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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."
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!
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.
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 don't get you... how do you mean "one tool please them all that they are trying to make Mozilla into?"
;)
Mozilla *is* and *was* already a "swiss-knife" application. including a kitchensink
but yes, i agree completely that a more modular, plugin-style architecture would make things a lot better (more maintainable). just have a little patience... apparently it takes more time than planned
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.
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.
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
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.