Slashdot Mirror
Mozilla 1.7 to Become New Long-Lived Branch
iswm writes "MozillaZine has announced that the Mozilla 1.7 branch will become the new long-lived stable branch, replacing 1.4.
The stable branch is intended to act as a baseline for developers
building Mozilla-based products, with critical bugs fixed on the branch
as well as the trunk. Mozilla Firefox 1.0, a new milestone of Mozilla Thunderbird,
a new Camino release and several third party Mozilla based products
will be based on Mozilla 1.7, so the Foundation is making efforts to
ensure that it is high quality."
it had to happen sooner or later : mozillazine
The rumors of Camino's death have been greatly exaggerated...
.8 soon.
OS X's Camino hadn't been updated since March of '03 (.7 release), and personally I thought it had been put out to pasture thanks to Apple bundling Safari.
According to http://www.mozilla.org/projects/camino/ we can look forward to
Welcome back!
Ryan Kennedy opposes comm
What the article fails to mention however that there appears to be a point of contension between Mozilla developers over whether or not the next long-lived stable branch of Mozilla should be 1.7 or 1.8. Many feel that it is too late in 1.7's development cycle to make it the next stable branch after 1.4. For more information, see here. It's a shame that the Mozilla Foundation apparently feels pressured to make decisions based on time frames instead of quality.
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." - Oscar Wilde
On the other hand people are happy that there's finally something to replace 1.4 which was showing its age.
Note that this means that the next version of Netscape, if there is one, will be based on 1.7 etc.
Let me guess...
You didn't read the instructions on how to install a new version, and you deleted them yourself?
Due to windows instability, I've had to do all manner of restores and upgrades. The only time I lost any bookmarks was the first time I flubbed a Mozilla install.
After I read the directions (please read them, but IIRC, it's something like: rename old mozilla folder under the mozilla.org folder, install new mozilla, see that it works, move plugins from old mozilla folder over, test that plugins are working, delete old folder, DO NOT DELETE ANY OTHER FILES BUT THOSE) I had no problems.
You can backup the bookmarks file, too, just restore it to the right place, BTW...
If you are still using Camino .7, go grab one one of these.
;)
You will be amazed at the changes.
Warning: Sometimes the daily is a bit of a mess, but I use it daily
The rumoured new version of Netscape being released by AOL will also be based on Mozilla 1.7.
1) Go to about:config.
2) Select "Print Preview"
3) Crash.
On Firefox 0.8 on Windows 2000.
That's good news. Someone should make sure they stop running Windows too.
Mike Pinkerton, the project lead for Camino, keeps us updated about their progress (among other things) via his blog
I like using a lot of div tags and css styles. 1.7b is better with several bugs fixed. But this bug:
1 93
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=204
This one still makes me go back to IE. With the wrong setup, you can't access links for form controls. While the bug is marked as fixed in 1.7b, the test case I put in still fails.
Go to CSS Zen Garden for learning by example on stylesheets. My pages mostly just have div tags any more, and the style sheet does the rest.
(And why does Mozilla prevent links to it via Slashdot? If I create a link it says "Ook! Sorry, links to Bugzilla from Slashdot are disabled.")
You can back-up everything incl Email and stuff
Help fight continental drift.
Why on earth would they completely change the base code and keep the same major release number? Er, they're not. Mozilla 1.7 is just an upgrade to Mozilla 1.6. Even Firefox and Thunderbird do not use new base code. The backends of Mozilla and Firefox/Thunderbird are virtually identical. The only thing that's different is the UI. Of course because the UI is the most visable part of the program, it feels like completely new code.
The plan is when Firefox and Tbird are considered version "1.0". What the requirements are to hit that milestone are anybody's guess.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Great news, but now the 1.7 stable release has been pushed back by a month. So, if FireFox is based on the 1.7 trunk it would mean that the FireFox 0.9 release will be pushed back too.
It would have made more sense to make this decision before 1.7 hit beta, this is really an ass-backwards way of handling the stability of the trunk.
The biggest problem such a person will face is the build system - as in, there isn't one for OS 9 any more.
Gerv
If you hack macs, please do the silent majority a favour and port a stable version of mozilla for us!
They have! It's called Web and Mail Communicator (WaMCom). They have produced a version of Mozilla 1.3.1 with hundreds of additional bugfixes that works on Mac OS 9.
Sure, it's only based on 1.3.1 (though with extra bug fixes), but it's better than nothing.
More details availble in these MozillaZine articles: 1 and 2.
Camino is designed primarily to be an OS X port of Mozilla, so it integrates well into the OS. It has a completely native interface, and feels far more at home on a Mac than Firefox. It's essentially a non-question unless you're on a Mac, in which case you can just choose one.
I have seen this happen to a couple of clients machines I have worked on. I traced it down to their anti-virus scanner blowing out prefs.js. By excluding prefs.js from any virus scan activity they have not had the problem since.
Try the 'Clone Window' Extension
Here's your answer (from the roadmap):
We are not retiring the SeaMonkey [Mozilla] application suite, or its XPFE front end, in the foreseeable future. Several companies have shipped and will ship products based on this venerable component of the application suite, and on the entire suite. Many organizations deploy it or a derivative of it, such as Netscape 7.x. We intend to keep supporting these deployments in at least a conservative, sustaining engineering fashion. However, we still intend to focus on evolving Mozilla toward the more flexible application architecture pioneered by Firefox and Thunderbird. That's where our innovative engineering effort should go.
Casual users don't have to worry about trunks, branches, or stable versions -- Mozilla.org hides that stuff pretty deep so that only developers and interested geeks can find it.
Currently Mozilla.org has five programs available on their main page. Four of those -- Firefox, Thunderbird, Camino, and Mozilla 1.7b -- are clearly marked as "technology previews" -- i.e., developmental software that's being released to help get the bugs worked out. Mozilla 1.6 is the program casual users will want, and, except when there's news to report, it's always at the top of the page.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
I've had this problem a lot on sites that use some of the more intense flash based ads.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
If you're not going read the article, or the links, then at least read the entire post. This is not a release notice.
They're just saying that Firefox 1.0, when it is released, will be based on Mozilla 1.7. They aren't saying Firefox 1.0 is available.
Yeesh!
Easier said than done. My wife is a graphic designer. Her Mac is her life. Everything has to just work. To her, a computer is like a good wrench to a mechanic. It's a tool. Nothing more.
Also, for her to upgrade would mean all new apps and they are not cheap. We're talking around $3000US to update everything. She's got to get ALOT of work to justify that expenditure.
That said, it would be nice to put a 1.7 version of Mozilla on her OS9 box so she can dump Internet Exploder.
What's my Karma Mr. Burns? "Excellent"
...(we are in business together)...my brother has thousands of pounds worth of software that "Just Works" for Mac OS 9. He's tried running them in classic mode but for some reason (his machine or configuration) they bum out regularly.
Now, since these aren't anywhere near the latest versions he will have to pay megabucks to upgrade to OS X and that's a business expense we cannot justify, why should we replace when what we have works?
I am NaN
Really, I find firefox handles intense flash based ads really, really well
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
> I think Phoenix was always supposed to be an internal codename like Whistler or Longhorn.
The slight difference between the two names is that Phoenix wasn't trademarked. Firefox is. They spent a lot of effort on finding a proper name and trademarking it and are not going to abandon it anytime soon.
They are keeping the name Mozilla Firefox. See the Firefox roadmap if you don't believe me:
"Firefox 1.0 will be called simply "Mozilla Firefox"... or "Firefox" for short."
That would be bug 218304 ("Print preview of about:config crashes"). FWIW, you'll have to copy-n-paste the address into your URL bar since Bugzilla refuses Slashdot referers.
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
You can switch to FireFox and get that functionality with the MozFBRH extension. It allows you to middle-click on the Forward and Back (Reload and Home also have extra functionality, hence the acronym) buttons to open up a new tab with forks of the history.
Because old versions of web browsers tend to contain known security holes.
The shareholder is always right.
Mozilla was originally the name for the Netscape internet browser. When Marc Andreesen developed the replacement for Mosaic, the first proper web browser, it was named Mozilla (Mosaic-Killer, Godzilla). The marketing guys at his new company decided to change it to Netscape Navigator, but the original core of developers kept the name.
Then a bunch of stuff happened, AOL bought Netscape, but at that point the source code had been released into the wild under its original name, "Mozilla". The team of developers working on Mozilla are in some cases the original Netscape team, with the additional benefit (depending on who you ask) of a slew of contribitors.
Mozilla is the name of their full-featured internet suite, much like Netscape had its Communicator edition that bundled email and newsgroups. But for people who just want an internet browser, they offer a trimmed-down version called FireFox (previously Firebird, Phoenix). As to your question:
Does that mean that Mozilla 1.7 will have Firefox 1.0 as it's browser?
The answer is: sort of. The Mozilla "core" includes some things you may have heard about like the Gecko rendering engine. FireFox is based on Mozilla's core, not the other way around. But FireFox is an independant development from Mozilla's internet browser, which is called Sea Monkey.
I know it can get a little confusing. This list of the different Mozilla components combined with this list of the different browsers based off the Mozilla core should put some faces to the names.
Man, I feel like an idiot asking this...
Feel like an idiot if you hadn't asked it.