Hi there. I designed the interface for Mozillas Javascript prefs back in September, and Doron Rosenberg has spent the past couple of months implementing it.
None of them do. Thats why there isnt a checkbox labelled do pop-ups. Blocking pop-ups in toto would be pretty useless, because it would stop a large chunk of the Web from working properly.
Think about it. <a href="http://foo.bar/" target="_new">foo</a> is a pop-up, and none of these prefs prevent that from working, because then the link would break completely nothing at all would happen when you clicked on it. <a onclick="javascript:window.open(whatever)">foo& lt;/a> is a pop-up, and none of these checkboxes prevent that from working either, for the same reason. (In both cases it would be nice if you could get the link to open in the same window rather than opening in a new window, but we dont have the back end to allow that yet.)
What one of these checkboxes does let you do is stop windows from opening by themselves based on a timer, or when you navigate to or from a page. Thats the behavior that annoys people the most, since the new window is usually of no interest to them whatsoever. And whats the label for this checkbox? (Drum roll please ) Open windows by themselves.
If you have a better idea of what to label that checkbox, Id be glad to read it theres been a lot of suggestions so far, but theyve all been either too wordy, too obscure, or (as in your case) just plain wrong.
Good job on the prefs, Moz-team, but please, hire Jakob Nielsen before 1.0 ships.
Hah. I wrote to Jakob Nielsen a year or so ago, asking if he was interested, and he didnt bother replying. I guess whining about sucky Web sites (or sucky mobile phones) is like shooting fish in a barrel, compared to coming up with Javascript prefs your mother would understand.
Firstly, something I have to get out of my system...
FIRST POST!
Yes, it's my first post to Slashdot. I've been here about 18 months now, and never felt compelled to contribute before. But this discussion just makes me sick. I am in a maze of whiny little Slashdotters, all alike -- complaining about Communicator, doomsaying about Mozilla, and no-one doing anything.
So let's cover the whingers' main points.
Navigator/Communicator 4.x is buggy.
Sure it is. Basically, Communicator 4.x is built on the same basic architecture as Navigator 1.0, and has grown like topsy. It's a mess, and it's hard to debug. Which is why, earlier this year, Mozilla.orgditched the old codebase and rewrote nearly all of Mozilla from scratch.
But in the meantime, I'd much rather have a browser with several performance bugs and fewer security bugs, than the other way around.
Communicator hasn't improved since version 4.5.
Yes, that's mostly true (unless you count `Shop' buttons and the like as improvements), except that a number of bugs have been fixed since 4.5. Basically, Netscape are keeping Communicator 4.x ticking over while they work flat out on Mozilla, because Mozilla is where the future is.
Mozilla won't offer anything IE5 doesn't already have.
Balls. Mozilla 5.0 will far outclass IE5's broken support for HTML 4.0, CSS1, CSS2, and XML. And Mozilla optimized builds are already faster than IE5. To quote Rick Gessner, Netscape's Director of Engineering:
About a year ago, I was asked to present the very early demo on Gecko. As a follow up, we went back to debate with Microsoft on the state of the browser war. The MS guy was nice enough, and credible, too. He seems like he cares about what he was doing...
But our own Eric Krock was on a mission. Even though he had larengitis (sp), he managed to show a side by side demo of us vs IE, and we killed 'em.
We smoked their demo on size, speed, and mostly on standards compliance. It was really funny to watch.
But even more exciting than Mozilla's standards-compliance and performance, is the fact that it offers the building blocks for constructing any client-side Internet application you like -- using its cross-platform front end of XUL (the XML User Interface Language) and JavaScript. So not only can you change the look and feel of Mozilla, but you can alter the entire user interface, or even create your own app using the Mozilla layout engine and networking code.
And this is the bit which really annoys me. Everyone is standing around moping about how IE is taking over the world, and thinking that talking about it (in usual Slashdot fashion) is enough.
It's not.
Join the Mozilla effort. Do it now. It doesn't matter if you don't know C++. It doesn't matter if you're stuck on Windows. It doesn't matter if you only have two hours a week to spare. Just join in. Download binaries. Report bugs. Suggest enhancements.
I'd like to think that the Slashdot readership were actually interested in the future of both Linux and the Internet. I don't want Linux to be a second-class end-user operating system, simply because it doesn't have the world standard Web browser on it. And I don't want Microsoft, or any company for that matter, to control the Internet.
Slashdot Mirror
Hi there. I designed the interface for Mozillas Javascript prefs back in September, and Doron Rosenberg has spent the past couple of months implementing it.
Well, if you have any suggestions, do share them.
None of them do. Thats why there isnt a checkbox labelled do pop-ups. Blocking pop-ups in toto would be pretty useless, because it would stop a large chunk of the Web from working properly.
Think about it. <a href="http://foo.bar/" target="_new">foo</a> is a pop-up, and none of these prefs prevent that from working, because then the link would break completely nothing at all would happen when you clicked on it. <a onclick="javascript:window.open(whatever)">foo& lt;/a> is a pop-up, and none of these checkboxes prevent that from working either, for the same reason. (In both cases it would be nice if you could get the link to open in the same window rather than opening in a new window, but we dont have the back end to allow that yet.)
What one of these checkboxes does let you do is stop windows from opening by themselves based on a timer, or when you navigate to or from a page. Thats the behavior that annoys people the most, since the new window is usually of no interest to them whatsoever. And whats the label for this checkbox? (Drum roll please ) Open windows by themselves.
If you have a better idea of what to label that checkbox, Id be glad to read it theres been a lot of suggestions so far, but theyve all been either too wordy, too obscure, or (as in your case) just plain wrong.
Hah. I wrote to Jakob Nielsen a year or so ago, asking if he was interested, and he didnt bother replying. I guess whining about sucky Web sites (or sucky mobile phones) is like shooting fish in a barrel, compared to coming up with Javascript prefs your mother would understand.
-- mpt
Firstly, something I have to get out of my system ...
Yes, it's my first post to Slashdot. I've been here about 18 months now, and never felt compelled to contribute before. But this discussion just makes me sick. I am in a maze of whiny little Slashdotters, all alike -- complaining about Communicator, doomsaying about Mozilla, and no-one doing anything.
So let's cover the whingers' main points.
Navigator/Communicator 4.x is buggy.
Sure it is. Basically, Communicator 4.x is built on the same basic architecture as Navigator 1.0, and has grown like topsy. It's a mess, and it's hard to debug. Which is why, earlier this year, Mozilla.org ditched the old codebase and rewrote nearly all of Mozilla from scratch.
But in the meantime, I'd much rather have a browser with several performance bugs and fewer security bugs, than the other way around.
Communicator hasn't improved since version 4.5.
Yes, that's mostly true (unless you count `Shop' buttons and the like as improvements), except that a number of bugs have been fixed since 4.5. Basically, Netscape are keeping Communicator 4.x ticking over while they work flat out on Mozilla, because Mozilla is where the future is.
Mozilla won't offer anything IE5 doesn't already have.Balls. Mozilla 5.0 will far outclass IE5's broken support for HTML 4.0, CSS1, CSS2, and XML. And Mozilla optimized builds are already faster than IE5. To quote Rick Gessner, Netscape's Director of Engineering:
But even more exciting than Mozilla's standards-compliance and performance, is the fact that it offers the building blocks for constructing any client-side Internet application you like -- using its cross-platform front end of XUL (the XML User Interface Language) and JavaScript. So not only can you change the look and feel of Mozilla, but you can alter the entire user interface, or even create your own app using the Mozilla layout engine and networking code.
Mozilla is doomed.
So if CNet and ZDNet say something often enough, it becomes true? That's sick. Sure, JWZ left. Good! Sure, Mozilla.org had to scrap a lot of their old code. Great! It's an open source project, you can't kill it, you can only delay it ...
Mozilla will be too late.And this is the bit which really annoys me. Everyone is standing around moping about how IE is taking over the world, and thinking that talking about it (in usual Slashdot fashion) is enough.
It's not.
Join the Mozilla effort. Do it now. It doesn't matter if you don't know C++. It doesn't matter if you're stuck on Windows. It doesn't matter if you only have two hours a week to spare. Just join in. Download binaries. Report bugs. Suggest enhancements.
I'd like to think that the Slashdot readership were actually interested in the future of both Linux and the Internet. I don't want Linux to be a second-class end-user operating system, simply because it doesn't have the world standard Web browser on it. And I don't want Microsoft, or any company for that matter, to control the Internet.
Do you?
[ Give up ] [ Fight back ]
-- mpt