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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."
And why should we trust you to provide tampered-free code?
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!
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.
no - on what grounds should this be a problem? Copyright applies to original work - no original work of MS was copied or used for implementing this. Also, no secret documentation was used and no animals were harmed. I do not see a problem.
When you optimize code or add new features, you also introduce new bugs that weren't there before. Out with the old, in with the new.
They obviously haven't spotted the new, so it's a beta.
...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
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
Just because it isn't a problem for us doesn't mean that the law agrees, er go DMCA.
#define DRM chmod 000
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.*
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?
But why not concentrate on implementing IE's version of DHTML?
Because the Mozilla developers will always be playing catchup. Once MicroSoft cottons onto the fact that the Moz people are expending considerable effort in matching IE's DHTML features, they'll most likely start releasing new extensions. As it is, there is a good compromise already in Mozilla. Web pages that don't appear to be standards conforming are rendered in "sloppy" mode, which generally works for IE targeted stuff.
At the end of the day, I cannot think of a single website that uses IE specific DHTML in a way that makes me yearn for support for it in Moz. The last IE only website I encountered was the Egg online bank one. Their insistence that I hadn't got a recognised browser simply means I got a credit card from somewhere else (Sainsburys as it happens).
Chris
Shouldn't that be:
But many developers (willingly or ignorantly) prefer MS's approach and most users (willingly or ignorantly) use Internet Explorer. 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.I'm tired of hearing this argument! If you just adhere to the standards when creating web pages you'll be just fine. In fact, you'd be better off as your pages will be much more easy to maintain, and you'll benefit greatly from all the available features that come with CSS. Try weighing the cost of maintaining a tag soup IE optimized (ugh!) page against a page using strict standards and the latter will win anytime!
IE is way behind Mozilla and Opera, it doesn't even support application/xhtml+xml, which is (or should be) used for XHTML. And don't get me started on the XML-declaration, IE chokes on this and throws itself into quirks mode when rendering your content.
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
"Why not save everyone a lot of time and money and support Microsoft's version of DHTML?"
Which is harder? Designing web pages by a common standard or conforming to one application's twisted implementation of said standard? You don't necessarily save money by developing only for IE. You waste time trying to create interesting ways to mimick features that can be trivial to implement in any compliant browser or simply attempting to figure out what IE will let you do. Remember browser compatibility charts that used to tell you what browser's supported what features? These were nightmarish for a simple markup language and a few CSS features. And so the solution is to just give up on compatibility charts and let MS have its way?
"It is very expensive for companies to implement Mozzila compatible versions"
No, no, I think you have it backwards. You are familiar with web standards? IE does a half-baked job of implementing them, makes some mistakes, omits things, and then leaves most of these problems for long periods of time. Oh yes, and some features actually might crash the browser.
Mozilla doesn't try to make web pages conform to some twisted view of a standard. Rather, Mozilla takes said web standards and attempts to comply with them.
There is also a principle here which is very important and every one seems to give up on. Open standards are important because they accomplish several things at once:
1) They promote use of the medium - making a given medium more accessible and beneficial to all involve.
2) They limit unnecessary complexity/redundancy - this saves everyone time and money.
3) They keep control away from single-minded interest groups who wish to control users of the medium. In essence, they protect the medium and its users. In the best cases they represent the interests of users and those care most about the medium's community.
Some people refuse to allow IE to dominate the browsable Internet unchallenged because it will only hurt the community and all involved. IE's dominance has brought apathy to its lackings - everyone knows in many ways it sucks, but the majority of its users are either ignorant, don't care, or are (seemingly) powerless. This in turn has actually warped the perception of the Internet into many things it should not be (a circus for advertising, for one). But even worse, IE has forced many developers to forget web standards and focus on IE and its version of things. In effect, IE says what is standard and what is not and we all obey.
Once you've gotten used to 20+ tabs and flipping between them instaneously, watch out. Mozilla is like the crack of the Internet. Highly addictive.
I'll give you one reason: the average (window$) users will give up if the installation is not better than smooth and will never see all the great things mozilla has to offer. Sadly, the average user is used to bearing with slow stuff more than he is to thinking.
Remember: perception is more important than reality.
Your point is well taken, but consider the fact that Mozilla is very much complete. It's got tabbed browsing, popup blocking, and a boatload of other little features. AND it doesn't crash like certain other browsers we're familiar with. What needs help now is the skinning system. The very least they could do is come up with a new skinning system that won't break backwards compatability every time a new version is released.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
I think a proper installer is a very high priority. I'm a linux user and use and I am quite happy using tar, but I've got a lot of friends who use windows and don't have the skills to install software that doesn't have an installer.
With an installer these people can download and install it themselves and then they can tell their friends, who can do the same. Mozilla usage can increase at an exponential rate. Without the installer mozilla would only be available to the technically savvy and their close friends.
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).
looks like adobe has not updated there client to support the 'stable' version of mozilla
http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/linux.html
Does "beta" mean bug-free? No.
Does "stable" mean bug-free? No.
These labels have nothing to do with optimizations or improvements; they are reflections of a team's comfort level with a products' defects and limitations.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
I'm tired of hearing this argument! If you just adhere to the standards when creating web pages you'll be just fine.
If you adhere to the standards it will work just fine in Mozilla. It might work in IE, but quite probably won't if you're doing any CSS2 or some CSS1. IE plains sucks when it comes to standards support.
This is both a blessing and a curse for Mozilla really. On the one hand it's good that there is an open source browser will full support for the latest standards, while MS still don't have one. On the other, since MS don't plan on releasing any updates to IE until Longhorn is released, we'll be stuck with this shit version for years to come. And going by past evidence, I doubt they'll get a standards compliant version out even then.
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.
NTLM is documented and understood pretty well.
Incedentally the jCIFS NTLM HTTP authentication Servlet Filter for authentication of IE users (and I guess Mozilla users now) against NT domain controllers implements the protocol completely and is used regularly by consulting arms of many big companies like Oracle, IBM, RSA Security, Novell and in production by countless other organizations. I know of at least one commercial SSO product that use it.
Mike (author of jCIFS)
It's useful for some, perhaps, but I don't speak gobbledygook very well. I'll start getting excited when they release a version that translates into English.
Because it's a pointless thing that is only relevant to the 0.01% of the population that a) have Mozilla and b) read that newsgroup.
Far better for it to be in a module. Then if you want it, you can install it, rather than bloating out the main application with something that the majority of people won't ever use or even understand the need for.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
You're right, but you're missing the point. Consider the facts:
1. MSIE is non-compliant with W3C standards.
2. As a result of #1 (and MSIE's 90% market share), many millions of web pages have been created to conform with MSIE features rather than W3C standards.
3. The W3C doesn't follow their own rules. A while back, some guy from Finland decided to do a survey of web sites run by W3C members, and out of 400 sites studied he found that 95% were not fully compliant with W3C standards because they had been designed with various IE-specific features.
So the real question is:
Which is harder: Getting tens of millions of people to re-design their broken, stupidly coded, non-W3C compliant web sites. Or, designing a browser that can display their broken, stupidly coded, non-W3C compliant web sites.
" 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.
You might not know this, but Mozilla doesn't just run on Unices. It also runs on Windows, Mac OS, and god knows what else. Most of what Mozilla does is not the way of Unix, mainly for the sake of being cross-platform.
Anyway, if you're interested in "small, sharp tools" or "one job, one program," you should look at Firebird and Thunderbird. You might be interested in knowing that this is the direction Mozilla is heading. So the Moz dev team would appear to agree with you there -- don't hold your breath about losing the disk cache, though.
Jason.
knowledgable user would download your source code / binaries and compare the checksum to the checksum of the real code
Note the parent poster provided links to mozilla's main site for the md5 checksums.
If he were distributing corrupt binaries he would have to either:
- get binaries' checksums to match the old binaries' checksums (nigh on impossible, given how md5 hash works), or
- replace the md5 sums on mozilla's main site (and the binaries, for consistency), or
- hijack routers or DNS so "mozilla.org" isn't right.
You're right, though, to be developing a healthy paranoia...."Provided by the management for your protection."
- 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 !
That's much easier said than done unfortunately, if you look at why the skins break a lot of the time. Skins are basically just sets of style-sheets and images that are applied to the user-interface widgets (which are defined in XUL, the XML-based user-interface language Mozilla uses). If anything major changes in the XUL definitions, like a new UI element or a renamed UI element, or an element is moved around to a more appropriate place, the CSS might no longer look right. It's not an issue of a binary format changing or something, it's that the skin is saying "put a black line here" (for example), and "here" is no longer where that line should appear. That's not really something it's feasible to provide backward comaptiblity with, unfortunately. That's probably not the only reason, but it is one reason that I've personally experienced while fixing some bugs in Thunderbird's GUI.
Rock over London, Rock on Chicago. Wheaties: Breakfast of Champions.
"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.