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."

Comments

Firebird 0.8

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweet. FB 0.8 can't be too far away.

I don't understand

[Pingular]

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?

I'm confused...

[Fnkmaster]

The roadmap has implied for some time that 1.4 was the last unified (XPFE) Mozilla-based release. 1.5-1.6 was supposed to be the Firebird transition period, during which Mozilla-the-unified-browser was supplanted by Thunderbird and Firebird. Perhaps that was too ambitious, and they've changed their mind, but the roadmap (here)still indicates otherwise.

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?

Re:I'm confused...

[Dickolas Wang]

If I recall correctly, there was a really tiny note at the bottom of the roadmap or of the 1.4 release that said that it was not going to be possible anymore. Speculation was they were hit really hard by the demise of Netscape (and thus the loss of umpteen Gecko developers). I think this more than anything put off Firebird being anointed the new Mozilla Browser.

SVG support

[AllergicToMilk]

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.

Any news on AmiZilla?

[Amiga Lover]

Any news on how the port of mozilla to AmigaOS is going?

Firebird is WAY better than Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Mozilla is leet

[g-to-the-o-to-the-g]

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.

Legal Ramifications Resulting From Use of NTLM

[use_compress]

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?

It's because SVG sucks ass

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:It's because SVG sucks ass

[Performer Guy]

Sorry, it is not superior. There are ambiguities, it relies on SMILE for it's animation and SMILE is badly specified and overly complex. The implementation issues and ambiguities mean that very simple animations produce different results on different browsers. The complexity means that there aren't a lot of very functional implementations because it's a big job to implement what should be a simple format.

The whole thing is a wasted opportunity.

firebird

[g-to-the-o-to-the-g]

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.

Firebird merged, When ?

[Anonymous Coward]

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 ?

Keeping Mozilla alive is essential

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Skins

[Kethinov]

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.

Re:Skins

[cscx]

AND it doesn't crash like certain other browsers we're familiar with.

You mean like, .... Mozilla?

I've used IE for a very long time and it is WAAY more stable than Mozilla. In the short times I have used Moz, it has crashed way more times than IE has ever crashed on me. Ever. Mozilla 1.5 had this nasty habit of crashing on me EVERY TIME I exited the browser. I don't call that "stable." And NO, it wasn't the fault of any configuration or faulty hardware or any other stupid reason someone can come up with.

BTW, i use Firebird now ;)

Re:Mozilla is a great browser

[phalse phace]

Yes, pop-up blocking is great.

I often get customers coming up to me and asking what they can do to reduce or stop those annoying pop-up's. Sometimes I'll have to stop and think for a few seconds to understand/remember what they're talking about since Mozilla has spoiled me.

The first thing I always do is recommend that they download Mozilla and give that a try while explaining to them that I haven't seen a pop-up in over a year.

Unfortunately, though, most folks (~ 95%) will just tell me that they like/are happy with Internet Explorer, despite its bugs and holes. After another attempt at explaining to them the benefits of switching, I'll just tell them about products such as pop-up stopper and popup defender. It's sad, really, as they have no idea what they're missing out on.

One flaw with Mozilla & Firebird.

[zymano]

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.

I know I will get flamed for this...

[use_compress]

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?

Flash format IS open.

[MelloDawg]

http://www.openswf.org/

There are lots of third-party apps that generate Flash files.

DOM performance

[groomed]

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.

When do the versions roll over, I wonder?

[pedro]

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 :)

OS X Mailsound still not working.

[dafdaf]

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...

Maybe the regressions? Or profile migration?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

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.,

• Mozilla mail pops up asking some people for their password all the time, even if they tell Password Manager to remember it
• Gecko still renders some page layouts (like Slashdot) badly first time out, IIRC due to some bug with the box layout code
• they've messed up a couple of things with the CSS code while trying to fix other bugs, e.g., margins around HR tags don't work properly now.

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.

Re:SVG support - built my own

[wowbagger]

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.

Not the Unix way

[wowbagger]

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.

Re:Not the Unix way

[wowbagger]

Actually, my point was that by creating a seperate cache program, they could bring the benefits of this to ALL platforms, *nix or not.

And by the way - MacOS is Unix.

The biggest single mistake Netscape made back in the day was to NOT realize that by providing a set of small sharp tools to the Windows programmers, they left the market open to Microsoft, who did exactly that. This is something they are trying to correct with Mozilla, by providing things like Gecko and the Netscape portable runtime libraries, but if they were to provide a unified disk caching library they could begin to provide a real benefit to Windows users.

Re:I disagree

[hacker]

"It does NOT support W3 better or worse, since it uses exactly the same Gecko engine."

Actually, the HTML rendering in 1.6 changed in very ugly (i.e. broken) ways. I can have 1.5 and 1.6 running against a site, such as our bugtracker for Plucker, and the way it renders the tabled HTML changes. colspan is broken and appears to be "reversed" (adding a colspan incrementor, shrinks the width of colums spanned).

There are a few places where it completely ignores CSS values for coloring as well, leaving pages which contain a named class in one place colored, while that SAME CLASS in another place on the SAME PAGE is left white.

So far, 1.5a is the best I've tried. Fast, lean, and properly handles validated HTML and CSS constructs.