Slashdot Mirror
A New Look For Firefox
ben writes "Regular users of Mozilla Firefox may be interested to know a new default theme is planned for 0.9 in preparation for the road to 1.0. 0.9 will also feature new improved theme and extension management, which will make it easy to make Firefox look the way you want it to."
...They leave everything as it is, and fix the resource leak in windows? It's hard to try and convince people to switch to my browser when I have to "end process tree" the thing once a day.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
I did prefer the old look, but then again the new one hasn't been finalised yet and is still under active development (it's been checked in but not enabled yet).
Whatever the case, 0.9 will be an excellent release and well worth trying. However, please remember this release will have some major new features (better extension/theme management, migration of prefs from other browsers such as IE, Netscape and Opera) and then focus will be on polish and stability up to a successful 1.0 release.
Here is the thread containing screenshots of the new theme.
There's mischief and malarkies but no queers or yids or darkies within this bastard's carnival, this vicious cabaret.
Will Thunderbird be following suite and changing default theme too?
Cheers,
Ian
Qute was a great Default theme. It looked great as a default theme, and really made switchers from IE feel comfortable. This new theme just doesnt fit in Windows or Linux... it looks good for OSX, but just not in other OSes.
in the browser market, you'd be looking to take it from Internet Explorer (duh). That's Internet Explorer on Windows ... not the Mac. I think that it is important to have a default theme that makes it easy for the mums and dads to identify with (because they are not likely to change it). I think the current default theme does this and the proposed change is a mistake. But what do I know?
The important things like fixing the preferences, the weird, fatal bugs can wait! We want fun eye candy!!!
Yeah, right.
Just tried firefox this afternoon - but switched back to Opera. Am I trying the wrong thing, or does firefox not expose as may options as opera? I wanna be able to do stuff like set my default encoding, browser id, source viewer n stuff like that... without recompling of course...
They are changing the name!
It's now known as ThunderFox.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
This is why I like open source software development. Just look at that forum thread. Inside a company like IBM or Microsoft, a debate like this would be kept covered up out of PR fears. Open source developers more often than not do not give a shit about PR (which is a good thing), they just want to make the best possible program. They also don't have to be afraid of losing their jobs, getting their salaries lowered, or whatnot. So we get to see the nitty gritty details of intra-project disputes and arguments from the front row, even silly things like what theme ships with Firefox as the default.
Gotta love it.
Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
Yes, Arvid Axelsson, the author of the current default theme (Qute), may have a bit of an ego himself, and may have been reluctant to freely license his artwork under the same MPL terms as the Mozilla codebase. But he's a reasonable person, and he's indicated he's willing to compromise and do a Free license that works for the Mozilla team, because he wants to make sure that Firefox succeeds, and has the best, most aesthetically pleasing look and feel possible.
For God's FUCKING sake you egomaniacs (and anybody who has followed some of these discussions over the last few years knows this is true - see the splashscreen debacle in Bugzilla, the many UI layout discussions, and the naming debacles for examples), we are relying on you and the excellent browser you have created and maintained. We respect immensely all the hard work the Mozilla and Firefox core developers have done, but their lackadaisical attitude towards branding of their product (Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox?), the terrible aesthetics of the splashscreens and icon sets they keep putting back in are just unacceptable. Qute was the best thing that ever happened to Firefox and the Mozilla project - compare to the awful looking old versions of the Mozilla browser - ugh.
You are the developers and project leaders of a critical mass-market product. If there is truly an unresolvable licensing issue with the current icons and their author is unwilling to compromise, come out and tell us, and assign a group of artists or other aesthetically inclined technology professionals to consider submissions for a new default. Realize that your contributions, while critical, do not need to include drawing shitty icons or making terrible off-the-cuff aesthetic decisions that have a negative impact on the adoption of a critical product for the entire Internet's wellbeing.
I just want to register my disgust at the behaviour and unprofesionalism of the people overseeing this project. The way they have treated the artist who contributed so much of his time is appaling.
This is almost enough to push me to another browser.
SHAME ON YOU!
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
...poor forum server is screaming...
Consistency across platforms or within platforms is quite a non-issue to us KDE users : the Plastik and Keramik themes for Mozilla and Firefox are beautifully integrated in the KDE desktop, so whatever the default themes becomes, we'll still be happy.
As long as skinning is avaible, everybody should be happy.
Well it is a pre-release, they're working hard to make sure that this is fixed before 1.0 - I think it'll be fixed in 0.9 too once all the theme changes have landed.
Can I configure Firefox back to the sane Ok/Cancel button order?
No or Yes?
Dude, you can skin it.
"..We respect immensely all the hard work the Mozilla and Firefox core developers have done, but.."
Read your own subject line and then tell me during which part of your response you were respectful of them and their work.
But when do we get custom sidebar tabs in PheoBirdFox? Or is that part of the "bloat" that led to the split with the core Mozilla team?
Now I know you can just download themes to your heart's content. I'm using a tiny theme because that's the way I like it. However there's no reason not to have several default themes to choose from at install time. I would suggest the themes be "Default", "Internet Explorer", "Netscape", "Opera" and perhaps a Macish theme. As long as it is explained that this is simply the look and feel and has no real functionality differences (explained in a calm and simple manner), things should be less scary. Previous posters are absolutely right-- the more different it looks, the more scared the user will be, even if everything is in exactly the same place.
Firefox was *supposed* to be a *fast* lean-and-mean browser. One reason was given that bundling IE with OS works because people are too lazy to download another browser. That gap WIDENS as the download size increases. Already Firefox is 10+ MB!!!!
Don't be such a troll. The download size for Firefox hasn't been anywhere near 10 meg (except perhaps before they stripped out all the app suite stuff).
If you look at the latest branch builds you'll see that the current download is below 5 meg on Windows.
Why oh why do they want cross platform uniformity??
One of the most basic principles of human-computer interaction is consistency. Windows users expect to see Windows-like apps, Mac OS X ppl expect native OS X looking apps and likewise for GNOME, KDE and whatever else.
Anything that breaks that (for example an OS X app that looks and/or behaves like a Windows app goes against the user's expections. And ultimately that makes the app harder for them to use and hence less appealing.
Granted there is a lot of similarity between the various desktop environments but they do each also have their own quirks. For example OS X apps have the toolbar along the top of the screen (not part of the app window) and have that little window-resizing thing in the bottom-right corner of a window (not part of the window's border). GNOME and KDE generally have different standard back, forward, reload etc icons for buttons that all apps should use rather than their own.
If you make Firefox look the same on every platform you will be breaking such little quirks and conventions on some (possibly all) platforms and the users will suffer.
I say make a different, native looking (and feeling) theme for each major platform and ship it as the default for that platform!
As for branding - you've got the name, you've got the firefox icon - they stay the same on every platform - surely that's all that's needed.
Personally I think that's a good thing too. I for one perceive it as really annoying and intrusive when I install an app that insists on planting it's icons all over my desktop, installing a pointless system tray icon and making itself the default player/browser/whatever (eg RealPlayer or QuickTime on Windows) - it feels like I get the branding forced down my throat and that does NOT make me a happy user! Apps that don't feel the need to do that are a breath of fresh air and it would be a real shame for Firefox to go down the road of excessive branding.
Please don't end up like the XFree86 developers, and completely ruin your project. Listen to the users, just give it a try. Now that wasn't that hard now was it?
I love Firefox, without doubt the best browser yet, and it isn't even 1.0. Keep it fast and light, bloat is what made regular Mozilla suck, face it.
The Mozilla devs did the right thing and asked about having Qute freely licenced 6 months ago. They were apparently told no and have therefore taken the only reasonable course left to them, sourcing another theme.
The new theme might not be brilliant but it is a work in progress and rather importantly is freely licenced so other people will be able to tweak it over time.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
FireFox 0.9 will be at max a 5MB download, and probably closer to 4MB depending on how much stuff they manage to thin out.
I do however think Opera is a very good peice of work for gettin g all that in 3.5MB, put I prefer FireFox for some reason for browsing, and I have all my mail on my iBook using Apple's mail.app (I think it's great... I don't understand why it gets such a slamming).
IntechHosting - Free domain, 2GB, PHP, £4.95/$8.95
Nah, the flash plugin has always been rubbish... QT would be fine, but what about those of us who don't want to install a whole nother set of wigets (I know that works in reverse too though) but then I'm sure lots of you KDE people have gtk2 for the gimp... if not then do a QT firefox too....
do not install 0.9 until (if) the extensions have been updated as it will break
once again backwards compatibility has been sacrificed (and we are not even at 1.0 yet) we had now 200+ extensions have to be updated and some have been abandoned as they worked, now they will be broken and useless
i hope all this aggro was worth it, or you might find a lot of people just give up with it and go back to IE while its got a lot of failings at least you know where you are with it and it doesn't keep breaking every month
IE browser is part of OS, so you got the platform to extend. ... so ... 10 MB.
When it comes to Mozilla, browser itslef is THE platform to extend and it is truly compatable across all major OSes
Now, do you really want to compare with Opera?
Apologies for only just vaguely being on-topic - but does anyone know what the progress is on the Slashdot rendering problem under Firefox (it gets mentioned regularly when Firefox comes up as a topic). I would have thought it would be an important fix for the Slash guys to put in, as I regularly have to refresh a page three or four times before I get any text in the main boxes. This can't help bandwidth...
I've seen IE barf on pages before. No browser is going to be perfect and I think explaining to people that you may have to close and restart a browser during the day (if they keep it open THAT long) is a lot easier than saying "ok, if you close those 5 pop ups and uninstall CometCursor, you'd see the page you're lookin for."
- gtaluvit (prnc. GOT-tuh-LUV-it)
Most of the members of the "community" seen in that thread seem to be a bunch of shouty whiners.
Sadly I expect that for many of them that is their sole "contribution" to Mozilla.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
according to the firefox roadmap it should be out this month.
"...personality goes a long way."
I don't care about the default look as long there is Plastik for Firefox available which also includes Crystal icons and Cancel<->OK button swap.
Yes, I'm aware of that, and I tried to fix it. Gave up after a few tries and went back to IE6+Avantbrowser. Yes, I run (licensed) W2KPro, fully patched with firewall and updated virus protection and Ad-Aware.
I did have Firefox set up with all the extensions I wanted and then it just broke. Not too confidence-inspiring.
Assuming you're talking about this bug:= 205893
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id
I'd be intrigued to hear why you believe GTK is so "fundamentally backwards", seeing as just about every useful Linux app (except for maybe KDevelop, K3B, and OO.o) is written in it.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
It looks very nice!! (a work in progress, and this maybe an older version).
save to disk: pinstripe theme
use the tool here to install it.
..like the CSS rendering. Horrible.
Not to start a flamwar, but it's sad when IE can render CSS better.
Need proof? display: inline; doesn't work. For those that don't know, if you have 3 divs and set them all to "display: inline;" it will align them horizontally similar to TD tags.
display: block; is supposed to align them vertically, much like the TR tag does.
There's a laundry list of other very BASIC CSS styles that will not render properly, and it's very odd that such very basic things don't work or function properly.
Actually, the look of things is about the only thing that even total idiots do change about their computers.
Many, many thousands of machines out there run without having ever been update since install, with every service under the sun enabled, and probably with the default passwords still in place. However, these same machines have custom backgrounds, colour cursors, sound effects and a dozen screensavers.
Skins are big with people who don't know how to change the Start menu and believe Linux must be a windos program, because how can something run on a computer if it isn't a windos program?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Ok so who's gonna be the first person to write an IE look alike theme ;-)
That and, in all honesty, if you're in a Qt environment in Linux then odds are you're also running KDE and thus have a nice helping of Konqueror.
And yeah, the Flash plugin is ass. What ticks me off is that using Crossover Office to use the Windows plugin works much better than the "native" Linux one.
The backwards HIG does not apply.
So it is a bug.
Before calling someone a troll, please invest a little more time than basic examples.
Proof:
<html>
<head>
<style>
#test, #test2
{
display: inline;
width: 250px;
padding: 0px;
margin-top: 10px;
margin-right: 10px;
vertical-align: top;
border: solid 1px #333333;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div id="test">
<div class="a">aaa</div>
<div class="b">bbb</div>
<div class="c">ccc</div>
<div class="a">aaa</div>
<div class="b">bbb</div>
<div class="c">ccc</div>
</div>
<div id="test2">
<div class="a">aaa</div>
<div class="b">bbb</div>
<div class="c">ccc</div>
<div class="a">aaa</div>
<div class="b">bbb</div>
<div class="c">ccc</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
I reported the memory leak on October 17, 2003:
Firefox 0.8: All instances crash. Memory leaks.
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22266
(Copy and paste the link to view the bug report.)
Please add your experiences to the report.
I reported the same bug in Mozilla browser, a long time ago. Huge memory leaks have existed since Mozilla version 1.0.
A recent experience: After two days of opening and closing instances of FireFox, with two FireFox instances open and maybe 5 tabs total, the FireFox memory usage in Windows XP was 374,656 kilobytes. When I closed one of the instances, the memory usage went UP to 385,868 kilobytes.
When you reach the limit of installed memory, Windows XP has to do its terrible disk thrashing thing. If Bill Gates weren't so poor, he could fix that. The advantage of open source is that there is at least a chance that the FireFox bug will be fixed.
...waterchicken was next in line.
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
Is this that Mac OS X look-a-like thing?
Great... Those kids that like making Windows XP look like Mac OS X will have a field day with this.
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
Here is a screenshot of the new theme.
" that's not the new theme, that's the old theme."
Except that it lists the changes for 0.9 which IS the upcoming version number. Not that I am sure at this point given that it's the first I've heard of a complete theme change, AND that mozillazine has been slashdotted thanks to this article (I'm active on the forum BTW).
I hate the new theme that someone linked to above, and think it's 10 steps backward in terms of quick visual recognition of icon function. I'm quietly hoping it's someone trying to promote their own upcoming theme, and that Firefox developers are wise enough not to completely change the look at 0.9 when it is only just beginning to achieve critical mass with new users.
I provide it to ALL my clients and they all think it is by far the best browser they've used. The theme linked as being the upcoming official looks miles less professional, and will hurt Firefox tremendously, regardless of its technical merit.
Visceral Psyche Films
here are more pics from the actual author's site.
The author of the new theme, Kevin Gerich, has posted a screenshot in his blog:
http://kmgerich.com/archive/000062.html
Complete Screenshot of the New Theme
Dear God.
Firefox download size becomes 4.6 MB
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
It may be just me but when the 'lean', 'no-nonsense' and 'stripped' version of software requires 27MB to run with two open tags I think it's perfectly fine to blame the developers of that software, even if there were no extra resource leaks.
I hope someone will write a browser that will parse only valid XHTML 1.1/CSS and nothing else. Would cut the executable in half not to try to support the horrible code people put on the web a few years ago.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
How about firefox native SVG support? Does anyone know if native SVG is included by default install?
Sketsa
SVG Graphics Editor
http://www.kiyut.com
That was Qute for 0.9. Arvid was still working on improving his theme and including icons for some of the new functions such as Mail.
Winstripe is indeed the new theme. We've been debating the decision in the IRC channel and Steven Garrity believes the theme will survive the backlash and be good for Firefox in the future. I hope he's right.
Arvid's Qute theme will still be available for download so let's hope the Theme manager has been totally bug-freed by next week.
First the positives:
1)It looks beautiful.
2)It does look like a Mac app now, but it still looks beautiful even if that might be out of place on Windows or Linux.
3)Very nice icons
4)Even looking a little out of place can be a good thing - example Opera.
5)It's still Firefox, no matter what it looks like - it works the best and it's my favorite browser, so I'm willing to give this new theme a try based on the trust and admiration I've built up for the application and it's developers. Thank you for this wonderful piece of software.
Now the negatives:
1)On Linux and Windows, this will look out of place and won't go down well with people who like a consistent look and feel.
2)The Mac themes are starting to get old and it is time to start off in a new direction and not change to a Macish theme now.
Lastly I have one question to any of those on the Firefox team who are willing to answer:
There are so many themes already for Firefox. Qute was great and I admit I did not change the theme from the default. But what makes you so sure that people are going to do the same with the new theme?
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
Plus they are diluting the cachet of sanitation engineers.
Will this blunder by Goodger & Co. be the straw the broke the camel's back and cause a FireFox fork (FireFork?) to rise to prominence, a la the XFree86 story?
We can only hope.
write his OS so that applications that aren't in use get put out to swap and stay there. I'll admit I don't really understand the technical aspects here, but the complaint seems to be that the this is 'thrashing'; which usually means _sustained_ memory swapping for no really good reason. I've had plenty of instances of that in WinXP, and a lot less of it in Linux (and I've heard great things about the BSD's but I'm too lazy to install them right now). Anyway you cut it though, I think we'll all agree the memory management in WinXP (and probably every other OS on the planet to be fair) could use some work. The grandparant is just ticked off that with all the money XP costs, something as basic as memory management isn't a top priority.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
They're not very big if you have a 1400x1050 12.1" screen. This whole "bitmap" thing is for the 90s, I just hope the free sofware projects have their icons in vector format or we're going to have to repeat this whole disaster in a year or two.
Thanks for saying that, it's exactly what I would have said. With Linux, the virtual memory use seems to be much more orderly.
As a professional web developer who tries to use standards as much as possible, I can tell you that display: inline does not work reliably (at all?) in Mozilla. It's another one of those quirks you have to work around. It surprised me too.
Incidentally, it works fine in Safari (KHTML)...
I have no idea what you're talking about with regard to Firefox CSS rendering, but it's fairly clear you have little idea how the box model works.
display:block and display:inline have nothing to do with how elements are aligned. They control the behavior of an element within the document flow. An inline element, such as an anchor, does not disrupt the flow. A block level element has breaks before and after; as such, it will interrupt the flow.
Your perceived alignment comes fromt this. When three inline elements follow each other, the act line words in a sentence and flow one after the other. When three block level elements follow each other, the breaks before and after the element cause each block to appear under the preceeding one.
Just a quick lesson. If I were you, I'd read up on CSS and prepare some testcases with a well written bug report before you talk about rendering issues. From your post you appear to be fairly ignorant of what's really going on.
Free iPods - now in the UK!
The way they have treated the artist who contributed so much of his time is appalling.
The artist may have spent so much of its time, but he hasn't contributed his time unless and until he licenses the theme under the appropriate license.
... That looks like my OS (GNOME)! Firefox isn't too bad atm, infact its amazing that they have got as much looking like native, but its still not right, infact its still not anywhere close, my highlighting in the menu bar is a dull blue white text in sinks into the menubar. the items selected are rounded dull blue with white letters in firefox they are square edged. Sure its mostly there, but its not quite, and in UI issues not quite is not a great deal better than nowhere near! That's why i use Epiphany as my browser, but I use Firefox for developing (it really doesn't matter for that coz i use jEdit which is Metal Themed so that is nowhere near either)
I hate the way extensions currently work in Firefox, where each one decides where and how to intall itself. In particular, many plugins try to install themselves in the Firefox main folder rather than in the user's profile directory; this is not only annoying for those who want different plugin sets for different users, but it flat out prevents some people from installing some plugins (I cannot install any of the Mycroft quick search plugins because of this, for example).
Not only that, but there is currently no consistent way to remove extensions, either; each one has to provide its own removal method. An extension manager that provides an uninstall function would be nice, but what would be nicer is if I could install a plugin simply but placing a file in the plugin directory, and uninstall it by removing that file. Simple, intuititve, and it doesn't preclude having a nice extension manager on top, either. In fact, this is exactly how the old Extension Manager on pre-OS X Macs worked: disabling an extension would simply move it to a folder called "Extensions (Disabled)" in the System folder.
Mike
Wasnt orbit (or a clone) the default theme on a prior version? I'm very certain it was, and it was gorgeous, usable, and well done. In fact, I remember thinking Qute was pretty crappy in comparison. Qute is very 'Microsoft' and corporate. The different button sizes in Orbit and other elements were very usable and damn cool looking.
The current proposal looks like a mock-up done on MS Paint by an 8-year old.
Go with Orbit (or its clone). Please.
to actually get 0.9 out the frikin' door, rather than fiddle with themes!
It will be interesting to see the Mozilla reaction to this - the response to the new theme has been mostly negative. I certainly haven't seen anyone raving about as they did with the recent Firefox application icons.
Will Mozilla make some kind of pretence at listening to the community here?
Free iPods - now in the UK!
I still write in HTML 4.0 Transitional and validate it. Why should I be left out? XHTML is unnecessarily complex for my needs. At the end of the day, I merely want a site that looks reasonably good and is functional. I don't really need the wizardry and features XHTML can offer.
> It may be just me but when the 'lean', 'no-nonsense' and 'stripped' version of software requires 27MB to run with two open tags I think it's perfectly fine to blame the developers of that software,
I would agree with you if it still were 1990's. But today, memory is dirt cheap, new computers tend to have 256MB to 512MB fast, real memory and lot's of more virtual memory, which works very well in modern operating systems, like linux and other unix-like operating systems. What difference does it really make if a software requires 27MB to run?
In field of embedded software the thing is different but AFAIK Mozilla is not targeting that field. Actually with a real OS it would not matter the requirement would be double or quadruple. All that memory is not needed all the time, ad as said, virtual memory works fine.
It's always fun seeing people going "this shows your lack of understanding", when CSS is in fact a huge monster of a spec, and extremely complex.
0 02 May/0226.html
As for the matter of contention, yes, inline elements can contain block elements. This is usually illegal HTML, but XML is another ballgame.
Q: May elements with display:inline contain children with display:block?
A: Yes, absolutely. I do this occasionally (by Bert Bos, you know, CSS guru and all?)
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2
Now, I do not pretend to know whether Bert is right or not, but when I can find out this much, with five minutes, don't go around thinking you know it all.
You've totally missed the point. I fully agree that an inline element can contain a block level element.
What I am trying to get across, and what the original poster missed, is that div elements contained within an inline element will be block level elements unless explicitly told otherwise.
In fact, I fail to see what you think you have proved with your quote.
Free iPods - now in the UK!
Try the browser named "Dillo"
Here's what Pinstripe looks like. Goes to show OS X still has the most beautiful, pleasant, and clean-looking GUI around; no wonder everyone tries to rip it off yet fails:
Pinstripe Firefox Gallery
"Sufferin' succotash."
To win the average idiot, you need simple layout, bright colors, and hand-holding wizards.
To win the average idiot, you need to do two things:
1.) Make something fun to use. That encompasses everything from a pleasant visual look to a simple yet powerful interface. Something most OSS lacks.
2.) Don't call them "idiots." They're not idiots just because they have enough of a life to not treat browser and operating system wars like religious crusades, like we do.
"Sufferin' succotash."
I'm still waiting for Mozilla/Firefox to integrate the Reload and Stop buttons into one button. Why are they seperate? Since Mozilla has ripped everything else off from Opera, why not this basic interface decluttering idea? Right now, I have grayed out Stop button that only ungrays when the page is loading. Stop and Reload should be the same button, toggling when a page is loading and when it has finished loading.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Yet automatically by default.
Maybe we need to lure some Opera developers away and have them hack on Firefox for a while.
"Sufferin' succotash."
123121321321321321321321
Some simple bugs haven't been fixed yet. 0.8 has a great bug (in windows in linux at least) where checking the "don't let sites that set removed cookies set future cookies" doesn't actually make it work. This works in the suite, but not in firefox.
The rendering engine still barfs on images that have been scaled to large sizes too, making pages scroll slower than a snail.
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
Please shut up! Some people like Firefox others like Opera, there is no point in saying which browser is the best! Btw, you forgot to mention ads in Opera and firefox being free!
"Brand identity", psah! I'm not familiar with the whole Mozilla/Firefox dev team but that alone there tells me there's something wrong with their attitude. How about creating a better experience for the user? That's better than any "brand identity!"
Cross-platform looks suck, I won't use any browser that makes my Mac looks like some second-rate Windows monstrosity. Thank goodness there's Camino...
I just they'd enable a user to select IE style favorite handling (in .lnk files) if a user wanted it. I prefer the way IE handles favorites.
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
I hope we don't have a Mac style Firefox, Qute works so much better with Windows and I'd hate to see an Apple design on my PC. Chances are it'll be a different default skin for the Windows version, but Qute was awesome. I will miss it.
Have you metaroderated recently?
What's it going to be named? ;^)
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Except that when you reach the memory limit in Windows XP, the OS often becomes unstable, and remains unstable until you reboot.
Something is wrong with MS memory management, but I have never been able to determine what makes it go bonkers.
You say, "All that you need to do...". That's a good nickname for Windows XP. It's an "All that you need to do..." operating system. Go a little bit deep into how it works, and you begin experiencing its sloppiness.
From the minutes of the mozilla.org Staff Meeting of Monday 24th May 2004:
*Firefox 0.9*
- Firefox branch tinderbox finally turned green last night
- No automated nightly builds or Tinderboxes for AVIARY_1.0 yet
- 10 bugs left; take about a week to fix
- Release at the end of the 1st week of June
- Asa has update to the primary Mozilla roadmap chart and table
> It would also probably cut the number of web pages you can view by half as well.
I'm well aware. I actually really like the other poster's suggestion about Dillo, thanks to them!
>I still write in HTML 4.0 Transitional and validate it. Why should I be left out?
You're not left out. If I *really* need your site, I can scrounge up the 27MB of Firefox.
>XHTML is unnecessarily complex for my needs. At the end of the day, I merely want a site that looks reasonably good and is functional.
XHTML is, by definition, much simpler than HTML, since it comprises of a smaller set of tags and attributes. I'm assuming you mean CSS, but -honestly- you can make an ordinary site very easily using CSS (admittedly making an absolutely positioned site is much easier than a relatively positioned one).
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
Sure, the resources are there but --and let me be very clear about this-- this is not an acceptable excuse for poor coding. I think (or hope?) most of the poor code in Firefox is directly inherited from Mozilla, but I'm honestly a bit afraid it may continue to exist since it's probably pretty deeply rooted in the structure.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
Just make a new tab and paste the URL to that.
Are you using OOo on Windows or Linux? I find it insanely slow on Windows (which isn't really OOo's fault) but just fine on Linux.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Cant wait til firefox is getting the standard browser in the mozilla package. Mozilla is slow, but altough its getting better and better for each version tho, 1.7 final is soon out, like 10% speed increasment there.
Which is great and all, except I don't need all of that power.
XHTML is a misleading name. Essentially all XHTML is is simply an XML document type -it has a schema, and, yes, it is theoretically extensible just like any XML document. The extensions are known as releases -XHTML 1.0 vs. XHTML 1.1, which have different schemas.
The individual web developer will not extend XHTML in any fashion (he can, but then it's not of the same document type anymore and will therefore not work with the clients (browsers)).
XHTML is mostly a subset of HTML (although one or two new tags are defined also). See here for all XHTML 1.1 tags.
The reason for XHTML's existence is that HTML concentrates (heavily) on presentation as well as structure, and it was felt that this should not be. So XHTML defines the structure of a given document and leaves any presentation of that data to some other entity (like any good XML document)*. The presentation layer is called CSS or Cascading Style Sheets.
* I don't mean that an XML document can't define presentation per se -what I mean is that a good XML document does one thing and one thing only: presents some data in a structured manner (for example, this post contains a MemberName, Subject, Text, ModerationScore and so on). There's nothing that prevents using XML to describe presentation, but it should not be presentation -that's a very important distinction. So theoretically an XHTML file describing the structure of the document could be accompanied by another XML file that described how it was to be presented, but at least for now that task has been given to CSS. For information about XML as presentation description, you can take a look at XUL from Mozilla.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
I think this might possibly be an XP issue? Firefox 0.8 running under win2k SP4 has always behaved immaculately IME - commit charge around 170 mb. I'm sure this has already been said somewhere else, but it can be difficult to tell whether the fault lies between XP's sometimes-flaky (IMO) memory management and Firefox itself.
Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
-- Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
Leaving aside what I think about this issue, your post contains major factual inaccuracies.
their lackadaisical attitude towards branding of their product (Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox?)
I'm sorry to use strong language, but that's completely clueless. The Firefox naming decision took such a long time precisely because we spent an inordinate amount of effort trying to get it right. We even held up the 0.8 release for months to make sure we had a solid and sustainable brand and strategy.
Realize that your contributions, while critical, do not need to include drawing shitty icons
The new theme is being designed by graphic designers.
Gerv
I guess from what you're saying is that you want a parsing & validating browser. AFAIK, the closest thing to that is the W3C's Amaya browser, and that's almost painful to use.
It would be cool if Mozilla had a "strict" mode, though.
WeRelate.org - wiki-based genealogy
Let's put it the other way:
Large resource usage in complex program is not necessarily a sign of poor coding!
I'm sure there's lot of poor code in Firefox, but even if every last line of it were perfect, it's still damn complex application and would still eat memory. There's no magic "640kb is enough for everyone" switch.
It's very interesting that you say that, because I've often thought that there was a bad interaction between FireFox and Windows XP.
In Windows XP, it is ALWAYS possible to make the problem happen simply by opening and closing enough instances and tabs of FireFox. Eventually, FireFox will be reported as using a huge amount of memory. I haven't tried Windows 2000.
Sometimes the problem has seemed associated with loading PDF files into FireFox tabs.
It's amazing to me that, after all these years, Windows memory management is still sloppy.
I forgot, temporarily. Back when I did the testing, I found that the Linux version of FireFox failed in exactly the same way. However, when FireFox has memory leaks, Windows XP becomes unusable until rebooting. I never saw any evidence of OS instability in Linux.
Notice that two women posted messages to my Bugzilla report that said that Linux was unstable and Windows XP was reliable. I assume they are paid astro-turfers, or it is some joke that is funny only to them.
Oh, you're certainly right, there are complex applications. A web browser is not necessarily one of those. For example the Dillo browser mentioned above produces an executable of about 350KB, and is fairly featured.
I'm concerned that the availability of resources will encourage developers to use questionable techniques. Have you seen the tentative Longhorn hardware requirements?
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
When did XHTML come into common usage with browsers though? Would the people back on Netscape Communicator or Internet Explorer 5 still be able to view it?