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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
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!
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
;)
So apart from what's not in bold text above, you're saying that IE is a better browser?
Work on that syntax, son.
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.
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?
Dead as a doornail. IIRC it began around the time of Milestone 9 or something, and nothing was ever released in public.
Besides, why do you ask on Slashdot?
Try a more specific site like ANN.lu or amiga.org.
(Or if you want to be fed with lies and hear everything's A-OK and you should send more money to "Amiga, Inc." in order to "support the community", then head over to AmigaIncOtherworldly.nuts)
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?
There are many users who prefer MozillaSuite for many good reasons (more features, several components nicely integrated, no need to download countless extensions, ...). Apart from that, FB/TB are still "technology previews" with many problems.
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.
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
Well, if you need to know how far away, you could check out http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/ for a nice summary of the 'nightly' activity. If you want to see 'who changed what in what file and when' in any release, just check http://bonsai.mozilla.org/. Not as easy to summarize that yourself, but when I was into the nightlies, I loved watching that. The rate of progress is phenomenal.
--- March, milde, march!
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?
Unfortunatly the kitchensink patch isn't in the mainstream mozilla yet (see bugzilla.mozilla.org, bug 122411)
/ kitchensink.xml
However you can view it in all it's glory here: http://www.mozilla.org/docs/web-developer/samples
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
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.
It's because SVG sucks ass 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.
SVG appears to be far superior to Flash for Vector graphics, especially the way it's so easy for a scripting language to modify it on the fly. FlashMX isn't the standard for vector design, it's a tiny niche market for web designers like yourself. The vector graphic designers include everybody on the face of the planet that uses an application such as Adobe Illustrator.
When SVG becomes de facto, we will see small web design firms become far more productive:
* designer fires up Illustrator (or whatever) and knocks up a pretty design
* designer points out that his texts COMPANY_NAME_HERE and SLOGAN_HERE need to be dynamic
* client-side programmer takes 10 seconds writing a script that reads in the file, does a str_replace() with the company details in the database, and spits it out
Thankfully all the menu buttons can be done this way, which wastes a lot of our designers time and soaks up bandwidth for no practical purpose. The alternative of Flash for buttons is not good as it cuts out those without the plug-in, and people losing or not sending the source means we have maintenance troubles.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
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.