Mozilla 1.8 Alpha 5 Out And About

asa writes "Today we've shipped the latest Alpha release on the road to Mozilla 1.8. With nearly 600 bug fixes since Alpha 5, A6 contains some exciting new Gecko work. You can help the Mozilla team as we drive toward 1.8 by downloading and testing this release. Get the release builds and notes at mozilla.org."

Comments

Who uses this anymore ?.

[Gopal.V]

I realized that all I need is a Browser....

I read my mail in mutt and I like that (*hint* , it lets me use vim to compose) , chat with xchat etc.. Mozilla Suite might have been overshadowed by it's leaner sibling :)

But Gecko improvements are GOOD (TM)

Re:Who uses this anymore ?.

[BrokenHalo]

Mozilla Suite might have been overshadowed by it's leaner sibling :)

It certainly has in this household... Some time ago I thought the intention was to cease further development of Mozilla as Firefox matured. Looks like that's gone by the board.

Re:Who uses this anymore ?.

[Anonymous Coward]

vim in kmail
vim in evolution

Re:Who uses this anymore ?.

[LizardKing]

Mozilla is still the testbed for new functionality that may make its way into Firefox, Thunderbird, etc. A sort of Debian testing of the browser world.

Re:Who uses this anymore ?.

[Flooded77]

My father-in-law for one... He loves how everything he needs is in one app and is fast (/.'s opinions aside, this is what he thinks- and that is what is important). After cleaning up his windows box a year ago, I suggested Mozilla. He hasn't looked back since.

Re:Who uses this anymore ?.

[sleepingsquirrel]

Off the top of my head, here's a few of the reasons I'm thinking of switching back to mozilla from firefox.

• More consistant keyboard shortcuts. For example, in firefox, if you are typing in the address bar and you want the page to open in a new tab you use ALT-ENTER. If you've highlighted a link with type-ahead-find and you want a new tab, you have to hit CTRL-ENTER. (mozilla is consistant in both cases)
• I seem to prefer doing searches from the address bar, and not a separate (tiny) search box
• Type-ahead-find in mozilla only searches through links, not all of the text. This makes keyboard navigation easier (and you can still search through the text just fine by using the '/' command).
• Easier configuration. For instance turning off animated images in mozilla was a lot easier (it was an option under Edit->Preferences). Firefox makes you do the 'about:config' thing, which give you an alphabetically sorted list of options where it not exactly obvious how to change things, or even obvious that you can change things.
• My observation from everyday use is that firefox doesn't apprear to render things faster/better or start up faster. If firefox is less bloated, it must be something like 15% less bloated.

And I don't use (or would ever want to use) the extra applications in mozilla, like the mail client.

Re:Who uses this anymore ?.

[psykocrime]

Who uses this anymore ?.

I, for one, do. I prefer Mozilla's mail/news client, and I use Chatzilla and Moz Calendar as well. For me, the Mozilla Suite is exactly what I need.

Additionally, despite the constant whining about 'bloat' from certain Mozilla developers, I find the Moz Suite to be perfectly fine performance wise, on modern hardware. The slowest machine I run it on is 700 mhz Celeron, and it's fine on there.

Not to mention I hate the fact that Firefox doesn't support the same "search in the url bar" feature as regular Mozilla. And yes, I know I can type "google " but I find having to do that annoying compared to the way Mozilla works.

Re:Who uses this anymore ?.

[Anonymous Coward]

I user Moz mail, calendar, and address book. Besides, Moz is almost imperceptibly slower than FF. I like my suite, thank you very much.

Re:Who uses this anymore ?.

[alacqua]

While I laud the goals of firefox, I like the UI and integrated applications in Mozilla Suite. I would be interested in using something like firefox/thunderbird/etc. if they cloned the Moz Suite UI and simply split out the applications. In fact, I thought that was the original plan and I wish it still was.

Re:Who uses this anymore ?.

[renoX]

And what if you use Mozilla Mail to read your emails?

I would replace one app by two, I'm not sure where is the gain..

Roaming Profiles

[Matt Perry]

This release is supposed to have roaming profile support like hte old Netscape 4 had. If you've been waiting for that, give it a try to help shake out any bugs.

Correction

[JavaRob]

With nearly 600 bug fixes since Alpha 5, A6 contains some exciting new Gecko work.

This should read "...since Alpha 4, A5 contains some..."

I don't use the Mozilla suite anymore (moved to Firefox), but the Gecko improvements will of course end up in Firefox as well, so it's all good. Time to browse over to the roadmap to figure out how that development path actually works nowadays...

Seamonkey over Firefox

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

I probably belong to the minority of people who prefer SeaMonkey over Firefox, even though I've tried Firefox 1.0 final.

I sincerely hope that Mozilla.org does not stop supporting the suite, as most of the users of the suite have been Mozilla supporters far longer than the current influx of Firefox fans. Hopefully, our dedication in testing would convince them that seamonkey is just as important as Firefox.

Re:Seamonkey over Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

Only feature firefox has which I feel is lacking in Mozilla is the ability to right & middle click bookmark menu entries to change or open in a new tab. Of course, for all I know, that's in the 1.8 series, since I stopped updating to every alpha and beta back around Moz 1.4...

Re:Seamonkey over Firefox

[oever]

Middle/right click on bookmarks is not implemented in today's mozilla build. It is, however, implemented for the personal toolbar.

Re:Seamonkey over Firefox

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

Get the TabExtensions extension. It fulfills this requirement.

Re:Seamonkey over Firefox

[mcbridematt]

I agree. I used Firefox back when it was called Phoenix from 0.2 - 0.5, but when to the suite, and I simply can't stand Firefox.

Re:Seamonkey over Firefox

[oojah]

I completely agree. I really don't get on with firefox. Besides, I use the browser, mail client and the calendar so getting the suite would make sense even if it wasn't better.

I would be mortified if they did stop supporting the suite.

> Hopefully, our dedication in testing would
> convince them that seamonkey is just as
> important as Firefox.

Hopefully so.

Cheers,

Roger

Re:Seamonkey over Firefox

[chroot_james]

What about Thunderbird and Mozilla's calendar extensions for either one? The calendar

Re:Seamonkey over Firefox

[oojah]

Well I already use Mozilla the browser, so I already have the mail client (ie. the integrated one) as part of the suite. I use the calendar extension that you link to as well.

It's all good.

Cheers,

Roger

Re:Seamonkey over Firefox

[Short Circuit]

I'm not dissing the suite, but maybe it's time you gave Firefox, not Phoenix, a try? It's a lot more stable than it used to be.

Re:Seamonkey over Firefox

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

I agree with the above comments, it's not a stability issue, it's an interface issue. I got used to the Mozilla/Seamonkey style (been using moz since Milestone 12 I think). Firefox is a much different interface. On the downsides, Firefox is much snappier, bookmark handling is much improved compared to Moz 1.7, and I'll be giving that up. Looking forward to Mozilla 1.8 so I can ditch firefox.

Re:Seamonkey over Firefox

[sean23007]

Not to troll, this is just out of curiosity ... Why do you say it's better? I stopped using Mozilla at around 1.4 or so when I started using Fire(bird|fox) exclusively, and I always found the latter to be at least as good. Faster startup times, cleaner interface, more responsive. What does the full suite currently offer over that?

Re:Seamonkey over Firefox

[deadlinegrunt]

" Not to troll, this is just out of curiosity ... Why do you say it's better?"

Maybe some people think that mozilla provides better integration between browsing, mail, news, organization, and even HTML page creation as opposed to having different apps like Firefox and Thunderfox to do the same thing.

Choice of course - some people may prefer links/w3m/lynx/surfraw, vim, tin/slrn, and mutt to do the same thing as well.

Perceived benefits are what makes the determination of what makes something better because their needs are the one being addressed.

Re:Seamonkey over Firefox

[RealAlaskan]

In MozMail, when I middle-click a link in an email, it opens the link in a new tab in the browser. In Thunderbird, it tries to open Konquerer. In general, the Mozilla suite works together, and the Firebird/Thunderfox duo don't, quite.

Then, there's the UI differences: the teeny-tiny search bar instead of typing searches into the big URL bar, slightly different handling of middle clicks and searching, and so on. I haven't used anything but Moz for a while, so can't tell you more specifics. These are matters of taste, but Firefox and Thunderbird don't suit my taste.

Re:Seamonkey over Firefox

[edwdig]

I've been using the suite for years now. A few weeks ago I decided I'd use FireFox and ThunderBird at work to give them a chance. I'm still using the suite at home though. I'm currently still prefering the suite over the FF/TB combo, altho it's much closer now than it was even a few months ago.

Here's a few things I like better in the suite:

1) Type ahead find is nicer in the suite. I prefer it to only search links if I start typing. Even messing with about:config, I haven't gotten FireFox to work like that. Closest I can get is to hit ' to start the links only search.

2) In the suite, type-ahead find works everywhere. That includes the View Source window and email messages. In the seperate apps, it only works in the main browser window.

3) With the suite, I can right click a link in an email and choose "Open in New Tab". I can't do that in Thunderbird.

4) It's easier to find stuff in the suite Preferences window than in FF/TB. FF/TB group half the options under the Advanced tab, making it a huge scrolling mess. The FF/TB Options dialog is awkward when you have to scroll and/or collapse the right side.

5) The History window in the suite is much easier to use than FireFox's sidebar when you're searching for something you're not totally sure of. OTOH, the sidebar is easier when you want to go back to something near the top of the list.

6) Thunderbird doesn't have a clear button next to the quick search field. That gets annoying fast.

7) The lack of a Window menu in FF/TB is annoying. When I've got a lot of Windows open, the Windows taskbar is a pain to find things in.

The startup time isn't really an issue. Since I have email and/or the browser open the vast majority of the time, I just turn on the preload option. It makes Mozilla come up instantly - faster than IE or FireFox. It's certainly worth the unnoticable increase in system startup time, and I have enough RAM that it isn't an issue.

I don't notice a difference in response times between the suite or the individual apps.

I will agree that FF/TB have cleaner menus than the suite, but that's mainly because the Privacy tab of the Options window is a mess instead.

Re:Seamonkey over Firefox

[elemental23]

FYI:

2) In the suite, type-ahead find works everywhere. That includes the View Source window and email messages. In the seperate apps, it only works in the main browser window.

This works fine for me in Firefox 1.0's view source windows. I use it all the time on both OS X and Windows.

Re:Seamonkey over Firefox

[oojah]

Well I guess I was trolling a bit myself... :)

I mostly prefer the way it works for what I do. I guess a large part of that is the fact that I'm so used to it that any change is a pain.

I can't really tell much difference over startup times or responsivity (this is on Windows with the quick start enabled), I think the firefox interface is messier - too much candy. I prefer the way I have moz set up with text only buttons and as few of them as possible.

The real gripe for me is the search bar. Why have a whole seperate bar? I realise that it can be removed and then you can use the url bar for searching, but this only appears to work if you type an invalid url or it cannot resolve a host to your search term. What if (for some bizarre reason), I wanted to search for "localhost"? In moz, you just type, press up and then enter. Easy.

One last thing (that I can't comment on personally), but quite often there seem to be comments on slashdot discussing the problems with firefox. This is a skewed sample of course as I'm sure more people use firefox than mozilla so more are going to comment on firefox, but still. There is the infamous firefox/slashdot rendering bug (is that fixed yet?). It's never affected me. Likewise the story there was the other day on the stability of firefox. Obviously it's hard for me to say anything other than subjectively, but moz crashes infrequently enough that it is a big suprise for me if it does.

Er, I think that's it :)

Cheers,

Roger

Re:Seamonkey over Firefox

[sean23007]

For some reason they haven't moved the Slashdot fix from the trunk to Firefox yet, but that should be coming over soon. I guess they waited on it because they froze for the 1.0 release.

I've been using Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox since 0.4 or 0.5, and I've had very few stability problems. I leave my browser running all the time, rarely with fewer than 10 tabs, and it just about never crashes. When it does, as you say, it's a shock. Which isn't surprising in either case, because they're almost the same program.

I say the interface is cleaner mostly because in Linux, Mozilla has severe problems. Resizing doesn't work properly ... when you drag the lower right corner, the window resizes much slower than your mouse moves, no matter how quickly you move. Firefox hasn't ever had this problem. And I know you can skin both, but the default skin for Firefox is so much nicer than Mozilla's. "Modern" is so old.

Of course, I have nothing against the suite.

Re:Seamonkey over Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

I also prefer the suite over Firefox. The suite is fast enough for me. I happen to like and use the Sidebars, and I use Mail as well as Chatzilla and Developer tools. Maybe a dozen or so preferences I like to twiddle with have no UI in Firefox (mostly security related). Firefox feels like it's too dumbed down and stripped down for me. I also don't have the same level of trust in it's security - I see the lack of code reviews worrysome (afaik more changes in the suite require code review).

Re:Seamonkey over Firefox

[mcbridematt]

Have recently (1.0 PR) and don't like it. Sure, its fast, but I prefer the suite any day of the week.

No mozilla for quite sometime

[chroot_james]

I wasn't using the full mozilla suite for a long while. It was too slow for me. I went back and forth between Galeon and Konqueror because I didn't like either enough. Since firefox has been out, I've been happy. Firefox/Firebird/Phoenix. Whatev it was called along the way...

Re:No mozilla for quite sometime

[thelexx]

Slow how exactly? They both use the same rendering engine after all. Startup? Why are you constantly closing and restarting it to begin with?

Re:No mozilla for quite sometime

[chroot_james]

Slow as in the whole interface. If I wanted to move the window around or expand it's size it would slow down the machine. It was annoying. Using Firefox got rid of that.

future roadmap

[Anonymous Coward]

For those who complain about losing support for the Mozilla suite - the plan is that all separate apps (Firefox, Thunderbird, NVu) will use the same shared libraries (currently these libs are staticaly linked and running firebird+thunderbird will result in having gecko to be loaded twice).
So installing compartible versions of Thunderbird+Firebird+Nvu, etc will be the same as installing the whole suite.

Re:future roadmap

[Eric Giguere]

I hope they do this carefully and with lots of planning, because it's so easy to end up in "DLL hell" (or "shared library hell") if you don't. It would be nice to keep the option to install these apps completely separately so that you can upgrade one without affecting the other. Sure, more disk and more memory, but these things are cheap today and continue to get cheaper.

Eric
How to detect Internet Explorer

Re:future roadmap

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope that's not really how you write JSP. Scriptlets are bad.

Re:future roadmap

[Eric Giguere]

That's why I say in the article "I'm keeping it really simple so you don't need to use JSTL or any other tag library". If this is something that you want to do often, you should move it into tags, or install a filter to set request properties, or whatever.

Mind you, I don't subscribe to the party line that all scriptlets are evil. Most of the time you shouldn't use scriptlets, but there are exceptions to everything. Nothing wrong with the occasional one-off here and there -- but you gotta know the rules to know when to break them. But that's just my opinion.

Eric

I do

[thelexx]

And so do many others who:

1 - Find Mozilla more mature and stable
2 - Aren't driven to use the newest thing just "because"
3 - Use MozMail as their main client and don't feel like switching
4 - Don't want to keep separate apps updated/tinkered with

SVG?

[blamanj]

Some of the change log entries mention SVG. Does that mean that SVG support is going to be built-in or will we still be required to use a plug-in?

Re:SVG?

[bunratty]

They've been working on building it in for years. Just download an SVG enabled build. Maybe you can find one most easily in the MozillaZine forums.

Re:SVG?

[pmsyyz]

SVG enabled builds have svg in their name:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mozilla/nig htly/latest-trunk/

It hasn't been decided when SVG might possibly be turned on for release builds. I've heard some talk of the 1.9 timeframe, but a lot of code still needs to be reviewed. Also, I think they are waiting on some rendering backend for one of the main platforms.

Bug 122092 - Enable SVG support
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12209 2

Obviously you will have to copy and paste the above link.

How to turn off URL autocomplete in Firefox?

[jbn-o]

I prefer Mozilla Suite over Firefox for one reason: I can't turn off autocompleting URLs in Firefox. I want to keep a history of where I've been, but I wish to turn off autocomplete. I know of no way to accomplish this in Firefox, but it is quite easy to do in the Mozilla Suite. Every extension I use has been written for Firefox, Firefox does some things a little differently but not so much that I can't get used to the Firefox way of doing them. However, I view the autocomplete issue as a security problem because I'm not interested in revealing where I've been to onlookers who happen to watch me browse with a laptop computer.

If any of you know how to turn off URLbar autocomplete in Firefox, I'd appreciate telling me how to accomplish this.

Re:How to turn off URL autocomplete in Firefox?

[sl956]

I can't turn off autocompleting URLs in Firefox

What about :

user_pref("browser.urlbar.autocomplete.enabled", false);

or adding the same key in about:config?

On a side note, you also have the very useful option:

user_pref("browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped", true);

in order to list only addresses you've typed in the address bar autocomplete.

Most of these advanced options can't be changed through the GUI, but they are still there in Firefox.
HTH :-)

Re:How to turn off URL autocomplete in Firefox?

[OldMiner]

I checked about:config on an old version of Firefox I had lying around and saw that, indeed, browser.urlbar.autocomplete.enabled no longer existed (neither did browser.urlbar.autofill, but it appears that the behavior for that it is now fixed to its default "false"). So the answer to this is, it's possible, but you would have to play with XUL. If someone would care to make a plugin to do this, you could get the feature that way.

Short of that, you can reduce the annoyance by setting browser.urlbar.matchOnlyType to true. It appears to default to false.

Re:How to turn off URL autocomplete in Firefox?

[Martin Blank]

This brings up my one major complaint about Firefox, and that's the dumbing-down of the options. It's fine that the options are simplified for those that don't like to tinker, but how about an Advanced button for those of us who do like to tweak things?

Re:How to turn off URL autocomplete in Firefox?

[Matt Perry]

Yeah, that was easy and intuitive. [rolls eyes] How about a button that I can click like in Mozilla's preferences instead of having to enter a URL to get a spreadsheet of options? This is my main gripe with Firefox. The UI for setting a lot of useful options has been removed. One is left to google around for information on an option.

Re:How to turn off URL autocomplete in Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

bitch bitch bitch.
he gave you a solution

nothing is good enough for some people.

how about you stop being a prick to someone who gave you some help, or simply shut the fuck up.

it is an advanced option, it doesnt have a gui menu yet, get over it and yourself.

gratitude should be in order, not more complaining.

Firefox and Mozilla Suite

[ZephyrXero]

I'll go ahead and admit that I am a huge firefox fan and have been using it for about 6 months now. That said, I tried out the original Mozilla a couple years ago and was very disappointed in it. I hear alot of people actually complaining on here about Firefox vs. Seamonkey. As far as I've seen from the mozilla roadmaps and whatnot, isn't Firefox going to become part of the mozilla suite now that it's hit the 1.0 status? Wasn't the long run goal to not only allow Firefox and Thunderbird to be used standalone, but to also replace the current Navigator and Communicator programs with them, once they hit 1.0?

ww + hl2 + doom3 = less productivity

[Anonymous Coward]

Well who cares there is a guy in bangalore busting his ass for me, get the party started :).

Browser Detection (OT)

[OldMiner]

Your signature line:

How to detect Internet Explorer

For those who are browser agnostic and simply wish for a browser to work on their web pages, it's more useful to check for the existence of a feature. Since Javascript allows you to check whether a function or object is defined without causing an error, one can gracefully fail -- simply don't use a feature if it's not available -- instead of trying to respond properly to innumerable browser versions. Feel free to read more on this from Quirks Mode.

As a side note, if all one wishes to do is detect Internet Explorer, even clever Javascript is more work than necessary, let alone server side shenanigans. IE supports conditional comments which can easily provide for any sort of IE criticism you want. And last I checked, Opera doesn't see these things (correct me if I'm wrong), so it would be more useful if all you were doing was haranguing people for using the default browser of their OS.

Re:Browser Detection (OT)

[Eric Giguere]

All I'm doing is showing how you can do a little server-side scripting to decide whether or not to show a "Get Firefox!" image or link to encourage IE users to switch to Firefox. (Just do it gently and politely.) Yes, you can also do this in JavaScript, but my little article doesn't deal with client-side detection at all.

Eric

Re:Browser Detection (OT)

[OldMiner]

I'm not sure you read my second paragraph in its entirety. I was not suggesting Javascript. I was suggesting a better method to do exactly what you say you claim you are trying to do -- "show a 'Get Firefox!' image or link to...IE users." You might check it again.

Re:Browser Detection (OT)

[Eric Giguere]

Sorry, you're right, I missed that bit about the conditional comments. Yeesh, what a kludge! Anyhow, my original intent was to show people how to detect if Firefox was being used and to show a "Spread Firefox!" button instead of a "Get Firefox!" button but some non-IE users took offense at the implication that they should be getting Firefox too. Can't please everyone, I guess!

Hopefully some viewers learn something new when they read the article (and the HTTP header viewer).

Eric

Broken edit:proferences ?

[nri]

This has happened to me before. When I upgrade the Edit:Preferences window is totally blank. Everything else works fine. All my profiles are intact, themes remain installed (pinball), extensions are there (prefbar). I can still get to my pregerences via about:config.

Anyone else have their preferences dialog box broken with this release ? I haven't seen a bug report for this version. Older versions bug reports have 'apparently' been fixed.

FYI, for those who do install the tar files. I wrote a little shell script that I called mozbak, that I always run before installing any theme or extension or upgrade. So I can always roll back :-)

[07:58] [nri@sammy:bin] $ cat mozbak

date=`date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S`

cd /usr/local
echo tar cvhfz mozilla_$date.tgz /usr/local/mozilla
tar cvhfz mozilla_`date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S`.tgz mozilla
use
cd /home/nri
echo tar cvfz mozilla_$date.tgz .mozilla
tar cvfz mozilla_$date.tgz .mozilla

Re:Broken edit:proferences ?

[IncohereD]

On Mandrake/Firefox it would sometimes show up blank the first time after I opened the browser, then work fine if I went back in.

Change in development road?

[rollthelosindice]

I could have sworn that I had read when firefox was still back at .7 or .8 that Mozilla.org had decided that the new 1.7 branch of Mozilla suite would be based on the current firefox development.

Now most of the replies seem to indicate a reverse course, that the 1.8 suite development will make its way into firefox.

I don't really care either way as long as they keep up the great work.

I had also begun to think that I would never use a "suite" again due to all that bloat, but since I love firefox so much, thunderbird has successfully beaten out outlook express(and hopefully soon outlook), and even the calendar project (which has a long, long way to go) is creating some momentum, it might soon be time to give it another shot, so long as they remain fit and trim and don't bloat up.