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Mozilla Picks Up Third Party IRC and RT Messaging
Floris writes "Mozilla picks up steam - it is actually starting to look like a real OSS project now ;) New third party contributions are IRC andReal Time Messaging clients. Funny to think that Mozilla might actually fulfill the promise the browser once was and integrate all internet protocols into one interface."
I am sorry if this is considered completely off topic and all but I have always wanted to know the answer to this one.
What makes the interface in Mozilla (the Linux build anyway) so EXTREMELY slow? I have heard that the windows version does not suffer from this problem. What differs?
Is it actually supposed to be that way?
Oh, and Im talking about the actual GUI now. The button-bar and such. The page-rendering is great.
All I want to say was LAYER tag...... It worked in preview. grrr.
I agree. Netscape/mozilla is targeting a large group of people. Larger than us slashdotters. Normal users expect their browsers to offer any functionality they'll ever need because they are not skilled enough to select, download and install a custom application (they just install what their provider gives them).
Also Mozilla is extremely flexible. What I heard about this chat client is that it's all XUL and javascript (i.e. not a single line of c except for some networking code which is soon to be replaced).
Not only is it nice for mozilla to have a chat client, this also displays the powerful features mozilla has to offer. A full fledged chatclient implented with mozilla's scripting and XUL features.
If netscape/AOL have any understanding of the market they are operating in, they will make sure that a large number of plugins (flash, vrml, realaudio, java, quicktime, ftp, etc.) is available for netscape the day it is released. If they fail to do so the upgrade won't be compelling enough for most users to dump internet explorer.
Jilles
Netscape on top, OK, IE the lowest, OK. but they have to think about the size of it. i hope they make a "ripped version" BUT WHY DO I CARE, I TRUST ON MOZILLA
End Of My Story.. Smell Ya never!
I didn't assume that peope will be compiling Mozilla. I was replying to a post in which the question was how to compile without unwanted features.
Well, actually the discussion went something like that: somebody (actually, a lot of somebodies) said that Mozilla is in great danger from bloat and feeping creaturism. It aims to be all things to all people and thus is likely to become huge, unwieldy, ustable etc. etc. Somebody else objected to this saying, basically, that Mozilla is modular so you don't have to use what you don't need. From here the question of how to load / not-load modules came up and somebody else again jumped in with a comment that "you have the source! Just compile what you need!". Here my soul became agitated and I posted, saying essentially that compile-time flags are not a good way to include or not-include modules in a program like Mozilla.
I understand that one can compile without the unwanted features. But the issue was how to load/unload modules at run-time. Hell, when I boot into Windows, I don't even have a C/C++ compiler there -- I presume that Mozilla will run under Windows, right?
I agree though, it would be nice to have some sort of application "builder" where I can check what I want and just load/download those modules
Well, I think it's not only nice, but essential. Again, we are speaking run-time, not compile-time. And a simple config file will suffice.
One, these are 3rd party projects. That's the power of Open Source.
So? Look at Winamp. It can hot-load third-party analyzer and display modules while it's running and it's not open source.
The second is that Mozilla is primarily for those that have no idea how to use "geeky" things. They are computer experts, and don't want to be. All they want to be able to do is to use one application that does everything they need to do
That's a good argument for MS Office. It's very much debatable whether one-big-app-which-does-it-all is a good thing, even and especially for naive users (aka the unwashed masses). Anyway, the debate is not about this. The question is customizability at run-time and IMAO Mozilla very much needs to have it.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
You guys want just a browser try; Grail. Its written completly in Python and is out as version 0.6 . The problem is that nobody is working on Grail any more. I think it shows real potential. I am thinking of trying to finish Grail mabey we should start a new project? If you want to download grail go to www.python.org and follow the link to the grail web site.
HTML is not the best interface for everything. I think many software designers have yet to learn that. Netscape's e-mail and news works very well in the interface it has. I definitely wouldn't want it to look like, say, DejaNews (or just "Deja" as they like to be called now). HTML has limitations, and there's no reason to unnecessarily apply those limitations to other things.
Anyway, what would a Web-like interface accomplish? Nothing except to confuse the user about how the Internet works. If e-mail clients look like Hotmail, then Microsoft can call Hotmail an e-mail client and get away with it.
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
But preferably it should be like *cough* MS Office, a collection of seperate executables that work together (somewhat) seamlessely. Or prehaps what Office tries to do. No paper clip though :)
I can do the former, but most people cant.. And putting it in all one binary makes it so you have to download a huge thing. All seperate things that know how to play with each other is what they should be aming for.. DDE/OLE/Cobra type stuff..
The IRC-client we're talking about here is nothing more than very sophisticated html/js.
And there's a mail-client with a web-interface, too.
See also Aurora.
Even the GUI itself (menus, toolbars etc.) is HTML/XUL/JS.
Check out www.mozilla.org and it's projects page for more info.
Did you try to strip the binary it was probably compiled with debuging information that will make it much larger and probably slower too. Also does mozilla support gtk+, I want it to 'fit in' with my themes, etc.
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
It's NOT one huge binary!
Berlin-- http://www.berlin-consortium.org
DNA just wants to be free...
I also think it's a big advantage to include all that fancy extra stuff, but the team can't forgot what a lot of the public excitement was about: a really small and fast browser. (Maybe we'll even get some more people IRC'ing. Whether that's good or bad, I don't know.)
free speach
Did you mean: free speech
Donst anybody get it? its a single point of communication. So that anybody can use any part of the internet. :-)
I already have that and I'm sitting in front of it. Is there *any* significant advantage from putting all these functions into one huge program over having multiple programs to do them? "Because we can" isn't a good reason
I like the idea of little handheld computers for simple tasks, but what makes one program that does 500 things better (or even more integrated) than lots of programs doing one thing each?
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Come ON, do any of you really believe any of it will be non-customizable when their interface will be XML/XUL based, and they use an internal object COM/CORBA-like protocol? It would be incredibly lame for them NOT to use those things to make contributions behave like plugins or loadable modules. Besides, these are OUTSIDE CONTRIBUTIONS - in other words, stuff other people contributed to Mozilla, not feature creap "just because we want the features."
Oh, and if I'm not mistaken Jabber is mostly GPL.
Floris.
--- Your superiour intellect is no match for our puny weapons
You know I'd settle for them coming out with something that didn't crash and sucessfully rendered pages first, before adding on all these bells and whistles.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
crit.org has had universal web annotation for a while now... but that didn't stop Third Voice from claiming they were the first earlier this year. The first proprietary one, perhaps.
[TMB]
Would they deny their own browser? You don't know the real reasons AOL paid out money for Netscape and (to lesser extent) Mirabilis. If it's their browser why don't they dumb MS from the day 1 of the purchase, instead they extended the contract with MSFT. Why don't they keep AIM and ICQ at the same time? Who can show me the clear policies they have in mind except the one to eliminate all competitors at all costs?
can you say MIME. That's what netscape and internet explorer use to implement what you're suggesting. You basically specify for each MIME type which plugin should take care of it.
The fact that you have to go through 'obscure procedures' to get them to use your applications only means that your applications are not smart enough that to figure out they should register themself for the mime type they handle.
BTW. I don't think this system is perfect. I think registering MIME types should be done on the OS level so that all applications can profit from it. A browser could of course still use its own list to override the default OS settings.
What most linux users who don't like this automatic launching of plugins seem to suggest to dump all registering all together and let the user figure out which pogram to use whenever a MIME type piece of data is encountered. I don't think that would be very satisfying for most users.
Jilles
If this is truly open source, AOL cannot ruin the project. If they shut down the project, we just start elsewhere.
[Sig: The box reads "Requires Microsoft Windows NT or better," so it must run on Linux.]
Some people seem to be forgetting that the World Wide Web was designed to be a medium that transparently handled other protocols. Users could familiarize themselves with one interface -- the Web browser -- and exchange information via HTTP, FTP, Usenet and gopher.
I'd like to see more protocols adopted as part of a Web browser, but not in the "office suite" style that Netscape seems to have adopted. The e-mail and Usenet clients should look and act like Web pages if they are part of the browser, the same way that FTP directories do. You should be able to use them without feeling like you've left the Web. Posting to Usenet from a browser should look like posting to any other form. Reading and writing e-mail using your ISP's SMTP and POP3 servers should look like a free-mail site.
Spawning separate programs with their own unique interfaces is not an improvement. For instance, there's no compelling reason to go with Netscape's e-mail client instead of a third-party's program, because the learning curve is the same -- and both are much harder to learn than a free-mail site like Hotmail or Prontomail.
If Mozilla can assimilate IRC and other messaging standards as part of the Web interface -- rather than a separately spawned interface -- I think it's a great reason to start using the browser again. If it's just being used to bundle and deliver separate apps together a la Microsoft Office 2000, the benefit to users is negligible.
Rogers Cadenhead (Web: http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench)
This kind of messaging will be useful in Office Enviorment also. Here we use Outlook E-mail is being use as IM. No one bother to use AIM here. They'll use it if it on a browser i'm sure.
Does this mean they'll have to rm -rf their entire existing code? Yes.
Uh, no. They've already done just that a long time ago -- that's where we got Gecko. The current Mozilla is pretty much just a bunch of shared library files, so you can add and remove the modules you want by adding and deleting files to the directory. It is HEAVILY componentized. XPCOM/CORBA and all that. No mucking with source at all to add and remove features. If you don't want the editor, delete the editor files. I'm certain when Mozilla reaches beta someone will make a "distribution" of it with everything but the browser stuff stripped out. If not, you can just delete the files yourself.
For a more complete explanation, see the indicated Anonymous Comment. (not by me)
Oh, and by the way... the current footprint is ~2.5MB with the editor and browser and everything; memory usage is also decreasing nicely now that they've started paying attention to optimisation.
Grrr... I'm tired of people spreading FUD about Mozilla when all of their information is plainly hearsay. Try reading the status page regularly. Or maybe you'd find MozillaZine more palatable.
Berlin-- http://www.berlin-consortium.org
DNA just wants to be free...
I sure hope so. I'd like to see Mozilla back on top. Hopefully the AOL influence won't ruin this great project.
======== In the future, everything will be artificial. ========
Third party contributions... I like that. It seems only a couple of months ago that naysayers were muttering about the death of Mozilla because no-one outside Netscape was contributing.
And real-time messaging that's fully open; does that mean they're giving up that silly fight with microsoft?
Are you sure? I thought that these new functions are being added in much the same way as the mail and news functions. That means they will be in same executable, I think. Please correct me if I am wrong. What I meant by plug-ins are things like a VRML viewer or Flash player - they are separate from the main executable. IMHO, the best design would place only the renderer and http protocol in the main executable. Everything else, Java, Mail, News, IRC, etc. (even ftp) should be in plug-ins which are downloaded separately.
When attempting to follow the links from this article to mozillazine.org, I get the unceremonious result:
;)
Unable to connect to SQL server
Didn't even bother with a {HTML} or anything. Maybe Netscape aren't really all that anti-Microsoft after all
Quoting: "The Jabber team has been designing and developing an architecture for real-time messaging that is fully open, utilizes an XML based protocol, will support the IETF/IMPP developments, and can bridge transparently to 3rd party messaging services such as IRC, ICQ, and AIM." I won't even say a word about waste of development time to implement yet another RT messaging client, when there are lods of them now. What I really question is who is going to be on full-time to patch bugs and changes in protocols intentionally done by Mirabilis and possible AOL (although they own Netscape). With all due respect to Mozilla's team, which makes a fairly good progress towards a _browser_, all such things (though developed in parallel by seems independent people) are (not nessesary) evil.
I just can't agree with you. This kind of outside contribution is purely counterproductive at this point in the project. What the Mozilla team *should* have done was put all their effort into getting a bare bones browser beta release out as soon as possible - no mail, no news, no IRC, etc. What a cruel joke this project has become. It's been a year and a half and the GUI code (menus, dialogs, etc.) is still so buggy that nobody can use it. But we do have a full set of bloatware plug-in modules written. Talk about misguided effort!
I love Netscape. But my major concern is that the more useful apps that they load into the product, the more put-out I'm going to be when the application (well, all the applications) crash at once. ARRrrgggghhh... I don't want to replace the headache of Microsoft's OS crash with a Netscape mega-app crash.
I was not aware that one of the goals of the mozilla project was to integrate all protocols under one interface... IMHO that is a BAD thing... A web browser should be a web browser... there's a good argument to be made for it to be a minimalist FTP client and it's even conceivable for it to be an email and news reader as well , although all three would work better as optional plugins, that way I could hand off the URLs to pine, tin, and ncftp if I want.
;)
EVERYTHING else should be an optional plugin. I already have 2 perfectly good instant messaging clients right now, and I don't want Mo usurping them...
What's next, will Mo play mp3s ? Why not, Winamp parses HTML... pheh...
Oh well, I didn't want NFS and HTTP to be parts of the kernel either. Nobody ever listens to me.
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
Anyway, what would a Web-like interface accomplish? Nothing except to confuse the user about how the Internet works.
A Web-like interface accomplishes a lot: It enables people who can surf a Web site to send and receive e-mail and use other services without a learning curve.
That isn't important to most of Slashdot's readership, but it's extremely important to the masses. The Web interface, for all its faults, is popular because of its simplicity and ubiquity. Do you think dozens of people would be discussing this article today if we had to run a Usenet client and load up alt.slashdot.discussion just to read and write messages?
One of the reason services like Hotmail have taken off is that most people don't want to learn 16 programs to use 16 Internet protocols.
Besides, users don't need to know how the Internet works any more than they need to know the protocols involved in making a long-distance phone call. They pay good money to other people (namely, geeks like us) so they can be shielded from this kind of technical arcana.
If e-mail clients look like Hotmail, then Microsoft can call Hotmail an e-mail client and get away with it.
Hotmail is an e-mail client that delivers most of the functionality John Q. User would want or need. It's a security nightmare, obviously, but the adoption of Web-based e-mail by millions of people shows the service is valued.
Rogers Cadenhead (Web: http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench)
I think it's very important for Netscape (or is this really going to AOL ? If so i might as well give up now.) to have clear goals for mozilla. Adding to the already totally rewritten codebase, third party products of dubious quality or usability seems a littly pointless.
From the start as i understood it, the goals for mozilla was to have a very fast layout engine (NGLayout is brilliant) and a thin footprint. That is exactly what most serious users want out of this client. A stable and speedy browser, not bloatware.
Though i do understand that the target market includes many users who do not spend over 5 hours a day on the internet or hacking their 1980's tape kernel drivers for linux. Any such addons such as an instant messager should be a seperate entity that can be downloaded if required.
All the hard work has nearly been done, do not wreck it with bloatware or a by diluting the original worthy goals.
Why don't you just download the stand-alone Navigator browser? You complain about big Netscape downloads and yet you are perfectly happy about the much more bloated IE5. Strange.
I think you (and others) have a hell of a lot of nerve complaining about Mozilla not being released considering the loudest complainers are the ones who have NOT contributed a single line of code or anything else to the Mozilla project. With that said you don't have any right to bitch at all about features in Mozilla, the lack there-of or anything else about Mozilla. Maybe if you shut up and started writing some code and submit it to the Mozilla team it may be released sooner.
You have been assimilated.
Feature-freeze this thing and get it out. At the current rate its going to be another year before Mozilla is in wide release.
Well, I hear you, I don't like gadgets in my programs either.
But this is open source, meaning those that contribute determine which itch to scratch. It also means that even should these functions not be removable (doubtful), someone can rapidly create a version in which they are, and redistribute it.
And as to cries for bloatware from the Linux community, maybe not. But Mozilla isn't for the Linux community alone, it has Windows, Mac, BeOs and other platform developers as well. Some of these may want an integrated platform even though many of us prefer tools for specific jobs. Integrated platforms can even be nice if the interfaces are suited to many different plug-ins for each function, especially when open source.
You can find a gazillion threads on whether mail, news, and other clients should be included with a browser in their netscape.public.mozilla.general newsgroup if you are curious as to their reasoning. You can even give them feedback if you think it that important.
This is not directed at you Synn, but let's quit kicking Mozilla, the media will do that for us. Either people should get involved and control the direction from within, or they might at least wait to see the gift before complaining about it.
Afterstep is already messed up enough, I don't think adding a "browser" with everything under the sun to the equation is gonna help me at all. As it is Netscape has a pretty crappy record for memory and stability. I'm still stuck with 3.0, and I honestly don't think I'd want to install some more Netscape crap thats just going to comprimise Afterstep some more.
I couldn't agree more. Why couldn't they have just concentrated on the browser first, put all of their effort into releasing a standalone browser, and then moved on to building a bunch of plug-ins for other functionality. There are a lot of people who just want a fast, lightweight, fully standards compliant browser without all of the bloat.
I personally doubt that most people want a single application that handles all of their computing tasks. If they did, emacs would be more popular and there wouldn't be a bunch of lightweight emacs clones around. Star Office is another example. How many people who use it wish there were separate executables for each app?
I'd add to this another point: the addition of these things is a good sign for the overall Mozilla design. There's a saying about portable software, "There is no such thing as portable software, only software which has been ported.". I think the same thing applies to software intended to have relatively arbitrary plug-in functionality added. You can't design for it and get it right without actually doing it at some point. That it's being done indicates that the glitches are worked out enough to make things work, so maybe we'll have an easier time adding protocols in the future.
One big bloated monster... So what?
Get the source.
Go through the directories with perl/grep to recognize what needs to be changed and what doesn't.
Release the thing in modules.
By the way if you bothered to read the mozilla site you'd know that all the stuff is developed in modules. Therefore all that need to be changed is a few includes/file. Nothing else, NOT EVEN THE SOURCE.
Then release the tiny imps instead of the great monster. I might just do it myself for cryin out loud.
Many people trash Emacs for being 'bloated'. Emacs users reply that Emacs isn't bloated, it just has 50000 elisp modules that you can load.
Many people trash Mozilla for being 'bloated'. Mozilla developers reply that Mozilla isn't bloated, it just has 50000 loadable modules that you can add.
I like Emacs' "bloat". Despite the similarity, however, I am disturbed by Mozilla's bloat. Why? Let me explain...
In Emacs, virtually every module I've seen, except for w3 and a few cute things like the Tower of Hanoi, is somehow related to text editing and viewing. This makes sense since Emacs' primary function for most people is as a text editor. Even the news/mailreader falls into this category, since you have to edit text to read mail and news anyway. Even these 'leverage' the abilities of Emacs to perform their operations.
Mozilla, on the other hand, is a Web browser. Loadable modules that would make sense would be things like movie-playing plugins, Java VMs, interface touchups, and so on. What doesn't make sense is adding completely new functionality under the pretense of 'integration'. How is it more 'integrated' if my IRC client and Web browser are the same program? IRC clients don't need complex HTML layout; in fact, virtually the only piece of code that the two functions share is the code to transmit bytes over a network and maybe configuration infrastructure. Mail and news clients as well have *no reason* to be 'integrated' into a Web browser unless they are using HTML to send and receive messages -- and as anyone who has unexpectedly gotten one of these HTML messages can tell you, HTML email is Evil. (even with mutt, which parses mailcap and starts lynx..) FTP, on the other hand, makes some sense -- you're generally viewing structured information and retrieving files.
I suspect that most of these will end up being like Emacs' w3: "My Web browser can read mail! How cute!" However, the fact that several of these projects (the mail and news clients at least) appear to be part of Mozilla's "core" distribution makes me wonder about the goals and attitudes of the project.
When I heard that Mozilla was going to create a fast, clean implementation of the browser, I was ecstatic. Finally something that would just let me read Web pages! How wrong I was. I wish I had time to make my own browser, but I've already got plenty of other projects to work on. Hopefully one of the other groups working on a free browser will avoid the pitfall of overgeneralization..
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
crit.org's nice ... but we need a more client side solution. For currently this is really heavy on the crit.org server, hence slow, does'nt work with layered, etc ...
KDE and Gnome have file and web browsing integrated, and it would be a waste of resources IMO if they were still being developed. Does anyone see the benefit of replacing those browsers with PARTS (i.e. JUST the browser which seems faster) of Mozilla?
:)
Oh wait... the MPL or NPL or whatever it's called right? Or am I mistaken?
My other comment/question:
To me one of the big plusses of open sourced software is choice... I don't worry about some big company cramming a suite of products down my throat when I want just 1 application.
I've used Mozilla SOME. I'd like to use JUST the browser, and conserve loading time and memory by discarding the built-in bookmarking, history, instant-messaging and IRC stuff I don't want.
Are these add-ons being integrated in such a way that I could easily unload them to save RAM? Doesthis work like a "default IRC client" which I could repoint to say BitchX or will it be hard-coded (yes, I know I am 'free to hack the code'... then bitch for an hour when it won't compile
I'm grateful to the mozilla folks for what they are doing. I think people tend to become a bit jaded online and make comments they wouldn't make in person.... "hey I just added some stuff to the free browser I wrote for you" - "oh great you couldn't resist the Kitchen Sink". Nice...
If I can plug in my own apps or disable the linking alltogether that sounds perfect for everyone - why complain?
You should notice that IE5 integrates with your Windows. Every time you run Netscape, you're running it *in addiion* to IE5, whether you like it or not. Since your 486 only has 16MB of RAM, your virtual memory will swap like crazy when you open Netscape. It's your IE5 that's eating the memory, not Netscape. I had a Pentium 100 with 32MB of RAM. When I had Netscape Communicator installed, everything runs smooth and fine. Then I gave it to a friend, who then installed IE4. Now my poor old computer is slowed down to a crawl. Sure, IE4 starts up faster (due to integration into OS), but at the cost of slowing everything else down. Think clear before you put your blames.
amen! telnet would rock...
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
dave whiner...heh heh
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
GNOME, BASH, GPG are open source projects. Mozilla has just recently (& i mean recently started recieving help from the open source community). The lacklustre support that they attained during the initial development stages of the project was due to Netscape having open sourced the project in theory only though in actuality 80% of the developers were inhouse. This plainly goes to show that Mozilla has not been the most widely accepted open source project.
Though why you accept the fact unconditionally that open source automatically means an excellent project i do not quite comprehend. Though i am in total support of mozilla development as it is one of the fundemental tools required in the coming expansion of the Information age. Also i have total respect for open source devlopment strategies, but i do not suffer from the illusions that all open source code is by its very definition perfect.
Also my worry is that most of the decisions about marketing (& considering the power of the marketing department of the the techies in most companies) that AOL will suddenly decide before initial realease to integrate their IM with Mozilla to increase market share. Who is going to say no and achieve a no from them ? The 30 developers who commited hours upon hours of free time on it ? Trust me... AOL wont care.
I somehow doubt a windows user is going to start passing compilation options to their GCC.
This is an exciting demonstration of the componentised Mozilla architecture. Write a core routines in some compilable language if need be, and then build a UI layer on top using JavaScript, XUL and CSS.
Not only is Mozilla a browser, its also a widget toolkit and development platform! We need more apps like this to show the power and extensibility of the tools being developed.
Posturing? Beats pretending to know what you're doing by installing everything on Earth.
Ahh... nevermind
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
I haven't seen the RT Message client, but the IRC client is a bunch of javascript. When running, it just looks like a web page. This does not add any signifigant code the mozilla browser itself. Even if the IM client adds hundreds of thousands of lines of code to mozilla, *YOU* have the source, and *YOU* can recompile it with whatever you want in there. I'm sure after mozilla gets released people will rpm or deb slimmed down browser only mozillas.
Actually in BeOS the mime types are handled by the OS and application register their services/supported filetypes there...
Well I've been keeping up with the Milestone releases, and this puppy has a long way to go. 3rd party add ons are wonderful, of course, but the Mozilla team needs to be very focused on what matters to them. Namely, Mozilla. The application is slow to respond on my 550MHz machine with 256 Megs of RAM. Even a bloated program will respond fast on that sort of machine, so they must be doing something wrong. We don't need another Netscape - We need a decent browser.
Right after M11 there is a feature freeze. They're working on M10 right now, but there won't be a M10 release. They're going straight into M11.
...is for people to learn the correct acronyms. It's CORBA. Common Object Request Broker Architecture. And you're right - it won't be on your wristwatch anytime soon. Then again, it was designed to be a solution to a problem much more complex than this one.
Sure, it's not the greatest platform, but Windows has been doing this since 95. I really like the way Windows handles data types. There are a few things I would change, but otherwise it creates a very standard way to change data types throughout the whole platform.
Not only BeOS registers mime types ... Same with KDE, Windows, ...
Most of these new additions won't be included in the normal release of Mozilla and probably won't make it into Netscape.
The IRC client is written totally in javascript and xul, which means its small. The new necko "network" library allows this.
That IRC client seems to use parts of YagIRC. Cool.
Wellp, I just tried GZilla. It works, now, but only marginally. It certainly isn't at the point where you can use it to peruse Slashdot (in fact, it gets completely hosed). There's also no keyboard navigation controls (gotta use that damned "mouse" thing people keep talking about), and the interface is beyond spartan. It's definitely making progress, but that's about all I can say for it at this point.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
Mozilla is working with that kind of URIs. I've seen mail box:/, newsgroups:/, pop 3:/ etc.
How dare you? The do-everything Kitchen Sink already exists, it's called Emacs!!!
Sorry folks, not flame bait, but IE is now comfortably ahead, both in user share and features. I really don't see how a competing product can catch up.
Todays browser is trying to be a Jack of all Trades but ends up as Master of None. Now, apart from being a (poor) web browser, it does mail (poorly), news (poorly), web-page design (poorly), and also is a (poor) Instant Messenger and (poor) IRC client as well? Yuk! Just about the only thing these monstrocities do well is bloat up your HD.
Please call me back when it can control the spin-cycle on my dryer and microwave me a cheese sandwich as well.
Alright, it's time to clear up some misconceptions. First, Mozilla is actually a collection of really cool technologies. The first is Gecko, which is a small, very fast standards compliant renderer that can handle XML, HTML 4, the Document Object Model, and Cascading Style Sheets. Gecko is _not_ a browser, just a renderer. Next is XUL, which stands for Xross-platform User-interface Language. XUL allows one to build their entire program's user interface using a collection of XML tags, like this: >toolbar id="Command Toolbar"< >html:button/html:button< >/toolbar< This would create a toolbar. Now here's the cool part: Gecko _renders_ the XUL components. The XUL components are controlled and scripted by Javascript, while the look and feel of the XUL components are specified in Cascading Style Sheets. Now, HTML 4 can be intermixed into the XUL, as in the above example where I place an html:button into the XUL toolbar. Notice that I haven't yet even specified a browser yet! Gecko+XUL is NOT the browser. All Mozilla really is is a collection of XUL files that builds the browser chrome _around_ Gecko! So, one could use the Gecko core for entirely seperate applications, such as the IRC application, and just use it as a rendering engine. For example, someone is working on creating an editor that uses Gecko and XUL that has nothing to do with the Mozilla browser. It doesn't have to be integrated in! The collection of technologies within the Mozilla project is truly amazing, and they are really the basis for a web operating system. Other technologies make this possible. C++ components are written using a cross-platform implementation of COM called XPCOM. Groups are working on making it possible to write XPCOM components with both Java and JavaScript; they could even be Python if you so desired. Now, there is something called XPIDL while allows one to describe in a non-language specific way the methods and attributes of the XPCOM component. What this means is that other languages, like javascript, can call the XPCOM component. Mozilla has a collection of XPCOM components, such as one that handles RDF, another that handles the user's history, and another that handles the user's bookmarks. These XPCOM components can be called from javascript, so that you can use pre-defined XPCOM services from your Gecko chrome. So it should be possible to wrap some parts of the KDE services as XPCOM components, script them from JavaScript, and use XUL+Gecko to build a DOM-based rendering engine on top of KDE! Cool beano. Thanks, Brad Neuberg brad@basesystem.com
But can it edit text?
This is all third-party work, so your argument is moot.
If any of the moaning posters bothered to read the source and compile it themselves, they might realise that passing options to configure would reduce the size and components built.
I downloaded and compiled M9 this weekend, and managed to get it working. However I need to compile it again without the debug code in place, as by default it compiles with debug in everything. I ran out of time (need a faster processor!).
This weekend I'll try again.
I did receive a number of sig 11 faults during the build; more importantly I found the cause of them and ways of working around them. AFAIK, neither of the causes of the sig 11's were in sig 11 FAQ. One cause was a lack of conventional memory when ld was processing a large link. In this case exiting X appeared to resolve the problem. The other cause was a lack of disk space, seen during the building of a 50MB library. I had around 100MB free, but there was not enough disk space for the scratch-files and a core dump. Running 'make clean' and building the components in a different order fixed this, but I ran out of disk space completly.
Finally got it compiled by blowing away my 800+MB Win95 partition. When finished there was only 1% free.
I have a great idea, which apparently never occured to Mozilla developers: Why don't they add HTTP/1.1 support to their browser, remove support for everything else (including FTP), except HTML and image rendering, make sure it never takes more than 2MB of memory, and release it?
Does this mean they'll have to rm -rf their entire existing code? Yes. Nobody wants this bloated, crashing, resource-hungry piece of crap doing a lot of this we don't want, but not doing one simple thing: browsing.
heh i agree. i dont even use any of the crap that comes with netscape beyond the web browser, pine for email and bitchx for irc. what else do you need? heh. we dont need any more bloatware in this great day and age.
I think the netscape guys should be working on making my browser not crash every hour or so. that'd be a lot more useful.
Tyler
URI's are great but they're nowhere near as flexible as what Dave Whiner(of scripting.com fame) has come up with. Check out xml-rpc's website to see how you could do everything you've described and more without having to resort to arcane madness such as CORBA ;) Xml-rpc is quite simple to understand and use. It should have a stellar future. Zope has just integrated it and people have already come up with interfaces for Perl, PHP, ASP, etc.
I completely agree with you. There's several good IRC clients already out there. I *DON'T* want IRC capabilities in my web browser, period.
i don't know why your post was marked down.. you made a valid point.
www.gzilla.com - it's a GPL'd browser. The current dynamically linked executable is about 500k. I need to check it out when I get home... has anyone else used it?
Having seen many posters express concern about Mozilla becoming bloated or
s /irc/js/lib/irc.js
trying to integrate too many things, such as IRC, into the browser, I
wanted to correct these wrong attitudes:
First off, the code for the client was written by rginda, who does not
work for netscape. So, it is totally "third party" and serves as a great
example of what can be done with Mozilla. The Mozilla team itself is
focused on delivering the browser that everyone is screaming for.
THE SIMPLE PICTURE of how Mozilla works: (At least how it appears to me!)
The Common Perception:
[ M O Z I L L A ] = One unit with everything inside it.
The Reality:
[ [[core][core][core][core]] [optional] [optional] [optional] ]
There is a set of core components which make a usable, basic, web browser
which supports the standards defined at http://www.w3.org.
Beyond that core, everything else is just an optional component, like a
plug-in. That's it. The IRC Client is in no way part of the core, (and if
you read below you'll realize its a javascript which utilizes the core
functionality)
Blah blah wait there's more if you want to be able to make an informed
criticism next time:
To summarize the technical documents linked below, Mozilla is built using
components which are for the most part self-contained. A certain number of
these components are necessary to form a working web browser capable of
rendering HTML, CSS, XML, XUL, JPEG, GIF, PNG, and other common web
formats and standards. You can read about these core functionalities and
how they are built in a component-based way at:
http://www.mozilla.org/newlayout/overview.html
Beyond those core functionalities, other components may be created which
are also self-contained and do not in any way interfere with the core
browser components. The IRC client works like this. In fact, it only uses
a small component that is loaded when a Javascript file explicitly asks
for the component. The rest of the client uses Javascript and html and XUL
(XML Based User-interface Language: http://www.mozilla.org/xpfe). So,
basically the IRC client is a javascript! What makes it function like
other clients is that is that it _completely_ leverages and relies upon
the flexibility of those core components listed above. In short, it
introduces no bloat.
Some technical documentation on the subject:
http://www.mozilla.org/roadmap.html http://www.mozilla.org/newlayout/
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xpcom/
http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/source/extension
BOSTON(AP) - The Mozilla Project released version 1.0 of their storied "Open Source" project at a small ceremony at the Computer Museum in Boston's Museum of Science. It will now reside in a display case along-side such other historical artifacts as the Altair, Java, and Windows.
The project began in the late twentieth century as a beseiged company engaged the use of "Fence Painters", a reference to a Mark Twains classic Tom Sawyer, to combat the rising fortune of Microsoft's "Internet Explorer."
The project itself has taken a number of turns along the path to the 1.0 release. Along the way, the team implemented such features as non-linear digital editing, sound processing, and even theater lighting systems. At one time the project also included code to control small robots used in the construction of homes for Habitat for Humanity.
The teams current leader, Zipznak Zawinski, the great grandson of one of the projects first programmers, gave a brief speech lauding the original intent of the project and the relief that it is now done.
Arg! Bloat! It has an integrated editor, mail/news reader, and web browser, now it's getting IRC and IM... Next thing you know they are going to rewrite gecko and the entire UI in lisp, call it mozlisp, and make you memorize hundreds of obscure commands like META-b-x-add-bookmark.
I can see it now, in three years Mozilla will be a HUGE creature weighing in a 60 megs and carrying so much functionality users will never have to leave it... and then AOL will start requiring that you call it Mozilla/Linux and RMS will have a fit. Aint life grand?
Don't hurt me, I'm kidding.
Funny... you described IE... (Been my favorite browser since i finally gave in and downloaded ie5.)
Mozilla is doing nothing wrong. Keep in mind that commercial products you only see the final, optimised, cleaned up, perfected app. If you get to see a "beta", it has been "polished". The mozilla code is the development code. It's full of debugging information. It's not been optimised. It's "in progress".
So yes, as anyone who develops code knows, code doesn't just "happen". I don't start a project that is automatically feature-full, and production ready. It's a long process to get there.
That seems to be the drawback of a highly-visible open source project. People who don't understand software development download the latest milestone, find out it's not finished, and then proclaim that the project is a "failure".
It's not. Even Internet Explorer had a time when the browser was at the point Mozilla is now. Don't forget that. Even though you you can only see the "beta" or final product, don't think that it started out that way. It was a long project, just like Mozilla is.
The project is progressing, and as all projects do, soon reach that finish line. At that point it'll be time to see if it's "fast" enough. For now, it's not. For those wanting to help, find out what's being worked on right now, and what bugs are being looked for. Find bugs and missing features that already in the road map. It does no good to complain that feature "xyz" is not there, when the roadmap already shows that feature "xzy" is planned to be implemented in Milestone 12.
-Brent--
The only problem is that the browsers don't pay enough attention to the MIME types. Netscape keeps its own database of MIME types independent from the OS so you still have to go and change your settings in a bunch of different places. IE is almost the same way. It handles things the way it wants to unless it doesn't know how -- then the OS gets it.
The other problem with MIME is that MIME handles data types, not protocols. Internet applications are generally geared to a protocol (and then sometimes - and only sometimes) a file with a certain mimetype. MIME types for IRC? I think not.
I am excited to hear about the XML-Rpc spec. It basiclly is the agent I described in my first post, and it is very cool, but it's a backend interface; not a human interface. That is why I think that URI's will be around a long time. It's fine if my Internet apps are all talking XML behind my back but I don't really want to have to see it! If I want to access something on "the internet," I am going to want to type a URI.
~GoRK
Yep.. non-technical folk seem to think that we can pop code into exisitance. Many a time I have worked on something for 8 hours and had someone say "run into some problems?" and I've said "no.. it just takes 8 hours to write something that big" and many more hours to debug it. I guess it's a misunderstanding that hack coders (like me) helped to start because someone will say "do you think this could be done?" and rather than just say yes or no we'll hack together a little bit of code to see if it is possible.. 40 minutes later we will come back with an answer "Yer.. I can do it.." and show them that code that you've thrown together and they think that you've written the entire project when in reality, the lump of code that you've thrown together only works because you, the programmer, are holding it together with constants and zero expectations. As soon as you try to push that piece of code to do anything other than prove to yourself that you could write the whole project, it will fall apart.
Software development takes time.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Jesus christ, dude. Your wish describes almost exactly what the mozilla project is providing. Pluggable components for protocols, pluggable JVM, pluggable xml/html/ftp/http etc. handlers. If people had any clue what mozilla was the attitude would be very different here at SD.
But seriously, the bloat is already there. Yes, I know it's not a commercial release, it's got debugging info, etc. etc. this thing is still a huge ugly dog. Really, what do you expect, it is built off of Netscape, and the only good thing anyone I know can say about Netscape is at least MS doesn't own it.
The only decent web browsers out there IMHOP are Lynx and Opera, and the main reason I still have a Win32 partition is that Opera hasn't been ported yet (though they are working on it, thank G-d) I looked at the Jabber the other day, and it sounds like a wonderful idea, but "integrating" it to an already bloated browser is a Bad Idea(tm)
What you want is what I am using. www.opera.no The linux port isn't available, yet, but it's in the works.
I thought there was no need for that, but a friend of mine which has just tried irc asked me : " can i do irc with communicator ?". So ok there is a need, it's just that i did not consider the thing like you did :-)
Strangely enough, yes. There is already some sort of plaintext editor required for message composition, so the current builds have a "plaintext editor". Whether that will stay, who knows?
I remember when the Mozilla project was promising a small, compact, yet full-feature browser. I downloaded Gecko and thought to myself, finally someone is getting this thing right.
As time goes on, we see more and more of the same additional features integrated into the browser which exist as well, if not better as stand alone applications.
If the mozilla license was less one-sided, I'd make this project fork.
Actually both Windows and MacOS have this type of functionality. Windows registers MIME types in its registry database, but because OLE (ActiveX) was not designed with browser plug-in capability in mind, plug-in authors have to put their components directly into the Netscape/MSIE plug-ins folder anyway. MacOS has the most user-friendly method of registering applications and if you move an app to a different folder or different hard drive, the "shortcuts" continue to work. However, the OS knows nothing of MIME types.
IMHO all operating systems would benefit by having some form of a centralized registry. (On a side note, if anyone is sufferring from repeated "Windows Registry" errors, I have written a utility that can fix that problem in certain circumstances under Win95/98. Open source. Will release to public soon. E-mail me.)
I feel this sort of all-in-one integration has confused the newbies as well - IMHO, newbies NEED to make the distinction between the various net protocols, lest they NEVER get a clue about what they are doing on the net.
The "bundling" of all these various functions into the single product seems awfully "Microsoftish" to me. I'm aware this is probably heresy in this environment to criticize Mozilla, but I'd like to see it concentrate on giving us what we have yet to see from either Netscrape Aggravator OR Internet Exploiter - a standards-compliant, fully functional http client that is the best of breed.
Why cobble the thing up with IRC and RTM? There are excellent clients available for those protocols as it is. The same cannot be said for http clients!
======
"Cyberspace scared me so bad I downloaded in my pants." --- Buddy Jellison
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
And all of these people keep arguing that you can recompile without these components, but is it really possibly to recompile Mozilla and still maintain the SSL and such? If I can truly separate these out it'd be great (from the looks of the screenshots, the IRC client is in JavaScript so that won't really add bloat (but JavaScript is the most evil language and will most definitely cause crashes and quite possibly open up security holes) but I can't say the same about Jabber).
Jabber is a good idea, but from what I've heard their security model isn't exactly tip top. (You can't stop somebody from talking to you, for example). But I can't confirm this, as I said. Regardless, there are plenty of RTM protocols out there (though ICQ does blow and I don't like the implementation of AIM, so this may have been necessary).
-- atomly
Just remember this is third party development, this is not Netscape Communicator 5.0 or anything. If people want to add features to an open source project it's up to them. If some one integrated IRC with gcc then there's no one that could stop them, but I can't imagine that the gcc maintainers would accept it.
I think these new developments will be available as options for Mozilla and nothing more.
--
Hello... before you go busting a gut about all the feature creep on mozilla take a look at how these projects are actually implemented. The irc client is run entirely through html/xul/javascript except for one small xpcom component that is currently required to run the socket (this may be replaced later by more generic moz socket apis). Basically you load a web page. I don't know what the state of the jabber integration is but the real power of mozilla is that you can do things like make an irc client using the languages that the browser can interpret itself. Read- no extra code. This is a wonderful thing and mozilla is making real what the internet has been promising for some time now.
Consider supporting this excellent project that, I might add, is very necessary for linux and other popular alternate platforms here at SD, to be able to compete with windows. As more and more apps go to the web you must have a web environment as well as an operating system.
-benj
I don't think mozilla's irc client will have better fonctionnalities than xchat, bitchX nor mIrc. I don't understand the goals of this code integration.
No it will not be better but convenient. Those program does nothing but IRC they are optimized for chatting or DCC in IRC. Embeding a RT client in Browser can be very useful in WorkEnvoirment. You know like arrangeing lunch and stuff. or just talk online for a bit. but if you want to do real IRC then you'll use IRC client.
I really like kfm. If Konquer(it's KDE 2.0 replacement) is anything half as good as it's supposed to be, I'll have all I need right there.
Civ CTP is awesome! Thanks Loki!
Romans 10:9-10
I don't mind a bunch of protocols & APIs being stored in the same place where everyone can find them & work on them, but instead of recreating the all-in-1 browser that everyone else has already done (with varying degrees of success), I'd like to see all the Mozilla work componentized (heh - I love corrupting the English language by "verbizing" nouns :) so that other projects can use them.
The HTML/XML rendering engine would be a prime example - it should be possible for other applications to "instantiate" a rendering object, provide it with a window & a string stream or file, and viola! the application is xML enabled!
Other interesting components might be active/passive FTP/HTTP download components (multithreaded downloads given a URL), components which handle the POP3/IMAP/SMTP protocols for you, a Java Virtual engine, etc.
Anyway, if the Mozilla project provides a central repository for all these kinds of components, then I'm all for it. The all-in-1 browser should just be a testbed for all the components - other people might put the components together in different ways to make browsers which look different (kind of like skins, I guess).
If the all-in-1 browser is all the Mozilla project is trying to create, then I lose a great deal of interest.
I mean come on, this is starting to get embarrassing... This is supposed to highlight the strengths of open-source, but we can't get a product out? We're highlighting our weaknesses...
(sigh) To compile in the IRC module, you'll use --enable-extension=irc. Make is your friend. Or, the instructions describe how to just compile the IRC module. At any rate, it will have nothing to do with #defines.
-Brent--
Mozilla with a IRC/Chat program internal?
Hmm, wonder how M$ likes a taste of their own medicine.
But seriously, this is a GOOD THING. Do you know how many modules exist for EMACS? No, you don't, that's the whole point, OSS means never having to say, "Thats ALL I can do with this program", (and by extension, it means never being able to say "I understand it completely") but we want the damn bazar, because it works. Don't say it's bad because YOU dont want a particular feature, OSS software almost always allows to disable any thing you want, and the specs on how Mozilla folds modules in are beautiful. IE will never be able to compete with this, precisely because they limit it to what THEY think most people want.
-Crutcher
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
ALL of the Mozilla components are optional and replacable, dependencies aside.
Berlin-- http://www.berlin-consortium.org
DNA just wants to be free...
I found and reported a few rendering and JavaScript bugs in release M9. This is the page that they occur at if you want to see em.
http://www.mindspring.com/~joeja/com puter.html
First see it with a JavaScript and Java Enable browser and if you have the tcl plugin that too, then see it with M9. I have only tried on Linux RH6.0 so it may be better on other platforms. This is just an FYI. It looks good thou, and it is getting better.
Only 'flamers' flame!
I'm not worried that the Mozilla team will create another unmanageable mess of crashware. Large projects can be built solidly, if done right. I suspect that much of the reason Mozilla has taken so long was the need to rewrite so much existing code. There will be a payoff from all that work.
;)
Bring on the IRC and messaging clients! Woohoo!!
I intend to convert to Mozilla as soon as the team tells me to.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
Does anyone know if all these tools are loadable on an as-needed basis? I don't relish the idea of a huge application any more than the next guy, but if they're all just "plug-ins" then it's got to be a good thing.
Werd.
Most importantly, Mozilla should make it hard to disable telnet. It's so frustrating when you have a strange anonymous computer to use, and you can do web but can't telnet to check your mail, etc.
> Your proposal makes no sense at the application level.
Ummmm....
Ummmmmmmmm.........
I guess I'd better uninstall Netscape standalone browser, IglooFTP, Licq, Gaim, Pine, Tin, and Ncftp, then...
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
IMO, this is a step in the right direction by providing the ability to chat on IRC, send Instant Messages and such built right into the browser. I think that a browser should be used to browse many types of content whether it be a web page, and ftp site, and IRC chatroom. I believe these are some screenshots from the client for Mozilla. Go MOZILLA!!!
Good is never enough, when you dream of being great!
Hey, hold on a second. I don't want all my protocols stuck behind one interface! Is that what the browser is supposed to do? I don't even like the fact that browsers handle FTP and E-Mail links unless you go through an obscure procedure to direct them to other clients.
a m=value
/20323
I sugggest that it is time for universal Internet applications messaging standards (between a user's set of apps, not between computers). It should be simpler than browser Plug-In's. It should be universal unlike ActiveX, OLE, and even COBRA. I don't want to hear it about how you can compile COBRA components on any platform. My wristwatch just won't do COBRA any time soon. It should probably be TCP/IP only so that you can do distributed applications and cool stuff like that.
Here's an idea. Let's see a core component that processes URI's and coordinates Internet information between clients that know how to handle HTTP, FTP, SMTP, IRC, Real Time Messaging, Telnet, SSH, ad infinitum.
The URI is the most powerful identifier, and I am very dissapointed that more applications do not use it. I.e. the notion of
protocol://user:password@host:port/identifier?par
is the most powerful tool anybody has to locate information or services. It works for every applicaiton and every protocol. Imagine if the following links all worked:
http://www.slashdot.org/index.pl
ftp://ftp.freshmeat.net/pub/
irc://JoeSchmoe@irc.slashnet.org/#blah
pop3://JoeSchmoe@mail.myhost.com/Inbox
You get the idea....
Maybe it's just me, but I don't think that Mozilla will ever become my IRC or messaging client of choice. Not that I have anything against these projects. I like to see them. I just think it would be more useful if someone did something like I have just described. If I could code, I would do it.
~GoRK
I only hope they post a browser-only version of this thing, so 90% of us can simply ignore all these wasted man years of add-ons and get what we really want:
A simple, stable, fast, compliant web browser.
Or have I just been missing the cries for more bloatware in the Linux community?
There are *optional* features. Because of the fact that you have the source code for Mozilla, you can disable these features with little difficulty
Oh-oh. You mean I'll actually have to go into source and #undef stuff, then recompile? That's not good at all. My definiton of 'optional' does not include this way of disabling features. What I want is a config file (with or without a pretty GUI front end) where I can specify what modules to load and what to leave behind. Hot-loading or unloading will be nice as well. But if you really expect people to mess with header files in order to switch off features, that's not going to happen.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Quit your whining about mozilla integrating other protocols. They can do whatever they want because they, not you, are coding it. Most people don't enjoy downloading separate applications for each and everything that they want to do (remember buying separate spell-checkers in the 80s? of course you don't). Maybe mozilla will also offer different versions of the browser (like Navigator and Communicator)? Maybe they see this as an area where they can further compete by trying to be the first application which actually integrates every chat program in existence? Why don't some people here get a clue before degrading into macho geek posturing? Maybe then we'd actually get some women to work in this field....
I just want a Web Browser. Please....
It doesn't need builtin Email support ... I have mutt... and it doesn't need a clone of icq or aim as there are a number of those. I think what linux needs is a useful browser. Mozilla should concentrate its efforts on making an alternative for the aging and tired netscape.
The one saving grace i see if that perhaps all of these things will be modular and thus I can easily remove icq, aim,aol*, mail, news, etc from mozilla and have a relatively lean beast.
I'm worried that this modularization may not be a reality. Anyone used netscape 4.61 for win9x? AIM is forcefully installed and cannot be uninstalled beyond deleting the files.
Repeat after me... Mozilla is not Netscape Mozilla is not Netscape etc. etc. BUT! Netscape is the major developer of Mozilla. Their goal is to create a browser which can compete with Internet Explorer. In order to do that, they need these features which can compete with Internet Explorer including all this 'feature bloat' as some of you call it. Netscape wants their primary target audience (in terms of numbers) to use Netscape's mail client, IM client, etc. So the first official release of Mozilla (which should be nearly identical to Netscape 5) will include this stuff. Yet the beauty of the Open Source model will allow a stripped down super-fast and small Mozilla browser to be available about the same time. So all I have to say is, PATIENCE! Wait until there is a finished product before you start complaining. Mozilla is coming!
Either there's a lot of flamebait going around or people don't understand Open Source / Mozilla, etc.
1) These add-ins have been written by people who have no connection to Netscape and are not part of the main Mozilla team.
Therefore this will not slow down development on the layout engine as the people who are working on that (mainly Netscape employees) are still working on it.
2) Anyone can contribute to Mozilla a nd if they do this is a good thing. It's good that these extensions exist but I don't think they'll make it into the official Netscape Communicator distribution. There has been NO word from Netscape saying that they would be included and there's not even a mention of these projects yet on Mozilla.org.
Netscape said they'd produce a small standards compliant browser and I think they'll stick to that as that's the best way to regain market share from IE. Just get it into your heads that just because someone writes it doesn't mean Netscape is going to include it.
I hope that Netscape will offer a selection of download options at least one where it's just browser only, then perhaps mail, news, then perhaps an editor and a pack with everything in it for those who want it. Also remember that most of these extensions are written in XUL/Javascript so that they don't contribute as much to the bloat as traditional addons.
...and if Netscape doesn't release a browser only version and neither does Mozilla.org you can bet that someone definitely will, that's the beauty of open source.
--
Yes! They are using Jabber, which in turns uses the protcol developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which in turn was co-developed by Microsoft, which in turn is used by MSN Messenger (MSM), which in turn means Mozzila ain't using AIM!!! Oh wait -- Mozzial *is* America Online... dammit... I hate that AOL is taking over everything...
The entire thing is basically modular. There's a directory with all the .sos for the different components.
Berlin-- http://www.berlin-consortium.org
DNA just wants to be free...
The IRC client consists of a pile of XUL/JS for UI and protocol implementation and a thin library to provide raw socket access. (The library will be replaced by use of the necko raw-socket API in the nearish future as well, and then there'll be no ``native'' code involved at all.)
You can take pretty much anything you want out of Mozilla, either at compile- or run-time. Including, of course, the much maligned mailnews stuff: just delete the components you don't want and get on with your life. (Note: some components are required for the browser to work, if that's the Mozilla app you're interested in, and there are some bugs in the form of compile- and run-time entanglements, but if you care at all they'd not be hard to fix.)
There are still lots of things left to fix in Mozilla (performance isn't yet anywhere near its potential and there are lots of big and small memory leaks to kill before beta, for example), but nobody here is talking about the real issues. It's just kneejerk responses to ``new thing available'' and wildly ignorant assumptions about the architecture of the software. Do people complain about bloat when someone releases a new GNOME app on slashdot, too?
People can trash Mozilla for bloat or hostility to left-handers or an extreme bias towards windowing systems if they want; there's no way to stop them, and I'm not sure it's really worth the bother anymore anyway. People who care will discover the facts of the matter, and try to help fix what they don't like. And who has time for the posers?
I help work on the Jabber development and a lot of what is being said on here is either a) untrue, or b) misinterpreted. If you all would take the time to read the Jabber site you would see why it is such a great project. It's 100% open source and bridges the gap of all the other RT IM programs out there. It truly is an amazing project deserving of a little more respect then immediately getting FUD and other ideas about it thrown about. Join us in #jabber on the openprojects IRC network and we'll straigthen out any questions that you may have.
There aren't any reasons. But that's "the promise of the web browser" anyway. Now you know why web browsers haven't gotten any better in the last 5 years: they're too busy adding checklist items for the marketing department, instead of fixing/improving HTTP, HTML renderring, and user interface issues.
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Have a Sloppy day!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
There's a directory with all the .sos for the various modules; just add and delete them at your leisure. I believe they're demand-loaded, too.
Berlin-- http://www.berlin-consortium.org
DNA just wants to be free...
This doesn't mean mozilla will be bloated. I imagine they will hear all these people recoiling in terror and realize not to make one big fat program, but rather the central web browsing module, letting people add what they want. I think its cool. Jabber integration? Yah! I've been waiting for jabber since it was first announced. IRC client? Eh... I don't really do the IRC thing around, but it wouldn't be bad to have it handy. Heres the scary thing... Alright, microsoft sees the way of the future as the web, pushing things to be integrated into the OS like IE and such... Here we have a web browser that will be incorporating all important internet thingies for the most part. Where most of the work force belongs to netscape. Who is owned by AOL. Who is one of microsoft's greatest competitors. Scary, neh?
http://www.somethingpositive.net Funny + bitter = comedy gold
I am still hoping that some day someone will come up with just a simple clean web browser. What I want on my desktop is something that can be kept in memory without taking up too much space or that can be started up in a few milliseconds (unlike navigator). It shouldn't crash on content it doesn't understand either (unlike almost anything available under Linux). What I really don't need is another piece of bloatware that just does anything 10 different other programs would do anyway, only not quite as well. Actually the KDE file manager comes close to the ideal lean browser, but then it still doesn't understand quite a few things ...
I like the idea of Mozilla. It's super great, *BUT*, pls. stop adding crap to this beast before getting even the simple things like ftp to work.
:-) windows.
.....
Two days ago I downloaded the latest binaries for (hrrrmmm
It started allright, fast HTML rendering, I really liked it.
I started to look whats in the menus, but the last used menu stayed on screen until i selected something in it. Irritating bug #1.
Allright, lets try this thing to download some stuff from an ftp server, thats what I normally use my browser for. It was impossible to even get it show me a directory of the ftp server. Bug #2.
Progress information, no no. Funny little horizontal image that was spinning even after i was finished downloading HTML pages. Or not spinning at all. Bug #3.
Plug in finder, I hate it. That irritating windows keeps popping up all the time on pages for AFAIK unknown reasons. I really dont know whats triggering it. Background sound?, some image format? syntax errors in HTML?
Pleaze Mozilla hackers. Make stuff like HTML and FTP work before integrating a lot of other buggy code into this product that for sure will be a killer when it is released. But if you continue work at this pace i'm afraid Internet has changed to something else when Mozilla is released.
skuggan@altavista.nospam.net
I'm kind of tired of bloatware also... too many developers concentrate too much on adding new "features" to software rather than making improvements to the core of their application. After reinstalling Netscape 4.6... I am eagerly awaiting the final release of iCab. It is refreshing to see a company develop a piece of software that does onr thing... and one thing well.
In the early days, the whole point of a browser (e.g. Mosaic) was to integrate functions, early browsers handled at least gopher, ftp and http protocals, that is the whole point of the protocal:// addressing system. I presume you were very upset when browsers (*early on*) starting displaying gifs and jpegs, why not just hand them off to xv?
Look here, you haven't got some fancy GUI setup to disable features but you got much more. You got the source!!!! In fact we all got the source so if I want my cool project in mozilla I can get that, if you don't want some feature you can disable it. Its just a matter of ./configure --enable-X --disable-Y and GO!.
This gives all the users more than just a chois between Communicator Standard or Communicator Proffesional.
/and Im sure you will be able to disable IRC and IM in the preferences anyway
De lyckliga slavarna är frihetens bittraste fiender, legalisera!!!
I don't think mozilla's irc client will have better fonctionnalities than xchat, bitchX nor mIrc. I don't understand the goals of this code integration.
Do you have some answers ?
I don't beleive it!
On a 56k connection it's hard enough as it is to download a netscape upgrade or a Mozilla release.
I already hate the fact that it comes with an HTML builder, a mail reader, a news reader and AOL IM.
I have a perfectly good mail reader called pine, and a great HTML builder called my-keyboard-and-vim.
Will someone please please make these things modules that you can opt to download in addition to a core browser download. I have a 16Meg 486 that is used as a family machine, it handles everything fine until you run netscape which eats the machine. Please stop writing _more_ crap. Concentrate on making a really good browser. Right now, I have to pick MSIE 5 for preference everytime. Netscape sucks, and so far, the mozilla releases that I've seen, whilst better, still don't come close.
Everyone is living in a personal delusion, just some are more delusional than others.
Yeah, it's being done proprietary by some company, and of course windows only, but here's what we really need: a module to annotate pages/url in real time. To put post-its(tm) on pages, to be able to chat real time, based on the page you're currently browsing ... isn't that cool? That's really simple to implement ... now that we have source code ...
Explain to me why anyone would want bloatware that contains "all internet protocols on one interface?!"
Unless Mozilla is just a shell for loadable modules of each of these parts people will be trashing it just as they trash Netscape currently for it's bloat.
--Mark
A lot of the posters here are missing the point. There are *optional* features. Because of the fact that you have the source code for Mozilla, you can disable these features with little difficulty - or add new ones, if you so desire.
This is what Open Source / Free(d) Software is all about. It's about choice. Nobody is forcing you to use these addons, but you have the option to use them.
A few months ago (maybe even a few weeks ago) many people were saying Mozilla is a failure. Try out the latest builds - it's getting better and faster all the time. I would use it as my main browser except for the fact that it uses more memory than I'd like (I only have 32MB because my motherboard has a bad SIMM slot). It looks better than netscape and very soon will be faster.
It think it's great that people are able to add things to Mozilla if they choose - don't you agree?
Every week you hear some negative negative person predicting the doom and downfall of this great program that great company. Face it folks: something will not fall for the simple reason that you *JINX* it. Programs like Netscape will be around in one form or another for a long time to come for the simple reason that people WANT it to be. Lonesmurf
rJames.org - illustration
Anyone noticed how Slashdots banners disappear with the current build of Mozilla.
Better fix that code Rob... is dead!
This may be a bit off topic, but reading the previous article about the GnuPG makes me think that it would be a Good Thing if the e-mail client could support a plugin for GnuPG. I'm not sure if there are any liscensing conflicts, but I don't think it would have to be in the code, just provide an easy interface so that more people could have security in their communications.
Could there be a 56 bit version for export? otherwise, I don't think they could be distributed together. Although, even if everyone had 56-bit encryption on their e-mail, things would be MUCH better.
I haven't looked into what kiind of support there already is for PGP, so maybe I'm out of line, but even the capability to use GnuPG through the e-mail front end would be nice.
Matt
for the most part thats what KFM does, yes, the K file manager, on the alpha its one of the least bad options. Personally thats why I'm waiting for mozilla.
I probably have no chance of guessing what Mozilla will be in the final release. Hopefully it'll be a browser core that's small & fast, and then have a whole bunch of stuff you can add. If it's large and bulky I'll still have to download it for development use, but I'll probably hate it for being the size it is. That's why I compare Mozilla, IE and Opera (and Netscape too). Bloatware sucks, browsers doubly so.
There was a reflow issue that has apparently been fixed... try a nightly build from this week... however, resizing the window is still too slow..
Hey all you /. folks! :)
/.! To make some corrections to the posts that I've seen floating around, allow me to submit the following comments:
I am actively helping in the Jabber project, and I am sad to see so many hastily posted comments here on
1) Jabber is not a rip-off of anything. Jabber is completely different than other IM systems. The first thing that sets it apart is that it is open source and GPLed. But what is more interesting than that is the fact that Jabber has the ability to speak to any type of communication protocol that ANYONE would care to develop a module for. The thing that makes this even cooler is that the modules just need to be installed on the Jabber servers. That way a Jabber client (like the one that is going to work WITH Mozilla) can instantly have access to other protocols as soon as the server has been updated - no updating of the clients is necessary.
2) I have to PARTIALLY agree with the posts about Mozilla getting bloated. But I say partially because I don't believe that most of the posters (especially the AC's) realize that what makes Mozilla bloated is the MODULES (not sure what the "official" term is for modules in Mozilla). The Mozilla Jabber client just works WITH Mozilla and may not necessarily be included in the binaries and so forth and I can't imagine it being required in source packages. DaKrushr already wrote a good post covering this.
3) Jabber has hardly anything to do with Mozilla. Yes, we will be developing a CLIENT to use with Mozilla, but that is just one client. We have clients for almost anything you can think of - Java, Windows, X Window using GTK+, a JavaScript one for browsers, MacOS, Linux command line and more! Please realize that the Jabber client that will be working with Mozilla is just a tiny part of what the Jabber project is all about.
Thank you for your time, and I hope that you will look more indepth into Jabber before writing it off in a heartbeat.
If you'd like to ask some questions, feel free (as temas already posted) to pop into #jabber on the Open Projects IRC Network (try carter.openprojects.net).
Eliot Landrum
Leader of Jabber Documentation Team
eliot@landrum.NOSPAM.cx
my guess is that Mozilla, although "Netscape," is not AOL. I've seen Jabber before -- it's supposed to be an implementation of EVERY IM protocol -- but they're not going from the official AOL docs. (assuming there are some somewhere) AOL might still end up locking it out and/or putting pressure on Mozilla to have it removed. personally, I think this technique would backfire (check me on this here -- I haven't read the NPL all that carefully) if someone is allowed to fork the source tree. of course, AOL could end up blocking it anyways (if they still have anything up their sleeve) but it's horrible public relations (although mostly with people not likely to use AOL) and I don't see them risking it. They might say "well, Microsoft is a company and so we have a problem with them, but this is a "community project" and so we're ok with it." kind of a cop-out, but there you are. then their only recourse to blocking Microsoft would be legal and not technological.
offtopic amusement: when I went to MozillaZine, there was a banner for MSN Instant Messager. Hmm...
Lea
I'm starting to wonder whether the future "war" between browsers on the Linux platform will be between Opera and Mozilla. that is, provided Mozilla becomes a bloated gargantuan download. then people will maybe have the same options they have on Win32 now. you can pay for Opera to get a browser that fits on a floppy, has tiny footprint, renders fast, but has no mail or news support to speak of. or you can choose the Swiss Army Knife of browsers, Mozilla, which gives you all you ever did (and did not) want.
since I've hated the size of IE5 since it came out, regardless of its quality, and will pay for software I find worthy of payment, my choice is clear. even though earlier milestones of Mozilla gave hope for the future.
Hmm software that trys to do everything Winblows
I think it's great that the project will offer these other features, as long as they are similarly open source. I would love to see an extensible framework that would incorporate not just the IRC and IM stuff, but whatever else people want to write as plugins. This would hopefully encourage a best-of-breed accretion such as is happening in the KDE / GNOME space because the programs plug in easily and "cross-pollenate".
Before you go out screaming bloody murder about Mozilla adding all these features and and wasting their time with "side projects" instead of focusing on making a good browser, allow me to interject. Now, unless my eyes decieve me, I seem to recall seeing these things noted as third-party developments. Would that not mean that someone other than the Mozilla team is wasting their time on these bloat-infesting side projects? Also, as afore mentioned, if ya don't like it, take some scissors to the source code.
That's my two pesos.
--Ricky
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I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.
-- Dr. Seuss