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Batch-o-Moz: Firefox, Thunderbird, Suite Released
bluephone writes "Today Mozilla.org has unleashed a triple threat; Firefox 1.0PR, Thunderbird 0.8, and Mozilla Suite 1.7.3. Wow. Lots of news in all three fronts. so, for your release notes, sys-requirements, what's new, and download links, here you go. Firefox, Thunderbird, and Mozilla Suite. Enjoy."
is to convert an I.E. / outlook user to Mozilla / Thunderbird today ...
go on, you know it makes sense - if anything it'll make the internet faster without all the outlook generated spam flying around.
Fry: heh, Yakov Smirnoff said it
Leela: No he didn't.
Warning: mysql_pconnect(): Too many connections in /web/virtuals/mozillanews.org/db_config.inc.php3 on line 2
Database is not availiable
Seriously it's a hard job convincing people that it's stable when the developers are still putting Zero Point releases , especially at work. 1.1 Sounds a LOT more stable than 9.0 ... to some people at least.
Take back the Web ! ("Rediscover the web" sucks...)Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Not Found /pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/0.10/Firefox Setup 1.0PR.exe was not found on this server.
Apache/2.0.49 (Gentoo/Linux) Server at ftp.mozilla.org Port 80
The requested URL
Anyone got a torrent up?
http://www.spreadfirefox.com/
and
http://www.getfirefox.com/
It said my adblock version was out of date, asked if I wanted it to go and update it for me... yes please :)
WebDeveloper toolbar seems fine.
more than half of my extensions, even if they really are compatible with firefox 1.0, still say they're only good for 0.9.x+, not 0.9+, which means that firefox 1.0 won't install and use them.
biggest pain in the ass -- firefox won't let the user override an extension's compatibility setting.
I can only hope they all change their settings soon...
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
I always thought the names were gonna change as usual when firefox reached the 1.0pre release.. something like firewolf or fire-extinguisher :))
fifteen jugglers, five believers
All the themes I was using with 0.9.3 (on WinXP) are not compatible with 1.0PR, and that includes the neat Noia 2.0.
I wonder if it's really a compatibility problem, or a bug.
Love Firefox, but I wish they'd fix the bugs.
I am still stuck at Firefox 0.8 under Linux with Enlightenment due to serious focus problems with the recent releases.. And I do not want to be left behind!
I open everything in new windows and usually close them using the keyboard. That does not work if the focus is wrong, etc. Mouse-centric folk won't notice this much but it is a killer for me.
I think this is the bug and it looks like it is being ignored:
252178
There's also a new community marketing effort at SpreadFirefox.com, and one of their first goals is 1 million downloads in 10 days. Come on Slashdot, spread the word, we can do it!
In addition to the release of new versions of Firefox, Thunderbird, and Mozilla suite, the Mozilla Foundation have launched a new marketing campign titled Spread Firefox.
The goal is to see 1,000,000 downloads achieved in the first 10 days!
Get downloading Slashdot.
Ross Kendall Web Consultant and Developer (UK) - Drupal and Open Source Solutions
Thank you for making a wonderful browser. Thank you for gaining market share and thank you for stopping this non-standard-compilant IE madness. Image a world where all browsers have to follow Microsofts web standards to have all pages displayed correctly. One or two years ago, I thought exactly this would happen, but with Mozilla and Opera being such great products, websites are now W3C compilant with little IE tweaks. Thank you oh so very much.
"The 1.0 final release won't be out for another month or so"
"The version number for this release is 0.10PR. For those who still count in decimal, 0.10 is larger than 0.9, despite what you were taught in school."
RTFA
I did one this week-end.
The guy (in his 50's) had dramatic pop-up and scumware problems. I pointed him to mozilla + adaware, thinking that, he would not care, because it is not IE.
Boy I was wrong. He was over-enthusiast. He downloaded it as fast as possible, and now is not using ie anymore.
I am really impressed, as it is the first time I convert someone over 30.
Pop-up blocking, annoyance killing is *the* selling point of firefox. I didn't knew how fucked was ie browsing until I talked with this guy. The web was becoming useless for him, and he was driven crazy by frustration.
... to the Slashdot rendering problems I have with 0.9?
My poor F5 key is getting worn...
Sadly, I think it's an Old Skool Slashdot issue. Will anyone ever drag my favorite site out of 1996 and introduce it to some lovely CSS-P?
Yours, in hope...
The mozilla suite have literaly changed the face of the internet for me. Not just pop up stoppers, or tabbed browsing, or it being free. It just cooler, something that IE won't have. How can MS compete with a name like Firefox? Or Thunderbird
Karma whoring
The one thing I was waiting for in Thunderbird. Putting all your POP3 accounts into one main folder.
I couldn't believe they didn't have this feature earlier and when I switched over from Outlook Express I was severely disappointed that I had to look through two different folders for new mail.
Hopefully they'll upgrade the spam filter as well... because as far as I can tell it doesn't work too great, or maybe I'm just stupid.
Personally, I wish to wait until FireFox has a standard 1.0 release before converting a user to it. Yes, you did say Mozilla, but I prefer FireFox.
:)
Even though FireFox @ 0.9 is better than IE @ 6.0, Service Pack 2, I've decided to wait until it has a stable, 1.0 release to "convert" users. Doesn't seem like I will have to wait that much longer. The only reason I do this is because there are a few bugs, imo, that are confusing, to say the least. I can work around them, but at least with my friends using IE, it's not my fault if something goes wrong.
As for Mozilla Thunderbird... even though it isn't 1.0, I haven't had ANY problems with it. Converting my mom to that was simple enough. I just told her it didn't boot you offline like AOL.
Seriously, AOL sux. My mom is really happy with Thunderbird. It downloads her email, she reads the email, the end. No calendars, headline news, advertisements, etc. It gets the job done, and quite efficiently.
So: I accept the mission. But I won't carry it out... yet.
Should this not read "triple treat"?
IE is no match for Firefox, but IMHO (and as much as I love it) Thunderbird still needs to catch up to Outlook. Outlook 2003 just has more features and a better interface. Major things I'm waiting on before switching to Thunderbird at work are integration with SynCE and the Novell Connector.
USE='clever' emerge -u sig
These are generally the only two apps I need to suggest for PC users having problems. One other app that just makes people happy is PDFCreator (pdfcreator.sf.net) which adds a PDF printer to your system printer folder - great if you don't want to shell out $100 for acrobat.
I'm a bench technician for a local ISP just outside of Omaha. 90% of my job is cleaning pron dialers/browser hijacks/etc off people's computers, mostly through Ad-Aware and AVG. Think as soon as Firefox goes to 1.0 I'll start throwing that in there too on the grounds (and rightly so) that it's more secure than Internet Explorer.
Doing my part!
However, two things that have kept me from making a greater push into converting folks have been Thunderbird's buggy LDAP support (our company email directory is LDAP) and the lack of a central calendar. Yes, I use the calendar add-on, and am aware of the stand-alone product, but until it can talk with our Exchange server, the conversion process will be painful. I was willing to do it because I prefer having the same system at work as at home (where I run Linux). Most folks here aren't going to be quite as motivated...
Obligatory Plug - Please read my online novel
COMMENT RETRACTED. There appears to be a "Sort by Name" option on the right click menu. Firefox is now the perfect browser!
Pop-up blocking, annoyance killing is *the* selling point of firefox.
Be sure to show newbies how to use tabs and find-as-you-type! IE will soon be blocking popups.
Send lawyers, guns, and money. Dad, get me out of this.
Situation: If you type in an address in Firefox -- about:plugins, yahoo.com (with or without http:// and www.) -- and hit enter, nothing happens.
That's right the *enter key* is ignored.
Also happens for the search field.
Details: Windows 98 system. RC1 and other recient 9.x releases. Firefox was removed and reinstalled multiple times to avoid this. Works fine on all other systems I've encountered (Win XP, 2000, and Fedora Linux). I found one person who also experienced this, though they were planing the uninstall/reinistall tactic and did not report the results.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
I open everything in new windows and usually close them using the keyboard. That does not work if the focus is wrong, etc. Mouse-centric folk won't notice this much but it is a killer for me.
Agreed, I run across it all the time myself. I use tabs, and other tabs are always stealing the focus as I'm typing. This can be a serious security issue because this will often happen as I'm typing in username/passwords and I'll realize that I've typed my password into some other tab and submitted it when I pressed [return].
I just downloaded the new version, and all I can say is WOW!
/. as soon as the browser was opened, no waiting (previously, on the same connection, there was always some delay--and yes, I know network conditions make a huge difference for this).
Previously, startup times were less than that of IE, now I can honestly say that there is no noticeable difference. It also found
If I can show this to people and say, "hey, look, it even starts faster than IE!"--then they will be impressed!
Kudos to the moz team!
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
For my computer at home I prefer a straight binary with no installer crap, but for corporate deployment a multiuser-friendly MSI package is a must. It's the only thing I miss in FireFox. The point is to deploy FF from a server and have it working for low privilege users without them having to do any work.
There are some hacks about but I haven't managed to get it working in a satisfactory manner. I'd deploy it across the entire organisation (100 or so PCs) at the drop of a hat if I had a working MSI package. It's a school, too, so many accounts and users per machine.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
While I would have agreed with you several months back about Outlook having better features and whatnot, Outlook, for no apparent reason (good ol' MS software), started having a mysterious problem with passwords which meant I couldn't access any of my emails on any of my accounts. Having used Thunderbird in it's early releases, I wasn't too keen about swapping back to it, but I had no other choice (well, apart from webmail, but then I can't tell whenever I recieve emails, which is always a pain).
After swapping back, I had realised that Thunderbird had improved greatly and I'm very glad that Outlook b0rked up, otherwise I'd probably still be using it now.
Thunderbird probably does have a lot of features that Outlook doesn't have (or at least didn't appear to have), but I'm perfectly happy with the features Thunderbird does have and I don't require anything extra from it. It's interface looks much better than Outlooks boring GUI and it's junk mail filter is also extremely accurate, IMO - having marked around 98% of my junk emails as junk emails, with only 1 or 2 false positives in the whole time I've used it.
Anyway, you mustn't forget that features shouldn't be the only reason to swap over.. Outlook does have severe security issues that need to be addressed (anyone have a link to that bug where people aren't supposed to start emails with a certain word, because it makes Outlook think the rest of the email is actually a file? HAH!). Yeah, Thunderbird might have security issues too, but I seel much safer with TB than OL.
My 2c.
The links to MozillaNews are dead currently, so I can't check, but here goes my biggest complaint with Mozilla/Firefox. If you know how I can do what I want, by the way, please reply so I can start using Firefox more efficiently.
Sure, it may render pages on all platforms exactly the same, and give the same Javascript behavior. That's great, and I appreciate it.
But what is really getting me down is that I cannot, to my knowledge, browse using keyboard navigation on MacOS X like I can on both Windows and Linux. I use Find-as-You-Type and navigation among links with the Tab key all the time on Linux and Windows, but when I start using my Powerbook I have to give most of that up and use the touchpad.
For example, in the administration portion of a website that I work on, if I'd like to be able to make a new entry into the database, I can do it all without a mouse on Windows or Linux. I tab among the text entry boxes, dropdown boxes, and buttons and do my work. I can get to another tab and grab some text or a link, and then back to the tab where I'm doing data entry and paste the retreived information. All without the mouse.
Unless there is something big I'm missing, you absolutely cannot do this on MacOS X with the same efficiency.
I now work from time to time on all three major platforms: Windows, MacOS X, and Linux. While I like various parts of all three, I have to say that I find the keyboard accessibility of GNOME and Mozilla on Linux preferable to anything on the other two. Then again, Linux is also where I've spent the most time, but it sure was easier to find the keystrokes and customization options I wanted there than it is on Windows (and, so far, MacOS X).
Incidentally, I have also tried Safari (has the Option-Tab keystroke for navigating a page like I want, but even with Saft it doesn't have good Find-as-You-Type) and Camino (same problems as Firefox) and Mozilla (same as Camino and Firefox) all without any luck. Oh well.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
I've never has the problem you describe on either of my Win98 machines , but then I haven't been home yet to install RC1 on them either. I have, however, gotten the follwing message and some variants after closing some tabs after opening several at once:
"TypeError: arrViewNodes[j].contentWindow has no properties"
I can consistently reproduce it by opening a new tab that's blank & then closing after a few seconds or a few minutes without loading anything into it. This is on a WinXP Pro machine (no SP2, thank you very much) with an RC1 install that's less than an hour old.
"Linux doesn't exist. Everyone knows Linux is an unlicensed version of Unix"- Kieren O'Shaughnessy
I just converted. Yaay! Mirror, to save their poor souls.
Firefox
Thunderbird
However, I don't suggest updating right away if you like how your current firefox is customized. None of my cool extensions or themes made the switch. I especially miss tabbrowser extensions.
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
Mozilla.org renders buggily in Konqueror. So much for 100%-compatible HTML.
Seriously though, it's been a long time coming, and 'Firefox 1.0' sounds a far more serious product than 'Firefox 0.9.3' or whatever - the latter sounds very much like an amateurish effort, while the former sounds sleek and professional - maybe now I can convince a few more upper-management types at my college to switch over to FF, if we were to slap a Netscape-esque skin on it (I have a dislike for the new default theme in Firefox) as the admins have been bitching for a while now about how much spyware crap they have to clean off the machines at the end of every day. I'm sure they've asked before, but "We'd like to replace Internet Explorer with Firefox Nought-point-Nine-point-Three" is just going to sound to the management like the network guys just hashed it up in an afternoon.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
Ah, here's the link to that bug.
And in true MS style, the solution is... not to use that word at the start of email messages.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
When will firefox allow me to save my tab settings? Or have I just missed the function? That's what keeps me with Opera. Opera remembers the tabs I used last time so I don't have to reopen every single messageboard everytime I go online.
Another thing is the speed under linux... Is there a way to make that thing load quicker? I don't like to wait a dozen seconds just for the browser to appear.
The link to PDFCreator you gave is a dead site, try the Sourceforge project page instead... http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
Yes, I googled and yes there is a solution involving a shell script(s) and installing arcane extention in 'Fox, but:
This solution does not work for me; and overall, the shell script thing will be an immeditate turn off for someone converting from Windows (where by the way, Fox and Bird integrate perfectly including even XP login screen).
So does anyone know if there was any progress on this front with the new releases?
There are none... :-/
Working on it: bug 159999
It seems that Firefox doesn't render these iframes properly.
Oh come on...
Friends don't let friends use IE.
Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?
Here ya go!
You can now subscribe to and read RSS feeds in your Bookmarks. When you visit a page that advertises a RSS feed by using a <link> tag, an (RSS) icon will appear in the status bar. Click it to view a list of feeds the page is offering. Click one to subscribe - this adds a Bookmark Folder that contains all the recent posts from the feed.
Find is easier and more powerful now with our new Find toolbar. The Find toolbar (which shows at the bottom of the browser window) automatically highlights text in the page as you type and has a useful highlight feature.
You can now open blocked popups, and the Extension install system now blocks all attempts to install software from sites other than update.mozilla.org. Users can add other sites to a list that allows them to offer software, but software is never automatically installed. In addition to these steps, several other measures have been taken to prevent phishing attacks and to highlight when a page is being viewed over a secure connection.
Numerous improvements to bookmarks including more reliable presentation of Site icons, and a split pane view in the Bookmarks window.
Passwords saved with the Password Manager can now be more easily encrypted with strong encryption by creating a "Master Password". If you create a Master Password, you are prompted once per session to enter the Master Password so that Password Manager can automatically fill in site logins. A useful feature for people who share computers with others and want improved security.
Undetectable document.all support for site compatibility and improved compatibility for keyboard accelerators further smooth the transition for IE users
You can now configure Firefox as your Default Browser on GNOME, and Firefox will adhere to your GNOME settings for edit field key bindings, etc.
i installed 1.0PR few seconds ago and i missing adblock already
\n.\n
Does anybody know how to make Thunderbird only display messages on an IMAP server that have not been marked as deleted?
I use Thunderbird on my laptop and Outlook on my desktop (have to use it there), and frequently I end up with quite a few messages in my inbox (most of which are deleted) by the time I check my mail again using Thunderbird. There has to be a better solution besides purging all my deleted messages before using Thunderbird every time-- since sometimes I screw up and need to recover deleted messages...
I've looked in the View-Messages-Customize menu option, but there doesn't seem to be a field for the message's IMAP deletion status- any ideas?
It already does. SP2 added that capability. Of course, the Google toolbar had been blocking them too. I was running Norton Internet Security which also had a popup blocker. Now I run Admuncher which blows Adblock away. The point is, popup/ad blocking isn't the selling point you may think it is. It's all about the tabs. But you can install the Avant browser which adds tabs to IE so tabs aren't that big a deal either really. I guess the smaller size might be a selling point to people with really old systems.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
Openoffice exports to pdf.
The main thing that keeps me from using any PC-based email clients is the fact that I LOVE webmail.
Hell, I'm just waiting for someone to come up with a web-based browser. I'd switch in a heartbeat!
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
O.K so I know I'm replying late and I will probably be missed by the mods but who cares.
Firefox is getting big. I'm in Australia, so I know our Law & Order episodes are behind you in the Americas, but a few nights ago watching an episode of SVU I saw one of the detectives pull open her laptop, and run a google search. As soon as she did it, I noticed she was using Firefox for win32!
If it's getting used in show props as a realistic tool, it means people in non-nerd industries are looking at it. That means its getting really big!
--
The last digit of pi is four.
check it out.. the rendering of the left column of Slashdot has been corrected in this release,
/.
...I'm so conflicted.
as noted under "Major Bug Fixes" #217527
I don't know how I feel about that
or what that says about the prominence of
or what that says about the priorities of the moz devs
I know this is a minor point, but will they ever get favicons working correctly? These are the icons that appear next to your bookmarks. They're very useful when they actually work.
Think of it as "Zero point eight" , "Zero point nine", "Zero point ten" and so on.
Much the same numbering system as used by ATI's Catalyst Drivers.
I have no sig yet I must scream.
I used to think PDF Creator was fantastic, but when I tried deploying in the office it had problems I hadn't encoutered in my limited use of it.
The worst of these was in the save dialog where if you clicked on a directory shortcut - to jump to a directory - it would save over the shortcut instead of opening the directory. The sad thing is I reported this bug over two months ago, and it still hasn't got fixed.
In the end I went with the free but non-open source alternative of CutePDF
aus.music.scrapbook
Well, I'm writing this from 1.0pr and I must say that it's pretty decent. It does seem to have rather serious problems with Terminal Services though. The only theme that is half-way usable via WTS is the default. All the button backgrounds are black and with some themes, all the menus are black with black text. Ugh - please, someone think of us TS users!
Full-Featured GPL Web Hosting Control Panel
People can live without that. Now, mouse gestures...!
Hey, it's fixed in the trunk. I believe the fix will be in 1.0 final.
Until then, just resize the font on the page when it renders badly... and boom! fixed!
Jay | http://oldos.org
Since I got a Gmail account I open Tbird maybe three times a week to see if I forgot to forward anything important to it...
The main problem I have in converting people to Tbird is that it has no support for outlook, Yahoo or MSN. And yes, I am aware there are programs to do it, but having to say "Well, NO it doesnt check yahoo, but you can download and configure this other little program to make it work" really doesn't present it in a flattering light.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
I disagree. Whenever I introduce someone (mostly people who only use their computer when they have to) to Firefox, I always tae a minut or two to explain tabbed browsing, and turn off auto-scroll so they can middle click to open links in a new tab.
So far they've all raved about tabbed browsing once they've used FF for a bit.
Yes, there is a way. It is called the Single Window extension. Makes link unable to open new windows by themselves (open in tabs, as you wished) but *you* can still right click and chose to open in a new window.
Slashdot anagrams to "Sad Sloth"
I'll second CutePDF. It's been good quality and I haven't noticed bugs. I deployed it on a couple machines here at work, although the boss doesn't like it because we standardized on Adobe Acrobat (which I'll admit has more features) and he doesn't want to support two applications (CutePDF needs no support - it just works). So instead, the departments just send us all their documents because they don't want to pay for an Adobe license :P
0.10 is larger than 0.9 because it's not decimal. The period is simply a separator.
You should know that Mozilla doesn't consider them to be decimal when you have Mozilla 1.7.3 out also. If you saw 1.7.3 and 1.10.2 which would you think was newer?
This is common practice for MANY projects.
So, let's see, you need a service pack, three proglets and a third-party browser modification, all of which you have to keep updated, all of which you must be concerned over for future compatibility with future Windows and IE mods OR you can download Firefox/Mozilla and have none of those concerns? Seems like an easy answer to me: my time should be spent using my computer not fighting to update it.
The regular Mozilla is MUCH more stable. What i do fro myself and my users, is download the FULL Mozilla 1.7 package, and install the browser only. This way, mailto: links will go to my Gmail account (I have the Gmail Notifier), and for people that use Outlook, their mailto: link work too. I really don't like Firefox, as it isnt stable for me, and the GUI looks like a Jelly-Bean IE.
Nothing for you to see here, Please move along.
I'd actually recommend turning off tabs, just because the newbies will probably be less likely to use Firefox if they have to deal with tabs since it's something different than they're used to.
So far, everyone I've shown tabs to was at least intrigued if not downright ecstatic.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
I've had no problem with my parents (both almost 70). Here's what I did;
A bonus was pointing out that popup blocking is included.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
first, i love firefox, it's a wonderful product.
but i still have to uninstall before upgrading on many of the machines here, and it's ridiculous now to call this a 1.0PR with that problem still around.
also, from the release notes:
It should not be necessary to create a new profile when you upgrade from a previous version of Firefox providing you do disable all extensions from the prior version before upgrading. To do this, open the old version and open Tools > Options and click the Extensions panel. Click on each of the extensions listed and choose Disable Extension. Click OK to close the Options window. Now it is safe to install Firefox.
if you know this is the case, mister firefox, why the hell does your installer not do it for me?
you want mass adoption, but you continue with this mickey mouse crap of not being able to handle upgrades in any sort of efficient manor. i'm sorry, but you won't see mass adoption like that, and i'm afraid you've already gained the reputation.
I recently started working at the Support Desk at school, and sometimes there are some obscure problems with MSIE that we just can't work out over the phone. We usually have them install Firefox, and sometimes I have people install Thunderbird if their other mail client is giving them problems (or if they want good spam filtering).
I haven't had any calls yet this year of people having problems with Firefox.
Did I mention that Adaware is our savior here too?
Speaking as a 39 year old geek, I'll have you know not all of us old geezers are totally tech-phobic. In-between our Geritol and AARP meetings, we still find time to send out an electric mail or two over one of these new-fangled adding machines.
I remember when we used to send messages with a slide rule. Of course I'd have an onion on my belt while doing it, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...
He took a duck to the face at 250 knots.
I started to do it to avoid all the "son, what's that window that appears on my PC?" calls from my mom, but the side effects are just great: faster navigation, more secure PC, less hanging... And for free! :)
---
there was a SIG here.
it is gone now.
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=124750
Figured out the problem. It was the User Agent Switcher plug-in. It was set to IE, which caused FF to get bongled when loading the java plug-in.
To fix: go into prefs.js and set the general.useragent.override to an empty string. This will allow FF to start.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
Remember to go to about:config and set "keyword:confusing_bugs" to false.
Be sure to show newbies how to use tabs and find-as-you-type! IE will soon be blocking popups.
Most people have a hard time "getting" tabbed browsing -- what it is, and why it's so amazing -- because the idea of tabs is pretty abstract if you haven't used them before. So relate it to something the average Joe Windows has used: tabs in MS Excel workbooks. I recently switched my (non-techie) sister to Firefox for increased security, and when I tried to show her tabbed browsing, her eyes completely glazed over. Then it hit her -- "it's like having tabs for the different sheets in an Excel workbook!" -- and she instantly thought it was the coolest thing since sliced bread. (Even the Ctrl-PgUp/PgDn shortcut keys are the same.)
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Ok I'm 15 and I've been using Firefox for like an year now.
I have IE 6 on my computer too but I never use it. I've already converted three of my friends to Firefox, they aren't power users or anything, they don't know jack about computers...
On the other when I tried to convince my Dad (he's a web-developer, 44 yrs)to switch to Firefox, he's like no way (!) - Firefox is still in beta and unreliable, unstable blah blah blah... (BTW, this was before he had used it)
I showed him all the cool features like find as you type, google search built-in to the toolbar, tabbed browsing, popup blocker, adblock...the works.
I really can't see why my dad doesn't use firefox. I showed one of my relatives Firefox too, but he wasn't too interested - even though he had reformatted his HDD twice or thrice cuz of spyware and scum coming in thru IE. So yes converting someone over 30 is damn hard even if they despise spyware.
I'd like to hear from fellow slashdotters if they've faced similar problems in converting people to firefox.
Really, the state of computer literacy, at least in India (my friends in the US say its equally bad there) is really appalling, and I'm talking about well-educated,smart people not the poor people. I mean look at my Dad he's really smart, he graduated from the top colleges in India and still never bothered to install a firewall on our computer even though we have ADSL, doesn't want to use stuff like Firefox...
Basically converting people to firefox or linux is hard for two reasons - people are averse to change and mainly because most people are stupid.
P.S - I know somebody in my family who put a folder named 'sex' on the fucking Desktop, it had loads of porn, about a gig, and he has two kids (10 & 13).
and turn off auto-scroll so they can middle click to open links in a new tab.
Just FYI, you don't need to disable auto-scroll. The middle click is context sensitive, and will open tabs on links.
.sigh
SP2 also isn't mass deployed at least to those I talked to. I'm on Windows XP (I'm gamer leave me alone) and I haven't deployed SP2. Many people I know have passed on SP2 because they have heard bad things (mainly) or don't want to download it (just adding excuses). Everyone I know runs Firefox, Firebird or something similar. (I know for fact I have a few Firebird .7 still out there)
Lately, more and more screen shots I've seen on people desktops and of internet have included firefox in some form. I've also converted people who install Avant to their system. Avant is great but can be unstable and when I can give them a browser who doesn't do ActiveX and isn't some hack for already screwed up browser, I'm happy. Firefox is making leaps and bounds and it's user base is growing. Microsoft knows it. Why else would SP2 include some "security" updates? Also, why run Admuncher or Adblock which is eating additional RAM and is just more shit to go wrong?
Real question is.... Have you converted today?
The calendar project (aka Sunbird) got a new build the other day too. It's still in 2.0, but is very stable in my experience, and features are being added rapidly. http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/
Went back to school yesterday and to my delight discovered that the University of Guelph is now running Firefox on its computer systems!
spend money here
Download a bho remover http://www.computing.net/windowsme/wwwboard/forum/ 43535.html
use msconfig, look in task manager, or use sysinternal's procexp, and you should be able to remove it yourself http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/procexp .shtml
Startup Control Panel
http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml
As a 36 year old, I resent the implication that we're all old fogeys. ;)
As someone who will be 36 in 16 days I have to remind you of something. We are now old enough to legally date women half our age.
Oh, and in six more years we can buy them drinks. ^_~
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
The larger problem is that so many sites are still in the stone ages of html 3.2.
Ouch.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I'd love to convert a couple of people to Thunderbird at our office, but there is a problem.
Unfortunately they can't read those stupid "winmail.dat" files that Outlook loves to send out.
If anyone has a suggestion to allow Thunderbird to automatically read/open these stupid winmail.dat files, I guarantee two new converts, AT LEAST!!!
OT I know but since we are talking about it. I have a map in MS streets and maps that I want to print really really big. I would like to export a pdf of size 200x160 or whatever that comes out to. I have tried w/ the full acrobat and w/ pdf reader and both croak when dealing w/ that size.
Anybody have a suggestion for one that can handle it?
thx
ej
On most Windows networks that utilize MSI installers Firefox will not work anyway - the reason, Roaming profiles.
Currently no mozilla based browser will work "automatically" with roaming profiles. What happens is that a user will create his profile on one computer, move to another, then Firefox (Mozilla, Netscape, etc) will continually ask for a profile since it does not find the one that was created previously.
This is a major stumbling block for Enterprise acceptance of FireFox. Currently you can get around this by specifying a profile in the command line that launches firefox (make a batch file), but unfortunately every user that uses a computer will use the same profile. (Unless you have an extremely fast network and server which can sufficiently serve 100+ profiles at the same time).
Another complaint I hear from fellow Adminstrators is the fact that you can easily "lock down" Internet Explorer by using Group Policies through Active Directory. Example, you can easily change the home page of every user by simply creating a policy object and applying it to an Active Directory User Container that includes all of your users. To do this with Firefox would take hours (if not days) depending on the number of installations.
C'mon, go the extra step and link it! :-) And the homepage is here.
You've got add it yourself. Choose Tools->Account settings->Add Account->RSS News & Blogs.
I think that's just stupid, there's no excuse for not including this "account" by default. There's not even anything you can configure in the Add Account step, you've just got to confirm it.
On the other hand they still include crap like "Local Folders", even though there's a million dupes in Bugzilla with pleas to get rid of it. I mean what the heck are you even supposed to do with those? The only reason they can't be removed, as explained to me by a developer, is because Thunderbird depends on them for many background tasks even if you never store a single message in them. Nice job of separating the backend from the interface there...
Though I bitch, I still love Thunderbird. The UI is getting a bit bloated though (I mean do you really need a Javascript console in a mail application, what a waste of a menu entry position)
It's like deja vu all over again.
I've already converted a bunch of them at work. Microsoft made it really easy for me what with all the ActiveX exploits, lack of features updates, etc. The process is always the same:
COWORKER: My computer is really slow all of the sudden.
... 30 minutes later ...
...
ME: Have you checked for spyware lately? Run Ad-aware and Spybot lately?
COWORKER: OK...
COWORKER: Wow, there sure were a lot of nasties on there. I've removed them all and things are running much faster. Thanks for the tip!
... The next day
COWORKER: My PC was slow again this morning, so I ran Ad-aware and Spybot again. They found all sorts of new stuff. Is there any way to keep this from happening?
ME: There's three ways:
COWORKER: Oh, option 3 sounds good. I'll install it right now.
The good thing is, my upgrade today to Firefox PR1.0 seems to work on a lot of sites that weren't working with Mozilla, so it's only going to get better. However, the realist in me says that once Firefox really takes off, we can look forward to people finding security exploits in it too.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Am I the only one who is bothered by the fact that Mozilla has placed a potentially unstable preview release on their main page, and made people have to search around to get the stable older release? You don't win converts by feeding them potentially buggy software and giving them a bad impression of it when it crashes.
$ whatis themeaningoflife
themeaningoflife: not found
Considering it's version 1.0, can we upgrade this PR to the vanilla 1.0 when it comes out, or will I have to uninstall it again?
This is a major shortfall for any real deployment: read other that my personal pc.
Yep. By default when you enter something in the url bar that is not a site it will do a "I'm feeling lucky" search on Google.
q =" (there's no space in there, Slashdot inserts it). That should do the trick. You can of course change the url to be whatever search engine you prefer.
If you don't want this and prefer to get the full Google results instead, open the url about:config. Type "keyword.URL" into the filter box, and change the value to "http://www.google.com/search?btnG=Google+Search&
Another neat trick is setting up keywords. By creating a bookmark and adding a keyword to it, the %s part of a bookmark will be replaced with whatever is in the url bar at the moment. That way you can set up custom searches for IMDB, Google Groups, Google News, Wikipedia, etc. After that, searching Wikipedia as an example is as easy as entering "w sometopic" in the url bar. I've got a whole slew of keywords for doing online translations between different languages, dictionary lookups etc.
It's like deja vu all over again.
For one, am I really forced to press ctrl to stop links from opening in a new window? And those links that use a new window, there's really no way to keep them in tabs?
I recommend the Mouse Gestures extension. I always open my links in a tab with gestures. That's the only thing I missed when I switched from the big O, but wouldn't switch back now.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
Unfortunately, no. It has been corrected in the trunk, but Firefox 1.0PR is not using the latest version, it aims for "stability" :-(
You were lucky enough to have onions, all we had back in those days were tulip bulbs! Try shampooing your hair with one of those, and *then* you'll know the true meaning of hardship.
Plus I never figured out how to enter all those #*&^! European diacritis on the slide rule (even the German models we used at the time for some reason didn't have them)
Quoting from the Thunderbird release notes:
Important: if the account already has messages in the Inbox or other folders, you should copy or move these messages into Local Folders before setting the account to use the Global Inbox. If you don't copy or move the messages into Local Folders and you set the account to use the Global Inbox, the account will no longer be displayed in the folders pane and you will not be able to access those messages unless you go back and undo the Global Inbox setting. Also, if you have set up any filters that filter mail into this account, you should disable/delete them or change the destination folder.Why doesn't the program do this for you automatically? That's the sort of attention to detail and user experience that would really help.
I know these are pre-release versions so maybe such features will be added for version 1.0.
He's a web developer and doesn't use Firefox? Yikes.
Here's how to convert Web developers. Point them to this page:
http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/ (Especially the complexspiral one)
Go there in Firefox/Moz and in IE at the same time. Ask them to compare, and just stand back.
SYS 64738 NO CARRIER
That's the key. "I warned you that your system turned to crap because you were using IE. I suggested you use Firefox. You declined. Now your system has turned to crap again. I can't justify coming over every six months to rescue you from IE. I understand that LocalBusinessName has technicians available at reasonable rates. Call me when you're willing to switch."
Either way you spend less time repairing computers for free; you win either way.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
I'm going to add myself to the list of help desk technicians here advocating Mozilla. I work as an escalation technician for a third-party company who provides support for MSN users, and I would have to say a good 75% of my calls involve browser-hijacking spyware. By the time people come to me, their IE is usually so hosed that it's almost less time-consuming for the customer to reinstall Windows. Spybot S&D, AdAware and other similar programs are the only things that keep me from going aboslutely insane as well. "No spyware" is not the only reason to use Mozilla, but it sure is a compelling one. I use the Mozilla suite as my default browser and love it. With Quick Launch enabled, the first browser window comes up faster than IE's - my only beef with Firefox being that the first window often took a while. I've never been one to care for tabbed browsing (just so used to using alt-tab to switch between browser windows) but it certainly takes less RAM to have 10 mozilla windows open than 10 IE windows. I use IE very little anymore - just for Windows Updates and sites which decide to be buggy with Mozilla for whatever reason. These sites are getting fewer and fewer as Mozilla gets better. So take it from a guy who works for MSN - Mozilla is the browser of the future. Without some major security overhauls to IE, it just won't be able to compete.
It seems kind of appropriate to have a folder full of porn called "sex" on the fucking desktop.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
"Ok I'm 15 and I've been using Firefox for like an year now.." - 80% of Slashdot
You can ctrl+tab between tabs too. I got used to it pretty fast
Sorry, I'm just too damn lazy! Plus I use an extension to Firefoz which automatically converts any links / emails to hyperlinks for me.
Have a look at http://www.beggarchooser.com/firefox/ (*ahem* http://www.beggarchooser.com/firefox/) - converts text links to genuine, bona fide hyperlinks.
Doesn't look like the Slashdot rendering bug has been fixed yet, though. Since the Firefox team doesn't seem to care, perhaps the Slashcode authors could a hack to fix this?
They do care, it's been fixed in the trunk. Not sure if this will make it to 1.0 release though.
What I really want is a Mozilla Suite like application that includes firefox and thunderbird in it. The regular Mozilla combo pack sucks in my opinion because of the nonstandard gui attached to it that's very slow to open, etc. I love the guis in thunderbird and firefox, but I can't figure out how to integrate the profiles for both apps into one like Mozilla suite has. There would be no stopping Mozilla if they would simply do that.
"I don't use firefox because it's unstable." "I prefer IE." Are these the same person? Web developers, expecially. I use firefox to develop web sites, and then add in whatever "fixes" are required to make IE behave like a standards-compliant browser. Most of the time, this saves me lots of time. Sometimes it saves only a little. If for no other reason, there's an actual useful javascript error console and debugger (much like most netscape browsers)! Have you ever tried debugging javascript errors in IE? It's a nightmare.
Firefox was finally fixed to use the proper GTK2 keybindings by bug 257405. (No link, b.m.o blocks them from Slashdot) So for example, Ctrl-A finally selects all. If you don't like it, I think you're supposed to change your GTK prefs to use emacs-style, or use a GTK1 build which still has the old configuration.
Personally, I prefer shortcuts that actually make sense and match every other GUI app in existence.
Hey, it's fixed in the trunk. I believe the fix will be in 1.0 final.
Not necessarily so, it doesn't block 1.0 so it's not guaranteed to be fixed in it, it might be but last comments in the bug suggest there still might be some regressions so it won't go into big release like 1.0 if they're not absolutely sure it won't break anything else.
So it's not automatically in until the next branch, whenever that is. 1.1?
Torrent for win32 installers
I use all three of these programs. No one program finds everything. Oh, and also use a virus scanner, of course.
I find Ctrl+PgUp and Ctrl+PgDn much more efficient.
The only thing that bugs me about the ctrl+tab functionality, is that it doesn't mirror the alt+tab functionality of windows, where if you do an alt+tab to move to another window, release the alt button, then do another alt+tab you'll be back at the window you started with, i.e. it puts recently viewed windows next in your traversal list.
In Mozilla/Firefox, you have to cycle through all your open tabs to get back to the start. Releasing the ctrl button doesn't put the previously visited tabs next in your list of traversal.
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
It's been a complaint for a long time now, yet still no change.
...which is sad, considering that A List Apart has had a solution posted for nearly a year now.
Or maybe it was tried to no avail. Beats me.
Unfortunately, many extensions check for Firefox versions higher than a certain for compatibility. This new Firefox broke more than half of the extensions installed in my previous version.
I'd like to hear from fellow slashdotters if they've faced similar problems in converting people to firefox.
Maybe you should stop trying to convert them. They treat you this way because you're more annoying than the neighbor trying to get them to join Amway. This isn't a religion, so stop trying to peddle Firefox like it's the Watchtower or something...
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
You know, Microsoft's street address also says a lot about their mentality.
Well, ctrl+shift+tab reverses the order of tab traversal. Or, you could use the earlier suggestion someone had of using ctrl+pgup and ctrl+pgdn.
Come on, man...this is firefox! Nothing is impossible! :-)
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
In conjuntion with HijackThis, I use Process Explorer when supporting our customers. It's really invaluable for Killing Processes or Process Trees of spyware like Bubba.wintools that continually regenerate all of its files and registry entries if they are running.
It's sad that we went from caring about how cookies affect our privacy to frantically trying to keep our computers free of extremely persistant little programs that are free to do whatever they want with your data.
More about it here: http://www.gpc.edu/~jbenson/resource/winmail.htm
I used WMDecode from http://www.biblet.com/ to decode some attachments my coworker received from someone outside the firm in a winmail.dat file.
One problem with migration to Thunderbird from Outlook, apart from calendaring, is the ability to download Hotmail, MSN, AOL, or Yahoo! web mail. Mozilla doesn't do this.
Not that I think it's a necessarily useful or even sensible feature, but the point is that a lot of other people do.
On more than one occasion I have tried to encourage someone to switch to a less bug-ridden mail client only to be met with "But how do I check my hotmail?"
Therefore, I'd like to see this feature introduced, not for functionality, but as a migration incentive.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Solution: Don't Do That.
Sheesh... The only reasonable reason for setting everyone's home page to the same thing (eliminating the point of a home page) is to prevent the browser from being hijacked and pointing to a porn site... And you might notice that's not a problem with Firefox.
General rule: If it doesn't cause you any grief, and it makes the lives of the people who are trying to work with the program harder, and there's no legitimate reason to do it, don't do it. I can see locking down certain aspects of a computer. Some things that should never be locked down are instalation of utilities (WinZIP or equivilent, for example, or calculators, or unit converters) (if you're running on XP, this changes from merely bad practice to downright evil... Just lock down the system directory to prevent overwrites, but with XP, you can roll back even that), user preferances (desktop, font colors, and other things that people rely on changing for usability), time setting (this used to be a problem for me. The computer lost hours per day, and I didn't have access to set the time or load a utility that would allow automatic time syncronization), etc. All these make a computer less useful as a tool, reducing efficiency.
(yes, this is a big pet peeve of mine. I had to spend 3 months trying to get permission to install software I needed)
I'm not shy, I'm stalking my prey