Because forking it won't get code written any faster? It's not as if forking magically gets stuff done...
Their official reason for disabling Places amounts to "either we kill this, or no new Firefox for everyone". They chose to release something with the other changes rather than wait.
Re:The one place I can really see this used...
on
WebOS Market Review
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· Score: 1
No, I'm not arguing that stickiness is avoidable, just that my parent (score: 0) was arguing that by going HTML/AJAX it would be. That's why I had that re: line there:)
I totally agree that web-based apps can be useful - my primary email has shifted to GMail, and I thought my university's web-based student services system was a good thing (I've seen the time of trying to register by phone, computer was much better). And from what I've seen, sometimes moving towards that would be nice (aforementioned student services system, on the admin side, was still Java last I checked. That having been JVM 1.3 or something, I'm sure they wish it was web based instead)
As for not being required to move forward... Yeah, legacy content (i.e. the current AJAX stuff) will probably keep some compatiblity, but not entirely. Nobody cares about document.layers now, and browser vendors probably will not keep everything the same as the specs move. And it's not exactly like you can keep running old browsers either due to the security updates... Try getting Mozilla 1.4 branch (that was the stable branch before 1.7) to work now with patches for stuff that came out after it was dropped:p
Probably the same as the reason you can open chrome://browser/content/browser.xul in Firefox?;) (Warning, breaks your window because it does thing it really shouldn't)
Re:The one place I can really see this used...
on
WebOS Market Review
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· Score: 1
(Re: anonymous parent) And with this HTML-based thing, you're tied to the HTML/DOM platform. All that HTML and JS will *not* be usable outside of browsers. Want to move to native GTK apps? Port it. Native Win32? Port that too.
And with a browser-based platform, once the Internet moves forward your apps are dead. You can still sort of run Win16 based apps (not in Win64 though), but already Netscape 4 code is dead as a doorknob.
Of course, we'll get this "web as an OS" thing again when XAML/XUL/BobKnowsWhat gets pushed. Then it'll eventually just be Yet Another Legacy Toolkit du Jour...
Well, the Mozilla devs have been very good with cross-platform parity; it's also a memory hog on Windows:p
Some have reported that extensions can cause the memory usage to be worse; try Firefox's safe mode (which basically lets you run without extensions or themes, but the same prefs are used) to see if that might be the problem.
And Firefox 3 (whenever that shows up; Gecko 1.9 and later) will not be compatible with Win9x (initially due to Cairo not supporting it, and now that's decided more stuff like Unicode file names too)
Are you sure? Because my first thought was that what is really happening is that some US-owned laptop-branding company wants in on the pie. Just kick out all the Chinese-owned companies, and you suddenly have fewer competitors. Including the one with a long contract.
Note that I used "branding" - most likely, everybody makes their laptops in China (or some other non-USA country). But, hey, at least the company isn't Chinese-owned, even if all the people involved are equivalent, right?
It's not actually Mozilla admins - it's addons.mozilla.org reviewers.
There is no barrier to entry in becoming a reviewer. You are only expected to install the extension, use it for a bit to make sure it does what it claims and doesn't break, and approve. (Disapprove, of course, if it doesn't work.)
There is no code review involved. The reviewers are not even really expected understand code. Being approved on there doesn't really signify a sign of quality. Heck, if you want to you can end up reviewing your own.
They obviously mean extensions (*.xpi, install.rdf) instead of plugins (NPAPI).
Unless they mean the already-broken superceded Adobe SVG viewer that used unfrozen interfaces... (Later versions of the SVG plugin are not scriptable becuase Adobe could not implement that without using those unfrozen interfaces and basically being horribly tangled in Mozilla internals that might crash in the Mozilla release after that)
And extensions will break - at least, any that deal with bookmarks and history. What with the coming of Places:p
You may want to go read news://news.mozilla.org/mozilla.dev.general in the giant 2006-02-27 thread. I *think* somewhere in there somebody mentioned that, no, MNG isn't going to be in Mozilla until hell freezes over or something.
I think it may be around msgid: CuidnYb3aINfhIvZ4p2dnA@mozilla.org but I'm not sure - I read that part a few days ago.
I believe (not certain on this) they may be considering just showing it on the active tab instead (though there's appearently problems with tab positions jumping around in that case).
I also believe Tab Mix Plus might have an option to disable this. I know Too Many Tabs does (I currently have that installed); unfortunately the version I have randomly causes JS errors when opening/closing tabs, and I haven't managed to track it down enough to be useful to the author.
Alternatively, just try setting the browser.tabs.tabClipWidth pref really, really small.
Actually, the overwhelming majority of extensions are not even compiled. They're pure XUL/JS/CSS/RDF. The maxVersion arc mentioned in the sibling is the reason. It's used to guard against the browser internals changing under them - and yes, pretty much most of the things you can usefully change are considered browser internals.:( Then there's also the things randomly being ripped out (cf. the bookmarks and history going away and being replaced by "Places")
And as long as you do no use frozen interfaces (including defining MOZ_STRICT_API, not defining MOZ_INTERNAL_API, and linking against XPCOM glue), it should work fine most of the time. It's just that, depending on what you want to do, that might not be possible;)
The nightlies are now branded 2.0 alpha because... well, for some odd reason they like to brand their CVS builds before things get released, to make sure the act of rebranding breaks nothing. IIRC that actually hit them way back and they got scared.
Firefox 2.0 will be considered released when you see it on www.mozilla.org / www.mozilla.com / irc.mozilla.org
Hmm, that actually makes me wonder... They spun out Mozilla Corporation after the 2004 year, right? Maybe that's their solution to the problem of having too much money and not knowing how to spend it all in a year...:D
(btw, not my legwork; it's from folks on irc.mozilla.org... I think they just googled too.)
Not sure how that's going to work out with the MoCo spinoff; IANAA so I don't know if a NPO wholly owning a corp would need to report on profits made by the corp or not.
Just out of curiousity, what do you think of the JavaScript syntax then? (regex and functions are also first-class, but prototype chains instead of normal OO)
The usual JS people write for web pages is crap of course, but people can write crap in any language:)
Re:Do we have evidence that Intel coerced...
on
AMD Subpoenas Skype
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· Score: 1
You might be interested in XPCShell (err, not sure if comes with the Gecko SDK and/or the suite; all I know is building Firefox yourself seems to make it). It's basically a XPCOM enabled JS shell. Of course, that means things like window are still undefined... that doesn't make sense unless you actually have a window:)
As for making up small bits of XUL, the extension developer's extension has a editor (it basically has a frame that loads whatever you type into a textbox in). Doesn't work too well with dynamic stuff (every time you edit, it reloads that window...), but is good as a quick syntax checker.
Actually, they're moving history &c to sqlite, so it'd have some sort of SQL like thing soonish:)
(If you build from the Mozilla source tree itself, it also has some other sort of SQL thing (/extensions/sql), but I've never quite figured out what it is...)
Slashdot Mirror
You have VNC when you have SSH because you like to view your desktop remotely. Possibly VNC over SSH.
VNC and SSH solves slightly different, but related, problems. You'd instead drop VNC when you have something like RDP or NX.
I think by "built into the OS" they mean it will be like a library usable by apps like iTunes.
Similar to, say, Avalanche?
Because forking it won't get code written any faster? It's not as if forking magically gets stuff done...
Their official reason for disabling Places amounts to "either we kill this, or no new Firefox for everyone". They chose to release something with the other changes rather than wait.
No, I'm not arguing that stickiness is avoidable, just that my parent (score: 0) was arguing that by going HTML/AJAX it would be. That's why I had that re: line there :)
:p
I totally agree that web-based apps can be useful - my primary email has shifted to GMail, and I thought my university's web-based student services system was a good thing (I've seen the time of trying to register by phone, computer was much better). And from what I've seen, sometimes moving towards that would be nice (aforementioned student services system, on the admin side, was still Java last I checked. That having been JVM 1.3 or something, I'm sure they wish it was web based instead)
As for not being required to move forward... Yeah, legacy content (i.e. the current AJAX stuff) will probably keep some compatiblity, but not entirely. Nobody cares about document.layers now, and browser vendors probably will not keep everything the same as the specs move. And it's not exactly like you can keep running old browsers either due to the security updates... Try getting Mozilla 1.4 branch (that was the stable branch before 1.7) to work now with patches for stuff that came out after it was dropped
Probably the same as the reason you can open chrome://browser/content/browser.xul in Firefox? ;) (Warning, breaks your window because it does thing it really shouldn't)
(Re: anonymous parent)
And with this HTML-based thing, you're tied to the HTML/DOM platform. All that HTML and JS will *not* be usable outside of browsers. Want to move to native GTK apps? Port it. Native Win32? Port that too.
And with a browser-based platform, once the Internet moves forward your apps are dead. You can still sort of run Win16 based apps (not in Win64 though), but already Netscape 4 code is dead as a doorknob.
Of course, we'll get this "web as an OS" thing again when XAML/XUL/BobKnowsWhat gets pushed. Then it'll eventually just be Yet Another Legacy Toolkit du Jour...
On the other hand, your important OSS people have also see OSS code before being hired by Oracle...
I am starting to think they whole "tainting" jig is getting stupid.
Well, the Mozilla devs have been very good with cross-platform parity; it's also a memory hog on Windows :p
Some have reported that extensions can cause the memory usage to be worse; try Firefox's safe mode (which basically lets you run without extensions or themes, but the same prefs are used) to see if that might be the problem.
It's the same as the "Designed for Windows 98/Me/2000/XP" sticker.
It's a sticker. Probably shiny.
And Firefox 3 (whenever that shows up; Gecko 1.9 and later) will not be compatible with Win9x (initially due to Cairo not supporting it, and now that's decided more stuff like Unicode file names too)
Are you sure? Because my first thought was that what is really happening is that some US-owned laptop-branding company wants in on the pie. Just kick out all the Chinese-owned companies, and you suddenly have fewer competitors. Including the one with a long contract.
Note that I used "branding" - most likely, everybody makes their laptops in China (or some other non-USA country). But, hey, at least the company isn't Chinese-owned, even if all the people involved are equivalent, right?
I hope it's just me getting cynical...
It's not actually Mozilla admins - it's addons.mozilla.org reviewers.
There is no barrier to entry in becoming a reviewer. You are only expected to install the extension, use it for a bit to make sure it does what it claims and doesn't break, and approve. (Disapprove, of course, if it doesn't work.)
There is no code review involved. The reviewers are not even really expected understand code. Being approved on there doesn't really signify a sign of quality. Heck, if you want to you can end up reviewing your own.
They obviously mean extensions (*.xpi, install.rdf) instead of plugins (NPAPI).
:p
Unless they mean the already-broken superceded Adobe SVG viewer that used unfrozen interfaces... (Later versions of the SVG plugin are not scriptable becuase Adobe could not implement that without using those unfrozen interfaces and basically being horribly tangled in Mozilla internals that might crash in the Mozilla release after that)
And extensions will break - at least, any that deal with bookmarks and history. What with the coming of Places
You may want to go read news://news.mozilla.org/mozilla.dev.general in the giant 2006-02-27 thread. I *think* somewhere in there somebody mentioned that, no, MNG isn't going to be in Mozilla until hell freezes over or something.
I think it may be around msgid: CuidnYb3aINfhIvZ4p2dnA@mozilla.org but I'm not sure - I read that part a few days ago.
I believe (not certain on this) they may be considering just showing it on the active tab instead (though there's appearently problems with tab positions jumping around in that case).
I also believe Tab Mix Plus might have an option to disable this. I know Too Many Tabs does (I currently have that installed); unfortunately the version I have randomly causes JS errors when opening/closing tabs, and I haven't managed to track it down enough to be useful to the author.
Alternatively, just try setting the browser.tabs.tabClipWidth pref really, really small.
Actually, the overwhelming majority of extensions are not even compiled. They're pure XUL/JS/CSS/RDF. The maxVersion arc mentioned in the sibling is the reason. It's used to guard against the browser internals changing under them - and yes, pretty much most of the things you can usefully change are considered browser internals. :( Then there's also the things randomly being ripped out (cf. the bookmarks and history going away and being replaced by "Places")
;)
And as long as you do no use frozen interfaces (including defining MOZ_STRICT_API, not defining MOZ_INTERNAL_API, and linking against XPCOM glue), it should work fine most of the time. It's just that, depending on what you want to do, that might not be possible
Specifically, search for the XML tag "maxVersion" in the http://www.mozilla.org/2004/em-rdf# namespace (usually written as <em:maxVersion>).
Or just get Nightly Tester Tools.
(Not linking because, AFAIK, his server was badly slashdotted last time it was mentioned in a comment. If you really want to, Google.)
Mozilla Firefox 2.0 alpha NOT released.
The nightlies are now branded 2.0 alpha because... well, for some odd reason they like to brand their CVS builds before things get released, to make sure the act of rebranding breaks nothing. IIRC that actually hit them way back and they got scared.
Firefox 2.0 will be considered released when you see it on www.mozilla.org / www.mozilla.com / irc.mozilla.org
Hmm, that actually makes me wonder... They spun out Mozilla Corporation after the 2004 year, right? Maybe that's their solution to the problem of having too much money and not knowing how to spend it all in a year... :D
(btw, not my legwork; it's from folks on irc.mozilla.org... I think they just googled too.)
Actually, the Mozilla Foundation, as a non-profit organization, does need to disclose it.
7 /2004-200097189-01fa37ef-9.pdf
For example, for 2004,
http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2004/200/09
Yeah, the Mozilla Foundation files IRS 990s at least... Can't seem to find anything newer than 2004 of course.
7 /2004-200097189-01fa37ef-9.pdf
http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2004/200/09
http://www.scroogle.org.nyud.net:8090/mozilla.pdf (same content as above)
Not sure how that's going to work out with the MoCo spinoff; IANAA so I don't know if a NPO wholly owning a corp would need to report on profits made by the corp or not.
Just out of curiousity, what do you think of the JavaScript syntax then? (regex and functions are also first-class, but prototype chains instead of normal OO)
:)
The usual JS people write for web pages is crap of course, but people can write crap in any language
You mean if Intel offered optimized code that possibly was slow on AMD for no reason? :)
You might be interested in XPCShell (err, not sure if comes with the Gecko SDK and/or the suite; all I know is building Firefox yourself seems to make it). It's basically a XPCOM enabled JS shell. Of course, that means things like window are still undefined... that doesn't make sense unless you actually have a window :)
As for making up small bits of XUL, the extension developer's extension has a editor (it basically has a frame that loads whatever you type into a textbox in). Doesn't work too well with dynamic stuff (every time you edit, it reloads that window...), but is good as a quick syntax checker.
Actually, they're moving history &c to sqlite, so it'd have some sort of SQL like thing soonish :)
(If you build from the Mozilla source tree itself, it also has some other sort of SQL thing (/extensions/sql), but I've never quite figured out what it is...)