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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."
But despite standardising 1.7, development of mozilla continues.M E.html for details.
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/READ
But this news is already 8 days old. I wonder why this is picked up only now.
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.
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.
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?
What you call as "bloat" are useful features for other users. If you dont like/use these features, use firefox.
My mac mouse only has one button you insensitive clod!
Martin
For their poor servers ...
Win32 exe
Win32 Zip
Linux
Linux (installer)
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]
You can configure Mozilla to play nice with Outlook, check out the cool tip:
h tm l#other-default
http://www.mozilla.org/start/1.4/faq/mail-news.
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"...
--Murray Barton
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!"
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.
There doesn't seem to be a version compiled against Xft or Gtk+2.0. Is this a regression?
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!
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.
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.
the number of cookies that Mozilla can hold has also increased 'dramatically.'
I have submitted this as a bug!
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?
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.
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).
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.
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
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.
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.
Really, after so many years in development, the fact that SVG is still not in the main branch by default is really dissapointing.
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
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
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.
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..."