Feature Status Update
Thursday March 29th, 2001
James Russell has volunteered to pick up the Feature Status Updates from Gerv. This is the first of many from James, with updates on imglib2, View Manager 3, the Cache rewrite, and many others. Click the Full Article link to check them out.
If you have a feature update, or a feature you think is missing, e-mail James (only features included in the Mozilla tree itself will be considered for mention). James has agreed to post new feature status updates for every point release of Mozilla (so the next ones will be for 0.9, 0.9.1 if there is one, and so on), which should work out to every five weeks or so, given the new Mozilla roadmap.
Also, thanks to all who volunteered to take this, your support was greatly appreciated!
Full Article...
this is a cool alternative to the status updates on mozilla.org which are sometimes hard to read (although I still try every week!) Thanks for the hard work.
You're welcome, and thank you for the encouragement. :)
JR
Just in from Netscape's Gordon Sheridan:
"...I've asked Gagan about pushing
our design docs out to mozilla.org, and he's working on it. We've landed
the cache, and HTTP is using it. libpr0n is using it on whatever platforms
it has been switched on. FTP was using it, and then stopped; I'm not sure
if DougT has turned it back on yet. We still waiting for IMAP to
transition to the new cache. Once that's done, we'll remove the old cache
from the build.
"The disk cache is currently what we are referring to as "Level 0"; it's
functional (or supposed to be) but has known performance issues. We are
working on Level 1, which will provide dynamic eviction (Level 0 evicts
only on shutdown) and efficient cache miss detection. We hope to land
Level 1 by early next week. Level 2 will provide a more efficient
mechanism for storing the cache entry and metadata. We hope to finish that
about a week after Level 1. Level 3 will build on Level 2 and provide a
more efficient mechanism for storing the data portion of cache entries.
"We are currently distinguishing new cache bugs from old cache bugs by
adding '[cache]' to the status whiteboard field, so you can search bugzilla
to see what's happening."
Great Summary!
Also I would like to congratulate the people working on mail/news because they're creating a great very usable progem.
BTW Where could I find more information on PSM2?
Way to go mozilla,
Netvigator
What is BiDi? What does it do?
BiDi stands for Bi-Directional text. It is for Languages (such as Hebrew or Arabic) which are written from Right to Left instead of Left to Right (as are most western languages).
Generally it means that both kinds of lnaguanges can be displayed properly on the same page. Pretty cool if you speak these languages, which a lot of people do.
in written writings, Chinese sentences are also from left to right (which most people do), or from right to left (widely used within Taiwan, or traditional writings).
May be due to the influence of English, left to right seems prominent.
It's cool to see a browser supports this!
One of the reasons Microsoft got most of the market in israel is because IE had proper Bidi support since version 4.x.
Microsoft also pushed websites for using logical hebrew, forcing netscape clients out(Now, I have to admit, logical hebrew is easier for the webmaster, However, in website i build, i always take care to use logical hebrew on the back-end, and make conversion using PHP scripts)
I'll look at questions here for fodder for future updates (for example, I'll get some more info on BiDi for the 0.9 update). You can also e-mail me at the link above.
James
The first update like this was great, and this is even more complete. Also great that you've committed to doing this regularly.
Kudos!
hope we can see more i18n status updates in future ;-)
despite that, of course, much thanks for the effort, so that the rest of us are knowing what's happening, progressing, and expecting.
(Initially accidentally posted in an obscure reply above)
This just in from Netscape's Gordon Sheridan re libpr0n:
"...I've asked Gagan about pushing our design docs out to mozilla.org, and he's working on it. We've landed the cache, and HTTP is using it. libpr0n is using it on whatever platforms it has been switched on. FTP was using it, and then stopped; I'm not sure if DougT has turned it back on yet. We still waiting for IMAP to transition to the new cache. Once that's done, we'll remove the old cache from the build.
"The disk cache is currently what we are referring to as "Level 0"; it's functional (or supposed to be) but has known performance issues. We are working on Level 1, which will provide dynamic eviction (Level 0 evicts only on shutdown) and efficient cache miss detection. We hope to land Level 1 by early next week. Level 2 will provide a more efficient mechanism for storing the cache entry and metadata. We hope to finish that about a week after Level 1. Level 3 will build on Level 2 and provide a more efficient mechanism for storing the data portion of cache entries.
"We are currently distinguishing new cache bugs from old cache bugs by adding '[cache]' to the status whiteboard field, so you can search bugzilla to see what's happening."
This may not be the right place to ask, but I am hoping someone will help enlighten me anyway.
I plan to upgrade my Mac to OS X this weekend and so I\\\\\\\'d alo like to make the move to the Carbonized version of Mozilla at the same time. I see that the tinderbox is green for Fizilla but I do not know where to grab the build. Do I have to compile my own? My CodeWarrior is not up to date yet, so I hope nightly binaries are available somewhere.
When is Mozilla going to be able to open encrypted messages? In my opinion this is the most important funcionality missing in Mozilla.
When someone writes the support. I have heard rumours that someone is working on it, but it's certainly not anyone who hangs around the dev. community much (or, if it is, they are keeping quiet about it.)
Gerv
From PSM website :
<http://mozilla.org/projec…rity/pki/psm/plan_20.html>
"The main goal of PSM 2.0 (Codename: PSM in Process, or PIP) is to run in-process as a fully integrated Mozilla component. Other goals are listed below. Although S/MIME is not a feature of PSM 2.0, we will be laying the groundwork for S/MIME features in later releases."
"Think ahead about S/MIME. The work we do for PSM 2.0 will lay the groundwork for S/MIME features to be introduced in later releases. Although we're not doing any S/MIME work for PIP at this time, we want to make sure that the UI and APIs don't have to change when we start to imlement S/MIME features. "
"S/MIME ready. The UI and APIs (where applicable) will be S/MIME ready. That is, S/MIME functionality should be a super-set of PIP. The S/MIME developers will not need to change PIP when adding their own features."
Sounds like it's not for tomorrow...
First, I'd like to thank you James for your time and effort on this. It's nice to get a good 10000 foot view of the project.
My question would be about the status of the XBL form controls. I have a number of bugs that "will be fixed" by using them, but I haven't heard word one about them recently. Any news on that front?
David
Actually, its more for things like trying to send the value of a form element to the server when its display is set to none. At the moment, Mozilla doesn't do this and is causing me no end to ulcers. Another example, setting an IFRAME's display to none and then back to block causes the IFRAME to *reload* the page, loosing everything that was in there.
One of the Mozilla engineers mentioned that XBL Form controls would fix this type of behavior (it had something to do with the DOM and where the elements go when they are no long displayed) and I'm anxiously waiting for something to happen on this front. The current implementation of mozilla for application development frankly sucks because I have to spend man MONTHS working around these bugs which, incidentally, IE does not have...
David
Anyone who has tried to develop any significant interactivity on a Netscape platform, say using a plugin or DHTML, is well aware that you spend ninety percent of your time working around Netscape bugs. I don't see any reason to expect Mozilla to be different, given that it has over twelve thousand known outstanding bugs, and the number is only going up. If you want to do something like application development on the web, Explorer is still the only way to go. Sad, but true.
Probably, nobody knows, since Microsoft keep these things as a secret.
Moreever, because Mozilla has an open bug reporting system, it has more known bugs.
Also, remember that Mozilla is still considered beta, and it is better then any beta I have seen from microsoft.
Concerning Netscape, you are right, Netscape tend to release non-complete versions, and NS 6.0(based on Mozilla 0.6) proved it very well.
I've found that NN and IE are about equal in pain when you limit yourself to the latest versions of each:
IE) A real pain to get it to do what you want with CSS. Yes, you can generally hack things up to get it to work, but even with borders and padding it doesn't do what its supposed to. These problems can generally be worked around without too much cussing.
MOZ) Does everything you tell it to in styling, sometimes to my dismay. The problem is that the code base is young, and it shows. There are some pretty stupid bugs that were released with NN6 that still are in the codebase today. Unfortunately, these bugs are generally more difficult to work around than the IE styling bugs.
On a day to day basis, my "most hated browser" changes depending on where I'm coding. It's getting better though. I just completed a 10,000 line javascript application that works on Windows and Linux (and probably Mac) with maybe only 5 browser sniffs in the entire thing. It was pretty cool....
David
There are all sorts of hidden comments you can see when you do view source on Mozillazine pages:
<!-- Ramen Noodles! -->
<!-- Spicy Noodles! -->
etc.
Has MozillaZine been hit by Ramon?
ian.
Tantamen yummy and goddamn hot!
Why is it that all these improvements are coming so late and not earlier? Anyway, do you have to wait for 0.9 for all the new performance improvement land-ins or just get the nightlies?
A lot of the stuff are in the nightlies, although there are a little rough and have some bugs of their own.
Alex
i would suggest waiting a couple days on the nightlies, they have been pretty rough for a few days now. just make sure to read the build comments on this site...
What's the status of PSM 2.0? It's desperately needed to get SSL to a usable level. Currently, it's so slow that it's unusable for all practical purposes for anyone who relies on SSL and uses SSL sites extensively.
There will probably be experimental PSM 2.0 XPIs available late this week or early next which should give drop-in in-process SSL support. Are you by any chance on win98. I'm on NT, win2K, Mac OS9.01 and RedHat 6.2 and do not experience any significant performance problems with SSL sites like <https://www.sourceforge.net> I have heard that win98 is particularly painful to use and that PSM does considerably better with copius ammounts of RAM (not unlike the rest of the beast). My PCs have 128 MB RAM and my Mac has 256. I've got high speed connectivity here but I've also tested SSL sites on my home machines (win2K 64 MB RAM PPro 200 and win2K on 32 MB P90) on a 28.8 connection and didn't have any performance problems that prevented me from using it. I'm not discounting your experience (I've heard the same thing from a number of testers, though mostly on win98) and I'm not saying that I can use Mozilla for all my secure needs (since some banks and commerce sites block the client alltogether) but I'm definitely not blocked from using Mozilla because of PSM. Still, I'm looking forward to the improvements that should come with PSM 2.0
--Asa
Yup, Win 98 and a fast connection (>2Mbps). One good test for me is <http://www.kuvalehdet.fi> because there's both an SSL and a plain version of the site that is identical. On IE, both load in less than 1 second for me. With Mozilla, the plain version loads in like.. 1-2 seconds, but the SSL version takes up to 30 seconds to load completely. I just tested with my work machine (NT4 SP6) and a one-week-old version of Mozilla and the site loaded about as fast as the plain version so it seems to be Win98 only.
mozilla.org now has some feature tracking tools on its website:
<http://komodo.mozilla.org/planning/branches.cgi>
very cool, thanks for the info on the feature tracking!
|
