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Mozilla 1.8 Alpha Released

AllMightyPaul writes "Last Friday, the Mozilla Organization announced Mozilla 1.8a. You can download Mozilla 1.8 alpha (with torrents available) from the Mozilla public FTP server. Features include a basic upload FTP UI, improved junk mail filtering, and the number of cookies that Mozilla can hold has also increased 'dramatically.' What's amazing is that they haven't even released Mozilla 1.7 yet. Here I thought that Mozilla was going to standardize on 1.7."

336 comments

  1. Old news by enodev · · Score: 5, Informative

    But despite standardising 1.7, development of mozilla continues.
    1.7 is about third party developers and products which rely on a fixed api.
    1.8 is where new features will be found.
    New features are for example ftp upload capability, use of 4. and 5. mouse button.
    see http://www.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla1.8a1/READM E.html for details.
    But this news is already 8 days old. I wonder why this is picked up only now.

    1. Re:Old news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Wait. Odd numbers are the stable releases, even numbers are the development versions? That can't be right.

    2. Re:Old news by Gerv · · Score: 5, Informative

      Odd numbers are the stable releases, even numbers are the development versions?

      Mozilla doesn't use an odd/even scheme. We just designate particular releases and branches, such as 1.7 as stable. Previous releases with this designation were 1.0 and 1.4.

      Gerv

    3. Re:Old news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, odd numbers are the bloated versions and even numbers are the flaky ones. Or is that the other way round?

  2. What everyone is interested in... by ultrabot · · Score: 1, Interesting

    When does firefox/fire* get renamed "mozilla browser"?

    --
    Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
    1. Re:What everyone is interested in... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When does firefox/fire* get renamed "mozilla browser"?

      It doesn't. Not now, not ever. Firefox is the permanent name.

    2. Re:What everyone is interested in... by CountBrass · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Let's hope the answer is "never". The reason: association with bloat, at least in my mind. Whenever someone mentions Mozilla I think "bloatware".

      And if any of my colleagues mentions they're considering switching (from IE) to Mozilla I stop them and point them at Firebird (which they always love: how fast they cry! How bloat free!).

      There's an expression: You can never be too rich or too thin. For software the corollary is: it can never be too fast or to lightweight.

      --
      Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
    3. Re:What everyone is interested in... by Pflipp · · Score: 1

      Yeah nice, but you just tell me what my upgrade path on Debian is if I just want to have a *newer version* of Mozifoxwhatever that won't crash on half of the Internet's websites.

      Branding? My ass! Said the cow.

      --
      "We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
    4. Re:What everyone is interested in... by mabinogi · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You know, starting FireFox and Thunderbird takes longer in total than starting Mozilla.

      And together they use more memory than Mozilla does, or at least no less memory.

      As far as usage goes there's no perceptible difference in browsing speed between Mozilla and Firebird.

      I think people like to say Mozilla is "bloatware" because it's the trendy thing to do, but I don't think it deserves the title.
      The interface used to be fairly slow in pre 1.0 versions, particularly in the Mail/News component...but that really didn't have a hell of a lot to do with "bloat".
      Now I don't notice any difference between the speed of Mozilla's interface or any other Windows Program.

      --
      Advanced users are users too!
    5. Re:What everyone is interested in... by crayz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah, I always laugh at the bloatware idea. It's funny watching people at work who use IE and have dozens of Windows open, and how long it takes them to open a new one, switch between windows, etc.

      IE is slow compared to Moz. Firefox is probably slightly faster, especially on slow machines, but IMO it's really more about which browser's features you prefer at this point.

    6. Re:What everyone is interested in... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

      You know, starting FireFox and Thunderbird takes longer in total than starting Mozilla.

      Next time I want to start my browser and email at the exact same time, I'll be sure to remember that.

      And together they use more memory than Mozilla does, or at least no less memory.

      Together, they giggle and laugh when you make up statistics about them.

      I think people like to say Mozilla is "bloatware" because it's the trendy thing to do, but I don't think it deserves the title.

      No. People call it "bloatware" because it crams/crammed the functionality of half a dozen applications into one. Now I don't notice any difference between the speed of Mozilla's interface or any other Windows Program.

      I don't blame you! It must be difficult to notice things while you're engaged in sweaty relations with a wooly, herbivorous quadruped.

    7. Re:What everyone is interested in... by CeleronXL · · Score: 3, Informative

      Never. It was the initial plan to rename it to Mozilla Browser, but now they have settled on Mozilla Firefox as the permanent name (it no longer remains simply the codename).

    8. Re:What everyone is interested in... by Jugalator · · Score: 1

      Whenever someone mentions Mozilla I think "bloatware".

      You do know the full name of Firefox is Mozilla Firefox, right? ;-)

      --
      Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
    9. Re:What everyone is interested in... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Let's hope people like you fade away like they deserve.

      Mozilla is a platform for internet. I fully *expect* mozilla to be composed of multiple collaborative applications. Like today. You may call this bloat, but having a single app (single download, single install, single version tracking) that does web + mail + calendar + html editor + irc on every existing platform is required.

      By porting mozilla, any new platform get access to the whole internet suite. This guarantees that Microsoft cannot get a hold on the web by fragmenting the offer.

      That is far most important than all your little my-browser-is-smaller-than-yours pissing contest.

      I would not mind to see the mozilla suite extended to include a blogger, an im client, a pim synchronisation tool or a p2p client.

      Btw, your so-called small browser is waaay too big to be usable on a handheld.

      One size fits all don't work. Do not turn mozilla into what it is not. If all you want is to browse the web, then, by all mean use a standalone web browser (based on mozilla, if you want), but don't divert the mozilla.org resources into fullfilling your personal needs.

      The war for the control of the internet is not irrelevant and Mozilla is the single most important application in that field. Don't divert mozilla resources into a browser war with Microsoft (because they already won it last century).

    10. Re:What everyone is interested in... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Bloatware is defined as cramming unrelated functions into one piece of software, eg. cramming a mail program into a browser.

    11. Re:What everyone is interested in... by jb.hl.com · · Score: 1

      It probably won't.

      Mozilla has spent quite a lot of money getting Firefox/Thunderbird branding and trademarks. I think, after all the name changes in the past, they'll probably want to keep the current name. Which is good: it's a good name and a good logo :)

      --
      By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
    12. Re:What everyone is interested in... by bwy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Whenever someone mentions Mozilla I think "bloatware".

      Maybe, but there are places I will gladly take the bloat of 1.8. For example, my iBook. How OS X has made it so long without including a bi-directional FTP gui, I'll never know. The Finder's support is read only. And I haven't really found a good cost free FTP gui for OS X. So if Mozilla is going to be including FTP upload functionality, this is good news for me.

      The Finder IMHO is the once place that OS X is still lacking. I mean, you can browse and read-write any file system you want using OS X, but FTP is still read only? Go figure.

    13. Re:What everyone is interested in... by byolinux · · Score: 1

      You might like CyberDuck (GPL) or RBrowserLite (no-cost).

    14. Re:What everyone is interested in... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Now I don't notice any difference between the speed of Mozilla's interface or any other Windows Program.

      I forgot to say that I'm running Windows on an old Celeron 300, and Mozilla on an Athlon 64 with 2GB of RAM.

    15. Re:What everyone is interested in... by dnoyeb · · Score: 1

      You don't have to be slow to be bloatware, just "bloated."

      I for one prefer the seperation of browser from email client from news reader.

      When I can get fireThing to work, i will be switching. For me, mozilla (on RH) since 1.2 has been buggy. I always leave it open to pull down my email 24-7. But it always simply stopps getting my mail after a while. NO idea why, but this is on going. It must be bounced to restart which means I have to close any browser window which is open as well. This is annoying when I'm doing some heavy surfing/shopping and want to check if an order was successfully placed...

    16. Re:What everyone is interested in... by BlowChunx · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Mozilla is a platform for internet.

      1) This is not the unix way of doing things. Small individual apps that can be combined in powerful ways.

      2) What is this "internet" thing you talk about? To me it's a moving target. It does the "big three" (browse, mail, chat). What about streaming MP3s? How about P2P? How about unknown protocol-X? I like mozilla as much as the next person (typing in it now...), but the goal is overstated.

      Mozilla should break into separate apps to handle separate tasks.

      Then the desktops should provide a standard way of providing inter-app communication (is that what message bus is attempting?), so that clicking on a link in my e-mail client of choice it sends it to my browser of choice...

    17. Re:What everyone is interested in... by jovlinger · · Score: 1

      ya. like that old sawhorse about democracy:

      moz/thunderbird are the worst imap email clients in the world, appart from all the others.

      They suck; the others just suck more.

      All I want is an imap client which allows me to fsking reset my connection; one that believes me when I tell it that it is out of sync with the server and should purge all cached data and rebuild from scratch.

      Should this be hard?

      For some reason I must be the only one with this complaint because apparently making the client pretty and skinnable is more important.

    18. Re:What everyone is interested in... by Viol8 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      "but having a single app (single download, single install, single version tracking) that does web + mail + calendar + html editor + irc on every existing platform is required."

      Drivel. Its only required if you're some sheep who thinks the monolithic way a-la MS Office is the only way to go.

      "That is far most important than all your little my-browser-is-smaller-than-yours pissing contest"

      NO it isn't. Its a damn site more relevant than a mine-can-do-more-than-yours chest beating contest.

      "mozilla suite extended to include a blogger, an im client, a pim synchronisation tool or a p2p client"

      Oh yes , and bloggers are so useful ... well to egotistical teenagers and 20somethings who kid themselves that they're miserable lives or ideas are of the slightest interest to anyone. But hey , yeah a blogger why not. And why not a word pro to compose all those blogs and hey , maybe a spreadsheet and a presentation manager?

      "the mozilla.org resources into fullfilling your personal needs"

      Oh dear, you called people "resources". You're a just another standard issue manager-in-waiting cog in the machine spouting supposedly trendy buzzwords arn't you.

      "Mozilla is the single most important application in that field."

      Yeah whatever , keep kidding yourself, maybe someone will believe you one day.

    19. Re:What everyone is interested in... by u38cg · · Score: 1

      See ESR's opinions on emacs.

      --
      [FUCK BETA]
    20. Re:What everyone is interested in... by FooBarWidget · · Score: 1

      "1) This is not the unix way of doing things. Small individual apps that can be combined in powerful ways."

      The average user does not care about "the unix way". They want an easy to use and as complete as possible product.
      Attitudes like yours is exactly why Slashdotters will never succeed on desktop debates.

    21. Re:What everyone is interested in... by royalblue_tom · · Score: 1

      Dude - never underestimate the nagging power of the "Can I get it in cornflower blue?" crowd. ;)

    22. Re:What everyone is interested in... by RadGeekAuburn · · Score: 1

      The average user does not care about "the unix way". They want an easy to use and as complete as possible product.

      Of course, this neglects the simple empirical fact that the current dominant web browser on all those desktop systems that don't run Unix is Internet Exploder--which also does not come with a built-in e-mail client, newsreader, chat program, blender, washer and dryer.

      And the most popular e-mail client on those systems (Outlook Express--shudder) does not come with a built-in browser, either.

      The way that Mozilla (suite, not Firefox or Thunderbird) currently does things is neither the Unix way nor the Microsoft way nor anything except the Netscape way. And the sooner the days of the old Netscape suite come to a close, the better.

    23. Re:What everyone is interested in... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Right on! And it should include a full office suite and media player too! Maybe the Mozilla and Open Office and Mplayer groups could merge. That would be great! If not, then maybe Mozilla can add these features on their own. Then I could just install ONE application that would do everything I need and I could update everything at once. And I would hardly ever need to use the start button because I could access everything from one menu. I'm sure a lot of school and business admins would rather just support one app too.

    24. Re:What everyone is interested in... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Agreed. I like the "UNIX way" of doing things, and it can work very easily for this sort of thing.

      The desktops should provide a standard way of providing inter-app communication (is that what message bus is attempting?), so that clicking on a link in my e-mail client of choice it sends it to my browser of choice...

      Although it might be nice, I don't think we really need a desktop standard for this right now. My email client already does what you describe. In a similar fashion, the browser should run the email client when you click a mailto: it's simply "sylpheed --compose [address]". A web browser can allow you to enter the appropriate command to run, or it can have a list of popular email clients to select from (including any that are built-in).

      That kind of simple process invocation is the Right Way to do this. It's trivially simple, and it can do 95% of the things you'd ordinarily want inter-app message processing to do. Or 100% if you extend it a little where appropriate, using pipes and so on. The more complex it gets, the more it needs to be standardized; but the dead simple stuff that everybody uses all the time doesn't require much thought at all.

      That there is no obvious way to configure Firefox to run that command when I click an email link is an inexcusable omission. Even if they are trying to build a all-powerful development platform which will eventually replace every other app, there's no reason they shouldn't play nicely with the rest of the system in the meantime.

    25. Re:What everyone is interested in... by MarcQuadra · · Score: 3, Interesting

      This is not the unix way of doing things.

      Agreed. But it's time to start working towards some unification and integration on desktop apps because the 'UNIX Way' has failed to capture the desktop market.

      Mozilla is OSS, so improvements to any part of it wil ripple through the different products automatically. FireFox, ThunderBird, Mozilla and Camino are all coming from the same base code, and improvement to that code improves all the products. Continuing to develop the 'monolithic' mozilla is vital to the rest of the projects, because the monolithic app showcases and tests the ground for features that may or may not dribble down to the 'birds.

      Thinking about it like 'if you write code for Mozilla, you DIDN'T write for FireFox" is backwards, if you improved Mozilla you improved ALL of the mozilla.org offerings.

      If you add code to Mozilla that does AOL mail or AIM protocol, that would be fscking AWESOME! Someone else will modularize it and make it a plugin for FireFox later, and we'll have a better offering, and it won't be shoved down anyone's throat.

      Personally, I just moved from Mozilla (for mail and web) to FireFox and ThunderBird, I'm not at all impressed. I saved a few MB of RAM, but overall I was happier with the monolithic app. I switched so that I could file bugs and make the new apps better.

      --
      "Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
    26. Re:What everyone is interested in... by Bombcar · · Score: 1

      this neglects the simple empirical fact that the current dominant web browser on all those desktop systems that don't run Unix is Internet Exploder--which also does not come with a built-in e-mail client, newsreader, chat program, blender, washer and dryer.

      What? Internet Exploder comes with a whole damn OS!

      And try to run Lookout express after removing IE (if you even can!)

    27. Re:What everyone is interested in... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      This is not the unix way of doing things. Small individual apps that can be combined in powerful ways.


      Have you used firefox/thunderbird? No, really tried to *use* them. Have you stopped for even a second to verify the propoganda that mozilla is "bloat" in comparison? As best I can see, firefox+thunderbird is *larger* than mozilla, requires almost twice as much memory (2 copies of all staticly-linked objects in memory), isn't any faster at all, and don't integrate with each other very well. Firefox and thunderduck are neither small nor can they be combined powerfully.



      Mozilla should break into separate apps to handle separate tasks.
      ...and be a better product by doing so.

    28. Re:What everyone is interested in... by RadGeekAuburn · · Score: 1

      What? Internet Exploder comes with a whole damn OS!

      Given the degree to which Internet Exploder is entangled with the operating system, this is a perfectly reasonable thing to say from the standpoint of system architecture. But it misses the essential point--which was not about system architecture, but rather about user experience.

      FooBarWidget's argument was about what "the average user wants"; s/he said that this anonymous user 'does not care about "the unix way". They want an easy to use and as complete as possible product.' That's not a point about how browsers and e-mail clients are programmed but rather about how people use them. The claim seems to be that people expect, and want, a web browser and an e-mail client that are (as in the Mozilla suite) treated as two aspects of a larger program. But that is not how the "average user" actually uses e-mail and web browsing; the average user actually uses two separate programs (IE and OE).

      That's the only point being urged here. Debates about the best way to program browsers and e-mail clients are usually not very well resolved by what the "average user" wants, since they tend (with good reason!) to be indifferent to system internals.

    29. Re:What everyone is interested in... by Sivaram_Velauthapill · · Score: 1

      Firefox loads up much faster than Mozilla. The difference is very large so I'm not sure what your problem is.

      hmm... or do you mean to say... that firefox AND thunderbird take longer (together)? I don't know about that case since I don't use thunderbird.

      --
      Sivaram Velauthapillai
      Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places ;)
    30. Re:What everyone is interested in... by FooBarWidget · · Score: 1

      That's only because Internet Explorer and Outlook Express is already shipped with Windows. To the end user, it *is* a complete Internet suit.

    31. Re:What everyone is interested in... by Tyrell+Hawthorne · · Score: 1

      1) This is not the unix way of doing things. Small individual apps that can be combined in powerful ways.

      ImageMagick is great. So is The Gimp. I'd say ImageMagick is more the unix way of doing things, but there is still definitely a place for The Gimp.

      Mozilla should break into separate apps to handle separate tasks.

      That sounds like a great idea! I seem to remember reading that the other parts (chat) were being made into separate apps as well, but a quick googling showed nothing.

    32. Re:What everyone is interested in... by synopsis5 · · Score: 1

      >>Mozilla is OSS, so improvements to any part of it wil ripple through the different products
      >>automatically. FireFox, ThunderBird, Mozilla and Camino are all coming from the same base
      >>code, and improvement to that code improves all the products. Continuing to develop
      >>the 'monolithic' mozilla is vital to the rest of the projects, because the monolithic app
      >>showcases and tests the ground for features that may or may not dribble down to the 'birds.

      You have no idea what you are talking about. The monolithic mozilla application suite is in maintenance mode now. New features all go into the new apps like Firefox and Thunderbird.

      What you probably mean with the "monolithic mozilla" is the mozilla backend code (e.g. the layout rendering engine aka Gecko or the networking code aka Necko to name a few). The backend code is still improved continously but it is totally independent from the monolithic Mozilla Application Suite aka Seamonkey. If the mozilla foundation and the mozilla hackers wanted they could abandon the suite today. They won't because there are still some hackers interested in the suite as are some companies who have deployed the suite.

    33. Re:What everyone is interested in... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm the original poster. Let's talk.

      >> "but having a single app (single download, single install, single version tracking) that does web + mail + calendar + html editor + irc on every existing platform is required."

      > Drivel. Its only required if you're some sheep who thinks the monolithic way a-la MS Office is the only way to go.

      Not a very pertinent argument. You don't know who I am, but I can tell you that

      1/ I truely hate Microsoft since 1986 (having done tons of DOS assembly programming)
      2/ I never said that a monolithic app was the only way to go. I said that *mozilla* is a monolithic app. Firefox is not. It does not make mozilla better or worse. They are *different*. I objected to the idea of *breaking* mozilla to concentrate on the browser part of it.

      >> "That is far most important than all your little my-browser-is-smaller-than-yours pissing contest"

      > NO it isn't. Its a damn site more relevant than a mine-can-do-more-than-yours chest beating contest.

      Could not parse this sentence.

      >> "mozilla suite extended to include a blogger, an im client, a pim synchronisation tool or a p2p client"

      > Oh yes , and bloggers are so useful ... well to egotistical teenagers and 20somethings who kid themselves that they're miserable lives or ideas are of the slightest interest to anyone. But hey , yeah a blogger why not. And why not a word pro to compose all those blogs and hey , maybe a spreadsheet and a presentation manager?

      How funny it is to quote out-of context. I did not said I want those apps, I said I wouldn't mind if mozilla included those. For the record, I have never even seen a blogger app, and I could not care less about them. But, if it is an important component of current internet usage, than I would *not* object having it folded into the mozilla suite.

      > > "the mozilla.org resources into fullfilling your personal needs"

      > Oh dear, you called people "resources". You're a just another standard issue manager-in-waiting cog in the machine spouting supposedly trendy buzzwords arn't you.

      First, I am not a 'manager-in-waiting' (hint the 'in-waiting' part is wrong).
      Second, resources means more than people. It means bug database, internet bandwidth, marketing (ie: mindshare), etc, etc...

      > > "Mozilla is the single most important application in that field."

      > Yeah whatever , keep kidding yourself, maybe someone will believe you one day.

      I recall telling that in the late 90's on slashdot itself while I was using M11 milestone (and, boy, it did crash and crash and crash).

      People continuesly said that mozilla was irrelevant, bloated, would never work, was a major failure, was useless.

      I recall fighting people just like you, telling them that mozilla was the only way to save the web from an IE only access. You may disagree, but I really beleived that, if mozilla haven't been the success it is, today, the web would be IE only (and, konqueror/opera wouldn't have been able to resit without netscape 6, apple would had no way to make safari so would have kept IE, etc, etc).

      I stand on my position. Mozilla is the single most important app today in the 'internet' field. Mozilla is not a /web-browser/.

    34. Re:What everyone is interested in... by phrasebook · · Score: 1

      What crowd? When was there ever a crowd that demanded something be skinnable? Skins are a crime against all humanity.

    35. Re:What everyone is interested in... by plover · · Score: 1
      Actually, skins are valuable to a large number of people with disabilities. Some people have a hard time seeing contrast with the default shades of grey. Some people need black and white color schemes; some need to have many default colors adjusted before some of these pages are viewable to them. And some mobility-impaired people need extremely large buttons to make it easier to click on the important ones.

      Personally, I like the "pinball" skin because it makes the buttons smaller, leaving more pixels available for the web page itself. The fact that it does it with style doesn't displease me, either. But I know I could do perfectly well without the skins. Sometimes it's hard to remember the people who can't.

      --
      John
    36. Re:What everyone is interested in... by RadGeekAuburn · · Score: 1

      This is silly. The reason that Mozilla suite is usually referred to as a "complete Internet suite" (and thus unlike separate applications such as Firefox and Thunderbird) is the way that the web browser, mail reader, IRC client, etc. are all bundled together in the interface. If all that you mean by "complete Internet suite" is the fact that they are packaged together in one download (or, in the case of IE/OE, without having to download anything), then this has nothing at all to do with any design decision that goes into the software whatsoever; it has to do with how downloads are packaged.

      If you think the "average user" cares an awful lot about that, then why not just produce a ZIP archive with the Firefox and the Thunderbird install packages together in it? Or a CD-ROM that has them both on it? (Oh, wait, Mozilla already does that.)

    37. Re:What everyone is interested in... by chris_mahan · · Score: 1

      at 80Megs, it's using, oh, 12% of available ram...

      Buy more memory, no?

      --

      "Piter, too, is dead."

    38. Re:What everyone is interested in... by phrasebook · · Score: 1

      Colours and button/text sizes don't have anything to do with an application being skinnable... those can be provided by the host OS eg. Windows display properties, or gtk/qt options etc. The problem is Mozilla's non-standard, slowish UI that doesn't fit as well as it could on ANY platform, and the only reasons for it are to not have to write platform-specific UI code presumably, and to make it skinnable eg. new pixmaps for 4/5 buttons on the toolbar. It's naff, and has naught to do with accessibility.

  3. Happy :-) by Killjoy_NL · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm just glad that they will develop the Mozilla package next to the firefox/etc packages.

    I use the Mozilla package at home and Firefox at work (since I have to use Outlook here).

    They haven't let me down yet.

    --
    This is the sig that says NI (again)
    1. Re:Happy :-) by floe · · Score: 1

      "I use the Mozilla package at home and Firefox at work (since I have to use Outlook here)."

      Why don't you replace Outlook with thunderbird? I have done so at my office, even though they are running exchange **horror**

    2. Re:Happy :-) by Killjoy_NL · · Score: 1

      heh, company policy etc, standardization. It took a LONG time and some HARD debating to allow me to use Firefox.

      --
      This is the sig that says NI (again)
    3. Re:Happy :-) by spacefight · · Score: 1

      And how do you connect to Exchange with tb?

    4. Re:Happy :-) by floe · · Score: 1

      You can treat and exchange server as a normal IMAP, POP OR SMTP server unless it uses microsoft proprietary authentication... Which luckily ours doesn't. I've heard that tb 0.6 supports SPA (aka NTLM) for POP/IMAP/SMTP so i guess the only problem that remains is to import your data from outlook which works well but needs a bit of tweaking... But the effort is nothing compared to the rewards :)

    5. Re:Happy :-) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you serious? Your company really mandates what browser is used!?

    6. Re:Happy :-) by mabinogi · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Actually, the Exchange server has to have IMAP or POP access turned on.
      The standard Exchange protocol is not something Thunderbird (or Mozilla) can handle, and NTLM authentication wont help that.

      There's also the fact that both Mozilla and Thunderbird cant use all the groupware features of Exchange, so it'd have to be mail only.

      The result is, sometimes it's just easier to go with the flow and use Outlook. It's not actually all that bad if you're using a current version, and fiddle with some of the settings a bit. (Though I'll never like their "sort by conversation" approach to threading)

      --
      Advanced users are users too!
    7. Re:Happy :-) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I would be interested in the arguments and debates.

      Is there some place on the web where the arguments are laid out in a formal way?

      []

    8. Re:Happy :-) by beachplum · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I feel your joy. I use both also, because FireFox is my favorite browser ever, but it knocked out Acrobat Reader on my one user profile (Yes, I am a dorky XP user). However, Mozilla gets along fine with Reader, and that is great, becasue I need Reader for my job and I like food.

    9. Re:Happy :-) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I mandate that my parents use Firefox. Why would it be strange that a company does so with their employees?

      If they've got IE secure, locked down, and it works for them, why not keep users from using other browsers and possibly causing problems?

    10. Re:Happy :-) by IncohereD · · Score: 1

      Are you serious? Your company really mandates what browser is used!?

      What generally happens is they don't give most people admin or power user access so they can't install anything. So if you want a new browser installed, you have to request it. And unless it's on an approved list or its something you can prove you need for your job, IT will tell you to fuck off.

    11. Re:Happy :-) by pixelbeat · · Score: 1

      That's questionable now since firefox/thunderbird
      have just forked

  4. Firefox by tfbastard · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I wonder when, if at all, we'll see these new features trickle down to firefox?

    1. Re:Firefox by stokkie · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I hope only as optional plug-in's. Want to keep my browser as light as possible.

    2. Re:Firefox by stiggle · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Thunderbird and Firefox are the standalone programs for mail and browsing.
      The Mozilla Suite is a platform that does everything (except the laundry - but they're probably working on that too) which the other standalone programs use as their base.

      I always thought of Mozilla as the technology demontrator platform and the other programs as the bits that are useful.

    3. Re:Firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Currently the Mozilla Suite is a single monolithic app, but the plan is (at least last time I checked) that when Firefox and Thunderbird hit 1.0 to spin a second suite in the sense that it would be integrated and available as a single download but not monolithic. Sort of like with Star Office previous to the release of the new Open Office code, both are suites but the later is also a set of independent apps (and doesn't suck ass while trying to create a pseudo-desktop). Firefox would then be labeled Mozilla Browser and Thunderbird Mozilla Mail.

      I'm of the opinion that Firefox/Thunderbird will win more users because, frankly, they look better. Heck, the only reasons I switched from Mozilla's mail client to Thunderbird is because of the kick-ass new logo on the greeting pane. Everything from the horrible splash screen to the icons in plain old Mozilla pushes users away.

    4. Re:Firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Rarely have I seen developers so resitant to change as on the Mozilla bugzilla forums. It seems the core developers fight every little attempt to improve the interface, fought the new website (and thankfully lost), fought adding a new splash screen (and apparently threw in that nice new orange "thing" as a big "fuck you" to everyone who posted on that thread). Hell, If I was running the show every new release would have a new splash screen ala the GIMP. Because, really, who gives a shit about some minor bugfixes, but the GIMP splashscreens rock and are genuinely funny in the beta builds, so people upgrade anyway, the builds get more testing and everyone is happy.

      Basically, everything should be open for change. Every UI pixel spacing issue should be open for improvement, every 1px border in the interface needs to be justified. All text that is presented to the user needs to be constantly reviewed for easy of use, and so on... Of course, these things are only essential if you care at all about people actually using your software... The Thunderbird logo will convert more users than any single feature X you can name. If you can't see that you really don't understand the end user market and their need to download spyware infested wallpaper changers.

    5. Re:Firefox by madprof · · Score: 1

      I give a shit about minor bugfixes and splash screens are a total waste of my time. Who cares about pointless crap like splash screens?

    6. Re:Firefox by A.+Pizmo+Clam · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I give a shit about minor bugfixes and splash screens are a total waste of my time. Who cares about pointless crap like splash screens?

      Splash screens: minor but annoying problem.

      Closed, disdainful developer culture: major problem.

      Mozilla has other problems too.

      * Mixed messages: is FireBirdFoxWhatever going to replace the big Mo' or what?

      * Branding clumsiness: the standalone browser has gone through how many name changes?

      * Little support/documentation for non-Mozilla developers intersted in Mozilla as a platform: there are a reasons why no one uses XUL, and very few of them are technical.

      These are all serious problems. The splash screen thing is only the most prominent symptom.

      --

      Thank you for your support.
    7. Re:Firefox by jonasj · · Score: 5, Informative

      I thought Firefox was scheduled to be *the* browser in the suite [...] How does that work if Firefox is on a branch and the suite ploughs ahead?

      Firefox is only on a branch for 0.9 and 1.0. That's no different from how Mozilla 1.7 is on a branch. Future versions of Firefox will be built from the trunk (or, more likely, from a more recent branch from the trunk), and thus will contain all the backend work that's been going on since 1.7 branched.

      Of course, you're welcome to download the trunk builds of Firefox (which are being made available daily) -- you'll get the same backend fixes that 1.8 Alpha1 has, but it won't be anywhere near as stable as the branch builds.

      I hope bugfixes [...] are consistantly and promptly backported to 1.7 (and thus to Firefox)

      Actually Firefox is on its own branch now, based off the 1.7 branch. And no, not all fixes will be backported, that's the whole point of having a branch. And the bug you mentioned isn't even fixed yet.

      or the impetus could be there to reverse the flow back to the suite

      That doesn't make sense. If you wanted the bug fixes that 1.8 had, you could just get a 1.8 build of Firefox instead of the one from Firefox' 1.0 branch. No reason to switch back to the suite.

      --
      You know, Microsoft's street address also says a lot about their mentality.
    8. Re:Firefox by Gerv · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It seems the core developers fight every little attempt to improve the interface

      - Not everyone has the same definition of "improve"
      - The suite is now in maintenance mode, and so there will be no big UI changes

      If I was running the show every new release would have a new splash screen ala the GIMP

      This sounds like a great way to get people to spend their time arguing instead of hacking.

      Gerv

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

      - Not everyone has the same definition of "improve"

      Of course not, but right now the developers are just pussyfooting around making tweaks to subsystems nobody cares about, not fixing basic UI mistakes (basically every error message dialog in the program, all of the preferences, etc.) and nobody has the balls to draw the plans for Mozilla 2.0. Forget "we'll reach 2.0 when the API changes", nobody cares about that. Watching the progress from 1.4 to 1.8 is about as exiciting as watching paint dry. Mozilla 2.0 could be in testing by the end of the year if we wanted to with two features people would actually care about:
      - A better look
      - Automatic self-updating

      That's all it takes to spin a 2.0, nothing more. What, you're afraid to run out of integers or something? To the general public 2.0 <8 1.x, it also gets Mozilla a new fresh round of much needed media coverage.

      - The suite is now in maintenance mode, and so there will be no big UI changes

      Why? Who decided that? Why can't obvious UI mistakes be fixed? Also, there is no plan to leave maintenance mode at the moment, so we're caught in a state of limbo. It's crazy to be in maintenance mode when the marketshare is, what, 2-3%? We need to be reworking the browser now and not when we reach critical mass.

      This sounds like a great way to get people to spend their time arguing instead of hacking.

      Sounds like an excellent opportunity to get the non-coding community involved with Mozilla. Heck, you could hold "Vote for Mozilla 1.X splash screen" sessions at Mozillazine. Anything to get people passioned about the project, and donating to the foundation.

      If a the new versions don't look any better than the previous ones, there's nothing for the users to get excited about.

    10. Re:Firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Not everyone has the same definition of "improve"

      That's why you don't leave the choice up to the developers, you get some interface experts to look at it. I'll even take the community arm-chair interface commentators (Eugenia Loli-Queru, *cough* ;) over some bitter Mozilla developer who holds emacs as the ultimate program and doesn't want to the unwashed masses to be messing with their baby. I *like* Mozilla and follow the development, and I can't off the top of my head come up with a single worthwhile new feature since we got typeahead.
    11. Re:Firefox by Gerv · · Score: 4, Informative

      Why? Who decided that? Why can't obvious UI mistakes be fixed?

      Not everyone has the same definition of "obvious UI mistake". Same point as last time. :-)

      nobody has the balls to draw the plans for Mozilla 2.0.

      Says who? Just because we haven't reached the stage where it's appropriate to publish them doesn't mean they aren't being looked at.

      That's all it takes to spin a 2.0, nothing more.

      You've got it all backwards. You don't pick a version number first and a set of features second. We are not thinking "goodness me, what can we do so that it looks sensible calling it 2.0?", we are thinking "what's the next big step in Mozilla's evolution?" and, incidentally, deciding to call it Mozilla 2.0.

      it also gets Mozilla a new fresh round of much needed media coverage.

      Who says the Mozilla suite needs media coverage? It's certainly not obviously true. One could argue that we should spend all our effort getting media coverage for Firefox and Thunderbird.

      Also, there is no plan to leave maintenance mode at the moment

      No, and that's the point. That's what maintenance mode is. Seamonkey is still around because some people care about it, but they care about it being like it is now. Any massive marketshare increase we get will be driven by Firefox, not by Seamonkey.

      Heck, you could hold "Vote for Mozilla 1.X splash screen" sessions at Mozillazine.

      A vote is (well, was originally, it's now mostly inertia) the reason the suite is stuck with that current weird throbber. Votes, in general, suck as a way of choosing anything. Open Source projects are (mostly) not democracies.

      If you want to be listened to, come out from behind that cowardly anonymity and engage in constructive discussion.

      Gerv

    12. Re:Firefox by Gerv · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Your comment talks about two totally different things - user interface design and new features - which are very different. You can make a lot of changes ("improvements" is a loaded word I'm trying to avoid) to a product's UI without changing the feature set, and you can often add features without changing the UI.

      So how is "Mozilla developers aren't taking any UI patches" related to "there hasn't been a worthwhile new feature for ages"?

      Also, why are you looking to Seamonkey for new features? The suite is in maintenance mode - there are still people and companies interested in it, but they are interested in it staying as it is. Firefox is where the innovation is happening right now.

      Gerv

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

      The goal of the firefox developers for 0.9 and especially for 1.0 is supreme stability.

      Of course important bugfixes are and will be back-ported. After 1.0 Firefox development will again follow the Mozilla trunk and it will pickup all the fixes which went into the trunk.

      You can also download daily builds from the trunk if you want the latest and greatest trunk fixes, but be aware that these builds may have regressions and are not as stable as the branch builds.

    14. Re:Firefox by takkaria · · Score: 1

      You'd rather not have "Find" look in textareas as well as body text? You'd rather not have better CSS support? And don't forget all the rendering improvements, bugfixes, etc.

      See the changelog.

    15. Re:Firefox by stokkie · · Score: 1

      There is a slight difference in fixes and features.

  5. Middle mouse click on MacOSX by GreatDrok · · Score: 2, Informative

    It doesn't mention whether the middle mouse button can be made to open a tab as it does under Safari. That really is the one thing that keeps me coming back to Safari for my general browsing. Some sites work best with Mozilla and I have 1.7rc2 installed for that (they just fixed a problem with large images that wouldn't display on previous versions) but still no middle mouse click. I have to do left + CMD combination. Yuk.

    --
    "I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
    1. Re:Middle mouse click on MacOSX by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I use mozilla 1.4 and I am perfectly happy with it. Middle click opens a new tab, too ;)

    2. Re:Middle mouse click on MacOSX by Suburbanpride · · Score: 1

      out of the box, the side buttons on my Kingsinton 5 button map to forawrd/back under Firefox and good old Mozilla 1.6. I'm not what other things i want my mouse to do. I'm happy with cmd-t to open new tabs, since when i wnat a new tab, I am going to want to type in a url.

      --
      sorry 'bout the mess...
    3. Re:Middle mouse click on MacOSX by martingunnarsson · · Score: 4, Funny

      My mac mouse only has one button you insensitive clod!

      --
      Martin
    4. Re:Middle mouse click on MacOSX by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wait, where'd you get a middle mouse button on a Mac?

      (Seriously, I've been using this behavior with Mozilla variants on UNIX since before Safari was announced, so if they've removed it since Phoenix 0.5, it's a regression, and otherwise it's an option you'll have to find in the constantly-refactored configuration menus.)

      What I miss is the "noun verb" ctrl-enter-after-entering-URL-for-new-tab that seems to have gone missing in Phoenix/Fire*... because they slid to Alt for no obvious reason.

    5. Re:Middle mouse click on MacOSX by enodev · · Score: 1

      At least with Linux and Windows it's working fine. I thought Macs' just have one button?!
      And bugzilla also has "Zarro Boogs" about this. Perhaps it's time to file a report or re-check your preferences?

    6. Re:Middle mouse click on MacOSX by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      So it should be by definition the middle mouse button, right?

    7. Re:Middle mouse click on MacOSX by Pflipp · · Score: 5, Funny

      Well, is it in the middle?

      --
      "We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
    8. Re:Middle mouse click on MacOSX by jeorgen · · Score: 1, Redundant
      My mac mouse only has one button you insensitive clod!

      Aaah, but then that is your middle mouse button.

      /jeorgen

    9. Re:Middle mouse click on MacOSX by cyfer2000 · · Score: 1

      use the apple key together with click works for me.

      --
      There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
  6. yet more bloat by CountBrass · · Score: 2, Insightful

    One of the reasons I stopped using Mozilla was the bloat. I do not need one tool that does: web browsing, email, usenet, html editing and, now, ftp upload.

    One of the perennial criticisms of MS software is the bloat. Is bloatware some how ok if it's open source? Of course it isn't.

    Adding yet another piece of unnecessary functionality to Mozilla makes it less, not more, attractive.

    --
    Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
    1. Re:yet more bloat by vivek7006 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What you call as "bloat" are useful features for other users. If you dont like/use these features, use firefox.

    2. Re:yet more bloat by CoolCat · · Score: 1

      One of the perennial criticisms of MS software is the bloat. Is bloatware some how ok if it's open source? Of course it isn't.

      Amen to that brother.

    3. Re:yet more bloat by ciupman · · Score: 1

      yeah .. and all those 10 seconds extra loading time is worth it

      --
      I fuse with Mercer every single day...
    4. Re:yet more bloat by eyeye · · Score: 1

      Out of curiosity what software do you use for Web and email?

      IE is massively bloated and includes FTP functionality.

      outlook express has usenet functionality

      Opera has usenet/email functionality.

      So what software are you using that ONLY does one thing?

      --
      Bush and Blair ate my sig!
    5. Re:yet more bloat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think most people care about "bloat", or at least they care about it less than software that does what they want. Strategy Letter IV: Bloatware and the 80/20 Myth Joel on Software - Bloatware and the 80/20 Myth

    6. Re:yet more bloat by dylan_- · · Score: 1

      I use "true"! (tried "false" but it kept failing...)

      --
      Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
    7. Re:yet more bloat by CommandNotFound · · Score: 1

      One of the reasons I stopped using Mozilla was the bloat. I do not need one tool that does: web browsing, email, usenet, html editing and, now, ftp upload.

      You can select browser only during the install, and this only loads the browser and html editor, and the email and other clients are not installed. I've run Moz like this for years, because I use other mail clients.

    8. Re:yet more bloat by yRabbit · · Score: 1

      Or if you prefer Mozilla over Firefox, don't install the extra features. Use the net installer and don't even download the extra features.

    9. Re:yet more bloat by CGP314 · · Score: 1

      Indeed. Hell, the HTML editor is the only thing I use Mozilla for.


      -Colin

    10. Re:yet more bloat by Nutria · · Score: 0
      One of the reasons I stopped using Mozilla was the bloat. I do not need one tool that does: web browsing, email, usenet, html editing and, now, ftp upload. One of the perennial criticisms of MS software is the bloat. Is bloatware some how ok if it's open source? Of course it isn't. Adding yet another piece of unnecessary functionality to Mozilla makes it less, not more, attractive.

      If you used Debian/Knoppix/Libranet, you could just install mozilla-browser as opposed to mozilla-mailnews.

      After looking at the RSS of both firefox & mozilla-browser, after many hours of surfing, with many open windows, I find that the amount of memory used by ff is almost the same a mozilla, and I like Mozilla's feature-set (even though it's currently using 305MB RAM).

      --
      "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
  7. Mozilla needs more speed and by Adolph_Hitler · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Mozilla needs more speed and less power.

    Currently Mozilla is the most powerful browing suite on earth. Problem is people don't care about all those features, we just want speed. So developers what do you plan to do to make XUL faster? How do you plan to reduce the memory footprint? How about reducing CPU load? What about actually speeding up the rendering of websites ?

    And if you are going to add new features, try intergrating bit torrent into mozilla since it seems to be the new default download format why the hell are you upgrading FTP?

    --
    People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
    1. Re:Mozilla needs more speed and by krumms · · Score: 1

      Personally, I'd love some decent FTP support in Mozilla.

      gftp does an *okay* job, but there's not a lot else out there.

    2. Re:Mozilla needs more speed and by greenreaper · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Because they are implementing FTP upload. Read the darn post. And it may be the new "default download format" for people trading warez, moviez, anime and possibly linux distros, but I certainly use FTP way more than I do BT, because I actually upload stuff to a site where people see it, not leech off others. :-)

    3. Re:Mozilla needs more speed and by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Pfft, /bin/ftp is all I need.

    4. Re:Mozilla needs more speed and by samhalliday · · Score: 1
      it may be the new "default download format" for people trading warez, moviez, anime and possibly linux distros

      and for downloading mozilla... you insensitive clod!

    5. Re:Mozilla needs more speed and by greenreaper · · Score: 1

      It's open-source . . . that's practically warez to start with! Besides, I use optimized firebird trunk builds, and it's not really convenient to get them by BT. :-)

    6. Re:Mozilla needs more speed and by 42forty-two42 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Bittorrent does not cover the same needs as ftp. Bittorrent is good for serving to many users simeltaneously, but needs a seperate client (and the client would not be able to use the same download interface as the rest of mozilla, due to seeding mode). FTP is good for uploading to a web site, or downloading without a seperate client which people might not be familiar with. Also, it does not require a seeder at all times to maintain the swarm.

    7. Re:Mozilla needs more speed and by Tin+Foil+Hat · · Score: 1

      Um...

      How the hell am I supposed to upload files to my web server with bittorrent? Don't get me wrong, bittorrent is great software: I use it and I love it, but it is not and can never be FTP.

      And BTW, Mozilla uses btdownloadgui.py just fine. I would welcome further integration, but really, there's no need.

      --
      No matter how many of my rights are taken away, somehow I still don't feel safe. -Frigid Monkey
    8. Re:Mozilla needs more speed and by anonicon · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "Mozilla needs more speed and less power."

      Opinions and assholes, everybody has one. I disagree with yours.

      "Currently Mozilla is the most powerful browing suite on earth. Problem is people don't care about all those features, we just want speed"

      While you're right about Mozilla, your second sentence is straight from CrackLand. If everyone is clammering for few-feature, speedy-browsing, why isn't Lynx the #1 browser? It dusts *everything*. I happen to love the fact that Moz comes with so many tools. So do the ~10 people whose PCs I've installed it on.

      So developers what do you plan to do to make XUL faster? How do you plan to reduce the memory footprint? How about reducing CPU load? What about actually speeding up the rendering of websites ?

      Websites render super lickety-fast on my cable modem, even non-standards compliant ones. As for the rest, I'll assume they're working on it, but why not help out and send them some money so that they can spend more time doing it? Heck, I'll make it easy, click this link.

      "And if you are going to add new features, try intergrating bit torrent into mozilla since it seems to be the new default download format why the hell are you upgrading FTP?"

      I always appreciate better FTP and HTTP transfer performance. As for bit torrent, it may be growing in popularity, and it would be nice if support for it was built into Mozilla, but 95% of my non-p2p downloads and download GB are via http or ftp. Bit Torrent is barely on that radar.

      Peace,
      Chuck

    9. Re:Mozilla needs more speed and by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Insightful
      What I want to know is, why the hell is Mozilla married to its own slow-ass widget set? I know there are assorted versions of the browser which use native OS widgets, and are as such much much faster in some ways than normal netscape, especially on lower-end (P2, P3, Celeron) systems. I know that using your own widget sets makes things a lot easier, and gives you skinning support, but I'd rather have speed - but I still want the whole browser suite.

      There are numerous cross-platform applications out there which support multiple native widget sets, at least Windows, and "everything else". Tivoli's TME10 system (I haven't seen it since they renamed it) had a management console application using a common codebase, built with gcc on Unix and with VS on Windows, which used I believe Motif on Unix systems and used the Windows widgets. All Tivoli GUIs are drawn based on a description file which instructs the system on which components to use where.

      Now granted you'd have to end up having some library which was replaced system by system, but this is something I think Mozilla could really use. You could argue that faster machines run it smoothly (my XP 2500+ rarely slows down because of the mozilla gui, but it certainly does draw visibly slower under load) but there are many of Pentium 2 and 3 systems out there in the 333 to 733 MHz range under which Mozilla performs like an absolute dog but Microsoft Orifice 2000 is not only usable, but also prompt.

      I don't think including new features necessarily must make Mozilla consume more memory or operate more slowly, as long as they either A> are built on top of the framework like everything else and thus not loaded when not needed, or B> are dynamically loaded at the time of use, which probably isn't happening today.

      As for bt > FTP, this is nonsense. Integrating BT would be neat but is unnecessary and the bt code available today is very much in its infancy. Besides, all you have to do is associate torrent files with your bt client and you're in like flynn. That wasn't so hard, was it? FTP is here to stay. It is used heavily by many websites and ftp support is just considered to be part of the system. FTP upload support in a web browser is often really handy for those who use Mozilla to edit and maintain their websites for whatever reason - Maybe they can't afford Dreamweaver, or maybe it's just not available for their platform, or maybe they don't think it's worth whatever the hell Macromedia charges for it these days. Regardless, FTP upload support is not unreasonable. Integrating the moving target of bittorrent (even the main branch of bt is horrendously unstable) at this point would be maintenance suicide.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    10. Re:Mozilla needs more speed and by Gerv · · Score: 3, Insightful

      why the hell is Mozilla married to its own slow-ass widget set?

      a) Justify "slow-ass" with figures.
      b) Let's see you render an animated GIF background on a button using the Motif widget set.

      Any browser which wants to support a decent part of CSS needs its own widgets, because OS widgets just don't cut it. IE does it too - and they have access to the underlying platform development team, _and_ only have to support one platform!

      Gerv

    11. Re:Mozilla needs more speed and by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      I'm not talking about buttons on web pages. Web pages are slow enough (what with communicating to some server out in the world somewhere) to where that's irrelevant. I'm talking about window decorations, dialogs, and menus.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    12. Re:Mozilla needs more speed and by Sleepy · · Score: 1

      And if you are going to add new features, try intergrating bit torrent into mozilla since it seems to be the new default download format why the hell are you upgrading FTP?

      Because it is the second most common protocol link found in web pages?

      BitTorrent is complex, and, as I found out when getting Fedora CD's... most GUI Bit Torrent clients suck. The model for a BT client is much more difficult to express, and no one's done it (case in point: autodetection of your upload cap, and smarter traffic shaping).

      You might as well ask Mozilla to embed a media player.

      Now, it would be NICE if things were different in the world, and they could move on to SFTP & SCP instead. Thanks to Microsoft's lax attitude towards security, no Windows OS ships with a SSH client, and gets lots of folks relying on Telnet and Ftp.

      Anyways, it's hard to take your post seriously when your login handle name marks you as a total asshole.

    13. Re:Mozilla needs more speed and by Minna+Kirai · · Score: 1

      I'm not talking about buttons on web pages.

      I think she meant specifically the button in the upper-right of a browser window which animates as you wait for the page to download. Normally the animation includes a globe and a letter like N, e, or M. (Called a "throbber" in web-professional talk)

      However, that's still a red-herring, because there's no reason it really needs to animate at all- or even be a button.

    14. Re:Mozilla needs more speed and by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My parents' 400mhz comp runs Firefox faster than it runs IE. They commented to me about how something I did "made the internet faster". Mozilla is the bloated monolithic branch, Firefox is the svelte younger brother.

    15. Re:Mozilla needs more speed and by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful
      b) Let's see you render an animated GIF background on a button using the Motif widget set.

      That's the best argument I've ever heard for the superiority of the Motif widget set.

      What kind of an idiot would put an animated background...anywhere, much less on a button? Why the hell do I want my browser to support that?

    16. Re:Mozilla needs more speed and by Gerv · · Score: 2

      It was an example.

      There are loads of things you need to be able to do to support CSS that the available cross-platform toolkits couldn't do when the project began, and still can't do.

      Gerv

    17. Re:Mozilla needs more speed and by Gerv · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If you need your own widget set to do the web page form controls, why not use it for the UI? Otherwise you need _two_ widget sets.

      Anyway, if you want some other set to be used round the outside, use Camino, Galeon, Ephiphany, K-Meleon or any of the other Gecko-based browsers.

      But I personally don't choose software based on which widget set it uses...

      Gerv

    18. Re:Mozilla needs more speed and by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Otherwise you need _two_ widget sets.

      Eh? If you're using an operating system (as opposed to a 'distribution') then you already have a widget set. I'm running Windows so I've already got one of them. It's called the standard Windows common controls. You know, the controls used to make regular, fast, responsive Windows programs? If you want to put your own widget to render the page itself, fine. Nothing new there. People have been making widgets for a long time. But for menus, toolbars, dialog boxes - stick to the standard stuff!

      But I personally don't choose software based on which widget set it uses...

      You're a Mozilla developer, so your opinion on widget sets frankly doesn't count. You'll never be a regular user and are incapable of having a balanced viewpoint. From your comments you've shown yourself to be far too technical a user. You're too involved!

      If this is the best you can do for justifying Mozilla's slow, gawky interface (and no, I do not need to show you numbers to prove that it is slower - you know perfectly well that it is, grow up) then that ain't very impressive!

    19. Re:Mozilla needs more speed and by Gerv · · Score: 1

      But for menus, toolbars, dialog boxes - stick to the standard stuff!

      And rewrite the UI for every new platform? That sounds like an excellent way to waste a lot of time. Netscape went there for 4.x and regretted it massively.

      You'll never be a regular user and are incapable of having a balanced viewpoint.

      It's funny how one's own viewpoint is always balanced and everyone else's is skewed...

      you know perfectly well that it is, grow up

      Ouch. That piece of logical argument really hurt.

      Gerv

    20. Re:Mozilla needs more speed and by Adolph_Hitler · · Score: 1

      Netscape and IE did embed a media player.

      --
      People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
  8. Improvements in Mozilla Mail by vivek7006 · · Score: 4, Informative
    Some interesting new features in Mozilla Mail
    • Mozilla 1.8 Alpha1 has UI for multiple identity support.
    • Users now have an option to mark incoming junk mail as read.
    • Preferred mail format (plain text or HTML) is collected and remembered in the Personal Address Book.
    • The Mail window menus have been adjusted to improve usability and resizing the mail window no longer resizes the folderpane.
    • Addressbook auto-completion has been improved.
    • 1.8a1 fixes an issue with listboxes that caused mail to display multiple attachments incorrectly. Additionally, mail sorting scrolls to keep the currently selected message in view.
  9. Mozilla 1.8A is great! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I have been running the new alpha of Mozilla for a little time now and I can definitely say that this is the best browser I have ever used.
    It's faster, more responsive, uses less memory and overall is just one great piece of code.

    I'm looking forward to the final release, but to those who are sceptical to running an alpha release I recommend that you give it a try anyway - it's that great!

    Internet Explorer will have a hard time keeping up with the great folks at Mozilla. In my book, the browser war has already been won.

    1. Re:Mozilla 1.8A is great! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Faster and more responsive than what, though? Mozilla 1.7? If so then I'll probably start using it.

    2. Re:Mozilla 1.8A is great! by nacturation · · Score: 2, Funny

      Internet Explorer will have a hard time keeping up with the great folks at Mozilla. In my book, the browser war has already been won.

      Ah, yes... the war has been won! Could you remind me again which side occupies 95% of the land? :)

      --
      Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
    3. Re:Mozilla 1.8A is great! by __aatgod8309 · · Score: 1

      When was IE last guilty of 'keeping up'? Isn't it in 3rd-party-only development limbo? (apart from the long-awaited pop-up blocker - how long until that's useless, i wonder? - and other SP2 stuff for XP, that is)

    4. Re:Mozilla 1.8A is great! by Evan+Meakyl · · Score: 1

      those who are sceptical to running an alpha release I recommend that you give it a try anyway - it's that great!

      Indeed ... I just wanted to reply to a full-text email I received, and Mozilla 1.8a crashed ... :)

    5. Re:Mozilla 1.8A is great! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Haha :) I'm the AC who posted the parent post as a bet with a friend to see if I could get a +5 [something] in an article of his choice.

      I personally think Mozilla is one big bloated mess and I refuse to run anything except Opera. Nice to see though that generic praises of open source software along with small Microsoft bashes still get modded to +5.

    6. Re:Mozilla 1.8A is great! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It is a little sad. I particularly noticed the way you didn't mention any specific features of this version. That could have been posted about any Mozilla release.

  10. Spam filter by darien · · Score: 5, Informative

    improved junk mail filtering

    I really don't understand why this is still a live issue. When I used to use Outlook I used SpamBayes to filter my spam and within a few days it was catching 99.99% of my spam. That's obviously a made-up figure, but that's how it felt. I never missed a single real mail, and after a few weeks I don't think a single spam ended up in my inbox.

    Then I moved to Thunderbird, and suddenly obvious spam is regularly ending up in my inbox, despite several weeks' training. Don't get me wrong, it's a great mail client, but I don't see why it's so hard to implement something that's already been done perfectly in more than one open-source project?

    1. Re:Spam filter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Precisely the Spambayes filtering are among the updates. See bug 181534 on bugzilla.

    2. Re:Spam filter by GreyPoopon · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Then I moved to Thunderbird, and suddenly obvious spam is regularly ending up in my inbox, despite several weeks' training.

      I wonder if this could be timing. I use Mozilla Mail as my client at home, and I turned on spam filtering for my wife's email account (because she was silly and gave her email address to Publisher's Clearinghouse). After a couple weeks of training, it was catching almost all the spam, but in the last few months the spammers have been intentionally misspelling words in random ways, which reduces the effectiveness considerably. Does anybody know if SpamBayes addresses this issue?

      --

      GreyPoopon
      --
      Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?

    3. Re:Spam filter by eatenn · · Score: 1, Interesting
      "...within a few days it was catching 99.99% of my spam. That's obviously a made-up figure, but that's how it felt. I never missed a single real mail..."

      If SpamBayes filtered a legit message in with the spam, how would you know about it?

      --
      "But the cars are all flashing me, bright lights are passing me, I feel life passing me by" - Stiff Little Fingers
    4. Re:Spam filter by Xrikcus · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That and much of the spam I've been getting recently is very simple. Say, two links in an e-mail and that's all (plain text). They're not being picked up as spam by spamassassin any more, it has about 50% accuracy at the moment.

    5. Re:Spam filter by Wudbaer · · Score: 1

      Maybe because if you really paranoic about filters you double-check the spam before deleting ? (yes, it really sucks, like sifting through feces, but the only way to be sure). For me Thunderbird's spam filter has drastically improved with 0.6, with 0.5 it was just a joke, especially compared to SpamBayes. But SpamBayes is very slow for me in comparison (have running the Outlook plugin at work) while Thunderbird's filter is blazingly fast. What really is missing from T-Bird IMO is a separate folder for "Uncertain" spam as SpamBayes offers it. I never got a real false positive in Spam Bayes spam folder in about 9 months of heave usage, everything which is uncertain ends up in the uncertain folder which is much easier to check .

    6. Re:Spam filter by darien · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If SpamBayes filtered a legit message in with the spam, how would you know about it?

      Short answer: because I am very distrustful of technology, and I do actually skim through my spam-box every so often just in case. :)

      However, one reason it never came up is that SpamBayes has a very graceful response to email it's not quite sure of. It puts emails below a certain (user-adjustable) confidence threshold in a "suspected spam" bin, for you to review at your convenience. After the first few days actual spam almost never ended up in here, but it was very good for catching email from, e.g. new mailing lists that I'd just signed up for (which Thunderbird 0.6 simply dismisses as junk).

      To be fair, yes, I should have taken this into account when making the claim you quote. But y'know.

    7. Re:Spam filter by TheVidiot · · Score: 1



      Spambayes captures everything. Sometimes it places mail it's not sure of in a Suspects folder, but it hasn't let spam in my inbox (I'm using the Outlook add-in) for months. Use it.

    8. Re:Spam filter by glsunder · · Score: 1

      spammers have been intentionally misspelling words in random ways, which reduces the effectiveness considerably.

      I suppose the solution to that would be to spell check the email before passing it through filter. Of course, it'll have to also read 1337 speak, commonly known non-english words, etc. If anything, spam & fight spam is one of the more unusual was of teaching a computer to read.

    9. Re:Spam filter by tbmaddux · · Score: 2, Insightful
      in the last few months the spammers have been intentionally misspelling words in random ways, which reduces the effectiveness considerably. Does anybody know if SpamBayes addresses this issue?
      Paul Graham (inventor of Bayesian spam filters) assessed this a few months ago. He concludes that these sorts of tricks won't work. For misspellings in particular, he states "Misspellings end up having higher spam probabilities than the words they're intended to conceal."

      I realize this doesn't quite answer your question, but I suggest you continue to train your filter. Then (like me) you should see the results improve with time.

      --
      Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?
    10. Re:Spam filter by mrbass · · Score: 1

      Thunderbird 0.5 doesn't work filtering junk mail. I tried it for over a week and the results were pathetic. Funny thing is Mozilla works pretty decent. I was writing a guide on anti-spam techniques and was surprised I couldn't recommend Thunderbird but instead had to recommend Mozilla. For those pour souls using Outlook/Outlook Express pop3 only K9 works great and is free.

    11. Re:Spam filter by GreyPoopon · · Score: 1
      For misspellings in particular, he states "Misspellings end up having higher spam probabilities than the words they're intended to conceal."

      I realize this doesn't quite answer your question, but I suggest you continue to train your filter.

      I continued to train my filter for a while but I've nearly given up. Paul's assessment of the situation is not entirely accurate. Although a misspelled word would have a higher spam probability than correctly spelled words in common use, the RANDOM misspellings means that almost all of the "words" in the email messages are being seen by the spam filter for the first time, and therefore don't contribute towards classifying the message as spam. Although there is a finite number of ways each word may be misspelled, it's a very high number that any amount of training just can't keep up with.

      --

      GreyPoopon
      --
      Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?

    12. Re:Spam filter by danharan · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That's exactly what I'm finding too. There are simply so many ways to misspell words that these filters are ineffective.

      This may simply create another round of technological escalation, but... if you search Google for "v!agra", it will ask you if you meant "viagra". That's not really difficult to implement.

      SO- If instead of storing "v!agra" in the filter we stored say, $typo$__viagra or some such thing, we might get filters working well like before.

      Likely someone has already implemented this somewhere, but if so I haven't heard of it :(

      --
      Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
    13. Re:Spam filter by fupeg · · Score: 1

      Anything Bayesian has to play catch up. Once it is tricked once, it takes a while to "train" it again. Of course Apple has a solution to this...

  11. Mouse preferences... by interactive_civilian · · Score: 1
    Just use your preferences for your mouse (i.e. LogiTech control center for me) to set your middle mouse button to be "command-click" and it then set your mozilla tab preferences to accept command click as open in new tab...

    HTH...

    --
    "Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
  12. Torrents by onco_p53 · · Score: 4, Informative

    For their poor servers ...
    Win32 exe
    Win32 Zip
    Linux
    Linux (installer)

  13. Second the motion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I second the motion: bit torrent yes, FTP no

  14. I used to use FireFox for the same reason... but! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    You can configure Mozilla to play nice with Outlook, check out the cool tip:

    http://www.mozilla.org/start/1.4/faq/mail-news.h tm l#other-default

  15. Erm... can do? by MachDelta · · Score: 2, Informative

    Ok, im no 'zilla expert here, but ever since I can remember Mozilla (or at least Firefox) has supported opening tabs on middle click. I know thats how I have my Firefox set up right now anyways. And maybe its some weird extension or something I have installed, but i'd be willing to bet money on this little sumwhathin' I found being key:

    Install Firefox (or Zilla, whatever)
    Type "About:Config" into the URL bar
    Type "middleclick" into the filter bar and hit enter
    Find the entry that says "browser.tabs.opentabfor.middleclick", and make sure the value is set to true.

    Give that a whirl, maybe its what you're lookin for. Or maybe its an extension of mine, either way its worth a shot fer someone to try :)

    1. Re:Erm... can do? by Lurker+McLurker · · Score: 3, Informative

      It always works for me, too, in both Firefox and Bloatzilla. In fact, unlike Opera, there doesn't seem to be a way to make a middle button click on a link do anything else, from the Options menu (Preferences in Opera).

      --
      Mod parent up!
    2. Re:Erm... can do? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      It is 'true', still doesn't work. Hasn't worked for the longest time. There's a bug on it somewhere.

      The way to make it work, for me, is as the guy above say, map middle-click to cmd-left-click

    3. Re:Erm... can do? by thesolo · · Score: 5, Informative

      Ok, im no 'zilla expert here, but ever since I can remember Mozilla (or at least Firefox) has supported opening tabs on middle click.

      Well, you're mostly right. Tabs were added prior to the 1.0 release, and middle-click to open the tabs was turned on then...except on OS X.

      Kindly see Bug 151249 -- Middle click on links does nothing in OS X (You'll have to copy that link, bugzilla has a referrer check to block links from slashdot.)

      Unfortunately, Carbon doesn't have the ability to recognize a middle mouse click, so Mozilla (Seamonkey) and Firefox can't do anything on a middle click. Camino, on the other hand, is built with Cocoa, so middle-clicking works on a default build.

      Combine this with the lack of Ctrl+Enter URL autocomplete, and I don't enjoy my Mozilla experience on OS X. I use Firefox on a daily basis on both Windows & Linux; the second I go over to my Powerbook, Firefox doesn't behave even close to the same way, and it drives me crazy. I still use it, because I really dislike Safari's interface, and it's still missing too many features, but Mozilla on OS X needs a chunk of work before it will act like it does on other OSes.

    4. Re:Erm... can do? by GreatDrok · · Score: 1

      That was something I tried way early on. It is set to true in my copy of Mozilla, and yet I never get a new tab when I click a link with my middle mouse button on my Macally mouse. Now it is possible that there is some sort of driver thing I need to do, but since it works fine with Safari not to mention X11 I don't see why Mozilla should not work. Weird.

      --
      "I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
    5. Re:Erm... can do? by gabebear · · Score: 1
      The only differences I see when I switch from Mozilla-Linux to Mozilla-MacOSX is the middle-click issue and that tabs move between the URL bar and the main window(instead of between elements). You can fix these two issues by setting middle-click to command-click, and setting tab to move between elements in the preferences. Firefox's preference panel lacks the option to change tabs behavior, but regular Mozilla for OSX has it.

      I hadn't ever heard of ctrl-enter auto-complete before, but it seems worthless considering Mozilla assumes http:// for any URL lacking a protocol and you rarely need www before a domain. CTRL-ENTER in Linux Mozilla opens links in new Tabs, Command-Enter in OSX Mozilla does the same thing, I don't have a Windows box.

      I have been using middle-click set to command-click since to the days of Mac OS8, when Command-clicking a link in Netscape 4.5 would open it in a new window. If you haven't already got it, try out Side Track with your powerebook. It lets you set sections of your trackpad to do different things, like middle and left buttons or scrolling.

    6. Re:Erm... can do? by thesolo · · Score: 1

      The only differences I see when I switch from Mozilla-Linux to Mozilla-MacOSX is the middle-click issue and that tabs move between the URL bar and the main window(instead of between elements). You can fix these two issues by setting middle-click to command-click, and setting tab to move between elements in the preferences. Firefox's preference panel lacks the option to change tabs behavior, but regular Mozilla for OSX has it.

      Setting middle-click to command click is a hack to get around a bug, not a real solution. Under Linux & Windows, using Firefox, if I middle click on a link, I get a new tab. If I middle click on a tab, the tab closes. Command click will open a tab, but it won't close it. So now I'm only half-way towards my usual usage.

      As for the tab key, those options shouldn't even be necessary. The problem is Bug 187508, Mozilla doesn't respect keyboard preferences in OS X. You should just be able to turn on full keyboard navigation in System Preferences. Instead, in Mozilla Seamonkey, you have to set a preference. In Firefox, you have to use about:config, and set the tabfocus preference to 7, which will let you tab between all fields, links, etc.

      I hadn't ever heard of ctrl-enter auto-complete before, but it seems worthless considering Mozilla assumes http:// for any URL lacking a protocol and you rarely need www before a domain. CTRL-ENTER in Linux Mozilla opens links in new Tabs, Command-Enter in OSX Mozilla does the same thing

      It's not worthless at all. For one thing, if you just type "google", and hit enter, Mozilla will take a second or two to resolve it to www.google.com, and then take you there. Control+Enter will get you there faster. Additionally, there are keyboard shortcuts for .net & .org, which I use frequently. Moz for Mac has none of these shortcuts. Also, under Firefox, Control+Enter does not open a link in a new tab, it's a different behavior than Seamonkey.

      I appreciate the link to Side Track; I actually don't need it, as my logitech wireless mouse came with software that lets me customize the middle-click button to command-click. My point, however, is that I shouldn't need a piece of 3rd party software to get Mozilla to function correctly. At least Mike Pinkerton (Camino Dev) approved a patch for Firefox to work around the lack of middle-click events in Carbon. Hopefully this will land for 0.9. If not, I'll build my own copies of Firefox.

      And of course, there are other problems with Mac Mozilla, like Bug 137523, Command+M doesn't minimize Mozilla, or that always annoying bug where plugin content is z-indexed above the tabs, so if you switch tabs, you still see the plugin contents. I can't seem to find the bug for that, but it drives me crazy. My bank uses a java stock ticker on their home page, and if I switch to another browser tab, that ticker is still there, floating on top of the tab content.

      Also, there is no way to get Single-Window mode on the Mac, as TBE and Tabbrowser Preferences both completely fail on Firefox for Mac. Also, plugins like MiniT (which let you rearrange tabs) fail on the Mac as well. Very frustrating.

    7. Re:Erm... can do? by gabebear · · Score: 1
      I see the ctrl+enter autocomplete as a bloat feature, I'd rather just type google.com, but to each their own.

      Thanks for the Firefox "tabfocus preference to 7" thing. That realllllly annoys me when I'm on Firefox in OSX.

      I had not noticed any of those other problems.

    8. Re:Erm... can do? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      My point, however, is that I shouldn't need a piece of 3rd party software to get Mozilla to function correctly.

      Well, your point has been undermined then. Complaining about bugs that even you concede have workarounds strikes me as a waste of time. Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill.

    9. Re:Erm... can do? by Fancia · · Score: 1
      If I middle click on a tab, the tab closes.
      I'm using Firefox for Linux and that doesn't work for me; I've tried to fix that, but as far as I can tell it just doesn't work.
      --

      Bít, zabít, jen proto, ze su liska!
    10. Re:Erm... can do? by thesolo · · Score: 1

      I'm using Firefox for Linux and that doesn't work for me; I've tried to fix that, but as far as I can tell it just doesn't work.

      It does work, but not by default. By default, Firefox for Linux has ContentLoadURL turned on in about:config. Kindly see the following article I wrote about Firefox Middle Click behavior, and how to make the Linux client work exactly as it does on Windows.

    11. Re:Erm... can do? by Fancia · · Score: 1

      You're right, that works great! Thank you very much!

      --

      Bít, zabít, jen proto, ze su liska!
  16. Firefox by muzza · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I thought Firefox was scheduled to be *the* browser in the suite (with Thunderbird the equivalent in the mail space). How does that work if Firefox is on a branch and the suite ploughs ahead?

    I hope bugfixes (217527 for example which affects Slashdot) are consistantly and promptly backported to 1.7 (and thus to Firefox) or the impetus could be there to reverse the flow back to the suite- up until now I have tended to think of Firefox as "the best of Mozilla"...

  17. Plans change by Kaseijin · · Score: 2, Insightful
    When does firefox/fire* get renamed "mozilla browser"?
    Given the effort put into Firefox branding and the decision to continue Seamonkey development indefinitely, probably never.
  18. If you want speed, use epiphany ! by lazy_arabica · · Score: 1

    So what, guys ? He didn't say he wanted his browser to be stable too.

  19. Mozilla is supposed to be bloated by Aqua+OS+X · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Mozilla is a browser for web developers.

    Firefox, Camino, and Thunderbird are the browsers and email clients for those who don't need JS debuggers, consoles, ftp clients, text editors, whosits, and whatsits.

    --
    "Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
    1. Re:Mozilla is supposed to be bloated by WARM3CH · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Mozilla is a browser for web developers.
      Actually, it is normal people who like swiss knifes more: They download/buy one package to do all things. A developer on the other hand usually tries to get the best tool to do a specific job. For a developer, no one software is the best answer for all questions. Don't we already have lots of advanced (and open source) tools for things like FTP and editing text files that are much better than Mozilla for those tasks?
    2. Re:Mozilla is supposed to be bloated by CountBrass · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Wouldn't a better architecture have been to go for a plug-in model? That way I could choose what extras I wanted, and either uninstall, or never install, the crud I don't care about.

      The problems with the Mozilla monolith are:

      • You get everything or nothing: I can't decide just to have the web browser and html editor: but I'd rather use my existing email app so I don't want that taking up resources on my machine.
      • Regression testing. This is more an issue for the Mozilla developers, but a change in one component (email say) could break another part (html editing say).

      And separating the dev' environment (browser) from the users environment as you suggest only makes life harder.

      --
      Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
    3. Re:Mozilla is supposed to be bloated by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      You get everything or nothing: I can't decide just to have the web browser and html editor


      Yes you can. If you use the net installer (which is 200kb or so) you can simply choose not to download/install the other cruft.
    4. Re:Mozilla is supposed to be bloated by Stephen+Williams · · Score: 1

      I can't decide just to have the web browser and html editor: but I'd rather use my existing email app so I don't want that taking up resources on my machine.

      If you build it from source, you can. That's not a solution for everyone, of course, but it's an option for the more technically-minded users.

      If you use Debian, separate packages are provided for the browser ("mozilla-browser"), mail/news component ("mozilla-mailnews"), IRC client ("mozilla-chatzilla") etc., so you can pick and choose which components you want. Other distributors may well have similar schemes for Mozilla packaging.

      -Stephen

    5. Re:Mozilla is supposed to be bloated by CowboyBob500 · · Score: 2, Informative

      On Linux I just choose the "Navigator only" install option...

      Bob

    6. Re:Mozilla is supposed to be bloated by Spad · · Score: 3, Informative

      You get everything or nothing: I can't decide just to have the web browser and html editor: but I'd rather use my existing email app so I don't want that taking up resources on my machine.

      Yes you can - you just select "Browser" during the install process and deselect the other components. It's really not that challenging.

    7. Re:Mozilla is supposed to be bloated by mercuriser · · Score: 3, Interesting
      The problems with the Mozilla monolith are:
      • You get everything or nothing: I can't decide just to have the web browser and html editor: but I'd rather use my existing email app so I don't want that taking up resources on my machine.
      The good thing about the mozilla browser is you -can- do this, all you need to do is pull down the source and compile your own version of mozilla with the various features that you do/dont want. Pretty much everything can be disabled/turned on and off in the main build by simply editing the .mozconfig file to how you would like. Plus there are the other applications which have already done this for you (think firefox, thurnderbird which the changes in the main mozilla app are propogated to anyway)
      • Regression testing. This is more an issue for the Mozilla developers, but a change in one component (email say) could break another part (html editing say).
      The HTML editing component of Mozilla is in no way dependant on anything at all in the mail component. (although mail is dependant on the editor to create HTML emails etc). Thunderbird still pulls in the same dependant compoents just like standard Mozilla does. It's similar to using libGtk+ libraries in an app, it has the possibility to break things further down the chain (usually it put thru more testing anyway).

      Isn't this all standard software engineering practise which makes development alot simpler rather than having to have a similar thing coded in 10 different places.
    8. Re:Mozilla is supposed to be bloated by GeckoX · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      Insightful? Come on now mindless drones...you KNOW better than that, this post is just WRONG.

      Anyone who's used Firefox knows it's THE browser for developers...Small, fast, stable, compliant, and HUGELY extendable.

      Compared to Firefox, Mozilla has NO developer tools.

      Mozilla is for the masses who either a) don't understand that email and web browsing are 2 different things (never-mind ftp etc etc). These are the people who think that a browser IS the internet. Or b) People who are irked by the fact that they have to run IE _and_ Outlook Express.

      It's a convenience thing.

      --
      No Comment.
    9. Re:Mozilla is supposed to be bloated by GregWebb · · Score: 1

      Not quite what our original poster meant.

      Mozilla isn't set up to be end-user software at all. It's set up to be a stable proof of concept from which other developers can take all sorts of cool programs and make their own applications - as with Netscape 7.

      It so happens that it makes a nice end-user browser too, but that's not the (official) primary development goal.

      --

      Greg

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

    10. Re:Mozilla is supposed to be bloated by juiceCake · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "Mozilla is for the masses who either a) don't understand that email and web browsing are 2 different things (never-mind ftp etc etc). These are the people who think that a browser IS the internet. Or b) People who are irked by the fact that they have to run IE _and_ Outlook Express."

      Sorry, but I understand full well that web browsing and email are different things but I prefer Mozilla over Firefox/Thunderbird. Imagine that...

      Fortunately, Mozilla offers both alternatives to people. Because, you know, we all have our preferences and they're just that, preferences. If they are different than yours they're most certainly not, in all cases, for the reasons you list. I also don't have to run IE or Outlook Express, save for testing the web pages I develop.

    11. Re:Mozilla is supposed to be bloated by drinkypoo · · Score: 1
      A web browser needs to do ftp. That is not even open for debate. If it's going to be able to download, you might as well make it upload. This should not contribute significantly to the size of mozilla, and if it has, then someone over there is not utilizing the platform to its fullest. Given the size of ftp(1) the routines to actually handle FTP traffic are tiny, and any significant chunk of code will be UI-related. However, since Mozilla is supposed to be an application framework, the UI code should be trivial.

      We're just going to have to accept a certain amount of bloat if we want to support all the assorted "web standards" out there. It's gotten to where many websites can't be navigated without flash, java, and/or a bunch of other crap, and web browsers need to support that. Your cell phone might not need to, but just about everything else does. Or, put another way, give up on that pentium 166 and drop a hundred bucks on a P3 733 :)

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    12. Re:Mozilla is supposed to be bloated by GeckoX · · Score: 1

      OK, maybe that was a tad harsh, but I don't think you're getting my point, at least noone wants to discuss.

      Are there any developers out there that do/have use/used Mozilla and Firefox for development? And which do you use now? And why?

      And I wasn't trying to pigeonhole mozilla users, what I was trying to show was that it is a personal preference thing...different users, different needs.

      Sorry to offend.

      BTW, if you are a web developer using Mozilla, and you haven't tried FireFox, you really should at least give it a try.

      --
      No Comment.
    13. Re:Mozilla is supposed to be bloated by GeckoX · · Score: 1

      OK, I see how you could have misinterpreted my post and get pissed off, however the point you are making is the exact point I was trying to make. (Obviously I failed miserably)

      Choice is good, personal preference is everything here.

      Now, to not take _all_ of the blame here, I think that if you re-read my post you will see that I was only stating some facts when I categorized mozilla users, (Yes, I know I left personal preference out which was the mistake I made) I was describing some well known, typical users. Not all users of mozilla, just some.

      As well, can you show where I said that one was better than the other? Because I didn't. You appear to mostly be pissed at me because I suggested, in some way, that you shouldn't be using mozilla. Why would I say that? Oh, I didn't.

      --
      No Comment.
    14. Re:Mozilla is supposed to be bloated by qon · · Score: 1

      Depends on the platform. I'd say it's pretty challenging on OS X, which doesn't offer that installation option -- it's all or nothing.

      q

    15. Re:Mozilla is supposed to be bloated by bass2496 · · Score: 1

      As well, can you show where I said that one was better than the other? Because I didn't. You appear to mostly be pissed at me because I suggested, in some way, that you shouldn't be using mozilla. Why would I say that? Oh, I didn't.

      He never accused you of saying nor implied that you said any of that stuff.

      You should reread his post. He didn't come off as pissed at all. You made a generalization and he simply responded to it.

    16. Re:Mozilla is supposed to be bloated by Aqua+OS+X · · Score: 1

      I'm a web developer, and I have FireFox (and a billion other browsers) installed... however I find Mozilla's feature set a bit more useful for development.

      --
      "Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
    17. Re:Mozilla is supposed to be bloated by GeckoX · · Score: 1

      Have you seen the Extensions section in the options panel? Have you seen what is available there?

      Just as an example, where is the XUL console in Moz?
      And how do you view full HTTP headers in Moz?

      Hint: you don't.
      But you can in FireFox.
      XUL Console
      and
      LiveHeaders

      Just 2 of about a hundred or so available.

      --
      No Comment.
  20. Try this: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    FileZilla. GPLed. Slick, fleksible, fast. Supports drag & drop properly. SFTP. Server.

    It's a winner.

    1. Re:Try this: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Filezilla's only for Windows though.

    2. Re:Try this: by spacefight · · Score: 1

      "FileZilla is a powerful FTP-client for Windows 9x, ME, NT4, 2000 and XP"

      I think the grandparent refers to Linux.

    3. Re:Try this: by spektr · · Score: 2, Informative

      No, FileZilla doesn't use the Mozilla framework.

    4. Re:Try this: by cyxxon · · Score: 2, Informative

      "FileZilla is a powerful FTP-client for Windows 9x, ME, NT4, 2000 and XP"

      I think the grandparent refers to Linux.

      Well, both is true, guys. FileZilla right now is available for all them Windowses around, but the upcoming 3.0 will be cross plattform.

      And that is some release I am really waiting for, since FileZilla is my ftp client of choice on Windows. Really. Especially the bookmarks-in-a-xml-file thing makes it quite useful, as you can just put the whole FileZilla directory wherever (USB stick, network volume, whatever, it just works).

  21. Xft version by AirLace · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There doesn't seem to be a version compiled against Xft or Gtk+2.0. Is this a regression?

    1. Re:Xft version by arvindn · · Score: 3, Informative

      I was thinking exactly the same thing. Makes a nice punchline: "The 1990s called. They want their fonts back." :-) Joking aside, I think it is indeed a regression. The Burning Edge Firefox nightly build blog says that gtk2 builds don't start (since May 11). It could be an unrelated firefox-specific problem, but I'm guessing there's a connection.

  22. This build sucks by Celt · · Score: 2, Informative

    I've been using Mozilla 1.7rc1 for some time so I decided to install 1.8 Alpha, it short it sucks
    Installed without a issue but tried to start it and it just consumed 15MB ram and wouldn't start so rebooted XP and started it again, this time it loaded a webpage but wouldn't do anytiung else (m,enu's would not work etc)
    So I'm back to 1.7RC1 now :-(

    --
    "WebTV: bringing the Internet into the shallow end of the gene pool since 1995" - Martin Bishop
    1. Re:This build sucks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Sounds like you have some extension installed which doesn't work with 1.8alpha. The extension management is crappy (it's being improved in Firefox), but the build works ok. There are bugs though - it's an alpha after all.

    2. Re:This build sucks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yes, thats why it's called an alpha release, you fuking retard

    3. Re:This build sucks by DerPflanz · · Score: 1

      I don't think you can say 'it sucks' in general, because it usually means 'it doesn't work for me'.

      In this particular case, it is even worse, because it is an alpha release. Alpha means 'not finished', 'still a lot of bugs to be fixed' and, most importantly, 'this may not work on your SupaDupa-TurboCharged new hardware or with all your Pre-Installed Ultra-spam filter firewall software'.

      Of course, there are programs that really suck, and I also say that something sucks sometimes when it only doesn't work for me.

      --
      -- The Internet is a too slow way of doing things, you'd never do without it.
    4. Re:This build sucks by Celt · · Score: 1

      I realise its alpha :-)
      But its actually the first build that won't work in anyway at all for me.
      I'm actually including the nightly builds in that statment, its a big shame really as I like to test out new builds.
      Might give it another go later and see how I get on.

      --
      "WebTV: bringing the Internet into the shallow end of the gene pool since 1995" - Martin Bishop
    5. Re:This build sucks by superyooser · · Score: 1

      Not only is this the Alpha release, but it is the Alpha 1 release. Yes, it's very buggy. There will be two Alpha releases from now on. Note the new milestone schedule.

  23. so then the other 99% of users i guess by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    hmm?

  24. Mac OS X: Mozilla 1.8a1 and Firefox by VEGx · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I have a trouble, I can't make them co-exist!
    Firefox is using the pref files that Mozilla uses BUT the new Mozilla hangs at the older version's pref.

    Can someone tell me how to move Firefox preferences so I can make them both work.

    1. Re:Mac OS X: Mozilla 1.8a1 and Firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Look in ~/Library/Application Support/

    2. Re:Mac OS X: Mozilla 1.8a1 and Firefox by VEGx · · Score: 1

      Nope, no help in there. The Camino saves it's prefs in there, but not Mozilla nor Firefox.

      I'm wondering how can I tell Mozilla/Firefox to change the default folder for profiles...

    3. Re:Mac OS X: Mozilla 1.8a1 and Firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ~/Library/Mozilla/Profiles/
      ~/Library/Phoenix/Pro files/
      ~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/

    4. Re:Mac OS X: Mozilla 1.8a1 and Firefox by VEGx · · Score: 1

      What I've been trying to explain (sorry, I haven't been maybe too clear) is that for some reason both Mozilla and Firefox use ~/Library/Mozilla/Profiles

      I don't know why or how, but that's how it is... and that's why there's a conflict... I can't solve it...

    5. Re:Mac OS X: Mozilla 1.8a1 and Firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have a ~/Library/Phoenix/Profiles path that Ff uses, no doubt a relic of a previous 'phoenix' install. I tried the latest trunk of Ff and it suddenly forgot about the Phoenix folder and tried to import from my ~/Library/Mozilla/Profiles, it crashed out though. I have never been able to use the profile manager to point a profile to a different path, instead I use symlinks to my ipod for my non-work email and web, works well but it would be nice if profile manager's features were beefed up.

  25. by reviewing the moved-to-spam folder by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    by reviewing the spam folder

  26. Re:This just in.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Free" applies to the source code, not you. I don't care about you. Go cry me a river you poor unfree baby.

  27. Slow by Tribbin · · Score: 1

    The Win32.exe torrent is going very slow. (1.8 kb/s)

    Upload at 0.0 kb/s.

    What's the use if nobody 's using it?

    --
    If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
  28. BitTorrent/XUL by 16K+Ram+Pack · · Score: 1
    What do you think would be the benefits of adding Bittorrent rather than having a separate app?

    That's a serious question, not an attempt to flame, because for me, I'd rather have something separate, particularly so I can close down the browser and have the torrent running in the background.

    I think one of the things that people ignore when people talk about speed of loading is that Mozilla has this powerful XUL stuff. How much it is used by people, I don't know. Has anyone any experience of using it for data collection or whatever?

    1. Re:BitTorrent/XUL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's bug 203571, which was first rejected (read comment 13), and then later a new bug was opened (bug 236755).

      ( use the form at http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/ to look for the bugs )

    2. Re:BitTorrent/XUL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's just the difference between the people who use browser's download manager versus the ones who use a dedicated download manager software. Personally I would be happy to have a basic bittorrent client installed with Mozilla.

  29. Why the upload? by bo0ork · · Score: 1

    I'd rather have seen that they add some much needed functionality to the download manager so everyone can get rid of those third-party download managers.

    --
    Does everything include nothing?
    1. Re:Why the upload? by BobPaul · · Score: 1

      Why the upload? Because having an FTP brower integrated into the webrower is quite useless if you can't upload. Never requiring a full ftp client, I've always used Mozilla for browsing FTP servers and downloading and IE for uploading.

      Yes, the download manager needs to do something other than sit there (most pointless tool ever) but FTP upload is also a long needed feature and I applaud the mozilla team for releasing it. Time to try a 1.8a based build of Firefox!

    2. Re:Why the upload? by standing_still · · Score: 0

      the only additional functionality I would like to see would be for 'resume' downloads. PS: If you want to see it added you can vote for the feature using Bugzilla

  30. small UI font problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Anyone else have this annoying problem with really tiny fonts in mozilla UI? I'm using debian-stock mozilla 1.7 (unstable) and it doesn't have this problem, but when I install from .tar.gz I always get really tiny fonts in UI. I tries to edit userChrome.css and user.css files, but nothing helped. Content fonts are OK and I have tweaked DPI settings, too.

    Anyone with solution?

    1. Re:small UI font problem by leoboiko · · Score: 1

      A friend of mine managed to fix this problem by playing with "about:config" entries containing the substring "font". I don't know exactly what options he tweaked.

      --
      Prescriptive grammar:linguistics :: alchemy:chemistry. Stop being a nazi and learn some science.
    2. Re:small UI font problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks! This led me closer to the solution. Now the UI font is readable.

      In ~/.mozilla/default/*.slt/chrome/userChrome.css
      I have this new section:
      --clip--
      * {
      font-family: Verdana !important;
      font-size: 12pt !important;
      }
      --clip--
      It's something similar I tried earlier, but this time it works. ;-) However I had problems with 1.8a stability, and I'm back to using 1.6 (not 1.7 as I stated).

  31. I like Mozilla by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I use 1.7 on XP, which I find a big improvement over IE/OE.

    I look forward to 1.8 for it's additional usefull features & further increased speed.

    1. Re:I like Mozilla by airdrummer · · Score: 1

      me 2, but i've found a perfectly reproduceable crash on osX: try to scroll down ars technica b4 it's completely loaded...BAM!!! every time:-(

  32. Jabber ? by johnjones · · Score: 1

    hey look features are features but a few are missing

    I would like a IM client (IRC does not rock my world) a Jabber client would be good

    I would like a iCal clone... (in process)

    I would like OpenPGP intergrated (only 128bit to save the export legal stuff) just basic crypto would be great (make it easy to setup as well)

    regards

    John Jones

    1. Re:Jabber ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      I would like OpenPGP intergrated (only 128bit to save the export legal stuff) just basic crypto would be great (make it easy to setup as well)

      Enigmail works as a GnuPG frontend. Although it's not integrated, I've heard good things about it.

    2. Re:Jabber ? by cyborch · · Score: 3, Informative

      hey look features are features but a few are missing

      I would like a IM client (IRC does not rock my world) a Jabber client would be good

      jabber support

      I would like a iCal clone... (in process)

      Indeed it is :)

      I would like OpenPGP intergrated (only 128bit to save the export legal stuff) just basic crypto would be great (make it easy to setup as well)

      There's a gpg extension, will that do?

    3. Re:Jabber ? by Tet · · Score: 1
      I would like a IM client (IRC does not rock my world)

      Can you explain the difference? Both allow you to talk to others in realtime. What makes one better than the other (yes, this is a genuine question -- I use neither, so I don't know the pros and cons).

      While you're at it, can you also explain why it should be part of Mozilla, rather than a standalone app, the way the gods intended? :-)

      --
      "The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
    4. Re:Jabber ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Jabber has a handshake subscription system, offline messaging, typing notification, file transfer (GOOD file transfer), and a bunch of other stuff I can't think of.

      Also, on IRC (which is mostly just for chat) you can only chat with people on the same IRC network as you. On jabber, you can message or add a buddy from any server, and it works as if there's no difference.

    5. Re:Jabber ? by johnjones · · Score: 1

      a few points

      the jabber support you mention is being rewritten and nothing is working....

      Mozilla Calendar needs to be polished
      dont worry about being fancy just be able to subscribe to ical via webDAV and tell if somthing has changed

      Enigmail seems to do some really nasty hacks to get this working I would like it all nice in the Mozilla Thunderbird Mail Project tree

      regards

      John Jones

    6. Re:Jabber ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are a faggot

      regards

      Jones John

  33. ObClue: Macs can use any USB mouse by huntse · · Score: 1

    My mac "mouse" is a logitech trackball with three buttons and a scroll wheel all of which work just fine in OsX.

  34. More cookies? by bwalling · · Score: 4, Funny

    the number of cookies that Mozilla can hold has also increased 'dramatically.'

    I have submitted this as a bug!

  35. Huh! by trezor · · Score: 1

    If you want speed, you use Lynx!

    'nuff said!

    --
    Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
    1. Re:Huh! by Feztaa · · Score: 1

      Forget that shit, if you want speed, I'm sure you can find a dealer on a street corner somewhere.

  36. Spammers changed their methods. by Dog+and+Pony · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Thunderbird used to have the same results - when I used 0.1 and 0.2, I never saw a spam outside my spam box, and no real mails got marked wrong either - after just some minor training. Then, after a while, spams started to look differently, and what do you know? TB started to fail.

    Spammers simply learned how to (partly) defeat Bayesian. I'd be very interested to see your results if you tried SpamBayes now. I bet it wouldn't do better.

    Or did you think the spammers would just give up and go home?

    1. Re:Spammers changed their methods. by darien · · Score: 1

      I'd be very interested to see your results if you tried SpamBayes now. I bet it wouldn't do better.

      I was using SpamBayes three weeks ago! And it was doing a lot better.

      Though it occurs to me that this argument is a bit pointless, because there's really no feasible way for me to support this claim... sorry!

    2. Re:Spammers changed their methods. by SimplyCosmic · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I started using Thunderbird a long time ago, much like you did, and found myself in a similar situation to yours.

      In the beginning, the included spam filtering worked wonders, but after time more and more spam began to leak through no matter how much "training" I did.

      Instead of moving to a different email program as you did, however, I simply kept Thunderbird and used POPFile as a spam-filtering proxy. Because of this, I can actually directly compare the in-program filtering of Thunderbird to an outside bayesian client. Right now, according to the built-in statistics of POPFile, it's at a 99.36% accuracy rate, even with the large number of random-word spam attacks I get daily, yet Thunderbird only catches about half of them.

      So I have no doubt that you are correct in your argument that SpamBayes isn't being caught by the same random-word techniques that are currently ruining the effectiveness of Spamassassin or Thunderbird's built in filtering.

    3. Re:Spammers changed their methods. by Gerv · · Score: 2, Informative

      In the beginning, the included spam filtering worked wonders, but after time more and more spam began to leak through no matter how much "training" I did.

      Yeah, Thunderbird's Bayesian implementation did fall behind a bit. Fortunately the latest 0.6 release has an updated version, which is apparently a lot better.

      Gerv

    4. Re:Spammers changed their methods. by hysterik · · Score: 1

      Perhaps spam filters should start using a spell checker. Too many misspelled words and the mail gets flagged. Actually, that would be double plus good, as it would require people to develop better writing skills, and maybe we might see the demise of leet speak.

    5. Re:Spammers changed their methods. by Dog+and+Pony · · Score: 1

      Hehehe, that is one of the best (and at the same time funniest) ideas I've heard in quite a long time. Kudos to you! =)

    6. Re:Spammers changed their methods. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      i think people would simply communicate LESS with you.

      besides the usual lectures on proper comma placement they wont be missin much

    7. Re:Spammers changed their methods. by buzzcutbuddha · · Score: 1

      Spammers haven't learned how to defeat Bayesian filtering. That's honestly a myth, and that's something that Paul Graham already discussed when he talked about Bayesian filtering. This is of course with the caveat that you're using a good algorithm for your filtering.

      Thunderbird's Bayesian filtering is poor. Very poor. It needs a lot of work. Despite the increased presence of words, and even whole paragraphs at the bottom my emails at work, SpamBayes detects and destroys them without fail. I've yet to have a spam end up in my Inbox, and only a handful false positives.

      As the spammers try to beat it, the filters will adapt.

  37. Middle Mouse on Linux (was: re: ... on MacOSX) by cyxxon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Only slightly related is this:

    What I never understood, though, is why with the X version of Mozilla (Linux in my case) clicking the middle mouse button on a tab by default tries to load the current selection as an URL.

    Why? First thing with all Mozilla installs on Linux I do is to disable middlemouse.ContentLoadURL. Why on earth do they set it to true on Linux? Just to make life harder for people whop use both Win32 and Linux? Or do they track this silently somehow, trying to figure out how many people know how to change settings "back to normal" via about:config?

    1. Re:Middle Mouse on Linux (was: re: ... on MacOSX) by Patrik+Nordebo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Because Netscape (and Mozilla after it) has always reacted to a middle click by trying to load the selected URL, unless you click on a link. I, for one, am used to that behaviour and use it all the time, and I suspect that goes for a large proportion of the people who used to use Netscape on a Unix(-like) system.

    2. Re:Middle Mouse on Linux (was: re: ... on MacOSX) by CmdrTHAC0 · · Score: 1

      Then you creepy Power Users should be allowed to turn it on and leave us poor n00bs without this confusing backwards cruft...

      --
      __CmdrTHAC0__
      In Soviet Russia, Spanish Inquisition doesn't expect YOU!!
    3. Re:Middle Mouse on Linux (was: re: ... on MacOSX) by FuzzyBad-Mofo · · Score: 1

      Ah, my favorite Mozilla-on-Linux "feature". Argued about it on bugzilla to no avail. It's incredibly annoying loading a URL when middle-clicking the fscking TAB if you ask me.. Now, clicking on the URL box, fine. That almost makes sense.

      And all because historic versions of Netscape had behavior something like this, HOWEVER, old versions of Netscape didn't have fucking tabs, now did they?

    4. Re:Middle Mouse on Linux (was: re: ... on MacOSX) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This functionality is great when Web pages show URLs, but are not linked. Select, middle click. Also works when you have a URL from an X term or OOo document. Any URL in the cut buffer works.

    5. Re:Middle Mouse on Linux (was: re: ... on MacOSX) by Slack3r78 · · Score: 1

      In the same vein, is there any way to get middle-click on a tab to close it under Linux? This is the one thing that drives me insane when working on one of my Linux machines, as it pastes the contents of your clipboard to the URL toolbar instead of closing the tab.

      Any about:config hacks I need to know about to work around this behaviour?

  38. Re:This build by beef3k · · Score: 1

    Well, it _is_ an alpa release. Add a bug report describing how it's not working, and it will more than likely be fixed for the next alpha.

  39. Why new features if they have an extension model? by beforewisdom · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why is Mozilla adding new features like the FTP client if they plan to go to a firefox based browser that uses a system of extensions?

    Why wasn't the FTP client written as an extension?

    Steve

  40. One clue for you by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It is an Alpha, that means that big bugs may exist. You should report the bug to the developers, not whine about how this test-release sucks. The point of testing is too find bugs before a real release, not to deliver bug-free software. If you want that, use the release version.

  41. Did you report any bugs? (Re:This build sucks) by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 1

    Why are you telling Slashdot, instead of the mozilla project?

  42. Speaking of Kitchen Sinks by aelfwyne · · Score: 4, Funny

    All that's left now is to merge EMACS and Mozilla. Then we'll have everything in one application.

    --
    -- If it ain't broke - overclock it more.
    1. Re:Speaking of Kitchen Sinks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      and the Kitchen Sink of course

    2. Re:Speaking of Kitchen Sinks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      There would be some feature overlap, like two news readers, yet still no decent text editor :(

    3. Re:Speaking of Kitchen Sinks by Sunnan · · Score: 1

      This is something I've been seriously considering for quite a while.

    4. Re:Speaking of Kitchen Sinks by moeffju · · Score: 1

      ... except for a proper text editor, you mean.

      --
      follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/moeffju
    5. Re:Speaking of Kitchen Sinks by ceeam · · Score: 1

      Hooah!! All that would be needed done then is to rewrite it cleanly. I bet this could be done it 1-2 months.

    6. Re:Speaking of Kitchen Sinks by millette · · Score: 1

      You probably want to try mozex or the actual kitchen sink...

    7. Re:Speaking of Kitchen Sinks by SEE · · Score: 1

      VIPER.

  43. Compile it yourself! by UberLord · · Score: 2, Informative

    This is one of the places where Gentoo really shines. Using RedHat 9 on my lappy, finding a recent version of Mozilla with XFT/GTK2 support was a right royal pain.

    Using Gentoo the ebuild compiles XFT/GTK2 support by default :)

  44. Re:This just in.. by Sprite+Remix · · Score: 0

    Perhaps the troll to end all trolls?

  45. Not 'real' bloat though by MarcQuadra · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Mozilla isn't bloaty though, I've been using it since 'milestone 18' back in the mid-nineties when it was a bit pokey and broken.

    Have you done a quantitative ascessment of this feeling that Moz is big or slow? I think Mozilla is quite fast, certainly faster than IE. Also, I think that if you could un-marry windows and IE and get a full grasp of how much RAM IE was using (even when it's not loaded, mshtml.dll and friends are in RAM) you'd change your story.

    Every web browser is going to use a fair amount of RAM because it needs at least a window-sized buffer to composite on. Safari and IE are tricky because they use the OS libraries for that, so it's not as easy to see the footprint, but Moz does it inside itself, so the footprint looks somewhat massive.

    --
    "Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
    1. Re:Not 'real' bloat though by Chester+K · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Have you done a quantitative ascessment of this feeling that Moz is big or slow?

      Yes. I've implemented a web grid-view component that runs solely using DHTML orchestrated by a JavaScript object. The component is capable of showing a grid with literally millions of lines of data, since the display algorithms I use are O(1) with respect to the data set size and O(xy) with respect to the visible size of the grid on the page. This is done by dynamically creating/modifying/repopulating a table which is absolutely positioned within an overflow:clip DIV to give the appearance of a small view into the bigger dataset. On top of that is overlaid a overflow:auto DIV with a transparent DIV inside that is sized by calculation of the number of rows and columns in the dataset, in order to present scrollbars to the user where the scrollbar thumbnail is sized appropriately. I went to great pains to make sure it works in both IE and in Mozilla.

      The component, without any data attached, but set to think it has a dataset of several thousand rows and several hundred columns, when maximized to fill my 1280x1024 display, can update the display for each scroll in 70ms in Internet Explorer. On the same system, under the same conditions, even running a slightly different code path in order to make use of Mozilla-specific performance boosts, it updates in 180ms. In IE, it's usable but feels a little chunky -- in Mozilla, it's so slow to the point where grabbing a scrollbar thumb and dragging the view is not practical.

      These times were calculated by loading the page in question, scrolling the view from top to bottom to top using the Page Down and Page Up keys, allowing the system to settle, then doing the same operation, having JavaScript measure the amount of time each update took to scroll from top to bottom to top again, then averaging the times.

      (For what it's worth, a .NET-based implementation of the component which can used directly in IE 5.5 and up in a completely secure fashion, the update times with data population are less than 10ms. This is why I've been wanting Mozilla to support the use of .NET components via the OBJECT tag, like IE does, but that's mostly a pipe dream since I don't realistically think it's ever going to happen.)

      In this real world example, using code that's actually being used in a web-based intranet application, Mozilla's performance is more than 200% that of Internet Explorer. Depending on whether I can convince management of the potential benefits of doing so, I might be able to release the actual code used in this test some day. I'd really like to see Mozilla improve, I've certainly been giving it the old college try to the point of spending more time on testing with Mozilla than I really should, but this is just one in a long string of problems with Mozilla I've run into that would block it from being rolled out as our platform of choice.

      --

      NO CARRIER
    2. Re:Not 'real' bloat though by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Mozilla isn't bloaty though, I've been using it since 'milestone 18' back in the mid-nineties when it was a bit pokey and broken.

      It would have been really pokey and broken back then: it didn't exist in the 1990s.

    3. Re:Not 'real' bloat though by MarcQuadra · · Score: 1

      Milestone 1 was in 1998. I was just starting to use Linux back then, I clearly recall using Milestone 8 during my internship at a school in fall of 1999.

      --
      "Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
  46. Hmm, yes, yet more bloat by eugene_roux · · Score: 0, Troll
    I do not need one tool that does: web browsing, email, usenet, html editing and, now, ftp upload.

    You are so damned right.

    That's why I stick to something nice and lean like emacs ...

    --
    Part Time Philosopher, Oft Times Romantic, Full Time Unix Geek
    1. Re:Hmm, yes, yet more bloat by eugene_roux · · Score: 1

      (Score:0, Troll)

      Okay... [Wry Grin]

      Well, I suppose actually expecting intelligent insight and a sense of humour from /. was a tad optimistic...

      --
      Part Time Philosopher, Oft Times Romantic, Full Time Unix Geek
  47. Re:Why new features if they have an extension mode by mlefevre · · Score: 4, Informative

    They didn't add an "FTP client" - they added UI to allow FTP upload. The FTP back-end is useful for other stuff, and was already present - adding the menu command wasn't a huge thing.

  48. this is fixed now? by nfabl · · Score: 1

    Atleast according to that bug report the latest trunks load fine.

  49. How many more times... by BinLadenMyHero · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ..I'll have to hear this?

    It's just the linux kernel that follows that numbering.
    A small number of projects followed the idea, but it's very far from a general rule, and it's not intended to be.

  50. Does it support MNG/JNG? by PybusJ · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Does this new release restore any support for the MNG/JNG graphics formats, or is GIF still the only animated format supported?

  51. Still no SVG? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Really, after so many years in development, the fact that SVG is still not in the main branch by default is really dissapointing.

    1. Re:Still no SVG? by fbg111 · · Score: 1

      Really, after so many years in development, the fact that SVG is still not in the main branch by default is really dissapointing.

      Is SVG available in *any* browser? Afaik, both IE and Opera require a 3rd party plugin. Seems Mozilla is a lot further along than the competition with this feature.

      --
      Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
    2. Re:Still no SVG? by rmohr02 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      SVG is in the main branch, it just isn't built by default. Also, I believe the only guy doing any serious work with SVG for Mozilla is Alex Fritze. If you want SVG quicker, I'm sure Alex could use help.

    3. Re:Still no SVG? by gr8_phk · · Score: 1
      "Seems Mozilla is a lot further along than the competition with this feature."

      How can it be further along when the feature is not enabled in the release builds? This is something that could really set Mozilla apart from the others, but it's not enabled. As long as it's unfinnished, it should be possible to turn it off/use a plugin but it should be enabled.

      MathML should also be enabled by default and the required fonts should (maybe) come with Mozilla. I absolutely hate sites/browsers that tell me I need to download extra crap to view them. Consider me a lazy joe sixpack, but if it isn't installed and turned on it isn't there - as far as I'm concerned.

      p.s. the Stixfonts are nearly complete and would be good for rendering MathML.

    4. Re:Still no SVG? by IncohereD · · Score: 1

      MathML should also be enabled by default and the required fonts should (maybe) come with Mozilla. I absolutely hate sites/browsers that tell me I need to download extra crap to view them.

      Then why don't you use IE and have it automatically download all kinds of extra crap?? The reason that these things are choices is because not everyone wants them, and people would get pissed off if the choice was made behind their back.

    5. Re:Still no SVG? by gr8_phk · · Score: 1

      Actually, I was wrong about MathML - it is working just fine in standard Mozilla. The fonts are not installed, but don't seem to be necessary. SVG is planned to be the same way when it is finnished (I think). The reason it's not enabled now is probably that it's not done. I would prefer partial native support now that I could disable if I choose (because a plugin works better). I don't see anyone "pissed off" because MathML was enabled (and can't be disabled) behind their back. These are reasonable W3C standards, not some MS crap or Flash that some company wants people to install. Perhaps I'll join the SVG development so we can enable that behind your back ;-)

  52. one point against Moz but few against firefox by lingqi · · Score: 1

    Funny that I am typing this in Moz right now, BUT:

    using FireFox + ThunderBird may take longer to start total and take a bit more memory overhead, but when Moz browser dies, it always takes mail with it - and on more than one occasion it has taken some long mail I have composed, but not yet saved in drafts or sent, with it too.

    That said, I like Moz browser's inline search functionality so I can't get used to firefox. And does anybody else notice that the context menu for tabs on the two apps are different? (one has close tab on top and the other on bottom) It's a pain when you reflexively click the wrong one.

    I also don't like firefox's lack of Ctrl-Enter in new tab thing, as well as some auto-appending www / .com thing. (try typing slashdot.org into firefox and it will try to go to http://www.slashdot.org.com/.really is a more mature product.

    --

    My life in the land of the rising sun.

    1. Re:one point against Moz but few against firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bullshit. I just tried this in FireFox 0.8 and it went to http://slashdot.org, as expected

    2. Re:one point against Moz but few against firefox by gabec · · Score: 2, Informative
      I also don't like firefox's lack of Ctrl-Enter in new tab thing, as well as some auto-appending www / .com thing. (try typing slashdot.org into firefox and it will try to go to http://www.slashdot.org.com/.really is a more mature product.

      to open a url in a new window it's ALT+ENTER.
      to open a url such as "cnn" and add ".com", use CTRL+ENTER
      to open a url such as "sourceforge" and add ".net", use "SHIFT+ENTER"
      to open a url such as "slashdot" and add ".org", use "CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER"

      Feel free to criticize after you RTFM.

    3. Re:one point against Moz but few against firefox by Reapy · · Score: 1

      inline search... you mean type a / then any word you want to search for? I use that all the time in firefox...

    4. Re:one point against Moz but few against firefox by armando_wall · · Score: 1

      Feel free to criticize after you RTFM.

      Feel free to actually read the fucking posting before you criticize.

      The Ctrl+ENTER he's referring to is very useful in Mozilla... it will open the URL in a new tab. In firefox, you just can't do this.

      I haven't tried it myself, but entering "slashdot.org" will try to fetch www.slashdot.org.com when typing Ctrl+Enter? Give me a break.

    5. Re:one point against Moz but few against firefox by thatnerdguy · · Score: 0

      You can do exactly the same thing in Firefox. Try it!
      I use Ctrl-enter (or actually ctrl-click) to open pages in new tabs all the time. In fact i mapped a thumb button on my mx700 to ctrl so its even easier to open a new tab.

      As for the other thing, entering slashdot.org and pressing ctrl-enter will take you to www.slashdot.org.com.

      --
      I saw the Sign, and it opened up my eyes
    6. Re:one point against Moz but few against firefox by gabec · · Score: 1
      >> Feel free to criticize after you RTFM.

      > Feel free to actually read the fucking posting before you criticize.

      Irony abounds.

      Just so your dumb ass doesn't continue on in bleak ignorance, continuing the first guy's misplaced criticism, I will go ahead and repeat myself for your benefit.

      The whole point was to inform the grandparent that Firefox had moved the CTRL-ENTER feature to be ALT-ENTER. I then ever so courteously proceeded to let him know what other cool-yet-mostly-useless related keystrokes could be used for this feature he and you were obviously igorant of. I assume this is where you got confused. It's understandable.

      "But why did they change it!" you ask? (Of course you ask, because you didn't RTFM either.) Because Firefox decided to emulate MSIE's key mapping of adding "www." and ".com" to the urlbar when hitting CTRL-ENTER. Therefore they had to move the Open-In-New-Tab feature to another keystroke: ALT-ENTER.

      This has the annoying side effect of messing with your browser's focus if you change your mind since the program will assume you have hit alt to access the File Menu via the keyboard, but is otherwise a harmless change. It is also not possible to simultaneously open a url in a new window and add the TLD suffix/prefix. e.g. you cannot successfully do CTRL+ALT+ENTER on "cnn" and get "www.cnn.com" in a new tab.

      Oh well!

  53. Best idea ever... by hot_Karls_bad_cavern · · Score: 1

    Bar none folks, "..And if you are going to add new features, try intergrating bit torrent into mozilla since it seems to be the new default download format why the hell are you upgrading FTP?.."....damn, i really hope some of the developers read that. To be able to nab (and release) torrents with only a click, perhaps even transparently and no different than a normal download. Damn, that is a good idea! Cheers!

  54. Firefox and Thunderbird too early by n-baxley · · Score: 1

    You won't get widespread adoption until Firefox and Thunderbird reach 1.0. Call it symantics, but it is important for them them to reach the 1.0 mark soon, not just in name but in functionality.

  55. Yay, FTP upload. by Bilange · · Score: 1

    But unfortunately i wanted to see this on FireFox / Firebird. Yes, I can browse and download but not upload with Firefox AFAIK.

    Too bad, im still stuck with nautilus (having passwords displayed in Nautilus address bar sucks)

    --
    "...a generation of kids has grown up thinking Trance is the shittiest music since country and western." - Paul van Dyk
  56. Bloatware by dpilot · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I was recently "forced" to get IE running on the kids' dual boot Linux/Win98SE machine. My son needed to use a certain college web site, and rejected Mozilla, being "IE-only". So I visited Windows Update, since IE on the box had never been used for web browsing. Many, many updates and reboots later, he was able to do what he needed to do. After I have paid the first tuition bill and become a member of the in-crowd, I'm going to write to the college about their IE-only site, about how they're aiding and abetting a convicted monopolist with a site like that, and how they should be using w3c, webwasher, and the like to generate portable content.

    My kids tend to keep the machine on Windows, largely because they can do what they need there, plus play games. After this experience, I cautioned my son to avoid IE because of future security problems, even if it is currently fully patched. His response... IE is a *pig* compared to Mozilla.

    --
    The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
    1. Re:Bloatware by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Interesting
      This is pretty funny to me. First, unless they're using ActiveX you can change your browser personality in order to make it think you're using IE. Second, I use IE (Actually I use MyIE2) on my WinXP system and I occasionally use Mozilla and in general IE itself loads quicker than mozilla but mozilla loads many pages faster. However, under periods of high load and due to their insistence on using their own widgets, the gui for Mozilla becomes completely and utterly unresponsive. Mozilla also has problems rendering pages in the help desk application we use at work; It's fine until you try to shrink the window, and then it doesn't draw the table narrower to fit the width window as it should. It's funny because it handles resize-to-larger events but not to-smaller. This is Moz 1.6.

      Schools, like anyone else, target the most common platform. Typically speaking they don't have the staff to care about things like whether you can get on with Mozilla. Their attitude tends to be that if you can't get on from home, you can come and use one of the many Windows machines on campus. For better or for worse, unless you organize a coalition, no one is going to care that you want them to use web standards.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:Bloatware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      i taught for 2 years, and this second especially, when the systems were all Win2k, i mandated the use of Mozilla.

      why? for one it was a defensive measure. the geniuses who installed win2k during the previous summer neglected to install a virus scanner as well (!!!). using mozilla, while by no means fool proof, was a defensive measure, being less vulnerable than IE.

      second, i wanted the kids to experience a better browser, pop-up blocking and tabbed browsing being the biggest benefits. once they grew accustomed to tabs, they loved them. it's hard to go back to a lesser browser after using tabs (for me anyway).

      the other big draw? mozilla composer. composer is the single reason i didnt have them use firefox by default. it was a great way to introduce kids to HTML editing. first i'd teach them very basic HTML, then show them how much easier it was to use composer. it also helped for them to grasp the basics of HTML coding so they could tinker with the page source to make up for any shortcomings in composer.

      that's not to say the experience was flawless. these were older boxes in the lab, and even with mozilla pre-loaded in memory, the launch time wasn't that great. it didn't help to explain to them that slow start times are to be EXPECTED when you have a P2 with 64 MB RAM running Win2k. kids merely thought, "mozilla=slow". also, since popup blocking isnt enabled by default (mozilla team, PLEASE consider changing this!!!), some smart asses would say, "HAHA! mozilla's broken! it got a popup!" a few keyboard strokes and one checkbox later, smart asses were put in check with blocking enabled, but it would be nice to see this already done beforehand.

      the handful of kids who used firefox--either on a linux box i had setup or on the Win box i put it on--loved it. i burned several disks that had mozilla and firefox on them so kids could use it at home without having to dl it over dial up. all in all, i think introducing them to the mozilla family was more than worthwhile. i try to spread the gospel to everyone i know as well, and people who use it (especially firefox) love it.

      you're right in the sense that people dont care about web standards. they do care about getting rid of pop ups and not having web sites that take over their pc's. the mozilla family is a great start for these folks because it just plain works. i have experienced very very few page rendering problems, and the ones that do render funny are usually written by mo-mo's, and are shite for content (not always, but generally). for the majority of users, the differences between mozillas and IE in page load times and rendering, in general, are not only barely noticable, they are much lower on the priority list than safe, unobtrusive web browsing.

    3. Re:Bloatware by bunratty · · Score: 2, Insightful
      unless they're using ActiveX you can change your browser personality in order to make it think you're using IE
      There are several other reasons that a web page may not work in Mozilla, even if you set the user agent to spoof IE. One is the use of proprietary DOM, such as document.all, which Mozilla does not support. Another is if the server is misconfigured to send files (for example, WMV files) with an incorrect MIME type. Yet another is if the client-side JavaScript checks navigator.appName, which is not spoofed even if the user agent is spoofed.

      What webmasters should do is design according to the web standards, not target one particular browser. That will ensure that the page will work for the largest possible audience, and will need less maitenance in the future. In my experience, webmasters generally do care if Mozilla users can't access their site, and if you point out specific problems and standards-based solutions to those problems, they will usually make their site accessible in Mozilla.

      --
      What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
    4. Re:Bloatware by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      I agree that developers should target standards in general, but the problems with that are twofold. First, standards aren't. Write a page for the standards and two browsers will render them differently. That's a fact of life. You can target a subset of the standards and have things work but then you're missing functionality. Secondly, there's plenty of stuff not covered by the standards which is why developers use new, non-standard technologies. Remember life before HTML tables? Remember how we got them?

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  57. THANK GOD FOR MOZILLA!!!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Hi, I install cable modems for a local cable internet service provider. Before I go any futher, let me just say this:

    Geeks don't get to see how the other half lives (fixing mom's computer doens't count).

    I am required to configured the customer's computer and setup their e-mail. Part of the install process requires me to hit the cable company's web page to allow the customer to chose their e-mail. Every day I get to see 20 or more fscked up customer computers that have so many spyware programs, viruses, trojans and other assorted crap gumming up their desktops. It's not uncommon to see 15+ instances of IE load up with ads before I can get a usable browser. More often than not, the browser's spyware add-ins have the customer's computer so fscked, that I have to ftp to mozilla and pull down an clean, standards compliant browser that blocks pop-ups. Only when I load the same web page back to back between IE and mozilla does the customer begin to understand just how fscked microsoft software is.

    So, even though I don't have the money to contribute to the Mozilla project, I would just like to thank the hard working folks who put that fine browser alternative togeter.

    Thank you so very much. Without Mozilla, my install time would increase from an average of 20-25 minutes to well over an hour.

    And to Microsoft: Shame on you, your shoddy code and your market share. If there's anybody headed for a fall, it's you.

    1. Re:THANK GOD FOR MOZILLA!!!!! by RobertLTux · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Might i suggest that you put together a "Geek On Disc" with current copies of Mozilla, Ad-aware, and SpyBot Search and destroy (add OO.O If you can) Drop a Readme file that disavows any link between the cd and your employer and... (note IANAL you kight want to check with one)

      --
      Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
  58. I just installed it and.. by Maljin+Jolt · · Score: 1

    Using a 1.6 for some time, I just sucked 1.8. And guess what, all Slashdot fonts goes totally crazy. My system is Mandrake 10 cooker. And I am beginning to hate gtk crapware.

    Unfortunately, while Konqueror looks very nice, has a crappy html engine. Not able to render a Slashdot personal page for ages.

    So I have a perfect browser within primitive-looking (and behaving) app framework and nice one with eye candies showing scrambled pages.

    Why not put mozilla engine into KDE framework?

    WHY NOT PUT MOZILLA ENGINE INTO KDE FRAMEWORK???

    Sorry for a flamebait.

    --
    There you are, staring at me again.
    1. Re:I just installed it and.. by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 1
      What version of KDE do you have? I switched from Firefox to Konqueror for regular browsing a couple of weeks ago, and I really don't notice much of a difference between the way the two render pages. Slashdot is still ugly, and everything else looks much the same.

      One nice thing about KHTML is that Apple is spending a lot of time and money to make it render well, which is also good for KDE users.

      --
      Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
    2. Re:I just installed it and.. by Duty · · Score: 1

      There's an officially recognized and endorsed "mozilla-qt" subproject, in fact, although it's been dead in the water for a while, AFAIK. Why don't you contribute to it and help it get going again?

  59. what I don't understand... by Ender+Ryan · · Score: 2, Insightful
    ... is why people are always making you answer the stupidest questions over and over! :D

    Sheesh, the whole project is Open Source / Free software, with a largely open, public, and transparent development process. Go to mozilla.org and all the mozilla portals and learn a little bit about the project, where it's headed, why it's headed that way, who's responsible for it, how it can benefit you, how you can help, and et cetera.

    --
    Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
  60. So when will Firefox and Mozilla re-merge? by magefile · · Score: 1

    I love having a stand-alone browser, and I think it's healthy to have that kind of separation. But I'm wondering when they're going to make the Mozilla browser Firefox? (the best I've ever heard from Firesomething, by the way, was "Mozilla Lightningnarwhal")

  61. Small TB logo by bjdevil66 · · Score: 1

    The Thunderbird logo will convert more users than any single feature X you can name.

    Does anyone else think that the small TB logo in the Windows taskbar's Quick Launch looks more like an Anime girl's head w/blue hair than a bird on an envelope?

  62. FTP? by phorm · · Score: 1

    So, Mozilla 1.8 is going to include basic FTP upload support. I've always wondered how Filezilla fits into the mix. To me, it seems that it's just tailing on the 'zilla name, and no real relation. FileZilla is really a pretty good FTP program - but it is windows-only. I'd like to see the FileZilla team hook up with the Moz team though, maybe add it to the suite and/or make a linux/Mac branch.

    1. Re:FTP? by Gerv · · Score: 2, Interesting

      To me, it seems that it's just tailing on the 'zilla name, and no real relation.

      Bang on.

      Gerv

  63. Scrolling Speed by yRabbit · · Score: 1

    My mom doesn't want to use Mozilla, because clicking and holding the mouse button over the scroll buttons (the "up" and "down" ones) is too slow.
    And it is slow compared to IE or really old Netscape. She also refuses to scroll in other manners (mouse wheel, drag the bar around all the time, arrow keys).
    Does anyone know any way to speed up Mozilla's button scrolling, short of downloading and editing the source? ;)

    1. Re:Scrolling Speed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      K-meleon's got a top-notch button scroll. It's based on Mozilla, so she'll get that added benefit. Since it doesn't use XUL, none of the extensions will work on it though.

    2. Re:Scrolling Speed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You can increase the number of lines that are scrolled at each 'click' of the scrollwheel by typing in the location textbox

      about:config

      which should display the configuration variables. Then seek the following variables: (you can use the filter tool for locating them faster)

      mousewheel.withnokey.numlines
      mousewheel.withno key.sysnumlines

      Modify the value of numlines to something bigger than the default of 1 (to your mom's liking) and in order to make that modification effective, set sysnumlines to false.

      This works fine at least in Slackware Linux with Mozilla 1.6.

      There's also a Mozilla add-on project for advanced mouse wheeling that might be of interest to you.

  64. Firefox has a really nice javascript console by Mustang+Matt · · Score: 1

    Just choose custom when you install it. (This is on the windows side, but I imagine it's on linux as welll.)

    --
    The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
  65. Snoop Dogg Spam by Mustang+Matt · · Score: 1

    If spammers started translating their emails into Snoop Dogg style languagizzle. Would it get past spam filters easier? I guess it wouldn't be too tough to block every email with the phrase izzle.

    --
    The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
  66. Seriously. by sulli · · Score: 1
    I want fewer cookies.

    In particular, shouldn't cookies be handled via a whitelist? Let the user affirmatively accept cookies for sites he cares about (slashdot, nytimes) and delete all the rest when he quits mozilla. That would be better for privacy and also reduce unnecessary bloat. Who really needs 20 cookies for servedby.advertising.com - and has time to individually blacklist all of the ad servers?

    --

    sulli
    RTFJ.
    1. Re:Seriously. by quiddity · · Score: 1

      ummm, moz 1.6 does this.
      just set it to block all cookies (except session cookies, if ya want/need), then per site use the toolbar menu to select "allow cookies from this site".
      works perfectly.

      --
      .
      . hmmm
  67. Fix the damn calendar!! by EvilStein · · Score: 4, Interesting

    And no, "Sunbird" isn't even close to a suitable answer. Neither is "Thunderbird" or "Firefox."

    Corporate users can barely grok "Mozilla" but they certainly understand "Oh, no functional calendar? I'll just stay on Outlook..."

  68. Go the way of KONTACT....? by standing_still · · Score: 0

    Does the Mozilla team have plans to bundle together FireFox, and Thunderbird similar to how Kmail, and Korgranzier (and a few other appz) were bundled using Kontact?

    I know Linux/Unix users like to have seperate applications that are small and powerful, but I find that many Windows user want an application that does everything -- regardless of how poorly it works *cough* Look-Out ... I mean Outlook *cough*

  69. get her to use the wheel or buy an mx500 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    she wont have to waste time moving the mouse. try getting her an logitech mx500 it has scroll buttons (cruise buttons) so you can adjust the speed in which they scroll. and you can set any button to use the speed scroll. also you can bind keys for back and forward. my dad was the same way till I made him use the scroll wheel. your just not trying hard enough

  70. w00t by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    another moz alpha. I think I just wet my pants. How about a new slashdot article everytime CVS is updated? Thanks.

  71. Re:Why new features if they have an extension mode by Dr.+Spork · · Score: 1
    Agreed, but I also think this functionality would best be separated out and made into an extension. It makes sense in this case.

    And I think they should be aiming to repackage Thunderbird as a Firefox xpi extension, as a fork of the Thunderbird stand-alone app. That way, if you run both, you don't need to have Gecko in memory twice.

  72. Don't mean to bust your research bubble... by ashpool7 · · Score: 2, Informative

    but

    "Unfortunately, Carbon doesn't have the ability to recognize a middle mouse click"

    Is completely false.

    As this developer page shows, Carbon can handle 65,535 buttons. The problem is, as you would know if you poked around in bugzilla, mouse events don't use Carbon Events (here's the filed bug for rewriting them). At least be correct in your knowledge of the situation next time. :)

    1. Re:Don't mean to bust your research bubble... by thesolo · · Score: 1

      Thank you, I did actually know that. 106692 is linked from 151249, and I've seen it before. I was hurriedly trying to write my reply up at work, and I said something incorrect.

      You're right, it's not that Carbon can't handle the buttons, it's that Mozilla doesn't use Carbon Events to do so. This is what I meant to say, and had I gotten more sleep last night, I probably would have gotten it right the first time :)

    2. Re:Don't mean to bust your research bubble... by Bombcar · · Score: 1

      Carbon can handle 65,535 buttons.

      Hmmm. The company with one button mice can support 65,535 button mice?

      I gotta gets me one of those.

  73. Standardize on 1.7 by mnordstr · · Score: 1

    "Here I thought that Mozilla was going to standardize on 1.7"

    They are, that's why they haven't released a stable 1.7 yet! Ever heard of QA?

  74. NO! by IncohereD · · Score: 1

    I think she meant specifically the button in the upper-right of a browser window which animates as you wait for the page to download.

    No...what Gerv meant was that CCS (i.e., rendering specifications for webPAGES), requires that you be able to do certain things with the standard form widgets (like buttons, drop-down lists, text entry boxes, and the like), which require a custom widget set. And if you need a custom widget set for webforms anyway, you may as well use it for the rest of the browser.

  75. Re:I used to use FireFox for the same reason... bu by IncohereD · · Score: 1

    I suspect the reasone is more the opposite. Personally, I used firefox at work for browsing (where we used Outlook), and the suite at home because I wanted the web to integrate closely with my e-mail. Thunderbird/Firefox now play very nice on windows, but are still a pain on Linux.

  76. Thanks! by sulli · · Score: 1

    I didn't know that. Will switch to that method going forward.

    --

    sulli
    RTFJ.
  77. Spell Check for Browser! by dbcooper_nz · · Score: 1

    When will this essesntial feature be implemented? Spell checking for browser text boxes and forms is a must. Opera and IE have it available.

  78. MNG and JNG support by roesti · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Mozilla 1.7 has been pending for a couple of months now, and I reckon something specific must be holding everything up for 1.8 to be in alpha before 1.7 is finalised. Does anyone know what these things are?

    I've been following Bug 18574 (no links allowed from Slashdot), which concerns restoring support for MNG and JNG image formats. The debate about this bug has been long and arduous, and heated at times: essentially, it's the same old nobody-supports-it and it's-just-code-bloat arguments versus the same old it's-a-good-format and Web-pages-will-use-them-if-browsers-do arguments. However, people are starting to get it to work on their own builds, with some crashing still on some systems (eg. OS/2) with some image files.

    If there are specific issues holding up 1.7, I'm starting to suspect this is one of them. Officially, there is no target milestone for Bug 18574. Of course, if it doesn't make it into 1.7, it may end up as an XPI (eg. Mngzilla) and all will be well. Does any one know for sure?

    1. Re:MNG and JNG support by denis-The-menace · · Score: 1

      These should be done as plug-ins/add-ons like this:
      MNG XPI for Mozilla

      How did I find this?
      Google with: MNG mozilla

      --
      Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
  79. And this is why.... by Koguma · · Score: 3, Insightful
    developers run screaming from the Mozilla framework. I mean, what's the point of developing for it when what you code will be out-of-date within a month or so. Who will run your app on an 'old' version of Mozilla? I've written some stuff using XUL and JXPCOM and having it work in later browsers is a mixed bag. And as has been said, 1.7 isn't even out yet. Why not focus resources on getting all the bugs quashed in 1.7 to make it the standard for developing. And they have the gall to wonder why developers don't use their framework. Doesn't look like M$ has any competition after all...
  80. Please learn how to make links. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Please learn how to make links.
    See <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla1.8a1 /README.html">here</a> for details.
    yields: See here for details.
  81. mod up for funnY by Adolph_Hitler · · Score: 1

    hahahahaha Thats the only response i can give to this post. Keep being funny

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    People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
  82. Adding to mozilla by kiwipeso · · Score: 1

    I'm working on adding gnutella & bittorent , IM and an option to use very strong crypto for the lot.

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    - Kaos games and encryption systems developer