firebird 0.7 into its own directory (not over top of the previous installation), then installed the Mouse Gesture Extension. It works beautifully.

Torrent for the Linux i686 version

[McDutchie]

I just managed to get the Linux version as well, here is the torrent. Enjoy! (get BitTorrent first if needed)

Regarding Opera...

[StressGuy]

I like Opera and would definately consider giving it another try. It's only weakpoint seems to be that it has trouble with Java applets (often crashes it). Were it not for that, it could have very easily become my default browser. Although, the built-in Bayesian filter that comes with Mozilla is very nice.

As far as cost, I had no issues with using the "Adware" version of Opera. The ads were both visible and out of the way. I've even clicked through these ads when I've seen something I was looking for. Had this same add been presented as a "pop-up", I would have closed it immediately with looking at it (assuming I had pop-ups enabled in the first place). IOW - I don't mind non-intrusive ads.

No install program

[ElleyKitten]

At least with 0.6 (in Windows), it doesn't have an installer. You unzip it to the folder you want (any folder), then you click on the MozillaFirebird.exe and it opens. No bloatware or any junk. =)

Does it MSIE javascript without breaking?

I wasn't aware that "MSIE" was a verb now :D
It hasn't for me, but I don't go to javascript pages enough to know definativly.

Re:No install program

[Snaller]

At least with 0.6 (in Windows), it doesn't have an installer. You unzip it to the folder you want (any folder), then you click on the MozillaFirebird.exe and it opens. No bloatware or any junk. =)

Really? That's funny, i could have sworn last time i tried, it did use such an installer (like Microsofts installer or installshield)

Re:No install program

[ElleyKitten]

I think Mozilla has an installer, but firebird doesn't. =)

~Elley

Re:No install program

[Snaller]

Perhaps that is what i misremember :)

What mozilla/fb needs...

[tit0.c]

The only reason I havent moved away from Opera is because of the very convenient windows save feature.Handy in case of a crash or simply to stop browsing and resume at a later time at the exact same sites you left off...

The real reason for non techies...

[doublem]

Loading Mozilla loads a Web Browser and Mail client. This consumes time, memory and other resources.

Splitting the applications has many advantages:

Users who just want the web browser will be able to have a smaller download and faster load time.

It will be easier to maintain two separate programs that share a few components than it is to maintain one massive program that does several things.

The act of having two programs that share a few hunks of code (Such as the HTML rendering engine) will result in the shared code being in a state where it's easier to embed in other applications. This may not be intention, but it's a hard to avoid consequence.

People who just want the web browser have been complaining about having to "waste" time, resources and CPU cycles on a mail client they never use, but is still loaded in the background. (And even some of the biggest fans of the mail client admit the browser only users have a point.)

It's a chance to streamline and improve the code.

Both applications can be made faster as individual programs than as a single entity.

The biggest reason is that it gives users more choice.

There are other reasons as well, but the bottom line is there were a lot of reasons to make the change, and not many reasons to hold back.

Mod This Up - Valid Link!!

[EchoMirage]

Mod parent up now - first valid Windows Firebird 0.7 link yet today. ftp.mozilla.org is totally thrashed.

Mirrors?

[Bobman1235]

Does anyone have any mirrors that would include the *bird downloads? All of the mirrors I see only have the regular Mozilla downloads. Unless I can't navigate correctly..... in which case help with that problem would also be appreciated.

Serves them right

[NeoSkandranon]

Those dang mozilla fools for being forced to a lower bandwith server. Let's slashdot the hell out of them then! And Mozillazine too!

Re:Serves them right

[NeoSkandranon]

Flamebait my ass

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=22 77 12#227712

Methinks they don't like the attention.

Re:I take it there's some incredible features in t

[JediTrainer]

I was able to get it from ftp.mozilla.org. The trouble is the link on the releases page sends you to their web server with an http:// link. Hit them on ftp://ftp.mozilla.org and you should be able to download the new release just fine.

Can we get a -1, Troll mod here?

[Anthracks]

I have no idea why I'm bothering to reply to this, but here goes:

• No, it does not run non-standard MSIE-only JavaScript. That's their choice, to support web standards over arbitrary monopolies.
• I don't even know what you mean by a bloatware installer. But Mozilla still uses an improved version of the same one it always has, which leaves exactly zero "junk files which are only used by the installer" as far as I have ever seen.
• It puts them in your user profile directory for a reason...since it also runs on, gasp, OS's other than older versions of Windows, it needs to be multi-user friendly. This also lets you delete older versions without losing your settings and extensions. Why is this bad exactly?

Re:Can we get a -1, Troll mod here?

[hkmwbz]

"No, it does not run non-standard MSIE-only JavaScript."

Yes it does. Example: innerHTML, which is a non-standard MSIE extension. Well, it is a DOM extensions, but I am sure you get the point.

Firebird Themes (or lack of...)

[fakeplastic]

So I install Firebird 0.7 - but my themes are all gone. So I visit http://texturizer.net/firebird/themes/ and the selection is poor. I reinstall 0.6.1 and my themes reappear and http://texturizer.net/firebird/themes/ has all my faves...

I assume that something crucial about theming changed in 0.7 and I'll have to wait for the old themes to get ported? I actually use the Luna Blue theme (gasp!) which is far superior to the default Firebird theme.

Comments? What has changed?

Re:Firebird Themes (or lack of...)

[eyeye]

Yes the theme format changed recently. I wasn't happy either since I also use luna blue.
Apparently it was going to be fixed for the 0.7 release so any day now hopefully.

qute sux :-(

Re:Or it could be because you don't have any mirro

[jmcmurry]

From ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mozilla/rele ases/mozilla1.5/MD5SUMS:

1f025ea6acd1cf3b5a6b6e9f41acb5da ./mozilla-win32-1.5-installer.exe
05c7e551d630c85 2274835e00cec4b8f ./gecko-sdk-win32-1.5.zip
0a1447d0c4ff99a39d4a07e 65b5f544f ./src/mozilla-source-1.5.tar.bz2
a0a3d54278a37655 f3eb0ecf14ffab2e ./src/mozilla-source-1.5.tar.gz
205ad05d4ff432665 e9b0678c260a2c1 ./mozilla-win32-1.5-stub-installer.exe
165789ba0a e122cb11ecc3c536110549 ./gecko-sdk-i686-pc-linux-gnu-1.5.tar.gz
3b155ada 068771bb8984dfdf09aa3351 ./mozilla-i686-pc-linux-gnu-1.5-sea.tar.gz
624d30 3f7dab498bd07541c371da06ae ./mozilla-i686-pc-linux-gnu-1.5.tar.gz
cec2d6fdf4 69c8735c305b67f2e257ca ./mozilla-mac-MachO-1.5.dmg.gz
6a07c48d29a483dd54 095e5354d7ebdd ./README
aed838a1f643fc4a9db98e0fafbe215e ./mozilla-win32-1.5.zip
9def1a2318df77f0be6508f16 b775b38 ./mozilla-win32-1.5-talkback.zip
6f3104840e177c0a 6af6e4a3f1488471 ./linux-xpi/browser.xpi
8ef0e87fe6a2b6aef56713efe 71763d4 ./linux-xpi/chatzilla.xpi
ea12fe4ac6096fe5c44c0ea ed74897db ./linux-xpi/deflenus.xpi
3d2319dc7f9806b86e92d8eb 436aaefe ./linux-xpi/inspector.xpi
f91a7cf743fbd27ec0b42d1 e6c4568b2 ./linux-xpi/langenus.xpi
81989b57d13d14df3379c301 a9b65a4a ./linux-xpi/mail.xpi
ba5d124a7d5b891aa146d16a064c 7b4a ./linux-xpi/psm.xpi
27dcbcca8a079cb41d0ac5e9bcda8 99a ./linux-xpi/regus.xpi
5c2002c731ed084153a0b09e14c 5cf4f ./linux-xpi/spellcheck.xpi
caa1b36a146a7d22fb7dc8 d8429e1fe5 ./linux-xpi/talkback.xpi
00477fd8968eefbe850bf56a 7f1d824a ./linux-xpi/venkman.xpi
45dde70e3a185f73bbd91257d 549189c ./linux-xpi/xpcom.xpi
4c649d8a26671e7ff7a2754aae3 91de4 ./windows-xpi/browser.xpi
08ec47aeb603168e78d467d 81419acf2 ./windows-xpi/chatzilla.xpi
232734ec06bc823ae04aa b8e72c41fc1 ./windows-xpi/deflenus.xpi
63a58d685dbd2fbb9618b9 c4bedf5827 ./windows-xpi/gre-win32-installer.zip
c906c3c44e6 f4b9ff70b4218881fc360 ./windows-xpi/inspector.xpi
64406c547f2457907844f ca14c42b09a ./windows-xpi/langenus.xpi
648ba5ee5d647dbb4b90db 4c034b78ba ./windows-xpi/mail.xpi
6adc29214c0fbda7c6096c06f3 618441 ./windows-xpi/mozillauninstall.zip
564c9cd73d4f7b 0310a7042b86949fa3 ./windows-xpi/regus.xpi
76a131b78ce079696ae2952fc ea70d24 ./windows-xpi/spellcheck.xpi
0ea8d3a91ac6702454fc 283d0c22ff0a ./windows-xpi/talkback.xpi
fcf62136a6cbe766cfbf89 b3b3340aed ./windows-xpi/venkman.xpi
caf7a3127b93048a53a1379 81fdc0446 ./windows-xpi/xpcom.xpi
27c3338b2456c32f3e892c7ba 9f20d74 ./mozilla-i686-pc-linux-gnu-1.5-installer.tar.gz

(BTW, Slashdot's "Code" formatting option eats characters, at least in the above text, so it's just "Plain Old Text". Boo.)

Good job

[jd142]

A great job on Firebird. The first thing I noticed was how much faster it loads now, even faster than the beta from a week or so ago.

I'll never go back.

Does not build for me.

[damian]

Did anyone actually try to build this on Linux? Or is everyone using the binary versions?

I tried building an rpm with the source and it didn't work.

Others seem to have the same problem: bug 222241

STOP THE PRESSES!

[EvilAlien]

Its official, Gentoo is dead.

sephiroth portage # export USE="gtk2" ;emerge mozilla -p

These are the packages that I would merge, in order:

Calculating dependencies ...done!
[ebuild R ] net-www/mozilla-1.4-r3

Thats was just now... 1.5 isn't in my portage tree after an emerge sync. If Gentoo can't keep up with these releases, what hope is there?!?!?!!?!

Re:STOP THE PRESSES!

[CanadaDave]

It will still come out faster than any other distro. It will also need to be tested, so unless you have ~x86 flag on you won't be able to get it.

Torrent for the Win32 version (full installer)

[McDutchie]

Third and last: just got through to the Win32 version, here is the torrent. Have fun. (get BitTorrent first if needed)

Re:Torrent for the Win32 version (full installer)

[MalachiConstant]

Thanks a lot for putting that up. I hit all the mirrors they had listed and couldn't find the 1.5 release. I'll leave my window open all day.

Re:Torrent for the Win32 version (full installer)

[CanadaDave]

Mod the post I'm replying to UP! This bittorrent link works.

Re:Torrent for the Win32 version (full installer)

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweet. I love bittorent and you for seeding :)

Re:Torrent for the Win32 version (full installer)

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a much 'older' torrent
here.

Re:Torrent for the Win32 version (full installer)

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that one's for Firebird only, this one is for mozilla!

Re:Torrent for the Win32 version (full installer)

[scottj]

Just downloaded via this torrent at 132KBps. 8 seeds are currently up. Sweet!

Use a mirror?

[AxB_teeth]

WTF for? Downloading out-of-date builds?

Slashdot in Firebird

[Lerxst Pratt]

Does anyone else have occasional troubles loading the /. webpage with Firebird? It happens to me several times a day. The site will not display as intended. It comes across as a bunch of garbled links and code (Slashcode?). I sometimes have to refresh several times before the site displays properly. This has happened with every single version of Firebird I've used (0.4 - 0.7 and nightlies). Other websites, for the most part, seem unaffected. No site gives me as much trouble as /. It's kind of disconcerting when I'm trying to turn on a new user to Firebird and my homepage (/.) comes up all garbled. Other than that fact, I am very happy with Firebird. I use it as my primary browser for both Linux (Gentoo and Debian) and Windows (XP Pro, XP Home, and 2000).

Re:Slashdot in Firebird

[Anonymous Coward]

It's something to do with one of the preferences, nglayout.initialpaint.delay. The main Mozilla has a different value for it, which explains why it doesn't really have this problem. I think it's worse when the user is on dialup and visiting a site with several nested tables. Type about:config in the user bar to change it. You'll probably want a higher paintdelay value. Here's a link to a discussion about it. (Mozillazine's down)

slight mistake in the feature comparison page

[spydir31]

hrm...
Opera's tabs work in all windows, the comparison says they must be opened in the same one.
Opera has the "Automatic Downloading" feature, as Quick Download(also has the ability to set this per (file/mime)type)
it also has a password manager, which is most definatly there.
some fact checking would have been appreciated.

Thunderbird 0.3 Win32 torrent!

[zsazsa]

Thunderbird 0.3 Win32 torrent available HERE.

Re:Thunderbird 0.3 Win32 torrent!

[Anonymous Coward]

thank you sir. i loves the torrents

Mirrors are out of date

[bingo_tailspin]

So please use a mirror if possible could have just read wait a day or two.

What about Opera?

[Anonymous Coward]

You fucks never talk about Opera, the best browser on Earth. Just this open sores garbage.

Re:What about Opera?

[Piggymon]

Might be because Firebird does the same thing without costing money.

Re:What about Opera?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, so you're clueless *and* cheap? Excuse me.

Get a clue, scumbag. Open sores doesn't grow the economy. You just want a free lunch, you pirate. When you use open source you are in effect stealing from software vendors because you are denying them the profits to some pinko commie outfit of trashy GNU hippies. I hate you people.

Firebird 0.7's user agent set to Opera by default

[grandmofftarkin]

Can anyone confirm they same?

Why??

Mod Parent Up

[michaelggreer]

ftp is fine. Use ftp, and you're golden.

Re:Mod Parent Up

[Anonymous Coward]

FTP is not fine now. It's not responding.

Torrent for Firebird 0.7 for Mac OS X? Anyone?

[Lyon]

What about for Firebird 0.7? Does anyone have a torrent for the Mac OS X version of Firebird 0.7?

Why split Mozilla into Thunderbird and Firebird

[MobyDisk]

Is it just to help the load times?

I have smoothly moved many newbies from MSIE+Outlook to Mozilla and they are very happy with it (safter, no popups, etc.). So why the change? Installs and upgrades are so easy I point them to Mozilla.org and they do it themselves. How easy will it be to migrate them to two separate apps (and keep their bookmarks, emails, address book, etc.)

Mozilla is great as an e-mail client

[Jungle guy]

The Bayesian filter in Mozilla is very good. I have been using it for two months and now it is almost perfect, catching most spam without messing with ilegitimate messages. After two weeks of training,the filter gets very smart. I recommend Mozilla as the best e-mail client for any Windows or Linux user.

When Thunderbird gets a little better I will recommend it, also. I think that a good e-mail client, with strong spam filtering, is something that most internet users need. And, frankly, most of them don't want another browser that is almost like the one they have, with a few extras (direct google search, tabbed browsing). Ironically, Mozilla project, that started building a browser, might get famous for their e-mail client.

Mirrors not updated with Firebird

[Lexic0n]

It does not appear that any of Mozilla's mirrors have the updated 0.7 release of Firebird. guess I'll just have to wait until Mozilla's own servers aren't so slammed.

torrents

[mraymer]

MozillaFirebird-0.7-i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.gz

thunderbird-0.3-win32.zip

MozillaFirebird-0.7-win32.zip

I think more might be coming soon, check this page.

Re:Torrents

[rmohr02]

Ahh yes--the link is broken. Right-click, select "Copy link location", paste to the address bar and hit enter.

Too bad bugzilla doesn't take referrals from slashdot.

Torrent for Firebird 0.7 for Mac OS X: here

[McDutchie]

Going to get it for you... (in case anyone wonders how I manage to get through, ftp.mozilla.org is a name for several IP addresses and I found that just one of them is kind of working some of the time, GNU 'wget' does the rest with its retry feature).

Anyway... here is the torrent for FireBird 0.7 for Mac OS X.

Oh, and all torrent downloaders, be sure to keep open that window for a while after you're done. And if you're the first to download it, expect a slow speed at first because you've got only my ADSL line to get it from, speed will pick up as others join in.

Re:Torrent for Firebird 0.7 for Mac OS X: here

[Lyon]

Thank you! I always do leave my torrent client up and running for a good while afterwards, otherwise, what's the point in using BitTorrent? (^; If you're firewalled or nat'ing like me, don't forget to open up at least 6881, up through 6889 if you run multiple torrents at the same time.

Aargh...

[nickos]

I've just upgraded from Firebird 0.6 to 0.7 and I've lost my vertical scrollbar (thank God for my mouse wheel), comboboxes (dropdowns) no longer dropdown and my Googlebar gives me my results in Spanish.

Any ideas?

Re:Or it could be because you don't have any mirro

[tcyun]

I agree about the md5's. FYI, this is the sum generated from the BT file i just grabbed. No clue if the file will decompress, just thought I would add the sum to see if folks thought it was any good

md5sum
MozillaFirebird-0.7-win32.zip
8c363353b 6529f50451091e6bface362

Sheeesh, just got v1.4.1 a few days ago!

[antdude]

Sheesh, v1.4.1 just came out a few days ago and now v1.5 is out. :)

Re:Sheeesh, just got v1.4.1 a few days ago!

[falsification]

Just install 1.5 to a new directory. In Windows, for example, install it to:

program files\mozilla.org\mozilla1.5

You can create a separate desktop shortcut for it. That way you can have both.

Mozilla: Eat your cake.

Re:Sheeesh, just got v1.4.1 a few days ago!

[antdude]

falsification: No, I was complaining that v1.4.1 just came out and we have a new version already.

Re:Sheeesh, just got v1.4.1 a few days ago!

[falsification]

Well, that's one way of looking at it. The other way of looking at it is that the 1.4 series is a long-term branch. It's supposed to take the place of the long-term 1.0 branch. OTOH, the 1.5 series will be replaced shortly by 1.6. So, in that sense, 1.5 doesn't succeed 1.4.1. They're just different branches.

Re:Sheeesh, just got v1.4.1 a few days ago!

[antdude]

falsification: Right, but it seems ridiciously torelease it after a few days. v1.4.1 just came out last week. Maybe Mozilla should have skipped v1.4.1.

Re:Sheeesh, just got v1.4.1 a few days ago!

[Glenn R-P]

There used to be an explanation on the Mozilla.org home page, but now
it's buried in the roadmap (http://www.mozilla.org/roadmap.html).
Mozilla-1. 4.x is the "stable" version and Mozilla-1.5, 1.6 is the
path with riskier, more aggressive development.

Re:Sheeesh, just got v1.4.1 a few days ago!

[antdude]

Thanks Glenn R-P. So far, I haven't run into any problems.

One mirror finally has it

[jhkoh]

Well, finally, one mirror has the 1.5 release. Many of the other mirrors don't even have 1.5RC2...!? (For those with BitTorrent capabilities, see above comments for BT links.)

Mizilla 1.5 FTP Link

[Anonymous Coward]

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mozilla/rele ases/mozilla1.5/

ftp.mozilla.org nicely connected - sponsors

[bigberk]

I was pretty impressed by ftp.mozilla.org, although you don't get your download immediately a better client (like wget) will retry the different IP addresses available in the pool. These are the hosts in ftp.mozilla.org. Kudos to these universities, and the ISC for contributing their bandwidth...

• mozilla.ussg.indiana.edu
• tricia.cc.gatech.edu
• ftp.oregonstate.edu
• mozilla.isc.org

Hey Mozilla Firebird

[Anonymous Coward]

Your website looks like a html email I got advertising a great deal on herbal viagra.

Re: older torrent already available

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a much older torrent here.

Cookies still don't behave like I want!

[skryche]

I was excited to see that Firebird has a shiny new cookie manager... but it's still missing the functionality I'd like (or I'm too obtuse to figure it out.)

I want all cookies to be session cookies except for ones from my whitelist of sites. This way:

• No sites break 'cause I don't take their cookies
• No nasty tracking coofies 'cause they're deleted when I close the browser
• I don't have to log in to Slashdot, Metafilter, etc., each time I want to use them.

Is this not the most perfect way to manage cookies?

Re:Cookies still don't behave like I want!

[ip_vjl]

I want all cookies to be session cookies except for ones from my whitelist of sites.

This is in version 0.7 - if you go to the Options > Cookies panel, there is a button to define "exceptions" where you can specify sites to always allow/deny cookies.

It didn't seem to always "catch" the site when I added it, but I haven't been able to repeat the problem so I'm not submitting a bug report.

Failing this, you can always go the non-pretty route and edit the cookperm.txt file in your profile.


theSiteToSet.com 0F
theOtherSite.com 0T


make sure that it is a TAB between the site and the value.

0F means always block cookies
0T means always allow cookies

1F/1T to do the same for images
2F/2T to do the same for popups

You can do the popup management through the GUI, but the image allow/deny isn't yet editable through the config panels - you can only view the settings (or delete listings) so for image management, you need to do the cookperm.txt editing manually.

Re:Cookies still don't behave like I want!

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Not quite what he asked, there's no "Make persistent cookie to session cookie" option. I'd like this too. I think they didn't put this in because of bloat/complexity issues, but I pretty much wished for what the parent asked for.

Re:Cookies still don't behave like I want!

[ip_vjl]

You're right. I'd thought that was how it was working, but I'd tested again and it doesn't work quite that way. (Works only if you're entirely blocking cookies)

It would be valuable to use that list as the list of sites that can write *persistent* cookies when using the 'session cookie' option.

I too would use this feature, right now I turn off the session option. Log into the site I want, then turn it back on so as to keep a permanent cookie for that site.

Firebird 7.0 Mirror

[zifferent]

Here's a direct link to a Firebird 7.0 Mirror of the zip file.
MozillaFirebird-0.7-win32.zip

Mail Import

[fleppir]

Can you believe that there is no way to migrate away from Mozilla Mail to Thunderbird???

Of all the things .....

Torrents: FireBird 0.7 MacOSX/Linux/Win32

[McDutchie]

More torrents:

• Mozilla FireBird 0.7 for Mac OS X
• Mozilla FireBird 0.7 for Linux i686
• Mozilla FireBird 0.7 for Win32

BTW, all torrent downloaders, be sure to keep open that window for a while after you're done. And if you're the first to download it, expect a slow speed at first because you've got only my ADSL line to get it from, speed will pick up as others join in.

(In case anyone wonders how I keep getting thru, ftp.mozilla.org is a hostname for several IP addresses, and one of them kind of works some of the time. GNU 'wget' with its retry feature does the rest.)

Firebird mirror?

[mbbac]

Is there a Firebird mirror anywhere?

"Images from originating servers" works again...

[follower-fillet]

In 1.4 it seemed to block images that weren't from the sub-domain, rather than just those from a different domain, which blocked a *whole* lot of images (including useful ones).

Oh crap!

[h0mi]

I just installed 0.7 of firebird and it looks horrible! I can't get icons to appear in the browser- I just see a bunch of text for my bookmarks and for the backward/forward/reload buttons.
I even did a clean install into program files\mozillafirebird ... no dice.

OS X Firebird is getting there.

[Jimithing DMB]

I have to say I'm quite impressed by this 0.7 release of Firebird for OS X. FB 0.6 had some major drawing issues and was overall fairly slow feeling. FB 0.7 just plain SCREAMS through pages.

While the firebird UI is great, it's missing a few things that Camino has (and so I am back writing this in Camino). The absolute MOST important thing it is missing is the Camino style "Go" menu. I realize that almost everyone has become accustomed to the back/forward buttons with little down arrows, but Camino really stumbled upon a great idea here.

For those of you who don't use Camino, I'll briefly explain. Instead of having drop-down arrows next to the back and forward, Camino has a per-window history in the Go menu. At the top of the menu are Home, Search Page, a spacer, then Back, Forward, and another spacer. Then the forwaard most page is listed in top and a checkmark is placed on the currently viewed page. It makes it a lot easier because you don't have to think if you are going back or forward before dropping down the list.

Firebird and Mozilla also have a similar setup, but it is per-browser instead of per-window. I've grown so used to the Camino style go menu I want it in the OS X Finder as well.

The only other issue is the overall spit and polish of the widgets. They desparately need to fit in with the rest of the system. But even then, how it works is much more important than how it looks.

It doesn't have WHAT?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and I'm outraged that they also don't support the .GUR format, which is a Botswanan image algorithm that is used by three Pakistani brickmakers and a deep-sea tube worm.

-1, mixed Snow Crash references

Mirror

[MikeD83]

Looks like many of the mirror sites do not have the 1.5 release yet. Here is one that does.

im-ja on firebird?

[leoboiko]

Anyone knows if it is possible to access GKT's "Input Method" menu on the new Firebird? Epiphany is using too much memory...

Tabbrowser Preferences

[Quizo69]

I tired the Extensions as well but found them to be ill designed and too confusing. Instead, I use the Tabbrowser Prefences extension that gives you only a couple of options but basically lets you choose to open all in a new tab and a couple of other minor options. Works great with Firebird 0.7.

still one big complaint

[BigBir3d]

Firebird is still horribly slow to scroll up and down when compared to IE. Very annoying when using up/down arrows (or left clicking the slider area) to navigate long web pages (such as /. discussions) where you want to go up or down many (10+) pages. You think this would have been worked on. Load time is faster, why isn't scrolling?

Re:still one big complaint

[kayen_telva]

sure it isnt your setup ?? my scrolling is very fast with the svg xft build

Re:still one big complaint

[BigBir3d]

Shouldn't it work well with the basic install? That is the point, is it not?

Torrents

[rmohr02]

Many of you are asking for torrents, so I filed a bug report about them. Please do not comment on the bug unless you actually have something serious to add. If you're interested, add yourself to the CC list. Unfortunately, the mozilla.org component doesn't seem to allow votes.

Firebird View Source - Goto Line

[brunes69]

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE put the Goto line # menu entyr / shortcut into the Firebird View Source applet!!! Not having a GoTo line, or even marke dline numbers, makes htis browser absolutely useless to me as a web developer.

Seamonkey had these features eons ago, and I can't see how they would be difficult to implement.

Re:Firebird View Source - Goto Line

[Anonymous Coward]

what the fuck!?!?!

K-Meleon

[bruns]

For those of you who don't like how slow Mozilla/Firebird is, can I suggest using K-Meleon instead?

http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/

0.8 is due out in the next few weeks. We are in the process of rewriting alot, including the installer.

0.8 should be based on Gecko 1.5.

If you want to help beta test 0.8, contact me and I'll give you info on where to get it. Otherwise, you can download 0.7 and SP1 right now and use it (0.7 is based on Gecko 1.2).

I use venkman in firebird

[xant]

Never had any stability issues. The only thing you have to do after installing the extension is bookmark the chrome. Just make a bookmark to this:

x-jsd:debugger

Thanks for the corrections and links

[Compact Dick]

Much appreciated :-)

Mirrored Mozilla 1.5

[DaveLatham]

Here

Experience

[greygent]

No really noticeable change in Firebird, that I've noticed yet. The new bookmark panel thingy is of no use to me, currently. But it's still the same great browser.

Thunderbird, which was unusable to me in v0.2 is much improved in .3. My IMAP stuff is a lot faster now... alot, and you're now properly notified when a folder other than the Inbox receives a message. Quite a speedy mail client. So far, so good.

Unofficial Mirror Win32

[TheGreatOrangePeel]

Broke through! download 1.5 here

If only thumb buttons would work...

[GamezCore.com]

One of my biggest gripes about any browser under Linux is the simple fact that the thumb button on my Logitech iFeel Mouseman USB doesn't function as the back button. I realize that this is more of an X issue, but I have yet to find a suitable solution that will give me a solid result.

Still does not accept certificates /auto login

[splatter]

Hey all,

Just wanted to throw in my .10. I have been using firebird for a hwile now and like it a lot, but have not been able to get certificates working.

This version finally has a certificate importer and supports autologins, but will only import pk10 certs which I can not get xp to export my existing cert as.

Has anyone been able to get this feature running? I hate to say it but if I lose my auto login I'm going to have to think about going back to (shudder) IE.

DP

Poo only flies as far as someone flings it

[nkntr]

In a dark alley in slashdot world the two gangs prepared to rumble

This is all highly amusing, yet somehow terribly tedious and silly. If you like Mac, go get a Mac. I like PC. I like AMD. I'll go get an AMD PC. The whole faux west side story rumble between the rival chip gangs, spouting somebody else's benchmarks and the beating of chests in a valiant but altogether vain effort to change each other's opinions, charging off like Charlemagne in a beaney....Is all this really going somewhere?


-We'll convert the heritics if we have to kill every last one of them

where the Firebird bug fix list?

[ynohoo]

I nosed around the site but couldn't find anything about what is fixed, only blurb about new features.

The last version I tried was useless to me as the refresh button just gets the version from the proxy server, not the website. Is this fixed? Or have they only added new features?

New Easteregg

[Anonymous Coward]

And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced. But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird. The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire and thunder upon them. For the beast had been reborn with its strength renewed, and the followers of Mammon cowered in horror.

from The Book of Mozilla, 7:15

Check your MD5.. they are NOT identical

[cculianu]

MD5 of MozillaFirebird-0.7-win32.zip: (I don't know why checksums are not provided by Mozilla, but ok)
8c363353b6529f50451091e6bface362

MD5 of torrent file MozillaFirebird-0.7-win32.zip.torrent:
b00ce8083e1c3731602a94fd5cda24d0

Erm.. either I am missing something, or care to explain how you can say they are 'identical' when they have different md5 sums?

Re:Check your MD5.. they are NOT identical

[sketerpot]

They're not supposed to be identical. One is a zip file, the other is a .torrent file. It's just reassuring to have the checksums up somewhere (if only I knew I could trust them).

Re:Check your MD5.. they are NOT identical

[Lev_Arris]

Well, of course you can't trust them (Mozilla.org would have to put up checksums for that)... all I can do is give you my word that I didn't modify the file (I have absolutely no interest in doing so).

That and the fact that plenty of people have already downloaded the file and nobody complained yet is all that I can offer for 'security'.

Another Unoffical Mirror

[Koldark]

I have both Firebird 7 (unoffical) installer and Mozilla 1.5 installer for Win32 on my blog. I am still trying to get Thunderbird 0.3. Here is the site: http://www.koldark.net/archives/000126.html

Re:I take it there's some incredible features in t

[Anonymous Coward]

Poke a hole through your firewall, idiot.

Dang, this thing is good

[jxs2151]

As a long time IE user I am normally loathe to try new browswers. Opera doesn't give me enough screen space, Mozilla I found to be slow and bloated, etc.

Just installed Firebird and this thing is cool!!

Cookie management, image management, tabbed browsing, keyboard shortcut for damn near everything, integrated Google search, link searching, text searching.

After years of IE, I finally feel like *I* am back in charge of my web experience.

I would pay money for this thing.

Re:I take it there's some incredible features in t

[Sir Haxalot]

mozilla.org is totally slashdotted already. Anyone got a mirror of the list of mirrors!
The google cache for the mirror list is here, and the torrent for the Windows release of Firebird 0.7, which I downloaded at 60kb/s, is here .

And one release to bind them...

[gmkeegan]

Look for the release that includes Firebird, Thunderbird and others, called BigBird.

Anybody else have problems building The Lizard?

[linuxjack55]

The issue seems to be no Makefile.in for xpfe. I've downloaded the release source and also grabbed the CVS from which the current binaries came. No joy.

Had a similar problem with SVG in the 1.4.1 release.

And, after enduring a metric buttload of gratuitous abuse on irc.mozilla.org, still no answers...

It's not Firebird version 0.3

[Anonymous Coward]

It's _release_candidate_3_ for version 0.3.

bloat zilla

[minus_273]

strikes again with its bloated in effecient communist model. This is not a troll look at what i am saying:
1. mozilla is bloated .. it is
2. mozilla is communist . If you dispute that please click on the mozilla link.

Firebird Sidebar

[Jack Auf]

Until Firebird has a sidebar that is actually useful, that you can load a url in or one of the many handy Mozilla sidebars, I can't see switching.

It's a shame that the current release of Mozilla is going to be the last when Firebird is so clearly far from feature complete.

communist

[minus_273]

http://www.mozilla.org/party/1999/mozilla2.gif
link
nuff said

Re:Or it could be because you don't have any mirro

[lizrd]

8c363353b6529f50451091e6bface362 MozillaFirebird-0.7-win32.zip d77be9bc436c469f4fe2616aac44d503 thunderbird-0.3-win32.zip

uhhh...

[Anonymous Coward]

who are you talking to?

What's new in Firebird 0.7

[jesser]

New features since 0.6.1:

• Advanced preferences panel
• Download/helper apps preferences panel
• Cookie whitelisting (through the new Cookie Exceptions window)
• New password manager
• Web panels (like Mozilla's sidebar panels)
• Alternate stylesheet support (through a status bar button)
• Close other tabs (tab context menu)
• Domain is shown for image blocking (image context menu)
• Send Page, Send Link, Send Image (various context menus)
• Autoscroll (trigger by middle-clicking on a web page)

Important bug fixes since 0.6.1:

• 206029: Flash plugin installer breaks firebird (really a bug in the Flash installer, but firebird works around it)
• 210910: Right-clicking a file within a bookmarks folder in the bookmarks menu or toolbar makes that folder inaccessible. (Fixed for the most common cases.)
• 210588: Cancelling download of .lnk file deletes target of .lnk file (Windows 2000 only)
• 212556: scroll wheel sometimes stops working after app switch
• 199819: setting browser.formfill.enable (save form information) to false doesn't disable form autocomplete (partly fixed)
• 205893#c31: Should no longer cause GDI problems on Windows. (Example GDI problem: when you open about 100 large images in 0.6, the browser stops redrawing content and even its user interface.)
• 212686: down arrow into autocomplete causes other autocomplete results to disappear

Important bug fixes between 0.6 and 0.6.1:

• 205989, 206026: Two JS/DOM bugs that broke bookmarklets
• 184202: Autocomplete crash
• 212487: Autocomplete is one character behind typed text (this fix caused 212686)

Regressions in 0.7:

• 214310: removing parent of focused elem breaks mouse wheel and textboxes (shacknews.com dthread mode).
• 218894: After closing history sidebar, search results remain (but search text does not).
• Several password manager bugs (218135, 218927, 220734, 217439).

Stuff you should know:

• The "Quick Launch" feature (-turbo) has been removed (217026).
• If you store multiple passwords for a site, Firebird will no longer show a dialog listing the usernames you have stored (216541). Instead, Firebird will fill in your password after you fill in your username. You can get the list of stored usernames by pressing the down arrow in the username textbox.
• Firebird does not refuse to use some old themes (217410). If you use one of these themes, your scrollbars and back/forward buttons will go missing.

source

Re:What's new in Firebird 0.7

[rsborg]

Jess, you rock. Someone PLEASE MOD up parent!!!

I spent like 5 minutes browsing and googling before I found the info above... why doesn't the Firebird page have a link to their own release notes for 0.7? Hopefully they'll get around to updating that page.

FTP has good download performance

[merger]

I just decided to ftp into the mozilla site and no slowdowns at all, in fact I was getting 384k a second. I'd recommend it if anybody is having difficulties. This is while the link on the web site is completely unable to connect. It's just interesting to notice that the bottleneck is on the http server rather than bandwidth.

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/

AHHHH!!!! 1.5 ate my bookmarks!

[gmezero]

This stupid POS it not only ate my bookmarks, but it then replaced them with bookmarks that it imported from IE.... AAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!! Damn!

Oh, even better it completely deleted my entire Mozilla profile information. F'ing piece of sh1t.

Firebird needs a spell checker

[greenstork]

Given that I use Movable Type almost every day, I'd love to see an inline spell checker for the browser as well as Thunderbird. I'm sure it would appeal to frequent poster on /. and other forums too.

WTF is up with these different web pages?

[swordgeek]

OK, I go to mozilla.org, and am presented with a link to firebird 0.7, which leads to a funky page where I could download the browser for Solaris. If the page worked, which it doesn't. (timeouts--might just be overloaded)

HOWEVER, If I click on the logo in firebird 0.6 (which I'm using right now), it takes me to an entirely different page on texturizer.net (??!), with the latest known version being 0.6.1. Furthermore, going to the downloads brings up a blank page. Great.

Someone needs to tell the entire mozilla project and its direct offshoots that friendly user interfaces aren't only necessary in the application itself. Version names, numbers, and websites are an utter mess right now.

Sucks for Mirrors...

[DraKKon]

None of them have Firebird above 0.5...

Fixed: .torrent for Firebird linux

[Lev_Arris]

All right, I managed to grab a new copy and this time I actually got to check that it really extracts. Here's the fixed link:

MozillaFirebird-0.7-i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.gz.torre nt

Note: It's still the same link, I replaced all the files to have everybody download the right one automatically. Sorry for those who downloaded the corrupted one. :(

Oregon Mirror

[fumble]

For our Pacific NW friends
ftp://ftp.oregonstate.edu/pub/mozilla.org /

Re:Oregon Mirror

[Mythicman]

Thanks! Finally found a mirror that's not just a link back to ftp.mozilla.org that has a copy of Thunderbird. I havent' been able to get a complete download of any of them (Moz 1.5, FB 0.7 or TB 0.3) from mozilla.org. Weird...

Thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Many thanks Mozilla/Firebird/Thunderbird team.

they are switching the location around

[kayen_telva]

heres the linux version with svg & xft

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firebird/r el eases/0.7/MozillaFirebird-0.7-i686-linux-gtk2+xft. tar.gz

D'oh, sorry

[stonecypher]

Whereas Mozilla will be moving to Firebird sooner-or-later, it's waiting until Firebird is ready; 1.6a, which is almost frozen, is still Moz suite, and it looks like 1.7 might be too.

Sorry. Firebird isn't that ready just yet.

Is there an auto-save project?

[Deslock]

I couldn't find a project at http://www.mozdev.org/ for automatically reloading your tabs when Mozilla or Firebird crashes (like Opera does).

I thought I read about one a while back, but now don't see it. Does such a project exist?

Re:Is there an auto-save project?

[tweek]

Tabbrowser extensions

http://extensionroom.mozdev.org

Re:Is there an auto-save project?

[Deslock]

Ah yes, it's called Recall. I just found it on the list over at mozdev.org too (it's number 68 on the inactive list).

Thanks!

Please mod parent up..

[msimm]

I had a hell of a time trying to find a mirror that had Firebird. Thanks for the torrents (I'll be leaving mine up at work too).

Help! URL to get all config options

[bgarcia]

What is the URL to get mozilla to display all of the configuration options? I think you were able to also change the value of the options in this window. I'm pretty sure it was posted on /. in a previous article, but I can't find it anymore.

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last?? (L)user revolt!

[poopie]

I have a few hundred stubborn old Netscape 4.X users who will *never* switch to I.E. for windows, and if they don't get their integrated browser/mail/news combo client, they'll keep using Netscape 4.X

I still have lots of users who are reluctant to use Mozilla because it's not "Netscape".

Mozilla firebird?? How many hits with a clue stick will it take to get die-hard netscape 4 users to switch to that?!?

Re:Help! URL to get all config options

[pe1chl]

about:config

not for Iraq and Afganistan though

[axxackall]

This source code is subject to the U.S. Export Administration Regulations and other U.S. law, and may not be exported or re-exported to certain countries (currently Afghanistan (Taliban controlled areas), Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria) or to persons or entities prohibited from receiving U.S. exports (including Denied Parties, entities on the Bureau of Export Administration Entity List, and Specially Designated Nationals).

It doesn't matter that USA army controls 100% of Afganistan and Iraq territories - those poor people still cannot download Mozilla and have to pay money for IE or Opera. Or stay away from Internet.

That's what they call a liberation!

yeah, it's godawful

[sweatyboatman]

maybe it's been hacked.

and yeah, if anyone knows where the release notes for the damn thing are, that'd be nice. I can't find even a mention of them. and of course the mozillazine.org message boards are down.

sigh

No actually,+1 Insigthfull and not nerd zealousnes

[Snaller]

No, it does not run non-standard MSIE-only JavaScript. That's their choice, to support web standards over arbitrary monopolies.

I don't know why you bother to write "their choice" - their choice is irrelevant for my choice. My choice is a browser i can use that doesn't break on a lot of pages because some zealous programmer refuses to support something out of indignated righteous.

I don't even know what you mean by a bloatware installer.

A bloatware installer is an installer that adds a lot of files which are related to the installer and not the program actually being installed. Such as Microsofts installer or Installshield, if you monitor what they are doing you'll see that they add a lot of stuff to windows and other places, presumably information about has been installed and how to remove it, but its taking up waay to much space. Something like Nullsofts NSIS intaller is a small and tight install machine. Most programmes installed by Microsofts installer doesn't get "real" shortcuts either, but special shortcuts which call the installer core first before redircting to the application.

But Mozilla still uses an improved version of the same one it always has, which leaves exactly zero "junk files which are only used by the installer" as far as I have ever seen.


Last time i tried it didn't. It left a couple of megabytes of junk on the c drive.

It puts them in your user profile directory for a reason

The reason being they don't care much about users.
since it also runs on, gasp, OS's other than older versions of Windows, it needs to be multi-user friendly.

Excuses.

Something like FileZilla has the right approach, the first time you run it, it asks you how you want your configs store, and gives you choice, registry/config file etc.
Why is this bad exactly

Its bad by definition when a program installs its stuff where the programmer things its a cool idea and now where the users want it. At least when i select something to use, which is why i asked the original question. Now i'd prefer of others try and be a big broadminded instead of borishly naming anyone who doesn't agree with them trolls.

Oh and don't mod people down - its a waste of good moderator points, take the 10 minuttes to find good posts and mod them up instead of speanding 30 seconds modding someone down. That makes Slashdot more worthwhile all around.

As soon as she gets back from the bank...

[djeaux]

...where she's busy laundering the money she made from selling the pirated CDs. At least, that's where the RIAA told me she was ;-)

Composer

[Anonymous User 2000]

One thing I haven't seen answered yet is what is going to happen to composer when when Firebird/Thunderbird take over. Is it going to be released as a stand alone application as well? I use it all of the time and I'd hate to see it go.

The same question goes for the irc client too, even though I don't use it.

Re:Composer

[Anonymous Coward]

Composer is now developped as a standalone program by Daniel Glazman. The current codename is Composer++

If you want news about Composer you should read Daniel's weblog :
Daniel

When daniel sees it fit, he will officially release binaries through mozilla.org, in the meantime he sporadically releases test builds and afaik, the source code is downloadable from mozilla.org CVS servers if you want to compile it yourself.

where are SVG builds?!

[axxackall]

Since when Mozilla SVG builds are missed? I would say that non-plugin-based SVG is the most innovative feature in Mozilla. Dropping it is the worst what can happen to Mozilla today.

PARENT HAS WORKING FIREBIRD TORRENT, MOD UP

[Hobart]

'nuff said.

I'm sharing right now, and nobody's downloading. Mod the damn thing up folks. :-)

no installer?

[mushroom blue]

Well, give it a day, and this page will have an installer package, as they have with all the nightly builds.

And this page has all the information to install plugins. Besides, flash isn't hard to install. you download a .exe, and double-click it. Rocket science, I know.

Crash vs lockup

[Anonymous Coward]

At least Moz doesn't crash anymore, but it still locks up when the server doesn't respond. All these years and they still haven't added a damn timeout to get requests...

Same stupid problem will Firebird, since it uses the same stupid engine.

I'm a Mozilla User

[christopherfinke]

I seem to see less ads and pop-ups

What's a pop-up?

Re:Firebird and Thunder bird Torrents (Linux/Mac)

[Jedbro]

Might want to take a look at the
Officially Unofficiall Mozila Bit Torrent page here:
http://www.metashops.co.uk/mozilla/

I'm sure it would be best if we all targeted one bit torrent (for faster downloading/uploading).

Plus they list a few Linux and Mac options too :)

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last?? (L)user revolt!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla firebird?? How many hits with a clue stick will it take to get die-hard netscape 4 users to switch to that?!?

That's nothing the right skin can't fix.

Although they might loathe the working CSS support and the general stability.

Re:Firebird and Thunder bird Torrents (Linux/Mac)

[McDutchie]

Might want to take a look at the Officially Unofficiall Mozila Bit Torrent page here: http://www.metashops.co.uk/mozilla/

Aha! Thanks for that link, I had no idea. I'll use that next time.

Another Mozilla 1.5 BT

[Anonymous Coward]

Another Mozilla 1.5 BT
http://www.aixgaming.com/filerush/

Pregnant whale but the best.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's still a pregnant whale beyond belief, starting it easily takes up 20MB of RAM on Winblows. Only my Staroffice 1.0 is worse.

Still its easily the best and most convenient browser around (in lack of Konqueror). E.g. The Opera UI just can't compete. Also I have a cunning plan: I'll write a little app which can increase the working set of Firebird via a Winblows system call so maybe Winsucks doesn't keep swapping it out when it's in the background even though I have only committed half of my 1/2 gig of RAM (why does this happen? and no the system cache doesnt take up the rest). Maybe then it won't take 10 sec to bring it to the foreground and another 5 sec to animate a pressed button, in spite of having plenty of free memory and 1GHz of muscle....

Why is bug 124307 not resolved?

[Norman Lorrain]

I'd have thought this release would have fixed it.
See:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=124307
(I didn't make a link cause Mozilla doesn't like links from Slashdot)

Solution

[Kjella]

1. Go on Kazaa
2. Download Windows XP ISO
3. Install
4. Enjoy your "C:\Program Files"
5. Find out why it's a bad idea
6. Reinstall Linux

I don't know if that'll help you any, but it'll keep you too busy to make redundant jokes on Slashdot ;)

Kjella

Though they didn't want to change the numbering

[Kjella]

Check out the Mozilla roadmap. It shows a version 1.6 coming out in December 2003.

Because of what I would call version bloat aversion, they do not want to call the new Mozilla 2.0, even if it's off a different branch. The first version to implement Firebird/Thunderbird was supposed to be 1.5, now it's 1.6 instead. The reason qouted is that switching to 2.0 would indicate that they are breaking API compatibility with plug-ins (as per the 1.0 release manifest).

What they fail to realize is that people get antsy when you deliver less than promised, not more. "Mozilla 2.0 is out, leaner meaner and better than ever before! Oh, and all your 1.x plug-ins will still work perfectly" is a GOOD thing, not a bad thing. To write off the entire switch as a dot release is simply poor management, in my opinion.

Kjella

Upgrade Issues

[bpavane]

I "upgraded" from Firebird 0.6.1 on my WIndows XP box at work to Firebird 0.7 today. In doing so, and going by the instructions to remove the existing MozillaFirebird directory and then replace it with the directory for the 0.7 release, I happened to lose all of my customization settings.

I would think this is an issue that will need to be resolved if Firebird is to expand beyond a pure techie following, a real installer and settings database will be needed, that can withstand updates and new installations.

I have not tried to upgrade to Firebird 0.7 on my linux box at home, but I will certainly try that tonight, and hope to not run into the same issues there.

If I'm purely missing something, or not following documentation (there isn't much to begin with), please let me know.

Otherwise, I really do love Firebird, you just need to make sure you install a few of the "Extensions".

I've also found that you can make your browsing experience much faster, by mucking with a few of the settings in about:config.

KARMA WHORE WARNING! 1 ! 2 ! 3 ! 4 ! 5 ! 6 ! 7 ! !

[Anonymous Coward]

Sir Haxalot is a known karma whore and troll...

New about:mozilla...

[mnemonic_]

Check out the about:mozilla page in the new releases... it's different...

I won't spoil the surprise... the meaning of the about:mozilla statement seems pretty obvious.

Re:Absolutely right, a question though....

[ironygranny]

The release notes for thunderbird mentioned something about IMAP support getting way, way faster...

Scroll Speed is adjustable in preferences.

[Confessed Geek]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what your talking about, but if you just mean the rate of scroll from your scroll wheel, you can configure that in your preferences to X lines per scroll "click" or even pages under mozilla.

Re:I take it there's some incredible features in t

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the bittorrent. You can download it less than 60 seconds with this link. Mozilla Firebird 0.7 torrent

Hey, it's great for the typical office user

[Anonymous Coward]

Lack of installer is great for a workplace that dosn't let you install other software, expects you to check things on the internet, and only has internet explorer installed.

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last?? (L)user revolt!

[Joe Tie.]

I think it's time to give up. If someone's still using Netscape 4 at this point, they're not going to change untill windows can't run it anymore. And I have to wonder if they'll even upgrade to an operating system that dosn't support Netscape 4. I have visions of 120 year olds complaining to developers because their telepathic cybernetic p2p setup dosn't render in Netscape 4.

FB vs Mozilla

[jbolden]

Any opinions on Firebird 0.7 vs. Mozilla 1.5?

Please join the marketing team then...

[Phil John]

...that way you can get your opinions heard by the people trying to push this thing into the place it rightly deserves (the top of the browser food chain).

We could probably use a few more people on the list, after cd manufacture's been sorted out the list has started to stagnate somewhat. Good people with good ideas though, especially Bart Decrem et al.

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last?? (L)user revolt!

[DrEasy]

Mozilla firebird?? How many hits with a clue stick will it take to get die-hard netscape 4 users to switch to that?!?

It took a few hits, but here I am ;-) The thing is, Netscape 4's email is pretty good (got all the features I need and nothing more, and it is gentle on RAM), so I was keeping it around to check mail, and I was browsing with an old IE. Yep, call me a luddite!

I tried Mozilla (and Netscape 7), but the general look and feel didn't appeal to me, and my fairly old PC didn't enjoy the memory usage.

This is until I discovered Firebird, and it was love at first sight! No need for IE anymore, but what to do to replace my email? Well, now I've converted to Thunderbird as well, but TBird + Firebird = memory hogs, and I still miss Netscape mail (is there a Netscape 4.x theme somewhere for nostalgics? ;-))... Thunderbird's junk mail filter is nice, but I'm running SpamAssassin on the server, so I don't really need it.

Basically I'm waiting for Firebird and Thunderbird to replace the current Mozilla suite, and hopefully there will a drop in combined memory usage...

Re:I take it there's some incredible features in t

[mcbridematt]

Not that I know of :)

oh brave new world, that hath such creatures in it

[Paul d'Aoust]

It's amazing how there's such a spectrum of different opinions on subjects like this. It's like stepping into a Baskin Robbins store; you never knew there were so many options!!! Coming to a site like this makes one realise that people have completely different, but equally valid, opinions and needs.

For instance, the parent loves the integration ("swiss army knife approach") of the Seamonkey suite. And is obviously enamoured of it, and would do violence to those who would force him to part with it. But myself, I couldn't care less; when I go browsing I just want something that Just Works, works well, works efficiently, and has features to speed up surfing like tabs and the wonderful Google search box. Sure, Seamonkey has all that, but so does Firebird, and I couldn't care less about integration with my e-mail. (To tell the truth, I'm not quite sure what benefit integration would have for me; as long as I can click on a mailto: link and have Thunderbird start up, I'm happy ^_^)

oh brave new world, that hath such creatures in it!

Re:Help! URL to get all config options

[bgarcia]

Thanks!

Re:Or it could be because you don't have any mirro

[110010001000]

Done. thanks.

Yet Another Critical Mozilla Flaw

[jazman]

Oops, that's get me modded -NaN Balrog.

Installed .3 - seems a bit unstable. Crashed a few times doing basic stuff. Oh well, roll back to 0.1 and wait for .4...