Mozilla M12 Released

Cyrrin writes "M12 source is up on the Mozilla ftp site. Binary builds should be appearing RSN." I've been playing with the pre12 builds all week and let me just say wow. It's getting faster and more stable. It's really exciting to see it all come together and climb out of the vapor. The preferences dialog is really slow, but progressive page rendering is fast. Good job to everyone involved, and welcome to the home stretch.

Comments

footprint

[MenTaLguY]

Suprisingly it is pretty small. The packed-up nightly builds which include all of the .sos for browser (with debugging symbols!), mail, news, etc, plus a lot of images, scripts, and demo pages, are about a 5MB download. Do a non-debug build, omit the mailnews libraries (leaving just the browser and some other stuf), and leave out all the demo images/html, and I think you're left with something pretty embeddable.

Isn't this a little premature?

[Deven]

Is it really helpful to post an announcement like this before it's entirely ready? Yes, the M12 source is up, but none of the binaries are yet, much less mirrored to other sites.

Couldn't this sort of announcement wait until the mozilla.org announcement is made? I don't imagine they'll delay an announcement unnecessarily, and driving traffic to their FTP server prematurely might not be appreciated...

An old FidoNet tagline put to new use...

[DragonHawk]

That's all that IE is anyways. An up-to-date crutch to use while waiting for Mozilla.

"MSIE is great! I used it to download Mozilla!"

Ah, I eagerly await the day. :-)

Maybe we'll see FreeBSD binaries again now :-)

[Zigg]

It seems that one great side effect Mozilla has had is pushing lots of open source OS's hard to fix various problems that they've had. A few months ago we saw a problem with threads and glibc on Linux that Mozilla exposed hardest and best.

Now, according to bug #14676, Mozilla has exposed some trouble in FreeBSD's dlopen() which has subsequently been fixed, making FreeBSD a better OS.

Mozilla is a Good Thing(R). :-)

Re:This is definieltly alpha material

[Gurlia]

I'm looking forward to replacing Communicator too... Communicator is just too unstable and has too many bugs.

Well, I hope Mozilla delivers on its promises (looks like it's going to, it's looking pretty good so far). We really need a standards-compliant browser out there ASAP so that web designers will stop producing pages that are compatible only with IE. Netscape has (or used to have; I hope still has) a large enough customer base that if Mozilla becomes popular among them, they will not be an insignificant percentage which web designers can ignore.

Not that I care that much about sites that use IE-specific code -- most of them are just useless fluff anyway. But the average Joe user likes all that fluffy eye-candy, and we certainly don't want the Web to become proprietarized because of this.

Slices, dices, chops, cores!

[Jikes]

I guarantee on my small insignificant life that you will be delighted with the new functionality, stability, and efficiency in M12. It still eats RAM like a mother, isn't luxuriant-feeling like IE, and falls over every once in a while, but it's well behaved, significantly more responsive-feeling, and handles far more page/frame/ecmascript/java issues... As an added bonus, the Win32 version can find and use all your old plugins, like Flash!

For the uninitiated, let's run down a few facts.

*************************

Mozilla is licensed under the Mozilla Public License, which is certified Open Source.

Mozilla has nothing to do with Netscape whatsoever, except for a majority of the authors, the backwards-plugin functionality, and the fact that Mozilla will be incorporated into Netscape 5.

Mozilla is quite modular.

Mozilla is completely cross platform. If the OS exists, Mozilla will probably have no problems running on it.

Mozilla is a very insanely complex program, which is probably why it doesn't have a lot of outside hackers. It's not a weekend project, and the codebase is enormously sophisticated.

Mozilla will do to-the-standard CSS1, HTML4.0, DOM Level 1, XML, a great majority of CSS2 (although this is not promised), and the latest bastard variant of Javascript.

Mozilla will not have crypo. That's for binary-only vendors, or your own project.

The entire UI (ENTIRE) will be themeable. So if you don't care for the UI, don't bitch, because theme support is coming soon, and you will be able to write your own.

Mozilla is going to be large because that is how it is. Don't bitch about bloat, because none of the weekend-project HTML widgets your favorite toolkit sports are able to do everything Mozilla does yet.

Mozilla is not going to force any particular Java Virtual Machine, HTML editor, or mailer on you. Although the comes-with editor and mailer are extremely nice this time around.

Mozilla will be a compile-it-yourself type thing if you so desire.

Report any and all bugs to bugzilla.mozilla.com. Please follow the bug submission guidelines. A shitty bug report is worse than none at all, and wastes developer time.

If you wish, you can do hourly downloads of binaries, weekly downloads of tarballs, or up-to-the-minute CVS of mozilla.

You will be delighted with mozilla. If not, use something else.

Re:Slices, dices, chops, cores!

[aeonek]

Comments:

Mozilla is licensed under the Mozilla Public License, which is certified Open Source.

True for a significant part of it, but some of it is Netscape Public License. Although it doesn't restrict the use of the source code, it includes som clause that gives Netscape special privilegies.

Mozilla has nothing to do with Netscape whatsoever, except for a majority of the authors, the backwards-plugin functionality, and the fact that Mozilla will be incorporated into Netscape 5.

Oh, come on! Mozilla has a LOT to do with Netscape. Everybody knows that.

Mozilla is quite modular.

True.

Mozilla is completely cross platform. If the OS exists, Mozilla will probably have no problems running on it.

You have to port it, and it's not trivial. Granted, 97% of mozilla is completely platform-independent.

Mozilla is a very insanely complex program, which is probably why it doesn't have a lot of outside hackers. It's not a weekend project, and the codebase is enormously sophisticated.

True.

Mozilla will do to-the-standard CSS1, HTML4.0, DOM Level 1, XML, a great majority of CSS2 (although this is not promised), and the latest bastard variant of Javascript.

IIRC, it will do ECMAScript, which is the standardized version.

Mozilla will not have crypo. That's for binary-only vendors, or your own project.

True.

The entire UI (ENTIRE) will be themeable. So if you don't care for the UI, don't bitch, because theme support is coming soon, and you will be able to write your own.

It has been themable for ages.

Mozilla is going to be large because that is how it is. Don't bitch about bloat, because none of the weekend-project HTML widgets your favorite toolkit sports are able to do everything Mozilla does yet.

It's not going to be large compared to IE or NS, but maybe if you compare to lynx...

Mozilla is not going to force any particular Java Virtual Machine, HTML editor, or mailer on you. Although the comes-with editor and mailer are extremely nice this time around.

Well, those components are in the binaries, so you have to download them. Not the JVM, but messenger and composer. However, they don't get loaded before you use them, and you can compile your own version without them if you want.

Mozilla will be a compile-it-yourself type thing if you so desire.

True.

Re:Mozilla speed

[Matts]

I have to say that mozilla already beat your comment. I've been using the pre-12's for a few days now, and it rocks. Barring a few scrolling problems, freshmeat and slashdot render instantly. The only issue now is waiting for the cache to be plugged in (apparently Intel is working on an advanced cache for Mozilla) and for a few stability issues to be fixed. Otherwise it's looking really great. Kudos to the developers.

Re:This is definieltly alpha material

[yist]

I'm looking forward to replacing Communicator too... Communicator is just too unstable and has too many bugs.

I hope everyone out there is doing the Right Thing (tm) and reporting any bugs they find. There really is no use in saying "Hey this program is full of bugs" and not doing anything about it, whilst you can.
Found a communicator bug?:

- Communicator bug report form
-Bugzilla, for mozilla

Help make a better product!

Source code size

[ajs]

21MB of source! Um... Should my browser really be larger than my operating system kernel? Should my browser really be bigger than my windowing system?

I have a lot of respect for Mozilla, but I have to say: isn't it about time to fork the code-based into several smaller projects?

It would be nice, for example, if the mail handler were a separate program so that any mailer could (ab)use the same API in order to replace Mozilla's default. Or, is this already possible with the plug-in API?

Re:JAVA support in M12 : Needs Java 1.3

[Matts]

Mozilla requires Java 1.3 for it's OJI (Open Java Interface). Currently Java 1.3 is available only in beta, but that should change before mozilla is released.

Crypto back-port

[evilpenguin]

You know, I've never really looked into the RFCs on SSL and https. Is anyone following Mozilla closely enough to know how hard it is going to be to get crypto into Mozilla after the fact, either by licensed RSA implementation "plugin" (ugh) or by use of some compatible, patent-free, open source library developed outside the United States and thus not subject to our boneheaded crypto export restrictions?

I realize that this is a complex question...

Gecko still does fit on a floppy

[deusx]

Browser != HTML engine.

Mozilla as a browser will not fit on a floppy. Various Mozilla technology components, such as the Gecko rendering engine, most likely will.

You don't really think that Nokia, who IIRC expressed interest in using Mozilla on a wireless device, will be using the same Mozilla browser as it's assembled on Linux and Win32, do you?

No, they'll prolly be using a version of the HTML engine, with a new browser wrapped around it.

Still smaller than Emacs ;-)

[Per Abrahamsen]

21MB of source! Um... Should my browser really be larger than my operating system kernel?

Well, it is less than the source for Emacs 21 (26 MB .{c,h,el} files).
Of course, Emacs does do a lot more than Mozilla.

Re:I hate to see IE succeed (and politics)

[Mr. Slippery]

So let me get this straight: Microsoft's marketing practices are as bad as slavery and abusive child labor?

You are committing the fallacy of the Extended Analogy:

The fallacy of the Extended Analogy often occurs when some suggested general rule is being argued over. The fallacy is to assume that mentioning two different situations, in an argument about a general rule, constitutes a claim that those situations are analogous to each other.

This fallacy is best explained using a real example from a debate about anti-cryptography legislation:

"I believe it is always wrong to oppose the law by breaking it."

"Such a position is odious: it implies that you would not have supported Martin Luther King."

"Are you saying that cryptography legislation is as important as the struggle for Black liberation? How dare you!"

HTH. HAND.

Mozilla marks the end of browser duopoly

[Markonen]

No wonder Microsoft wanted to see Netscape dead. Microsoft has everything to lose if the world will collectively embrace a new, standards compliant browsing platform. Mozilla will provide just that, and like M12 is starting to show, offer an additional bonus: it's quickly becoming the absolutely best browser out there.

Sooner than you think, the Mozilla 1.0 release will be in the hands of anyone that's interested, in complete source form. This WILL spawn zillions of of new, Mozilla-based browser version. They will have minuscule market shares at first, but that's when the big players will enter: Computer manufacturers will start making browsers to bundle with their machines, application developers will start integrating browser features into existing apps, big corporations will create custom browsers for internal use.

Each of these new browsing platforms will make little difference on its own, but grouped together, they will create a single, compatible, cross-platform application environment that is based on accepted industry standards. Mozilla will be the catalyst of life in this expanding pool of diverse browsers, and together the pool will quickly challenge Internet Explorer's position as the dominant browser.

There will be no reason to ponder if Compaq, Dell or Apple will include the Netscape Communicator or Microsoft Internet Explorer with their machines. They can and will roll their own, emphasizing their brand's unique selling proposition through innovative, custom features and look-n-feel.

How will that be possible? Luckily, it's a certainity that Microsoft will be barred from forcing their distribution channel (OEMs) to distribute Internet Explorer with other Microsoft products. This will level the playing field and launch wide-scale Mozilla-based browser development.

The emerging new browsers will share an API that is the W3C standards suite, and in this Microsoft-vs-the-world situation Microsoft will witness their embrace-extend-extinguish strategy becoming a public relations nightmare. Eventually Microsoft has to follow suit and develop a standards compliant browser. When this is realized at Redmond, it may very well be that the company will even switch to use the Mozilla layout engine as a goodwill stunt.

Consequences: Microsoft will lose some of the applications barrier to entry they've so feverishly protected all these years. Faced with this reality, they will even claim that the barried never existed. The Open Source camp will rejoice, but only to see Microsoft products grow their market share by sheer inertia.

Marko

Disclaimer: my crystal ball was being polished, so I had to pull this out of my ass. Sorry.

Netscape: they knew what they were doing

[/]

They knew all along that cludging standards and implementing their own half-assed versions would make it more difficult for the end-user, but they did it anyway for the same reason all software companies make their own proprietary file formats, etc. They wanted to lock the end-user into using only Netscape. Yes, some of it had to do with general coding laziness, and some of it had to do with not wanting to have to wait for the various international bodies to shove stuff through committee and release a spec, but most of it was classic monopoly-building strategy.

What they didn't count on was MS coming along and being better at this game. MS and monopolies -- you'd think they could've seen it coming.