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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?"
Might seem silly, but when upgrades come out for the Moz suite, IT teams need only upgrade/test one piece of software. Might seem insignificant, but at my school EVERY computer had Moz installed, and that would mean a lot of work.
Also, Mozilla suite has a higher version number which, for some reason, keeps ignorant IT managers more at ease.
I use Firefox exclusively for web browsing, but if I need to use an HTML editor for simple stuff every once in a while, I still have the Mozilla suite installed for Composer.
Thats about it though. I haven't used the full suite for web browsing (I use Evolution for e-mail) for almost two years now.
It was my understanding that Firefox and Thunderbird were engineered to completely replace Mozilla.
Does anyone know when this is supposed to happen, i.e. when will the code branches merge into a single whole?
The unofficial
Will we ever see a Mozilla suite composed of Firefox and Thunderbird to keep it all simple?
What are the reasons for keeping two different project sets going at the same time? More and more it seems like the Mozilla Suite is becoming the "Legacy Trunk", and Firebox & Thunderbird are the next-generation R&D releases.
It seems if we could dedicate more developers to a single development tree, it would be more efficient? Just one primary development trunk, no need to sync in changes from Firefox/Thunderbird -> Mozilla and from Mozilla -> Firefox/Thunderbird.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
I much prefer the suite to FF/TB.
I still can't stand FF as a browser - it simply isn't as good as Mozilla for my uses. If I'm going to use both the browser and mail components then why the hell would I want to sacrifice performance and features (such as opening email links in a new Mozilla tab by middle-clicking) by running two seperate programs?
Whatever happened to 1.7.4?
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Right click on a toolbar in Firefox, and you can add/remove/re-arrange all you want. Don't want a search? Remove it.
Great, but what if I want to have location and search in the same text box?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
If you want to minimize Firefox and Thunderbird to the tray, just install this extension: http://minimizetotray.mozdev.org/.
Type ahead fine works better in the suite. I prefer a links only search if i just start typing, with / for the fulltext. Firefox always does fulltext.
Type ahead find doesn't work in the View Source window of FireFox.
Type ahead find doesn't work in Thunderbird.
Too many options have been removed from the preferences window in FF/TB. The new design isn't very usable for the more complicated tabs (such as Advanced).
I like right clicking a link in an email and selecting "Open in New Tab".
TB/FF don't have a window menu, making it slower to navigate between multiple windows.
Those are the main ones I can think of. Probably more that I don't run into as often.
Composer: I give lectures and use Composer (a lot) to create 'poor man's Power Point' presentations...the advantage of this to me is enormous: I don't like Power Point - I no longer use any MS products, .html is quick and easy, I can embed any media I want into a page, and it does exactly what I need it to. I rely in Composer heavily and would be lost without it even though I have tried other methods of creating slides for my lectures.
Chatzilla: this is very handy, easy to use, and I like the interface...plus people can download it and use it in my workshops for free and it's x-platform...wish it could do file transfers but maybe it does this in the new 1.7.5?
Browser: sorry, but I don't like IE, Safari is still half-baked and while Firefox is very nice Moz has all the moving parts I need in one place without having to launch and manage new apps/windows during heavy work sessions.
For me, it is the fast access to cookie settings in the Tools menu in Mozilla. To change the setting for a page in Firefox, I have to go to the Preferences (Options in Windows) dialog and then enter the address of the site manually.
Other than that, I would use Firefox instead. Unless of course, the same feature is in Firefox and I just have not found it.
This is why. If I set up thunder as the email client, and then firefox as the web client, that leads to more choices, and choices are what often cause significant security problems for the average user. Perhpas they will open IE instead of firefox. If the web window is already open, then the use of IE will be less likely.
So, in a setting in which the inherently insecure features of IE are not needed, running mozilla is one way to keep IE from being run. The user will load up moz for email, and continue for web browsing.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I have 4 computers, 2 Mozilla, 2 Thunderbird.
I like that when I start Mozilla Browser, it will check my email and tell me if there are new messages. Firefox/Thunderbird does not do this.
The other issue I have is the way tabbed bookmarks open. On Mozilla, I just left click on the group of tabbed bookmarks. On Thunderbird I have to right click and specify to open in tabs.
Another item that is odd, Mozilla has a button next to the tabs for a new tab. On one installation I can't seem to put the button there on Thunderbird. On another installation, I managed to put it there on an old version of Thunderbird and it stays there through the upgrades. I wish I knew how to get it there for my new Thunderbird installation.
I guess I could live without the integration. The tabbed bookmarks might be fixed by some advanced configuration I haven't found yet, same goes for the new tab button. Maybe I could switch, but I am not doing so for now.
You can lose something that is loose, so tighten the loose item so you don't lose it.
"What are your reasons for running the old standby suite over the Firefox/Thunderbird combo?"
Why should it be a standby suite? If something doesn't work on Firefox, it won't work on Mozilla navigator either. Most of us would interpret "standby browser" to mean Lynx, Links, emacs, or Internet Explorer, i.e. something which might work when the primary browser fails.
Why is it "old"? Mozilla just released a major version today, which makes it newer than Firefox 1.0
Why are the reasons for running Mozilla non-obvious? It has features that Firefox doesn't have. Many of us use those features.
For example, I use chatzilla all the time. It's not available except as part of Mozilla.
Another example: Mozilla composer is one of the best word-processors I've found. It's part of Mozilla, but not part of Firefox. You can download nvu separately of course, but why bother?
Of course, the other thing which makes Mozilla indispensable to web-authors is "Edit this page" which is not available in other browsers. I use it to quickly type pages, and then paste from the HTML source view into the SSH session that I actually edit the website on. Much quicker for some things than using emacs remotely.
I could not find a BitTorrent link for Mozilla on the mozilla.org web pile. So here I am downloading via ftp. Expected duration: 3.1 hours.
For starters: Mozilla's preferences menu allows a lot finer control of the options than Firefox's. This is very puzzling: why would the Firefox team remove options and then turn around and hide them under the "about:config" panel? Is this some kind of an Easter egghunt or something?
Second, cookies. Mozilla's cookie handling was great; FF leaves a lot to be desired. Usually I disable cookies; but some sites refuse to work without cookies, and in which case I have to enable session cookies. Mozilla had a convenient option under Tools. Even if I mistakenly denied the cookies from a site, one could go to Tools -> Cookies -> Allow session cookies to conveniently allow from the site. Under FF, if you disallow cookies from a site, you have to go to Edit -> Preferences -> Privacy -> Exceptions; and then hunt around for the site in that list (without any convenient search function). It takes much longer to enable session cookies for sites once they've been disallowed.
While the FF team is doing a great job of coming up with a standalone browser, their "usability" decisions leave something to be desired.
Try OffByOne (offbyone.com, I think) -- a reasonably full-featured Win32 browser that fits on a floppy and has miminal sysreqs beyond that. It has its annoyances too (chief among them the lack of an address bar) but it's fast, stable, does all the usual stuff one needs, and consists of a single self-contained file of just over a meg. (Minor additions needed for special functions, but you can live without it.)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I agree with many of the other coments here such as liking the way mozilla does google searches as oposed to the seperate box in firefox but my main reasons is this:
I really like the fact that I can close the mail application and it still sticks around and pops up an icon in the system tray when there is a new message. If you use thunderbird theres no way that I've seen to get it off of the task bar/sys tray when you are not using it. I always have a browser open but I don't like keeping my mail program open. Mozilla lets me do this so until TB has a minimize to tray I'll stick with the suite.
Belive in Technology and AMAZE yourself. -- RIP ZDTV/TechTV