Mozilla 1.7.5 Released

shokk writes "Mozilla 1.7.5 is out for all platforms. See the changelog for more details. Quite a few bug fixes are in this. A number of the bugs are Firefox/Mozilla specific, so you can expect that these will be avilable in the upcoming Firefox 1.1 Deer Park (that's good browser!) release. Is the Mozilla suite no longer at the forefront of browser technology, long surpassed by Firefox and Thunderbird? Will we ever see a Mozilla suite composed of Firefox and Thunderbird to keep it all simple? What are your reasons for running the old standby suite over the Firefox/Thunderbird combo?"

Comments

Why I still use Mozilla...

[Tet]

What are your reasons for running the old standby suite over the Firefox/Thunderbird combo?

Quite simply, it's a better browser. The killer feature for me is searching. I hate the wasted real estate in Firefox from having a separate location and search box, and ease of use is dramatically better in Mozilla than in Firefox. In Mozilla, I just hit Ctrl-L, type my search commands, hit up arrow and enter. I haven't found any way of achieving the same thing in Firefox, and I hate the small size of the box I'm given to enter my search terms.

For email, I don't use either. Until something else comes close to the power of mh, I see no reason to change. But I also found out a major failing in Thunderbird yesterday. My other third uses it, and it turns out it can only get mail from a POP3 or IMAP server. It can't read from a local mbox file. How braindead is that?

Re:Why I still use Mozilla...

[Tough Love]

"The killer feature for me is searching. I hate the wasted real estate in Firefox from having a separate location and search box, and ease of use is dramatically better in Mozilla than in Firefox. In Mozilla, I just hit Ctrl-L, type my search commands, hit up arrow and enter. I haven't found any way of achieving the same thing in Firefox, and I hate the small size of the box I'm given to enter my search terms."

Exactly. I just hate the separate search box. After a couple of months using Firefox every day, I'm still constantly typing my search into the location bar, then I either notice and correct it by Ctrl-A, Ctrl-X, Tab, Ctrl-V (a real pain) or fail to notice and Firefox automagically googles to the first match and throws away my search text, never to be seen again. How hard would it be to enter the search text into the url history instead of discarding it, anyway?

Re:Why I still use Mozilla...

[rseuhs]

Quite simply, it's a better browser.

Exactly.

Firefox feels a little too much "dumbed down" for me.

An example is that I coulnd't find a preference in Firefox to turn off gif-animations (v0.9 IIRC). Yes, I'm pretty sure there is some way through extensions or about:config, but what's the point, it's the same browser engine anyway.

Re:Why I still use Mozilla...

[Tet]

But if you have some exotic mail program not widely used that stores mail in some obscure format

If you believe that mbox is an obscure format, I suggest you need to read up on the subject before commenting on it...

Re:Why I still use Mozilla...

[gnugnugnu]

you could easy set up bookmark keywords for your searches that way.

You are missing the point entirely.

Mozilla "out of the box" does more of what some of what some of want and are used to and it is not worth switching to Firefox if we have to waste time adding it all back in.

Frankley I'm amazed that the Firefox developers saw fit to compltely remove the search option from the location bar. Those who knew about it could keep on using it and newbies could use the easier to find search box.
What harm would it have been to leave well enough alone?

I for one regularly need use Mozilla Composer to correct ugly ass webpages into something less harsh on the eyes and more readable. I like having Chatzilla around too. Just because I could add it back in doesn't mean I think that would be a worthwhile way to spend my time.

Fact is that I do use a lot of the suite, some of it more often than other parts but just because I dont use it often doesn't mean I want to get rid of it. The improvements to the gecko rendering engine are shared between Mozilla and Firefox which is what is really important and any improvements I have seen in firefox do not outweigh all the little annoyances and missing bits I would have to add back in.

Firefox != Mozilla

[TheEvilOverlord]

The underlying rendering code might be the same, but the interface (and the features) are completely different.

Firefox is lightweight and quick and I use it on slow/low memory machines, but I prefer mozilla simply because it still looks and behaves like netscape. Firefox is for those people that use IE and switch over.

It might sound silly but there are subtle interface differences and keyboard controls, etc that are missing in Firefox. I went from using netscape to mozilla (when it was stable enough) and I've always disliked IE.

I'm sure Firefox will gain netscape behaviour features at some point, but I guess at that point certain users will start complaining about bloat.

Until there is a compelling feature to move I'm not going to, and I wish people wouldn't make it into some open source guilt trip not to use Firefox! Damnit! I only recently started using mozilla mail over PINE! (and that was for the junk filtering).

Edit - Preferences

[Erik Fish]

Last I checked FF had an extremely abbreviated preferences window with the rest of the options available through an enormous about: page. I like Mozilla's prefs interface better.

Moz is also a great drop-in replacement for people who are used to NS 4.x (a population that includes many of the users I support).

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

Mozilla does just what I want, even it it does take some time to load. I like having an integrated Browser/HTML Editor/E-Mail client.

At work, I run Firefox under NT4 (!) and editing HTML there is a pain in the ass - no 'Edit Page' option there. I am sure there are other ways to do this, but what I actually do at work is sufficiently taxing that looking things up (with no internet access) would just be a distraction.

Mozilla is quite simply more powerful

[Smukatele]

Firefox seems to be designed as a very good replacement for IE. It is faster, safer and has more features, but it cannot do what Mozilla does. I have always viewed the Fireefox and Mozilla as being for different crowds. Firefox is for those who want a fast and simple browser, but don't need the ability to customize all the settings. Mozilla is for the power users who want to tweak every portion of their browser. I for one hope no one ever replaces Mozilla with Firefox, because although I like Firefox, I don't enjoy being restricted on what I can tweak. If you don't know what I am talking about, go download it here http://www.mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x/ Then play with the preferences, you won't be able to miss the differences.

Custom Styles [was Re: Here's Why I Run Mozilla]

[space_man51]

As of Mozilla 1.8a3 I can limit stylesheets to a specific web site which allows me to fix my google groups problem. The following code in my chrome/userContent.css file lets me show google groups messages in monospace:

Well, you can still edit the userContent.css file in Firefox, it just doesn't support specific websites. However the `class="mbody"' attribute is probably very unique, so you shouldn't notice a difference on other websites

And even if Firefox is behind in some core features, the ability to use extentions means that it has features the Mozilla Suit will probably never have, because they would look like bloat to most users. That's the power of extentions - everyone can have their cake.

Oh, and on the topic of the configuration files, there is a very nice (although currently incompatible) extention for Firefox that allows editting these files from withing the browser itself. It's called "ChromeEdit".

I like the suite better

[zogger]

Because I default open a browser and the email anyway, and I most always used netsacpe communicator in the past so it's about the same thing.. I don't really see much difference in having one app open or two. What I would like to know (don't have thunderbird so I can't check) what is the cpu and memory footprint between moz suite, or having firefox and tbird open at the same time? Is there really much difference in speed and memory usage?

Why the suite is better

[Anonymous Coward]

1. On Linux, unless you're running Gnome or KDE, the integration between TB and FF is non-existent. Clicking on a mailto link in FF does not bring up TB, and clicking on a link in TB does not open FF.

2. Linux again: If you are using both the browser and the mail client, and you are compiling your own software, it's easier to download and compile a single tarball than grab the separate components.

3. On Windows: If I'm installing this for a friend or relative who doesn't know a lot about computers, I'm usually wanting all of the apps anyway: The browser to browse the web, the mail client to get mail, chatzilla so they can easily go to my website and click the irc:// link to talk to me, etc. Saves me a lot of time to just download and install mozilla than tracking down all of these apps separately.

Basically, it boils down to this: If all you need is the browser, then it's overkill to download the suite. But as soon as you need the mail program or anything else in addition, it's a lot less trouble to download the suite rather than downloading everything separately.

Re:Summary is incorrect

[aichpvee]

You assclowns do realise that arabs are Semites too, right?

Can't we just get back to hating people for their ideas and leave all the rest alone? PEACE!

I think this is the link you were all looking for: http://billgatesisafascist.slashdot.org