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Mozilla M7 - Ready for the War

jonMC writes "Ok, not quite Netscape, it's Mozilla. M7 release notes are here. You can get the straight goodies from the ftp site. " The release notes also point out that the Full Circle enabled versions allow for error transmission errors back to Netscape - along with "improved crash analysis". Mozilla just keeps looking better.

117 of 182 comments (clear)

  1. Screenshots by drwiii · · Score: 2
    1. Re:Screenshots by trazom28 · · Score: 1

      Heh.. long as I've known you.. you're always one for screen shots :-D

      --
      {} ------ When I think of a good sig, I'll put it here
    2. Re:Screenshots by greenrd · · Score: 1
      Ugh, I hope the UI design is better (not blue, blue and more blue) in the final Netscape release. (Not allowed to download software onto university machines so I have to use what they give us.)

    3. Re:Screenshots by Quikah · · Score: 1

      You can change the layout using chrome.

      Also gtk themes work on the Linux version. Of course you may be SOL if you cannot download any software.

      --
      Q.
  2. Re: IE5 is still faster by PhoneMonkey · · Score: 1

    That is true, you're right.

    But bear in mind that R7 is a pre-alpa.

    --
    It's a thankless job, but I've got a lot of Karma to burn off
  3. Proxy support? by Panelvan · · Score: 1

    Apparently the necessary callback in netlib (NET_PrefChangedFunc) is not called when the network preference change while loading the prefs50.js file. You can force mozilla to use the proxy info by changing the proxy type in the preference dialog, OKing, then changing it back to the right type (after which NET_PrefChangedFunc is called). The next time you load mozilla, it will fail again, though.

    Still doesn't work for me though. I'm not sure what sort of a bug I can report this as, apart from "Duh. Doesn't work".

    --
    -- Post No Gravy
  4. Testing it out at work. by finkployd · · Score: 1

    Well, the Win version looks pretty nice (even on a P90 running win98)

    Everything but the forward and back buttons seem to work with no problems and the rendering IS fast. The only strange thing I see is graphics sometimes "jumping" a little when I hit a link.

    I can't wait to get home and mess with the linux release :)

    FinkPloyd

  5. Re:I must be missing something... by bergie · · Score: 2

    What bothers me is the several other articles which claim it's blindingly fast - on this machine it's quite the opposite.

    Actually I think that most of the comments about speed are about the speed of HTML & CSS rendering (which is fast), not the speed of browser behaviour, which still is quite slow because of the lack of optimization.

    And is there truly no way of setting up a proxy host? I've looked, and I can't find one.

    I hear that this has been asked frequently on Mozilla newsgroups. So you'll propably find some answers by searching for it in Deja.com.

    /Bergie

    --

    --
    Midgard Project - Open Source CMS
  6. Re:I must be missing something... by fuerstma · · Score: 1

    And is there truly no way of setting up a proxy host? I've looked, and I can't find one.


    I am sure there is a way. For our Solaris boxen at work we have a shell script do things let set the proxy from the command line and set the size of the window, etc... You might have to do some digging to find the exact syntax that you have to pass Mo-zilla though.

    --
    www.jackasscritics.com
  7. Re:Why is the link for Win32? by Telsa · · Score: 1

    Slashdot used to post browser stats of recent visits to the site. I can't find them any more (where'd they go, or has my playing with my preferences accidentally lost them from my view?), but as I recall, there were a _lot_ of people using Windows.

  8. Re:I must be missing something... by Des+Herriott · · Score: 1

    Oh, I have done some digging, and come up with several different ways of setting proxies, all of which involve editing prefs50.js, and none of which work.

    Not wanting to moan, but something as fundamental as this should at least be mentioned in the release notes, even if just to say "this doesn't work".

  9. *sigh* ... no source release of m7 yet. by Rick_T · · Score: 1

    Like the subject says. Pity, I want to try it out on my Alpha. This particular post comes from Mozilla, but it's an oooold Mozilla (with Motif interface, if that tells you anything :) )

    --
    -- Rick
    1. Re:*sigh* ... no source release of m7 yet. by Neph · · Score: 1
      Could someone explain to me *why* it takes longer to get the source up there than the binaries? Isn't the former pretty much a prerequisite for building the latter?

      Kidding aside, I'd really like to know. The only thing I can think of is that they want to add some packaging niceties, like maybe changes to the configure script.

      Anyone?

      Steve 'Nephtes' Freeland | Okay, so maybe I'm a tiny itty

    2. Re:*sigh* ... no source release of m7 yet. by AMK · · Score: 1

      Why not just grab it out of the CVS repository? I follow the CVS tree and compile a new version every few days; since around M5, the tree is usually always compileable without difficulty.

    3. Re:*sigh* ... no source release of m7 yet. by Neph · · Score: 1
      Why not just grab it out of the CVS repository?

      It was my understanding that the SeaMonkey releases were branches off the main source tree, tweaked for stability and generally more release-frienly. Is this no longer true? . SNF .

      Steve 'Nephtes' Freeland | Okay, so maybe I'm a tiny itty

    4. Re:*sigh* ... no source release of m7 yet. by dveditz · · Score: 1

      > >Why not just grab it out of the CVS repository?
      >
      > It was my understanding that the SeaMonkey releases were branches off the main source
      > tree, tweaked for stability and generally more release-frienly. Is this no longer true? . SNF .

      It is sometimes true that we create a branch to get a few more fixes into the milestone if it looks like we'd have to hold the tree closed "too long" waiting for them. But even then it would be trivial to pull from the branch.

  10. Re:I must be missing something... by The+Cunctator · · Score: 1

    Check the bug database. If it's not in there, then add it. Bugzilla is too cool.

    --

    --
    Make mine methylphenidate.

  11. Re:Twice as big? by havoc- · · Score: 1

    The Linux binary is about twice as big because of problems with the amount of shared libraries used. In each of these shared libraries, there is a huge table of all exported symbols. Windows .DLL files are not truly Position Independent Code, and therefore are much smaller.
    The advantage of the Linux way is that a shared library only gets loaded into memory once, whereas Windows .DLL files get loaded for each time it is needed. In the case of mozilla, this may be the optimal solution, as a shared lib will only get loaded once, anyway.
    The mozilla team is researching ways to reduce this huge code size, as is my understanding.

    Someone correct me if I'm wrong. I picked this up in the mozilla newsgroups and bugzilla. (Yes, this is registered as a bug. As is the MAC binary size).

  12. Re:What, no Solaris? by styopa · · Score: 1

    I think the idea of offering wider platform support would probably be well advised, especially for Sparc stations. I was kind of hoping to see how good it does with XML but I wasn't able to get it to work on my Ultra here at work.
    I do understand that it is Pre-ALPHA ware but with there being a Sun-Netscape aliance one would think that with this being the sucessor of Netscape 4.x there might be something for Solaris on SparcStations.
    Oh well, can't get everything you want in life now can ya. Well, not yet.

    --
    Disclamer - Opinion of Person
  13. Re:Has anyone checked out HotJava? KFM? by styopa · · Score: 1

    There is a good reason why HotJava 3 hasn't been updated in a long time, and it ISN'T because Sun is working on a new release. Trust me friend, that road is a dead end.

    --
    Disclamer - Opinion of Person
  14. M7 by PhoneMonkey · · Score: 1

    I downloaded it this morning.

    The render speed... my heart...

    I'm drooling for 5.0

    --
    It's a thankless job, but I've got a lot of Karma to burn off
  15. Why is the link for Win32? by Brian+Knotts · · Score: 1

    I would think you would just link to the ftp site, or at least the Linux version.

    --

    1. Re:Why is the link for Win32? by Brian+Knotts · · Score: 1
      That seems incredible. The thing that confuses me is why very many Windows users would even be interested in Slashdot. Sure, a certain amount can be explained by people who aren't allowed to use Linux at work, but 94%? Kinda depressing. I use vnc to administer the couple of Windows boxes we still have at work. I just can't imagine having to actually use Windows on my desktop machine. Ewww.

      I'd sure like to see some updated Slashdot platform stats.

      --

    2. Re:Why is the link for Win32? by Trepidity · · Score: 1

      The last time I saw the stats, it was around 65% Windows users, and around 25% Linux users (with BSD/Mac/Solaris/other making up the rest).

      My personal website's hits are less than 0.1% Linux users (30 out of about 33,000 hits), so I suppose 25% is quite good.

    3. Re:Why is the link for Win32? by PhoneMonkey · · Score: 1

      From my counter of my webpage, 94% of the people who visit it from Slashdot are using Windows.

      4% are using Mac, and 2% Linux.

      Hmmm....

      --
      It's a thankless job, but I've got a lot of Karma to burn off
    4. Re:Why is the link for Win32? by jonMC · · Score: 1

      Sorry. I use a Win box at home and was so delirious when I saw the links that I just marked up the one I was using myself without a thought. Next time, next time.

      --
      -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
      wookin' pa nub in all the wrong pwaces ...
    5. Re:Why is the link for Win32? by Brian+Knotts · · Score: 1

      Fair enough. I grabbed the Linux build, and it does indeed rock! Even compared to M6.

      --

  16. The FTP site URL is incorrect by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    This is the correct URL:

    ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/releases/m7/

  17. Re:Mac question by scrytch · · Score: 2

    > One thing that makes me irritated with both M$IE and Navigator is that they were designed for preemptive multitasking

    My heart really bleeds and bleeds. When MacOS joins the 70's then all will be happy again.

    --
    I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
  18. Stability? by J.+Pierpont · · Score: 1

    How is it for stability?

    The previous Mozillas just didn't 'feel' solid. Has that changed any?

    1. Re:Stability? by mhanlon · · Score: 2

      I've had a few problems crashing while playing with the chrome, and once in the Debug frames page, but it's come a very, very long way from M3, at any rate. But overall this is the first apprunner I've run and thought of replacing NS4.6 with for my daily browsing (won't, of course, because right-click isn't enabled, tab-bing through links doesn't work just yet, and window.open isn't implemented yet).

      So, so exciting.

      --
      _m
    2. Re:Stability? by bergie · · Score: 1

      The previous Mozillas just didn't 'feel' solid. Has that changed any?

      Not much. I still managed to crash it several times during my less-than-hour test drive. Admittedly, the stuff I did with it wasn't quite normal browsing, but still...

      Anyway, it can be seen that Mozilla is making good progress, and I am sure we'll have quite an usable browser before autumn (or that's what I hope).

      Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Mozilla.org, but I try to watch the development as closely as I can as when working with Midgard a good browser is quite everything.

      /Bergie

      --

      --

      --
      Midgard Project - Open Source CMS
    3. Re:Stability? by hs2534 · · Score: 1

      I ran it for a total of 13 seconds before it crashed...I typed in 'www.slashdot.org', hit enter, and that was it.
      I promptly deleted the whole thing.

    4. Re:Stability? by Chelloveck · · Score: 1

      It seems better, but I wouldn't call it "solid" yet. When they get around to adding proxy support I might actually be able to give it a serious test drive.

      --
      Chelloveck
      I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
    5. Re:Stability? by tenchiken · · Score: 1

      Well. I am posting this from Mozilla. (It also poped up a window
      and saved my password while I was doing it). It's still Alpha
      software, but It is far closer then before. I think they just might
      make that release date.

    6. Re:Stability? by gsaraber · · Score: 1

      really ?
      that's the same thing i tried .. guess what.. i'm typing this reply from M7 :-)
      i like it .. the edit->preferences doesn't work right for me .. it's all messed up .. oh well .. too bad i don't have the time to help

    7. Re:Stability? by sab39 · · Score: 1

      I'm almost certain that proxy support IS in there if you manually edit the prefs. This is a FAQ I see over and over again on the newsgroups, so if you try searching dejanews for it, you'll probably find what pref you have to set.

      HTH,
      Stuart.

  19. Re:Anyone get this working with Slackware? by tippergore · · Score: 1

    This is what I get when I try to run it in Slack 4.0... I'm running a beta copy of slackware however, from when I had ethernet back at school.

    ohhh ethernet, how I long for thee.



    MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME=/arnold/home/jay/moz/package LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/arnold/home/jay/moz/package:/home /jay/rvplayer5.0
    MOZ_PROGRAM=./apprunner
    moz_debug=0
    moz_debugger=
    ./apprunner: error in loading shared libraries
    /arnold/home/jay/moz/package/libraptorhtmlpars.s o: undefined symbol: __vt_8iostream.3ios



    .. I also read that the binaries don't work on RH6, which might be the same reason they don't work on Slackware right now.

  20. Re:M7 by Red+Storm · · Score: 1

    Dammit! I'm out of paper towels to clean up the drool! Must download!

    I was reading somewhere that NSCP 5 was not going to be derived from Mozilla. Is this true, or was I smoking something really good and need to remember where I stashed it?

    --
    ---- Fight to protect your right to keep and arm bears! ummmm... ya I think that's right....
  21. what the fuck is with the micros~1 drones? by cthonious · · Score: 1

    we are being invaded.

    --

    support gun control: take guns from cops
    1. Re:what the fuck is with the micros~1 drones? by Trepidity · · Score: 1

      Either that or intelligent people.

      I personally use Netscape v4.51 as a matter of principle, but I have to concede that IE5 is significantly superior.

  22. Hmmm... free software vs. the qt toolkit again? by nitehorse · · Score: 1

    IIRC, there was a LARGE amount of anti-KDE feeling in general mostly because KDE was dependent on the QT toolkit. Opera, which looks to kick MAJOR ass, and is definitely the browser I'm going to be running (even if it only has HALF of the features of the Windows version) is also based on the QT toolkit. What is Mozilla based on? Forgive my ignorance, I can't recall if they're still using the Motif/Lesstif libraries or if they're now using the GTK.... This should be interesting. Opera, most likely (unless there is a HUGE amount of *polite* email requesting otherwise) will not include the source code for their browser.

    Personally, I have a bit of a problem w/ that, but Mozilla (while nice) has been disappointing (the betas, at least.) Yeah, I know they're only betas- but when can we get a NON-BLOATED browser that works with source and fully free licenses? (Just because it's not the GPL doesn't mean it ain't free, BTW) I will definitely try out the final version of Mozilla, don't get me wrong- and the Konqueror kicks MAJOR ass (what, don't you know what it is? time to get into some CVS, methinks...) but so far Konqy is still lacking in some HTML/Java support (it doesn't render out dear /. properly yet) but when do we get that killer browser? IE is nice, it's a pretty little toy, but I don't like it enough that I'd want to run it on my machine. Even if M$ DID release it for Linux.



  23. Re:I must be missing something... by nufan · · Score: 1

    The slowness is a known problem. Basically the browser is rendering itself too often and rendering parts that haven't been exposed or don't need to be newly rendered. I think it has something to do with the layer built on top of gtk. In Windows the browser feels much faster.

  24. Re:M7 by smileyy · · Score: 1

    Start lookin' for that stash. AOL wouldn't be funding Mozilla if it didn't expect to get a browser out of it someday.

    --
    pooptruck
  25. Re:mac vers by Balfazar · · Score: 1

    I had this problem at first too. This seems to be the 'stuffit' problem. Files compressed with Stuffit 5.x seem to appear corrupted to Stuffit 4.x or below. Grab a stuffit update from . After updating stuffit the file decompressed fine and M7 seems much nicer than M5. -- Posting from M7

  26. Re:Twice as big? by soren.harward · · Score: 1

    I remember seeing this a while ago, but can't find it now. It has to deal with the amount of debugging symbols and stuff in the Linux binaries, plus there are some things in the Linux version that work and are compiled in, but that don't work and thus are not compiled in with the Windows version.

  27. Re:Some Nerds use Win32 by trog · · Score: 1

    Some nerds (like myself) are forced to support NT boxen at work. All well. I'm posting this with M7, and I like it :)

    Gonna abuse the browser and see if I can contribute something back to Mozilla.

    When the final is released, it will become my companies standard. Muhahaha!

  28. Try the RELEASE NOTES by X-ViRGE · · Score: 1

    It's a known bug that Back and Forward don't work for URLs entered by hand in Linux.

    (That means they'll fix it)

  29. Re:M7 through a proxy? by Chris+Siegler · · Score: 1

    Proxy looks to still be broken. Take a look at Bug 8859 at bugzilla.

    When it get fixed, just try adding user_pref("network.proxy.http", "localhost:8000"); to the file prefs50.js

  30. Anyone get this working with Slackware? by nevets · · Score: 1

    Ok, I don't use RH.

    Did anyone get this working with Slack.
    I just want to know if you did. I'll play a little but it seems I'm missing some shared object files.

    --
    Steven Rostedt
    -- Nevermind
  31. Re:It still has trouble with SIMPLE navigation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure what you mean by 'anything with CSS on it seems to completely throw the browser into a funk' -- can you be more specific?

    However, yes, image loading (especially loading the same, resized, tiny gif multiple times) is hit and miss. Most of this will be addressed in the next few weeks as a rewritten networking module (Necko) is landed. (I'm sure lots of bugs will need to be shaken out, but I expect a lot of things will automagically start working (i.e., the fixes are on that branch, not the M7 branch).

  32. Evil Gates by Red+Knight · · Score: 1

    Check out Samples-> demo#14

    also on a side note, when I hit the preview button, here it seem to send it into an infinate loop :(

  33. Re:I must be missing something... by Chelloveck · · Score: 1
    It's there, Bugzilla #8559. Proxy support is crippled, but not entirely broken. I'm typing this from M7 via a proxy server. From the report:

    ------- Additional Comments From peter.vanderbeken@pandora.be 06/20/99 14:29 -------
    Apparently the necessary callback in netlib (NET_PrefChangedFunc) is not called
    when the network preference change while loading the prefs50.js file. You can
    force mozilla to use the proxy info by changing the proxy type in the preference
    dialog, OKing, then changing it back to the right type (after which
    NET_PrefChangedFunc is called). The next time you load mozilla, it will fail
    again, though.
    --
    Chelloveck
    I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
  34. Re: IE5 is still faster by Pseudonym · · Score: 1

    But bear in mind that R7 is a pre-alpa.

    ...and that IE5 doesn't implement CSS1.

    --
    sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
  35. Re:Twice as big? by Pseudonym · · Score: 1

    What are they thinking? Seems like everybody on Linux is anxious to replicate the DLL hell of Windoze.

    The reason is one of good, modern component-based software design. It's the same reason that I have dynamically loadable kernel modules on my Linux system: I shouldn't have to pay for the memory penalty of a Javascript interpreter if I have Javascript turned off, and I shouldn't have to pay the resource cost of loading Netscape's own DNS lookup software if my local machine is a DNS server.

    Oh, an aside: DLL hell is caused not by using dynamically loadable components but by other Win32 brain damage such as no PIC and no support for versioning of DLLs (something which, I might add, the Unix community have solved extremely simply and elegantly).

    --
    sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
  36. Re:Because... by Trepidity · · Score: 1

    Not everybody on WinXX is using it at work. For example, I'm reading from my Win95 box at home right now.

  37. More releases? by gavinhall · · Score: 1

    Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:

    Is it just me or has the Mozilla project been moving more quickly since jwz left?
    ---
    Put Hemos through English 101!

    1. Re:More releases? by FigWig · · Score: 1

      Although your post is probably facetious, I'll reply to it anyway since I am a sucker.

      Software projects usually start by spending lots of time writing the basic libraries and foundation code that will be used during the rest of the project. The foundation code usually isn't obvious to the end user - none of it is directly exposed to the user. But after all the foundation is laid the rest of the code development seems to go rather quickly. Just add a menu item, call some of your foundation code, and you've added a lot of functionality to your program.

      It's sort of like the math "joke" - What's the difference between lemmas and proofs? Proofs are easy. Or something like that...

      --
      Scuttlemonkey is a troll
  38. One. by Ptolemarch · · Score: 1

    You got it right. "Kaboom" has only one "a".

    :-)

  39. Re:Best Thing. by GZ · · Score: 1

    Advertisements - I think it was. If that doesn't speed things up around here nothing will.

  40. Re:Give it up by rpete · · Score: 1

    I was not aware that IE had won. Guess I'll have to move to it. Can you post the link for the Linux binaries? glibc-2.1 would be best. Thanks.

  41. question by HaKn5La5H · · Score: 1

    Feel free to slap me around if the answer to this in in some documentation, but why, exactly, does the Win32 Mozilla pass everything to a DOS box?

    1. Re:question by Lukey+Boy · · Score: 1

      K I'll slap ya around. It's not a DOS box, it's a Win32 console application. It just looks the same, and provides a convient window for debugging information to be sent.

      LukeyBoy

    2. Re:question by MindStalker · · Score: 2

      Well accually it sorta is. Lets say I run command.com and then procede to change to the mozilla bin directory and type apprunner
      that command.com (dos box) will start displaying the apprunner messages. seems like sorta a dos protected mode application to me. Or something of the sort. Nothing wrong with that, just kinda odd.

  42. Re:Slashdot != *Nix by Trepidity · · Score: 1

    It tries to be platform-neutral, but it's not. Trivial little Linux stories get posted (such as "The Wall Street Journal had a 2-paragraph article on Linux, if you care" or "Civ:CTP is being ported"), but important win32 stuff (such as "Civ:CTP came out in the first place") is ignored.

  43. Re:Twice as big? by Laural · · Score: 1

    I do not know much about Linux, but on the Win32 platform, being statically linked to many DLL can kill your application's boot performance. The system has to load every DLL to which an application is statically linked when the application boots. On the other hand, a DLL to which the application is not statically linked (for example, a DLL that is loaded on your application's behalf by OLE, or a DLL that is delay loaded with the linker setting they added in Visual C 6) is only loaded on demand. When tuning the boot performance of the app. I develop prior to the release of its latest version, I was able to cut SECONDS off of the boot time by being cleverer about delay loading DLLs, and being statically linked to less stuff. For example, if you use WININET but don't connect to the internet until the user says "please connect", being statically linked to WININET is wasteful and will add many millions of cycles to boot time on a memory constrained system as the WININET DLL is faulted in from the slow disk.

    At boot time, every disk page that you can avoid reading is precious. Another technique we use in with our application is delay initialization of static structures. For example, an HTML parser needs a table of HTML tags and their properties (e.g. is br a spanning tag for which I should look for a /br or not). This data structure is static for the duration of the process. However, for the application to boot this tag table may not be necessary; it's only needed the first time a document is parsed. So the solution is to maintain a static pointer to the table that is initially NULL, then the table gets initialized the first time it is accessed. Since the table doesn't have to be faulted in from disk during boot, several million CPU cycles will be cut from boot time, compared to a cost of only 2-3 cycles to check if the pointer is NULL each time before using the table.

    Boot time is important if you want a user to make regular user of your app. Many a time I will make small edits to a piece of source code in notepad just because it boots faster than visual studio, which is a clearly superior editor in most other respects.

    --
    http://www.laural.com/
  44. Re:I may not like Microsoft, but IE is *very* usab by tommy · · Score: 1

    Ordinary Joe, huh? That is the kind of intellectually stimulating reply I would expect from an ordinary AC such as yourself. I am a web developer. I write cross-browser pages. I know from experience(and a lot of it) that IE is generally much easier to write for.

    That is on top of all the stuff I said before about end-user usability. As far as standards, I like the efforts being made with Mozilla, but as it stands now IE is better overall.

    --

    I have a woman and money. Life is good.

  45. Printing under Netscape and M7 by pawlie · · Score: 1

    Quick question everyone:

    When printing a page WHY does it have to be downloaded again? Surely, if it's sitting there in front of me it doesn't have to be downloaded once more?

    No attempt is made to even use a cached version...

    Most bizarre.

    Paul

  46. Re:Twice as big? by Helish · · Score: 1

    The linux tarball is much bigger becasue all of the binaries and libries contain debuging information. If you want to make them smaller run strip on all the binaries and on all of the *.so (shared libs). I don't recomand running strip on *.a as it is going to break them.

  47. Re: IE5 is still faster by drunken+monkey · · Score: 1

    It does, but not completely

    narbey

    --
    -- "The evil stops here" -Petr
  48. Re: IE5 is still faster by drunken+monkey · · Score: 1

    yes but it's not Mozilla. A very important distinction for me.

    narbey

    --
    -- "The evil stops here" -Petr
  49. Resurrecting amigas by dark409 · · Score: 1

    Yeah, Linux has less than 25% of the desktop market share
    now too.

    As for resurrecting amigas:

    Check out http://www.antigravity.com

  50. Re:Give it up by GZ · · Score: 1

    Oh, really? Suppose a major ISP switched to Netscape with it's 15 million users. What would that do to your supposed 75% market share?

    And meanwhile, M$ falls even further behind in the race for developing Linux Apps.

  51. Re:Give it up by Rick_T · · Score: 1

    | But the fact is that Netscape in all of the
    | stats has under 25% of the
    | market share out there now.

    Does this really matter? Mozilla is, for all intents and purposes, a *new* product. How much market share do most brand new products have compared to an established product?

    | For all intents and purposes,
    | Netscape/Mozilla is dead.

    ... and by your logic, so is every product that doesn't have most/all of the market share. Good for competition and the improvement of software, that is.

    --
    -- Rick
  52. Re:Give it up by jilles · · Score: 2

    I'm one of those users who has switched to IE. I'm planning to give ns 5 a try though and I think a lot of other recently switched users are planning the same thing.
    I think there's a good explanation for ie's bigger marketshare: at this moment it's the better browser. People may not like that because they don't like ms marketing FUD.
    Everybody seems to be really enthousiastic about standards support. Most people don't seem to realize that those masses of ns/ie 3.x, 4.x users are not going to go away. In other words running a standards compliant site means excluding all but mozzilla users (unless you don't use the advanced stuff).

    I haven't downloaded M7 yet (and I don't think I will). I took a look at M5 though and I think it was very ugly to look at (it worked pretty well though). People have been talking about the browser being so configurable and all but I think it should look cool by default (I'm too lazy to start editing all sorts of files just to change the look and feel). I hope people at netscape will pay attention to this (for example by getting some good graphics people to work on this issue). Right now just about everything is plain ugly: the icons suck, the proportions of buttons and everything suck. Messenger in particular is very ugly. Half of the success of IE is the result of the fact that ms has a better looking browser. Ns 3 was better then ie 3 but ie 3 just looked cooler. Ns 4 was plain ugly and ie 4 looked even more cooler. I think look and feel is a very important aspect of a program and ns should definately improve on this.

    Enough with the negative stuff. I think ns 5 will be a very cool program and more importantly, I think there are a lot of people who are thinking the same. Peoples expectations about this browser are very high (standards compliant, small, fast, stable & loaded with cool features). I think people at netscape should be very careful with releasing the browser because the quality of the first release can make it or break it. I expect masses of people to download this thing as soon as its released. It will get lots of attention in the media. If marketed in the right way and if it really is a cool program, ns 5 will probably recover most of its marketshare in the first weeks and will blow away ie in the months after that.
    However, I expect microsoft to launch a counter attack at about the same time. They have pretty smart marketing people and they must realize that ns 5 will be a threat to them. So I expect a vastly improved ie 6 round about the same time.

    --

    Jilles
  53. Re:Give it up by Nite_Hawk · · Score: 1

    Nope, your post isn't flamebait, it's a troll. Your already dismissing mozilla before a stable release even comes out, and only because netscape supposedly only has 25% or less of the market. I might add, that 25% of the market is far from dead, even if those numbers happen to be true. (I somewhat doubt it.)
    now, if you want to go and use IE on windows, go for it. As long as microsoft obeys standards (ha) I really don't care how many people use it. It's their problem, not mine. I'd keep using mozilla, and the same goes for most people running linux. (ok, so I do run lynx sometimes ). Until something better comes along for both linux and unix though, netscape/mozilla can only be as dead as linux is, and well, if you want to make the claim that linux is dead, I think there are plenty of peole here that would be willing to argue that point. :)

  54. ?_?_?_?_? by HaKn5La5H · · Score: 1

    Why does it matter what other people are using? Use what you think is best.

  55. Re:IE4 and 5 blow Netscape away by Eccles · · Score: 1

    >Netscape is so utterly pathetically behind, it's crazy. How did they fall so far behind with such a head start?

    Umm, because Microsoft spent $100 million developing a product they are just giving away? Most open source products don't have that sort of competition. And the open source movement is gaining in momentum, it will be interesting to see what effect it ends up having on proprietary software.

    --
    Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
  56. Re:Duh! by tommy · · Score: 1

    So who came up with BLINK and LAYER?

    --

    I have a woman and money. Life is good.

  57. Re:Duh! by tommy · · Score: 1

    Exactly. Getting Netscape to properly layout tables can sometimes be impossible. Trying to do complex tables with percentage width td's, for example.

    The whole pixel thing is stupid, but you are right...it uses pixel groups.

    --

    I have a woman and money. Life is good.

  58. IE 5.0 vs. M7.... by HamNRye · · Score: 1

    The little war we have going over the IE vs. Navigator is an idiotic waste of disk space. First of all, I use Linux, I use Windows. The time I spend in windows won't make me less of a geek, just like the time I spend in Linux doesn't make me more of a geek. It's what you do in either of those operating systems that makes or breaks a geek. I'd rather see a guy with windows editing the registry than see some of our linux users who get uptight about editing their .xinitrc.

    Secondly, IE 5.0 beats the tar out of Nutscrape 4.5 on the win32 platform. The full screen mode is cool, it loads faster, (yes, because it's already partially loaded as your file manager) it renders faster, it has a cleaner interface, and a whole slew of other things.

    On Linux, we have no choice. KFM is an ok browser, but it still needs support for alot of things.

    On the win32 platform it comes down to one thing, IE wanted to win more than Nutscrape. Netscape got old and fat and lazy, and they got beaten.

    I don't know how many of you were there when the tarballs were released, but I seem to recall that the first big decision the OSS geeks made with Mozilla was to dump 80% of the existing source code and start from scratch. The rendering engine was a nightmare.

    So, Netscape/Mozilla is dead. This is son of Mozilla!

    Third, IMHO, the M releases are a mistake. They should not be distributing binaries, but instead they should be distributing source. The logic being that if you are unable to compile the program, you can't run the program. This makes them less likely to get assinine comments from pseudo-geeks, or hacker wanna-be's. We all know that there are some /.ers that can barely handle shell scripting, and they tend to post just to go for the geek chic... These are the same folks that balk at recompiling the kernel (with a nice TK script no less!) and think that VI is the number of the horse that won the Preakness.

    This is a prerelease of opensource software. We are very understanding of other "pre-releases" so lets do the same for this one. How long have we been humoring Enlightenment?? (Are we still on DR 0.14?) We seem to think that because this is a "Company" we are allowed to expect more. It's just not true.

    Oh, and as to the IE market share, 3 years ago, IE had 2% of the market share... So I guess it died 3 years ago...

    The moral: Use what you find useful, and then ridicule the beejeezus out of anybody that uses something you find useless.

    That's my $0.02, and I'll probably get change.

    ~HAMNRYE

  59. Re:Comments by BradyB · · Score: 1

    Sure the download is fast and the page rendering is fast. But I think they should remove the my netscape button if it won't load the page. It hasn't loaded it from the begining. Heck even that old crappy browser HotJava will load it. Mozilla barfs every time on Win32 that is. Linux doesn't work with my video card here at home.

    --

    Good is never enough, when you dream of being great!
  60. Has anyone checked out HotJava? KFM? by benmhall · · Score: 1

    Hi, I was looking on the sun site, and found a few interesting tidbits.

    First off, HotJava 3, apparently it's old, so I guess I'm way behind the boat here, but I downloaded it. It's only ~2MB (Plus the JDK) and seems very fast. It also renders pages rather oddly, a lot like Mozilla really.

    I'm not sure if the code is available, but it sounded as though Sun was going to release the code if they haven't already.

    Also, this article on Netscape/AOL & Sun Java integration is interesting:

    http://java.sun.com/pr/1999/06/pr990616-02.html

    Lastly, as a true alternative, have any of you tried KDE's KFM browser? I know that KDE is evil stuff with most Slashdotters, but apparently their licence is "free-er" than Netscape's.

    It's a very fast browser, that does almost everything! (except javascript and java, to be integrated into KDE 2)

    BTW, please don't flame me about mentioning KDE, I use WindowMaker and GMC, and KFM. They're all great!

  61. Re:M7 by NullGrey · · Score: 1

    I downloaded it this morning.
    The render speed... my heart...
    I'm drooling for 5.0


    Hey, that was almost a Haiku!!
    -NG


    +--
    Given infinite time, 100 monkeys could type out the complete works of Shakespeare.

    --
    +-- (Score:-1, Moderator on Power Trip)
  62. Re:Give it up by Jake_3-17 · · Score: 1

    I agree that the GUI must be good looking to get users to switch, however, a browser doesn't live by GUI alone. Even more important are the features and functionality. That's the part of the project being worked on the most right now. The current default UI is made to be functional and nothing else. The idea of having a very good default UI has already been talked about at MozillaZine.org. (It's in the Old News section now and is the largest thread they've ever seen over there, I do NOT recomend taking the time to read through it as it is very redundant [It's more of an argument than an informative discution, but a few good points came out of it]).

  63. Bug Request by MindStalker · · Score: 2

    I'm working on trying to recreate a bug in mozilla, seemingly only my homecomputer does this. It has been reported to bugzilla but they can't recreate it. I'm asking anybody who also has this problem to contact me with this build and basic system information. (build#/processor/motherboard/memory/internet connection speed/windows version/etc.)
    On loading of a url frequently images (and sometimes the pages themselves) are not loading and giving the error. seems to be a timeout error
    nsDocumentBindInfo::OnStopBinding: Load of URL 'http://someurl' failed

  64. Re:RH 6 - doesn't work by polarbear · · Score: 1

    I've never seen their shell script work... from the bin directory do this:

    # export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`
    # ./apprunner

    It works for me :)

    --
    --- polarbear
  65. Re: you are a windows-only person then by tommy · · Score: 1

    Someone mentioned the Mac version, but there are Solaris and HP-UX builds as well and I'm sure *someone* uses them.

    --

    I have a woman and money. Life is good.

  66. I may not like Microsoft, but IE is *very* usable. by tommy · · Score: 1

    Um...I have Win95 and Linux on my machine and I use Linux almost all of the time, but when I'm in Windows I use IE(5).

    If you don't think its usable, then I doubt you've seen as much as a screenshot of it. It has many more features, is renders incredibly fast(faster than Gecko/Raptor/ngLayout/newLayout/whateverElseTheyWi llCallIt). Now, I realize that Mozilla is in development and is not optimized, but even IE 4 was better.

    Someone already mentioned IE's ability to save state and remember previous entries in form fields. It also has a pretty consistent interface for browsing files, history, bookmarks, etc.

    Windows has terrible stability problems, but I have had far fewer problems with IE itself than I have with Netscape 4.x. IE is now a better browser than any version of Netscape or Mozilla. I only hope Mozilla will compare when it is done. Will it ever be done? I downloaded the code March 31, 1998 and that browser was more complete(albeit basically 4.0) than what it is now(a year and three months is a LONG time).

    --

    I have a woman and money. Life is good.

  67. Re:Because... by xtinct · · Score: 1

    it's probably because we're all forced to use winX at work...

    however, that's changing thank god... hell, i had a conversation with my boss this morning about putting up a linux/apache box up in the future months, and i got to put a linux partition on my work box! all in a place where MS used to be the only solution (due to ignorance)...

    things are looking good... ;)

  68. It still has trouble with SIMPLE navigation by arthurs_sidekick · · Score: 1

    I tried looking at (what I took to be) largely HTML/CSS 1.0 pages to see what they look like with a 'fully compliant' browser, and it had trouble flipping back and forth between pages with the 'forward' and 'back' buttons; you'd think that's a pretty serious breach in functionality (even re-typing in the URL of one of the pages didn't work).

    But OH that page rendering speed is something to marvel at. I hope they get it working soon!

    --
    "Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
    1. Re:It still has trouble with SIMPLE navigation by Hrunting · · Score: 2

      It's not just navigation. It has problems loading images as well. Anything with CSS on it seems to completely throw the browser into a funk. Even simple images don't load all the way. I have yet to see a transparent pixel image load up correctly on any of the test pages that I run. I'm waiting to post a bug report, though, until they fix all the CSS issues.

      So far, it's 'looking' very nice. However, even though the rendering speed is /very/ fast, the overall functionality still falls well short of what I need in a web browser.

      *sigh*

  69. Twice as big? by Zack · · Score: 1

    Why is the Linux-i686 tar.gz nearly twice as big as the Windows .zip? Is there a difference? (besides that one is for Linux and one for windows :P)

    1. Re:Twice as big? by spitzak · · Score: 1
      If there are libraries that are only used by Mozilla they should be STATICALLY LINKED!

      What are they thinking? Seems like everybody on Linux is anxious to replicate the DLL hell of Windoze.

      Static linking is not evil and can actually be far more efficient. Unless you have absolute proof that a second appliation will use the functionality (not just "this is so neat of a function that somebody might want to reuse it"), please don't make a shared library!

  70. I must be missing something... by Des+Herriott · · Score: 1

    ...because it feels about an order of magnitude slower than Communicator 4.6 on this Linux box.

    Coupled with the fact the Proxy preferences dialog doesn't work (try setting a proxy manually), and the (IMHO) extreme ugliness of the whole browser, and I'm somewhat less than excited.

    1. Re:I must be missing something... by bergie · · Score: 2

      ...because it feels about an order of magnitude slower than Communicator 4.6 on this Linux box.

      Ah, but you must remember that this is still an alpha (or pre-alpha, even?) release. There is still a lot of debugging stuff in the code.

      I guess that when those are removed and there is some optimization done, it will be much faster.

      Also, at this point (I think) it doesn't do caching correctly, which of course lowers performance.

      Wait a few Milestones, I'd say, and then see whether the speed has improved!

      And as for the outlook of the browser, that is very much configurable by the new XUL standard. Check out MozillaZine's ChromeZone for more information.

      /Bergie

      --

      --
      Midgard Project - Open Source CMS
    2. Re:I must be missing something... by Des+Herriott · · Score: 1

      I appreciate it's alpha, so I'm not desperately concerned about speed in that respect.

      What bothers me is the several other articles which claim it's blindingly fast - on this machine it's quite the opposite. It's a standard Red Hat 6.0 machine, P2-266, 128MB RAM. Communicator 4.6 is pretty zippy.

      So, am I missing something, or is everyone else running on P3-550's?

      And is there truly no way of setting up a proxy host? I've looked, and I can't find one.

  71. Re:Since I'm at work.. by MindStalker · · Score: 2

    How exactly do the scroll bars not work. It was my understanding that they finally fixed the scroll bars for M7.?? If the scroll bars don't work in specific cases and you can recreate it on another win box I would suggest reporting it to bugzilla

  72. Re:Give it up by TheHornedOne · · Score: 1

    Totally agree.. do we actually *want* Netscape to "win"? Hell no. Look where they were headed with that bloated Communicator suite..

    As far as only having 25% installed base.. bullhockey. Maybe in business since IE is installed by default, but among home users I see maybe 1 in 10 Windroids using Explorer. I was going to use it on my Mac until I tried using it to buy something and it crashed halfway through a secure transaction, most conveniently after my credit card # had been entered.. now that's a nail biter. Anyway..

    Winusers often adamantly prefer Netscape, and with good reason.. it's one small way that they're NOT getting screwed every minute they are in front of their monitor. At least IMHO...

    There's no way 75% of the internet community is just running out and denovo installing Explorer. No frikkin' way...

  73. Slashdot sucks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    plain truth will probably be edited out.

    "Im goin' hoeuuume"
    AC

  74. Re:Give it up by xtinct · · Score: 1

    a major ISP???

    you mean like America OnLine???

    there's NOOOO way that would happen...

    ;)

  75. Re:it *better* not have by jonathansamuel · · Score: 1

    I thought the idea of Mozilla was that if you didn't like a feature you could disable the code for that feature and then recompile.

    If all people are doing is running the precompiled binaries and are not messing with the code then why is Mozilla any better than any other beta product?

    --

    Marjo Wycam, Master of the Programming Arts
  76. Seems to be ok by macdaddy · · Score: 1

    I just D/Led it here and it seems to be ok. More than likely, the answer given by the other responder is right on target. D/L a newer version of Stuffit (fewer crashes too!).

    Justin

  77. Re:RH 6 - doesn't work by xtinct · · Score: 1

    this is purely a guess, but the release notes said that the version with the TalkBack or whatever feature (the one that automatically submits bug reports) does *not* work with RH6.

    RH5.2 is supposed to be okay... but that's just what i read...

  78. Re: you are a windows-only person then by Sancho · · Score: 1

    IE has 0% market share with non-Windows users.


    Not true, iirc there's a Mac version of IE.

  79. Re:Give it up by Rick_T · · Score: 1

    | Try www.statmarket.com. Those numbers are hard
    | to argue with.

    You're missing the point, Mooboy. Mozilla'a not Navigator - it's a new product. New rendering engine, new interface, etc. So who cares how much market share IE has vs Netscape? It's largely irrelevant to Mozilla.

    If AOL decides to integrate Mozilla when it's stable enough to be release quality, that's instant Mozilla market share. Something to think about if you're *that* paranoid about making sure you run whar everyone else runs. :)

    --
    -- Rick
  80. Posting from Moz by HariSeldon · · Score: 1

    Getting much, much better. I very much like the look and feel, and it seems to play well with our firewall pretty nicely. Still some problems with resizing, but I'm pretty confident that this will come.

    Bravo.

  81. Re:Why Slashdot is going downhill... by TerryMathews · · Score: 1

    ... and retire Hemos.
    Dude, that is not cool. So he got the wrong damn link. Boohoo. Why don't you lay off the guy? It's not like he gets paid for this.

    --
    -- Terry
  82. Slashdot != *Nix by Megaweapon · · Score: 1

    Oh please. This is a nerd site with a heavy Linux slant, not a pure *Nix site. If you want a clue, get an account you mere AC!


    --
    I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
  83. M7 through a proxy? by AT · · Score: 1

    Anybody know how to get M7 to go through a http proxy? I remember seeing something about modifying prefs.js, but I can't find it anymore.

  84. Re:Why Slashdot is going downhill... by ez8 · · Score: 1

    Retire Hemos? Who next? Batgirl, Steve Urkel? or Marvin and Wendy(the Wonder Twins)? You just don't understand why CmndrTaco keeps Hemos around, my friend.


    "Well that's a dumb idea" -- Some consultant(I think Peter Card) from Jupiter Group about Embedded Linux

  85. Re: IE5 is still faster by TummyX · · Score: 1

    Try the nested tables in both browsers.
    Not FUD. Truth.

  86. Seems to be ok by macdaddy · · Score: 1

    I just D/Led it here and it seems to be ok. More than likely, the answer given by the other responder is right on target. D/L a newer version of Stuffit (fewer crashes too!).

    Justin

  87. Since I'm at work.. by angelo · · Score: 1

    I decided to get it anyway then delete it. very nice look+feel (much cleaner than ie better looking icons too) but the scrollbars don't work under win95.. Maybe I'll try it out with slack when i get home.

  88. Manual Proxy Setting? by Mignon · · Score: 1
    I'm trying the Win32 version on NT 4.0. The preferences dialog is alot like that on Communicator 4.51, except that there's no "View" button next to the "Manual proxy configuration" radio button. Does anyone know how to get this to work?

    Perhaps something's no good with my JRE - displaying windows seems slow, and they don't fully paint 'til they've been obscured, then uncovered.

    Other than that, I tried loading some local files and I thought it was slower than Comm. 4.51. It also renders tables without side borders. Is that correct?

  89. Some Nerds use Win32 by CynicX32 · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure where they are, but I'm sure they exist.

    Slashdot != News for Linux Nerds. Stuff that matters.

    Though it might seem that way at times.

  90. Re:Then why the drooling? by bergie · · Score: 1

    Doesn't seem appropriate to drool about something that is still slow...

    As I stated before, the reasons why it still slow are quite obvious, and once they are removed, it will be very, very fast.

    And besides that, it will be the first really good and standards compliant browser out there (yes, I know about Opera and iCab, but neither are available yet for my Linux box).

    Would those be reasons enough for drooling? :-)

    /Bergie

    --

    --
    Midgard Project - Open Source CMS