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

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??

[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??

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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: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.)

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

alt. link for windows firebird 0.7

[klocwerk]

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

linky

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.

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)

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.

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)