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 ?.

[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.

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

[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

[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

[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.

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

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?

[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.

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: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.