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Two Interesting Mozilla Articles
DragonHawk writes "First, a short review of the Milestone Ten release, which gives you a good idea of where Mozilla is at. Second, and more interesting, is this article on press attitude towards Mozilla. It gives you a real good idea of how big a project this is, and just how far they've come. Any web user should check them out. "
Also, it's SLOOOOOOW. (Word 6 slow...) There was a thread about this on MozillaZine a while back, where a bunch of posters, including me, were getting startup times over 60 seconds on fast machines -- and not just on the first run. Adding a splash screen would make it seem less comatose but it's still much slower than Communicator.
Between that and the fact that Mac users are much more finicky about interface design, I'm kind of pessimistic about Mozilla's popularity on the Mac. It's a shame -- I mean it's not as if any of the Mac hardcore want to use Microsoft but IE is rapidly becoming the only real choice. (Although I'm writing this in Navigator.)
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Is it just me, or is Mozilla more concerned about their Win32 release then their Linux release? Now before you guys start flamin the hell out of me..
/root/package, put it in my path
:(
I just ran 10/18/1999-12 Win32 release.. I have
to say.. WOW.. It is REAL REAL nice, I love
the translation/search features, its a VERY smooth
browser, and I'm seriously thinking about running
it 100% of the time I spend in Windows.
Now I also ran the 10/17/1999-09 Linux Release (I've noticed they seem to release more Win32 nightly builds then Linux builds, why is that?)..
And I had trouble even getting it to run.. I
untared it in
so that it could find all those libs.. and WHAT A MESS. Its ugly, its PURE STRIPPED browser window, thats it. How come it doesn't have all the pretty stuff thats in the Win32 release? I was soo encouraged by the way the new Win32 build works, I seriously wanted to have the same thing in Linux and finally give Netscrape 4.7 the BOOT.
SO can anyone tell me if I'm an idiot or is
this just the code hard facts? That Win32 people
have a better Mozilla then Linux people?
-Matthew
Technetos, Inc.
heh heh...not quite there in my coding ability yet. I'm working on it though ;-)
----------------
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
on the page where you downloaded mozilla, it tells you to check a bug report about proxies.
Add the following to your prefs.js file (created after you launch mozilla for the first time) user_pref("network.proxy.http", "servername"); user_pref("network.proxy.http_port", port#);
--
~mindlace
Is this the same interface that comes up when you click "View Source" in the menu on the taskbar? The one I'm referring to is "greyed-out" and doesn't allow editing. Maybe I'm wrong or just don't know about the one you are referring to. Thanks for the response though.
----------------
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
Mozilla is going to die if it doesnt get finished VERY soon.
Are you actually saying that, if Mozilla takes another 18 months, but when it is released it is better than the contemporaneous releases of either Opera or Internet Explorer, and you don't have to pay for it, you wouldn't switch to it? And that enough other people wouldn't switch to it that it would utterly fail to gain enough marketshare to not be considered "dead"?
And, of course, on Linux and many other platforms the only competition to Mozilla is earlier versions of Netscape, as Opera and IE on those platforms is either neither planned or still vaporware. Are you saying that a free Mozilla released in 18 months would not replace Navigator 4.x as the dominant browser on those platforms? If so, is this because you think people would keep paying for Opera, because IE will be released for Linux, or because nobody will upgrade from Netscape 4.x to Mozilla?
I really wonder what standard has to be applied to a reply to your post to qualify as a "stupid remark" relative to your post.
That, in itself, would be a victory. Microsoft would then make its operating system GUI dependent on an open-source product.
No, it doesn't help crush Microsoft directly. But for MS to use open source software as a major part of its OS? Can you say PR victory? Can you say credibility? If Microsoft did this, they'd render themselves completely unable to FUD open source software.
Most of the questions you ask are answered in the release notes, including the one about precompiled bins.
Also, try disabling gfx in Prefs|Debug.
But, that is the main problem with OpenSource coders. They have great ideas, but the ideas do not benefit the computing community at large because the great code is leveraged out by business people such as MS and others. It takes someone like Red Hat to take the OpenSource to the masses. Of course, if all you're talking about is server software such as Apache, word of mouth and excellence is enough to catapult a piece of software into wide use by expert computer users. But when we look at Mozilla, this is a piece of software designed for the masses and the masses will use what they are handed. You have to position your product in such a way that it is used by many people and is visible to many people. With an eye towards business, you can get into strategic partnerships and create a secondary market for your product and that in turn allows you to find what the users wants and provide it to them.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
Shut the fuck up! you whinneing mac bastard! I deal with Mac user every day they are all jerks and faggots!
I'm always amazed when I hear about people with such a lack of imagination they can't figure out a copy paste. Simple:
In Winblows, CTRL-C is copy, CTRL-V is paste.
In X11, highlight what you want and click middle button (or both buttons if you don't have a middle button) to paste it where you want.
If all else fails, save the file and then open it in a text editor.
As much as I hate to admit it, there has to be a business driving the OpenSource movement. As someone said earlier, everyday users will not deal with a pre-beta browser, and probably not even a beta browser. If Mozilla wants to avoid losing the main stream audience, they need to get a product out very soon. It's fine to say that they spent a year going in the wrong direction. But, come on, this is the Internet, a year is a lifetime. Mozilla people should know this better than anyone. A bunch of OpenSource heads (like us here on /.) will not be able to sustain a browser. You have to get it into the everyday users hands. I say hurah for Mozilla and I'm glad that they have high scruples and are making an excellent product, but maybe the way that MS does it where the first 2 versions suck is the way to go. Get your name out there and get something into the peoples hands. Right now, the regular user is being dirven into the arms of MS because there is no comprable alternative that they can see. It's a terible fact of life, but the stupid end users rule the market. Nate
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
Will Mozilla have the ability to use the "View Source" command and edit, copy, paste, etc. the source which is being viewed? Yes, this functionality is already present in M10.
Berlin-- http://www.berlin-consortium.org
DNA just wants to be free...
From the looks of it, it's a very boring release, meaning that this is a release of something that simply works, does what one expects it to do.
Now don't get me wrong, that is actually very good news. No scandals, no ugly crashes, just a good product.
Point is, how to tell the world?
-John
The funny thing is, I wrote a long rant, about how each nightly build has ever increasing usability, and as a joke I was going to put *crash* at the end, and it crashed :)
:), to nice and mostly usable (crashing when you write amusing /. posts)
Anyway, M11 nightly builds went from barely usable (couldnt http-post) to http-post working, but quitting when you press any key
I wont push my luck this time...
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
The funny thing is, I wrote a long rant, about how each nightly build has ever increasing usability, and as a joke I was going to put *crash* at the end, and it crashed :) :), to nice and mostly usable (crashing when you write amusing /. posts)
Anyway, M11 nightly builds went from barely usable (couldnt http-post) to http-post working, but quitting when you press any key
I wont push my luck this time...
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
Word 6 was just plain a crummy product :)
.)
It was slow as blazes, and took out or encumbered features that I used daily. Equation editor is no substitute for the old typesetting commands, inserting symbols (greek) is much more complicated, and the mail merge is, well, wretched.
Aside from the unbearably slow, these problems exist to this day (or worse: open a file that uses the old formats, and it changes the *original* file to the new format without permission, unless you knew ahead of time to mark it read-only).
If it weren't for LyX, I'd still be using Word 5.1 today, as well as Excel 4. IM!HO, these were the last good products to come out of Redmond.
A while back, I needed to send out many job applications. I figured out that it would be easier to add mail-merge to LyX than to fight with the current MS version (hey, let's display the results of the conditional from the first record, rather than the conditional! See, a nice easy nothing to click on to make changes. Bleach.). I was right. With the mailmerge patch applied, I can now not only write merge code as was once possible, I can do the things that *should* have been in word's merge capacity to start with. (IF/ELSEIF, unlimited recursion . .
What worse can you say about a product than that it was easier to write something to replace it than to use it?
I don't think it's valid to judge Mozilla's speed just yet, since it's not very optimized at all at this point. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if there's still a lot of debugging code in there.
In short, you should never judge the speed of an app before the release version.
4.x != MozillaClassic.
You can download MozillaClassic source code.
I would just like to point out that I originally saw these two articles linked from LinuxToday. I submitted them to Slashdot because they actually are not really Linux-specific at all, and are of interest to the general geek population. But I wanted to give LT their fair credit for good linkage.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
I don't care what this guy says; Mozilla is going to succeed.
If I read one more pro-Microsoft, anti-Open Source article like these two I think I'm going to puke.
Hands up all you mozilla bashers out there... slashdot must have the lowest ratio of feeding hands to biters in the quadrant.
Will Opera be better than Mozilla? Possibly. Is that a reason for abandoning Mozilla as doomed from the start? Absolutely not.
I've been using M10 for a while now, and I've got to say I'm impressed with the progress that's been made.
Shame on Netscape. They were supposed to build a web browser to meet the growing needs of today's users and instead they went and built a web browsing architecture to meet the growing needs of tomorrow's users and businesses. But I wanted it now, damnit!
Well said, that man. You've stirred at least one soul into resolving to finally getting around to submitting bug reports.
Remember: Mozilla may be bug-ridden, but that's mainly because of the large number of unreasonable assholes who look on it as a finished product, and give up as soon as there's a dodgy refresh.
It's not even beta, for fuck's sake.
software? i'm simply a non-programming linux newbie, but my understanding has been that open source, free software is free from the time schedule that a for-profit company would impose. so, what's the problem with letting it be ready when it is ready?
You want something now? OK, download and compile Mozilla Classic (4.x) from Mozilla.org.
...the ability to use the "View Source" command and edit, copy, paste, etc. the source which is being viewed? I never have like this particular lack of functionality in the previous Netscape browsers. Otherwise it sounds like the guys are doing a great job so far. Keep up the good work!
----------------
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
I tried downloading and running some builds a while back and even built from source once (I printed out the final link command and hung it on the wall; it was 4 pages). It never worked for me either. I did get to see viewer once, but I couldn't do anything useful with it. But now, thanks to a nice .deb in the current Debian unstable distribution, I'm finally able to run this thing. So, you should be able to try it out on those Debian boxes at least.
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
I agree, the GTK interface needs some work. Also, probably GTK needs some work. The GIMP uses it fine, but it has issues with redrawing, flickering, and generally making applications look like gray windows when they should be displaying something or refreshing. Anyone know why this is? Do people just write apps that don't redraw themselves enough, or is this a good thing?
:)
And read the article. This is all positive press, and very true. I liked M10 a lot, it's come a *long* way from the previous builds. (and even then I managed to build it on my old P133+32MB RAM--unlike Microsoft, the system requirements for development are even understated!)
However, if KFM improves (and I hear it has), or if I only need text-browsing (W3M) then I might not have to worry about it for a web browser. If I also want Mail/News/Page Design and all that in a GUI, then Mozilla starts looking better. (but why do it in a GUI?)
However, with so many good, fast, free web browsing efforts, I really don't need Opera.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Just compiled M10 this morning, and I'm not
impressed at all. On my AMD K6/2 400 Mhz it's
really jumpy and slow. Also, the proxy info
dialog doesn't let you enter in anything.
The text fields are there, but no input is
possible, so I couldn't even test out the
browsing. However, just trying to open windows
and pull down menus was quite slow.
I just did a default configure and make; did I
miss something?
--- witty signature
I don't think I've had a usable result out of any of the linux milestone builds since M6. It seems to be hellishly sensitive to shared library versions that I just don't seem to find commonly in place on many of the linux boxes I use.
I realise that this comment will generate a multitude of responses along the lines of "It works just fine for me loser, stop spreading FUD" but I'm just honestly reporting the state of play as I find it.
I would love to use a OS browser with the functionality that Mozilla offers , I would like to chip in to the development towards stability, even if only in the form of usable bug reports, just not quite enough to manually upgrade my libc , C++ runtime , compiler , ORB etc to match what seem to be specific linking requirements that you just don't get from the majority of GTK Unix Apps, even including that cherished old scapegoat for stability problems, GNOME .
The searching I have done seems to indicate that the released builds will work fine out of the box on up to the minute Red Hat installations, but I haven't been able to coax them into working on the older Red Hat SuSE or Debian boxes I have access to.
I'm just wondering if the ability to run on a wider range of GNU/Linux systems out there might engage or enhance that massively parallel debugging engine that helps drive OS projects along at such a staggering rate of improvement.
-- Oh Well
I'm glad to see the progress that Mozilla has been making. I'm still holding off on using IE4/5, but I do recognize that they are, unfortunately, better now than Netscape 4.x. Wait, let me rephrase that. Better than Netscape 4.5/6/7. I never had any problems with 4.07, but as soon as I switched to 4.51 a few months ago, problems popped up in the worst way. And on the Solaris box that I use, I can't even use the newsgroup module reliably. I do, on the other hand, use Opera a decent amount and I'm pleased with it for the most part.
Can't wait until Mozilla is complete. If I had the time to study the code, I'd contribute to the project; I'm just bogged down with my own stuff as it is.
--
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
see the picture
The latest nightly builds seem to have broken two :-) and i can write a nice lightwieght
important things: I can't save the window size or
toolbar state in apprunner anymore, and the "back"
button in viewer is nonfunctional. Admittedly, I did
have to edit some files in ~/.mozilla manually to get
my favorite window size, but i didn't really mind.
I like viewer because the interface is lot more light-
weight... i don't get a lot of these complaints about
the 'GTK' in apprunner. from my point of view, it looks
like apprunner is drawing buttons and menus from
scratch rather than using GTK... i would prefer that.
Hopefully once the rendering widget stablizes, the
interface will be published in a form mere mortals like
me can understand
wrapper that's only a bit fatter than viewer is now.
As a Mac user, I was concerned about the non-Mac-ness of Mozilla's interface. But some people argued the merits of using XUL for cross-platform-ness, making it easier to port and synchronize and so forth...
HOWEVER, isn't this precisely what happened with Word 6 on the Mac? In the interest of making the software identical across platforms, the Mac version lacked consistency with all other Mac applications, and didn't function in the way a Mac application was supposed to behave.
Everyone was up in arms about this, even causing Microsoft to release a (non-free) "downgrade" to Word 5.1. The people rejoiced when Word 98 felt much more (though not enough, imho) like a standard Mac application.
Is not the same thing happening to Mozilla? After all, even if, a skin is written to make it LOOK like Mac app, as long as it uses XML and not standard Mac toolbox controls, it simply will not FEEL like a Mac app. In M10, for instance, text-selection is a simple inverted white-on-black box, instead of using the standard Mac settings for text-selection coloring.
Likewise, many controls do not function as they do on a Mac. This will not be changed with a mere skin.
I think interface consistency within an operating system and the apps written for it are incredibly important, and I'm afraid Mozilla will not achieve this goal, and remind us in many ways of Word 6's cross-platform interface fiasco.
So my question is, will it be possible to actually make the Mac version of Mozilla use actual standard Mac controls? Does XUL support this? Or does it only support an approximation, in effect rewriting the Mac controls and not quite getting it right and getting a slightly off feel?
What makes IE5 and Opera 3.6 better for you? If you don't explain why you prefer them, the developers will never know what to work on. And if you don't have time to say more than "Mozilla is going to die because I say so", then yes, you should take heed when people tell you to shut up.
To Mozilla Developers:
First, Mozilla is doing well and surprising everyone. The new layout engine is fast and stable, despite the hideous number of standards that need to be supported nowadays just to view a web page.
My nitpick is that on initial load, it is ... well... damned ugly. If you are at the stage where you are looking for a large number of testers, pretty up that interface so that people can stomach using it on a daily basis. Also, people's initial impression of Mozilla will change with a prettier interface. Mozilla is a product in the latter stages of development, more things work than don't work. But to anyone not familiar with the details of the project, loading Mozilla for the first time makes it seem that you have just figured out how to make buttons. Its understandable, but not excusable, for a journalist to "check it out", run it for an hour or so, not be impressed, and write a bad review. They are used to dealing with a commercial software industry where the interface comes first (to wow the journalists, spread the FUD, etc.) and the backend comes later.
Bottom line, make it prettier and you will draw more testers and better press.
Just a note to give credit to mozillaZine for the forum from which these reviews come. Chris, Jason, and Steve have been and continue to do a wonderful job maintaining the #1 source of mozilla news and information.
The Release-Notes
this functionality is already in the code.
The one thing that tells me that Mozilla will be a killer browser when it comes out is that I can view freshmeat, the site with the most tables I've ever seen, and it dynamically resizes the tables when I resize the browser without reloading the page or even slowing down. That's a hell of a feat. Plus the fact that it's cross-platform to the core is a beautiful thing that appeals to the coder in me.
Read the article first!
I know that some things Ill state here are going to cause stupid remarks like "M$ blabla" or "stop telling that shit" etc. Just in advance: I am neither a M$ lover nor a anti-opensource guy.
To put it shortly: Mozilla is going to die if it doesnt get finished VERY soon. Damnit, if I look at IE5 or Opera 3.6 (my favourite browser) and then compare it to Mozilla (M10) I just gotta admit that commercialism sometimes pays off. IE5 and Opera are better, put simply.
I do a lot of programming myself and I know its cool to have the best enginge, the most flawless layout unit etc. but - I need something to cruise the web NOW. I dont want to wait till 20xx to have a decent browser.
Mozilla being cool just because it is opensource? Come on, Ive been using Linux for more than 3 years and Im sick of trying to pull a BETA of this program to write my mail, using a pre-ALPHA of that program to browse my harddisc etc. I want a system I can WORK with and not a system I can PARTIALLY use.
Now to all those bongos who only seem capable of yelling: "GO AHEAD AND HACK SOME CODE, OTHERWISE SHUT UP" - you are obviously from another world. Otherwise I cannot understand how much time you have left each day after working. I dont have the TIME to waste on projects like Mozilla.
I know Mozilla is still far away from a finished product, but as long as I cant use it, Ill take Opera. And if Opera for Linux comes out and Mozilla isnt finished Ill pay the $35 and buy it - Mozilla being cool or not.
this guy freakin' loves mozilla! calm down!
I checked out the M9 release when it was released and it looked like it was coming along fairly well. I don't think that the project is doomed. Not yet, it is only doomed if they dump the whole project. There is coming competition in the market once again. Yes M$ may gain market share but there will be choices. True computer users will be willing to download the new Mozilla when it is releaased if not just to try it out, but also to use. I know that I'll be getting a copy when it is completed.
Somehow I just cannot see M$ getting the whole enchelada(sp) ever. To many people and companies are opposed to them.
Only 'flamers' flame!
It's good to read. It's good to see someone passionate about this. However, you're preaching to the choir.
The problem (if you want to call it that) is that most windoze users who I admin to (who have just barley heard of Linux) had no Idea that a version of the old netscape ran on it and have never heard of the Mozilla project. They hapilly live in a world where M$ spoon feeds them the apps (and bugs!) and the last thing they heard about Netscape was something that was glanced off the pages of a Ziff-Davis publication about the "Browser wars."
This is what the "shadow" is and it's really quite silly.
I thought this kind of sensationalist psudo-journalism just about as trite as the "cola-wars" (something cooked up by marketing companies and departments to sell more).
I've said it before and I'll say it again CONGRADULATIONS to the Mozilla Team for their hard work and persistance! When it's "Ready for Prime Time," "formallay" released, and periodical marketing machines get a hold of it, you will see a 180 degree turn around in what they say.
GO Mozilla!
-ravage
-- "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."- Albert E.
I have a question for those who hope Mozilla will some day "beat" MSIE: what if Microsoft decides to "embrace and extend" Mozilla? If Mozilla has a killer layout engine, an MS engineer can grab it and stuff it into Internet Explorer. Ditto any other good component. An at-least-as-good-as-Mozilla IE fitted with additional MS goodies (SSL, mail client, FrontPage etc) would seem to be unbeatable. Mozilla is open source and modular. This means it is quite vulnerable to being hijacked by MS or being plundered for code treasures. Also, Mozilla cannot beat IE on price as they are both free of charge.
A good effect of this scenario is that it guarantees good code all round. The down side, of course, is that those who hope to see Microsoft beaten will continue to be disappointed.
I think you are missing the point of milestones. Milestones measure the distance you have travelled. Mozilla has hit the M10 milestone. It has not hit the M11 milestone. Calling the nightly build M11 before it actually hits the milestone is somewhat counter-intuitive.
You know, its a great thing that open source projects are gaining greater visibility. But just as a side note, who cares about everybody else? Mozilla will live, regardless of whether it beats MS, whether it gets dumped by AOL. The point is to create an alternative for those who demand extensibility.
Sure, mozilla hasn't put anything major out on the table. This is the slow time. This is the time when a dedicated group of organizers and programmers toil to make something the right way-- for the benefit of everybody following.
When Mozilla is released in a finished state, we will begin to see the exponential advances that we expect from open software.
Come one everybody, look at the graph of x squared. Down before 1.0, everything sure looks slow. But later...
Did you read the articles? Or were you under drugs?
I have installed once mozilla and when it started it was extremely small and ugly. Guess what, I quit the app, cd /usr/local, rm -rf the whole mozilla directory! Yes, I'd be happy to start using it to be able to make bug reports, but not before it starts looking like a modern app for god's sake! I mean once you start using gnome+enlightenment, all that crappy Athena widgets look becomes hated, hated.....