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Mozilla 1.7 Beta Is Faster And Smaller

ccady writes "Mozilla 1.7 beta is out. Not too many new features, but "Mozilla 1.7 size and performance have improved dramatically with this release. When compared to Mozilla 1.6, Mozilla 1.7 Beta is 7% faster at startup, is 8% faster at window open time, has 9% faster pageloading times, and is 5% smaller in binary size." I'll be downloading it."

738 comments

  1. Oh no, there goes Tokyo... by kentyman · · Score: 5, Funny

    Go Go Mozilla!

    --
    You know where you are? You're in the $PATH, baby. You're gonna get executed!
    1. Re:Oh no, there goes Tokyo... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think that it's Blue Oyster Cult's "Godzilla" being referred to...

    2. Re:Oh no, there goes Tokyo... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or even blue oyster cult songs...

      Some people

    3. Re:Oh no, there goes Tokyo... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I guess the closest would be mojila-gumi?

    4. Re:Oh no, there goes Tokyo... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      History shows what's real and what's not
      How Nature got slashed when it met dot...
      Slashdotta!
      Ooooooooooh, noooooooooooo
      Their commander is some whack taco
      Slashdotta!

    5. Re:Oh no, there goes Tokyo... by Zakabog · · Score: 5, Funny

      History shows again and again How open source points out The folly of closed, MOZILLA!

      If you don't understand this joke go listen to some Blue Oyster Cult

    6. Re:Oh no, there goes Tokyo... by SphericalCrusher · · Score: 2, Informative

      Amen! MoZilla (besides Safari) is the only browser that I use. Down with IE!

      Oh, and what about that post forgot to mention it being 25% faster on the Mac OS X operating system? o_O

      --
      "Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
    7. Re:Oh no, there goes Tokyo... by Sporkinum · · Score: 1

      Good B.O.C. reference, and me with no mod points today... darnit..

      --
      "He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
    8. Re:Oh no, there goes Tokyo... by Angry+Pixie · · Score: 1

      Oh you bastard! I've got a live cut of that one that's been playing in heavy rotation at my place for about a month!

    9. Re:Oh no, there goes Tokyo... by gnalre · · Score: 3, Funny

      Wrong, the success of windows has proved that you have to make software more complex, slower and take more resources to succeed.

      By giving people pandering to the lowest common denominator you are only killing yourself in the long run. Please stop it Mozilla before it is to late!!!!

      --
      Choose your allies carefully, it is highly unlikely you will be held accountable for the actions of your enemies
  2. Mozilla 1.6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Wow, I got here first using 1.6. Looks like some people will need 1.7 to get here faster next time

    1. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      could you please stop spamming /. with your polls?

    2. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by LBArrettAnderson · · Score: 2, Interesting

      i wouldn't consider it spamming... it's a lot easier to vote in a poll than to post a comment... i find it interesting to learn what everyone on /. (and other websites) think about certain issues, such as what browser they use. I've already learned something from this poll -- so far more people have voted mozilla than MSIE, which absolutely surprises me. I always thought it was just a vocal minority that used Mozilla, but I suppose i might be wrong. (then again maybe the ones who use mozilla got here faster than the ones who use IE)

    3. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by bobthemonkey13 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It would be great if you could link it to Referer: headers to see how many people lie.

    4. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by LBArrettAnderson · · Score: 1, Interesting

      i'm checking the log files right now... and of the 15 voters, 10 used MSIE. (only a couple actually voted IE)

    5. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by rokzy · · Score: 1

      er, where the fuck is Firefox?

      it is NOT the same as Mozilla.

    6. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Dreadlord · · Score: 1

      Why not create a page that generates browser usuage stats based on the user agent?

      --
      The IT section color scheme sucks.
    7. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      that would defeat the purpose of ASKING people. Of course some people are at work and have to use a certain browser and of course some people are going to lie.

    8. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by shepd · · Score: 1

      Lynx.

      --
      If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
    9. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by kundor · · Score: 5, Informative

      You realize that many alternate-browsers spoof IE headers so that they don't get rejected by MS-powered websites? Konqueror and Opera may even do it by default.

    10. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      This type of poll sucks

      Yes
      No

    11. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Epiphany is Gnome's official browser and you forgot it, insensitive clod!

    12. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by kundor · · Score: 4, Funny
      Dude, lynx is so dead. Links is the text browser of the FUTURE!

      It'll be dominant within months, just wait.

    13. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Curtman · · Score: 2, Interesting

      But how many of those forge their useragent string so that pages render properly? Quite often I have to change mine from

      "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040308 Firefox/0.7"

      to

      "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)"

      To deal with browser detection on broken sites. More often than not I forget to change it back afterward.

    14. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by platipusrc · · Score: 4, Informative
      On my version of Konqeror (3.2.1) ,
      Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/3.2; FreeBSD) (KHTML, like Gecko)
      is the default ID string.
      --
      And the muscular cyborg German dudes dance with sexy French Canadians
    15. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Favorite browser != current browser. A lot of workplaces don't give you a choice.

    16. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by GAVollink · · Score: 1

      Epiphany won't compile without having Mozilla source nearby. So Epiphany is close enough to Mozilla as to not matter.

    17. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by wo1verin3 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      okay, i feel better now that I know I'm not the only one who is single and bitter.... just ended 4 year relationship :(

    18. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Stonent1 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      I mod him down when I get mod points :)

    19. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      text-only links is trash. It attempts to recreate the layout of a page that is designed around graphics and mouse navigation, but does so ignoring the fact that keyboard and mouse navigation are COMPLETELY different, and graphics-based page layouts are useless when browsing in text mode. Even tables, links' big killer "feature," are ugly and almost useless in it.

      I've never used the graphics-capable versions of links, so I won't comment about those.

      But still, no doubt, the best text browser is Lynx. It formats text so that it is easy to READ and NAVIGATE. No stupid scrolling left and right garbage. Give me a Lynx window and the four directional keys, and I can make do (although I don't normally limit myself that way when I use Lynx). Try that in links and you'll find yourself screaming at your monitor.

      IOW, links can shove it. Lynx is the supreme info browser, period.

    20. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Guspaz · · Score: 2

      I voted for Mozilla, but I've got Firebird. No option for Firebird-only. Ah well, close enough.

    21. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by red+floyd · · Score: 1

      I use Lynx, You Insensitive Clod!

      --
      The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
    22. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Epiphany is Gnome's official browser

      Of course it is. Epiphany is garbage and Galeon is great. Out with Galeon, in with Epiphany. It's all in line with the degeneration enforced on GNOME to become retarded.

    23. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Trejkaz · · Score: 4, Funny

      Faster? You mean like the guy that beat you to the first post?

      --
      Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
    24. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Massive146 · · Score: 1

      Yes, so you would expect there to be more votes for IE. If there were more votes for mozilla or some other browser (which I think is what he is insinuating), you could assume that people were lying.

    25. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by cbreaker · · Score: 1

      I've heard rumors of sites rejecting non-IE browsers, but I have yet to find one myself.

      Probably only some small sites with admins that don't have a clue. I avoid such sites anyways.

      --
      - It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
    26. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by tbuskey · · Score: 4, Funny

      I used to change my user agent to say it was running IE on CP/M-86.....

    27. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      i'm glad this got moderated "troll" instead of "informative"........ (yes, i was being sarcastic)

    28. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by sumdumass · · Score: 1

      i have seen site that reject non IE browsers. these sites usuallt use some kind of active x control or somethign that IE can only run.

      i know other browsers can run active x controls. but IE is part (supposedly) of the OS so it can by default do things other browser might have dificulty. also these site that require IE also require a newer version of windows too i think.

    29. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How do you avoid them if you've never found one? Do you get a spooky feeling in your mouse finger when you hover over an IE-only link? ;-)

    30. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by wavedeform · · Score: 1

      "part of the OS"
      Speak for yourself.

    31. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by MechaStreisand · · Score: 2, Informative
      I always thought it was just a vocal minority that used Mozilla
      Evidently you don't understand the meaning of the term "vocal minority". More people voting for Mozilla than for IE is exactly in line with what a vocal minority would do.
      --
      Disclaimer: IANAL. This post is, however, legal advice, and creates an attorney-client relationship.
    32. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by jonadab · · Score: 5, Funny

      > I used to change my user agent to say it was running IE on CP/M-86.....

      I like to play fun games with my ua string, too. One of my favourite tricks
      is to claim to be running my browser on an X11 GUI on PC-DOS 3.3, but claiming
      MSIE on X11 is fun too (especially, MSIE on an X11 GUI on a Microsoft OS).
      Other user-agent jokes I've seen include the following:
      * Claim to be running a significantly future version, (e.g., claim MSIE 11.5
      or Mozilla/7.0 or use a future Gecko build date, et cetera)
      * Claim to be both MSIE and Gecko in the same user-agent string
      * List Emacs as the operating system
      * List Klingon, Quenya, or Sanskrit as the localization language
      * Claim an utterly impossible browser/OS/hardware combo, like iCab on
      OpenVMS on SPARC, or, even better, claim a combination that's not only
      impossible but also ancient, like NCSA Mosaic on ITS on a PDP8.
      * Claim a virtual machine architecture (e.g., the z-machine, glulx,
      parrot, jvm, ... anything that's never been implemented in hardware)
      as your hardware architecture.
      * Make wrong and incompitible version claims (e.g., start with Mozilla/2.0
      and then give a 2003 Gecko build date or claim to be MSIE 6.0)
      * Claim to be running on Hurd, BeOS 6, or some other vaporware.
      * "NoBrowserNeeded (My TCP/IP stack is connected directly to my brain.)"

      --
      Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
    33. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by MikeCapone · · Score: 1

      Evidently you don't understand the meaning of the term "vocal minority". More people voting for Mozilla than for IE is exactly in line with what a vocal minority would do.

      Something else to consider is that a lot of people don't read the discussions on /.

      The people who do are usually the geekier kind, a higher ratio of which probably use Mozilla & co., so the poll isn't quite representative of slashdotters.

    34. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by The+Snowman · · Score: 5, Informative

      I've heard rumors of sites rejecting non-IE browsers, but I have yet to find one myself.

      I am forced to change my browser header for one site on a regular basis. The site to pay one of my credit card bills barfs without IE, it says my browser (Mozilla) is uncompatible with the site. So I use the prefbar plugin to change the browser ID to IE and everything works well. Their tech support never got back to me when I told them this. Mozilla still will not work unless I change how it reports itself to their server.

      --
      24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
    35. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Dominic_Mazzoni · · Score: 0

      Why is this modded a troll? I think the poll is quite relevant and it will be interesting to see how Slashdotters vote. I'm not sure it should be modded +5, but why mod it down?

      Next time, don't forget to include Safari! (I voted for Konqueror instead, since they use the same HTML renderer, and I do like using Konqueror on Linux).

    36. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      wtf has referrer got to do with user-agent?

    37. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Gleng · · Score: 1

      Hehe, I used to have my user agent string claim I was running Mozilla 0.0000001 on a ZX Spectrum 48 :)

      --
      "Proudly Posting Without Reading The Article"
    38. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      but but, w3m has emacs-like (C-s) searching and jumping to links. so hah.

    39. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by acebone · · Score: 0

      All I know about Bush is I still have a job. -- Osama bin Laden

      --
      Check out my PHP Url Validator
    40. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by cbreaker · · Score: 1

      If you followed the context, you may have also come to the conclution that I meant "small sites with dumb admins."

      --
      - It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
    41. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by kundor · · Score: 3, Funny
      I have Hurd installed on my computer. It's not vaporware.

      You could make the valid contention that it's "nobodywantstouseitware," however.

      Anyway, couldn't you list Emacs as the operating system, the browser, the gui, and the hardware architecture? (I'm sure that must be an extension.)

    42. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by gabec · · Score: 4, Insightful
      As much as I hate to point out the obvious, it has nothing to do with "geekiness" that an arbitrary BS browser poll in the comments of a *mozilla* thread has *mozilla* winning.

      Doesn't it stand to reason that Mozilla users are the ones that will be the most interested in reading the thread? Right-o...

    43. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Fenris+Ulf · · Score: 1

      Have you tried w3m? I couldn't live without it.

    44. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by bonch · · Score: 1

      I always thought it was just a vocal minority that used Mozilla, but I suppose i might be wrong.

      Taco has already said the majority of hits are from IE. If Mozilla users are more vocal, it's because idealist people tend to be louder, and though Mozilla is technically superior to IE, most people who use it happen to be OSS idealists who always proclaim what "open alternative" they're using.

    45. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by GrumpySimon · · Score: 3, Funny

      Yes, those of us using IE have to type in the http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/30/042824 2&mode=thread&tid=113&tid=126&tid=133&tid=172&tid= 186&tid=95 Damn URL's so it does take us a bit of time to get around...

    46. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by HalfFlat · · Score: 4, Informative
      but claiming MSIE on X11 is fun too
      Are you aware that MS did make a version of IE for Solaris? It was astonishingly bad, but it did exist.
    47. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by grahamdrew · · Score: 1

      It tends to happen a lot with banks. I know I've had a lot of issues with my online banking website claiming my browser didn't support 128 bit encryption with the default browser string. Spoofing as IE 6 caused it to load fine though, security et all.

      I think my University's online payment system through the Bursar also had some issues accepting Mozilla at first. Half the lab machines were Sun Ultra 5s, though, and they got a lot of complaints about people not being able to pay thier bills from the available machines.

      --
      // Dumps core here
    48. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yes it is, its the GECKO rendering engine

      same as MyIE2 is the same as IE.

      duh

    49. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Neophytus · · Score: 1

      This used to break the java plugin if you tried to load a page (I'm not sure if this was ever fixed)

    50. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Curtman · · Score: 1

      Which java plugin? Sun, IBM, or Blackdown? I've been using the IBM one lately, and it hasn't given me any trouble yet.

    51. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by LittleBigLui · · Score: 2, Funny
      ... IE for Solaris? It was astonishingly bad, but it did exist.


      IE astonishingly bad? Is that like an astonishingly round circle?
      --
      Free as in mason.
    52. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Angry+Pixie · · Score: 1

      Are you aware that MS did make a version of IE for Solaris? It was astonishingly bad, but it did exist.

      Hey, I remember that one. I remember actually wondering why I was using MSIE on Solaris, then promptly going back to Netscape. It was the principle of the matter.

    53. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by AuMatar · · Score: 1

      Last I read, it still couldn't deal with hard drives over 2 GB. SO a usable version is still vaporware.

      --
      I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
    54. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by haeger · · Score: 2, Informative
      Here's one:
      This is a Swedish bank that needs to fix their site. Feel free to send them a friendly mail if You're swedish. I really think they should wise up.
      Also, it appears to be a domino powered website. :-)

      .haeger

      --
      You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
    55. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by CRCulver · · Score: 1

      I find Links is useful for doing graphics browsing when I don't want to start X, since it can work with Linux's fbdev or DirectFB. You're limited to Ghostscript fonts, which don't have enough glyphs to do easy browsing in some languages, but it's graphical web browsing from the console, with a tiny memory footprint and immediate start-up.

    56. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by BlackHawk-666 · · Score: 1

      15 voters! You consider that to be a big enough sample to be representative of the brower using habits on slashdot? That makes me wonder, if when TV ads say 9 out of 10 doctors recommend X, did they only ask 10 doctors?

      --
      All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
    57. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by BlackHawk-666 · · Score: 1
      Try this site:

      Microsoft

      --
      All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
    58. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by rokzy · · Score: 1

      no it isn't the same.

      Mozilla is an entire suite, Firefox is a stand-alone browser.

      I would never consider Mozilla because it has so much crap I don't need.

      Firefox usually gets advances like tabs and ad-blocking first and has more frequent updates/snapshots.

    59. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Perhaps it's just that most hits are from work where IE is the corporate policy.

    60. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      same here,

      w3m w3c www jpg gif png html xml url ...

      i like to use things that are easy to spell :D

    61. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by fredrik70 · · Score: 1

      go to this site (it's a UK bank). click on the 'continue' link and you'll see you browser disallowed. if you go there with ie you'll see that all there is to the page is a form to fill in nothing special.

      --
      if (!signature) { throw std::runtime_error("No sig!"); }
    62. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by ultranova · · Score: 2, Funny
      That makes me wonder, if when TV ads say 9 out of 10 doctors recommend X, did they only ask 10 doctors?

      No, of course not. They asked however many doctors they needed to get those 9 recommendations, be it 90 or 900. Then they decided that their sample was those 9 doctors and 1 who didn't recommend the product.

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    63. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://home.hetnet.nl/gradeupbrowser.htm

    64. Re: Mozilla 1.6 by Jabberu · · Score: 1

      Whenever I want to pay my bills via my "internet bank" I have to reboot to windows, since it only "works" with IE _and_ Netscape 4(!), though support for N7 is to be integrated soon. If you try to load the site with any other browser, you're left with a complete blank.

      --
      We're not retreating.. we're merely advancing in reverse. - Earthworm Jim
    65. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's your opinion. Unfortunately graphics-heavy sites have won over, and navigating them on lynx is a pain, IMHO. For example, links is my browser of choice for browsing slashdot...

    66. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by yanestra · · Score: 1
      This is a Swedish bank that needs to fix their site. Feel free to send them a friendly mail if You're swedish. I really think they should wise up.
      They're using Lotus Domino 5.0.9a, according to the page fragment, which seems to be a little outdated. Anyway, IBM is to blame...
    67. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by 16K+Ram+Pack · · Score: 1
      I've been to a few sites that don't render properly. I do something simple - write to them and tell them to start rendering properly, and I'll start giving them business.

      Internet banks seem to have a bad reputation, but I bank with two that work just fine, so all that encryption don't matter. If either of them stopped working with Mozilla, I'd seriously think of switching elsewhere.

    68. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by gnu-generation-one · · Score: 1

      You realize that IE spoofs Mozilla headers so that they don't get rejected by Netscape-powered websites?

    69. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Hway · · Score: 1

      Funnily enough, finnish Handlesbanken's site works perfectly, although there were some login problems in past.

    70. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Alzheimers · · Score: 2, Interesting

      My biggest problem with LYNX is how it formats headers and sidebars into long lists at the top of the pages. Almost every webpage these days has a list of links at the top of the screen and a newspaper column style sidebar. Both of which force a LYNX user to page down past all those links before getting to any useful content.

      I haven't played with Links yet, but if it avoids this problem I'm all for it.

    71. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Quintin+Stone · · Score: 1

      I have to agree. Unless I *need* to see tables for a particular page, I'll stick to Lynx when I have to use a text-only browser.

      --

      "Prejudice is wrong; you should hate everyone the same."

    72. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by jonadab · · Score: 1

      > I have Hurd installed on my computer. It's not vaporware.

      I was vaguely aware that it exists now and that Debian has a distro out based
      on it (though nobody else seems to, and Debian probably does for ideological
      rather than practical reasons), but it *was* vapor for over five years, long
      enough to earn it a permanent status as well-known vaporware, the closest
      equivalent in the operating systems world to what Duke Nukem Forever is in
      the gaming community.

      Incidentally, the other example, the BeOS, is theoretically back to active
      development now and will eventually have an actual version 6, so we're told.
      But it's too little too late, and the world has passed it by.

      > Anyway, couldn't you list Emacs as the operating system, the browser, the
      > gui, and the hardware architecture? (I'm sure that must be an extension.)

      Not per se. Emacs could be listed as the OS, and W3 could be listed as the
      browser. Emacs doesn't really have a GUI as such; it has a standard widget
      set (and has had for a long time), but the widgets are text-based, and though
      Emacs now supports graphics and proportional fonts, the widgets still don't
      feel GUIish. Also, Emacs doesn't do overlapping windows, the fundamental
      GUI feature; it just splits its frame horizontally and/or vertically into
      multiple windows that don't overlap. (This works for Emacs very well,
      primarily because of the ease of switching a given window to show any buffer,
      a feature for which there is no analog in any GUI of which I am aware; it's
      just a different way of doing things.)

      As for being the hardware architecture, I'm not sure that makes sense. Emacs
      is very portable and runs an basically any hardware, but it's not really a vm
      in the usual sense of that term.

      What Emacs needs is to get some of the cool features all the modern OSes seem
      to have these days, like preemptive multitasking and memory protection, and
      then people would maybe stop looking down their nose at it. Hey, it worked
      for the Mac :-)

      --
      Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
    73. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Darren+Winsper · · Score: 1

      Because HURD memory maps partitions when it mounts them, you get a 2GB limit on 32-bit architectures. On a 64-bit system, however, you're not limited to 2GB, but to some stupidly large size we won't hit for a while.

    74. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by jonadab · · Score: 1

      > Are you aware that MS did make a version of IE for Solaris? It was
      > astonishingly bad, but it did exist.

      I was aware that there was a version of IE for some brand or another of Unix,
      though I'd forgotten exactly which one. However, wasn't that, like, IE3 or
      so, an early version that nobody actually used even on Windows, from back in
      the days when Netscape was still dominant and Microsoft still considered
      TCP/IP to be an optional add-on? I was thinking more of claiming to be using
      a somewhat more current version of MSIE on X11, possibly on an OS that doesn't
      normally use X11 as its primary GUI. You know, like this:
      Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; X11; PC-DOS 3.3)

      --
      Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
    75. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by AuMatar · · Score: 1

      If it doesn't work on 32 bit systems, which is the vast majority of its target audience, then its hideously broken. I have a lot of respect for the GNU programs, but HURD is hideously misdesigned. If mmap breaks it for 32 bit architectures, then mmaping partitions is a bad design decision.

      --
      I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
    76. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Swith your UA to be IE6 and go to microsoft.com - the page gets all fuct up, especially at the bottom.

    77. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Jellybob · · Score: 1

      As a web developer I use MSIE on X11 regularly, via the joy of Crossover Office, which is great for testing sites I'm working on under IE without having to reboot.

    78. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, Lynx does that by design. But the alternative would be to create multiple columns from those sidebars (which would be slow and would be tricky for Lynx-style instant render-on-download *) or actually render them as sidebars to the left of body data, the latter of which links actually does.

      Links's behavior is very poor in this regard. If a page does have a sidebar, it will be rendered as such, and will push the body text to the right. You must then scroll the screen to the right in order to see anything useful. That is one of the horrible problems with links: Pages rendered by links can have potentially endless width, regardless of the horizontal character resolution of your console window. This creates a bad environment for keyboard navigation, since know you are scrolling in two dimensions.

      Lynx avoids this behavior. It scrolls up and down, and formats text to fit your console. Hyperlinks in Lynx are easy to locate and navigate, and focus doesn't necessarily switch to that of the hyperlink.

      Try this in both browsers:

      1. Identify a link at the top of a page. Memorize its link number (so that you can do a "g [link number]" to open that link in a future step). You must have numbered links enabled in both browsers.

      2. Scroll down so that the link is no longer in view. Think of the text you are now looking at as important data.

      3. Type "g [link number]" to open the link from step 1.

      4. Go back to the first page with the left arrow. In links notice that you are now focused on the link. In Lynx, notice that you are still focused on the important data from step 2. Imagine how inconvenient it would be to sort through data from the middle of a page while having to compare it to data found in a list of hyperlinks at the top of that page.

      Of course, Lynx allows you to send focus to a numbered hyperlink as well, with the "G" command (capitalized).

      * I make the distinction between Lynx's render-on-download and that of links because Lynx is just much faster at it. Load slashdot in both browsers and you will find that links renders, more slowly than Lynx, a page divided into three columns - scroll down two pages and the left column is now completely blank, while the stories take up only less than half of the screen (on my 80-characters wide console window). That's not pretty, that's just forcing a mouse-based layout on a keyboard-based browser (though you COULD use a mouse with either program, that's not necessarily their best application). Even better speed test: Open a Yahoo Mail Inbox with either program. Links will take many times longer to open it than Lynx will, because of its slow rendering engine and insistance on creating dead space. Good luck if your Yahoo inbox is set to display 100 messages per page.

      Anyway, I don't like links for many reasons, after months of trying to find reasons to switch to it. It's the mouse-user's text browser, but Lynx is much faster (usability-wise and rendering-wise) for the user who is intimate with the usage of both.

    79. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ugh, scratch those steps. I haven't had my coffee.

      In step 1, ignore the "g" command. It's the URL-entry command.

      Ignore the "capital `G'" command. It's the "edit current document's URL" command. The command to send focus to a hyperlink is to type the link number appended with a lower-case "g," so to send focus to link #15, you would type "15g." To open that link while not focused on it, simply type "15."

      These explanations were intended for those not familiar with these browsers, but I scraped on them. Bad me, to the caffeine depot post-haste.

    80. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Elinks has become my primary browser as of late, nd w3m is kind of nice when I want to read comics. I'm on 400MHz with no video card to speak of at home (Debian GNU/Linux). I still use Galeon some, but even that's too slow for me, and Dillo just didn't support enough stuff (does it even know cookies?) There are some annoyances still, but overall, it's the best thing I've found for slow systems. Heck, I'm on a >1GHz computer at school at the moment and finding Firebird and IE both too slow for my tastes. I've been spoiled by test-based browsers.

    81. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by cbreaker · · Score: 1

      A bank in Sweedin. Damn ye Microsoft to HELL!!! Now where am I going to bank!

      --
      - It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
    82. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by cbreaker · · Score: 1

      Microsoft.com works fine with Mozilla, it actually behaves and works quite nicely.

      So much for your whitty rebuttle.

      --
      - It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
    83. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by BlackHawk-666 · · Score: 1

      Twat, did you even follow the link? It was a link to Windows Update service, which does *not* work fine with Mozilla. Try reading the web page the link takes you to. So much for your "witty" put-down.

      --
      All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
    84. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by kundor · · Score: 1
      it doesn't support PARTITIONS larger than 2 gb.

      Nothing stops you from having 12 such partitions, however.

    85. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by cbreaker · · Score: 1

      What the fuck is your problem? Of course Windows Update doesn't work without IE, and it's incredibly ignorant of you to even try and make a point out of it. It's way out of context.

      I didn't click your stupid link because you're a stupid fuck and it would have been a waste of my time to click your dumbshit link.

      Next time just say what you want to say instead of trying to be all smartass.

      --
      - It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
    86. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by BlackHawk-666 · · Score: 1
      You are such a complete retard. It wasn't worth the time to click the link, but it was worth the time to type another pointless message?

      The original post stated "I've heard rumors of sites rejecting non-IE browsers, but I have yet to find one myself." and my post pointed to a site that doesn't work with non-IE browsers. What part of that exchange can't you understand?

      --
      All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
    87. Re:Mozilla 1.6 by cbreaker · · Score: 1

      Next time I'll be more specific so that retards like yourself don't feel the need to be even bigger retards.

      How about this: "I've yet to find any sites, BESIDES THE FUCKING OBVIOUS ONES, that are IE only" - is that clear enough for you, dipshit?

      --
      - It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
  3. MNG? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    But does it have MNG support?

    1. Re:MNG? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/mngsuppo rt

      That's a plugin for MNG support in Mozilla/Firefox. I would read the comments, though, some seem to warn against installing the plugin for certain builds. I only glanced over it, though; MNG support hasn't really been a priority for me, especially since I didn't even know MNG existed until people complained that they took support for it out of Mozilla.

    2. Re:MNG? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Does anyone actually use these formats anymore?

    3. Re:MNG? by Arngautr · · Score: 2, Interesting

      This isn't a troll its funny, oh well, But I wish everybody would just do MNG (and PNG for that matter) right, GIFs are so limiting.

    4. Re:MNG? by dpete4552 · · Score: 1

      It doesn't work.

      --
      http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares
    5. Re:MNG? by CeleronXL · · Score: 1

      No, MNG support is still gone. Who really knows why. They say its to make it smaller and faster . . . It's not worth the cut. Hey, let's cut out HTML support - that'll make it faster too! :(

    6. Re:MNG? by Trejkaz · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Part of the problem there is that animated GIFs are still considered images, whereas MNG is probably considered video (since its mime type is... video/mng? Or is it video/x-mng?.) Therefore any site which only permits images to be displayed on it (various bulletin board sites are the main culprits, I suspect) might still cripple MNG supporters.

      Unless you really can have <img> tags which contain MNGs, in which case I'll STFU.

      --
      Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
    7. Re:MNG? by tepples · · Score: 1

      Yes, if MNG support in Mozilla were to get a new maintainer, MNG data would work in <img> elements. But even if not, sites that sell ad space (the other market for MNG) have already converted to use <object> elements for SWF movies. MNG occupies the space between animated GIF and Flash.

    8. Re:MNG? by Trejkaz · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well I for one welcome our new MNG overlords, but I just don't see anything happening unless people get enough impulse to stop using GIF. And there's also that slight problem of the other, more broken browser which can't implement many other standards well, including PNG, and has even less chance of getting MNG right.

      --
      Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
    9. Re:MNG? by Jussi+K.+Kojootti · · Score: 2, Funny

      How could I tell? There are no pages I could test it on...

    10. Re:MNG? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm pretty sure that IE lets you do anyway, so that has nothing to do with it.

      The main issue is lack of good MNG tools and the fact that right now nobody uses them for anything.

    11. Re:MNG? by Arngautr · · Score: 1

      Just tried using an img tag and it works fine in my Netscape version 7.1, however it doesn't show anything in my (now old and obselete) version 1.5 of Mozilla, and IE6 shows the familiar broken image box, embed also doesn't work at all in IE though it works in the others, M$ really needs to update IE, though I must say their css coverage is comprable to Netscape's, I just wish there were more overlap between the two.

    12. Re:MNG? by Trejkaz · · Score: 1

      That's interesting. I guess this sort of arbitrary choice is why the W3C are removing the tag in the next version. People were using video types (like MNG) as images, and it was possible to use image types (like PNG) as objects. In XHTML2 everything will be objects so browsers can still make the arbitrary decisions, but no ill logic will result. :-)

      --
      Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
  4. Slashdot-GO! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    "Not too many new features, but "Mozilla 1.7 size and performance have improved dramatically with this release. When compared to Mozilla 1.6, Mozilla 1.7 Beta is 7% faster at startup, is 8% faster at window open time, has 9% faster pageloading times, and is 5% smaller in binary size." I'll be downloading it.""

    Not if we get there first.

  5. This is why I dropped Netscape by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is why I stopped using Netscape: each version was much larger, much slower, and much less reliable.

    How can something with the same kernel, and the same ancestry go the other way: Mozilla actually improves as it evolves.

    On the one hand, the dodo. On the other hand, the road-runner.

    1. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      On the one hand, the dodo. On the other hand, the road-runner.

      And in a crash-hole between them, the coyote.

    2. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Mozilla actually improves as it evolves."
      windows user huh?

    3. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by Planesdragon · · Score: 3, Informative

      How can something with the same kernel, and the same ancestry go the other way: Mozilla actually improves as it evolves.

      Mozilla is a descendant, of sorts, of the Netscape 4 browser. OTOH, it doesn't have any real inherited code--and Netscape 6 and 7 were just repackaged Mozilla that did, AFAIK, get smaller and faster with each iternation, just like Moz did.

    4. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by vocaro · · Score: 5, Informative

      How can something with the same kernel, and the same ancestry go the other way: Mozilla actually improves as it evolves.

      Because it doesn't have the same kernel.

      Back in 1998, when Netscape released their code, the open-source community soon realized that they would have to throw much of it away and start from scratch. By throwing out the cruft that had been building up since Netscape 1.0, the Mozilla team was able to build a better browser...eventually. (Check out this BBC article for a nice pre-history of Mozilla.)

    5. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by Joey+Patterson · · Score: 2

      How can something with the same kernel, and the same ancestry go the other way

      Because Mozilla exists "to preserve choice and innovation on the Internet" and their browser isn't loaded with corporate crap.

    6. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by colinramsay · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think Mozilla has reached the point where it can't really get much more advanced feature-wise until other issues are addressed - such as size and performance. There is so much crammed into the suite that reorganisation is going to take a while, and I think that influence from Firefox has made some people sit up and take notice.

    7. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by Imperator · · Score: 4, Funny
      On the one hand, the dodo. On the other hand, the road-runner.

      And this should serve as a warning to anyone else who thinks about getting stoned and posting here.

      --

      Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
    8. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by mAineAc · · Score: 1

      I dropped netscape because of all the AOL advertising crap built into it.

    9. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by Myen · · Score: 1

      Appearently bits like the MIME handling was copied from the old codebase.

      Or at least that's what somebody said in the MHT (RFC 2557) saving bug; I'm not linking hopefully to avoid /.'ing bugzilla via people with referrer blocking. See comment 82 of that bug.

    10. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by DataPath · · Score: 3, Funny

      Cuh IE yotie

      --
      Inconceivable!
    11. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think you're missing the intent of the statement. The parent was saying that Mozilla and Netscape 7.x share the same kernel.

    12. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Back in 1998, when Netscape released their code, the open-source community soon realized that they would have to throw much of it away and start from scratch.

      Actually, that's a bit of myth. It was really Netscape's management who dictated the rewrite, in order to accomodate the Gecko rendering engine (which was still called NGLayout or Raptor back then). Most of the Netscape/Mozilla developers (less than six months into the project, there were not many non-Netscape contributors) at the time were against the change, not because they didn't like the idea of a smaller, faster and more standards-complaint rendering engine, but because they were given a ludicrous six-month timeframe to achieve parity with Netscape Communicator 4.5.

    13. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by shadowbearer · · Score: 1


      Agreed. They've certainly been doing a good job - I noted a marked performance increase in 1.6. Firefox is still much faster (particularly loading) but Mozilla has really changed in the last 6 months.

      Kudos Mozilla team!!

      SB

      --
      It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
    14. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by uncleFester · · Score: 3, Funny
      And in a crash-hole between them, the coyote.

      .. but is it an Acme Portable Hole?

      -fester

      --
      -'fester
    15. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by jovlinger · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Does anyone else see the same behavior I do; that while it starts out snappy, Mozilla gets slower and slower. This is most noticable when rendering tabs in the background; this goes from instantaneous to taking the better part of a minute.

      The slowdown from snappy to slow takes a day or two of use, and requires a restart of the browser to fix.

      This happens both in mozilla and fire-fox, so it must be some internal resource leak, I guessing.

    16. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by FireBreathingDog · · Score: 1

      Sounds like a memory leak to me...

    17. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by cmacb · · Score: 2, Informative

      Yes, I have noticed this. It used to be MUCH worse though. As you mention you have to browse for a good long time for it to become an issue. Every new version of Mozilla seems to make the problem less severe too.

      If the comparison you are making is with IE though, I don't find it any better, in fact rather than just getting slower, IE tends to just blow up at some point, especially if you have viewed a lot of pages that contain calls to plug-ins.

    18. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by kantai · · Score: 1

      Wait, are you complaing about having to restart your browser every day or two?
      I mean, there is very little reason that a browser should be open for longer than a day...

    19. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      It seems odd to see the words "preserve" and "innovation" in the same sentence.

    20. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by Foolhardy · · Score: 1

      Collectively, all the windows opened by Mozilla run under the same process, so if you have even 1 open, the browser remains active.

      I keep it active for some of the same reasons to have multiple desktops. I am in the middle of going through some page, or I see something I want to look at later (only once; not enough for a bookmark) then I will keep that page open for days, until I finish.

    21. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by aled · · Score: 1

      OTOH there should be little reason for a browser to not be able to last at least a few days open.

      --

      "I think this line is mostly filler"
    22. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by stienman · · Score: 4, Informative

      It seems to me to only be a problem when I have a lot of data open at once, and leave it alone long enough for windows to swap it out to the drive.

      For instance, I have a tab link that, when clicked, loads 63 comics pages at once. It significantly reduces my time spent reading comics (waiting for them to load, actually) but it's a TON of memory.

      If I let my laptop hibernate and bring it back up it takes nearly 30-60 seconds to render the tab that was on top when I hibernated. After I read the first few and close a few tabs it speeds back up to its normal speed. I suspect it's more an issue with mozilla using a huge amount of memory (possibly for holding rendered versions of web pages) that is swapped out.

      Using it interactively, even after having it open for several days, it's about as fast for me as when I first started it.

      -Adam

    23. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by jdclucidly · · Score: 1

      Yes, it is a documented memory leak. I believe most of the problem comes from imagelib.

    24. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by Lord+of+Ironhand · · Score: 1

      If you want real fast browsing, give Dillo a try. It still has trouble rendering some pages, but it leaves all the so-called "fast" browsers far behind.

    25. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by petabyte · · Score: 1

      Except dillo doesn't (to my knowledge) support CSS at all. At that point, I can't even load my own page in it and have it look the way it supposed to. It's useable (I designed the page for accessiblity) but looks nasty. And I like CSS :)

    26. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by Long-EZ · · Score: 1
      My Mozilla 1.6 seems worse about slowing down than 1.5. It seems to be a bigger problem when I view pdfs. I thought it was just something weird in my installation. Hopefully, the talented Mozilla team is fixing this. Zero is a good number of memory leaks.

      And yes, I leave my browser running all the time, just like my OS.

      It's still a great browser, and surprisingly just keeps getting better.

      --
      >> My ultraviolent Linux switch video.
    27. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by 0x0d0a · · Score: 4, Informative

      May I suggest netcomics and a dedicated image browser like gqview?

    28. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fastest is not always the bestest, I browse around a lot, and I like my usual browser to open as many pages as possible.. There's a java speed test that shows the latest Opera kickin butt on the speed, but I still us Firefox (Mozilla) because it opens more pages. I will try Dillo though, thanks.

    29. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by 0x0d0a · · Score: 1

      Do you use the embedded xpdf or embedded acroread to view PDFs?

      Acroread, a year or two ago, was incredibly full of leaks, perhaps the worst piece of software I've ever used WRT leaks.

    30. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If I forget to close mozilla and end up leaving it on overnight it gets REALLY slow.

      I think a lot of this is due to the fact that aggressive cron scripts run in the middle of the night and take all of mozilla's stuff out of the page cache. Therefore, mozilla's old memory is no longer loaded, and the Linux kernel must get it back from the disk.

    31. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by meringuoid · · Score: 2, Funny
      .. but is it an Acme Portable Hole?

      Knowing Wile E. Coyote, I hope not. The very first thing he'd do is try to lurk inside there while he takes his Acme Bloody Huge Roadrunner-Slaying Device out of its infinite-capacity Acme shipping crate. The consequences of this sort of thing, I'm reliably informed by D&D geeks, are bad.

      --
      Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
    32. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by rsheridan6 · · Score: 1

      Trouble rendering some pages? Trouble rendering an awful lot of pages is more like it. I'll use dillo to browse locally stored html documentation and stuff like that (because it really is fast and small), but it's not ready for prime time yet.

      --
      Don't drop the soap, Tommy!
    33. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That might be bug #76831, for which a fix is being developed. Could you try the test build with the fix and post the results at bugzilla?

    34. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by Long-EZ · · Score: 1

      My Mozilla uses nppdf.so. I haven't changed it from the default installation.

      Thanks for the tip.

      --
      >> My ultraviolent Linux switch video.
    35. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by betelgeuse68 · · Score: 1

      I have never seen the behavior you speak of... I leave my computer running for days... and days... and days... both Windows XP and LINUX.

      -M

    36. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by jovlinger · · Score: 1

      It seems more of a stocastic bug:

      I was running firefox (and had been for maybe 8-12 hours since last restart). All of a suddent (after I perhaps a little vigourously paged backwards through a couple of POST forms) it pegged the processor at 100%. Memory was ~50MB, and not swapping. I slowly and laboriously killed all non-vital windows (I had two comparison-shopping carts going that I didn't want to lose), and left it alone. Completly unresponsive. Eventually (after about 5 mins of 100% busyloop) it came back. Now, each click pegged the processor again, and each page load took at least 1 minute. Memory was not growing. Scrolling also very affected, but not nearly as bad as page loads. Eventually, I screendumped the carts and killed it in frustration.

      Notice tho:
      1) sometimes it can go days. This time not 12 hours.
      2) processor is pegged, not memory, eventually dies down, but any activity will peg it again; even simple window-expose redraws.

      Now, I'm running mozilla's contributed GTK2+XFT build, so it could well not be a core firefox fault, but as this is the state-of-the art OSS browser, the performance ain't too impressive.

      I have never seen this performance with v/ 1.4 on linux or solaris (haven't tried newer versions on solaris, tho).

    37. Re:This is why I dropped Netscape by jovlinger · · Score: 1

      erm. to clarify

      mozilla 1.4: ok
      mozilla 1.6: affected (or whatever I have installed. I can't check as you can't run both mozilla and firefox simultaneously ?!)
      firebird/phoenix: unaffected.
      firefox 0.7: affected

  6. yes, but.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    how many % faster in downloading though?

  7. Yes, it is smaller and better by ericdano · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Yes, Mozilla is developing quite nicely. It's my browser and email of choice. No more IE for me on my Windows XP system. And, of course, Mozilla runs on other systems as well, such as Mac OS X.

    When was the last time IE was updated????

    --
    It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
    I moderate therefore I rule!
    --
    1. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by lukewarmfusion · · Score: 5, Insightful

      When was the last time Mozilla had a 90%+ market share.

      I use Mozilla, Firefox, and Thunderbird too - they're my favorites. But I can't build for Mozilla. I have to build for IE. My clients use IE, the visitors use IE and that makes it the standard (even though it doesn't follow the "standards").

      It's an uphill battle, I'm afraid. That said, I'll be downloading this new version ASAP.

    2. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > When was the last time IE was updated????

      doesnt that get daily security fixes? or is it the holes that get found daily?..i forgot

    3. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by ericdano · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sad, but true. However, once one tries Mozilla, IE looks old and lame in comparison. I mean, Tabbed browsing is the best. Plus, you don't have VB tied into Mozilla like it is with IE, so, the virus issue is limited somewhat...

      --
      It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
      I moderate therefore I rule!
      --
    4. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      But I can't build for Mozilla. I have to build for IE.

      Why can't you build for both?

    5. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by walter_kovacs · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's a never ending circle - designers who don't know anything about web standards and have only ever used IE make sites that only work in IE - people try a new browser like Mozilla, and see that their favourite sites are "broken" in the new browser (when really it's because the sites were built to work around the non-compliant IE) - so they go back to IE... That said I've found Firefox does a pretty good job of rendering most pages well.

    6. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by MikeFM · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I code to the standards first and then verify it looks right with both IE and Mozilla (and Opera, and Lynx, and Konquerer). If something doesn't work with both I either remove it, tweak it until it's right, or use something like XSLT to generate the proper HTML for the given browser. It's more effort but it generally results in better code all around. If it's just CSS that is the problem I just have the site choose the desired stylesheet based on the browser used or let the user choose their own stylesheet from a list.

      IE's CSS support has gotten better in recent releases but it's still not on par with Mozilla's support. For most things though it seems good enough to just use standard HTML/CSS without any IEisms. IE still isn't very PNG friendly though which is an ongoing annoyance for me.

      Overall though it's not really a problem to just code to the standard. Coding to IE is problematic because it's a standard that changes with each release.

      --
      At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
    7. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by lukewarmfusion · · Score: 1

      Mozilla makes a hell of an effort to meet W3C recommendations, and support the "standards." IE, however, does not follow these nearly as well. There are a lot of things that IE support but others don't (or vice-versa).

      The Mozilla Forums are full of these examples.

    8. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Wrong, W3C sets the standard and their browser is the standard. You do not have to use superstandard methods like activeX to make a working webpage, so don't.
      IE is not a standard, and won't be unless Microsoft buys it's way into being a standards organization.

    9. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by no+longer+myself · · Score: 5, Funny
      the visitors use IE and that makes it the standard

      Admittedly, I get most of my site's hits from Slashdot, but I find a rather pleasant mix of Gecko, Mozilla, Opera, Apple Webkit, and occasionally someone using IE. Actually, I think Google surfs my site more than anyone. (I did tell "Slurp" to take a flying leap.) Of course it does flop over to nearly 80% IE from time to time, but I've also noticed that IE users are only interested in some file named cmd.exe or root.exe, and I've never offered either of those files from this box. It must be a Microsoft thing...

      Personally I'm hooked on using Firefox, but I design my pages to look good in any light. ;-)

    10. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by phliar · · Score: 4, Insightful
      But I can't build for Mozilla. I have to build for IE.
      Here's a revolutionary thought: build for standards, so everyone can see your pages.
      --
      Unlimited growth == Cancer.
    11. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by ljavelin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But I can't build for Mozilla. I have to build for IE. My clients use IE, the visitors use IE and that makes it the standard (even though it doesn't follow the "standards").

      Ya know, I find that a funny statement.

      I manage a software development group, and we have to build for IE too. But we also have to make sure our software works with Mozilla. And for Opera, and Mac, and everything else. We support all "modern" browsers (basicly, verions >=5)

      You see, we can't really dictate a browser, and we're not interested in getting locked into one vendor product. We want to remain flexible for the future, and we want to remain reliable when a new browser hits the market.

      So we support all browsers.

      Happily, this is a very minor expense. In fact, as project manager, I can say with confidence that it costs us well under 1/1000th of our development budget. The only difficulty is to get contractors and new employees to use web standards.

      In the end, our maintenance costs are lower, and our user satisfaction is sky high. We never ever get complaints about browser compatibility.... not even once in over 4 years of high-volume operation.

      Oh yeah, and our apps look and work damned good too.

      So what's the deal? What is wrong with organizations that can't support regular browsers without undo expense and difficulty???

    12. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Jexx+Dragon · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I just code sites in plain W3C-Complient HTML. No stylesheets, no javascript, a few small images maybe. Decreases bandwidth usage, dosent annoy people using Lynx. And dosent rely on pictures, animations and fancy crap... All of witch are used too much on the internet. If I do use these I don't care if IE users can see them, since a browser that dosent support the standerds shouldnt be used, or even legal. Of course, people seem to like designing sites for a particular browser, which is pretty stupid, and I'm sure everyone here agrees with me.

      --
      I don't have time to comment my code, the program is late already.
    13. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by alphakappa · · Score: 4, Funny

      I visited kavlon.org and lost my vision for a few minutes.

      --
      "When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
    14. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      hmmm, it best not to "design" for any one browser but rather follow W3C standards. However I always leave checking of IE the last job I do, this way I have found that I get better working functionality across most of the browsers. Designing the other way around (Working mainly with IE) I have found nothing but hassle. I guess it the bad habits that IE lulls you into.

    15. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      Hasn't mozilla improved in terms of seeing MS specific tags and 4.0 transitional standard ones?

      I use both browsers and every and I mean every site now works starting with 1.6. Even Microsoft.com.

      I assume sticking with standard html by w3c is no longer a problem since Mozilla is catching up from Netscape neglect.

      I am not a webdeveloper though, so I am curious.

    16. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Tony+Hoyle · · Score: 3, Informative

      I actually doubt IE has a 90% market share any more.

      I run a site that's for a windows app, so there's a majority of Windows users (I'd guess almost exclusively windows actually) visiting it... you'd expect a very high IE percentage there, but I've currently got (based on ~1.2 million hits):

      IE6 60%
      Mozilla 11%
      IE5 6%
      IE5.5 2.3%
      Opera7.2 1.7%
      Opera7.1 0.3%

      The rest is made up of sundry bots and capture scripts.

      Looking at those stats... why the $$% do people target IE5 over mozilla??? (I'd love to know why IE5 is 3 times more popular than 5.5, too...)

    17. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by lukewarmfusion · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, they don't agree. I enjoy a good looking site. Not only do such sites (as you describe) usually look boring, but they tend to lack rich functionality. I want a site that is usable, rich in content, functionality and looks good. You can do that and still support other browsers, but if it's a choice between supporting some random browser or having a great site - then screw the random browser.

    18. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by lukewarmfusion · · Score: 1

      Your numbers add up to about 80% of all users. Are you saying that 20% of your visits are bots and scripts? Remove those scripts (they don't count - they're not browser visits) and recalculate.

      For most of our sites, IE has a 99% share.

    19. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by optikSmoke · · Score: 2, Informative

      but I've also noticed that IE users are only interested in some file named cmd.exe or root.exe, and I've never offered either of those files from this box. It must be a Microsoft thing...

      IIRC, those are boxes looking for an IIS hole in your system. Whoever wrote the exploits must have decided to use an IE user agent string. Hehe...

      The "flip" over to 80% IE may just be a lull in traffic where the percent of requests from infected boxes is "amplified" by a smaller total number of requests.

    20. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by GregWebb · · Score: 4, Interesting

      For the most part, the web applications I work on don't have complex enough user interface requirements that the differences are that significant, but most of the time I've taken the exact opposite approach.

      Essentially, because MSIE butchers the standards, I know from experience that if I develop and test my code using MSIE it often barfs on anything else. If I code on Moz, because it's pretty well standards compliant, 99% of the time it works straight out of the box in IE too.

      I'd still develop under Moz if that wasn't true, though. To get a context menu item that'll tell me
      * What form fields are around and what values they have
      * What images the page contains
      * What links the page contains

      saves a _lot_ of hassle. Can they please fix the bug, though, that causes a new HTTP request if I want to view the source? Why can't it just use cached HTML?

      --

      Greg

      (Inside a nuclear plant)
      Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!

    21. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by lukewarmfusion · · Score: 1

      You can develop for both.. my point is that sometimes you come down to a choice between having something (IE only) or not (everything else). In those cases, I do what I can to make sure that the "everything else" will work and display. Then, the IE version (usually Windows only) gets the full functionality. It's not right - but it's reality.

    22. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by lukewarmfusion · · Score: 1

      That's exactly the way to do it... in the event that your code doesn't work exactly right (or you want to do something that IE can but Mozilla can't) then you adjust accordingly.

      BTW, I've had a lot of problems with IE and View Source.

    23. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by MikeFM · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I can't stand crap like Java or Flash on a site. Javascript is bad enough. If you want a bunch of extra fluff then use a custom client. All that crap just gets in the way for us people trying to get real work done.

      Besides, it's rarely plugins that are the issue between browsers. In my experience Mozilla runs Java, Javascript, Flash, etc as well or better than IE. The only problems I have with them come from boneheaded websites that check the browser and then refuse to allow any none IE browser to access the site. How clueless is that.

      Other than those things I don't know what you mean by rich content. HTML is HTML in any browser.

      --
      At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
    24. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      There is only one place most so called "web designers' should be looking and that's W3C, end of story.

    25. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by bcrowell · · Score: 2, Funny
      NO NO NO NO NOOOOOOO!!!!!

      Faster, smaller, and has fewer bugs!?

      Will these people ever learn? Every version must either leave in the old bugs, or fix them but create more new ones. Bugs in this version are the reason people are going to pay for the next version, hoping they'll be fixed.

      And of course performance improvements are a big mistake too. You want to make it slower and slower, so that people will buy new hardware, thereby driving sales of your OS, which is joined at the hip with your browser.

    26. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by MikeFM · · Score: 1

      You should try stylesheets. Browsers that can't use them are uneffected by them and they can really clean up your HTML which actually result in a smaller download for your users.

      --
      At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
    27. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by hixie · · Score: 3, Interesting

      > IE's CSS support has gotten better in recent releases

      What recent releases? WinIE hasn't changed for something like 3 years, and as I understand it Microsoft have said they won't do any more changes to their HTML/DOM/CSS support, ever (even in the IE release that will be in Longhorn). One hopes they are bluffing or will change their mind, but the fact remains that basically, as far as WinIE's rendering engine goes, nothing has changed in years and nothing will have for years to come (no non-security-related changes to be shipped in IE before Longhorn, have said Microsoft officials).

    28. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by SCHecklerX · · Score: 1
      If most web designers would publish to standards, then MSIE lusers would demand of microsoft that their browser render correctly, or they would use something else. Not that M$ really cares.

      So, you are adding to the problem.

    29. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by MikeFM · · Score: 1

      There are multiple stylesheets to pick from. I happen to like the bright but I include a couple dull looking options for people that haven't been online so long they require painfully high contrasting colors in order to see. ;)

      Look under the Home.. Configure menu.

      --
      At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
    30. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Entropy+Unleashed · · Score: 1

      Is this really the case any longer with Firefox? After a few months with Firebird and now Firefox, I've only found one site that doesn't render properly. I see this given as a reason for Firefox's slower adoption fairly frequently, but I haven't really encountered it at all as a user. Am I just fortunate in my browsing, or is this lack of mis-renderings the rule rather than the exception?

      --

      "I would give my right hand to be ambidextrous."
    31. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by colinramsay · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That's fine. But I bet it looks like ass. The web - not the Internet as a while - the web - is a visual medium. Sites like www.mezzoblue.com or those featured at www.webstandardsawards.com are accessible and stylish. You can still view them if you want to disable images, CSS and JS, but for those of us in the modern, broadband enabled age, we can have an interesting visual experience and still be entertained by good content.

      You're letting your visitors down by not making the effort.

    32. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by jonwil · · Score: 1

      Dont build for Mozilla.
      Dont built for IE either.

      Unless you are doing real fancy stuff, its possible to make Standards Compliant code (GASP!) that works great on IE AND on Mozilla.

      Sure, it may lock out those using Netscrap 4.x but anyone using that abomination has no right to complain when they cant view perfectlty normal standards complient web pages.

    33. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by niko9 · · Score: 1

      Yes, but how do you, or any other person for that matter, know how many Mozilla users are using the User Agent Switching extension, just so they can access that sight that forces them to use IE?

    34. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by ericdano · · Score: 1
      Sarcasm? This early?

      I thought it was games that we keep wanting new, faster hardware.....

      Oh well, back to doing stuff on my lowly Pentium III 600Mhz.....

      --
      It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
      I moderate therefore I rule!
      --
    35. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by MikeFM · · Score: 1

      IE6 had several major improvements to CSS support over older versions of IE. Whenever that was released. I still get enough people trying to use IE4 that I guess I think of IE6 as recent.

      Myself I don't really care if they ever release a new version of IE because I never use it for anything other than testing sites for IE compatibility.

      --
      At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
    36. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Curtman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I made the mistake of installing the ActiveX plugin with mozilla at a friends place once. What a great plugin, you can make Mozilla just as susceptible to popups and adware as IE. Sheesh.

    37. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by repetty · · Score: 1

      "...the visitors use IE and that makes it the standard"

      Please don't abuse the word "standard".

      It was a perfect good word before technical-type started fucking with it, pretending that they knew something about the english language.

      A standard is a standard. Get it?

      --Richard

    38. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Logicdisorder · · Score: 0

      There has been no major IE updates but there has been plenty of Hotfixes to it. I read a while ago that MS is not likey to do any major work on IE until Longhorn comes out. Gratned this was before they said they are now brining out a XP updated version so you mgiht see a change with IE in that.

      But let be real here IE blows the mighty goat. It is slow, uses lots of memory and is not secure. I moved to Mozilla years ago becasue I got sick of having to patch IE every other day.

      --
      "The most dangerous creation of any society is that man who has nothing to lose." - James Baldwin, American author
    39. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Curtman · · Score: 1

      Is this really the case any longer with Firefox?

      All the gecko browsers should render pages the same. So its not so much FireFox' adoption rate, as the whole group of browsers.

    40. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by ManxStef · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Mod parent up, he speaks the truth :)

      BTW Greg, the PNH toolbar might be of interest to you? I find it damn handy myself:
      http://placenamehere.com/pnhtoolbar/

    41. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Curtman · · Score: 1

      No stylesheets, no javascript, a few small images maybe. Decreases bandwidth usage

      Using CSS can reduce the size of your HTML documents dramatically.

    42. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by tanguerilla · · Score: 1
      Jesus, Mozilla doesn't like that site at all. But overall Firefox renders things alright.

      If your a windows user I suggest installing the IE View extension. It adds a 'View this page in IE' option to your context menu. That way if you ever do stumble across a non-compliant (but trustworthy) page you can view it with minimal fuss.

    43. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by AC-x · · Score: 1

      As a professional web developer IE is the BANE of my life.

      It's company policy to write pages in 100% conforming XHTML and CSS, and thus most times pages display perfectly in Mozilla, Safari and other decent browsers (apart from some minor quirks each browser has).

      PC Internet explorer on the other hand requires a large amount of hacks to get it to display things right (which after a lot of hours of trial and error it usually eventually does). Of course the hacks can't just be applied to the style sheet as this would make them non-compliant and usually messes up other browsers, so the best way I've found is to use server side scripting to serve up different css (and in some cases different html too).

      It's surprising how far you can push IE to display properly compliant and accessible pages if you spend enough time working round all its problems. If more website developers actually wrote in compliancy to their pages rather then just writing something that "works on most peoples browser" then that would be one less reason for ordinary people to use IE.

    44. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Selecter · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yes, it is really active X that makes IE such a magnet for bullshit and ad/spyware. That and the fect that most windows users dont know how to configure the browser via the security and privacy tabs in prefs to even set the thing up. I believe if you leave these settings alone out of the chute IE has no protection at all from anything, tho I could be wrong. If I am somebody correct me please.

    45. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      IE6 was released in mid-2001, FWIW. 2.5 years isn't really that "recent".

    46. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by sketerpot · · Score: 1
      Can they please fix the bug, though, that causes a new HTTP request if I want to view the source? Why can't it just use cached HTML?

      I imagine that you could work around that by installing a caching proxy server on localhost. Assuming your computer isn't ass-slow, it should speed things up a bit.

    47. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Scaling up your stats to discount the scripts and bots, your numbers show an 85% share for IE. There's no one correct figure, but 85% is in the same ballpack as 90%.

      As for why IE5 is more popular than 5.5 - IE5.0 is still officially supported on Windows 2000 (and it's the version that comes with Win2k), and still used by some corporates. IE5.5, however, isn't supported any more.

    48. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by GAVollink · · Score: 1

      Basically, anybody who wants to download windows apps, or whom are even looking for software .. are quite likely to run Mozilla or some other browser. Most web surfer's actually don't do anything with the software that's on their system unless it can be installed non-obtrusively, over the web (at which point, it's a function of web browsing - not software hunting).

    49. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Selecter · · Score: 1
      When flash is done well it's not bad - granted most of them are a pain on 56K dialup but somebody has to advance the medium, and I'm tired of having the "standard" be the lowest common denominator ( 56K )

      I think Peter Frampton's site at www.frampton.com, while a bit busy and some of the widgets are too small, is an example of a good flash based site. Others may not agree. YMMV.

    50. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The pop-ups BS has nothing to do with ActiveX. By default, IE asks you if you want to download and install an ActiveX plug-in and show you who digitally signed it. It will never install an ActiveX behind your back. The pop-ups are the result of standards-compliant ECMA script code (JavaScript or JScript in IE jargon).

      ActiveX can be very useful in IE-based Intranets and in the right hands, such as dowloading a plug-in from a trusted site to scan your computer for viruses, or using the Windows Update service to patch your computer with the latest OI updates.

      I've been using IE for six years and I've never had any spyware, spoofware, adware, worms, viruses, etc. These are all the results of ignorant users given too much power by IE. All of these malicious programs are installed by your own action, like willingly opening up an executable attachement, pressing "Yes" to a Gator ActiveX prompt, or opting in to file download services like Kazaa.

      People are responsible for their choices. If you're clueless, no program on Earth will protect you.

    51. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Lumpy · · Score: 1

      But I can't build for Mozilla. I have to build for IE.

      lame excuse.... I build for HTML STANDARDS. which work in all broswers... and I demand that all pages adhere to w3c standard and reject ANYTHING with IE specific design and will not render correctly in all browsers. Yes it's possible it's done every day by tens of thousands websites.

      sorry, but yours is a weak excuse code to standards and microsoft does NOT make any standards.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    52. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, screw the random browser. I'll code to standards, that way a greater number of browsers will be able to see how great my site looks! ...what, why is everyone laughing?

    53. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by BiggerIsBetter · · Score: 1

      Uh, maybe it's your reality, but not everybody's. If you've written a site that *needs* functionality that you only know how to support in IE, you've written it wrong. Plain and simple.

      --
      Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
    54. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by coats · · Score: 3, Interesting
      The only problems I have with them come from boneheaded websites that check the browser and then refuse to allow any none IE browser to access the site. How clueless is that.
      Not as clueless as the ones that claim to do such a check, and then reject you for not having the very browser that in fact you are using. (They claimed to support IE and Mozilla, then rejected Mozilla 1.6 (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040113)

      I ran into one of those yesterday on a sporting goods sales site... wrote them a nastygram quoting their rejection-page back to them, together with my browser identity, then asking whether I should expect the same kind of bullshit from their merchandise that I find in their web site design.

      idiot bastards!

      --
      "My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
    55. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by hey! · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I have to say I agree.

      But I also understand where MikeFM is comfing from.

      The problem is everybody is laboring under the delusion that they're a fricken designer because they can recognize a nice site when they see one. Sometimes its the designer and sometimes its the client and often its both.

      There's a huge gulf between being able to see that a site is good and bad and being able to produce a good site oneself. Unfortunately, once a non-pro gets his ego invested in something, he can't be objective anymore. A real pro can walk away from something he thought was great because, (a) he's there to accomplish somethign for the customer, no t just feeding his ego, (b) he knows there's plenty more where that came from and (c) he'll have a chance to try his brilliant design on the next customer.

      MikeFM goes to far. There's a big differnce between realizing that most designs suck and thinking design itself sucks. Since I am not a graphic artist, when I have to design a web interface I follow three rules: (1) keep it simple (2)steal from clean designs I admire to the greatest degree compatible with [1] (3) Put as muc of the design into CSS as I can, consistent with my understandign of CSS. It pretty much guarantees acceptable mediocrity, which is pretty good for a non artist.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    56. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > When was the last time Mozilla had a 90%+ market share.

      The VW bug had a 90%+ market share here in Brazil (ok, not so much, but it was so dominant it was always the leader in sales; other cars disputed the distant second place).

      That was for what, oh, say, 30 years in a row?

      Nevertheless, its kingdom came to an end. It became expensive to make one. Other turned to be so much more advanced that driving a VW Bug was life-threatening in itself.

      VW thereafter managed to create a new winner, but never attained the same market penetration (supposedly they don't want it, 'cause it's better to sell less cars for more money).

      But there's a lesson here: things come to an end. Even those which you might never believe would. IE is going to be history and M$ will not be able or has no interest in fighting guys who make software for fun.

      As a matter of fact, maybe the fighting ground is no longer Mozilla(Netscape) versus IE. Nowadays it's Mozilla x (Opera | Konqueror), soon also Openoffice x Koffice, Gnome-progs x KDE-progs etc.

      Unless M$ can pull a good one with Longhorn (and I'm betting they won't), IE and the like are out of the race for good.

      We just can't see this very clearly now. But IMHO we will, undoubtedly.

      I may be wrong, but evaluating trends is difficult anyway. Last time, Linux was my bet in 1998. I think we both did well. :-)

    57. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Great. Based on your post I imagine W3C must have a real killer browser they've developed. Otherwise we wouldn't even know if the spec could be implemented, right?

    58. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      IE5 is more popular than 5.5 because 5.5 was only available as an upgrade, while IE5 was installed as the baseline browser for Windows 98SE and Windows 2000. Most people don't upgrade their machines. Windows Me and Windows XP use IE6 as their baseline.

      Sad. IE5.5SP1 is the best IE ever produced (though that's not saying much).

    59. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by domanova · · Score: 1

      >> You see, we can't really dictate a browser,
      Take a letter, Moneypenny.
      "'A Browser'. That's C-O-W"
      Why they called browser? I ain't done that since Mosaic.

      --
      Down with categorical imperatives
    60. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by asdfghjklqwertyuiop · · Score: 1

      You can develop for both.. my point is that sometimes you come down to a choice between having something (IE only) or not (everything else).


      The point is you don't develop for "both", you develop for the only thing you should be developing for: standard HTML. From there, you scale back your usage of the standard until what you're writing is supported by all the common browsers.
    61. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by SlimFastForYou · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Mozilla 1.6 renered that site like crap.

      Strangely, Konqueror 3.2.0 rendered the site perfectly. And I thought they supposedly used the same rendering engine.

      Ah well

    62. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by pavon · · Score: 1

      FYI, this isn't working for safari.

    63. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by tepples · · Score: 1

      granted most of them are a pain on 56K dialup but somebody has to advance the medium, and I'm tired of having the "standard" be the lowest common denominator (56K)

      I believe in alternative content for low-bandwidth browsers. HTML seems to scale down to lower bandwidths more gracefully than SWF does. Users on slower connections can set an HTML browser not to fetch an image until the user explicitly asks for it; the browser substitutes alternate text instead. (Does Flash do this?) So if you plan on making a whole site in SWF, please make an HTML version as well.

    64. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, but a lot of people still don't bother putting in the correct DOCTYPE and then still complain about IE's CSS.

    65. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by alphakappa · · Score: 1

      It was just a light hearted comment :-) The dark scheme looks quite good and professional - might be a good 'default' scheme.. but then it's just my thought.

      --
      "When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
    66. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by NeoSkandranon · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      once one tries Mozilla, IE looks old and lame in comparison

      Moz is the one that ends up looking lame when banking sites stop working, personal pages no longer render and etc.
      And yes I am very well away of WHY. However very few people care about W3C standards, they care about being able to check their bank balance and pay bills online, get their websites and so on

      --
      If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
    67. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by benna · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      That fact that aynrand.org doesn't render properly is actually a feature of Firefox not a bug. Who would want to read that shit anyway.

      --
      "It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
    68. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mozilla wrote it's own version of ActiveX anyway -- how do you think all those Firefox Extentions work?

      If Moz ever becomes popular, it's going to have all the same spyware problems as IE.

    69. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by cbiltcliffe · · Score: 2, Informative
      By default, IE asks you if you want to download and install an ActiveX plug-in and show you who digitally signed it. It will never install an ActiveX behind your back.

      Not true. I was visiting a site recently with IE, and it asked me if I wanted to install an ActiveX control. I clicked 'No'. It popped up a dialog that said I had to, which had only one 'OK' button that I clicked on.
      Then it asked me again if I wanted to install the control. I clicked 'No' again. It popped up the same dialog that said I had to. I clicked 'OK', and it went ahead and started downloading the control by itself.

      Not exactly hidden behind your back, but it still did it, even though I didn't give it permission to.
      --
      "City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
    70. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by cbiltcliffe · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Moz is the one that ends up looking lame when banking sites stop working, personal pages no longer render and etc.

      If a bank site doesn't work properly in anything other than IE, I usually send them an email linking to articles about serious security holes in IE, usually including the SSL certificate one, and tell them they should tune their site to run in all browsers, as some of us are too knowledgeable to want to use something as crappy as IE for online banking.
      --
      "City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
    71. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by mabinogi · · Score: 5, Informative

      You do realise that 15% of 1.2 million hits is still 180,000 hits?

      15% non IE is obviously not a majority, but it's not insignificant either. Only dealing with IE would piss off 1 in every 7 visitors to your site.

      --
      Advanced users are users too!
    72. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by leshert · · Score: 3, Informative

      Generally, stylesheets overall _reduce_ the bandwidth usage of a site, mostly through the elimination of redundant tags.

    73. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by POWRSURG · · Score: 2, Informative

      I have found that Quirksmode's section on older browsers to be very useful, especially detailing how simple it is to install multiple versions of Internet Explorer. You really do see a jump in CSS and Javascript support as you progress from 3 -> 4 -> 5.01 -> 5.5SP2 -> 6SP1, though I feel this is to be expected.

      Now if you'll excuse me, I must be off to try and figure out why the changes I made friday night to work around some invisible transparent layer that was killing all of my links in Mozilla has now created the exact problem in Opera....

    74. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by archonit.net · · Score: 2, Funny

      When was the last time IE was updated???? Hey that's a bad call. Microsoft updates IE almost every other week!!! What you meant was... "When was he last time IE was updated for reasons other than a security patch?"

    75. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by fsterman · · Score: 1

      Not to mention many of us spoof the user agent so we don't have to deal with "Windows IE only, please come back later." How many browsers is that the default for? I wish some kind of better statistical information was out there, very hard to determine from website logs. The biggest collection pool is the Google Zeitgeist, I believe there is some JavaScript way to determine browser that user agent spoofing doesn't fool. If Google incorporated that we might have a better idea.

      --
      Is there anything better than clicking through Microsoft ads on Slashdot?
    76. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by krosk · · Score: 2, Informative

      Unfortunately, IE still has a strangle hold on website designers, *especially* when it comes to javascript applications and web based email programs. My university uses a javascript based email program for it's students. The *only* browser (and trust me, i've tried them all) that works with this program is IE. The university is also very reluctant to release the POP and SMTP server addresses so you can use a outside email client (not outlook!!). Somebody stop Gates from changing the industry standard to his own personal preferences!!

    77. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Unknown+Lamer · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but then IE stops working.

      I hate IE so much because of that.

      --

      HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
    78. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by antic · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Oh, so tough you are writing them a "nastygram" from afar!

      Chances are that they didn't develop their site, and contracted developers did it for them. You'd be better off sending your nastygrams to their web contacts, or emailing the sporting company *politely*, outlining the situation, and have them either find new developers, or talk to those they're already using.

      It's nicer and you'll probably get the result you were after (or a voucher!). ;)

      --
      'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
    79. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by rtv · · Score: 1

      I see your point, but I think it's shortsighted. If IR drifts far enough from standards and content is developed only for IE then the WWW is dead, replaced by the WW-MSN. MS can then use their monopoly on content to force you to buy their software or spend vast efforts reverse-engineering a moving target. This has already happened in office software. The web standards are a precious, precious thing. Use them or lose them.

    80. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You might want to check out Amaya.

    81. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by rabs · · Score: 0

      My clients use IE, the visitors use IE

      no kidding. also, my boss uses IE. here is a pretty accurate transcript:

      me: "you know, if you were using Mozilla, you wouldn't have to deal with all those popups."

      boss: "what are you trying to say? have you installed mozilla on a company machine?"

      me, cringing: "ah, no. what i meant was --"

      boss: "i don't care. you're an IE man."

      so, i guess i'm an IE man, and thank you, sir, may i have another.

      - rabs

    82. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Xabraxas · · Score: 1
      When flash is done well it's not bad

      In my opinion it's almost always bad. There are very few sites that use flash that actually benefit from it. Most of the time it just slows everything down and sometimes looks a littler prettier, at the expense of being useful. Coding every link and every picture to use flash instead of HTML is such a waste.

      --
      Time makes more converts than reason
    83. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by jesterzog · · Score: 1

      My parents have been using Netscape for browsing and email since they started using the Internet... I think it was a carryover from one of the ISP CD's some time ago, but they upgraded to Netscape 6 when it came out.

      Recently, after my dad bought a new computer with XP pre-installed, he was even able to set up a dial-up networking connection. But since Netscape wasn't available he didn't know how to get to the web. (He couldn't actually find IE, even though it was certainly installed.) Anyway, I've now installed Mozilla for him, and he's really happy with it.

    84. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by xRelisH · · Score: 1

      Yeah, well don't forget that Microsoft likes to make their own "standards".

    85. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Solosoft · · Score: 1

      IE in Windows XP SP2 (beta) actually has Active X limitations and will not let every script run like it's older versions. I was VERY impressed when it denied it a few times on some websites trying to install some kind of program. Even Adaware has been finding less spy thingys.

      Once SP2 comes out for XP you guys will have somewhat less reasons to complain about windows.

    86. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Enahs · · Score: 1

      Naw. The KDE has its own HTML rendering engine. This also happens to be the same rendering engine that Apple uses for its own Safari browser.

      --
      Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
    87. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In other words, you are a skillless hack who really shouldn't be writing web sites if you cannot figure out how to make a web site that looks good on any browser.

    88. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Dominic_Mazzoni · · Score: 1

      Here's yet another data point. AudacityTeam.org gets 3,000 page views a day. Over 75% of Audacity downloads are for the Windows version. And yet, in terms of browser share:

      MSIE 44%
      Mozilla 26%
      Netscape (compatible) 20%
      Opera 3%
      Other 7%

      (Too bad my web hoster doesn't keep stats on KHTML/Safari in particular...)

      Also check out the Google Zeitgeist - while they don't actually show any numbers for browser share, by carefully analyzing the image in a paint program, I would estimate that their numbers are:

      MSIE 76% (6.0 - 49%, 5.5 - 10%, 5.0 - 13%, 4.0 - 5%)
      Mozilla/Netscape 12% (Mozilla/NS6+ - 7%, Netscape 4.x - 5%)
      Other 9%

      The graph definitely shows Mozilla growing steadily, though not nearly as fast as IE6 is taking over previous versions of IE.

    89. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by dubious9 · · Score: 1

      If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

      Though I can tell by your artfully crafted website that you are a professional web designer, I'll have to disagree and say that IE is most definately "broken". Yes, it fulfills most of what web users want, but as for programming for IE, most non-trival applications require cludgy hacks, or IE extentions.

      Am I some Mozilla drone? No, I think all browsers need improvement, and in fact, last time I checked no broswer was 100% compliant with the current versions of (X)HTML/CSS.

      Normal people aren't into updating their software weekly. They want something mature that works. IE is mature. It works.

      It works... mostly. And though it may meet the definition of mature in some people's book, that title is far from indisputed.

      End of story. Mozilla is filling a nonexistent hole.

      What about boxen that aren't WINTEL? You're right in saying that that's what most people do use, but for a lot of people, and a lot of business, going with something that is vendor independent gives a lot of flexibility.

      Add to the fact that Mozilla is actually innovative. But seriously, there are so many roles for Mozilla to play that it's not even worth mentioning them here. To think otherwise is niave.

      --
      Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
    90. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      GuK is GaY !!
      GuK is GaY !!
      GuK is GaY !!
      GuK is GaY !!
      GuK is GaY !!

      Stupid GaY ass Canadian prick. Fuck off and die.

    91. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Xabraxas · · Score: 1
      IE is mature. It works.

      That was the biggest laugh I've had all week. Thanks.

      --
      Time makes more converts than reason
    92. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by MikeFM · · Score: 1

      Flash has a place but it's grossly misused IMO. I think it should be used more as an image format and less for replacing HTML/XML. What we could really use I think might be something like CSS for telling a browser how to convert HTML/XML elements into Flash or SVG. So if you looked at the site in a non-Flash browser it'd look fine but if you had Flash it'd show all the bells and whistles.. with little effort on the part of the developer. You should even be able to apply different stylesheets as to be able to select a different Flash look to the same site. IMO that'd integrate Flash with the web so that it had no harmful side effects.

      I don't care (much) if a site works for a certain speed of connection but it should work for users that are blind or using text-only interfaces. Obviously excluding uses of Flash for pure artistic purposes. ie every painting shouldn't be done as a book instead just because some people are blind.

      --
      At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
    93. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by MikeFM · · Score: 1

      Safari is a problem for a lot of us to develop to because we lack Macs. Is it still based mostly on Konquerer?

      --
      At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
    94. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by MikeFM · · Score: 1

      If it were a professional site I'd probably use the darker scheme by default but as it's my personal place to rant and such I figured I'd use my choice color scheme as the default. It's the only chance I get to force my horrible tastes on the world. ;)

      --
      At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
    95. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by MikeFM · · Score: 1

      Opera is actually the browser I have the most trouble with. I find that on different OSs it renders pages differently (with the same version of Opera) which really drives me nuts. The Solaris version seems to be the worst I've tried. Of course not having an actual Solaris box handy I have to work by the screenshots others send me.

      On my own site I'm less concerned about browsers besides Mozilla & Lynx than I am on professional projects. I don't feel much need to cater to users I'm not getting paid to worry about.

      --
      At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
    96. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by 0x0d0a · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The problem is that the "in theory Flash could be useful" argument is used to justify a huge range of websites that, frankly, are a pain in the ass to use, load slowly, are uncomfortable for users of older computers, and exclude the disabled and users of alternate browsers or people that disable plugins for security reasons.

      In my entire life, I have seen *one* website that used Flash in what I could consider a significantly beneficial manner, and I have seen many, many websites in my life. The website was for an MP3 player, and one could try out the interface in an embedded Flash object. The rest of the site did not use Flash. There was no equally effective way to reproduce this functionality without Flash, the functionality was clearly important to the product (the product was partly being sold based on having a good interface), and a user without Flash still had the ability to work with the rest of the website.

      On the whole, I have seen so little effective use of Flash, and taking into consideration the significant drawbacks of it, that if someone asked me whether to use Flash on their site, I would feel comfortable simply saying "no". The odds of it being a good idea are so phenomenally low that it's just not worth trying.

    97. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by NanoGator · · Score: 1

      "IE is not a standard, and won't be unless Microsoft buys it's way into being a standards organization."

      It's called a de-facto standard, and yes it is a standard.

      --
      "Derp de derp."
    98. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Curtman · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The Microsoft mantra:

      Once <insert upcoming release here> comes out, malware will be a thing of the past!

      Funny how it never gets any better though. Wasn't that the big promise about XP to begin with?

    99. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by RaymondRuptime · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well, you kind of had me agreeing, up until that last line. See, that's the just the parochial viewpoint that makes many members of the general public loathe us geekfolk. When much of the world is still on NS 4 and IE 4 and still (yes, heaven help us) on Win9x, saying 'screw them' just reinforces their stereotypical view of us, and engenders little good will. And telling customers they have to buy a new computer to use your web site seems like a bad business plan.

      [Rant on] I, for one, am sick of websites that vomit whenever I go there from my Linux or Solaris box because some lazy-ass coder felt that not enough people use those as their primary box to make it worth his lazy while to do his job. Some of them, especially the ones done by the MS/IE chauvinists, I just refuse to patronize--even when I'm on my Win box. [Rant off]

      Some people are still stuck on old equipment for a wide variety of reasons. Some don't have a choice because they're not the IT manager. Some still actually use 33K modems to connect. Some are blind, and use adaptive equipment that is only rated for a given platform. All taken together, all these minorities (who don't deserve to be discriminated against) amount to a very large proportion of the would-be users of many sites. How about we all cut them some slack?

    100. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Angry+Pixie · · Score: 1

      Since you said you use Mozilla and FireFox, I have to ask what do you think about the two comparatively? What do you get from Mozilla that you can't get from FireFox. Alternatively, what would someone get from Netscape that they couldn't get from Mozilla?

      I use FireFox, and have used it since it was Phoenix and FireBird, and I love it. It's a slick little corvette compared to Netscape and Mozilla IMO.

    101. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by incuso · · Score: 1
      May you point me to those links?

      Thanks,
      Massimo
      --
      http://incuso.altervista.org

    102. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by pavon · · Score: 1

      It's still based on KHTML. I don't know to what extent CSS selection is done by KHTML and what is done by the surrounding app.

      A quick check however shows that the problem appears to be with cookies. Even after changing settings to allow all cookies, the cookie 'kavlonLook' did not appear in my cookie db after submitting your form.

    103. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by stor · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You can develop for both.. my point is that sometimes you come down to a choice between having something (IE only) or not (everything else). In those cases, I do what I can to make sure that the "everything else" will work and display. Then, the IE version (usually Windows only) gets the full functionality. It's not right - but it's reality.

      No it's not: it's pathetic.

      If you can't cope with targetting a wide range of browsers you should rethink whether your capable to play in this game. Sometimes the client does not have a choice of browser or platform. What do you tell these people? "Sorry but you must use Browser X with this site" ?

      Even different versions of IE have different quirks and that's harder to test because you can't install any version of IE alongside IE6. So to test this you need multiple OS installations. It sucks. That's life. That's why you get paid.

      I work for a webdev company, 95% Linux-based. We find that practically all of our stuff renders in Gecko flawlessly, but IE screws it up due to not complying with standards. We employ various techniques including vbscript hacks and "catering to the lowest common denominator for a specific thing", etc. It's annoying yes but that's our job.

      Cheers
      Stor

      --
      "Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"
    104. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by yanestra · · Score: 1
      I ran into one of those yesterday on a sporting goods sales site... wrote them a nastygram quoting their rejection-page back to them, together with my browser identity, then asking whether I should expect the same kind of bullshit from their merchandise that I find in their web site design.

      idiot bastards!

      Funny. There still people who hate customers and dislike selling things.
      We (still) live in a free country, and it's their right to be unsuccesful. But it's a pain that they never know why.
    105. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Solosoft · · Score: 1

      Windows XP was a way to get "Windows 2000" into a nice "friendly" desktop.

      It actually was supposed to be Windows Neptune but that beta just never happened. Windows 2000 is too hard for the normal user so XP dumbed down the NT based windows for "normal" people to use.

      :)

    106. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by FrankNFurter · · Score: 1

      You haven't seen a bad website unless you've looked at this one. (No, it's not a picture of a gaping anus.)

      --
      "Slashdot - the one place on the internet where guys brag about how small it is." - that IT girl
    107. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Explo · · Score: 1

      The two online banks I use here in Finland have worked nicely with all browsers I've used. Generally, complaints around here about the banks and browsers seem to be nonexistent. Perhaps it's somewhat regional?

      (not a flame against a country; I don't even know where you post from ;)

      --
      Everyone who makes generalizations should be shot.
    108. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why are you implementing technology that has not been fully implemented withing browsers? No wonder it didn't work. As for MSDN being more correct with their info, that's great if you want to work to M$HTML.

    109. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes they do have a browser and it's called Amaya, anyway that's not the point. The point is they are the custodians of XML, CSS and HTML specs, it's they you should be looking to for guidance on HTML / XML specs etc... NOT MSDN. If a browsers don't comply that's hardly W3's fault.

    110. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by DarkSarin · · Score: 1

      In all this discussion of flash and usability, and is it good, there is something that is missing--accessibility. Being in an Industrial Psychology program, this is something we have to think about--can a blind person use your site. If the answer is "I don't know, but I use flash", then no way.

      The big drawback for using flash as a navigation system is that the blind cannot use that. Of course, this also means that anyone who uses a text-voice renderer cannot either.

      This is the best reason to use CSS instead of some other layout mechanism: It works with readers.

      BTW, if you are designing, and have 50 links on your home page (aka slashdot), this will bug the heck out of anyone using a text-reader too.

      --
      "We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
    111. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I did tell "Slurp" to take a flying leap.
      Uhm.. why?

    112. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Chacham · · Score: 1

      Yuck!

      Perhaps ctrl-alt-delete was in order?

    113. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by lukewarmfusion · · Score: 1

      No, you should never develop for only a single browser - you should develop for all browsers (using standards). Then, if the standards don't let you do something you want but IE does, you do that for the IE folks.

      A good example is collapsible DIVs. Make a div hidden, and the DIVs below it will:

      IE: Move up/down to account for the space difference

      Standards: Stay there - the hidden div above it still takes up space even if it's hidden.

      This is a pain - I have lots of applications that would benefit from the ability to collapse a page is a DIV is hidden. It's great - pseudo-dropdowns, hierarchical menus, etc. To get that to happen within the "standards" you have some screwy programming to mess with. In IE, it's quick and easy. That doesn't mean that non-IE folks can't use the page - they just get a little different functionality, interface, whatever.

      If you're going to play to the lowest common denominator and sacrifice features, functionality, usability, etc. then maybe you're the only holding the Web back.

    114. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Jexx+Dragon · · Score: 1

      Yes, I know. I try not to use CSS simply because I'm not very good with them and I have found a few browsers that don't consistently work with them.

      --
      I don't have time to comment my code, the program is late already.
    115. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by swv3752 · · Score: 1

      That is of course presuming that you are not exploited by one of te many security holes in IE.

      Here is one example is if you do not have IE patched:
      http://zcat.wired.net.nz/upgrade/

      It will auto download and install Mozilla. Imagine the possiblities of someone with malicious intent. One doesn't need to be clueless to be hit.

      --
      Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
    116. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't click no. It might even mean yes. Always use Alt-F4 on those guys. Always.

    117. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by jwpacker · · Score: 1

      Do you really do this? I mean it, do you really write to whatever company is running a website that flakes under anything but IE?

      Because you're about the only one that does, is my guess. And, another guess, they never do fix the problem for you, do they?

      The world is too lazy to complain long or loud enough to get changes made. I'm as guilty as the next guy.

      --
      Software is like a goldfish - it'll grow to fit the size of it's bowl...
    118. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by MikeFM · · Score: 1

      Strange. I'll ask some Mac friends if it works for them. I don't do anything unusual with cookies (that I can think of) so no idea why it wouldn't stay. Do cookies usually work for you?

      --
      At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
    119. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by http · · Score: 1
      i have to agree with 0x0d0a. however stylish it might be, which will vary wildly from person to person, mezzoblue.com fails it spectacularly in the accessibility department. example: the idea they seemed to have had at one point was "OK, if the user has a rollover menu already showing from the second row, disable showing a rollover menu from the third row."
      so... let's assume i'm running...oh, any common browser. i click on the "File" menu when i actually wanted the "Edit" menu (either because it's close to the "Edit" menu or i am having a brainfart). now i cannot access the "Edit" menu at all, and i'm not being told why. until i figure out that i have to (and how to) close the file menu, i'm sunk in the water. without moving your mouse and experimenting, tell me - how would you (a) display _your_ browser's "File" menu [trivial] and then (b) make that menu not visible again? no fair touching your mouse before answering this to your own satisfaction.[not trivial]
      It took me a minute to figure this out, _when i was _forewarned_ that there was bad menu shit happening. given that, and such a choice quote as
      See, the way I see it, CSS is about font control. You can manipulate things like your leading, text color, and font face. That's about all it gets you.
      i will not be hiring this guy for _any_ website or application design work any time soon. fitts' laws rules ok, dave?
      --
      If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
      3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
    120. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by pavon · · Score: 1

      I have never noticed any problems with cookies not working on another site before.

    121. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by bninja_penguin · · Score: 1

      I want a site that is usable, rich in content, functionality and looks good
      Funny, I feel the same way. I find marked Hyperlinks to be very usable, and straight text or image gallerys are wonderfuly rich in content, load quite well, have every bit of functionality I want from a website, and if you change the colors of the text slightly, along with the background color the page actually looks pretty damn good. Hunting around for drop-sown slide-out pulsating menus don't fit in my definition of usable, rich content, or looking good. I am after information, not spinning icons, unmoveable background images, or those godforsaken bullshit flash "presentations". Those hinder my quest for the information that should be available right away.
      I don't know if they still do, but a one point, ASUS' website required Flash to get to the driver page off their very tiny, not well marked link for support. WTF?!?
      I guess I'm of the "old" generation where substance was way more important than "flash." It would be nice if the people wanting the web pages would actually put more thought into what their website says than what their website looks like.

      --
      For those who describe their systems as 'boxen', do you order multiple 'boxen' of corn flakes also?
    122. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "I'd love to know why IE5 is 3 times more popular than 5.5"

      I like to use the version that came before the extra bugs and crud were put in.

    123. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I want a site that is usable, rich in content, functionality and looks good. You can do that and still support other browsers, but if it's a choice between supporting some random browser or having a great site - then screw the random browser.

      I hope you aren't implying that standards-compliant sites can't be "usable, rich in content and good-looking". The "lowest common denominator" myth is widespread, yet false. There are extremely few instances where a good developer will have to deviate from the standards to produce a high-quality website. For instance, using the <nobr> element type can increase readability, but it isn't in any HTML specification, and the CSS white-space property isn't very well-supported by browsers.

    124. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by 4of12 · · Score: 1

      I clicked 'No'.

      Ah, you thought you meant 'No', but the install wizard thought you meant "More".

      There ought to be laws to protect innocent users from raping installers.

      --
      "Provided by the management for your protection."
    125. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by cbiltcliffe · · Score: 1

      First, try:
      http://www.trustworthycomputing.com/

      Then, do a google search for:
      Internet Explorer SSL security hole.

      You should be able to take it from there.

      --
      "City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
    126. Re:Yes, it is smaller and better by cbiltcliffe · · Score: 1
      Do you really do this? I mean it, do you really write to whatever company is running a website that flakes under anything but IE?


      Yes, I do. What can I say? I'm an arrogant bastard..... :)

      And, another guess, they never do fix the problem for you, do they?


      Actually, they have done before. Certainly not always, but I usually quite politely but bluntly tell them that IE is a piece of shit, show them proof, and then say "If I'm forced to use Internet Explorer to be a customer of your site, then I simply won't be a customer. It's that simple."
      Sometimes I also tell them that I know plenty of other people who feel the same way, which is a lie, but they don't need to know that.
      Then they fix it.
      --
      "City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
  8. great by mr_tommy · · Score: 3, Funny

    I hear its got 20% more zilla too!

    1. Re:great by dtperik · · Score: 1

      But 100% mo' zilla than all the competitors combined.

    2. Re:great by kubrick · · Score: 0, Redundant

      Mozillla?

      --
      deus does not exist but if he does
    3. Re:great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean, 6.25% mo' zilla.

  9. I won't be downloading it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't use the main Mozilla package anymore. Too much bloat. I'll wait until Firebird 0.9

  10. and 10% more by ciroknight · · Score: 2, Funny

    Statistics than you'll ever need...

    --
    "Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
    1. Re:and 10% more by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Someone should hit this person doing the moderation with a clue stick... That was funny

    2. Re:and 10% more by garompa · · Score: 0

      you were moded offtopic, and still I think you are right, /. moderators don't like critics.

      --
      Is it absolutely necessary to have a sig. ?
  11. vs. nightly download by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How in sync is the "beta" with the nightly download? Which is better for helping them test?

  12. Firefox improved? by Safrax · · Score: 1

    Has firefox gotten the mozilla improvements yet?

    1. Re:Firefox improved? by yusufg · · Score: 3, Informative

      yes, firefox is nothing without the underlying Gecko engine. Shortly firefox will branch on the Mozilla 1.7 branch, it is very likely that Mozilla 1.8-1.9 will have much faster page rendering that Firefox 1.0. See bugzilla for the bugs targetted for 1.8alpha

    2. Re:Firefox improved? by SimplexO · · Score: 4, Informative

      Firefox will get the speed improvements, but since Firefox is already smaller and uses less, it won't be as significant (I think it is 3%?).

      They basically rewrote the string implementation and it is "better faster stronger" than before.

      So yeah, Firefox 0.9 will get a speed improvement too. (You can also grab a nightly. They have the improvements -- and more bugs.)

      P.S. Also new in Mozilla 1.6 is the ability to block websites from hijacking your context menu (right click menu) in the browser. Yay!

    3. Re:Firefox improved? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "See bugzilla for the bugs targetted for 1.8alpha"

      Why would anyone want to plan bugs in a release?

    4. Re:Firefox improved? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because they put everything into bugzilla - feature requests, enhancements, spelling errors, website stuff, even evangelism. Oh, mustn't forget the jokes - see bug 95849.

    5. Re:Firefox improved? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hadn't noticed the hijacking here (Firefox on linux). I was curious, so I tried searching bugzilla for the context menu hijacking, but nothing jumped out at me. Do you have a link handy to a report of the bug? Here's the bugzilla page if it's appropriate. TIA

      bugzilla: context menu.

    6. Re:Firefox improved? by SimplexO · · Score: 1

      There are a couple bugs on context menu hijacking (backend, firefox work, seamonkey work, etc) but if interested, you should start out at bug 117532. Links from slashdot are forbidden, so you'll have to copy and paste:

      http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=117532

  13. 5%? by AnonymousCowheart · · Score: 1, Interesting

    5% decrease in binary size? According to Mozilla's site it says:
    "Mozilla's binary size has been decreased almost 2% since Mozilla 1.6."
    Is the binary size in the summary from a different version?
    One thing that I'd like to see mozilla mail do, is have the address book open, like in thunderbird. I don't even use the address book in mozilla since it's such a pain. Am I just missing something?

    1. Re:5%? by Nasarius · · Score: 3, Informative

      You're looking at the README for the alpha. Try here instead.

      --
      LOAD "SIG",8,1
    2. Re:5%? by Quino · · Score: 1

      You're looking at the wrong release.

      The page for 1.7 beta does indeed say 5% reduction in binary size.

    3. Re:5%? by thryllkill · · Score: 1

      Perhaps the actuall percent in difference is different for different platforms? Maybe the webpage is using Megabytes of difference, and the poster is using kilobytes of difference... you know the whole 1MB != 1000 kb er... 1024... er which ever the hard drive manufacturers use to confuse me...

      --

      Note to self: No more arguing with the faithful.

    4. Re:5%? by AnonymousCowheart · · Score: 1

      Yep, you're correct, what I was looking at was the alpha version, thanks for pointing that out!

    5. Re:5%? by Jexx+Dragon · · Score: 2, Informative

      A Megabyte (MB) is now set at 1000 Kilobytes (KB) which is, in turn 1000 bytes. However, most of use still use MB = 1024 KB = 1024 bytes, which is now (officialy?) a Mibibyte (MiB), and Kibibyte (KiB). Confuses me too.

      --
      I don't have time to comment my code, the program is late already.
    6. Re:5%? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You want something? Answers simple! FORK! Split off a whole new build! SO you can have MOzilla, Firebird, Netscape, AND something new. THen you can REALLY bitch about a market share so small, only your penis is smaller! ;)

    7. Re:5%? by bob65 · · Score: 1

      Seriously?

    8. Re:5%? by elint · · Score: 1

      Yup. Except that "(officially?)" may be debatable. It depends on what you regard as official.

      IEC (Internation Electrotechnical Commission) and IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) both agree on using SI (International System of Units) metric units as they were intended (i.e.- Kilo = 1,000, etc) and new binary prefixes (i.e.- Kibi = 1,024), but it should be noted that the binary prefixes are *NOT* part of the SI metric system.

      The above can be found at: http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html

      I prefer to operate off of the assumption that the above is a proposal and I'll begin to follow it if it picks up wider usage. Until then, I'll probably continue using Megabyte and Kilobyte and just clarify when questions arise :P

      --elint

    9. Re:5%? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      It is suggested that in English, the first syllable of the name of the binary-multiple prefix should be pronounced in the same way as the first syllable of the name of the corresponding SI prefix, and that the second syllable should be pronounced as "bee."

      Ohhh.... So its "maybe"byte.

  14. Re:Mookore 2004 is faster and fatter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Oh. You failed it, dude. Face it... the Lizard is faster than Konqueror, even though KHTML is a schnazzy piece of work.

  15. Compared to IE.... by MarauderJr · · Score: 5, Funny

    The next service pack of Internet Explorer plans to have longer load times, more crashes, and open a few more exploits into a Windows system.

    Modzilla keeps getting better all the time.

    1. Re:Compared to IE.... by red+floyd · · Score: 1

      Modzilla keeps getting better all the time.

      Why isn't Rob using Modzilla for /. moderation?

      --
      The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
  16. 5% smaller binary size.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    hm.. so it's still gigantic then..

  17. Firefox by IO+ERROR · · Score: 0, Redundant
    And Firefox is many percentage points faster than Mozilla. Many many many. And renders better. And has a cooler download manager. Oh, did I mention it's faster?

    And for more fun, read your mail and news with Thunderbird. It's faster, too.

    --
    How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
    1. Re:Firefox by yusufg · · Score: 3, Informative

      How can firefox render better, it has the same rendering engine as Mozilla, are you comparing the same Mozilla version as the one which firefox is based on
      e.g, Mozilla 1.6-Firefox 0.8
      Mozilla 1.5-Firefox 0.7

      Remeber firefox will branch soon from the 1.7 release, so far a while, Mozilla (aka Seamonkey) will have rendering fixes/speedups and Firefox won't have it till it returns back to the trunk sometime after 1.0 is released

    2. Re:Firefox by thryllkill · · Score: 1

      Since firefox is based on mozilla, will these size and speed enhancments trickle down into the firefox browser?

      As it is firefox is pretty fast, maybe the next version will display pages before I think to click on the links... ;o)

      --

      Note to self: No more arguing with the faithful.

    3. Re:Firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      However, if you use both, the combined size is bigger than Mozilla.

    4. Re:Firefox by typhoonius · · Score: 0

      Mozilla with the quicklaunch on is much, much faster than Firefox. I use Firefox, but I'm curious why it doesn't have a quicklaunch feature.

    5. Re:Firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      The developers consider quicklaunch functionality to be a hack.

    6. Re:Firefox by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      Makes my workstation (AthlonXP +1800) slow as mollasis. As it is I have apache, mysql, cygwin stuff, MS-SQL server, winamp, and quicktime load at startup.

      IT takes over a minute before my machine usable after I log in. I took out mozilla and noticed boot time improved.

      I wish software developers would not try to load everything in startup.

    7. Re:Firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      And Firefox is many percentage points faster than Mozilla. Many many many.

      Sorry, but that's bullshit. It starts up a bit faster, but that's it.

      And renders better.

      Bullshit again. They both use the same frickin' rendering engine and RENDER JUST THE SAME.

      And has a cooler download manager.

      I'll grant you this one.

      Oh, did I mention it's faster?

      Did I mention you talk a lot of shit?

    8. Re:Firefox by IO+ERROR · · Score: 1
      How can firefox render better, it has the same rendering engine as Mozilla, are you comparing the same Mozilla version as the one which firefox is based on

      Of course I am. see:

      * net-www/mozilla
      Latest version available: 1.6-r1
      Latest version installed: 1.6-r1
      Size of downloaded files: 30,761 kB
      Homepage: http://www.mozilla.org
      Description: The Mozilla Web Browser
      License: MPL-1.1 NPL-1.1

      * net-www/mozilla-firefox
      Latest version available: 0.8-r1
      Latest version installed: 0.8-r1
      Size of downloaded files: 30,373 kB
      Homepage: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
      Description: The Mozilla Firefox Web Browser
      License: MPL-1.1 | NPL-1.1

      * net-mail/mozilla-thunderbird
      Latest version available: 0.5-r1
      Latest version installed: 0.5-r1
      Size of downloaded files: 30,901 kB
      Homepage: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/
      &nbs p; Description: Thunderbird Mail Client
      License: MPL-1.1 | NPL-1.1
      That's what I'm comparing to, and firefox and thunderbird are SIGNIFICANTLY faster than mozilla.
      --
      How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
    9. Re:Firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've been using Firefox for a couple months now. It doesn't render any better than Mozilla. It doesn't even seem to open and run significantly faster. It does have some nice features, but when I reload my system this week (after installing new mobo) I'll be switching back to Mozilla for the time being.

    10. Re:Firefox by U.I.D+754625 · · Score: 1

      You like the download manager? Blah, I like the plain mozilla one. Is anyone of the same opinion, and if so, can you recommend any new download management plugins?

      --


      //Blessed are they that run around in circles, for they shall be known as wheels.
    11. Re:Firefox by gareth6889 · · Score: 0

      Isn't that thunderfox? :D

    12. Re:Firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And on Windows, K-Meleon (a Gecko-based browser that does away with XUL completely) is many percentage points faster than FireFox. Many many many. And renders the same as any Gecko browser does. And has NO accursed download manager. Oh, did I mention it's faster?

      Seriously though, I don't get why so many FireFox partisans try to detract from the advances made by the monoloithic Mozilla team. What's good for the monolothic package is good for everyone. There are many good reasons why the Moz team hasn't dropped development on it in favor of Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox & Thunderbird.

      I'll leave you with some observations about Mozilla 1.6, Firefox 0.8, and K-Meleon 0.82:
      - Monolithic Moz is the most stable of all browsers on all of my systems, without exception.
      - On my systems, monolithic Moz and Firefox have identical loading and rendering times. Rendered results are also identical on all pages I regularly visit or have bothered to try.
      - On my systems, Firefox loads much more quickly than monolothic Moz without the loader. In Windows, K-Meleon cold boots faster than any other graphics-based browser I have installed can warm boot, including IE and Firefox. Only Lynx is faster for me.
      - Installation of XPI packages is less annoying on monolithic Moz than on Firefox, because monolothic doesn't have to wait for the stupid taskbar pop-up alert to disappear before shutting down completely. K-Meleon doesn't do XPI, but the hooks to extend it exist in the plaintext preferences files, and there are several packages that exist to extend K-Meleon.
      - Clearing cookies and cache is easier in Firefox because of the location of the buttons.
      - The "Extensions" prefs panel in Firefox is a good idea.
      - Monolithic Moz has the more complex, but more configurable, preference panel than Firefox. K-Meleon is even more complex and even more configurable.
      - Monolithic Moz has the better search options (Search sidebar with sortable search engine categories).
      - Firefox has the better image blocker, because it displays the server name in the context menu, while monolithic Moz doesn't yet.
      - Among Gecko-based browsers, only K-Meleon provides a proper means to spoof your UserAgent string for stupid websites.

      End result, I use Lynx and K-Meleon for quick browsing (Lynx in Linux and Windows for info and things like /. - yes I'm in Lynx now - and K-Meleon in Windows for graphics/media-dependent pages), Mozilla for big projects, testing, email, and some extended browsing because of its stability, and Firefox for playing around (compatibility testing, feature testing, non-critical tasks). Of them all, I would only really consider Firefox to be optional. Just my opinion.

    13. Re:Firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://downloadstatusbar.mozdev.org/

    14. Re:Firefox by foonf · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Every time I use a different web browser, whether its Mozilla/Seamonkey, Firefox, Opera, or even IE on Windows, I'm sure it feels faster than whatever I was using before. It doesn't matter what it is or how slow it is (unless it is really, really slow, like old Mozilla versions -- but even with them, I had myself convinced that some versons were dramatically improved from the last one, when they really weren't).

      This was bothering me the last time I was playing around with Firefox. There is no reason for there to be any difference in rendering performance at all between any Gecko browsers using the same version of the rendering engine. A different user interface will not change that.

      I decided to test this for certain. I got Seamonkey, Firefox, Galeon, and Epiphany, all running of of the same Mozilla version (okay, Firefox was actually a somewhat newer trunk snapshot, and had some optimizations, so if anything it should have been faster). I opened them at the same time, and in sequence, went to the same sites and watched them render. I loaded sites repeatedly from cache, and tried other sites I knew weren't cached. There was no difference at all. Every time I thought I noticed a difference, I went back to the other browser and loaded the same thing. It took the same amount of time.

      I didn't see a "many percentage point" difference. All of the percentage points of difference were within the margin of error of my ability to distinguish differences in time, and while that could be a problem, all of the things I checked took long enough on my computer that if there were a significant proportional difference between browsers, it would manifest itself as a subjectively perceptible slowdown.

      As for rendering, if you see any rendering quality differences between gecko browsers you need to check your font/screen dpi settings, because they ought to be exactly alike.

      Firefox might be a nice browser, and it has its merits in terms of UI feel and features, but it won't succeed by being faster than Mozilla/Seamonkey, because it isn't.

      --

      "(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
    15. Re:Firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bullshit. While Mozilla and Firefox use the same (or at least similar rendering engines), they use completely different widget toolkit systems. Firefox's toolkit is much much faster.

    16. Re:Firefox by Feyr · · Score: 1

      cooler download manager? firebird had a good download manager, if lacking a few options.

      firefox's is just annoying, for one it's an ugly copycat of microsoft UI, and the way it's set it's non intuitive.

      give me back my download manager damnit!

    17. Re:Firefox by sketerpot · · Score: 1

      Some pages have links in them for "back" "forward" "up" and such in a standardized way. Some browsers support toolbars to navigate these. Is it too much to ask that a browser prefetch the next page?

    18. Re:Firefox by Trillan · · Score: 1

      I agree the default settings are pretty nasty, but have you actually downloaded anything with IE? It's completely different!

    19. Re:Firefox by tepples · · Score: 1

      Mozilla does support prefetching for select <link> targets, but not enough sites seem to use <link>.

    20. Re:Firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      nice, thanks

    21. Re:Firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      BZZZT! Both use XUL as their widget set. Both use GTK as backend on Linux and Win32 (duh) on Windows.

    22. Re:Firefox by shadowmas · · Score: 1

      i think it must be cuz those speed increases are similar to the speed gain they mentioned in the bugzilla.

    23. Re:Firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And both are fucking slow compared to anything native. What's your point?

    24. Re:Firefox by FooBarWidget · · Score: 2, Informative

      Firefox *is* faster than Mozilla 1.6 (and Galeon using Mozilla 1.6). Try loading a large page like http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_mono/ libc.html
      When loading in Mozilla, my CPU usage was at 100% for 22 seconds. When loading in Firefox, 100% CPU usage lasted for 16 seconds.

  18. Or you could use FireFox by OneNonly · · Score: 0, Redundant

    If you only want a web browser - Mozilla FireFox is already *much* faster than the standard Mozilla... Fast enough to run on a Windoze box!

    1. Re:Or you could use FireFox by fhic · · Score: 1

      Perhaps I spend to much time in a Windoze world, but I like having everything installable from one big honkin' exe file that I can pop onto my USB dongle. Moz, plus a couple of the essential XPIs, and I wander around dispensing open-source goodness to the multitudes! :-)

    2. Re:Or you could use FireFox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I use both FireFox and Mozilla.

      FireFox is not much faster. In fact, with lots of tabs, it seems slower than Mozilla with lots of tabs.

      The worst thing is that FireFox will crash if my machine is heavily loaded. Mozilla (or any other ap -- this isn't a hardware issue) won't.

      There are some other small issues also. If I type a search term in the URL bar of Mozilla, I can hit down arrow and send it to google; that doesn't work in FireFox.

      Basically, FireFox seems to me like the buggy Mozilla of 2 years ago, but faster than Mozilla was then.

    3. Re:Or you could use FireFox by phrasebook · · Score: 1

      FireFox.. what's the big deal.

      Not sure how you can say it's *much* faster. I must say I've noticed little to no speed difference, anywhere. I'm not really using a slow computer though.

      As for your Windows jibe - Mozilla's interface responds much, much faster on Windows than on Linux. I musn't be the only one who sees this. I can't get over how slow the menus and dialogs feel on Linux! You can't even mouseover the menus.. File, Edit, View.. without them lagging. Never been a fan of the cross-platform UI stuff.

      Also I noticed in FireFox 0.8 on Linux (not sure about previous versions, don't use it much) that in dialogs, the Cancel button is on the left, and the OK button is on the right. Why on earth was this decision made? Weird. Kept clicking OK to Cancel.

      So I just install Mozilla without any of the other components.

    4. Re:Or you could use FireFox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've heard that the button layout is due to some Gnome convention thing. I'm not sure though.

  19. Durr! by rylin · · Score: 1

    what a tremendous increase!
    not only is the application speed increased, but i'm seeing an increase of SEVERAL HUNDRED PER CENT in terms of download times for the new release shortly after the story hit /.! :P

  20. Re:Who fucking cares by MikeCapone · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Mozilla has a small marketshare, practically no one uses it, and finally Long Live IE!

    True.

    Intelligence also has a small marketshare...

  21. My only gripe about Mozilla.... by raindown · · Score: 1

    is the fact that the icons in the browser/mail client (the only things I really use) are ugly looking.. and while I know I can download themes.. they should take the icons from Firefox and Thunderbird and incorporate them.

    Firefox on windows does have a couple issues with crashing on phpBB reply boxes.. which is why I use Mozilla when I'm not using linux.

    All in all, go Mozilla!

    1. Re:My only gripe about Mozilla.... by walter_kovacs · · Score: 1

      They should definitely improve the default theme with the phoenicity one - a lot of new users will have their first impression formed by the look and feel of the browser rahter than just the functionality. Firefox and Thunderbird look pretty slick - Mozilla just looks like a 90s Netscape throwback.

    2. Re:My only gripe about Mozilla.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you're going to complain about icons, complain about the missing website icons in the bookmarks. This feature worked around 0.99 but was broken shortly afterwards around 1.1 (IIRC) and has remained so ever since... and it's
      1) a feature that users notice (it works in IE)
      and
      2) actually quite useful for quickly finding a single website among a heap of other bookmarks

    3. Re:My only gripe about Mozilla.... by Myen · · Score: 1

      Hmm, can you provide more information on the crash using phpBB? O/S. version, etc.?

      (I find the bug interesting, because MozillaZine - pretty much the semi-official forums for Mozilla - runs phpBB.)

    4. Re:My only gripe about Mozilla.... by raindown · · Score: 1

      Windows 2000
      Firefox 0.8

      the board it chokes on is: http://plainparade.org/board/

      It pretty much happens only when I click post reply and start typing, then it bombs.

  22. noticeable? by davids-world.com · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I seriously doubt that a performance improvement 10% is even noticeable to the user. It's great that Mozilla is trying to catch up with fast browse-only alternatives like Safari, Konqueror and also the Gecko-based browsers, but you can't seriously speak of 'dramatic' improvements.

    1. Re:noticeable? by walter_kovacs · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      Konqueror anyway is just shit, full respect to the developers for having a go but the page rendering is just awful.

    2. Re:noticeable? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think anything less than 50% is noticeable to end users. Performance is good, but crowing about a 9% boost is definite geek territory and shows a lack of focus on users.

    3. Re:noticeable? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sure. A performace improvement of 10% is probably totally unnoticable to the user. The real point that the article fails to make is that Mozilla has been getting *consistently* smaller and faster since the 1.0 release. Subjectivley, it's pretty obvious if you use an older release that it's slower. But if that isn't good enough, there are graphs on tinderbox which show the measured codesize, pageload time, new window time and various other metrics (no link, because it would be irresponsible of me to launch an accidental ddos attack on tinderbox) - if you're interested the address is pretty easy to guess/find. Looking at the btek pageload time, I see that in June 2002 pageload was around 1210ms, now it's around 860ms and still decreasing. That's an improvment of around 30%, without cutting any features or degrading the standards support. That means that Mozilla is now competative with so called "lightweight" browsers such as Opera (I don't have comparisons avaliable because such things are hard to do).

    4. Re:noticeable? by davids-world.com · · Score: 1

      hmm, haven't used it in a while, but doesn't Konquerer share its rendering code base with safari? and haven't the Apple developers done great work on safari / WebCore? i use Safari all the time, and pretty much all pages render fine, just like in Mozilla and IE 6.0/Win -- very unlike Konquerer in the old days (pre-WebCore), indeed!

    5. Re:noticeable? by juhaz · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I seriously doubt that a performance improvement 10% is even noticeable to the user.

      Maybe it isn't. But if few releases in a row could each make 10% improvements, the cumulative 50% improvement damn certainly is noticeable.

    6. Re:noticeable? by westlake · · Score: 1, Interesting
      I seriously doubt that a performance improvement 10% is even noticeable to the user.

      That takes you back to the larger question of why none of the alternative browsers ever gains significant market share. Mouse gestures, tabbed browsing, etc. just doesn't seem to take you very far. Consider Moz's flat-line performance on the Google Zeitgeist , for example. You have to wonder if Microsoft's decision to integrate a simple web browser into Windows Explorer isn't closer to the mark, something that has value to ordinary users.

    7. Re:noticeable? by BobWeiner · · Score: 3, Informative

      I just downloaded Mozilla 1.8 -- and speed improvements ARE dramatic -- it's FAST -- much moreso than Safari or even Firefox. Page rendering speeds are unbelieveably quick. Even the application loading time has significantly improved. I never would have considered using Mozilla as my primary browser -- but this version has me thinking otherwise. Download it, use it, and draw your own conclusions...

      Bob

      --
      The PC Weenies: 11 Years of Online Tech 'Too
    8. Re:noticeable? by BobWeiner · · Score: 2, Informative

      Oops. Should be 1.7b in my previous post.

      --
      The PC Weenies: 11 Years of Online Tech 'Too
    9. Re:noticeable? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      But if few releases in a row could each make 10% improvements, the cumulative 50% improvement damn certainly is noticeable.

      I'm not convinced, since moving to cable, pages either snap into place or hang for reasons that have little to do with the performance of the browser.

    10. Re:noticeable? by dpete4552 · · Score: 1

      It's probably psychological. If they re-released 1.6 as 1.7 and just falsey said "It's now 40% faster due to new optimization techniques" most people would download it and go "Wow this /is/ faster!".

      --
      http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares
    11. Re:noticeable? by Trejkaz · · Score: 1

      I'm wondering if the "turbo mode" which you can turn on in Firefox applies to standard Mozilla as well. Then you can get some massive increases in the time it takes to display pages... takes the same long time to start up though.

      --
      Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
    12. Re:noticeable? by linuxhansl · · Score: 1
      I read an article a while ago, which claimed that software speed increases less then 100% (i.e. the speed doubled), will not be noticed by users (unless, of course it was in the minutes to begin with).

      It sounds crazy, but you can try yourself; you'll hardly notice a speed increase of 50% unless you use a stopwatch.

    13. Re:noticeable? by Rogerborg · · Score: 1

      10% of ten minutes is noticable. That's about how long it felt like opening Mozilla 1.6.

      --
      If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
    14. Re:noticeable? by Jeppe+Salvesen · · Score: 1
      A few?
      100.0 * 0.9 = 90.0
      090.0 * 0.9 = 81.0
      081.0 * 0.9 = 72.9
      072.9 * 0.9 = 65.6
      059.0 * 0.9 = 59.0
      053.1 * 0.9 = 53.1
      047.8 * 0.9 = 47.8
      7 Major releases until it's twice as fast.
      --

      Stop the brainwash

    15. Re:noticeable? by mpe · · Score: 1

      But if few releases in a row could each make 10% improvements, the cumulative 50% improvement damn certainly is noticeable.

      4 increments of 10% would give you 46%, 5 would give you 61%. 3 would only give you 33%.

    16. Re:noticeable? by lucas+teh+geek · · Score: 0

      Trust me, on this PII 300Mhz, I'll more than notice the 10%

      --
      TIAEAE!
    17. Re:noticeable? by SpinyNorman · · Score: 1

      I'm browsing under XP on a PII 266MHz with 128MB RAM, and I can assure you that I can notice the difference. My main use of the browser is for eBay, and I typically perform a seach then open up all the resulting hits (30 or so) in separate tabs... With 1.7b I there's little or no delay in bringing up the popup menu to "open in new tab", whereas before there was a much more noticable delay.

    18. Re:noticeable? by jsebrech · · Score: 1

      You have to wonder if Microsoft's decision to integrate a simple web browser into Windows Explorer isn't closer to the mark, something that has value to ordinary users.

      I don't buy that, I've always seen little use in being able to see websites within your file manager. The metaphor use is entirely different, and so the UI becomes either a cluttered mess, or unsuitable for one of the two purposes.

      It's not the integration into the file explorer, it's the integration into windows. The vast majority of users are unaware there are alternatives. Most of those that are aware of the alternatives believe explorer is a good browser, and see no reason to switch. Only a very small minority is willing to try new browsers and stick with them.

      Also, it doesn't help that isp's promote explorer among their userbase. The biggest loss to netscape's marketshare came when isp's started abandoning them. If isp's started pushing an alternative browser again, you'd be sure to see it climb in marketshare drastically.

    19. Re:noticeable? by jsebrech · · Score: 1

      A 10 percent difference is very noticeable. There have been smaller improvements that I clearly noticed before I read the new version was faster.

    20. Re:noticeable? by GooberToo · · Score: 1

      Are those load times compared on the exact same machine with the exact same OS? No changes over that period of time? Or did they obtain the old version and then the new version and compare that way?

      I ask because I've seen many cases where developers upgrade machines and compare against old benchmarks and are amazed that they are faster. Duh. I Doubt this is the case, since it's the mozilla project, but I thought I might ask.

    21. Re:noticeable? by Pieroxy · · Score: 1

      That means that Mozilla is now competative with so called "lightweight" browsers such as Opera

      If you really believe that, just try installing Opera and use it for a full week. You will notice why everyone is calling Mozilla slow at the end of the week when you get back to it. That's what I call a noticeable difference.

      Note: I haven't been using 1.7 yet, but let me assure you that if it is less than a 10% achievement, the above still stand true by a long shot.

    22. Re:noticeable? by rjstanford · · Score: 1

      Also, it doesn't help that isp's promote explorer among their userbase. The biggest loss to netscape's marketshare came when isp's started abandoning them. If isp's started pushing an alternative browser again, you'd be sure to see it climb in marketshare drastically.

      Nice idea, but way too late. ISPs started pushing IE as soon as it became halfway decent. I know, I used to run one of them. We had to pay about $20/seat to give away current copies of Netscape. We had to pay $0 per seat to give away current copies of IE. IE got decent before Netscape got free, ergo IE won. $20/seat was a lot of money back then compared to our margins. And Netscape wondered why they got abandoned? Its all well and good to say, "You should have stayed with the non-MS solution," but that would have just meant that our competitors would have been selling a commodity-grade product for less money... not a good idea. And the user base, frankly, didn't give a damn, which makes it a comoddity in their minds even if our software was different.

      --
      You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
  23. Re:Who fucking cares by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    IE also has a small market share. Most of the galaxy runs Chrxylchos as their web browser. Of course you wouldn't know, but seeing as how you've never been abducted by aliens you are hardly qualified to dispute this.

  24. Not fair by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    I got here so fast using konqueror that the server hadn't even recorded my post by the time I left.

  25. In other news... by cperciva · · Score: 4, Funny

    When compared to Mozilla 1.6, Lynx is 99% faster at startup, 99% faster at window open time, has 50% faster pageloading times, and is 90% smaller in binary size.

    In all seriousness, it's easy to improve figures like this just by removing features.

    1. Re:In other news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Uh, what features have been removed from mozilla? With regards to lynx, I know it does run on linux, but, does it support jpg, gif, png...i could go on.....

      In all seriousness, it's easy to make statements with no intellect

    2. Re:In other news... by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      Question regarding security updates on FreeBSD as seen on your sig.

      Would that not cause binary conflicts? I switched to BSD to get away from binary conflict hell. I love the ports even though they are a pain and slow to install, they work.

    3. Re:In other news... by gnuzip · · Score: 1

      Does it support jpg, gif, ping...
      No, but if you're looking for a lynx-like browser that supports graphics, you might be interested in Links 2 (not links 1). Links is quite similar to lynx, but it has support for images, tables, frames, and colors.
      I use it as my main browser, and would highly recommend it. It is incredibly speedy, especially when compared to the 'huger' browsers.

    4. Re:In other news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You should provide a link. I was not able to find it in the usual locations, i.e. sourceforge.net, freshmeat.net, or gnu.org.

    5. Re:In other news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      The Links 2 page is here

    6. Re:In other news... by tvh2k · · Score: 1

      Yeah but I find the DHTML support on lynx to be quite lacking :-P

    7. Re:In other news... by Brandybuck · · Score: 1

      Would that not cause binary conflicts? I switched to BSD to get away from binary conflict hell.

      Read the link, Luke!

      This solves the pernicious problem of applying security updates to 500 machines running source-based operating systems. For my single system here at home, it's a trivial matter to apply a patch, compile and install. But for for 500 machines this would be excruciating.

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    8. Re:In other news... by Guppy06 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Let me guess: Your text editor of choice is ed, isn't it?

    9. Re:In other news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm posting this from Lynx, because it's simply better than links.

      Anyhow, what was my point? Oh yeah, I already made it.

    10. Re:In other news... by fm6 · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Yeah, I'm underwealmed by this announcement too. But your comparison is off-target, since this improvement in performance appears to have been done by improving the code, not by stripping out features. What's sad is that performance wasn't a priority from day one. Mozilla's bloated code base have pretty much destroyed its credibility outside its community of fanatical true-believers.

      Ironically enough, I'm writing this using Firefox, 'cause my copy of IE is infested with some weird stealth popup engine that neither Ad-Aware nore Spybot can seem to corner. I'm very close to abandoning IE, going back to Mozilla permanently.

      But I'm not quite there. Now might seem the right time to abandon IE, with its stupid security holes and lack of standards compliance. But Firefox still takes too long to download graphics and render complicated web pages. And the Mozilla version of the Google toolbar has a really stupid bug (actually more a case of overdesign) that makes search term buttons totally useless. I can't live without search term buttons!

    11. Re:In other news... by Ctrl-Z · · Score: 3, Funny

      It is the standard text editor.

      --
      www.timcoleman.com is a total waste of your time. Never go there.
    12. Re:In other news... by beforewisdom · · Score: 1

      Hell, I can beat Lynx's time by not even browsing the web at all.

    13. Re:In other news... by whig · · Score: 1

      HijackThis! is essential for removing those hard-to-corner spyware thingies in Windows.

      Or, you could just use GNU/Linux and not have to worry about creatures hiding in your registry.

      --
      Peace and love, y'all
    14. Re:In other news... by fm6 · · Score: 1
      HijackThis! is essential for removing those hard-to-corner spyware thingies in Windows.
      Have it. Doesn't help.
      Or, you could just use GNU/Linux and not have to worry about creatures hiding in your registry.
      Gee, I never would have thought of that. I guess I'm just too stupid to realize that Microsoft products suck!
    15. Re:In other news... by 0x0d0a · · Score: 1

      What's sad is that performance wasn't a priority from day one.

      See, this is a funny thing to say. The first thing I though of when I read your post is that "this guy has never written software before". Then I discovered that you had, indeed, written software, which makes this an even odder thing to say.

      Nobody sits down and optimizes software from day 1. The goal at Day 1 is to get the thing working. Oh, performace isn't something that you completely ignore -- you don't want to have to do something where you *know* that you're going to have to rewrite the codebase to get acceptable performace -- but it just isn't all that important. The point of Moz up to somewhere around 1.0 was to get something out and working properly. People have been optimizing and bug-fixing ever since.

    16. Re:In other news... by geekster · · Score: 1

      No, I think the point of it is that it's light weight and text mode...

    17. Re:In other news... by fm6 · · Score: 1
      OK, perhaps I shouldn't have said "day one". How about "the first five years"?

      Actually, I'm not the good at programming. I mostly read code that others have written (I write API docs for a living). But let me throw out some inexpert opinions.

      Notice that I didn't say performance was the priority. Obviously there are, as you say, other priorities that take precedence in the early stages of a project. So yeah, you have to pay more attention to getting the thing working than to making it work fast.

      But you can't just ignore performance. If you do, you'll make design mistakes that will be very hard to reverse later.

      Except that's what the Mozilla team did. They piled on feature after feature, without worrying about whether they were destroying the performance of the product. I guess they assumed this was something they could fix later. Well it is later, and they still haven't fixed it. Yeah, we just had this breathless annoucement with gee-whiz figure about how Mozilla is smaller and faster. Except it still hasn't gotten as fast as IE 6.

      Speaking of which: I finally nailed that spyware. (My main anti-spyware tool is now Spybot S&D. Koller is painfully flaky, but his software does the job better than anybody else's -- once you figure it out.) So I'm back to using IE. Yes, it isn't as kewl as Firefox, and yes it belongs to The Dark Side. And of course it isn't standards-compliant. (Though these days, who is?) But I don't go crazy waiting for pages to load, and I have a googlebar that actually works.

      And yeah, if I had free choice I'd switch to Linux and use Konqueror. Or if I had free choice and deep pockets, I'd switch to Mac and use Safari. But I don't so I won't, so enough with the "switch to something else" mantra.

    18. Re:In other news... by 0x0d0a · · Score: 1

      Except that's what the Mozilla team did. They piled on feature after feature, without worrying about whether they were destroying the performance of the product. I guess they assumed this was something they could fix later. Well it is later, and they still haven't fixed it. Yeah, we just had this breathless annoucement with gee-whiz figure about how Mozilla is smaller and faster. Except it still hasn't gotten as fast as IE 6.

      I'm not an expert on the Mozilla codebase (though I have worked a small bit on optimizing an HTML renderer), but I still think you're wrong about your claim.

      The main things that are going to be hit when rendering a page (which is going to be what people care about WRT Gecko performance) are going to be core things -- layout and rendering code. They aren't going to be "features" like the dialog that someone added in to let you choose a font.

      The only way you can have a "feature" in a layout engine is really to comply with an element of a spec, and I don't think that they should have put off spec correctness for performance, given the number of people that depend on the browser operating correctly for the webpages they write to show up correctly.

      That would seem to indicate that it isn't the additional features causing slowdown (the mail client code just plain isn't using cycles when you're viewing a web page), but insufficiently optimized core code, not something that can be fixed by omitting features.

      But I don't so I won't, so enough with the "switch to something else" mantra.

      I didn't tell you that you should switch in my post.

  26. Why... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why use Mozilla over firefox?

    1. Re:Why... by BobWeiner · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Mozilla has a built-in email program - if that's important to you, then that's one reason to use Moz instead of FireFox. Me? I toggle between using Safari and FireFox. FireFox was indeed faster than Safari 1.0, but with Safari 1.2, I'd say both browsers feel about the same, speedwise. Anyone have benchmarks?

      Bob

      --
      The PC Weenies: 11 Years of Online Tech 'Too
  27. Dramatically faster?? by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 5, Funny

    The fastest speed up is not even 10%. That's about an extra 0.01 tits/second. Want more speedup than that.

    --
    Engineering is the art of compromise.
    1. Re:Dramatically faster?? by B.D.Mills · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is obviously some new use of the word "dramatically" that I am not familiar with.

      When compared to Mozilla 1.6, Mozilla 1.7 Beta is 7% faster at startup, is 8% faster at window open time, has 9% faster pageloading times, and is 5% smaller in binary size.

      It might be just you and me, but single-digit percentage increases in performance isn't "dramatic". It's more like "scarcely noticeable".

      --

      The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
    2. Re:Dramatically faster?? by Cylix · · Score: 1

      But it's all relevant to how much time it takes mozilla to load on your system.

      If your system is a bit slow a 7% decrease could be a welcomed change.

      My friend's new centrino based laptop loads mozilla incredibly fast. It gave me a bit of realization on how much faster his laptop was then mine.

      In any event, it's probably safe to assume this isn't the last of the performance increases coming down the road.

      --
      "You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
    3. Re:Dramatically faster?? by robbyjo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      but single-digit percentage increases in performance isn't "dramatic". It's more like "scarcely noticeable".

      In that case, maybe... But if you follow some compiler conference papers, single digit percentage of improvement *is* a dramatic improvement.

      More than that single digit, we need to either change the underlying algorithm, or do a more dramatic overhaul, or correct a resource hogging mistakes. Well, we all know that Mozilla coders aren't that sloppy, so I guess that single digit improvements are really good because they usually involve quite a lot of cutting corners squeezing out more improvements over the already tight code.

      --

      --
      Error 500: Internal sig error
    4. Re:Dramatically faster?? by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 1
      Dogs bottom!

      If it took 60 seconds, now it will take 55.8 seconds. You won't notice that without a stopwatch!

      --
      Engineering is the art of compromise.
    5. Re:Dramatically faster?? by B.D.Mills · · Score: 1

      I think the problem is how they are saying "dramatic" when referring to the overall speed. It's not so dramatic, but it would be dramatic if we were to look at the individual bits they've tuned. They probably changed something small so a particular portion of the code runs 20 times faster, but *overall* it is only slightly faster.

      I say well done to the development team for their continued efforts. Maybe I will follow Darth Vader's lead and come back from the dark side of using IE by installing Mozilla.

      --

      The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
  28. Thanks Moz Team. by pararox · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm really impressed, and very much appreciative, of the amount of effort the Mozilla team has put forth over the years. I switched to Mozilla some 4 or 5 years ago, and haven't looked back since. The rapidity of development is truly astounding -- thanks girls and guys!

    That having been said, I've been dissapointed with the latest iteration of the Mozilla browser. I've found 1.6 to be rather slow (autocomplete lags, for example), bug prone and (if I'm correct) java support is still on the fritz.

    I'm liable to switch over to FireFox (or whatever it's called this week), except the Preference Toolbar (on which I'm hooked like a crack addiction) still does not function in this stripped down version of the Moz browser.

    Anyway, I look forward to this newest version; really, I just wanted to express, in this post, my thanks for the effort put forth by the whole Moz team.

    Regards,

    =pararox=

    1. Re:Thanks Moz Team. by petabyte · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'm liable to switch over to FireFox (or whatever it's called this week), except the Preference Toolbar (on which I'm hooked like a crack addiction) still does not function in this stripped down version of the Moz browser.

      Yeah, I have similar issues with epiphany. I like its layout and its Gnomeiness but there are certain options it blocks (even out of regular mozilla) that I would really like to have. Every time I download something and the damn download statusbar comes up I want to put my fist through the screen. You can't dare close it either as that will stop the download. Hopefully tomorrow when 2.6 launches I'll be able to play with Epiphany 1.2.0 and it'll have more options.

  29. good for mozilla by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    whenever i decide to give lynx a rest and look at the pretty pics online, i always use mozilla. not nearly as clunky or top-heavy as IE. if it's gotten even faster, i may just get up to the present day and use it as my main browser. :-)

  30. Faster loading times by gilesjuk · · Score: 1

    By that I take it to mean that the parsing and rendering of pages is faster, not that there's some trickery to download data faster. Every little helps I guess though.

  31. Help me out by Gyorg_Lavode · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Ok. So, mozilla was supposed to addopt the phoenix/firebird/firefox code right? Did they do that already? If so, why are the developed separately? If so, what advantage does firefox offer, or is it just a fork of the code?

    --
    I do security
    1. Re:Help me out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Each firefox release is based on Mozilla. Firefox 0.9 and 1.0 will be based on Mozilla 1.7.

      Mozilla will then make Firefox it's primary browser after 1.0, and Thunderbird it's primary mail reader after 1.0. The Mozilla browser you know will still exist as "Mozilla Suite".

    2. Re:Help me out by spacecowboy420 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      On a similiar note - I thought Mozilla was going away in lieu of FireFox and Thunderbird. I stopped using Mozilla long ago for this reason - when are they going to focus on just FireFox and Thunderbird - or are they really? It seems that Most linux distros use Mozilla instead of the seperate clients. This bugs me when I have to install firefox/thunderbird and always makes me ask - "If Mozilla is going away, why do we still use it? Why is it included in the distros?" And ultimately "Why Bother". I know mozilla is a good product, but maintaining a "to be discontinued" product is like cpr on dead people - what's the point? Please enlighten me.

      --
      ymmv
    3. Re:Help me out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Firefox and Thunderbird are beta software derived from the main Mozilla code tree. Once they're determined to be stable enough, they're going to replace the current Mozilla browser/mail client, but at this point they're considered too experimental.

    4. Re:Help me out by Myen · · Score: 1

      I believe it's something about how big corporations (as in, the people actually paying for things) prefer the suite.

      I'm not sure how accurate that is though - this is just stuff picked up on the MozillaZine forums and other user-submitted comments.

    5. Re:Help me out by erikharrison · · Score: 1

      Firefox and Thunderbird are going to be a while till they are production ready. And by production ready, we don't just mean fast/stable, we also mean featureful, containing all of the core functionality of the Moz suite.

      Until then, development will continue on the main Moz branch. This work benefits the other projects anyway, no major overhauls of the code are planned which don't have direct bearing on the two "mini" versions (that I know of), and this gives Moz the chance to prepare the developer and user community with lots of warning, transitional versions of app suite, and tech previews.

    6. Re:Help me out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      please excuse my ignornace, but i seem to have missed a memo, could you please provide a url for the one from which you derived this?

    7. Re:Help me out by afidel · · Score: 1

      Mozilla as it exists today is called Mozilla Suite, and will be the default until Firefox hits 1.0. It will continue to be available after that point so long as there are developers interested in keeping it alive. Personally I have been using Mozilla Suite as both my main browser and main email app since June 2000 and unless Thunderbird improves significantly and they get the bugs worked out of the profile migration tool I don't plan to move anytime soon.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    8. Re:Help me out by jsebrech · · Score: 2, Informative

      Firefox roadmap. Plus, it's been announced on mozillazine.org in even greater detail.

  32. Mozilla is good... by Lakedemon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I just love it and tab-browsing but there is still room for improvement:
    A resume feature in the download manager would be a nice start...

    1. Re:Mozilla is good... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't use Mozilla to download much because it's a pain in the ass. No resume as you said, downloads to temp first meaning I have to make sure there is enough space there (2x the space if I'm downloading to the same drive that temp is on) or it will break but the most anoying feature is the automatic extension adding. developers.mpg is already identified as an mpeg. Why does it need to be renamed developers.mpg.mpeg?

    2. Re:Mozilla is good... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://downloadstatusbar.mozdev.org/

      http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1203 27 #c387
      The file extension thing is due to many attempts to resolve conflicts between MIME types on websites and the actual file names they give. Critical so users do not complain that they cannot open the file once downloaded. There are a lot of bugs on that.

    3. Re:Mozilla is good... by mcsmurf · · Score: 1

      what should i say *g*, it's in the makings, see http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=219556 , Patches are waiting for reviews

  33. I was about time ... by InodoroPereyra · · Score: 1
    ... for software projects to give actual figures when they talk about performance gains in new releases. Even though these figures are always relative, it is better than just saying "increased performance".

    And also, what a good looking, clean design for the README page. Kudos !!!.

  34. Kerberos Support by CNeb96 · · Score: 4, Informative

    It now support's SSO HTTP Authentication using GSSAPI Kerberos. Similiar MS's implementation of SPNEGO in IE. See bug 17578 in bugzilla for more information.

    This is compatible with both IIS, and mod_authkerb for apache.

    http://sourceforge.net/projects/modauthkerb/

    Next the plan is to make kerberos support more general so it can be used for other protocol's like IMAP.

    1. Re:Kerberos Support by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      it's really neat but use an anchor next time please.

    2. Re:Kerberos Support by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Learn how to use apostrophes moron.

  35. 5% faster than 1.6, but.. by edxwelch · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How much faster in comparision to other releases? What I want to know is if Mozilla is progressively getting faster, or is this just to compensate for performance regressions when they went from 1.4 - 1.5, etc.

    1. Re:5% faster than 1.6, but.. by afidel · · Score: 2, Informative

      Roughly 33% faster than 1.0 for pageload according to Tinderbox. Code size is smaller so startup should be improved as well. This is while ADDING support for more standards.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  36. 5% 8% 9%?? by greppling · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Oh my god. An old rule of thumb is that the user experience is noticeably better if the performance doubles. That may be an overstatement, but how on earth should 7% faster startup make a difference for daily work?

    Of course, it's nice to see they are going in the right direction, but I suppose it will take me a while until I have made up for the time following the link and downloading it (not to speak of the time it cost to post this comment :P) by the increased productivity...

    1. Re:5% 8% 9%?? by Apiakun · · Score: 1

      Well, if you can start mozilla faster and render pages faster, there's a chance you just might finish reading slashdot before your boss sees you browsing the web on his or her time.

    2. Re:5% 8% 9%?? by ChrisMaple · · Score: 1

      Time "is" money. It adds up to money savings in a commercial setting and life savings otherwise, whether the difference can be sensed or not.

      --
      Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
    3. Re:5% 8% 9%?? by 0x0d0a · · Score: 1

      I've heard that the minimum noticable improvement is generally somewhere around 30% in an article on the classic Mac OS running on faster hardware.

    4. Re:5% 8% 9%?? by CGP314 · · Score: 1

      An old rule of thumb is that the user experience is noticeably better if the performance doubles.

      So if they make every new release 7% faster I'll never notice?

      How tragic!


      -Colin

  37. No diffirent then the last release by Jexx+Dragon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've been using Mozilla since 0.4 or 0.5, can't quite remember which. It's always been the best, and keeps getting better (tabs anyone?). Every release gets faster, and most get smaller, though not all.

    --
    I don't have time to comment my code, the program is late already.
    1. Re:No diffirent then the last release by ChiChiCuervo · · Score: 1

      i MIGHT consider switching from galeon once i figure out how to put the tabs on the bottom where they belong!!!

    2. Re:No diffirent then the last release by Jexx+Dragon · · Score: 1

      probably a simple recompiling. Alter a few lines of code and it could be done (I think).

      --
      I don't have time to comment my code, the program is late already.
  38. Mozilla Vs Firefox by colinramsay · · Score: 4, Informative

    Seeing as Firefox is getting most of the press these days it's important to realise that the full suite is still moving along nicely. They are addressing criticisms well - a redesign of the cookie manager and speed increases are reflective of the fight against bloat and complexity.

    And don't forget, changes to the suite are picked up by Firefox since FF is based off the same source tree. So a lot of work here will affect the mini-moz too....

    1. Re:Mozilla Vs Firefox by ezzzD55J · · Score: 3, Interesting

      slightly offtopic perhaps, but perhaps someone here knows, speaking of improvements.. what i'd really really like greatly is roaming profiles, allowing me to share bookmarks, cookies, history etc. with mozilla's on each of the systems i use.. It would be such a huge improvement to my browsing usage, at least; currently I don't bother with bookmarks, for instance.. I know this feature has been talked about endlessly, i haven't read the full bugzilla bugs about it because they were so large :) Anyone know what the status is of this?

    2. Re:Mozilla Vs Firefox by colinramsay · · Score: 1

      This would certainly be cool:

      Bugzilla
      Mozillazine

      Knew I'd seen mention of this recently - I don't follow suite development that closely but this is very interesting and I'm sure there's more info on the associated bugzilla bugs.

    3. Re:Mozilla Vs Firefox by BroadbandBradley · · Score: 1

      Roaming support is coming. Thought it might have been in version 1.7, but it just missed. On my website, I post news on roaming when I find it and hope to offer a roaming server service when roaming is added to the Mozilla suite.

      the work I refer to is in Bugzilla, I cannot link directlty to Bugzilla from Slashdot, but check out ZillaVilla.com and you'll see the link to the bug on the front page.

    4. Re:Mozilla Vs Firefox by f0rt0r · · Score: 1

      I just wanted to note that I tried Firefox .8 ( something with an "." and an "8" in it, along with Mozilla 1.6 on Windoze, and I found Firefox to be faster but Mozilla had all the features I wanted ( browser only, not email or IRC ), so I switched back to Mozilla.

      Now, back on topic ( the articles topic ), seeing Mozilla getting a stronger foundation that is more stable and consumes fewer resources would be nice. On thing to keep in mind is the size of the task usually decides whether good code runs faster than sloppy code. e.g. good code completes a task 10 milliseconds faster than bad code, but that task is only run once...it doesn't make a noticeable difference. But in the case that task runs a million times, the difference is now 1,000,000 * .010 equals roughly 2.7 hours difference, which is noticeable :), especially for loading a web page.
      My point is that users who don't load down the application very much probably won't see a difference, while "power users" will definitely see an improvement.

      --
      I can't afford a sig!
  39. A point each way. by irokitt · · Score: 5, Interesting

    IE is not expected to see a major revision until Longhorn ships in 2006-2007. It is rumored that the Longhorn version will have tabbed browsing and some kind of pop-up blocking. This would probably be accomplished via the MSN toolbar, which is similar to the Google toolbar but with that *other* search engine.

    But the truth is that IE has so much of the market share that revisions don't matter. People tend to use whatever came with their system, even if it is older and came with IE 5. If Microsoft didn't push the patches, quite a few people would be using these older version even now.
    BTW, I'm using Firefox.

    --
    If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
    1. Re:A point each way. by Utopia · · Score: 3, Informative

      WinXP SP2 RC1 already has popup blocking.
      Integrating MSN toolbar with IE is highly unlikely.


    2. Re:A point each way. by kundor · · Score: 1
      Integrating MSN toolbar with IE is highly unlikely.

      Ummm.....why?

      That would be exactly what I expect them to do. The only unlikely bit is that they haven't done it already.

    3. Re:A point each way. by qoa · · Score: 1

      The latest MSN Explorer, has built in popup blocking, and a Longhorn-like GUI.

      --
      Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
    4. Re:A point each way. by minus_273 · · Score: 3, Informative

      actually, IE will see a major revision when MS relaeases SP2 for XP in a few months. You can do a quick search and see screenshots of it. It uses a new brusged metal theme and has popup blocking and a download manager built in. In addition, it is supposed to incoporate a lot of the corrections made since MS's security audit (this is a rumor BTW).
      Overall, eventhough it looks liks a knock off of Safari,I am interested in seeing what changes MS made

      --
      The war with islam is a war on the beast
      The war on terror is a war for peace
    5. Re:A point each way. by bwy · · Score: 1

      People tend to use whatever came with their system, even if it is older and came with IE 5.

      If this is the case, and I think it is, we could eventually get rid of a lot of the current Outlook style worm crap by convincing the big PC makers to ship Mozilla as the primary mail client and browser on their OEM consumer boxes. I'm sure this would violate some kind of "agreement" however.

    6. Re:A point each way. by westlake · · Score: 0
      If this is the case, and I think it is, we could eventually get rid of a lot of the current Outlook style worm crap by convincing the big PC makers to ship Mozilla as the primary mail client and browser on their OEM consumer boxes.

      when an end user buys an OEM Windows box, he expects an OEM Windows install. arbitrarily changing the defaults is nothing but a headache for technical support. Moz has limited visibility beyond Slashdot, and can't sold as delivering significant added value or a potential revenue stream like iTunes.

    7. Re:A point each way. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      By default, if you press the "Search" button in the toolbar, you get a MSN sidebar. Also any keywords or bad host names typed into the address bar go to MSN.

    8. Re:A point each way. by efishta · · Score: 1

      Chances are the brushed metal theme is probably the Visual Style that the person that took the screenshots has applied, and not the default look.

      MS would not like to be seen as a copycat company, which is why they would not want to have a skin in Internet Explorer/Windows that mimics that of Apple's brushed metal theme.

      Speaking of the built-in popup blocker; in the brief time i tested SP2, it did a good job blocking the ads (no reason why it wouldn't I guess) but I still prefer to stick to Pop-Up Cop, which can turn off a variety of IE annoyances, such as those damned "eyelets" that play embedded in webpages without a third party media player, (I wanna say they're Flash based.) as well as automatic window resizing, automatic scripts/events, Flash autoplay etc...

    9. Re:A point each way. by BandwidthHog · · Score: 1

      MS would not like to be seen as a copycat company...

      You're new here, aren't you?

      --

      Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
  40. Re:Who fucking cares by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You do a good job at projecting an elitist attitude. This does nothing good for the open source movement...

  41. Mozilla and Firefox by Maxim+Kovalenko · · Score: 1

    While I applaud the increase in performance on the Mozilla 1.7 beta...it seems to me to be a waste of effort. In my opinion Firefox is ready for primetime now, and according to Mozilla will be the defacto browser anyway. You already have a Porsche guys...you don't need to hand build a Camry because your bored.

    1. Re:Mozilla and Firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I personally still use Mozilla 1.6, I installed Firefox a while back and it was extremely buggy.

      1.6 is fine for my needs and is extremely stable.. I am downloading 1.7beta now, though am skepticle of its stableness, after all, it is a "beta".

    2. Re:Mozilla and Firefox by finalrain · · Score: 1

      I started using Firefox (was Firebird at the time) when it was .6, and, after about a week, I began using it exclusively for everything except sites with flash, etc. that I wanted to see (Firefox still seems to be a bit slow with flash, etc). I've had few problems with bugs, and the added functionality and speed is spectacular. Maybe my setup is ideal for it (Win98, official binaries), but I haven't had any problems with bugs, and I certainly wouldn't classify it as "extremely buggy."

      --
      -- It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
    3. Re:Mozilla and Firefox by Tin+Foil+Hat · · Score: 1

      1. Firefox is NOT ready for prime time. While it is perfectly usable for normal web browsing, many features are still lacking, incomplete, and/or buggy. For instance, if you right click on a deeply nested frame and choose 'this frame -> view frame info', the browser will crash. Well, it does in Linux, I haven't checked it in Windows.

      2. The Thunderbird and Firefox products are not meant to replace the Mozilla Suite, despite early announcements to the contrary. Enough people have shown interest in continuing development of the suite that it is unlikely to go away. Similarly, there are many people that like using the suite because of it's greater stability and integration between componants.

      --
      No matter how many of my rights are taken away, somehow I still don't feel safe. -Frigid Monkey
    4. Re:Mozilla and Firefox by Xabraxas · · Score: 1
      1. Firefox is NOT ready for prime time. While it is perfectly usable for normal web browsing, many features are still lacking, incomplete, and/or buggy. For instance, if you right click on a deeply nested frame and choose 'this frame -> view frame info', the browser will crash. Well, it does in Linux, I haven't checked it in Windows.

      What distro are you using? It works fine for me.

      --
      Time makes more converts than reason
    5. Re:Mozilla and Firefox by Tin+Foil+Hat · · Score: 1

      How deeply were the frames nested when you tested that? Again, this only applies to deeply nested frames. It crashes for me when I reach level 3 or 4. There are many factors that apply to this situation, however, and it's entirely possible that you have not reproduced the exact scenario that causes the behavior. Factors that may be significant include document types, language settings, document encoding, and document validity for it's HTML version. To answer your question, I'm using MDK 10, although that shouldn't matter. I noticed the problem under MDK 9.2 also.

      Another example of it's incompleteness/bugginess is the handling of the sidebar. Although you can add any bookmark as a sidebar (great feature, IMO) you can't open your sidebar and choose that bookmark from the tab list, you have to do it through the bookmarks menu. I don't mean to denigrate the Firefox team as they are doing an outstanding job, I just pointing out that Firefox has not reached 1.0 status, and for good reason.

      Since I use Mozilla as a primary development tool, I depend on many features that most people will never use or even know about. I have every reason to think that most, if not all, of these issues will be resolved by the time 1.0 is released. Until then, I choose to run the Mozilla Suite.

      --
      No matter how many of my rights are taken away, somehow I still don't feel safe. -Frigid Monkey
    6. Re:Mozilla and Firefox by Xabraxas · · Score: 1

      It worked for me at 3 levels deep.

      --
      Time makes more converts than reason
  42. All those stats... yet no memory useage counts? by WoTG · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Anyone know if memory use has gotten any more efficient? I still find Moz to be a bit high in memory useage. It's not a problem if when it's up and browsing, but if I flipped to another application for awhile, and Moz gets paged out to disk, the delay to switch back to Moz is a little annoying. At least on my relatively slow by today's standards, WinXP box.

    On a related note, is it just me, or does Moz get paged out a LOT quicker than many other apps? Is it playing "too" nice somehow?

    1. Re:All those stats... yet no memory useage counts? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      try not minimizing it if you're in windows. sometimes I forget and it pages out and yes, it is annoying as hell....killing and restarting it is faster!

      anyway 1.7b kicks ass, its way more than a 10% improvement on launch for me.

    2. Re:All those stats... yet no memory useage counts? by MyHair · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I still find Moz to be a bit high in memory useage.

      If you're comparing to IE, then it's not a fair comparison since IE hides some of its memory footprint in explorer and other places and still takes up 12-25 MB for iexplore.exe.

      If you're comparing to Konqueror or another KHTML or Gecko browser, then nevermind.

      On a related note, is it just me, or does Moz get paged out a LOT quicker than many other apps? Is it playing "too" nice somehow?

      I probably don't know what I'm talking about, but if you're using Moz under Windows then the disadvantage is that Moz plays fair. IE, MS Office, Sun Java and Adobe Acrobat Reader I've noticed hang around in RAM a long, long time after you quit using them. I suspect they have settings to stay in memory an extra long time, where I suspect Mozilla plays nice and sets itself to normal and therefore gets squeezed out by the others.

      If you're talking about an X / POSIX platform, then nevermind.

    3. Re:All those stats... yet no memory useage counts? by Tribbin · · Score: 4, Informative

      Mozilla for windows has a very good keep-in-memory option.

      It will then start about as fast as IE every next time you open it.

      --
      If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
    4. Re:All those stats... yet no memory useage counts? by thegrassyknowl · · Score: 1

      I found the occasional bug with Mozilla. When you visit lots of pages the memory allocated doesn't seem to free up all of the time. If you spend a day browsing continuously (I have done on occasion) then Mozilla ends up using a tonne of memory. I haven't tested it with 1.6 because I haven't had occasion to spend the whole day browsing since I installed it.

      It wouldn't surprise me if the Evil Empire products hung around in memory longer than something that competes with them. I've noticed that (on XP) Mozilla and Open Office seem to get swapped out regularly, while IE and M$ Office seem to be pre-loaded at boot (one some machines) and have a "startup" time that is almost insignificant. That was one of the selling points for IE and Office that M$ were making, wasn't it? That they load faster...

      I suspect that it is not Moz playing fair, rather than the Evil Empire playing unfair.

      --
      I drink to make other people interesting!
    5. Re:All those stats... yet no memory useage counts? by WoTG · · Score: 1

      Is this part of the "QuickStart" (or whatever it's called) feature?

    6. Re:All those stats... yet no memory useage counts? by ArmorFiend · · Score: 1

      C'mon now, swapping is what XP does best!

    7. Re:All those stats... yet no memory useage counts? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, IE "hides memory" using it's "sekret APIs" while "running in the kernal". Typical slashbot baloney.

      Or maybe Mozilla is just bloated because it's user interface has all it's own damn widgets written in mutherfucking javascript!!!

    8. Re:All those stats... yet no memory useage counts? by mysticalreaper · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Heh. Sorry to break it to you, but Moz is not at fault here, it's XP. Now, investingating why it gets swapped out is still an interesting question, but XP does the swapping, not Moz. Which is demonstrates yet another reason i use linux. MUCH better memory management. The only time i remember Moz getting swapped out was when i left my computer compiling for 24 hours, and came back to it. Took about 2 seconds to pull it back. On a p3-700 with 512 MB RAM. just my two cents.

    9. Re:All those stats... yet no memory useage counts? by Eythian · · Score: 1
      On a related note, is it just me, or does Moz get paged out a LOT quicker than many other apps?

      I noticed this on Linux. However, when I upgraded to the 2.6 kernel, either not so much was being swapped out, or it was being swapped in much faster. In general it does seem to take longer to come back to the front after being not used for a while than most apps, however it is larger than most that I run for long durations, also (this is the case for Fire{bird|fox} anyhow).

    10. Re:All those stats... yet no memory useage counts? by CTachyon · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It's not a secret API. It's MSHTML.DLL, which EXPLORER.EXE (since Win95+IE4 or Win98) and IEXPLORE.EXE both use. It probably uses (documented, non-secret) APIs to create shared r/w data pages for an interprocess in-memory cache. (And, to be fair, if you were writing an embeddable shared-object web browser control meant to be part of 20 apps at once, all owned by the same user, why wouldn't you?)

      --
      Range Voting: preference intensity matters
    11. Re:All those stats... yet no memory useage counts? by RzUpAnmsCwrds · · Score: 1

      Swapping out, even when there is spare memory, is often a *good idea*. Why? If you have a 50MB application that isn't doing anything, then that 50MB could be better used as disk cache.

      Windows is a bit agressive in how it swaps out, however.

    12. Re:All those stats... yet no memory useage counts? by anethema · · Score: 1

      It IS the quickstart feature. Just keeps mozilla started in memory. Unfortunatly that memory seems to sometimes get paged to disk, which makes the mozilla start slow..Which is what (i think) this guy is talking about.

      --


      It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
    13. Re:All those stats... yet no memory useage counts? by Zetta+Matrix · · Score: 1

      I have a theory that XP may be "monitoring" the socket calls made by an application to see if it's a "browser." If so, and not by the name of IEXPLORER.EXE, then it preferentially chooses to swap before pages belonging to other processes.

      Think about it, OpenBSD has syscall-level permissions, so adding in little hooks like this is nearly trivial, and I wouldn't doubt that such a thing might exist.

      I know for a fact that on my XP box at work, with 512 MB of RAM, Mozilla and Firefox sure get swapped out pretty quick...

    14. Re:All those stats... yet no memory useage counts? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OK, so how is the memory "hidden" then?

      Are you suggesting that IE stuffs data into an Explorer.exe process in order to make itself look smaller in task manager?

    15. Re:All those stats... yet no memory useage counts? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Rather than making claims with no support, you could very easily test that by renaming IE and then post the results here.

    16. Re:All those stats... yet no memory useage counts? by noselasd · · Score: 1

      This is how memory allocation work on most platform. You malloc/new some memory , later you free/delete it. It is only released back to the memory allocator , not back to the os. Now there are various techniques on some platforms that releases it back, e.g. big allocations are done with mmap which gets released when unmapped. Some reduce the heap(brk(...)) if the memory allocator realizes there's a lot of free space at the top of the heap. Remember the heap grows/shrinks like a stack.

    17. Re:All those stats... yet no memory useage counts? by CTachyon · · Score: 1

      Actually, no. I was suggesting that IE's cache would appear to either (1) bloat all running programs embedding IE, or (2) not show up. Some experimental testing under Win2K says that my guess was wrong -- I dusted IE off and tried some web surfing, and EXPLORER.EXE didn't grow in Task Manager while IEXPLORE.EXE did.

      --
      Range Voting: preference intensity matters
    18. Re:All those stats... yet no memory useage counts? by jsebrech · · Score: 1

      Or maybe Mozilla is just bloated because it's user interface has all it's own damn widgets written in mutherfucking javascript!!!

      I know you're trolling, but a lot of people use that argument seriously, without understanding why mozilla has its own widgets.

      The thing is, if you want to display standards correctly, or be cross-platform, it's literally impossible to use native widgets, because they're often too limited. Read Dave Hyatt's adventures in getting the mac widgets to cooperate when rendering standards-compliant pages in safari, and he doesn't even have to worry about cross-platform compatibility. And he can also submit bugs to the widget developers and actually gets things fixed. Mozilla doesn't have that luxury.

      So, mozilla HAS to carry its own widgets. At that point you have an engine that can render complicated pages using custom widgets. It made sense to not implement a separate engine for the gui, but just reuse the browser engine. So the entire gui is not much more than a webpage to the mozilla framework (in fact, the only thing that is keeping people from embedding xul in regular webpages is a series of bugs). Does it slow down mozilla? Yes, some. But in exchange you get a browser that is consistent, reliable, standards-compliant, cross-platform and ridiculously extendable. Additionally, mozilla is a superior development platform for webbased apps, and keeping that from happening was the major reason for MS to kill netscape. So, in a way, netscape won, because of the insistance of mozilla developers to build a platform rather than a browser.

      Besides, if you see what longhorn is bringing, you'll see that microsoft is heading in the same direction. Performance and features are always in a trade-off, and today it makes sense to no longer compile your ui's. Longhorn will use xaml like mozilla uses xul. Mozilla is just a pioneer. Pioneers always get criticised for taking too much risk.

    19. Re:All those stats... yet no memory useage counts? by scrytch · · Score: 1

      > If you're comparing to IE, then it's not a fair comparison since IE hides some of its memory footprint in explorer

      It does not. Evidenced by my being able to run a fully functional iexplore.exe without explorer.exe running, and it having the same memory footprint. I do find that both IE and mozilla grow to about the same memory footprint after about an hour of heavy use, however. Mozilla merely allocates more up front, though it's always going to be a little bit fatter due to using its own widget set (whereas using windows native controls will "hide" some resources in GDI, which is typically mapped right into the video driver).

      Ultimately on even 5 year old hardware, the difference isn't noticeable (even startup time -- IE takes ages while to start up if you don't have active desktop running), but the first thing people tend to notice about firefox on my machine is "wow, it renders fast".

      None of the apps you mentioned have any "special settings" to stay pinned in RAM -- all DLL's stay loaded until they get unloaded by a single kernel thread (you can unload directly, but it tends to be crashy for some weird reason). Apps that use a lot of DLL's make this effect more pronounced. Acrobat sticks around because plugins typically don't shut themselves down properly. I just kill it off with task manager, and it doesn't appear to impact browser stability.

      --
      I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
    20. Re:All those stats... yet no memory useage counts? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The only time i remember Moz getting swapped out was when i left my computer compiling for 24 hours, and came back to it

      Ahh, the battle cry of a Gentoo user! :o)

  43. Re:Who fucking cares by Jexx+Dragon · · Score: 1

    Mozilla does have a smaller market share (actully no marketshare). So does Linux, so does OS/2 (I think people still use it), so does My Aunt's homemade soup, hell, so do trucks (at least here). That dosent mean the alternitive is better.

    --
    I don't have time to comment my code, the program is late already.
  44. Actually... by twoslice · · Score: 0, Funny
    That should read

    The next service pack of Internet Explorer plans to have 25% longer load times, 120% more crashes, and open 58% more exploits into a Windows system.

    --

    From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
  45. This is Mozilla we're talking about. by Dlugar · · Score: 1, Troll

    When you're talking about Mozilla, removing features could very well be a good thing.

    Dlugar

    --
    Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
  46. Re:Who fucking cares by LordK3nn3th · · Score: 1

    Of course. And stupidity is a monopoly that the government has deep ties in.

    --

    ---
    Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
  47. Re:Who fucking cares by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Please sir, don't feed the trolls.

  48. I'm using it right now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just got it. It's boner central.

    1. Re:I'm using it right now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Post pictures. (wink)

  49. Re:Mozillamatic.js by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    More like my-site-will-remain-obscure-amatic.

  50. Back button slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why is the back button in Mozilla so slow compared to IE or Opera? Is it reloading the page from the network or something? It should be instant, loaded from the in-memory cache.

    1. Re:Back button slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      edit>preferences>advanced>cache

      See how much space you have allocated to cache.

      If it's 0 then there you go. If not then i don't know, i'm just here for the free hat.

  51. Re:Who fucking cares by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Worst Score 5 Insightful post ever...

  52. Re:Segfaults? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Mozilla had its growing pains in the stability department the past but that was a long time ago. I use it as my primary browser in both Windows and Linux and haven't had a crash that I can easily recall in the past year.

  53. Yeah but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    7% faster, 5% smaller... Sure but it tastes like wood! I'd rather use a juicy browser and die young but happy than use a lean browser and live a long boring life.

  54. Mozilla in the wikipedia. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    For detailed information aboutMozilla, read all about it in the wikipedia.

  55. Re:Mozillamatic.js by gomoX · · Score: 1

    So except I use Internet Explorer AND wish to install Mozilla i will get to see a nice ass. You'd better check your code honey :)

    --
    My english is sow-sow. Sowhat?
  56. Firefox worse than Firebird? by caitsith01 · · Score: 1

    I've been using FireFox for a few days and I must say that the old version of FireBird I have installed seems much nicer to me... I don't know what exactly, but there really aren't many improvements I can put my finger on, and FireFox seems to load a bit slower and have fewer options.

    Maybe it's just my brain though...

    --
    Read Pynchon.
    1. Re:Firefox worse than Firebird? by Rakshasa+Taisab · · Score: 1

      Perhaps you forgot to install extensions to get those features that were moved out?

      --
      - These characters were randomly selected.
  57. improvement is good, but NOT dramatic by dh003i · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No-one is going to notice a 10% improvement. It is a non-factor. You need to double performance to make a noticeable difference. Granted, if they keep on improving by 10% each release, it will eventually be really good, but don't call a 10% improvement "dramatic" (or whatever the original author called it).

    Personally, I like Galeon and Firefox. I just need a web-browser.

    1. Re:improvement is good, but NOT dramatic by saynte · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I don't think it's fair to say that a 10% improvement isn't significant. For a reasonably mature project such as mozilla to be able to still get 10% more performance is pretty damn good, and either a sign of poor programming to begin with, or very good programming now. Basically, just because the improvement isn't noticeable perceptable while you use it doesn't mean it's not significant.

    2. Re:improvement is good, but NOT dramatic by evilviper · · Score: 1
      No-one is going to notice a 10% improvement. It is a non-factor.

      Okay, if that's the case, than explain why, when I am driving, I always have idiots that jump from lane to lane, narrowly avoiding numerous acidents, just so they can drive 5% faster than trraffic? (which makes little difference in the long run, because I always catch them at stoplights anyhow)

      On a completely unrelated note, if there was a 10% speed improvement in the rendering of each page, that would be significant. Just think, 110 hits in the same time as 100 hits used to take.
      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
    3. Re:improvement is good, but NOT dramatic by dh003i · · Score: 1

      Good point, but your talking about cummulative phenomena that are much different. When an application loads in 2 seconds, a 10% improvement is going to be 0.2seconds, or 1/5 of a second. That's not going to be particularly noticeable, and even if it is, it's not particularly impressive for the end user. If the end-users at a point where he or she can notice a 10% improvement in load-time, then you're program loads way too slowly to start out with.

  58. Questionable Improvement Measurement Units? by robbyjo · · Score: 1

    That's about an extra 0.01 tits/second.

    You're saying... extra tits/second as an improvement unit? My mind is distorted.... ;)

    --

    --
    Error 500: Internal sig error
    1. Re:Questionable Improvement Measurement Units? by BlastQuake · · Score: 1

      I'll take all the tits I can get.

      --
      "What use is power to the Keeps of Balance?" -Disnt of Nightmare LpMud
    2. Re:Questionable Improvement Measurement Units? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'll take all the tits I can get.

      I'd rather have just 2 tits in my hands than 2.1 tits.

  59. Galeon by AnonymousCowheart · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The latest Galeon is out too. Version 1.3.14. Works with Mozilla 1.4 through 1.7b and trunk. Loads pretty fast too;) For those of you who don't know, galeon is a browser based on mozilla, for gnome-but ofcourse works in other wm's too.

    1. Re:Galeon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, it doesn't load faster. From my tests, Galeon is the bigger and slower browser. Really...

    2. Re:Galeon by Tribbin · · Score: 1

      I more than once tried totally switching to galeon and (let not forget) epiphany because I use many gtk applications and it might save some memory usage... But tabbed navigating just isn't as smooth as with firefox.

      --
      If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
    3. Re:Galeon by Compenguin · · Score: 1

      I found galeon's tabbed browsing to be much smoother than firefox. To start with it doesn't need an extension to be custoamizable or reorderable.

    4. Re:Galeon by Xabraxas · · Score: 1
      it doesn't need an extension to be custoamizable or reorderable.

      That's a feature though, not a bug. Firefox was meant to be modular. You can have a really stripped down browser or have one loaded up with extensions. I do have to agree that the default galeon tabs behaviour is preferable to firefox though. At least it was the last time I used it around a year or so ago.

      --
      Time makes more converts than reason
    5. Re:Galeon by Azghoul · · Score: 1

      I keep on going back to Galeon. It feels much faster than Firefox, even, and even if all else was equal, the address bar functionality is perfect for me (meaning, the clicks it takes to select parts or all of an address, and the pop-up 'memory' of previously-entered addresses).

      The Tabs never break either, unlike firefox's. Firefox is fine on windows, but only because there's no Galeon. :)

  60. Unlisted Speed Change by jmt9581 · · Score: 5, Funny
    When compared to Mozilla 1.6, Mozilla 1.7 Beta is 7% faster at startup, is 8% faster at window open time, has 9% faster pageloading times, and is 5% smaller in binary size.

    After the news is released on Slashdot, it's now 40% slower to download. :D

    --

    My blog

    1. Re:Unlisted Speed Change by TwistedGreen · · Score: 1

      Actually, I was downloading it last night at some pretty nice speeds, pretty much maxing my bandwidth. Maybe their server is in Soviet Russia... where the server Slashdots you!

  61. Re:Who fucking cares by koody · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Mozilla has a small marketshare, practically no one uses it, and finally Long Live IE!

    Feeding the troll:
    You are right. Mozilla's marketshare isn't large. Most Windows users probably don't even know it exists. This doesn't mean they haven't used Mozilla or that Mozilla would be insignificant.

    I've seen Mozilla based browsers used in several public web terminals. You will not be able to go to a fair of almost any kind without seeing mozilla used (I've been to quite a few that had little or nothing to do with computers and seen mozilla or a browser using the gecko engine used).

    Mozilla will not gain a 95% marketshare today nor tomorrow, but it will gain marketshare. IE will live long, probably a time counted in decades, but Mozilla isn't going away.

    I've been following Mozilla closely since milestone 16 and I started using it as my main browser arund version 0.96. Before that it was basically horrible. It was unstable, ate memory like crazy and was too slow for me to use.

    Mozilla today is a different beast from the early days:

    The most stable (modern) browser I've used (links is the most stable ever)

    Best standards support

    Getting faster by every release

    Getting less resource hungry by every release

    The most extendable browser around.

    IE will live long but so will Mozilla. Mozilla's marketshare will grow, IE's will probably not. Mozilla is evolving fast, IE is not. Mozilla will always be free, IE might not be. Mozilla will be developed as long as anyone wants to do it or has the money to fund it, IE will not.

    All I can say that I hope that the current version of IE lives long and that Microsoft keeps iproving it at the current pace. That will ensure that Mozilla will gain marketshare as it races past IE.
    Long Live (the current version of) IE

  62. Thunderbird... buggiest thing on earth by caitsith01 · · Score: 3, Informative

    I tried Thunderbird for a few days last week... it was so riddled with bugs I found it unusable.

    In particular:
    - massive problems moving/deleting nested mail folders
    - massive problems importing from another mail client (Eudora)
    - seems to crash sometimes for no apparent reason
    - crazy things happened with the preview pane all the time, like it would disappear at random or make itself really, really tiny and refuse to return to its former, big size
    - some options tied exclusively to a particular account - e.g. filters - making the mail-checking process less transparent if you have multiple/many e-mail accounts
    - seems to be trying to look a lot like Outlook, which is a shame and unnecessary

    I wasn't looking for problems - I WANT to use it, and it has a lot of potential, but right now I'm not gonna use it myself and I couldn't in good conscience recommend it to any non-technical people.

    --
    Read Pynchon.
    1. Re:Thunderbird... buggiest thing on earth by syrinx · · Score: 4, Funny

      I use Firefox and Thunderbird for all my stuff, but I definitely agree that TB has a way to go. The biggest problem that I've noticed is that occasionally it will just start acting slow, and I have to close it and start it up again.

      That said, I love Firefox, and if I'm forced to use IE (say, on someone else's computer), I feel like killing people (its designers, mainly). Is that what they mean by "killer app"?

      --
      Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
    2. Re:Thunderbird... buggiest thing on earth by wayland · · Score: 1

      If Firebird has been renamed to Firefox, I'm hoping they don't rename Thunderbird to Thunderbox.

      (Moderation only from those who understand the Australian idiom please).

    3. Re:Thunderbird... buggiest thing on earth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is a Thunderbox anything like what was sometimes called a "Thundermug" in some towns in the western U.S.? (That is, a bed pan for those who may not know...)

    4. Re:Thunderbird... buggiest thing on earth by primus_sucks · · Score: 1

      Maybe that's why the version is .5 not 1.0!

    5. Re:Thunderbird... buggiest thing on earth by Zerbey · · Score: 1

      Hmmm... are you using the most recent version (0.5?), it's been very stable for me in Linux AND Windows [XP] and I do a lot of IMAP stuff in it which is the best way to break most mailers!

      Try 0.5, or if you already using it get the latest snapshot releases. If it's still buggy for you file a bug. Perfection takes time and the Thunderbird developers are doing a fantastic job.

    6. Re:Thunderbird... buggiest thing on earth by Sylvain · · Score: 1

      I've been using Mozilla web and mail for a few month and decided to switch to Thunderbird for the mail to get rid of annoying mail bugs in Mozilla that were suppose to be fixed in TB 0.5 (new mail notification even if mail is junk is one of them).

      Unfortunately the bugs are still here in TB and the many others you mentionned too. It seems that many problems are located in the core code and will be hard to fix soon. You can typically see those same bugs in Mozilla Mail.

      I too wanted to use it, I love the excellent Enigmail extension, standard mbox storage and overall good GUI. I also think this project is very promising but at this point Firefox is much more usable than its mail buddy is.

      I hope 1.0 will be as good as Mozilla first official stable release.

    7. Re:Thunderbird... buggiest thing on earth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not quite. Thunderbox is the term for an outside toilet, generally contained in a small tin shed, hence thunderbox.

    8. Re:Thunderbird... buggiest thing on earth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In the U.S. we call this an outhouse, and it's usually located inside a wooden shed.

    9. Re:Thunderbird... buggiest thing on earth by caitsith01 · · Score: 1

      I agree - I can't believe what a pos internet explorer is. I have never used it - I used to use Communicator/Navigator, then Opera, then Mozilla, now Firebird/fox. I would say IE now is as bad as Navigator 4, if not worse as it takes longer to load.

      How do the 90% who use it put up with such crap?

      --
      Read Pynchon.
  63. Never understood why people use Mozilla. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Firefox/Thunderbird separately are LOADS faster than the mozilla suite could ever be.

    I don't even know why they still make it. What's the difference other than Firefox/Thunderbird are faster?

  64. Phoenix code? by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

    I think its called firefox or something else now, my mind can not remember.

    Anyway I know it was a fork of mozilla 1.0 and it is much smaller and faster. Highly recommended for older systems.

    I remember the Mozilla project commented on remerging the 2 projects back together in the 2.x series for something small, light, and fast.

    Could this version incorporate some of the firefox or phoenix code?

    1. Re:Phoenix code? by Myen · · Score: 1

      Phoenix, (now Firefox) never really was independent. It was mostly a rewrite of the user interface; you still get Firefox by downloading the Mozilla sources (trunk) and setting a build flag. As such, there really is nothing to remerge - they share the rendering engine, network stuff, etc. Pretty much anything none-UI.

      The Firefox project pretty much forks on releases (kinda like how the main Mozilla project forks on suite releases) and merges back into the trunk. Appearently Firefox 0.9 / 1.0 will be based off the Mozilla 1.7 branch and merge after 1.0 though.

      (Well, okay, so they've been working on profile migration, and I don't think that's being used by the suite yet... But that part is also pretty buggy right now.)

  65. OS X Talkback? by Megane · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Does anybody know why they stopped putting Talkback into the OS X pre-release versions since 1.6 alpha? I thought that was supposed to help them find crashing bugs. Kind of hard to do when you forget to put it in there in the first place.

    --
    #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
    1. Re:OS X Talkback? by va3atc · · Score: 4, Informative

      Does anybody know why they stopped putting Talkback into the OS X pre-release versions since 1.6 alpha? I thought that was supposed to help them find crashing bugs. Kind of hard to do when you forget to put it in there in the first place.

      I can't speak for OS X, but as for Windows, I inquired about the removal of the talkback feature in the nightly builds they had this to say about it:

      No, it's not possible to enable it. It's either built into the official builds or its not. Currently the official builds are not being built with talkback because of some talkback server issues, so there is no way to disable it. Hopefully by Firebird 0.9 all of the talkback issues will be sorted, but it's probably not going to happen for the Firebird 0.8 release.

      Though if you page down it appears that we shall see it in this release of Mozilla

      "The installer releases of Mozilla 1.7 Beta now include Quality Feedback Agent again, allowing users to report crashes, ..."

      Hopefully all those new bug reports will help speed up development :-)

      --
      Candle burns its brightest in the dark
    2. Re:OS X Talkback? by rmohr02 · · Score: 3, Informative

      The talkback servers were hosted by Netscape, then AOL. The Mozilla Foundation does not have access to those servers anymore, but will hopefully have new talkback servers soon.

    3. Re:OS X Talkback? by fiddlesticks · · Score: 0, Troll

      > Does anybody know why they stopped putting Talkback into the OS X pre-release versions since 1.6 alpha

      'cos OS X users don't bother reporting bugs - why bother when you can shell out 100 GBP/ 180 USD/ year, and have someone else fix them for you in the next OSX point release

    4. Re:OS X Talkback? by Megane · · Score: 1
      The Mozilla Foundation does not have access to those servers anymore

      Well, that's a rather good reason. (FWIW, I did check Contents/MacOS/Components/ and the talkback component is still not in the MacOS 1.7 beta build.)

      --
      #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
    5. Re:OS X Talkback? by afidel · · Score: 1

      The 1.7 beta disk image DOES include talkback, I remember reading it in the README notes a few days ago (I have the Mozilla RSS feed enabled in my slashdot profile).

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    6. Re:OS X Talkback? by Megane · · Score: 1

      Do you trust everything you see in a README? In fact, the talkback component is NOT included, as can be verified by looking in the appropriate subdirectory and comparing with 1.5.

      --
      #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
  66. Good point .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Back when I designed graphics accelerators for a living we did a whole bunch of work trying to figure out what 'faster' ment - at least from a subjective point of view - turns out if you graph actual performance to subjective performance there's sort of an S curve, on the left it's dog slow and people are just annoyed, on the right it's so fast people don't notice performance is an issue at all and in the middle there's a vaguely exponential region where if every time you make things ten times faster they think it got better, maybe by a subjective factor of 2 .... 10% is in the noise .... unless your UI is in that far left dog-slow region

  67. Old Splash Screen by Jexx+Dragon · · Score: 1

    The one thing mozilla ismissing now is the old splash screen (the fire-breathing lizard). I liked the old icon too. I wish they would bring back that splash screen (or a version of it), the new yellow one is just ugly.

    --
    I don't have time to comment my code, the program is late already.
    1. Re:Old Splash Screen by Jeff85 · · Score: 1

      You can change Mozilla's splash screen if you really want.

      --
      Fetch Text URL - Firefox Extension
    2. Re:Old Splash Screen by stecoop · · Score: 1

      I put splash screens #4 on my anoyance list followed by Spam, Pop-Ups, Framed web pages.

      If given an option, I simply turn off Splash Screens.

    3. Re:Old Splash Screen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      for win32 in the target of your shortcut
      "C:\Path to\mozilla.exe" /nosplash
      will kill it

    4. Re:Old Splash Screen by stecoop · · Score: 1

      Thanks so much.

      That is so usefull that I have added you to my friends list!!!!!!

  68. Re:Segfaults? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    99% less than IE does

  69. Debugging code? by ilikejam · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Are these speed / size / page-load figures accurate for the binaries with the debugging code still in?
    If so then these performance gains will be even better once the debugging stuff's taken out for production. Will they not?

    --
    C-x C-s C-x k
    1. Re:Debugging code? by Mia'cova · · Score: 2, Informative

      The improvements are mostly in the algorithms, not the code-optimization. So yes, it affects both debug and production builds. But that being said, we're not downloading debug builds so it's a non-issue.

    2. Re:Debugging code? by Myen · · Score: 2, Informative

      I believe the stats come from tinderbox (automated builds), which are now also being used to build nightlies. As the nightlies are not debug builds (it would be a pain to download, for one thing), my guess is that those stats are for non-debug builds.

  70. How about growing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    market share? :P

  71. Re:Segfaults? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Maybe you should start your browser this year.

  72. Remove Nuke feature by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Dear Mozilla developers:

    Please adjust the context menu when right clicking on a tab, so that "close other tabs" is further away from "close tab".

    I got bit in the ass again by this. I don't know if it is the slowness, or whatever it is, but when right clicking on a tab, the tab/window and menu sometimes move a bit as I'm selecting "close tab" (or I just miss), and I end up closing "other tabs" by mistake. It's not so much a problem on windows, I'm guessing, but on Linux, where I run for weeks at a time without a reboot, I tend to have quite a few tabs open at a time. And going back to the sites is not an option, as some of the tabs contain news, which has changed hours or days later even though the url is the same.

    Is it possible to include an option in the preferences menu (under tabbed browsing) to add/eliminate/reconfigure the context menus? I tried looking in the .mozilla directory for individual users, and in the mozilla directory in /etc, and couldn't find any file to edit to change the context menus.

    Another request: After going to a web page, if I want to save that page later, the browser goes to the web site to get the page again. This is a problem under two circumstances: If offline, and if the page has changed. I had a news page that I wanted to save, that was sitting on my desktop for a few days and I didn't get a chance for unrelated reasons to save it earlier. When I did save it, it saved the updated page, which carried a different news story at the same url as the old story. While wgetting the page again for saving may have its advantages, there should be an option of saving the page from the temporary file created to view the original page, not getting the page again to save it. Something like "save from cache" (and this needs to work even if cache is set to 0 mb, the file is still temporarily created somewhere if cache is set to 0 mb in the preferences menu) in the same area as "save html only" and "save web page complete" would be the proper place I believe (but still retaining the other choices, not substituting them).

    I'm writing this here, instead of submitting it as a feature request or bug because I tried submitting this same feature request and others (and a couple of bugs that someone else fixed anyway) a while back (more than six months), but the submission area is sooo confusing and covers so many areas that I couldn't figure it out, and abandoned the submission the few times I did try. Sorry, but it is too complicated for me.

    Thanks for the work on Mozilla to everyone! I use it regularly because Konqueror (my first choice) lacks the "save web page complete" choice, and mangles the tvguide listings (yeah, I'm sure the tvguide page doesn't conform to w3c, but Mozilla works, Konqueror doesn't, on that particular page, so I have no choice), and Konqueror still crashes on me.

  73. Building for Both - Lacks features by GAVollink · · Score: 5, Informative
    There are three ways to build web pages.
    1. Code to Any Browser.
    2. Code to Internet Explorer.
    3. Code to The Mozilla Engine.
    4. Basically, the Any Browser campaign says to write everything to HTML 4.01 "Strict". Use CSS for all layout. Mozilla development fits this very nicely. Check out Eric Meyer's CSS/EDGE. Everything at CSS/Edge fits with the "AnyBrowser" way of doing things, but yet not everything at CSS/Edge will load with Internet Explorer.

      In my own less complex pages, I've found that I can make a page load /similarly/ in both, but I can't use HTML "Strict", unless Internet Explorer starts to choke (throwing everything to the left edge when I wanted it centered, etc.).

      So, as the above post mentioned, you end up writing to Internet Explorer, but you loose compatability with some "text readers for the blind", lynx, etc.

      Ah, but who cares if a blind person can read your web page. Well, maybe your web page isn't just a collection of photos, maybe you have something of interest. Then, you should care.

      Bottom line, the user will think that you're web page is broken if it doesn't load in I.E., and you loose readers this way. So, you end up with a web page that is a little more sparse, and less feature rich than you wanted.

    1. Re:Building for Both - Lacks features by vena · · Score: 1

      I have no way of knowing in what situation you're having the alignment problem, but in case you weren't already, set width:100%;height:100% on html,body to ensure that when you're positioning elements below the body in the document tree relatively they have something to relate to. I've noticed this to be the most common problem when people are having trouble with alignment.

      if this doesn't apply to you, ignore me. just trying to be helpful :)

    2. Re:Building for Both - Lacks features by 0x0d0a · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Every time I've run into a web page designer that tried to make his page "feature rich", I've been disappointed with the actual usability of the page.

      I don't *want* rollover menus, thank you very much.

    3. Re:Building for Both - Lacks features by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, the stuff on CSS/Edge DOES load into IE, it just does not render quite correctly in a few places. A few of the problems don't appear to be problems initially until one reads how it is supposed to work, loads it into Mozilla or Opera to see it actually working as-is, and goes, "Wow, that's pretty dang cool!".
      I like the menus implemented w/o using any JavaScript...

    4. Re:Building for Both - Lacks features by GAVollink · · Score: 1
      Where "Transitional" means, "support broken browsers," it also means break this browser.

      The fix that always works is <body width="100%">. Of course, I am no longer using HTML "Strict", and am now relegated to HTML "Transitional". At that point, both I.E. and Mozilla change the rendering engine entirely, and suddenly start creating a whole different set of problems.

      I ran into this while trying to deal with a site that required interlocking graphics where everything was supposed to be left justified, and the background picture needed to line up with the foreground (clickable) pictures. AND the header across the top was supposed to expand with the screen. There was a -5 pixel background shift in I.E. that I couldn't get rid of (and if I tried, Netscape would forward shift the background +5).

      I was to the point that I was about to create separate CSS files for Internet Explorer, but when I tried, that broke Opera (because Opera automatically puts in the "MSIE Compatible" tag). This is very difficult to parse for using CSS alone (I wasn't willing to CGI the entire site).

      I ended up doing a center-all site with the same fix as you suggested. I'm very glad this wasn't a client site.

    5. Re:Building for Both - Lacks features by GAVollink · · Score: 1

      Agreed, but the way those features load into I.E. are "not good enough for saleable work".

  74. 5% to 9% is "dramatic"? by shodson · · Score: 2, Insightful

    OK, I'm glad there's a new Mozilla release, and I'm glad it's a little faster, but calling the 5% - 9% increases "dramatic" is a little much, don't ya think?

    1. Re:5% to 9% is "dramatic"? by CPlusPlusOwnsYou · · Score: 1

      Well, if it was that certain male organ, a 5-9% increase would be fairly dramatic.

      --
      "Software is like sex: it's better when it's free."
    2. Re:5% to 9% is "dramatic"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      OK, I'm glad there's a new Mozilla release, and I'm glad it's a little faster, but calling the 5% - 9% increases "dramatic" is a little much, don't ya think?

      pshaw, they're just trying to be dramatic.

    3. Re:5% to 9% is "dramatic"? by Mia'cova · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It is a dramatic increase. Just remember that every 0.1 increment in mozilla isn't some huge major revision. It's an evolution. 5-9% is a dramatic increase for a +0.1 release. It's all relative to the time spent since the last release.

      We don't expect a 50% cut in speed every few months after all. It all adds up over time though.

  75. Dramatically? by ScrewMaster · · Score: 1

    I don't know if less than ten percent improvement in the abovementioned categories qualifies as "dramatic" but it is noticeable compared to 1.6.

    --
    The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
  76. w3m 0.5 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    If you really want small and fast, w3m 0.5 is out as well.

  77. Get an optimized build by 1001011010110101 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Dig up a bit in the forums. I'm using a Athlon XP optimized build (with all that black magic voodoo compiler switches). If you have the hardware to support it, you can REALLY feel the difference.

    1. Re:Get an optimized build by kobaz · · Score: 1

      So where did you get your voodoo optimized athlon mozilla build, I'd like to try it out.

      --

      The goal of computer science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.
    2. Re:Get an optimized build by 1001011010110101 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'm using the Firefox now, but u should be able to find custom builds for the big zilla in the this forum

  78. "dramatic" by sacrilicious · · Score: 4, Insightful
    "Mozilla 1.7 size and performance have improved dramatically with this release. When compared to Mozilla 1.6, Mozilla 1.7 Beta is 7% faster at startup, is 8% faster at window open time, has 9% faster pageloading times, and is 5% smaller in binary size."

    It would seem that the definition of "dramatic" just got marginalized. Personally I'd think of a 2x performance increase as dramatic. 1.1x is what I'd term "laudable".

    --
    - First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
    1. Re:"dramatic" by bunratty · · Score: 1

      What's dramatic is not the speed increase itself, but the fact that it occurred in just a few months. This rate of speed increase is about 25% faster per year, and that certainly is a dramatic rate of speed increase.

      --
      What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
    2. Re:"dramatic" by rjstanford · · Score: 0, Redundant

      By your argument, you could scale a one day's effort that increased performance by a measly 1% and claim a 38-fold increase over the year.

      I mean, really....

      --
      You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
  79. Re:Who fucking cares by Ironsides · · Score: 1

    This is the reason why I keep directing people to use Mozilla and Firefox instead of IE or OE (Outlook Express*). I set my parents up with Netscape when it was good (ie, before AOL bought them) and with Mozilla more recently for an update. The people I give this too never go back to IE or Netscape 6/7. Mozilla is gaining.

    Slow and stead wins the race.

    --
    Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
  80. Re:Who fucking cares by cjsnell · · Score: 2, Funny

    You will not be able to go to a fair of almost any kind without seeing mozilla used (I've been to quite a few that had little or nothing to do with computers and seen mozilla or a browser using the gecko engine used).

    You, my friend, have obviously not been to the Bandera County Rodeo and Fair. Absolutely no Mozillas to be found, though there are some nice heifers!

  81. no googlebar by chocolatetrumpet · · Score: 1

    Oh, did I mention the mozdev googlebar doesn't work on firefox?

    And no, being able type words in and have a google search done on them does not count as all the functionality of the googlebar.

    --
    Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
    1. Re:no googlebar by spinfire · · Score: 1

      This is entirely incorrect. I use the googlebar with firefox, and it works flawlessly. I do not use the builtin search, as its features are weak compared to the real googlebar.

    2. Re:no googlebar by Alorelith · · Score: 1

      I had the same problem too until I removed my old profile and let firefox create a new one. The googlebar works as normal.

    3. Re:no googlebar by Trillan · · Score: 2, Informative

      From the GoogleBar FAQ:

      Someone told me that this works in Netscape and Firebird. Does it?
      The answer is both yes and no. The toolbar works best in most recent versions of mozilla, since this has been where development has occurred all along. Due to XUL changes in the mozilla versions following the release of Netscape 6.2, the Googlebar will not work at all in any release of Netscape 6.2.x or below. However, in Netscape 7, which is a close cousin of recent mozilla versions, the Googlebar works. It has also been tested to work in Phoenix/Firebird 0.2 and above.

  82. seeing similar by Jafa · · Score: 1

    When I switch users on WinXP, moz definately takes the longest of any app to become responsive again. Sometimes it's like 20 seconds or more, which is a freakin eternity when you're sitting there waiting to get a webpage. More memory in my machine definately helps, though the machine crashes like crazy with that extra memory (which is another issue again).

    J

  83. meh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    i will wait for the final, as i use gentoo and compile every app especially for my processor :), it takes foooorrrrreeevvveeeerrrrr to compile mozilla(about 3 hrs), so i really dont wanna compile it unless its a final build ;)

  84. Come on, exagerations! by Killswitch1968 · · Score: 1

    I've been using Opera for about 3 years now. For around 98% of the sites I visit, Opera does a fine and dandy job. But what about the 2% that require IE?

    Right-click. Open document in Explorer.

    The point is that even at 90% market share they're not invincible. The key is to convince people to use Firefox for general usage, to which it is superb. When enough people do this more sites will start using designing their websites for Firefox.
    Ya, it's an uphill battle, but it's not the sheer rock face you make it out to be.

    --

    Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
  85. Firefox by miketang16 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I assume these speed changes will be transferred over to Firefox as well, since it uses the Mozilla code base. That will likely make Firefox amazingly fast, since it's already faster than the stock Mozilla.

    --
    -------
    "In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
    -- George Orwell
  86. Splash Screen Info by CPlusPlusOwnsYou · · Score: 1

    You can always customize your mozilla splash screen by placing a file named "Mozilla.bmp" in your mozilla directory.

    Link to some splash screens you can download:
    here

    --
    "Software is like sex: it's better when it's free."
    1. Re:Splash Screen Info by An+Onerous+Coward · · Score: 1

      Wow. Mine weighed in at #60. This is why I didn't go into graphical design. :)

      --

      You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!

  87. Be More General by repetty · · Score: 1

    "And Firefox is many percentage points faster than Mozilla. Many many many."

    Whoa! My head is exploding with data!

    Try to be a little more general in the future.

    --Richard

  88. smb:// now supported, and better GTK+ integration by sn0wman3030 · · Score: 3, Informative

    As mentioned in this Footnotes article, the new Mozilla supports smb:// browsing through gnome-vfs, and the integration with your GTK2 theme has improved.

    --
    Life is offtopic.
  89. Re:Mods on crack by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The two most abused and overused moderations on slashdot.

  90. Nazi by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Thank you for telling us all what we should and shouldn't be able to read, jerk.

    1. Re:Nazi by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks for admiting you don't understand how to change your preferences so you read -1 Nested so that moderation doesn't make any difference, idiot.

  91. YBHT. YHL. HAND. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    n/t

  92. I guess that makes it..... by laddhebert · · Score: 5, Funny
    "Mozilla 1.7 Beta is 7% faster at startup, is 8% faster at window open time, has 9% faster pageloading times, and is 5% smaller in binary size."

    I guess that makes it.....

    29% Better!

    -L

    --
    Don't Panic.
  93. Mozilla including MS DRM? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Speaking of mozilla, does anyone else have 2 Microsoft DRM plugins in about:plugins ?

  94. Actually its getting slower by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Since the last version, computers have become 10% faster, but the program has only gained 8%. It's like a 3% savings account. You're actually losing, not winning.

    1. Re:Actually its getting slower by JebusIsLord · · Score: 1

      i would assume they meant on equivalent hardware.

      --
      Jeremy
    2. Re:Actually its getting slower by stor · · Score: 1

      Since the last version, computers have become 10% faster

      Yeah that's right! I'm sure I read that in a benchmark somewhere... computers in general, 10% faster since the last version of Mozilla.

      What?

      Cheers
      Stor

      --
      "Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"
  95. Mozilla by minus_273 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Good ole mozilla? have they gotten rid of offensive icons and imagery yet? I personally refuse to contribute to it until they take that crap out. It's unfortunate that they would continute to use such blatantly divisive imagery. Good thing for Konqueror and Safari or I would be stuck with the IE crap. Interestingly enough, the newst update to Safari (from OS X 10.3.3) eliminates all of the minor problems i've had with DHTML on some sites. Given how much faster and leaner KHTML based browsers are, I don't think I will ever need to use a gecko browser again. I think it is high time someone came out with a native KHTML browser for Windows (like safari) , it would give Mozilla a run for its money!

    --
    The war with islam is a war on the beast
    The war on terror is a war for peace
    1. Re:Mozilla by Tin+Foil+Hat · · Score: 1

      your comment reminds me of a sig I've seen around here somewhere. Something to the effect of "Open source is about communism as much as is the phase 'for the people, by the people, and of the people'".

      --
      No matter how many of my rights are taken away, somehow I still don't feel safe. -Frigid Monkey
    2. Re:Mozilla by Rebar · · Score: 1
      Why do you feel that you can't use a browser because of the color of the logo? Maybe you don't like concentric circles. Or red. Or the dinosaur head. Or is it the pentagram that you dislike perhaps - a symbol that has been used to represent just about anything having five subparts (wounds of Christ, etc.). Really, I'm stumped - maybe it looks too communist?

      If that freaks you out, perhaps you should read what this loon says about the symbology your Apple!

      Now, I will concede you this point; if the logo were, say, goatse, I would probably look for another browser too... but while that would be very offensive to most people, I just don't see how their current image is too divisive.

    3. Re:Mozilla by minus_273 · · Score: 1

      well plently of people have suffered under communism and continue to this day. Has nothing to do with open source, just mozilla. Heck, i write open source apps (hosted on sf.net no less) however, go ask a jew to use software where the logo is a Nazi stlye swastika and i think you will understand how the logo is deivisive. The swastika may be a harmless symbol of eastern religion but in context (nazi stly swastika) it means something else. Red star witha yellow border and workers around it looks like something else (as compared to the texaco red star). Do you see my point?

      --
      The war with islam is a war on the beast
      The war on terror is a war for peace
  96. What about it's footprint when using a timer? by Chas · · Score: 1

    One of the little nasties I found out using Mozilla.

    Javascript with timers. The way things are right now, using even one, unless it's VERY tightly coded, will drive CPU utilization up to 100% and just keep it there.... Even when tightly coded, it still eats a massive amount of CPU time.

    With Opera, and other non-IE browsers, there's a small hit on system resources, but nothing CLOSE to what Mozilla/Firebird(/fox) have.

    With IE, there's barely a bump in CPU utilization.

    --


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!
  97. Corret link by minus_273 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I encourage everyone interested Mozilla to look at this link and think about what they are supporting.

    --
    The war with islam is a war on the beast
    The war on terror is a war for peace
  98. Is this just another way of saying: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Its not the meat, but the motion"?

  99. Re:Mozillamatic.js by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Actually, I'm pretty sure that, as it stands, it's only safe for IE users wishing to get Mozilla...

    If, say, you are already using Mozilla, you get dumped immediately. No questions asked. ... Wait, was that actually a trick to get people to use IE?

  100. ie 5.5 is an upgrade by poptones · · Score: 1
    and ie5 ships with win2k. Some of us refuse to update ie, we just disable it as much as possible and use it only when absolutely needed (like when some dickhead admin thinks no ohter browser deserves to visit their banking site, or some other such nonsense)

    Basically, that 6% of ie5 users are either lazy win2k users, people using servers with incompetent admins, people using ie on linux who just don't give a shit what version they use so long as they have a working ie in their WINE environment, or people using ie "for the moment" because the goddamn website won't let them in with mozilla.

  101. That's how GNOME does it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It seems every release in the 2.x cycle advertises this:

    - we just reinvented the wheel with Epiphany, Galeon is out
    -we just limited your options by 59%

    WOHOO!! ANOTHER GREAT RELEASE!

  102. Oops, I mean massive decreases. by Trejkaz · · Score: 1

    Cursed brain... I will get you yet.

    --
    Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
  103. well, considering by dh003i · · Score: 1

    considering that Mozilla was so damn slow to start out with, it's not really that great. Maybe significant from a programming point of view, but not from the pov of the end user. The end user, such as myself, wants "the internet" -- along with everything else -- to load instantaneously.

    1. Re:well, considering by saynte · · Score: 1

      Ah yes, much agreed. A 10% in performance isn't readily noticable to a user, which is sad, considerint it probably took considerable work and planning to achieve (or maybe not, I dont' really follow the development very closely!). I tend to think that mozilla renderes fairly quickly, not leagues apart from IE anyway. The tabbed browsing is easily worth any performance loss though, as well as the integrated pop-up blocking etc. Sometimes I think MS should just implement gecko and be done with it, maybe toss some code that way, but we know that's never going to happen ;).

    2. Re:well, considering by yRabbit · · Score: 1

      I'm on a 56k modem, no browser in the world will make webpages load instantaneously for me. (Oh, except lynx/links might come close.)

  104. Camino 0.8 by rixstep · · Score: 3, Informative

    Camino 0.8 is on the way too.

    22 January 2004: We are in the process of driving the Camino 0.8 buglist to zarro boogs. We will be branching off Mozilla 1.7 (now scheduled for April) and will release shortly after. We expect Camino 0.8 to be faster and even more solid than 0.7...

  105. "I can't build for Mozilla" by FlyingOrca · · Score: 1

    Sure you can. Just design and code for standards, and make sure you do it in such a way that IE isn't too badly broken. It's quite doable. Cheers!

    --
    Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
  106. Another improvement by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    When compared to Mozilla 1.6, Mozilla 1.7 Beta is 7% faster at startup, is 8% faster at window open time, has 9% faster pageloading times, and is 5% smaller in binary size.

    Now with 200% more statistics!

  107. Why Thunderbird at all? by mbourgon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Okay - Firefox I understand. Lots of people just need a browser at work, for instance. But to be honest, if I need an email program I probably need a browser. What's the advantage of a standalone email client?

    --
    "Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
    1. Re:Why Thunderbird at all? by Mazaev2 · · Score: 1

      The ability and freedom for people to choose to use IE, for example, as a browser with their email client of choice instead of being locked into Mozilla for both tasks.

    2. Re:Why Thunderbird at all? by edwdig · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The big advantage is if your browser or email app crashes, it doesn't take the other one down with it.

      The disadvantage of splitting the apps is greatly increased memory usage. There is some performance increase and memory usage reduction due to the simplification of the user interfaces, but that's greatly outweighed by each app using it's own copy of the Gecko libraries. (To those who want to complain about Mozilla having an IRC client and the like, that stuff has always been an optional part of the install) The development of Firefox and Thunderbird aren't syncronized at all, so there isn't any chance of that getting changed anytime soon.

    3. Re:Why Thunderbird at all? by TiggsPanther · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Maybe 'cos some non-IE people use Browsers other than Mozilla?

      It means you can mix-and-match. You can use Opera, or Konqueror or even Internet Explorer, but without being tied to their particular mail-client. And then use a Moz-based e-mail/news client without being tied to the Browser.

      Personally I mainly use the Mozilla suite. Although Firefox is fast reaching the point where I'll want to use it at work - where I need a standalone browser. But just 'cos I always use the browser and mail client together doesn't mean I don't know that some people want/use them seperately.

      Plus if they do develop Thunderbird seperately, it's still based on the Mozilla codebase IIRC. So if they suddenly find some major optimisations for the mail/news side of things, they can probably be ported across to the full suite.

      Tiggs
      --
      Tiggs
      "120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
    4. Re:Why Thunderbird at all? by jsebrech · · Score: 1

      Though, to be honest, they are moving towards sharing the gecko engine using mozilla GRE (gecko runtime embedding), so you won't have the performance bloat resulting from the double gecko use (or triple, with nvu, or something like that).

  108. Last IE Update by AnomalyConcept · · Score: 1

    if(update == patch) February 7th? Update for Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 (KB831167) [microsoft.com]. Of course, I don't think this really counts. =P

  109. Mozilla Marketshare is Growing by f0rt0r · · Score: 2, Interesting

    With a little help from me, I have gotten 10 or so Windows users at work to start using Mozilla, and one of them even tried out Firefox before I did! However, on the down side, I haven't gotten any of them to try Linux, though several have said "they should". I might just burn Knoppix to CD for them and hand it out.

    Anyway, IE does have greater "marketshare", but all it took me was a few nudges to get Windows users to switch. Now if I can just get them to change their homepage to ./ , then it can do the rest of the work ( converting )for me. :)

    All this from a former MCSE who though Microsoft was the end-all be all and Linux was just a flash in the pan...

    --
    I can't afford a sig!
  110. that's KHTML by tepples · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Mozilla suite and the Firefox, K-meleon, and Camino browsers all use the Gecko engine. The Konqueror and Safari browsers use the KHTML engine. Apparently, the KHTML developers have a more pragmatic policy with respect to implementing MSHTML extensions *cough*document.all*cough* than the more standards-minded Gecko developers.

    1. Re:that's KHTML by 0x0d0a · · Score: 1

      I remember some guy that was trying to argue that implementing the "change scrollbar color" extension in KHTML was a good idea.

    2. Re:that's KHTML by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'd like to see a gecko dll replacement for the internet explorer webpage rendering in explorer and programs that use IE dlls to call up webpages, I'd be impressed by that.

    3. Re:that's KHTML by Brane · · Score: 2, Informative

      Here you are: Mozilla ActiveX Control

      Not just a similar API

      An identical one! That's right, the Mozilla control will implement the IWebBrowser and DWebBrowserEvents interfaces that Microsoft have already defined for Internet Explorer.

      Since the Mozilla control implements exactly the same API, it will mean that developers can take existing IE code and port it, sometimes in a matter of minutes!

    4. Re:that's KHTML by jsebrech · · Score: 3, Informative

      Apparently, the KHTML developers have a more pragmatic policy with respect to implementing MSHTML extensions *cough*document.all*cough* than the more standards-minded Gecko developers.

      There are good reasons for not implementing that. Implementing just document.all does nothing for IE-compatibility, since you have to implement the rest of the MS Document Object Model to actually get things done. Once you do that you would have three DOM implementations, the mozilla native one, the W3C one, and the IE one. All three would have to be maintained, and you'd need to constantly chase every new release of IE (though with IE's current lethargy this is less of a problem). Also, it's impossible to have perfect IE compatibility. IE for mac was a different engine, and wasn't anymore compatible with windows IE than mozilla is. You need to not only implement the same features, but you have to implement the same bugs, the same way of responding to error conditions, the same timing of screen updating behaviors.

      Gecko's design is a very good trade-off between standards and compatibility. Dave Hyatt has stated on his weblog he tries to do things the gecko way often (looking to gecko for guidance on how to do a compromise). And safari pretends to be gecko in its useragent string.

      Anyway, if a site doesn't work in mozilla, you can file it as a bug. If it can be fixed in the engine without breaking standards compatibility and a lot of sites would benefit from that fix, it probably will be. Otherwise it will become an evangelism bug, and mozilla people will contact the site to advise them how to become mozilla-compatible.

    5. Re:that's KHTML by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dave Hyatt has stated on his weblog he tries to do things the gecko way often (looking to gecko for guidance on how to do a compromise).

      Who is Dave Hyatt? Sorry for the newb question.

    6. Re:that's KHTML by jsebrech · · Score: 1

      Dave Hyatt is one of the lead safari developers. He works on webcore. He used to be one of the lead mozilla developers.

      He has two weblogs, one for personal stuff, and one for safari stuff. Neither is currently being updated much, but the archive of posts is very interesting.

      You can find more current and ex mozilla developers weblogs at mozillazine.

  111. $5 by bstadil · · Score: 1
    I just checked that my Moz takes 43Meg of Ram. Now check price of 1Gig PC3200 stick on Pricewatch ($117) and you will realize that for a delta of $5 you can keep it memory permanently.

    I think this puts the Memory discussion in perspective. If you really need small footprint for real systems concerns. There is plenty of specialized browsers out there. Opera embedded being one of them.

    --
    Help fight continental drift.
  112. No, Kmail wins the "buggiest mail app" award. by GodWasAnAlien · · Score: 1

    I keep switching between the two. Thunderbird currently seems to have less dangerous bugs.

  113. Faster? by crashnbur · · Score: 2, Insightful

    In only a matter of seconds, I'm not going to notice less than a 10% improvement on an application's speed. With something like Photoshop, maybe that would matter.

    Of course, I'll download it anyway, because I always update my browsers upon full (non-beta) releases. Just waiting on the full 1.7 release...

    1. Re:Faster? by bunratty · · Score: 1

      What you're missing is that this speed increase occurred just in the few months since the release of Mozilla 1.6. Each release has been faster than the previous one, so that even if you don't notice a speed increase from one point version to the next, you would definately notice a huge increase from Mozilla 1.0 to Mozilla 1.7.

      --
      What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
    2. Re:Faster? by crashnbur · · Score: 1

      That's a very insightful point (hint hint, moderators), but how many of us are upgrading directly from 1.0 to 1.7? We're commenting on Slashdot, for crying out loud. We've downloaded every alpha and beta release since long before the Mozilla project even had version numbers. :-)

    3. Re:Faster? by bunratty · · Score: 1

      Certainly some people who claim that Mozilla is slow haven't used it for a significant time. If they try Mozilla 1.7, they'll find it significantly faster than versions from a year ago or more. Soon it will be time for people who tried Mozilla a while ago to try out Mozilla 1.7 or Firefox 0.9 and re-evaluate their opinion of it.

      --
      What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
  114. Added to Firefox's codebase? by randomErr · · Score: 1

    So when will these changed be added to Firefox? Of course these optimization could be coming from Firefox. Anyone know one way or the other?

    --
    You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
    1. Re:Added to Firefox's codebase? by bunratty · · Score: 1

      Mozilla and Firefox use the same C++ codebase (with the exception of some #ifdefs), so the improvements were made to both browsers simultaneously.

      --
      What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
  115. Re:The HATE WINDOWS Campaign Celebrates! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why don't you just mark them as nuetral and not take part in it at all? I don't see how marking windows as a friend is going to help anything.

  116. Re:Who fucking cares by realmolo · · Score: 1

    The reason they never go back to IE is because they DON'T CARE WHAT BROWSER THEY ARE USING as long as it works.

    Which is the same reason everyone uses IE, and why it will remain the market leader indefinitely.

    The differences between the browsers are mostly academic to the end user, and in real-life, IE is the most compatible, since everyone has to design to it in one way or another.

  117. Re:Who fucking cares by MikeCapone · · Score: 1

    You do a good job at projecting an elitist attitude. This does nothing good for the open source movement...

    I'm not a OSS politician; I don't care much for having a wooden tongue.

    Anyway, I didn't mean it as in "mozilla users are intelligent", I meant it as in: "It's not because something is a minority that it's not worth supporting."

  118. JS difference between Mozilla and MSIE by solprovider · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Javascript with timers. The way things are right now [in Mozilla], using even one, unless it's VERY tightly coded, will drive CPU utilization up to 100% and just keep it there. Even when tightly coded, it still eats a massive amount of CPU time.

    Be careful when using setInterval() and setTimeout(). Mozilla 1.3 cannot use setTimeout() recursively to create the effect of setInterval() without maxing CPU usage. setInterval() works fine. If you want something to happen at regular intervals, use setInterval() to make all browsers happy.

    ---
    One issue where the browsers are different is capturing key events:

    MSIE6 requires:
    function inputIE(){
    addchar(window.event.keyCode);
    }
    document.captur eEvents(Event.KEYPRESS);
    <BODY ONKEYPRESS="inputIE()">
    Mozilla1.3 works with:
    function input(e){
    addchar(e.which);
    }
    document.onkeypress = input;
    [addchar() is a generic function to handle the processing of each key regardless of the browser.]
    [Why did Slashcode add a space within the ECODE tags?]

    Luckily both sets of code can be on the same page with the KeyPress event being set correctly without testing for the browser names. I prefer the second method because it allows the code to be contained in a .JS file without modifying the BODY tag. This may have been due to misunderstanding MSDN. There is something called a "named script" (<SCRIPT FOR = object EVENT = onkeypress>) that looks awful and is specific to MSIE. Maybe I just did not find the correct object in MS's DOM to set the onkeypress function for the entire page (maybe document.all.onkeypress?) I stopped researching it once the page worked correctly with both browsers.

    To be on-topic:
    Does Mozilla1.7 allow for the awful event model of MSIE? Will this code still work?
    --
    I spend my life entertaining my brain.
  119. Re: IE 90%+ Market Share by matthewcraig · · Score: 1

    Develop your web pages to The Web Standards and not to a Program's Standard!! The application will change from version to version in possibly undocumented ways, but the web stardard will always be documented. Any diviation in IE from the web standard should be considered a software bug.

  120. There's always one moron... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...to analyze a joke. That's you.

  121. my Book of Mozilla entry. by burtonator · · Score: 2, Interesting


    And so the beast became agile. The unbelievers fell silent and the followers of
    Mammon were left behind. The beast had been improved and awaited the release of
    the great FireFox.

    from The Book of Mozilla, 1:7b
    (Red Letter Edition)

  122. Did they fix LDAP? by EvilStein · · Score: 1

    IIRC, mozilla seems to want to use its own .ldif which is whacked and doesn't quite work with *other* clients (like OS X Address Book, and..gah..Outlook)

    Maybe I'm missing something, but it'd be nice if Mozilla's LDAP implementation would work a lil' better.

    (Yes, I checked Google.. I'm not the only one that thinks the LDAP implementation is a bit wonky)

    1. Re:Did they fix LDAP? by pe1chl · · Score: 1

      What is wrong? We use Mozilla with LDAP all the time.

    2. Re:Did they fix LDAP? by EvilStein · · Score: 1

      Does it use the "mozilla.ldif" schema? Or are you just pulling name & email address?

    3. Re:Did they fix LDAP? by pe1chl · · Score: 1

      It is used as an email address lookup, yes.
      But it also works from addressbook for some other items.
      I am not aware of any special schema, does it exist?
      (we use standard schema with inetorgperson etc)

    4. Re:Did they fix LDAP? by EvilStein · · Score: 1

      Yeah, there's a "mozilla schema" available. The one thing that I cannot manage to get to show up, of all things, is the street address. There's also no field for "Suite #" - but they have one for AIM address. Blah.

    5. Re:Did they fix LDAP? by pe1chl · · Score: 1

      Yes, the street address is a bug.
      I think that the PO Box is shown as the street address, when present.

      Will have a look at the mozilla schema...

  123. From whence the numbers? by beforewisdom · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I followed the link to the article.

    I couldn't find anything about what those percents mean.......ie how many seconds faster on what kind of hardware.

    Its a step in the right direction though

  124. Re:Who fucking cares by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful
    Mozilla today is a different beast from the early days: The most stable (modern) browser I've used (links is the most stable ever) Best standards support Getting faster by every release Getting less resource hungry by every release The most extendable browser around.

    The browser in it's present form seems to be a mature technology, and the improvements you mention increasingly marginalized, a smaller footprint is interesting technically, but rendering a page miliseconds faster than the competition won't set anyone's heart to pounding.

  125. who closes Mozilla? by victorvodka · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Wait - what sort of person quits Mozilla after firing it up? I usually have at least five Mozilla windows open. The only time I have no Mozilla window open is immediately after a reboot. I suspect that for most users, Mozilla's absolute paging behavior (what happens when you quit it entirely) is a non-issue except how it handles the creation and destruction of additional windows beyond a certain low number.

    --

    The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg

    1. Re:who closes Mozilla? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      you don't have to quit it... for example, changing user forces a swap of all nonactive processes.

  126. fixed: table bug affected tikiwiki and slashdot by Bob.Smart · · Score: 1

    The bug that affected tikiwiki and sometimes slashdot seems to be fixed. This makes it much more useable. Kerberos auth also important.

  127. What about the child? by Space_Soldier · · Score: 0

    Since the Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox project has started, I haven't cared about Mozilla as a whole. I have only cared about Gekko, which is the major part of Firefox. My question is, how does this Mozilla release affects Firefox?

    1. Re:What about the child? by bmantz65 · · Score: 1

      I don't think it really affects Firefox too much. They'll be out with Firefox 1.0 probably by summer or near the start of fall, I assume.

  128. ZDNet dislikes Mozilla. Other sites are fine. by solprovider · · Score: 1

    === GOOD ===
    My "bank" (https://www.usafcu-onlineusa.org/) has always worked great with Mozilla. USAFCU is a credit union with a highly technical membership (includes employees of Unisys), and actually cares about its "customers". (Credit unions do not have customers; every account is for a share holder.)

    MyCheckFree.com works in Mozilla. It is a bill-paying website required for PECO Energy, unless you like snail-mailing checks. PECO is rather backwards, and does not have the ability to automatically withdraw from credit cards or bank accounts.

    Yahoo, Google, Dictionary.com, IBM, Dilbert.com, and even Microsoft.com work well with Mozilla.

    === BAD ===
    A few weeks ago, ZDNet.com started doing weird things in Mozilla1.3. The tables/layers in the menus do not line up and content can be on top of other content. The article text is usually fine.

    Mapquest is useless with my Mozilla settings. It may be my setting for loading images. I use maps.yahoo.com instead.

    Hotmail.com also has the issue with images. I am afraid to change it because I do not want to load images for spam. The images are specified using the IP Address. Do later versions of Mozilla have "Allow images from this server"?

    [My main PC still uses Mozilla1.3. I have later versions on other PCs, because I install the latest version when I (re)build a PC, but my main PC has been stable for some time.]

    --
    I spend my life entertaining my brain.
  129. hasn't this been done? by bazooka_foo · · Score: 1

    i think it's called ..... firefox?

    also, from other /. comments i downloaded opera and am loving it.

    1. Re:hasn't this been done? by BRSloth · · Score: 1

      You are using it on Windows, right? I have Opera installed on my GNU/Linux box (I'm working on a project with some stupid CGI that has to work with HTMLs coded for IE) and that thing surely sucks more than a blackhole. I mean, the fonts are ugly, I don't have any anti-aliasing or option to turn it on, the tabs behave oddly, etc.

      Man, I surely miss working with Mozilla again...

  130. Is this dramatic ???? by 1tsm3 · · Score: 1
    Mozilla 1.7 size and performance have improved dramatically with this release.

    The author goes on to say improvement rages from 5% to 9%. Is 5% to 9% a dramatic improvement?? I don't think so... I agree that its a move towards betterment... but Dramatic??? No!!!

    What do you say people?

    --
    -ItsME
  131. Where is the Home button? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Still not standard in Mozilla's gui?

  132. HIstory shows... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men

  133. Thank You Moz Team!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Finally, mail has "SPA" ability!

    No more outlook!!!

    WOO!

  134. Dramatically? by Rui+del-Negro · · Score: 2, Redundant

    Mozilla 1.7 size and performance have improved dramatically with this release. When compared to Mozilla 1.6, Mozilla 1.7 Beta is 7% faster at startup, is 8% faster at window open time, has 9% faster pageloading times, and is 5% smaller in binary size.

    Dramatically? I don't know about you, but an 8% increase in speed and 5% decrease in size doesn't seem very dramatic to me. Mozilla is okay, but still fels like a truck compared to Opera.

    RMN
    ~~~

  135. Re:Who fucking cares by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    why use stuff thats not finished

    Exactly! Thats why I never use IE.

  136. Re:Who fucking cares by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Mozilla will always be free, IE might not be.

    IE is not free. You need a Windows license in order to use it (unless you are using the Mac version).

  137. Firefox by bonch · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Does this have anything to do with Firefox's string changes which reduced the code and increased speed by about 5%?

  138. Are you *joking*? by 0x0d0a · · Score: 1

    I keep my web browser up for *weeks* sometimes.

    If I'm working on a number of projects on different desktops, there's no reason to close all my windows and then reload all of them each day.

    Plus, (Mozilla, at least) doesn't have the ability to store all the URLs and window positions that I'm at as Opera does, so it would be a significant inconvenience.

    1. Re:Are you *joking*? by Hast · · Score: 1

      I believe you can get that functionality as a plugin. At least I've seen mentions of "rescue" plugins which let you return to last state if your browser crashes. It should work for shutting down as well.

      And keeping your computer on during the weekend is pretty wasteful use of electricity if you ask me. Not that a computer uses enourmous amounts but it just seems unnecessary. I usually keep mine on during the week but shut it down for the weekend.

    2. Re:Are you *joking*? by Photon+Ghoul · · Score: 1

      There's a workaround for the storing of URLs in Mozilla (and Firefox). It's been in since the rewrite. While you are at the page you want to store, simply press the CTRL key and the D key at the same time. When you want to get back to that article the next day, press the ALT key and the B key at the same time. You will see your article there. Experience the power of open source!

  139. Nowhere near as fast as Opera. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I keep trying out every Mozilla release, since I use mozilla for email, but the browser is still nowhere close to opera in terms of raw speed. Nice try, but nothing impressive. Back to opera for me.

  140. What bank do you have that Mozilla doesn't do? by 0x0d0a · · Score: 1

    What bank do you use that Mozilla doesn't work with?

    Seriously, that's *awful*.

    1. Re:What bank do you have that Mozilla doesn't do? by Phlux · · Score: 1

      I have a credit card through Capital One, and their website barfed on Mozilla for quite a while. I emailed them about it, and one of the problems they gave was an inability to test the site with all the versions of Mozilla (at the time, all we had were milestones and daily builds). As soon as Moz 1.0 came out, I emailed about it again. They said that they were working on it and a few weeks later, it worked!

      I encourage anyone who's having similar problems to email the tech contact for an offending website and let them know that you care.

  141. Re:ZDNet dislikes Mozilla. Other sites are fine. by anagama · · Score: 1

    • Do later versions of Mozilla have "Allow images from this server"?
    Yes. I'm using 1.4 (so behind the times aren't I?). There are radio buttons for "no imgages, images from originating server only, all images" as well as a "manage permissions" button where you can set up special image rules on a site by site basis.
    --
    What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
  142. This is how a new version should be. by The+Saint+(ST) · · Score: 1

    Congratulations to the Mozilla Team! They remind us that a new version does not need to have new features. A new version should be a better implementation of the earlier one, faster, smaller, more optimized, running on less powerful computers. I'd love to see this concept in other applications also.

  143. That's because KDE = Windows by bonch · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...and everyone knows it. :) KDE is obsessed with becoming Windows. They even integrated the HTML browser and file browser--there is *absolutely no point* in doing that, and now I have to wait through seconds of lag time to open simple folders.

    All the volunteer effort in the world and what do we do? We make another UNIX. Then we make another Windows on top of it!

    1. Re:That's because KDE = Windows by margal · · Score: 1

      I think you're confusing Windows with a desktop that's attractive to the majority of desktop users. We're changing the world, and we're providing users with freedom. They will never accept that freedom unless our software is easy to use.

    2. Re:That's because KDE = Windows by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 1
      All the volunteer effort in the world and what do we do? We make another UNIX. Then we make another Windows on top of it!

      Erm... That wasn't funny when this lot said it the other day, and it's still not funny now. Sorry. :-)

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
  144. "stylish" != "good" by 0x0d0a · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I disagree. I've yet to find one person who raves about how "stylish" and "good-looking" a web site is an then points to a website that isn't a pain in the ass to use.

    Let's take a look at your mezzoblue.com example:

    * Uses inconsistent highlighting -- background rollovers (ugh) on part of the text like the "also available" websites, underline rollovers on other parts like the "Designing with Web Standards" link.

    * It uses images for text in its heading. At the moment, I am sitting back fram my computer and leaning on a recliner. My face is about 1.5 to 2 times my normal viewing distance, and I use 1152x864 on a 17" monitor, which is already a high resolution. Normally, I just bump up the text size and have no problem reading a website (as do disabled people). This website's topic entries are unreadable to me, and I had to lean forward plop my face right next to the screen to read the "also available" heading. Heck, that's damned small text even for a lot of glasses-wearing older folks that I know of, with no way to work around it.

    * The site uses rollover menus. I don't think I know *anyone* that likes using rollover menus -- I *really* hate it. It doesn't even use your typical old annoying rollover menu -- this has an image background or something. It took ten seconds or so for the image to load, so I had floating white text on a light blue background for a bit. It was pretty unusable.

    * Widget functionality is unclear to a viewer. Once again, the analysis I've heard of rollovers holds true -- they're used by designers that have such an unintuitive design that they require the user to wave the mouse around over the interface to figure out how it works. There are rollover menus in the upper top corner. There's no visual indication that these little dinky images are, in fact, rollover menus. It wasn't until I started scanning the page with my mouse cursor that I figured it out.

    * Confusingly chosen and similar visual indicators. The mezzoblue.com site uses a diagonally-upward-aiming triangle to indicate a menu (*most* of the time). For starters, this indicator is inconsistent with the common desktop use of a downward-aiming triangle to indicate a popup menu. It is also almost identical to the diagonally-downward-aiming triangle that is used to indicate a section header *on the same site*. Not only that, diagonal triangles most common use in current HCI is for a half-open expandable section of data, a convention from Mac OS. The sections look like they *might* roll up when clicked, but do not in fact do so.

    * Dissimilar widgets are visually identical. If this designer *had* to make rollover menus and grokked HCI (a dubious pair of bedfellows to begin with), he'd know that one does not make widgets that operate differently but appear identical to the user. Up at the top, we have three blocks of text that appear the same (upward-diagonal triangle, text). The first two ("about", "weblog") are rollover menus. The third, "contact", is a link. When I started rolling my cursor over them, I sat and waited on this link, assuming that my browser was just slow to pop up the associated menu.

    * Text colors poorly chosen for readability. Much of the text/background combinations involve two very similar shades of blue. Most of this is readable to me at my current viewing distance if I increase the size, but I know many people that would *not* be able to comfortably read such text.

    Honestly, mezzoblue.com seems an excellent example of why sites should *not* be "stylish" -- when designers use "stylish" as an excuse, they're frequently making websites that are simply poorly built from an interface point of view.

    Finally, as I've argued before, a lot of people making "stylish" websites with "extra zazz" are people that are familiar with the conventional way products are sold. Most products need to appear flashy, interesting, and novel just long enough for a person to impulsively choose to buy them. For conventional products, "flash" h

    1. Re:"stylish" != "good" by MikeFM · · Score: 1

      Google is an excellent example of a good website. Another would be Yahoo's classic look. They switched it a couple years ago so that it's crammed full of crap in the interface. Made it much harder to use so I mostly just don't bother anymore. In old web design books though it was one of the most oft mentioned examples of a highly usable site.

      Slashdot, IMO, has a little bit to noisy of interface. The main functionality is clear but many of the extras take experience and patience to get to. Most anything that appears on the left hand menu needs to be reworked I think. That menu alone is okay but combined with the large amount of actual content on the page it gets lost in the noise. I think most new users probably don't even notice it.

      --
      At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
    2. Re:"stylish" != "good" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think your points woul dbe valid if it were my granny using mezzoblue, but, It's not, it's people like me, Web developer types who don't need to be lead around a website like its the first time we've ever been online. Usability Rule #1 : Know your user!

    3. Re:"stylish" != "good" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      damn, looks like you're not aware of the "dissability" features of mezzoblue....

      anyway.. hum.. first, comment is based on YOUR tastes,... that looks kinda cheap... not a single professional comment in here...

      mezzoblue, like some other websites, are related to website complexity of design... not usability for blind persons... most of the mezzo content is related to the "look and feel" of websites... blind persons focus on content...

      so why compare apples with citrus ?

      and for the rollover thing, it's css... if your browser took 10 seconds to load the images, change your connection. if you can't see the content of the page at 30 inches of the screen, it's normal..

      don't test a website thinking you're in the place of an handicapped person... you don't know how they deal with screening... they don't use 1024 resolution, they work with 640 or 800 screens... so they see what they want to see.

      and NO, mezzo don'T use image for titles.. it'S a trick for non-blind persons... the blind persons will read the exact text it's supposed to apply.... it'S css based.

      READ THE SOURCES, damn.

      btw, you comment on a professional website focussing on design... what is your knowledge of design ?! you're not even able to define different details in the proper language.

      when you want to compare coke and pepsi, please don't drink milk...

  145. Followup by 0x0d0a · · Score: 1

    Keep in mind that my writeup was done based on something like thirty seconds of actual use and staying only on the main page. It is not intended to be a comprehensive list of problems with the site, just a set of examples why using a similar approach on a website is not a good idea.

  146. Resume. by zonix · · Score: 2, Insightful
    A resume feature in the download manager would be a nice start...

    If you double-click on each download in the Download Manager, you'll get access to pause/resume features. That feature has been there for while. Of course, in the Firefox Download Manager these features are shown up front.

    z
    --
    What would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
    1. Re:Resume. by edwdig · · Score: 1

      The problem with that is you can only resume the download as long as you don't close Mozilla. It also can't resume after an error.

      I don't use the download manager because I would always end up closing my last open Mozilla window, causing the download to abort. The download manager currently can't resume a download if that happens.

  147. Mozilla/FireFox Usage According to Google by CritterNYC · · Score: 2, Informative

    The Google Zeitgeist shows their current visitor breakdown as a graph. It isn't labeled, but by breaking it down and determining which pixel the lines fall on at the end, the percentages look like this:

    Internet Explorer (5/5.5/6): 89%
    Mozilla/Netscape (5/6/7): 5%
    Unknown/Other: 6%

    1. Re:Mozilla/FireFox Usage According to Google by molarmass192 · · Score: 1

      Except that my user.js has this in it:

      user_pref("general.useragent.override", "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98)");

      because I need to get into a single (poorly) designed site for work, so I show up as IE on every other site even though I'm using Moz. This isn't something that's in my realm of control to change and from what I hear, a lot of people are forced to do the same. I would imagine that an extra 3-4% could be added to that Moz/NS stat based on this kind of assenine web authoring alone. Moz really needs to add a Konq-like useragent override so we can set that string for site specific instances.

      --

      Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
    2. Re:Mozilla/FireFox Usage According to Google by bunratty · · Score: 1
      --
      What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
  148. MMedia did this by RedLaggedTeut · · Score: 1
    Macromedia(tm) did this. Speaks volumes for a company attempting to sell an html editing tool. I was unable to access their site using any of the four different browsers I had.

    Notepad or vi works great for editing html :-)

    --
    I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
  149. Mozilla IS getting faster by georgevulov · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You all might snicker at the single-digit speed improvements in the latest release, but I just upgraded from 1.2 to 1.7 and the difference is not only noticable, it's unbelievable! Especially the startup time, must be a quarter of what it previously was (no preloading in memory under linux, startup times for mozilla used to be awful)
    The GUI is also much snappier.

    I see good days ahead for Mozilla. A few days ago, a non-techie friend of mine saw me using Firefox and inquired about it. Once he installed it and saw the tabbing, pop-up blocking, speed, and skinnability, he immediately set it as his default browser. Though IE is the most common right now, people will find about the quality of Mozilla sooner or later. Actually, who cares? Even if they don't, I and all my friends still get to use a superb browser

    --
    TerraIM - my pet AIM client project.
  150. Mozilla@linux + Macromedia (flash/shockwave) by boaworm · · Score: 2, Interesting

    That sounds very interesting, gotta try it out (PowerBook + G5 DP). Although I have another issue with Mozilla on Linux though.

    When accessing shockwave/flash pages, Mozilla (and Netscape, and Opera) crashes on me rather frequently. It happens atleast a couple of time every business day. I just copied the plugins from the standard Netscape 7.1 distribution.

    Are there any other shockwave/flash plugins that I can use that dont bring my browser down all the time ? Any hints/tricks/tips greatly appreciated! (Apart from trying out Mozilla 1.7 :-)

    --
    Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
    Aristotele
    1. Re:Mozilla@linux + Macromedia (flash/shockwave) by sam0ht · · Score: 3, Informative

      Ok, I used
      http://macromedia.mplug.org/tarball/generic/ instal l_flash_player_6_linux.tar.gz
      I think. Works for me with Mozilla 1.7a on Fedora x86.

      BTW I also got Flash Click-to-play, which stalls each animation until you click to activate it.

      http://flashblock.mozdev.org/

      Check
      http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/linux.html
      f or more links

    2. Re:Mozilla@linux + Macromedia (flash/shockwave) by SilvaDragon · · Score: 1

      > BTW I also got Flash Click-to-play, which stalls
      > each animation until you click to activate it.
      > http://flashblock.mozdev.org/

      THANK YOU!! I have gotten so sick of Flash spam on websites that I could not have adequately expressed it.

      Oh! I just had a warm basking-in-the-open-source-goodness moment.

  151. Feature loss is the whole point... by Phil+John · · Score: 1

    ...they want the program to be "just" a browser, if you want mail you use another program which is "just" a mailreader (thunderbird), and if you want IRC do not use anything mozilla at all, the chatzilla client was more a proof of concept than a useable product. BitchX is the way forward on Linux/Unix, on windows you could do a lot worse than mIRC.

    I stopped using moz long ago because I didn't like the slugishness when compared to IE, I only left IE when I switched to Firebird/fox and haven't looked back.

    --
    I am NaN
  152. Mozilla still in bad shape by mnmn · · Score: 2, Informative

    I dont know quite what went wrong, but Mozilla's development just spiralled upwards into features and bloat year ago. That is bad considering its the only really free standalone browser. If youre running say NetBSD on some exotic hardware, or Solaris on x86, or something not mainstream, youre really stuck with Mozilla unless you can get around the overhead of KDE/GNOME and use their browsers.

    Mozilla firebird/thunderbird has caught most peoples attention and can be far more popular than mozilla if it didnt crash so much. For now, people with exotic setups will have to use lynx, keep trying mozilla and firebird intermittently and turn back to Windows or Linux on x86 when they get frustrated. I do wonder whose interests is Mozilla serving anyway with such extreme bloat.

    --
    "Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
    1. Re:Mozilla still in bad shape by pe1chl · · Score: 1

      I guess you will have to live with the changes that occur over time (sometimes called progress). Today's PCs are powerful enough to run Mozilla, and it seems nobody cares to maintain a browser that still runs on a 486 with 16MB.

      Given that the limited resources of developers can be spent only once, I rather have them spent on a browser that can keep up with the market demands, than on a browser for some NetBSD geeks that insist on using a 5 years old machine.

  153. You need to get out more! by Dewin+Cymraeg · · Score: 0

    8% faster start up time. So if it takes 30 seconds to start up 1.6, it'll take 27.5 seconds or so to start up 1.7. If you think that's dramatic, you need to get out more!

  154. w00t, .05 decrease in binary size by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    w00t, .05 decrease in binary size.. wow we should code the whole damn thing in assembler and then we'd get mad improvements in the speed and size of the binary....

    Sheesh... since when was performance/quality measured in binary size... shouldn't features and performance matter more (and I fully acknowlege that he listed the increases in speed... and I say thats what really matters)

    - AC

  155. Slow machines by holygoat · · Score: 1

    Of course, the position on this curve changes depending on your environment.

    On a brand-new machine, you're on the far right, so this is unnoticeable. "Not worth the effort".

    On a P-90, you're on the far left - your loading time just fell from 2 hours to 1:45. "Still not good enough".

    On a P2-300, Mozilla has just become useable. That 10% was important.

    Usage patterns are also relevant - if you have a 60-tab bookmark (like a previous poster), then shaving 10% off the loading time for each tab is a massive saving.

    I expect that a number of users will find this speed increase useful.

  156. Re: Roaming profiles with LDAP? by erl · · Score: 1

    I had the impression that you could store your bookmarks etc in LDAP, is this not so?

  157. Re: What does Mozilla do with its memory? by erl · · Score: 1

    I can't quite understand why Mozilla needs to use 40-100 MB. It would be interesting to see what that memory is actually used for. Images are normally fairly small, and can't take up *that* much. HTML source shouldn't account for much. Where does the memory go?

  158. Waiting for Mozilla Firefox by AmitArora · · Score: 1

    Well, I am waiting for the next version of the Mozilla Firefox 0.9 (or 1.0) or standalone version of the browser from Mozilla coz I don't need that extra programs hooked upto my browser

  159. Firefox the once future king? by leandrod · · Score: 1

    So with Mozilla getting Gtk+ themes and speed, will Firefox ever succeed it? When?

    --
    Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
    DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
    GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
  160. Blind consumer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The computer industry is one of the most polluting on Earth.
    When you buy a memory stick you do not see the many pounds of toxic waste of the long chain of pollution from the production and transportation of raw materials to the delivery of the stick in your mailbox.
    Guy Debord was right. We survive in the Society of the Spectacle.
    Pollution means the poisoning of life.
    Bad programmers are deadly.

  161. Re:Mods on crack by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The post was offtopic, it had nothing to do with the software update.

    The post was redundant, obviously mozilla's christeners and logo designers thought of that joke A LONG FUCKING TIME AGO.

    Too bad some jerks can't take the truth.

  162. And I thought...... by tiger99 · · Score: 0
    ....that 1.5 was fast enough, stable, and immune to most of the security holes which infest the obsolete trash produced by the non-competitive (he can't compete technically) product of the Convicted Monopoly!

    I can't be bothered installing 1.6, I will wait till 1.7 is stable. No point doing it twice within a few weeks.

    I must say that Mozilla really does seem to move forwards consistently, when was their an actual improvement to Inept Exploder? It serves to confirm my suspicion that some people (Netscape, Mozilla, countless developers...) simply want to make a good browser, whereas Sir Bill simply wanted a default installation of his Illegally Commingled Code that barely worked but would be sufficient to wipe out Netscape.

    It will backfire on him shortly, the general public are beginning to wake up to the fact that the Criminal Monopoly do not set standards or control either the web or the email system, and that their vile, bug-ridden, insecure and obsolete products are simply not neded.

  163. Use Proxomitron to corner it by Quizo69 · · Score: 1

    Grab the program from: www.proxomitron.info

    Then grab the best filter set for it here: www.jd5000.net

    The nice thing is, not only will it prevent popups, it'll tell you WHAT it killed. Makes it easy to work out what the weird popup is. I'd wager it's some form of JavaScript code which is written in stealth fashion to obfuscate it's true nature.

    Hope this helps!

    1. Re:Use Proxomitron to corner it by fm6 · · Score: 1

      That's a proxy. These popups are originating from spyware that's installed within IE! (You do know what spyware is, right?) Keeping the ad pages from downloading (which you don't need a proxy it do) isn't going to prevent the popups from occuring. I just get blank popups instead of popups with ads in them.

  164. Rollover menu? by GAVollink · · Score: 2, Informative
    Rollover menu wasn't my choice, or my problem. In some sites I've been required by the customer that rollover "light up" menu links appear. These are relatively easy with a decent understanding of CSS.

    CSS2 and Mozilla (not I.E.) can do full roll-over menus without the help of scripting. But this does NOTHING on I.E. Similarly, microsoft.com has menus (in black, top right of screen) that do nothing unless I.E. is loading them).

    If your boss/client wants menus like that, then there is no choice but to break the Any Browser campaign (which I believe in), and use JavaScript (or Server Side Includes) to create different pages for different browsers - again, breaking many browsers that spoof their headers, or otherwise lie (Opera, "MSIE Compatible").

  165. Where did you get these numbers from. by a1z26b2y25 · · Score: 1

    Even though I do use Mozilla (thus my interest),if you have not downloaded it yet, how did you come by such numbers? Oh marketing....... And if this is a beta copy would it not be reasonable to suggest that these numbers are on the low end? Just curious.

  166. I Converted a member of our sales staff to Mozilla by doublem · · Score: 1

    A few months back, one of our sales staff had a problem. His computer just wasn't working properly by any stretch of the imagination. After a few minutes investigation, I realized that he'd manages to corrupt his install of IE.

    This is a good sales guy (Listens to IT, good to work with, nice guy) and I didn't want to subject him to the downtime of a complete reinstall, but the IE upgrade app didn't work. (Kept crashing)

    So I ran Spambot on the computer to clean things up a little (Adaware wouldn't run, as it apparently uses some of the IE rendering components to display it's interface) and put (then) Thunderbird on his PC.

    I told him briefly what Mozilla and Thunderbird were, installed the tabbed browsing plugin and told him I would try to download the full install of IE 6 and come back. He understood Thunderbird to be a temporary measure.

    Later in the day, I have IE reinstalled and his computer running just fine.

    Fast forward two months to this past Friday. Our newest web developer and I are discussing browsers, and he's wishing all the NON IE browsers would die so he could just develop for one platform.

    In comes said sales guy and starts taking the developer to task, raving about Mozilla. It turns out he's been using thunderbird as his main browser ever since I installed it, and only uses IE when a site doesn't work in Thunderbird (He still hasn't upgraded from the version I installed).

    Don't you love it when a technology proves itself on it's own merits?

    --
    "Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
  167. Oops by doublem · · Score: 1

    My Bad. I installed FIREbird on his computer, not Thunderbird

    --
    "Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
  168. Seems to be NT-based problem by Dr.+Evil · · Score: 1

    I have this problem under NT4, Win2k and WinXP. Win98 didn't have the problem, and Linux doesn't appear to have it either.

    If you open up the Task Manager and watch the virtual memory size and memory usage, Firefox (or any variant of Mozilla to date), will show a HUGE amount of VM space. Right now Firefox shows a VM size of ~70MB, current "memory usage" of ~43MB. If I start working with a different app, Windows will spot those inactive memory pages and swap them out. The "memory usage" will slowly fall on Firefox... down to maybe 2MB.

    It is classic, predictable and boring application behaviour. Mozilla is a pig for RAM. This isn't a problem if it doesn't get paged out, but when it does, your machine will have to bring up tens of megabytes of swapped out and fragmented pages to re-render the page you've kept in the background.

    So when I click on Firefox, it can take over 60 seconds (real stopwatch seconds) for it to pull back from my notebook's 4800rpm drive and reach the foreground...

    Note that that is a lot longer than it takes to launch the app.

    If there are memory leaks in Mozilla, they're too small for me to notice or worry about, but this swap behaviour is horrible... so much so, that I include it as a caveat when mentioning Mozilla to people, and I've even considered going to IE (I've can honestly say I've never been a regular IE user)... but when I'm on the phone with somebody at work, and I need to look something up, explaining to them that my machine is pulling the browser out of swap is unproductive and embarassing... sometimes I launch IE just to get to the site more quickly.

    The hibernation doesn't really click with what I'm describing though. Hibernation brings back the full hibernation file to active RAM... if Mozilla wasn't swapped out before, it won't be swapped out afterwards.

    Why NT/2k/XP? If you watch them, they all use similar memory management patterns. Even if you're not using all the available system RAM, they'll swap out inactive pages to increase space for caching drive activity.

    For example: right now I have about 7MB available system RAM... a 70MB disk cache, and 564MB allocated on a system with 256MB of RAM. There is 70MB worth of RAM paged out in order to keep a big fat disk cache.

    Anyways, watch those memory numbers as your HDD thrashes bringing back Mozilla... it is painfully obvious what is happening. Mozilla is a pig for RAM, and NT & kin are swapping it out.

    I could "fix" this by putting ~768MB of RAM in my machine and turning off swap/paging space... but that doesn't bode well for the supieriority of Mozilla/Firefox/whatever.

    Does anyone have a trick to tweak the memory management characteristics of Windows?

    1. Re:Seems to be NT-based problem by Dr.+Evil · · Score: 1

      I'm pulling down that patch mentioned in a parallel thread... bug 76831 looks like it. I don't think Bugzilla allows Slashdot links, so those interested will need to cut and paste http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76831

      I should run a few Linux tests... I think this would appear, but under different circumstances.

  169. Resume feature. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Still on dial-up, huh?! ;-)

  170. opacity by ChristTrekker · · Score: 1

    Not too many new features? Implementation of CSS3 opacity is a pretty nifty deal. I've been looking forward to it for a long time.

  171. No, I'm not by bonch · · Score: 1

    I think you're confusing Windows with a desktop that's attractive to the majority of desktop users.

    No, I'm not. Windows is not an attractive desktop. Nor is KDE.

    We're changing the world, and we're providing users with freedom. They will never accept that freedom unless our software is easy to use.

    KDE is not easy to use. I could list paragraphs of flaws, and most of them stem from the copying of Windows and its metaphors.

    1. Re:No, I'm not by margal · · Score: 1

      No, I'm not. Windows is not an attractive desktop. Nor is KDE. Perhaps your opinions differs, but I find it hard to understand arguing that Windows isn't attractive to most desktop users. It quite obviously is, as it's successful. KDE isn't perhaps the most beautiful, but in terms of usability studies have shown it's just as usable as Windows, and in terms of accessibility, it's better. What are some of your flaws? Perhaps we should tackle them?

  172. No Web Services by Flave · · Score: 1

    If you're tempted to upgrade, read the 'new issues' section first:

    http://mozilla.org/releases/mozilla1.7b/README.h tm l#new-issues

    The 'Web services are not working in Mozilla 1.7 Beta' is a major show-stopper for me.

  173. Poor security for images in Mozilla by solprovider · · Score: 1

    Sorry, that is not enough. I use 1.3, you use 1.4, and I remember checking this in 1.5.

    A good security system for images would be to start with "No images" or "Images from originating server only". Then have a list of approved servers using "Allow images from this server."

    No version of Mozilla I have used has implemented this properly.

    You can "Block images from this server", but that is backwards security. To use this "security" feature, you must start by accepting all images, then block the offensive ones. That offers no protection when using web mail for spam, because you will load the image once (verifying your email address is valid), and may not even know there was an invisible image that needs to be blocked. And spammers will just change the "image" server for each email in case you did block the last server.

    You should block everything, then approve allowed servers. Mozilla cannot block all images and then only allow images from approved servers.

    I default to allowing the images for originating server only. With Hotmail, I need the ability to allow images for server 207.68.164.24. I do not believe this is possible, but I will check Mozilla1.7 when it is released.

    ===
    Also, why does "View Image" open the image into a new page? The current page already has a location dedicated to where that image belongs. For many cases, the image will only make sense if shown in the context of the page it was to be used. Using "View Image" loses that context.

    In Hotmail, the images are used for navigation. Without the images, it is very difficult to discover which empty spot means "go to next email" and which means "delete this email".

    For news articles, I want the ability to see the accompanying image, even if it is on a different server, without losing the security for all servers. I want to see the image above the blurb that explains the image, not on a separate page.

    ===
    I sent these ideas to Mozilla feedback back in the 1.1 timeframe. I wish I had the time to become a Mozilla developer, but that will not happen this year. Someone already familiar with the code and the data storage should be able to implement the first change in less than a week (not including QA.) I cannot estimate what it would take to add "View Image in current location on page" without studying the code, but the ability to redraw the page with the additional image should be simple. How did this poor interface survive at least 4 releases? (Make that 6 major releases if these issues are not fixed in 1.7.)

    --
    I spend my life entertaining my brain.
    1. Re:Poor security for images in Mozilla by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yahoo Mail allows you to disable the downloading of HTML-sourced images globally across all email boxes. If you want to view the graphics in an email, you can click on a link and only that email will load images for that one viewing, while the rest will adhere to your preferences to block images.

      That at least solves your privacy concerns with email-distributed web bugs, if you use Yahoo Mail (and you should, if your current solution is Hotmail - the most intrusive and bloated web mail I've ever used since Microsoft started tying all their crap into it).

      And the filtering option you want to ask for when discussing this issue with Moz devs is an image-blocking "whitelist," in contrast to the blacklist that is currently employed in Mozilla and Firefox. Your requests may get more attention if you use this terminology instead of fully describing the functionality itself.

    2. Re:Poor security for images in Mozilla by solprovider · · Score: 1

      Thanks, AC. Yes, I guess I should have used the term "whitelist". I usually talk to people who have no understanding of technical concepts. I should have assumed the Mozilla developers would understand better if I used technical terms. The request was actually sent from my father's PC, and he understood the message as written.

      I use YahooMail as well as HotMail. I use HotMail addresses for sites that I expect will send spam. If I am going to receive spam, I like letting MS pay for the storage. The Yahoo Mail spam filters work much better than HotMail's. I do not use the Yahoo Mail image blocking setting because Mozilla blocks the images. I would need to disable Mozilla's image blocking for Yahoo's to have any effect. (For the record, I also have email accounts with several ISPs and my own domains, some on my own servers.)

      So does anybody know if Mozilla1.7 uses an image-blocking whitelist rather than the useless blacklists of earlier releases?

      ---
      Back to what works with Mozilla:
      YahooMail works OK with Mozilla. It does not work as well with Mozilla as it does with MSIE. The rich-text formatting of email cannot be done unless using MSIE. Yahoo will send a page that uses an IFRAME if the UserAgent says it is MSIE. Mozilla1.5 does not work with the IFRAME and JS on that page (even if you fake the UserAgent.) My father spent quite some time trying to contact Yahoo about it, but they refuse to receive input from customers.
      (My father is a paid subscriber so he can pop the mail from the Yahoo servers for backup. He likes the webmail interface, although he also uses LotusNotes and MozillaMail for some email addresses.)

      For the record, I have NEVER sent an HTML-formatted email, but my father lives to send HTML-formatted email. He always increases the font size and usually plays with the text color. It looks terrible on my 21" monitors, but my grandfather likes it on his 15" monitor. I have not convinced them that the text size should be increased for the receiver's email client rather than in the email sent.

      --
      I spend my life entertaining my brain.
  174. Re:Helloooooo! by ih8n1gg3 · · Score: 0

    STFU you malotto piece of shit.

  175. Bull... by rjstanford · · Score: 1

    By your argument, you could scale a one day's effort that increased performance by a measly 1% and claim a 38-fold increase over the year.

    I mean, really...

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    You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
  176. Opera by AP31R0N · · Score: 1

    @ Opera's install is one third the size of Moz's. And has been the faster browser for several years now. *shrugs*

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    Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
  177. Re:Broken Java by Myen · · Score: 1

    Sun, on Win32 at least.

    It would complain, for some reason. Oh, and it would also crash if your UA was too long... 20-something characters IIRC.

  178. It's because they assume you're gullible... by Ayanami+Rei · · Score: 1

    ...and the reply was planted to make people take the "advice", which you correctly pointed out as equally stupid.

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    THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
  179. Not _astonishingly_ bad. by Ayanami+Rei · · Score: 1

    At the time when I first found out about it, it was either a IE5.0 work-alike, or Netscape 4.
    I used MSIE 5.0 until I got Moz 1.0 to work on the Solaris box. IE5.0 was about 10 times faster and crashed less than the Solaris-bundled Netscape (imagine that!).

    --
    THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
  180. The same problem is exhibited by both browsers. by Ayanami+Rei · · Score: 1

    If you disable java and plugins, both MSIE and Mozilla seem to work fine for days on end without issue. This is on two different types of machine with a modest amount of RAM (256MB).

    As soon as you let java or flash run, and open up a few links to some PDF files, everything tends to go to shit.

    I don't really blame MSIE or Mozilla for this, but the API the plugin and the browser use to communicate, and maybe the plug-in writers themselves.

    I should be able to hit the "stop" button in my browser and have the plugin receive an event that makes it stop what it's doing and release resources. It's just common sense.

    --
    THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON