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Mozilla 1.6 Beta Released
Sick Boy writes "As reported on Mozillazine, the Mozilla Foundation today released Mozilla 1.6 Beta. This latest milestone adds support for NTLM authentication on all platforms and improves the implementation on Windows. The automatic page translation feature has been restored (now powered by Google Language Tools) and a new version of ChatZilla, 0.9.48, is now included. In addition, several security and crash bugs have been fixed during the beta release cycle. Builds can be downloaded from the Mozilla Releases page or directly from the mozilla1.6b directory on ftp.mozilla.org. The Mozilla 1.6 Beta Release Notes have more detailed information about what's new and known issues to watch out for."
Not that I doubt they can take the load, but why make 'em?
"[A] high IQ is like a Jeep; you will still get stuck, just farther from help!" --Just d' FAQs, c.g.a
Sweet. FB 0.8 can't be too far away.
Mozilla is an awesome browser. Its stable fast and pop-up blocking is a god send. Once its stable version is released I recommend everyone at least try it. Hey its free so what do you have to lose?
especially things like the NTLM authentication support on all platforms gives us a stick to beat the anti-opensource FUD spreaders with
see? it works!
how this can be a beta, yet 'several security and crash bugs have been fixed during the beta release cycle', so this beta release is more stable than the supposedly stable 1.6 release?
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
What's the deal? It really looks like the new roadmap is "build in all the features people REALLY bitch about into XPFE Mozilla, then once Firebird/Thunderbird is more stable, we'll transition to those". I'm fine with that, but shouldn't they just come out and say it?
Ah, but when will they add SVG support to the standard build. I suspect we will always be tied to the non-open Flash format until someone steps up and makes SVG support in a browser standard.
There are only 6,863,795,529 types of people in the world.
Any news on how the port of mozilla to AmigaOS is going?
It's smaller, faster and supports the W3 far better than IE. It's also incredibly extensible - if you are a web designer you simply must try out the webtools bar. And I thought it was supposed to take Mozilla's place. Why haven't they killed off Mozilla yet?
This has been a long awaited release! Mozilla developement is usually much faster, but in the last month or so very little has been happening in terms of milestone releases.
Also, I read somewhere that 1.5 was going to be the last release of mozilla.
Hi there
From http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=3 990
Microsoft's NTLM authentication protocol, popular on Windows-based corporate networks, is now supported by Mozilla on all platforms. Previously, NTLM authentication was only available to Windows Mozilla users, requiring the presence of the Windows SSPI API. Now, the SSPI code has been discarded and a cross-platform implementation has been checked in.
This makes me wonder if Microsoft will peruse legal action to block Mozilla from using a cross-platform, non MS implementation of an MS technology. Because NTLM is undocumented, I wonder what the legal ramifications of implementing it are? Do you own a copyright to an undocumented technology?
and designers (myself included) are the ones who bring you vector graphics over the web. They decide. Simple as that. FlashMX is THE standard for vector design - not to mention a complete development environment to make all those nice applications and games.
Because IE is insecure, does not have popup blocking, lacks many other features Mozilla does have and supports W3C standards better. Plus, it comes with a mail client that is more secure than outlook and has a well working spam filter built in.
I was getting a bit of Deja-vu reading the NTLM stuff since I was sure they had announced it earlier.
NTLM support on all platforms was announced on the 18th of Nov and has been available in CVS since then.
(\(\
(^.^)
(")")
*This is the cute bunny virus, please copy this into your sig so it can spread
a new version of mozilla. I'll download it right away! Thank you slashdot for posting this!
...I'd think that getting Firebird & Thunderbird going, which seems to be a lot more plug-in oriented would make it easier than the "One tool to please them all" that they're trying to make Mozilla into.
Oh well, I won't complain, I'll just use Firebird in it's 0.x stage, it's more than stable enough for that anyway. Maybe they'll come in version 2.0 after all?
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Mozilla is great, and they will *eventually* be replacing it with thunderbird and firebird. I hope they develop firebird into a PIM suite, like a cross-platform ximian evolution. Windows needs a good alternative to outlook, anyways.
Hi there
Sorry guys, but IMHO Firebird is what mozilla should habe been : nice look, 'speed-o-light' fast, IE killer ...
And last time i used mozilla (a year ago), it was slow, ugly, and somehow much buggy !
So my question is, when will they merge the two project ?
Mozdev.org and Mozilla.org are not the same thing. They are seperate sites.
(\(\
(^.^)
(")")
*This is the cute bunny virus, please copy this into your sig so it can spread
Do you own a copyright to an undocumented technology?
No, you can't own a copyright on a technology - only on an implementation. You can however, own a patent on a technology. However, you can not patent an API, though you can patent an algorithm used by the Windows implementation of that API, in which case you'd have to find another way to implement it. However, since it's undocumented, there's also no known patents to avoid.
Besides, it would probably fall under the legal protection of reverse engineering for interoperability anyway.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I like patches and updates to Mozilla. I don't like that there is a new 1.X version out every other week. Maybe I just develop software differently, but unless I do a change to what I consider central code, I update by .X.X's. Are they really updating major stuff that often?
Or am I just not paying enough attention to their updates and how often they occur?
I don't know. I want Mozilla to succeed, but to see just drastic changes that often makes me nervous.
Now, if that makes sense to anyone, could you please explain it to me? I think I've confused myself.
You need something to keep all those feature-obsessed developers busy.
With these people out of the way, the remaining developers can work without interference on Firebird, the browser we really care about.
So exactly what is involved in getting complete SVG support into Mozilla (license issues aside)? How close are we, and how much farther do we have to go?
I'm game if anyone else is.
Firebird is clearly the chosen one. I wish they would put a final stake through the heart of the old mozilla and pass the mantle to Firebird already.
*Fortitudo, aequitas, fidelitas.*
FB is hardly that much faster - it uses exactly the same rendering engine and set of libraries under the hood, so there is just a tiny speedup from the GUI that is unnoticable on modern fast computers. It does NOT support W3 better or worse, since it uses exactly the same Gecko engine. And it lacks many features of Mozilla that need to be brought back through extensions. And inflationary extensions can eventually cause severe security problems.
Warning, this is semi offtopic.
As much as I love Mozilla as a regular user both in Windows and in Linux (using it now) I really wish they would fix backwards compatability with older skins. There's some really nice KDE skins out there (one in particular on KDElook that I love) that I wish I could use.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
I was talking to a few members of the development team and asked them when they would implement a faster,better web page caching system like opera but the developers mentioned it would take thousands of lines of new DOM code. They also said if you want faster browsing then just open a new window . I think there is a lack of priorities by the top managers at mozilla. How could making an installer be more important than making the brower faster. Also the fast forward and rewind is a good idea . If you notice ,alot of these direction features are in ADOBE ACROBAT PDF viewers.
But why not concentrate on implementing IE's version of DHTML? Given, MS doesn't follow set "standards" in this department. But many developers prefer MS's approach and most users (willingly or ignorantly) use Internet Explorer. These two factors cause many sites to support IE exclusively. It is very expensive for companies to implement Mozzila compatible versions of their webpages for the minority of internet users who don't use IE. Why not save everyone a lot of time and money and support Microsoft's version of DHTML?
After you've had your's, you can tell me when it's my turn.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
I only have a few computer nerd friends. All my other friends' eyes just glaze over when I try to explain the benefits of using Mozilla. So I don't even try any more.
:(
Hey, if they love popups (they aren't usually even aware of the Google Toolbar, for instance), and enjoy the occasional virus or homepage hijacking, they can help themselves.
How sad that most people just don't really seem to care.
/.: why the hell am I here?
http://www.openswf.org/
There are lots of third-party apps that generate Flash files.
/. is irrelevant.
because your statement is false. I work at a company which develops applications for web browsers, so there is a lot of Javascript/DOM/DHTML etc involved. The current browser generation is not nearly as difficult to handle as it was in the bad old times of Netscape4/IE4. We have a neat little js-framework that handles the differences between IE and Mozilla and most code works on both browsers without heavy modification.
Am I the only one in here that do not type out my web pages in a text editor? I happen to prefer the WYSIWYG web editing of Mozilla, which is missing from the Firebird releases. I, for one will be very unhappy to see the main branch of Mozilla discontinued just because of this.
Time flies like an arrow, Fruit flies like a banana.
How timely. I repeatedly tried to install this on the latest Firebird release as an extension yesterday and it never worked. Does the "zilla" part refer to its ability to stomp around and destroy previous installs of the flaming chicken?
Yes.. Popup blocking is a godsend for regular pr0n browsing....
Furthermore, mozilla is a good form of 'protection' vs. unprotected browsing with IE.
If only this had NTLM Authenti..........well, I guess I can stop bitching now and install this at work, eh?
They should fix the abysmal DOM performance some time. Simple DHTML applications or even plain document.write() hacks can bring Mozilla to its knees as it labors to add nodes to the document.
I usually build from CVS sources every few days or so, and we hard core weenies have been at 1.6b for well over a month. :)
How is it decided that a formal beta is released should be released to the larger public?
Oh, and could we get back rot13 decoding in mail and news, please? I read ASR occasionally via moz, and it would be a godsend
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
Just a quick comment for those stuck with NTLM at work. I run a local NTLM proxy server so I can run whatever browser or HTTP tool I like on whatever OS I need. I just point my browser at the proxy and it just works.
...
The proxy I use is written in Python, is small, and is really easy to install. NTLM Authorization Proxy Server.
Since you are authenticating with your user name and password, from your machine, and you are still actually going through the company web proxy just like IE would, there's absolutely no logical reason for the local "preventers of information services" to complain. At least, in my case, they haven't been able come up with an actual reason yet that hasn't been easy to dismiss. Not for want of trying, though
Does anybody else find it frightening that we have web browsers with automatic language translation? I mean, its awesome! But... where the hell was I when the world got all Star Trek?
And, of course it has intelligent popup blocking options. A simple option like "Open requested popup windows only" is really a major user win. I agree it's probably an effect of having a very small core of people designing
of course I meant that Mozilla still suppoerts W3C standards better ... though there are some CSS things that work better in IE. MS is finally slowly catching up.
It's cheaper, open, something you can check for yourself if it's secure enough to meet your needs, modularly designed, works on *ANY* platform (assuming you have time to get it ported), software that you can install on any and all machines you might use and can leave there for others, and, oh, did I mention it costs less than buying 15 CDs?
Why is it software authors *always* overestimate the value of their software? $205 to get close to the portability Mozilla offers? YIKES! That's more than Windows itself (and that includes a web browser).
Another might be that it is unoptimised for speedy browsing and tabs are a reasonable workaround....
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Wow ! And after years of development, playing a .wav file if new mail arrives, still doesn't work.
But besides that, Mozilla is by far the best piece of software on my computer(s). - I've been using it since the early milestone releases (on Linux) and will be very sad once the Mozilla suite will be discontinued...
To error is human, to forgive, beyond the scope of the OS.
Do IE and Mozilla treat the box model in the same way? (Example : try setting a fixed width box with a border, then adding some padding to it - it will currently look different under each browser)
If it does, then cool, but I'd be surprised.
I for one welcome our new Mozilla 1.6 Beta overlords.
Wrong. XHTML 1.0 and HTML 4.01 Transitional/Frameset have never explicitly triggered quirks mode. They once triggered Standards mode, but somewhere along the way they were added to a new, intermediate stage, "almost standards mode." I recommend you read Mozilla's doctype switching documentation.
That's a little unrealistic I'm afraid. I have a difficult enough time getting people to write web content that is compliant to any Web Standard. But XHTML Strict? That's quite a delta between it and most of today's developers' quirky markup. If Web Standards compliance is new to someone, then by definition, their initial target should be to write content that is valid to a Transitional DTD."It's not that hard" has been a key strategic advantage in compelling people to embrace Web Standards. Please try to keep it that way.
reinventing the wheel in the name of "choice"?. Use IE.
There were several unfortunate bugs that crept in with 1.5, and as far as I'm aware haven't been fixed yet, e.g.,
These are annoyances more than critical faults, but bring down the general quality. Given that the functionality used to work until 1.3 or 1.4 in each case, they're also regressions, which suggest weaknesses in the code introduced inadvertently and best fixed before building on it further for Thunder/Firebird.
It could also be the issue of profile migration. AFAIK, there are still no solid tools available to move a profile from Moz to the next generation alternatives, nor any easy way to move back if you don't like the change. The Thunderbird download pages are covered in warnings about this. If you're relying on Moz for more than toy use, for example if you have thousands of e-mails filed away that you want to keep, that alone might be enough to prevent you considering an upgrade, and thus to justify continued development of the original Mozilla tools in parallel with the new work.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
In order to check out the SVG support, I build my own image of Moz from the mainline CVS branch a couple of weeks ago.
The SVG isn't included for good reason - in its current state it is next to useless. Moz natively supports SVG right now as much as Microsoft natively supports the POSIX API - just enough to claim it, not enough to be useful.
However, IF you have the machine and the connection to do so, I suggest building your own - they have greatly improved the build process. Compiling moz with "-Os -march=athlon-xp -mfpmath=sse,376" has greatly improved the speed of Moz on my machine - but YMMV.
www.eFax.com are spammers
I don't understand why Mozilla has ANY form of disk caching built in in the first place - that is not the way of Unix.
Let a seperate program do the disk caching (e.g. Squid). Let Moz and any other program use that program. Thus, everybody benefits from the cache.
Just like in the latest released of libresolve (the DNS library for *nix systems) now has the "lightweight resolver" which is a small caching resolver library, so that applications that stupidly keep asking to resolve the same address don't load down the nameservers.
The way of Unix - "small, sharp tools" or "one job, one program" is not just for geeks - it makes for a more robust system as the programs can be optimized to do what they do VERY WELL.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Unfortunately, I've found that these people just stick to the old tag soup which is valid Transitional markup anyway. Transitional has been misinterpreted by the masses, and sadly hasn't provided a real incentive for these people to move towards Strict standards markup (by filterering out your presentational tags for example, etc.).
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
Same slow, same lame tab, no GUI option to set smooth scroll, no built-in mouse gesture... I'm re-downloading opera now.
--
Your GOD in 2004
Mozilla already has this functionality. If you click a link that only opens a popup it works as expected, my bank's webpage does this.
" the "non-open Flash format" argument is so old is not funny anymore."
/. is an anti-Flash crowd, but as a technology Flash is no more evil than animated gifs. Both are abused by advertisers but both have legitimate uses."
Proably because people didn't listen the first time around.
"The Flash IDE is proprietary. The Flash file format is open and documented. You can write your own program to create or read flash files like so many have."
Depends on the definition of "open" being used. The Flash format is "open" by the good graces of Macromedia, not by any kind of OSS License. Microsoft (Got money?) could buy Macromedia and cause all kinds of trouble with the "open" Flash format. The same would be harder with a truely "open" format. And yes the same applies to PDF's
"SVG may be nice but with 98% market penetration I don't see Flash disappearing anytime soon. Also, considering its graphics+animation+sound+video (sorenson based) capabilities, coupled with a pretty good language (based on ECMAScript 4), Flash is a very powerful tool."
Flashes power comes from it's tools, more than it's implimentation. Try doing Flash at the same level SVG is presently being done at for a demonstration.
"I realize that
Maybe they're "anti-flash" for a good reason, just as we're "anti-Microsoft" for a good reason. Or you can contine to hold to the belief that it's all about the emotion.
It says there's insufficient disk space on drive D yet there's ~5GB available. :-(
Sigh...
DOH... The installer is insisting on using C for something.... and that drive is full.
I thought they were going to stop developement on the current all-in-one form of mozilla and focus on the individual replacements (firebird, thunderbird.) What ever happened to this? This is at least the second update since I heard that was the case.
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
I haven't seem a popup I didn't want to see since 0.9. Sometimes I use IE in someone else's computer and get amazed by how much junk their Web has. Mine is so clean and quiet. The only complain I could have is that sometimes it won't let me see a popup I want to see, but these are so few that I can gladly live with it.
I just can't use IE or Safari anymore. With addons like AdBlock, BannerBlock and MPlayer plugin there is no need for any other browser.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
I've switched between Firebird and IE for months now. Once NTLM 2 support gets into Firebird, I'll be a lot happier, so I can connect to work without switching browsers.
But to be honest, I'm really disapointed with the lack of spyware for Firebird. I don't think it will ever be the better browser until I can get some software automaticallly installed just by visiting a site. I don't want to have to click buttons all the time, like Yes or Open.
That and the whole pop-up thing is annoying. If Firebird is a better browser, it should have MORE popups. More is better.
And what's with these constant builds?! SPs should be at least 12-14 months apart. None of this quick fixing stuff. In fact, Service Packs should be 12 - 14 years apart, just in case something gets broken somewhere.
They'll never know the difference, except that the web looks better and doesn't crash/annoy anymore.
Constitutionally Correct
thank you
Which is all features supported on all platforms, and the bugs fixed.
Then it is done.
Bringing a project to "completion" would be a great contrast to the never ending upgrade/beta cycle that MS forces on you.
- FTP: upload is a part of the protocol, but Mozilla UI developers are ignoring it for the last 3 years;
- HTTP: WebDAV now is a part of the protocol, but Mozilla developers implemented it only in Composer (not in Browser, like IE);
Why Mozilla developers think that Calendar and Chatzilla (which has nothing to do with web-browsing at all, and by the way it's implemented anyway so badly that nobody use it) are more important for web-browsing than a complete implementation of core web-browsing protocols?Maybe at early 90s it was ok that that the web-browsing is a one-way communication when you only read and download the content. But it's not true anymore (perhaps since the dot-com bubble?). Today the web-browsing is almost always a two-way communication: people are answering web-forms and uploading files all the way.
I suggest Mozilla developers to wake-up, to free themselves from old AOL cultural traditions (remember? AOL still tinks that the internet access == dial-up 56K modems!), and to redistribute their resource accordingly to real priorities. Stop wasting your time on developing ChatZilla and Calendar (really useless components). Instead, devote those resources on FTP upload and HTTP WebDAV.
Less is more !
Do they still both install separate copies of the entire runtime libaraies?
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
here
copy and paste gave me a 404.
Seriously, I work in a tech pit doing phone support for a large University's e-mail and dial-up system (yes, monkey work). Anyway, I'd love it if all the users could just install pop-up blockers and stop complaining to me about ads...BUT...the average user has NO CLUE how to configure a blocker to allow certain sites through. The problem is compounded by the fact that our (horrible) web e-mail interface, uses a javascript pop-up login window. So the user process goes something like this:
:)
1. Install Pop-Up Blocker
2. Pat self on back for being so l33t.
3. Forget I installed blocker 5 mins later.
4. Call tech support 'cause I can't get my mail!!
Such is my life.
> And, of course it has intelligent popup blocking
> options. A simple option like "Open requested
> popup windows only" is really a major user win.
> I agree it's probably an effect of having a very
> small core of people designing
Um. Mozilla had this feature before Opera did. I've been a happy Opera user since 3.x, and when Opera started popup blocking, it was dumb popup blocking. Mozilla later introduced popup blocking that didn't block popups when you click a link. Then, a few months later, Opera copied this "Open requested popup windows only" functionality.
Intelligent popup blocking is enabled by default in Mozilla. It is disabled by default in Netscape 7.1. There's no convenient Operaish F12-like quick access to this preference (there are some extensions that you can install that would help, though), but you can get to it by going "Edit -> Preferences, Privacy & Security -> Popup Windows -> Block unrequested popup windows".
--
-JC
http://www.jc-news.com/
Check out the docs for the "XUL" install system. This makes installing spyware even easier than on Internet Explorer, with no pesky certificates from those assholes at VeriSign. Mozilla fans just need to evangalize the spyware companies to port their products to Mozilla.
As for the people saying that Mozilla doesn't crash, they are mostly out of the loop on the development cycle:
+ You want a stable Mozilla -- use 1.41. That version got assloads of QA and gets security fixes. It's rock solid.
+ The whole point of 1.5, 1.6 and so on is to introduce destablizing new features. Eventually they will start fixing all the bugs and get it stable again.
I have a K6, you insensitive clod!
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
The roadmap isn't trying to double-talk its way out of anything. It's out of date, plain and simple. They've chosen to focus on actually delivering a product, rather than making sure their roadmap is 100% accurate which as far as I am concerned is a reasonable choice. I really wish they'd update it though, because literally every time a Mozilla story hits Slashdot a post about "When will Firebird take over? Lying bastards!" gets modded to +5 and results in confusion ;).
Basically, as might be obvious by now, they have decided Firebird and Thunderbird are not ready to take over for SeaMonkey (codename for what we know as the Mozilla suite). There isn't an official word on when it will happen now, as far as I know. Logically, when Thunderbird and Firebird are deemed "1.0" releases would be a good time. If you're interested in all this, I direct you to the Firebird roadmap and to a lesser extent the Thunderbird roadmap, they're much more up-to-date and provide a concrete list of the steps remaining until they hit 1.0. I hope this clears things up a little, or at least helps explain why things are confusing at the moment in the first place.
Give them a break, this product IS 100% free to the end-user after all. And if anyone's interested in lending a much-needed hand, there are concrete things even non-programmers can do to help the projects along, like various QA tasks in Bugzilla.
Rock over London, Rock on Chicago. Wheaties: Breakfast of Champions.
...for getting tabs and popup blocking in IE 6? It's not for me, I use Mozilla and haven't edited the config file since 1.1, I think, when Javascript control got into the main Options dialog.
I think I may have had early versions of Mozilla crash without the Flash plugin being installed, but I'm not sure. What I am sure of is that if I do have the Flash plugin installed, then Mozilla crashes like a looped video tape of Ted Kennedy driving across a bridge.
-- $SIGNATURE
"get binaries' checksums to match the old binaries' checksums (nigh on impossible, given how md5 hash works)"
It's so impossible that someone who could do it might win a Fields medal.
How many hundreds of people do you think browse with an alternative browser? Simply by going thru the process of testing your website in Konq and Opera and other browsers you are WASTING YOUR TIME.
This is the single hardest thing to get thru alternative browser users heads is that a very small number of people use anything other than IE. I was kidding above about "hundreds" but its certainly only in the thousands. Not even a million people. So why should companies develop for anything other than IE? Out of the goodness of their hearts?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I just hope 1.6 is actually an improvement in terms of stability. Going from Mozilla 1.0 to 1.4, a few features were added, as well as a LOT of bugs:
- sometimes the URL text field just won't take input, for no good reason.
- After being up for a day or so, Mozilla will suddenly slow to a crawl, taking painfully long to do the simplest tasks, and eating up most of the CPU cycles on the machine.
- I once had Mozilla 1.4 irretrievably delete a bookmarks folder when I told it to move a bookmark there.
and still no yEnc support.
9 64
if you can vote for the support
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=119
PS : Yes, I know it is evil, but it does ont change the fact that is used.
Mozilla is not slow ( on a fast computer ).
Funny.
There are still some people who need NNTP NTLM auth - is anyone working on that? I see:3
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22465
Anyone else care to comment?
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
Mozilla is just a clone of Netscape. Why bother using it when you can just use Netscape? No body even remembers Netscape, do they? The story with Opera is not much different. Troll me if you need to; I'm just expressing MHO.
Netscape was a spin-off of Mozilla, but never got updated that often as Mozilla. Mozilla has developed a lot since the version that was used for the last NS release and will continue to get developed and advance as many other Open source programs. The future of NS is not so clear and probably dim, thanks to AOL.
yenc support would be essential. Unfortunately, no one of the many who demand it seems to be able to contribute some constructive work ...
Does this version support MSs Secure Password Authentication. It can be found in Outlook Express. I've never been able to connect to a SPA server with mozilla, and am force to keep windows and OE for classwork.
I really hate Dan Patrick.
How do demo Mozilla (or any other OSS replacement package) with people who are afraid of change? Case in point: My uncle would not allow me to install Mozilla on his computer because he was afraid that "it will mess things up." (He is running WinME with whatever version of IE is pushed out by Windows update.) I tried my best to explain to him that Mozilla would not mess up his system, and if he didn't like Mozilla he could just ignore it and keep using IE, or uninstall it. He knows I am a computer expert, but he just would not believe me. His last experience with installing a web browser was installing IE4 on Windows 95, and no matter how I tried to explain it, he was just too scared that it would screw up his computer.
He is not the only person I know like this. Most simple computer users I know manage to get their systems into a (just barely) working state, then forevermore are frightened of changing it, except to add games, until they buy a new computer.
So we have a chicken-and-egg problem. Most people won't bother to use Mozilla every day unless they try it out first. However, most people are so frightened of installing new non-game software that they will not install it to try it.
Maybe what we need to do is to get some major game manufacturer like Id or Blizzard (forget OSS games -- too small a market share to do any good) to package Mozilla and install it by default with all new games. That way, it will sneak Mozilla onto the systems of those who would be too frightened to use it otherwise.
The preceding comments reflect the author's personal opinion and are public domain, unless explicitly stated otherwise.
I've had a bit of success building firebird in the past, though last time I tried, the compile wouldn't complete. Never did find out why.
Can anyone suggest any sites that explain the build process in a little more detail? There are a LOT of options there! Also, I know that several compilers have trouble with mozilla, but I haven't been able to find any actual lists of what works and what doesn't. Does such a thing exist? Seems an awful lot must be documented SOMEWHERE, but it doesn't seem to be anywhere on the mozilla site.
the point is that the gui overhead is constant time (i.e. independent of the page viewed) and as I said, on modern computers not noticable. The relevant performance differences between browsers come from the rendering time which is dependent on many properties of the displayed page ... and this is exactly the same for Mozilla and FB as both use Gecko.
Nuff said.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Actually you can animate SVG from the 'outside' using any scripting language or even Java to manipulate the DOM. The only time SMIL comes into it is for 'simple' animation like something rotating, where you don't want to have to script it yourself.
You're right though, they should have kept it simple. Leaving animation out of it entirely and doing it all externally like in VRML would possibly have been better.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
here's the lead developer. it will have to be a lot more standards compliant than the current html 4 version for me waste time downloading and installing and using.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
Here's something I'll toss out and see if it sticks.
One of the qualities Gnome has is language bindings.
So why not have a Flash binding?
Tools more powerful than Glade, combined with a wellspring of experienced designers to draw upon.
And the programmers can do what they do best, while the "UI" experts can do what they do best.
Mozilla is definately regressing. Features are being removed or breaking thing that worked before., bugs are going unfixed from 1.0-1.1-1.2-1.3-1.4-1.5, new bugs are being introduced. It's like nobody working on Netscape actually cares about including useful code, they want to be the "kewl d00d who added that kitchen sink".
Of course it's not perfect english, considering that's something still being worked on in research labs, but what you can from various free translation engines online can let you get an idea, or sometimes even the full meaning, of what's on a foreign language page. Getting the general idea of a page is much better staring at bunch of gibberish. At least gobbledygook is gibberish in your own language.
You do realize that IE 6.05 will have popup blocking early next year.
(I am a happy user of Firebird and it will take more than popup blocking to make me switch back)
Try Amaya, from the W3C themselves.
When I used IE, I just told the security settings to not install activex plugins. No more spyware.
I know, I was just being sarcastic. I'm kinda annoyed at the IE team for the lack of service packs.
Actually, there was a bug that let plugins get installed without checking the security settings. If I remember correctly it was something to do with the automatic install of Browser Helper Objects, combined with an overflow in the IMG tag handler.
And there are all sorts of interesting things you can do with an XML-based standard rather than a FLASH-based one. As the controls, sensors, and data-logging worlds are turning into a froth of SOAP bubbles, SVG is uniquely pre-adpted to be part of the suds, a JIT-able discovery mechanism for say including state diagrams and schematics with live data from sensors and building controls
This enables the physical world to become a full visualized player in the semantic web we want, rather than the eye candy of the past (and today).
Thought I'd try this on a couple general access PCs at work, only to find the IE theme hasn't been updated for newer versions of Mozilla/Firebird. Doh!
Constitutionally Correct
I want a setting so that any new tabs OR WINDOWS open in the background, and I want to be able to do it by left-clicking. No, CTRL-clicking does not help because then one hand has to be on the keyboard. I currently use "open in new window" with a right-click, which passes the focus to the new window, and does not work if the link was JavaScript. If the left-click could handle it, then JavaScript should work properly.
The situation:
I am reading a page; I see a link I want to follow; I click the link. I do not want to look at an empty window while the new page loads, then return to the original page and have to find my place. I want to keep my attention on the page I am currently reading, then see if any links that looked interesting are actually worth reading.
I realize that I am not the normal surfer. Most people click a link and need to see the result. They need to see tha chain of events to remember that THIS page opened because they clicked THAT link. But Mozilla is supposed to be able to be used by smart people too, right?
I also want the double-rightclick to close the current tab. I have the habit of closing windows (and all tabs) with the window's X or from the taskbar. Either method causes Mozilla to closes the window (and all tabs) without warning. Double-rightclick would allow me a method to close the tab or window without moving the mouse to a corner of the screen.
I am very surprised that Mozilla does not have a warning message that you are closing multiple tabs. I expected a prompt stating:
"You are closing a window that contains multiple tabs. Would you like to:
- Close the window and all tabs.
- Close only the current tab.
- Cancel and keep all tabs open."
That seems like an obvious and easy function to me. It would give me a chance to retrain my habits without losing information. Again, I am very surprised the original developer of the tabbed interface did not include it.
If left-click could open new tabs, and double-rightclick could close them, I would be using the tabbed interface. If there was a warning dialog when I accidentally close the 30 pages I want to read, I could at least try the tabbed interface without losing everything many times. As it is, I am stuck using multiple windows, and clicking to focus on the current page all the time.
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While we are at it, when receiving "Page Not Found", put the URL in the dialog box so we are informed what page is missing, THEN CLOSE THE WINDOW. Or at least offer the option in the "Page Not Found" dialog. Does anybody really need to keep the empty window open?
"The following page was not found:
http://slashdot.rog
- Close the empty window or tab.
- Leave it open (so the address can be fixed.)"
Otherwise, why are we prompted for missing pages? Just leave the window blank. Or even put the error message in the page (like every browser ever written except Mozilla.) The current prompt is useless, since it does not even focus on the window so it can be closed.
(I once tried to open 20 links from a page. A dozen of them gave this prompt, and then I had to find which dozen windows were empty from bad addresses, while some of the others were just loading slow.)
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Notice that all my dialogs have descriptive choices. I hate the VB-trained programmers that use dialogs like:
"This is dangerous. Would you like the hard drive to not be erased?
- Yes.
- No."
MUCH better would be:
"This is dangerous. Do you want to:
- Erase the hard drive.
- Cancel."
Always avoid double negatives since then the user has to think before answering, and we know how well users think.
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A final note in this lesson on UI design:
Why does Submit come before Preview?
I spend my life entertaining my brain.