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Mozilla Roadmap Update

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the stuff-to-read dept.

wikinerd writes "According to a recent roadmap update for Mozilla, the beta 1.8 version will be unveiled this month, while in the next month a second beta will be prepared. After the Beta2, Gecko engine 1.8 will be finished and it will power Mozilla 1.8, Mozilla Firefox 1.1 and Mozilla Thunderbird 1.1. The developers will then start working on Mozilla 1.9. Here are some nice graphics depicting the roadmap."

33 of 242 comments (clear)

  1. Are they saying... by goofyspouse · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...that Firefox 1.0 can be improved upon?

    1. Re:Are they saying... by gothzilla · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They better be. Go read the support forums for firefox if you want an idea on what could be improved. Also look at how many posts there are per day. There's a lot that can be made better. Personally I'm tired of the hype. It's a good browser but until it gets better I'm sticking with mozilla.

  2. Wasn't Mozilla by The+Grey+Clone · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Wasn't the Mozilla All-In-One browser supposed to be disbanded and effort placed into Firefox a while back? Are they going to continue delaying and delaying this? I tried to read the article, but it didn't seem to say. I'm curious as to how many people still use Mozilla, anyway.

    1. Re:Wasn't Mozilla by BW_Nuprin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The Mozilla Suite may not be disbanded, but how many people even know about it anyway? Its got its little niche, but whether or not it truly "goes away" now seems irrelevant. Firefox is the focus of all the publicity, and the Suite goes on about its business on its own.

    2. Re:Wasn't Mozilla by Omniscientist · · Score: 4, Interesting
      I still use Mozilla, Mozilla 1.7.5 with gtk2+xft x86_64 build. The reason I use Mozilla is because all I have to do is download one program and I get the browser and an email client.

      Now the reason why Mozilla Foundation is still making Mozilla is because Mozilla is aimed at vendors who will customize Mozilla to include the necessary or wanted features. We all know Mozilla has an big amount of features, many of which we never use, so the idea is that there would be some sort of vendor or someone making a distro who would customize it properly for its users/customers. Firefox is aimed at the end-user exclusively.

  3. Composer? by slim · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Now we have Firefox, the only time I load up Mozilla is when I want to use Composer. It's far from perfect (that poxy

    $lt;br> problem!) but it's a free WYSYWIG HTML editor withoout too many frills or complexities, and it throws out reasonably tidy HTML which can be cleaned up by hand much more easily than (say) Frontpage output.

    So what's the future for Composer? I'd love to have it either as a standalone alongside Firefox and Thunderbird, or as an extension to Firefox.

    I notice that Thunderbird contains vestiges of Composer (e.g. CSS styles for display modes no longer available)...

    1. Re:Composer? by Jack+Comics · · Score: 5, Informative

      Your solution is at hand. NVU is a multi-platform "spin-off" of Mozilla Composer, based on the Gecko 1.7.5 engine used by the Mozilla Suite and Firefox 1.0.

      --
      "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." - Oscar Wilde
  4. Re:What new features in 1.1? by eln · · Score: 3, Informative

    Most likely the primary feature will be the Gecko 1.8 engine. It seems to be the primary purpose for the release, and there may not be any other new features at all except maybe some scattered bugfixes.

  5. Mozilla vs FireFox by martok · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I recently started using FireFox at home and am wondering if someone would mind explaning the difference between Mozilla and FireFox. I understand they're both free software projects and are based on the same core technology. Why are there then two browsers? Is it simply a code fork?

    1. Re:Mozilla vs FireFox by temojen · · Score: 3, Informative

      Firefox is a browser. Mozilla is a Browser, Email reader, usenet reader, page composer, IRC client, and a few other things.

    2. Re:Mozilla vs FireFox by 0x461FAB0BD7D2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Firefox is an attempt at seperating the browser component of Mozilla, and hopefully making it smaller, more portable, and more memory-efficient.

      The rendering engine for both Seamonkey (the Mozilla Suite) and Firefox remains the same, the Gecko rendering engine. What differs is the UI, the functionality and large parts of the codebase.

      Originally, Firefox, and Thunderbird, were scheduled to replace Seamonkey, but after some developers voiced their concerns over this, the Mozilla Foundation has decided against this move.

      In short, it's not so much as code fork as it is a functionality fork. Firefox is geared towards IE/Opera/Safari users, while Seamonkey is geared towards old school Navigator/Netscape/Mozilla users.

  6. Re:What new features in 1.1? by goofyspouse · · Score: 5, Informative

    From http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/roadmap.ht ml :

    We are still working on goals for 2.0 and are drafting a PRD for its development. Some likely goals include:

    * Improvements to Bookmarks/History
    * Per-Site Options
    * Enhancements to the Extensions system, Find Toolbar, Software Update, Search and other areas.
    * Accessibility compliance
    * More ... ?

    (Note: placing an item on this list does not mean it will not be complete until 2.0, rather we would like to be done by 2.0, it may be implemented by 1.1, 1.5 or 2.0)

  7. The Roadmap Made Easy... by ackthpt · · Score: 4, Funny

    The Map

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  8. Wee:) by B3ryllium · · Score: 5, Funny

    They should make the gecko do the robot in the about window.

  9. I hope they improve on the Mac version by slutsker · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I use Firefox for my Mac, and I have used it for a while now. However, I have found it to use up a godly amount of memory, which sometimes leads to crashes on my mere 512 MB machine. I noticed the 1.0 version was better than the 0.9 version at this, and I hope the 1.1 version is even better.

    Anyway, I'm just wondering... does anyone else have these memory problems on their Mac's, or is it just me?

    1. Re:I hope they improve on the Mac version by Turf · · Score: 3, Informative

      The memory consumption issues kept me away from firefix for a long, long time. Whether on MS XP or GNU/Linux systems, the result was always the same: after a day of heavy usage, Firefox was slow, slow, slow. Memory consumption was always higher than any other program I used. As it neared the 1.0 stage, the memory usage became better. Not ideal, but better.

      Sorry I cannot corroborate your Mac usage, except state the same happens on other platforms.

  10. Slashdot fix in 1.1 by TechnologyX · · Score: 3, Informative

    Before anyone evens grabs the oblig. "Yeah but it still can't display Slashdot right!!oneone!1" post, the fix is in the pipeline for 1.1. And it's a race condition with Firefox, not with /.

    --
    Slashdot sucks
  11. And where does Sunbird fit into all of this ? by DARKFORCE123 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't see Sunbird in any of those slides. We still seem to be far away from a complete Outlook replacement that is stable enough to pitch to people. I would think replacing Outlook would be a good investment of resources.

    1. Re:And where does Sunbird fit into all of this ? by jbridge21 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Ummmm, haven't you seen Evolution? Or is there some other reason that's not what you're looking for?

  12. But can it render Slashdot? by Duncan3 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I just want to know if Firefox 1.1 will support rendering Slashdot?

    Just an idea, absurd I know, but... since every OTHER site I visit works great with the fox, so maybe somebody should stop posting dupes and fix the HTML?

    Yea, too absurd...

    --
    - Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
    1. Re:But can it render Slashdot? by md27 · · Score: 5, Informative

      There's actually a bug in Gecko that causes the mis-render, and it's fixed in the code that will be 1.1. I saw this on the burningedge 1.1 fix list.

  13. but but but... by temojen · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Still no SVG?!?!

  14. Re:What new features in 1.1? by davron05 · · Score: 5, Informative

    From the Unofficial Firefox 1.1 changelog:
    New features
    * 245392 - Installer options for where to put start menu / desktop / quick launch shortcut icons.
    * 231062 - Provide Firefox MSI package.

    Major improvements

    * 124561 - Anonymous ftp login failure should prompt for username/password.
    * 98564 - Caret overlaps the last character in textfield (if positioned after the last char).
    * 151375 - Focus outline should be drawn outside of element.
    * 133165 - Focus outline should include larger descendants of inline elements.
    * 65917 - :active neither hierarchical nor picky about what can be activated.
    * 175893 - Make XUL 's focusable.
    * 20022 - :hover state not set until mouse move.
    * 276588 - Rework toolkit command-line handling. You can now open local files easily from the command-line (e.g. firefox.exe README.txt), and command-line switches should do the same thing whether Firefox is running or not.
    * 95227 - Make it possible to set different default font type (serif vs sans serif) for different languages.
    * 16940 - [Windows] IME is now disabled for password fields.
    * 151249 - [Mac] Middle click on link does nothing on Mac OS X (should open link in new tab).
    * 242845 - [Mac] Firefox disk image should use .dmg internal zlib-compression, not .dmg.gz.
    * 238854 - [GTK2] Changing GNOME2 theme doesn't apply until restarting Mozilla.

    And yes, they are also targeting the famous Slashdot rendering bug (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2175 27). Copy&paste the link to your browser since diredt linking to bugzilla from slashdot doesn't work.

  15. Firefox security updates? by sjonke · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The only official release of Firefox is 1.0. There are a number of outstanding security flaws in Firefox 1.0 as reported by Secunia and none have been addressed yet. I don't know if there is a nightly release that fixes these flaws, but even if there is, those are not the releases that Mom and Pop download, and it is that type of user that tends to be affected most by security flaws. Doesn't the Firefox/Mozilla team need to release a version 1.0.1 that fixes these flaws sooner rather than later? Unfortunately there is no 1.0.1 on the road map, and version 1.1 is not scheduled to be released until June, if it is on time. By then the oldest unpatched flaw, from August 2004, will be 10 months old! While the severity of current flaws is nowhere near MSIE territory, the age of unpatched flaws will be getting into MSIE territory (well, somewhat, anyway.)

    --
    --- What?
    1. Re:Firefox security updates? by algae · · Score: 5, Informative

      I'm using FireFox 1.0, and everytime i've seen a security hole announced, an auto-updater pops up within a day or so to install the hot-fix. It's a little green arrow right under the title bar.

      --
      Causation can cause correlation
    2. Re:Firefox security updates? by mr_jrt · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Would you prefer non-root users to be able to overwrite your browser binaries? I've not used firefox on linux, so I'll assume the situation could prehaps be more highlighted to the user, but it's hardly a bug.

      --
      Boo.
  16. Where's the freakin' roadmap?? by amake · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you wanted to see the actual roadmap itself, starting at this /. article you had to wade through not one, not two, but three intermediate sites to get to it. Thanks a lot for not putting a direct link anywhere in the article, guys.

  17. Re:Safari Innards by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Informative
    The rendering engine in Safari is WebCore, which is based on KHTML, from the KDE project. A large number of changes have been made by Apple, many of which have not found their way back into KHTML yet (because KHTML is understaffed and can't handle the merging, not because Apple is hoarding them). While it is similar to Gecko in terms of features, I have found that it has slightly better CSS support[1], and produces nicer looking[2] output for several attributes (I seem to recall that bevelled boarders being one of them, although I may be wrong).

    WebCore is open source, but it is written in Objective-C++ (core is C++, interface is Objective-C), which is currently only supported by GCC on OS X (mainly due to the size of the maintainers' egos). Once the main branch of GCC gets Objective-C++ support, it is probable that the GNUstep project will gain a WebCore based browser.

    [1] Not in any way an objective measurement, I've just found that a few CSS tags I've wanted to use have been supported by Safari but not by anything else including Gecko.
    [2] Again, 100% subjective.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  18. Re:SVG? by wikinerd · · Score: 4, Informative

    About SVG: If you read my article on Mozilla 1.8 Alpha 6 you will see that I mention "Improved support for SVG". So, Mozilla 1.8 already has better SVG support.

  19. Re:Safari Innards by m50d · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Completely different. Safari is built on KHTML, used in konqueror. Which, IME, is a much nicer browser than firefox, at least if you're using kde.

    --
    I am trolling
  20. Re:Composer?? by digitalgimpus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    NVU is by Daniel Glazman, and based on Composer.

    Much better.

  21. Re:Graphical display issues by kryocore · · Score: 3, Informative

    Examples:

    The bluetabs template for Mambo CMS:
    http://www.mambohut.com/content/view/367/

    Slashdot

    It will hide results from this search tool, despite showing up fine in IE:
    http://windowssecrets.com/winfind/

    Anything with ActiveX or VBSCRIPT (not such a bad thing, but people will still complain about it)

    Windows Update - A very important site for any Windows user (not firefoxes fault, but this is still a disadvantage to illiterate users)

    Sites with the Invision Powerboard have been noted to display threads with lots of posts incorrectly.

    Some of these are no big deal, and there are just as many sites that IE displays incorrectly, but it will still be an advantage for IE if firefox displays the same site incorrectly, because people are switching FROM IE, not from firefox.

  22. Re:Graphical display issues by mopslik · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's not a matter of whether you or I who are fully capable of finding what we need are able to workaround Firefox not working with Windows Update, it's a matter of whether "Cletus" from the sticks of Mississippi can figure it out.

    Why do you think you get the "You must upgrade to IE..." page when you visit Windows Update with FireFox?

    If the page wasn't handled correctly, you'd see garbage on the screen. Or an empty screen. Or half of a screen. Basically, you would see the elements that FireFox parsed correctly.

    What you're seeing on Windows Update is the result of a script that checks if you're using IE. If you are, it lets you access the main page. If you're not, it tells you to switch to Microsoft's browser. How does FireFox get past this? Clearly, it can't change the script on Microsoft's site. Should it use some fancy algorithm to try and decide which scripts it should ignore and which it should obey? That's opening a whole new can of worms.

    It's not an issue of FireFox displaying the page incorrectly. It's an issue of FireFox being blocked at the door.

    If you have an example of a page that displays incorrectly without such a limitation on it, then you've got something to discuss.