Slashdot Mirror
Mozilla M8 Released
bergie writes "The Mozilla milestone release 8 is now available! Go check the coverage on MozillaZine. Go fetch it! " For
those interested, MozillaZine has a pseudo-changelog available. It seems blizzard's Xlib port
is coming along quite nicely. Anyone at OLS next week will
be able to attend Mike Shaver's "Inside the Lizzard" talk. Congrats to the Mozilla folk!
It said that all the major toolkits will be supported.
Does someone know how far away the Qt port is?
I suspect that they intend to put this behavior in, and just haven't done it yet. It exists (alebeit with some problems, especially with pages that have big complex tables, slashdot sometimes being one of them) in the current releases of Netscape, and has for some time. I doubt that they would remove this feature, as many users (myself included) would bitch quite a bit about it until they fixed it.
-Cheetah
Wow. After reading your load of confused crap, I'm still trying to figure out why you even bothered to share that. I'm guessing the following:
Quite possibly all three are true.
Not only that, there is a Solaris package available for download. That's what I've been using, because I've been unable to get it to run on Slackware, even with libc6.
My understanding of the milestone process is that they close the tree every three weeks for stabilisation. This seems to take about a week, so there's roughly about 3 weeks between every milestone.
See "http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3826" .
Who poured cornflakes in your chamber pot? Put down yer spoon for a second and stop chewing, in any case.
Yet the browser is more usable each time, as well. It used to be that I couldn't get the darn thing to load and render a Slashdot page without it choking; it's better at that these days. I suspect that your analysis of the development team's priorities is poor: if the true, number-one job were the inclusion of non-working useless features, I wouldn't expect much improvement in the ones that are already there.
But it's not beta. They're barely even releases.
Uh, no, monkey. You can't summarily re-characterize the state of the project based upon your own impatience.
What dream universe did you write that assertion from?
You're stretching. I suspect that you're confusing pseudo-beta-test exercises like Microsoft's promotional Windows pre-releases with open development. Or trying to.
Mozilla is under heavy development. The recent milestone builds are surprisingly usable but really just progress reports. You're pissing and moaning that it's not perfect when it's not finished.
If NS 5.0 comes out before it's finished, then that's the time to trot out the trite complaints you're making here. Could happen...
ObNetscapeHorrorStory: My ISP's storefront has a copy of Communicator in a shrinkwrapped box on one of its shelves (presumably version 4.x for low values of x). For sale. For money. The price? Over a hundred dollars.
Mind the Gap
...thus causing the text to lurch and jump all over the page as it resizes the placeholders when it finally does get the true image sizes. Sounds nice on paper, drives me to distraction in practice.
Mind the Gap
Just a thought, for those organisations who have installed the full monty as an allinone client, they might not want to lose that training investment etc in order to upgrade from comm to moz so they make the two similar?
Fede
1: segmentation fault !!!
...
... but ...
:-) on this one
whatever i tried, whatever platform i used,
whatever milestone i used
i'm willing to get a buggy preview of the new
browser
no
No, it'll never happen. That would mean that the browser would have to be linked against private gui libraries under Windows. And that would free them because of the GPL. And then we'd all get to watch Bill and Richard get into a love-spat the likes of which the world has not seen since Satan and Saddam went at it in South Park. The question is: which is Satan, and which is Saddam?
After a bit of guessing, I've found it's actually bug #8559 which is about http proxies. Seee that for the info.
The UI is really SLOW, and there are some minor rendering problems (scrolling while rendering corrupts the display), and the scroll bars are UGLY (why arn't they using my theme)..
But most of all.. Why the hell doesn't it correctly support the Alpha channel in PNG files? This binary transparency is for the birds!
"Some of us like having an integrated mail/news reader" you say. If you want a huge monolithic abomination, use Windows. The spirit of Unix doesn't put up with this short-sightedness. You should be able to use any mialer, newsreader, editor, etc that you want.
It's my understanding that the news and mail readers are just dll/so that are loaded on demand. The only issue I see is downloading of a larger mozilla install that includes the mail and news portions. Otherwise if you don't use the mail or news functions, then you should be just running the browser code.
let me know if I'm off the rocker with the technical details.
narbey
-- "The evil stops here" -Petr
I wrote this previously, but it answers the question pretty well, I do think; so here it is again --- Mozilla is Free Software.
But don't take my word for it. Please consider the following article, written by Richard Stallman (last updated Feb 12 1999):
'On the Netscape Public License'
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/net sc ape-npl.html.
First line of the article: "The Netscape Public License, or NPL, as it was ultimately designed in 1998, is a free software license -- but it has three major flaws."
Later on in the text: "NPL-covered software is also free software without being copylefted, and this by itself does not make the NPL worse than other non-copyleft free software license."
You can see that I am not downplaying Stallman's criticism or advice on this issue (the quotes are hardly endorsements). In particular, Stallman says: "Because of these flaws, we urge that you not use the NPL or the MPL for your free software."
However, Richard Stallman has stated, publically and in writing, that the Netscape Public License qualifies as a free software license.
What special knowledge do you have that allows you to argue otherwise?
This is a bug with the cache and the network library. They are in the process of rewriting all of the networking code, and that rewrite should be the default within a week or so. If you clear your cache, the images show up.
Minor quibbles:
1. The fullcircle version creates almost 900 separate files, a lot of which are just 1-2 lines of configuration stuff. That's a lot of wasted space, even on an HFS+ drive. Perhaps some of those options could be combined?
2. It takes a bit of time to open, during which there's no perceptible activity. I almost Command-Control-Powered the machine because I thought it had hosed itself.
3. Double-clicking a word doesn't automatically select it. Yeah, it's a little thing, but after 15+ years you get used to it. :-] And yes, I would fix it myself if I had the knowledge (I'm working on getting it now).
If the finished version is as big an improvement over M8 as M8 was over M6, maybe it can replace IE as Steve's browser of choice. Now, if they can start supporting Mac OS Runtime for Java....
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
Or has the Mozilla team suddenly kicked everything into high gear. Two milestones in under a month, my lord.
:)
There are still things I'd love to see in Mozilla. I actually fixed a bug in the up/down key scrolling, Mozilla is amazingly easy to read and understand.
I'm not sure why people complain that it's too much, it's a very clean C++/C program and my lord LXR is useful
--
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
What I want to know is why Jasin is up so late (early?), but then again so am I :)
:)
I am also downloading mozilla now, but I am disapointed that a full 10 minutes after 8 is released the debian sites still are only on 7... tisk tisk
Really it is great to see mozilla going.
I wasn't lost... I was only momentaraly confused of my spacial orientation relative to my prime destination.
Does this mean Mozilla will not require GTK+? Hmmm, I wonder how the two builds compare.
10. Renders pages very quickly.
9. Free!
8. New features such
*segmentation fault*
Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but why is the win32 M8 file without Fullcircle a larger file than the one with it?
Also, the only major usability thing that have yet to be completed in Mozilla so far as I have seen are right-click menus.
Of course, that strange caching thing is a problem, but the 4.0 series wasn't too much better.
I feel that Netscape has to at least meet the bar that MSIE 5's excellent caching set.
No browsers support CSS 100% properly at the moment. IE doesn't do everything properly, it may *seem* like it does a lot (as a casual glance at the MSDN SiteBuilder Web Workshop DHTML/CSS reference may imply), but when pushed hard it either offers only a proprietary solution, or no solution at all.
Microsoft can claim they have best support, but if you want a particular feature that's in the standard, the high level of support is as good as Netscape 4.x's level.
When the time does come for 5.0 to be released to the public, I see an intensifying nightmare for web developers. Now they'll have to design sites for Netscape 3.0, 4.0, and 5.0, as well as the IEs (fortunately IE5 is similar to IE4). Even with non-CSS based formatting, like tables, the three Netscape browsers will behave differently. Despite the standards compliance of 5.0, the decision not to support Windows 3.1 and mac68k will leave a number of users stuck with 4.x, waiting until Opera can come up with a completely compliant version of its software. As someone said somewhere, the web developer's life will get more complicated before it becomes simpler.
I don't mean to take away from your joy, but I do want to point out (primarily for others' benefit) that your "problem" in getting it to run is hardly the norm.
Look. I've been running the win32 binary builds since November 1998 ... it hasn't been particularly difficult to do so, and I use a three-year old computer to run it, using win95.
Yes, there are bugs and crashes -- so what? These are not "consumer" releases.
Okay, I'll stop being a cranky old fart now ....
Stallman must be Satan, and Gates is Saddam. Look at that Satanic facial hair on rms, and using clever lies to weasel people. Gates is obviously Saddam because of his iron fist and fascist repression. Oh, and summary executions.
heh, don't even bother. :) When I used slackware (3.6) on my main box, and tried running M6, I got all kinds of wacky link errors (__iostream stuff, mainly). That was after spending a few hours upgrading libs, just to get mozilla to run. I haven't tried it on slack 4.0 (still have 3.6 on my laptop), but it runs quite well on redhat 6.0, mandrake (dunno what version), and debian potato.. All are libc6 based, of course.
Anonymous Coward, reminding everyone that Real Men (and women!) know when to fight and when to agree to disagree.
The last place that anyone should fight is online. There's far too much already. I'm an argumentative type, and I love arguments. But when they so clearly acoomplish nothing, that's when I stop arguing.
I think that the both of you are taking this a leeeetle to far, and I certainly hope you enjoy it, cuz that's what will be gained from the whole thing. I've seen this so many times it makes me sick - but this one fits the mould perfectly. Guy 1 posts a decent-but-not-expertly-worded post about his or her point of view. So far nothing is wrong, but tbere is the possibility for harm. Guy 2 fires back a response, which tries or succedes to refute Guy 1's point of view. He thinks Guy 1 is an idiot, and doesn't have his facts straight. Layered with some genorous misninterpretation, we have ourselves the kind of post that we all love to hate. Guy 1 thinks (rightly or wrongly) that he's (she's?) being personally insulted, so he drops his gloves. Now we have ourselves a lovely little spat, and it's hard to say who's at fault. The bottom line: Stop.
Micah McCurdy
70-110? What Linux-boy FUD drivel have you been reading? The only reason they list such massive specs are in case you do a full download with all language packs, all plug-ins, in others words: all options turned ON! If you want a base install, it requires about 12 meg. And that's just needed for installation. After all is said and done, I have used 15mb of space. I have yet to trash the Internet Connection Wizard and the old setup files (about 6mb total).
For a real idea of how much space IE uses, if you install IE5 with compatibility mode you get a directory created with all the files that are needed by IE4. A grand total of 5 meg!
I just downloaded Mozilla M8. The archive expands to 12mb. There's a lot of garbage in there, too (test apps, blah blah), and I bet you could get it down to oh... say.... 5mb as well?
The "components" directory looks as if it has about 4.27mb of "stuff" needed to render and layout HTML.
4.27mb versus IE4's 5.97mb. Gosh, I'd better switch ASAP. I only have 40gb of storage...
This is the first release that I consider to be
usable on Linux... WONDERFUL JOB GUYS.
If it leaks less memory than Communicator 4.61
then I'll switch.
I refer to the current Communicator as "the sieve".
It grows to 90 megabytes in size after a couple of
days of use...
Mark
As a matter of fact there is a port to QNX's "Photon" GUI underway. It's just not ready yet, that's all.
There have been glitches in building on libc5 systems. In fact right now the configure process pretty much sucks, and misses a lot of requirements that it actually has but isn't programmed to look for. YMMV in compiling it yourself. Some people have had good luck with libc5 builds, as I seem to recall reading a while back in some of the mozilla newsgroups, others haven't. Personally, I haven't had much luck on anything but a pretty clean RedHat 5.2 or higher install.
:)
I build the new client every morning, automagically. Some days it works great, other days it doesn't. If you want to try building your own copy with libc5, I'd suggest two things -- if its not your first time building it, wipe the sources and repull them if you're using CVS. The configure process misses dependancies some times, and things don't always get built right. If everyone else seems to be able to get it to work but you, starting from a fresh pull is a good first start.
Personally I think the CVS method of building it using client.mk is the way to go, any idiot can do it without any problems. Make sure you actually grab the M8 branch if you do though, because they're starting to drop the Necko code into the tree today (I believe), and the whole thing is likely to be horked for a while. I've heard its going to be even faster with the Necko code. I haven't even gotten close to having a Necko build work though.
Either way, the i686 build will run fine on a i586.
(navigator!=msie)!=(navigator=bad)
No
(navigator!=msie)!=(navigator==bad)
Oh yeah, it's fast. But half the pages on the net look awful. If this product shows the inherent limitations of the real HTML specifications, then sign me up for IE.
But seriously, it is an "okay" browser. It's fast and small, crossplatform, etc. But what would really be nice if it came out for more than just Win32, Mac, and a handful of UNIXes.
What about BeOS? What about AmigaOS (pfft)? What about Bob? etc.
I downloaded the linux fullcircle binaries, and the thing won't even stay running long enough to pop up a window. M7 did the same thing. This is on a current snapshot of debian potato. Anyone else experience anything similar?
I think proxy support (and basic things like a cache) are coming with the Necko code drop this week, which hopefully will be stable by M9.
Necko is the new networking code, replacing the current networking code. Promises to be more efficient, blah blah blah. I just hope it doesn't block on DNS lookups like Navigator does under Linux. That'd go a long ways towards making the program "feel" faster.
The Moz project is very important to the continuing success of Open Source platforms and while the code-donatin' heros know how much their work is appreciated I'd like to pass the team a few buck-equivalents from my long-ago-smashed piggybank.
Where is the website where I can get a secure connection, pull out my CC and make a symbolic financial contribution to the volunteer Mozzers?
Buy some hardware, get together for free beer or whatever - I'd just like to show my gratitude.
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
I haven't, but perhaps someone who is already part of that "community" (like someone who already subscribes to the list) could suggest it for me? Thanks.
I knew this would be the most controversial of my ideas, but if you think about it, bookmark management really does belong in a separate application...
I've felt this for several years now.
1) Navigator's "Edit bookmarks" thing looks like a separate application anyway, so there's no reason for it to be all in one. Netscape itself should provide the bookmark manager as a separate app, but part of the whole package.
2) people do have to use multiple browsers at times, and you could rig up the same bookmark manager to handle multiple browsers (Netscape, IE, kfm, Opera) instead of having each have its own bookmark list.
3) The bookmark manager could be opened separately, or even have a way to incorporate it into a menu; then rather than start the browser and then select the bookmark, you just click on the bookmark you want.
4) Navigator's bookmark management is woefully inferior to IE's. If I could fix one thing for Mozilla, that would be it. There's no reason to make me compile the whole app just to fix that manager.
5) Some places will want to have a bookmark czar, who maintains a global set of useful bookmarks (say, to the company's key website pages, suppliers, and competitors) that should be accessible to some group of people as part of their menu. Having a separate app would allow building a manager that supports a global and a local list of bookmarks.
Also, there should be a way (if there isn't already) to have each new page submitted to an external app. This app could then keep track of the page marks, just like the back and forward menus, but it would also keep a tree view of all links traversed so that if you (for example) go to slashdot, go to freshmeat, hit "back" and then go to a Slashdot story, freshmeat would still be visible as a previous path.
BTW, I agree that responder to you was rather out of line, that there was no reason to be so antagonistic.
P.S. To the mozilla crew, good work! I'm acquiver with anticipation...
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
You didn't say what platform you're running, but one reason the Linux version is both less of a memory hog now, and less prone to crashing is, I believe, because there was a bunch of shared libraries actually being loaded a bunch of times each up until very recently, and for whatever reason I guess they were chewing up RAM, and causing problems with particularly shutting down Mozilla, causing coredumps.
:)
At least that was the explanation I read, I never actually noticed the problem myself.
I just tried to take my own advice and point Mozilla M8 at http://www.w3c.org/Style/CSS/Tests/ and it doesn't work. :)
This appears to be a good way to illustrate the bugginess of M8's navigation capability. Again, I'm not worried about it since it is still alpha software, but I thought I should point it out in case anyone else wants to try it. Also, if any active Mozilla participants read the list, you can submit it as a bug.
I don't mind if it comes extra; the only reason I'm concered about it for Mozilla is that working on those features might distract the team from focusing on the #1 goal: being a web browser.
It is entirely possible that even if these features were stripped, and only added later, the code would take just as long to reach production quality, because there are already enough people on this, and throwing more bodies won't necessarily make it better. I can't help but think though that they could have moved along much faster if they had just focused on getting the pure web browser functionality first, then started worrying about plugging in extra things like email, news, and HTML authoring.
Can someone who is familiar with the code or the development team comment on this? I don't mean this as flamebait; I'm just echoing a previous poster's concerns along these lines. Would focusing on just web browsing have helped much, or are the real issues totally unrelated to this and adding the extra stuff doesn't really slow things down that much at all?
----------
In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
Can anyone tell me the magic incarnation to get M8 to use a proxy? I can get it working by editing the prefs and then turning proxy off and on, but not get it to just work upon startup.
Cheers,
Alex.
-- Thorin sits down and starts singing about gold.
Oh yeah, it's fast. But half the pages on the net look awful. If this product shows the inherent limitations of the real HTML specifications, then sign me up for IE.
It's probably less of a limitation of the real HTML specs as a limitation of the people who didn't follow the real HTML specs when creating their pages. My experience is that the rendering engine is positively anal about compliance, and just plain doesn't like the kludges people have put in to make things look good on IE and NS.
it does have a version for BeOS dumbass ...
Still no Sparc (or i386) Solaris build. Particularly ironic considering
the relationship between NS and Sun. Maybe some day, but I'm no
longer holding my breath.
And I'd rather they get the !@$#$%!! thing working right as a *browser*
than spend time with MUA and newsreader functionality.
Zontar The Mindless,
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
It does a fantastic job rendering the IE5 homepage :-)
I checked out www.mozilla.org, then "what's related", saw IE5, and decided to see how some of those horridly complex MS pages would render. Very nice.
www.zdnet.com OTOH is completely broken.
I can't wait to see how the "translate" button works.
It doesn't seem too bad for submitting comments to Slashdot either.
I still don't see the speed benefits, and I don't consider it usable for day-to-day tasks, but it is damn close. I'll take everyone's word for it that it will speed up when it is out of Alpha. When Necko is finished, that might bump up the speed dramatically too. I'm beginnning to really like what I see though.
Funny you say IE5 installs 70-110 megss...On a newly installed NT4 wks, after applying sp5, an IE5 install (with IE, OE, netmeeting, and some fonts and junk) took up about 20 megs..
IE4 installed 70 megs, but it was a windows upgrade, complete with upgrading just about your entire system drive.
Hi,
Did you ever heard of the kill by proxy syndrome?
Please , let M9 have proxy support, so I can check it out once..
keep up the good work!
1) I've always been frustrated that I could not download Navigator + mail/news (which I use) without Composer (does anybody use that?), Calender, the push client (RIP) and AIM. At the very least they should allow you to select which components you want at install-time. But I guess that didn't fit in with the whole Communicator strategy...
2) In my experience, the back button takes you back to the original link in Nav4.x, but it often fails on certain websites (Slashdot being a notable one).
3) When is Mozilla going to acquire an interface that doesn't feel clunky? I hope Netscape is coming up with a sleek skin, because write now it looks and feels horrible.
KookOut.
I see my original response was downgraded to a "0/Troll". AFAIK that's the first time that's ever happened to any posts I've made @ /. (+/- 18 mos). In fact, I've had several of my previous posts on the subject of Mozilla upped to "3", "4", and perhaps even one "5" -- so maybe I was a little out of line this time. I'll try to be a good boy, and just offer helpful info when I see an opportunity to do so and otherwise keep my opinions to myself from now on, okay?
Yes, I'm against anonymous posting. I volunteer-host another Web discussion board where we don't allow it at all, and I think our discussions there are much better for it. Yes, I overreacted to your AC status. I may not agree with using it -- but it's your choice. Use it wisely (unlike the vast majority, you seem to be doing so).
Peace.
Zontar The Mindless,
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
The problem is that Mozilla is built using broken RedHat
c++ libraries (versions of libstdc++ patched by RedHat to fix
their lib5c problems when originally making transition to lib6c).
RedHat and other distros based on RedHat continue to use these
broken libs (they all have the __ double underscores in error
messages).
I am using a modern glibc distro (Stampede), not Slackware, and
Mozilla will not work with that distro or any other that doesn't
use the broken RedHat patches. Mozilla will work just find if
one replaces all the C++ libs with broken versions, but who wants
to do that?
It may be possible to find a place to get snapshots of Mozilla
compiled with standard libararies, but not from the official
Mozilla download site. Or, you can compile it yourself. It will
work just fine with Slackware, or Stampede, if you do, but I do
not have the hard disk space for the intermediate files or the
recommended ram. (128 meg).
Way to go RedHat. May you rot in hell. What a shame!
hum what is emacs?
Viewer.exe is better than apprunner... Viewer.exe should be the netscape 5
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
I do know the difference between "=" and "==", thanks. That "=" is being used as an assignment operator, and not a test for equality.
If you prefer, how about "navigator!=msie"!="navigator=bad"; (substitute neq if you desire)?
Zontar The Mindless,
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Zontar The Mindless,
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Two milestones in under 1 month is great but How many Milestones are there?
Do not read this
You can use program such SockCAP32 from http://socks.nec.com that's what i use to run behind my work firewall.
Could someone who has played with it please report on what sorts of embedded scripting languages it supports? Are we still stuck with just javascript, or can we now say SCRIPT LANGUAGE=xxx for other interesting values of xxx?
People are afraid to develop CSS-based content using W3C standards because of the non-standard implementation by *both* NN 4 and IE4/5. I personally enjoyed how MS, instead of cleaning up and fully implementing CSS level 1 in IE5, instead just added new stuff with more problems. While I'd love to see Mozilla kick ass and be completely standards-compliant, the truth is that it probably won't matter, because we're stuck with the stupid mistakes of the past for years to come as folks stick with legacy browsers. It's discouraging because had Netscape and MS just had the tiniest bit of vision a couple of years ago, web developers could be focusing on creating amazing sites instead of wasting an inordinate amount of time just making sure their pages don't break on one browser or the other.
(Note: I didn't throw that remark about IE in as flamebait; it has its own passle of problems that make it next to unusable too... although I suspect many of the multitasking problems are results of the underlying OS, but then, since IE doesn't run on Linux, and is made by the same people who make the OS, the blame still goes to the same people.)
Or is (allegedly) part of the OS...
Since I've never gotten Mozilla to work properly, can anyone tell me if they've removed a "feature" of Netscape 4 that I found incredibly annoying? I'm talking about how when you open a link in a new window, the "Go" menu starts at the new link instead of retaining the history of the parent window. I find it incredibly annoying since my mind doesn't treat them as "parent" and "child" windows when I'm reading two pages of the same site.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Nobody says you HAVE to do it this way, but you're the first person I've met who doesn't agree that that's the way the "back" button should work. Have you never experienced the frustration that I illustrated, using Freshmeat as the example? Yes, there is a workaround: open every link as a new window. However, let me stress that this is a "workaround" for what is widely perceived as broken behavior. I know I don't only speak for myself; read the other comments.
Your "workaround" is actually how I browse normally. Nothing annoys me more than having to hit back to follow other links I've already picked out as interesting. It wastes time and it interrupts my browsing. If I find a link I want to follow I open it in a new window and continue reading the current page. By the time I'm done with the current page the new page has loaded and I can read it. When I'm going through the news on slashdot I usually open a dozen article/comment windows and by the time I'm done with the main page the first few have finished loading. The single most annoying thing about win95 for me is that I can't open new windows with a single click like I can in X. Perhaps the 3rd button does that, but I only have a two button mouse and AFAIK there is now Emulate3Buttons for windows.
However, I do agree that the back button working how you describe is not desireable. I rarely use the back button, but when I do I usually appreciate that it takes me back to exactly where I left off.
All you get is a "go to" entry field and browser.
Pretty speedy compared to the full "apprunner"
Mark
It was a bug in libc that caused shared libraries to be loaded more than once. So the bug is still there if you run RH 5.2 or Debian 2.1. If you build mozilla from cvs, the configure script will bark at you if it detects a buggy libc. The problem is cured in Debian potato and RH 6.0 though.
Thanks. No use me downloading it until then-(
How do I use it like a simple web browser? Mozilla wants to do everything for me, and the win32 version wants to write a lot of stuff in the registry. The early version were able to just start up and show me web pages, which is basically what I want to do. Can I do this with the new Mozillas too? Profiles and stuff only confuse and destroys things for me and I want to get rid of them. Is Mozilla still for me?
First: How do one "install"/run this beast? Which script to run?
I can't find any guidelines on the site and the tarball is kind of sparse on readme's.
Second: The plan of milestones are ambitious. That is nice!
Best regards,
Steen Suder
Best regards,
Steen Suder
-- for email: send to
This message is being posted from Mozilla M8.
It's long been my contention that the biggest problem with Linux these days is that there are no decent graphical web browsers for it. I'm looking to Mozilla to make that change.
The current standings:
This version seems to be okay for stability on Win98. It hasn't crashed yet, although the "back" feature is still a bit quirky so I had to quit once and restart Mozilla to make it work again. Please note that this is not a huge issue for me yet, as I know this is still alpha software, but it's good to know where it stands so far.
Speaking of the "back" button, it is still broken: like Netscape, it takes one to the TOP of the previous page, rather than to the link on the previous page that was used to proceed to another page. This, IMO, makes it unusable for browsing: if I click on a link at http://www.freshmeat.net/ and then return later to resume reading Freshmeat, I expect it to take me where I left off, not dump me at the top of the page to spend a minute finding my place again.
IE seems to have figured out this little feature. What's wrong with the Netscape guys? Is this in the blueprints for Mozilla, and simply unimplemented at this point?
(Note: I didn't throw that remark about IE in as flamebait; it has its own passle of problems that make it next to unusable too... although I suspect many of the multitasking problems are results of the underlying OS, but then, since IE doesn't run on Linux, and is made by the same people who make the OS, the blame still goes to the same people.)
As for style sheets, I must say I am impressed by Mozilla's renderer, much improved over Netscape. This has been a sticky point with me, considering that serious web designers (many of whom I work with) only laugh at Netscape and barely (and grudgingly) bother to throw in a little extra code on their CSS-enhanced pages to make it readable in Netscape. And they're right: the CSS design is a good one, and Netscape's non-conformance to the W3C's standard is a serious detriment to the growth of the 'web and structured document development and acceptance. That is, people are afraid to develop content using W3C standards since 50% of the popular browser market (Netscape) doesn't support them. The fact that Mozilla renders HTML "correctly" according to the W3C is a saving grace.
Other than these issues, little else in M8 is particularly notable or worth its bloat. When it becomes a little more stable and fixes the "back" button, I'll try my hand at compiling it without the myriad of consumer eye-candy schlock that is handled better by external programs (like mail, news, and bookmark management). If I discover anything else worth noting, I'll try to remember to drop a note here for anyone interested.
When we get the installer working you'll be able to download separate components. Don't know exactly how Mozilla is going to be split up, but mail/news and the editor will definitely be add-ons to the browser.
Bookmarks could conceivably also be distributed separately for those few wierdos who said they wanted a separate bookmark manager, but I doubt we'll actually do that. Too many small optional packages will be confusing and just as bad as one monolithic chunk.
Hey, not bad. M8 doesn't hang and crash on startup like M7 did.
BURN THE TROLL! CUT HIM INTO BITS AND BURN HIM AGAIN!
I have read most of the comments here, and although most are pretty positive, there are enough 'odd' ones that require I make the following statement:
.9) to NT 3.0. Guess who would have won that one? The actual beta won't happen until about M12 (October 1), and by Jan 1 the Seamonkey browser should be finished.
MOZILLA IS CURRENTLY ALPHA SOFTWARE!!
Please remember this when you download the Milestone releases. Feedback on problems is very good, go to http://www.mozilla.org/bugs/ for more info. But griping and comparing the Mx releases to Communicator or IE is really counter productive. It's a lot like comparing early Linux versions (pre
Netscape will probably start tweaking Mozilla into Communicator 5 about this time (M12), if not before.
Also please note that Mozilla is not Netscape! the Milestone releases are actually Seamonkey, which is the reference browser for Mozilla, and will not be the same as Netscape 5.0, although Netscape 5.0 will be almost completely Mozilla components (including much of Seamonkey), with some 3rd party additions.
The Mozilla project develops code, design, and modules that may be used by anyone (under the Mozilla License) to create their own browsers or app that requires HTML, CSS, or XML rendering.
Personally, I think it is going great, and the Mozilla guys are still right on track.
jf
the "about:mozilla" thingie is gone!!!! i will never upgrade to Netscape 5 on my linux box, unless they re-instate the About:mozilla.....
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
Did you happen to notice this line in ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/releases/m8/REA
Thanks to Pete Collins for the FreeBSD package.
Thanks to Duncan Wilcox for the BeOS package.
The fact of the matter is that it does build and run on Solaris. What's stopping you?
Got any more moderation points to waste, antispelling nazi? It's "whose wife", not "who's wife", nor even "hi's wife".
IE5 is 7 Megs in the minimum install size, not 70.
Please don't fight FUD with FUD.
(I just installed IE today so I can browse
all the Hebrew sites properly. Netscape's
I18n people are very nice, but obviously
Msoft has vastly more resources in this area).
.
bloated.
Geeze... I run 4.61 for more than 10 hours straight and a break 200 MB. And I'm only that lucky if I successfully avoid any and all Java. But what irks me the most about netscape is not it's (lack of) speed or bloat, but the fact that with it's excessive features:
1) It can't print CSS pages correctly (win or linux)
2) The CSS engin is so broken, I can bring netscape down (win or linux) completely just by visiting a page with less than compliant CSS.
I'm downloading M8 right now, but with M7 you could actually view CSS. That alone was enough to make me switch.
The xlib version of mozilla already works better for me than the gtk toolkit version. When I tried to submit a comment with the gtk build, first it paused, then everything shifted, then scrambled. Of course, with the xlib version I couldn't even get to slashdot, but it seemed more stable and it let me use my arrow keys and spacebar to navigate pages.
You do have to build it yourself, but it's pretty painless. Just add --enable-toolkit=xlib when you run configure. If you add --disable-debug, you can save massive amounts of space, ~250M. I also add --disable-mailnews --disable-editor --disable-tests --disable-static too, which saves some more space and speeds up the compile. On my roaring P133, a build takes 1.5 hours and uses about 165M total (100M source, 65M for build).
Should be a pretty slick and small browser when it's finished.
these guys are working on it http://www.NexwareCorp.com/
---
While trying to take M8 through the PNG test suite, two things became apparent:
PNG rendering is atrocious, even in comparison to Netscape.
The navigation stuff is still unstable enough to make it unusable for everyday web browsing. The Back button, Forward button, and even clicking on certain links after the site had already been visited were intermittent at best.
I take it I'm not the only one who has problems getting images to load correctly under Mozilla.. Is this just a temporary thing to do with gif copyrights or is it a bug?
I dunno, but this seems like a huge improvement. I'm running with only 32 megs of RAM so any memory sucking is very apparent to me... This release seems a whole lot lighter than the older versions. I'm starting to get excited - Our little baby Mozilla is all grown up!
Does this version support http proxies?
the startup time is much better now. It makes it much more easier for me to replicate all those bugs (and some that I found were fixed for M8)
---
There appear to be some focusing issues. The scrollbars tend to flash terribly when moving over any of the widgets. Its only an annoyance though.. and it seems that Mozilla is on the road to becoming usable.
For the first time, I finally get to see what people where talking about when raving about rending speed.
Oh, she is speedy [rendering]. And this is with 20MB ram, the crappyiest video card on the planet, and a Cyrix Overdrive, and win95.
The last milestone I managed to coax into working was M3. It's still pretty fragile, but it's come a long way.
I just can't wait until they get rid of the debug code.. mmm... (there is still debug code in this baby isn't there?)
Someone said something about pictures not displaying properly? Everything's pretty and graphical with me. Using Windows 4.00.95a.
--
Mountain (martinjs.NO@SPAM.ihug.co.nz)
Posted from M8. I don't even know what my password is.
There is an FSF-sanctioned web browser. The web browsing mode in Emacs.
(navigator!=msie)!=(navigator=bad), okay?
Hmmm... MSIE 5: 70-110 megs, depending on your installation options. M8: 4.5 megs. Now, would you mind giving us that definition of "bloat" once again? Thanks. 1. Some of us like having an integrated mail/news reader. 2. Why shouldn't a user agent manage (its own!) bookmarks? Personally, I wouldn't want one that didn't. 3. Fact: For its 4th-generation product, Netscape has maintained parallel releases of Communicator (Navigator+Messenger+whatever) and Navigator (and absolutely nothing else, except maybe that stupid AIM thingie -- which can be excised by any six-year-old with half a clue). If you don't like Messenger, download the standalone and quit whining. At any rate, I'd say that Netscape will likely continue this pattern in the 5th-gen releases. Besides, this "bloat" you speak of includes (at present) the browser and email/news client, and it's still smaller than the standalone Navigator 4 or the standalone MS... oh, wait a minute, there ain't no such critter. Sorry!I wish people who are looking for something to complain about would find something to complain about before... well, you get the idea.
This is Zontar The Mindless, reminding you that REAL men (and women!) don't post as AC.
Later.
Zontar The Mindless,
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Does this mean people with i586's have to build the thing themselves (impossible for me, not enough disk space :-)). Also, this probably won't work on a libc5 system will it?
...but I've not seen the answer anywhere; or maybe I've just been blind or something. anyway...
when Moz is finally released, are they going to continue to release the standalone client alongside the communicator? I, for one, have no need for the massive disk bloat of an html editor (still use pico, vi), mail reader (pine), or newsreader (tin). Thus, it would be nice if I could download just the neccessary component...
thanks.
1) QNX has many compilers available.
2) people are working on browsers for QNX.
3) Just because you have never used QNX does not
mean that it is no good.
4) For stuff with real-time requirements, QNX
is a great platform, much better than Linux.
There are certain applications for which having
a reponse time from the kernel which is unbounded
is just an unacceptable condition. For those
apps, there's QNX.