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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?"
Nearly all of the 1.7.5 Mozilla Suite fixes are in Firefox 1.0. Firefox 1.0's code is Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0. This is a small upgrade for Mozilla 1.7 to reach Firefox 1.0 parity. Firefox v1.1 will be based on Mozilla 1.8 (currently at 1.8 alpha 5), and Mozilla 1.8 should be released first. I wouldn't say either one is ahead in terms of technology, since they share so much.
Whether we'll one day have a suite of applications replace the actual suite seems to vary month to month and depends on who you ask. Personally, I would've liked that as a goal for Mozilla's 2.0 release.
PS: Mozilla 1.8/Firefox 1.1 should have the new user stylesheet code to support a color override for it.slashdot.org!
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?
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
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?
Now that Firefox has become popular I have to use Mozilla to prop up my feeble ego by running against the current and sneering at those along the way.
Whatever happened to 1.7.4?
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
The upcoming Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (and recently released Fedora Core 3) include Firefox as the default browser. They also include Thunderbird, though Evolution is still the default. Yay, laziness!
If you want to minimize Firefox and Thunderbird to the tray, just install this extension: http://minimizetotray.mozdev.org/.
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).
You can get Nvu.
1. I, along with a bunch of other people, funded a developer to add roaming profile support. It's in the 1.8alpha builds but AFAIK hasn't made it into Firefox yet. Roaming profiles was a huge loss for me when I stopped using Netscape 4. I'm glad to have it back and I'm glad that open source allowed me to do something about it rather than just sit around and complain about it being gone.
2. The new Google Groups displays messages in a proportional font and doesn't have a setting to display it in monospace. This really screws up messages that are meant to be monospaced such as source code. Google has some kind of algorithm that attempts to see if the line should be monospaced but it works poorly and shows a mixture of proportional and monospaced lines in some messages. That can make things more difficult to read.
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:
Right now the Mozilla trunk is where the action is for new features. Eventually new development will focus on Firefox, at which point I'll probably switch over. Until then, there are new features that I need and those needs aren't being met in Firefox (yet).
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Of course it can read from a local mbox file... See menu "Tools" > "Account Settings" > "Add Account" > "Movemail". I use it on a regular basis.
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.
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).
Firefox seems to use an internal clipboard. Mozilla suite doesn't. Meaning that if I were to select a location or copy a url in Mozilla I can expect to middle-click it into an xterm, for example, for a wget. Or that if I select a link from elsewhere, I can middle-click that into the location bar. Not so for Firefox.
Doing the Right Thing should not be preempted by making a buck.
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.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
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.
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.
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.
No, it is still there. It is part of Mozilla, and from what I can tell has not been addressed in FF or tbird.
You can get Nvu (I have it), but it's not the same thing. Nvu is more reaching up towards the Frontpage/Dreamweaver crowd (reaching because it ain't there yet). In Mozilla, I could just hit edit page and there it was. I found this especially useful for adjusting tables, especially when I used vi for PHP code editing.
I.e. Mozilla Composer is an integrated part of the Mozilla suite, which makes it convenient to use. Nvu (and Dreamweaver, which I also use) are not integrated parts of Firefox (unless someone has made an extension for this since I last looked).
cuneAform is another contentder for Composer replacement. However, the reviews say that it isn't ready yet. It is in the correct space though (a Composer replacement needs to be accessible as a Firefox extension).
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".
Anton Markov
*** Linux - May the source be with you! ***
I think you may be thinking of an old behaviour in really old firebird/phoenix/whatever.
It used to be if you clicked in the URL bar, it would highlight the URL without copying it. This would allow you to "paste over" an existing URL without hassle, something that is not easy in X because the way the clipboard works normally.
They changed it back in later version to have a behavior more consistant with normal X behavior.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Ad 1. The default button order on Linux is Gnome-ish, since Firefox is a GTK 2 app, and as such wants to conform to Gnome Human Interface Guidelines, which specify the button order. If you want the KDEish/Windowsish button order (OK|Cancel) on Linux (or Mac), just put this in your userChrome.css: .dialog-button-box { -moz-box-direction: reverse; -moz-box-pack: right; }
and stop complaining. :)
Ad 2.
So why don't you remove the Google search box by right clicking on it, selecting Customize and pulling it into the window? And then, you can make Firefox location bar act like Mozilla's, just set keyword.URL in about:config to http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&q=
(The search box is much better, though, you just have to use it a few times ;))
Now, you have no reasons not to switch. :-)
I haven't tried it myself, but there is an extention for Firefox which claims to let you resize the searchbox: https://addons.update.mozilla.org/extensions/morei nfo.php?application=firefox&id=349&vid=1245
That is the power of Firefox. It's much easier to add new features or "fix" things you don't like. No need to go hacking the sourcecode or re-compiling it!
Anton Markov
*** Linux - May the source be with you! ***
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?
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