MozillaZine

Mozilla 0.9 Released!

Monday May 7th, 2001

mozilla.org today released milestone 0.9, which moves us a big step closer to a 1.0 release. The 0.9 release contains some of the largest changes in quite some time, with rewrites of the imglib, memory and disk cache, message view in mail, bookmark manager, Personal Security Manager 2 (PSM2), and the help viewer. Many of these rewrites have helped greatly enhance Mozilla's performance since 0.8.1, with the Mail front end rewrite and PSM2 being two of the largest improvements. For those of you who use Java, the JVM is now loaded on first use, rather than when you first start up, leading to much quicker startup.

Builds are currently available for Linux, Windows and Mac, on mozilla.org's download page. Expect other platforms to show up by the end of the week.

The next planned milestone is 0.9.1, for which the tree will close on May 23, and will be released a week or so following that date. Any milestone from this point forward has the possibility of becoming 1.0, and everyone is working hard to get the bug count down to make that happen.

#1 first comment

by zachlipton

Monday May 7th, 2001 6:41 PM

First comment on a release!

#2 My main complaints

by vondo

Monday May 7th, 2001 7:44 PM

Ok, let me first say that this build seems even a little snappier than my Apr-26 nightly, and things look to be coming together on the parts of the suite I use, Browser and Mail/News.

However, there are two or three areas I feel mozilla is really lacking, at least under linux. Those of you in Windows land may have a better experience.

1) First and most important to me is helper applications. One of the great elements of foresight for the designers of the web and the early browsers was the ability to program the browser to call on other applications if it didn't know how to deal with a particular data-type. This capability is almost unusable in mozilla. See bug 78106 for a long laundry lists of things that need to be fixed, but a quick list (on linux) is not using system or user-defined applications, not being able to learn from its own dialogs, and worst of all, not being able to set an app for some data type mozilla actually knows about (postscript, for example). This last is a regression from 0.7 days (I think).

2) Plug-ins. Precious few of these were ever put out for NN 4.x and linux, but the fact that one of the biggies, RealPlayer, seems to give lots of people lots of trouble (bug 56464) is not a good sign. Maybe bug 55959 is the solution to this problem? This seems like a major lapse to me.

3) Printing. Actually this seems significantly improved since the last time I checked, but its still not to the point where I can usually use mozilla to get a nice, saveable printout of the pages I'm looking at.

It's my belief that these issues should be addressed before anything called 1.0 goes out the door and considering the speed of progress in the past on these things, it seems 1.0 may follow 0.9.9.

So, in addition to increasing stability and getting rid of bloat, it seems to me there are at least a few areas where the functionality has to be brough up to speed too. I'm sure other people have their pet peeves, but these are the ones that keep me from using mozilla as my only browser.

#3 What about Mac OS X?

by loki77

Monday May 7th, 2001 7:45 PM

I am thinking that more priority should be moving to keeping the Fizzilla current. After all, most people who will use Mozilla will also be the type to move quickly to OS X.

#4 Re: What about Mac OS X?

by loki77

Monday May 7th, 2001 7:49 PM

Sorry: the previous post was meant to imply Macintosh users, and that they will migrate to OS X. Not that all of you Linux and Windows users will drop your boxes and run out and buy Macs! Didn't catch that till I had already posted!

#5 Migrating to MacOS X?

by helixblue

Monday May 7th, 2001 8:12 PM

Heh, that\\\'s why my Sun U10 is on ebay (bids end tommorow), and I\\\'m going to buy a dual-G4 with the money. I love OSX enough that I\\\'m migrating to it at home (from FreeBSD) for my main usage. Of course, there is still a lot of work to be done in OSX before it\\\'s fully usable w/ native apps: but I love it. I can\\\'t wait for Mozilla and Opera to show up on OSX.

#7 Just wait

by Kovu

Monday May 7th, 2001 8:48 PM

I think Mac OS X may be the first really big consumer-level Unix system. I wouldn't be surprised if Linux or FreeBSD people jumped to Mac OS X at some point.

#11 Re: Just wait

by Tanyel

Monday May 7th, 2001 9:54 PM

Be careful. Linus may hear you.

#12 re: just wait

by archen

Monday May 7th, 2001 10:52 PM

well lets just hope that Apple doesn't shoot themselves in the foot like they tend to have a habbit of doing. Certainly I want to see OSX do well, not only because it's cool, but because it helps strengthen Mozilla as a cross platform browser.

#6 Quick question

by Nemo_NX

Monday May 7th, 2001 8:20 PM

What changes have been made to the bookmark manager? Is it now using the Outliner widget previously mentioned by Ben?

#8 Re: Quick question

by gerbilpower

Monday May 7th, 2001 8:59 PM

No, bookmarks isn't experiencing the glory of Outliner yet. Not even Mail/News is taking full advantage of Outliner yet. I can't wait til they do though!

Alex http://www.gerbilbox.com/newzilla/

#15 Re: Quick question

by fab

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 12:11 AM

I'm not sure why it was put in the summary of this article that there was a new bookmarks manager, because it has been there since 0.8. Also there are serious bugs in it that we are trying to fix as fast as we can but it seems the bookmarks manager has been very affected by the XUL syntax changes and other stuff that really broke it badly. In the nightlies it should be a little better as I fixed the most outstanding bugs in it yesterday, and Ben Goodger is working on a big revamp of it, for next week. Fabian.

#20 Re: Re: Quick question

by Nemo_NX

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 1:57 AM

I got a question for you. Wtf is with the import IE favorites directory on the file menu and the Personal toolbar? The file menu one won't even show any subdirectories and basically shows me a list of bookmarks on the web page viewing area. Is this a new feature or something? Also, I can't go to a web page when I click on any of the links in there. All I get on the screen is this --> [InternetShortcut] URL=http://www.mozilla.org/ Modified=40072008219EC001EF

with the URL on the address bar looking like this --> file:///C|/WINDOWS/Favorites/7%20Total%20Slag/mozilla.org.url

However the bookmarks on the side panel work just fine. Is this a known bug or is something terribly wrong with my user profile that I make sure to delete before each new build of Mozilla? I'm also being bugged all the time with a pop-up asking if I want to change my internet shortcuts to use Mozilla instead of IE. I've said "yes", "no", and "cancel". Nothing has worked to get rid of that damn pop-up. :(

#21 System default popup

by lmacbride

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 4:57 AM

I got the system default popup to go away only after going to:

Edit/Preferences/Advanced/Windows Integration

and unchecking the bottom box ("Check that Windows is set up to match these preferences each time Mozilla starts up...")

Haven't tried the Linux version yet.

#9 Very fast

by darnell

Monday May 7th, 2001 9:26 PM

Well it is much faster, from what I\'ve experienced so far.

Keep up the hard work Mozilla team!

#10 Re: Very fast

by vondo

Monday May 7th, 2001 9:42 PM

Is all the debug information turned off in linux? It's not spewing to my console as it usually does.

#16 correct

by niner

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 12:17 AM

what I know de milestonebuilds are compiled without debug informations and all optimizations, that's why they are faster and that's why I'm thinking about using 0.9.1 when it's out instead of the nightlies.

#52 Many people use milestone releases only

by dipa

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 3:58 PM

So they note that big improvement from 0.8.1 to 0.9. I don't understand why they insist on using milestones since this product is still in beta stage. Trunk builds are more improved although (occasionaly) less stable. But I always keep a backup of my bookmarks file :)

#53 Re: Many people use milestone releases only

by gerbilpower

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 4:32 PM

Maybe people don't know which day to get a build since they don't know which one might be the unstable one?

That is a perfectly valid reason why people might prefer a milestone over a nightly, but I'm already enjoying a few things in the nightlies that isn't in 0.9 :)

Alex http://www.gerbilbox.com/newzilla/

#56 Re: Re: Many people use milestone releases only

by darnell

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 5:56 PM

You said it gerbilpower.

dipa, you even said it yourself >Trunk builds are more improved although (occasionaly) less stable.

The milestone builds are usually more stable. So why risk a nightly build like gerbilpower said. Maybe you are using this as a primary browser or you are really into it a bit more.

For me, the milestone releases are fine. I'm not using Mozilla as my primary browser and so I can wait on the milestone releases.

I've tried nightly builds before and they are cool, but I've been burned by a few too. So no need to risk it...

#93 CVS is useful

by dipa

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 3:20 PM

I mean "New Checkins" link in www.mozilla.org, every day. If I see a new feature / bug fix that I like to test, then I download the build. I enjoy this procedure but I do also understand this task might not interest all of possible Mozilla users.

But I never lost any critical information. By backing bookmarks there's no risk using a nightly, at least for the browser. Honestly. And I always keep a working build aside so I can revert to it if the latest build is unusable.

#61 Re: Many people use milestone releases only

by vondo

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 8:00 PM

I tend to use a milestone release for a few weeks, then grab a nightly for the few weeks before the next milestone.

I've using mozilla as my primary browser since M18. My primary motivation is having the features that come with mozilla over 4.7x and having a stable (as possible) application, not testing every single day to see what's wrong.

Don't get me wrong, I file a few bugs a week too for things that are broken, but testing isn't my primary motivation.

For me, not being on the bleeding edge has serious benefits.

#14 Re: Very fast

by macpeep

Monday May 7th, 2001 11:54 PM

Faster? How / why? Are milestone builds compiled as releases rather than debug builds and thus have all compiler optimizations turned on and all debug info off or why is it faster? I can't think of any other reason, since there shouldn't be any performance improvements in 0.9 that aren't in the trunk.

#19 Re: Re: Very fast

by michaelg

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 1:17 AM

"I can't think of any other reason, since there shouldn't be any performance improvements in 0.9 that aren't in the trunk."

I think you missed the point: 0.9 is faster than 0.8.1, not the nightlies.

#23 Re: Re: Very fast

by Ben_Goodger

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 5:10 AM

All builds put on ftp.mozilla.org are 'release' builds ;) Debug builds are considerably slower.

#13 SSL doesn't work

by rganesan

Monday May 7th, 2001 11:21 PM

Hi,

I am using mozilla rpms 0.9-0 on Redhat 6.2 and can't connect to any http site. There is a long delay and mozilla just says done without showing the page. And yes mozilla-psm-0.9-0.rpm is installed. Anybody else facing this problem?

Ganesan

#22 Re: SSL doesn't work

by locka

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 5:01 AM

Try renaming your existing .mozilla profile directory and trying again. A lot of problems boil down to cache or other profile changes and yours could be one of them.

If it does turn out to be that, consider zapping your existing cache and seeing if that clears up the problem.

#47 Re: Try unchecking TLS

by brewpaul

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 1:15 PM

I am currently in the process of downloading .9, but have found a number of SSL servers that are lost when Mozilla presents itself with TLS enabled. They simple spin aimlessly & eventually either time out or crash. Try this:

preferences...priv/security...SSL... (uncheck) TLS

#64 Thanks - unchecking TLS worked!

by rganesan

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 11:17 PM

Thanks a lot, unchecking TLS worked in mozilla.

#92 Re: SSL doesn\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'t wor

by brouhaha

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 3:06 PM

I installed the Red Hat 7 RPMS, including mozilla-psm, on machines running Red Hat 7.0 and Red Hat 7.1. Both machines immediately report \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\"https is not a registered protocol\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\" when I try an https URL. Yet the edit/preferences/privacy-security/SSL configuration is there; doesn\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'t that mean that the PSM is present?

#102 fixed

by brouhaha

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 5:47 PM

I had to remove mozilla-psm, rm -rf /usr/lib/mozilla/psmdata, and reinstall mozilla-psm.

#17 Installer with Talkback

by oliversl

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 12:44 AM

Does the Windows/Linux installer include the talkback client? Or should Install the zip/tar.gz files?

Thanks Oliver

#36 Re: Installer with Talkback

by bzbarsky

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 10:52 AM

You want the installer.

#40 win32 installer -no talkback

by asa

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 11:06 AM

The windows installer does not include talkback. The linux stub and full installers do contain talkback.

--Asa

#65 Re: Installer with Talkback

by asa

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 11:20 PM

I was mistaken, the win32 installer does contain a talkback XPI.

--Asa

#18 Where are you, Mozilla ?

by cochonou

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 1:11 AM

Needless to say, this milestone is indeed a great one. It seems that libpr0n along with the new outliner widget & cache have really done wonders. However, it seems the history has slowed down a bit (related to bug 66907 ?), but as I haven't tried any nightly for a while, and as don't use that feature much it's rather hard to know if this behaviour is new or not.

The startup speed is very impressive, too, but... Where has gone the mozilla splashscreen ? I rather miss it :).

#24 hmm..

by Brendon

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 5:38 AM

..optimized builds are pretty impressive, shame i dont dare try to compile mozilla on this lousy comp :/

freeze 23 May.. will the next release be released as planned or will it be pushed back again?

wouldnt it be better if mozilla would skip the next release date, because its so close and so that theres no slow down that comes with releases? just a thought, which i know will be waved off :)

great work people, the majority of comments on linuxtoday.com and slashdot.org are praise

#25 Unable to resize mail windows?

by fuxoft

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 6:52 AM

I\'m unable to move the vertical boundary that separates the mailboxes list and message list in Mail window. The boundary is always in the center so that mailbox list and message list always have the same width. What happened? This worked in previous versions. I hope it\'s not a feature.

#26 Still having problems with Bookmarks

by pwinthrop

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 7:43 AM

Hi Guys,

Well, I have to say that with every day taht goes by, I am getting more and more impressed with Mozilla. It's even starting to *feel* faster than IE 5.0! The only thing is that I am still having HUGE troubles with bookmarks....they just don't want to sort alphabetically anywhere other than in my Sidebar. Am I doing anything wrong? Are there any old files that I have forgotten to delete that are making this not work properly? Please help so that I can stop using IE!!!

#27 Good release, but ...

by NilsE

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 8:32 AM

A lot of nice things have been said about 0.9. It really is a good step forward. But I'm concerned about the project management. Mozilla is huge and complex, so bugs are often difficult to find and it seems that the number of open bugs steadily increases.

Different component groups continue with big code landings while even the basic browser functionality has lots of bugs. So rather than getting the basic stuff really good, more bugs are being indroduced. Do new users really care about a nifty feature in PSM2 while they encounter lots of bugs in imglib2, bookmarks, frame-focus, keybindings and other areas? My experience is: no, they don't.

I've seen quite some people turned away from Mozilla because during a first try, simple browsing was quite buggy (even with post-0.9 daily builds). Therefore, I would call for a kind of feature freeze or a similar measure (at least for some central components) to catch up on bugs. How do other people think about this?

#28 Re: Good release, but ...

by jwb

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 8:59 AM

I largely agree with you. Rewriting from scratch is an entrenched netscape/mozilla.org philosophy, and sometimes there is a lot of damage. Take the case of imglib2. It sure has a lot of archtectural improvements and other such things that users neither see nor care about, but it also has assloads of bugs. Can't display jpegs, artifacts on progressive GIFs, wacky animated gifs, you name it. It will take a few more weeks before imglib2 has visible feature parity with imglib1.

But I disagree with you about PSM2. PSM 1 was worthless. Usually the user would wait many seconds or even minutes to enter an SSL site, then PSM would either start consuming all the CPU, or just crash altogether. Mozilla with the previous PSM was not useful for banking and other secure online activities. That was a major deficiency and we should be glad that PSM 1 get scrapped.

#30 Good release, but ...

by NilsE

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 9:22 AM

I agree that PSM2 was an improvement. My point was just the contrast of rewrites/landings in "advanced" components vs. bugs in "basic" functionality. Maybe I should have taken a more exotic component as an example instead of PSM2 (which also serves the "basic" purpose of providing SSL functionality).

I also agree with your remarks on imglib2. Lots of bug triaging is needed there. An interesting questions is why not more volunteers help. I think my own situation is not exotic: although I have quite some programming experience, it's too time consuming to chase bugs. Mozilla's component structure is complex and its docs are sketchy, and many bugs require a good overview of the particular component. This exceeds the time most people can spend on it. Better docs might help here.

My fear is just that because of this development process, Mozilla might just not too soon reach the point of stability and usability that the average user expects.

#88 bug 57576

by dipa

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 1:30 PM

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57576

#89 wrong reply, sorry (NT)

by dipa

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 1:34 PM

nt

#29 Re: Good release, but ...

by jilles

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 9:21 AM

Undeniably, there has been a fair amount of feature creep in the mozilla project. I remember posting what I believed to be really pessimistic 1.0 release dates on this site quite some time ago (like 1 and a half year ago or so). To put it mildly, these dates have passed quite a while ago (and I was flamed quite a bit for posting these dates in the first place).

Feature wise, mozilla was ready enough for netscape to release their 6.0 browser more than half a year ago. Arguably Mozilla has improved in this period. A few features have landed, but the development in this period was mostly bug fixing and optimizing. But still it is not release quality. I think everyone severely underestimated the time debugging and testing mozilla would take.

I think, realistically, that mozilla 1.0 will take several more releases to be completed. I would be surprised to see a 1.0 release this summer. Q4 2001 seems the earliest possible release date.

Now is feature creep bad? Does it really matter that we have to wait a bit longer? I don't think so. For quite a while it has looked like MS was going to dominate the browser market. However, other platforms have popped up: linux, mac Os X and a whole range of pda operating systems. Especially in the latter category of systems MS has not yet succeeded in world domination. So, it's not over yet. Linux users are going to need browsers, mac users may want some choice and even windows users may be willing to switch provided the alternative is as good as internet explorer. Mozilla is still a very ambitious and innovative project. If a stable, fast, polished version would be released I think it will attract users very fast.

#46 Re: Good release, but ...

by archen

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 1:13 PM

Yeah, I'd have to say I agree. It's probably not as important as it once was that Moz 1.0 get out the door. See how much Mozilla gets flamed on slashdot and you realize most people wont start out using it right away no matter what.

I'm not so sure I'm worried about feature creep so much anymore. I was just impressed by one thing popping up on the mouse menu "Show just this frame". I've always been against new featurs, but just small things like this (which I use a LOT) sort of convinced me otherwise. Then again there's the "block image from loading" feature. I still have no idea what the hell that's for.

Still I think focus needs to be on getting the features that are there to work.

#55 Meaning block image from loading

by Netvigator

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 4:40 PM

Sorry for mentioning the obvious;-), but block image from loading literally means that. It is useful if a page ha a large image which takes ages to load select that option and it will prevent that image from loading.

Netv!gat

#31 Re: Good release, but ...

by arnoudb

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 9:29 AM

Right on! Luckily, there are quite a lot of (tracking) bugs on these matters, and most are scheduled for 0.9.1 or 1.0. To name a few: [meta] mozilla stops accepting keyboard input http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=70812

back/forward buttons don't work at first if first page is framed http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=56062 [meta] progressmeter and throbber do not stop spinning http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=39310

#37 Re: Good release, but ...

by bzbarsky

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 10:57 AM

The thing is, some of these complete rewrites were _required_ to get basic functionality working (eg cache and PSM2). The old architecture was just not well designed.

#62 Re: Good release, but ...

by wtmcgee

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 8:08 PM

i agree to some degree too. there are small usability things that i think need to be done along with bugfixing. one thing that i would love to see :

in windows, sometimes when my mail-news and a browser window are both open, it is very hard to decipher which is which in the taskbar beacsue the icons are the same. i\'d like to see the icon be the same as the icon in the mozilla taskbar of whatever skin you are using... just a thought!

#90 bug 57576

by dipa

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 1:36 PM

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57576

#32 Thank you Mozilla!

by damian

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 9:29 AM

Mozilla has been my favorite Free Software project since back at Milestone 8.

Our friendly Mozilla team has really put forth a super-human effort, and for this I thank them.

I especially love it when they fix a bug or add a feature right before I was about to report it. Example: the Java changes. I have been annoyed by Java loading at startup to the point that I disabled it altogether. I was going to write a bug report on it, but assumed the problem was in the plugin.

Thanks again, can't wait to try out the new release. All hail Mozilla!

#33 Realy cool.

by willi

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 9:30 AM

I Allso do like the \\\'little Mozilla\\\' theme very much. But, my Bookmarks won\\\'t show up in the Sidebar. they left me while updating to .81...

#34 hey, this submit box is broken.

by willi

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 9:32 AM

each time I try to submit, backtiks get escaped once more...

#41 Re: Realy cool.

by fab

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 11:57 AM

The workaround for this bug is to click on Tabs> in the sidebar, then chose Customize Sidebar. In that screen, select the bookmarks in the right pane, and hit Remove. Close the dialog with OK. Then reopen the dialog, select the bookmarks in the left pane, click Add, and close the dialog with OK. And voila! :)

#35 Why the debugging crap?

by damian

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 9:46 AM

If this is supposed to be a release, why is the debugging crap compiled in on the windows installer build?

I usually use the nightly rpm builds for linux, and they don't even have the debugging stuff built in. I thought I would try the new release on my friends computer, and they only have windows, so now I see this.

Not only does it look less "professional" to have the Debug and QA menus up there, the debugging code takes up memory and slows Mozilla down.

So who compiles these Windows builds? What gives?

#38 Re: Why the debugging crap?

by bzbarsky

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 11:00 AM

The debug and QA menus include no compiled code. You can remove them in minutes with WinZip and notepad. There is no way to "compile" without those short of just editing the XUL

#45 Re: Re: Why the debugging crap?

by damian

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 12:42 PM

I beg to differ. There is a compiler flag that can be set which not only leaves out the debug and QA menus but also the compiled in debugging functions, of which there are a great many. I know this is true, at least for Linux, because I use the Linux builds which do not have the debugging stuff. When using debugging builds on Linux you can see a lot more text dumped to the terminal, these are the debugging functions, which add a sizable amount of bloat.

Perhaps I'm completely off here, and the Windows build process is completely different, but I tell you debugging can be turned off at compile time, I have seen it.

#58 debugging crap removal

by bzbarsky

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 6:56 PM

Please enlighten me as to this flag. A build with

--disable-tests --disable-debug --disable-dtd-debug --enable-optimize --enable-strip-libs

has the menus you refer to. Trust me, the 0.9 build has all the debugging functions that can be turned off with a compile flag out...

Linux nightlies have the Debug and QA menus, I should note.

#108 Re: debugging crap removal

by damian

Thursday May 10th, 2001 8:26 AM

>Linux nightlies have the Debug and QA menus, I should note

Chris Blizzard\'s rpm builds don\'t. Perhaps he goes through the trouble of changing the XUL files for each of them then.

#57 Re: Why the debugging crap?

by michaelg

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 6:06 PM

"If this is supposed to be a release, why is the debugging crap compiled in on the windows installer build?"

Because it's a beta release. It's not a GA products and as such, it requires both QA and debugging.

Don't worry, it will be gone when 1.0 comes around.

#66 Re: Re: Why the debugging crap?

by asa

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 11:35 PM

"Don't worry, it will be gone when 1.0 comes around."

And where did you hear this? Mozilla binaries are provided for testing and development. These menus are used for testing and development.

--Asa

#116 Re: Why the debugging crap?

by michaelg

Thursday May 10th, 2001 11:27 PM

"And where did you hear this?"

Okay, you caught me. 8)

I didn't hear it anywhere; I assumed it was going to be the case. I keep on forgetting that Moz isn't for end users.

Which, IMHO, is a bit strange, but I assume you guys know what you're doing.

#67 Re: Why the debugging crap?

by asa

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 11:41 PM

The debug and qa menus are unrelated to the optimized or debug build flags. All mozilla nightly and milestone binaries are compiled optimized.

Mozilla nightly and release binaries are created for testing and development purposes. These menus are supposed to be in all Mozilla builds. If they are missing then it is a bug.

--Asa

#39 Really really good except

by tono

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 11:04 AM

There's this nasty annoying bug/feature where there's a 4 or 5 second lag between when a window opens and when it's actually useable. Till that timeframe is passed all of mozilla is frozen and that's uncool. Can that be fixed or is it going to be a permanent fixture in the application.

#42 Re: Really really good except

by gerbilpower

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 12:05 PM

I'm just curious why some people refer to certain bugs as features ...

Anyway ... there are various bug reports on this and work is being done. ETA? Dunno.

Alex http://www.gerbilbox.com/newzilla/

#50 Re: Really really good except

by brewpaul

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 2:16 PM

I believe this was listed as \"fixed\" in early May so we might see it on 0.9.1 I am not entirely sure if other bugs have cropped since the patch, you might want to check out the \"tear down the world bug\" on mozzila.

#43 Top Usability Bug List

by caspy7

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 12:27 PM

Is there a Top Usability Bug List somewhere or must one be created?

Something like this would help give developers perspective on where to prioritize their resources.

#44 Re: Top Usability Bug List

by gerbilpower

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 12:33 PM

I think usability bugs are marked with the "Catfood" keyword in BugZilla.

Alex http://www.gerbilbox.com/newzilla/

#49 Re: Top Usability Bug List

by brewpaul

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 1:29 PM

Try this page also:

http://www.mozilla.org/quality/most-frequent-bugs/

#54 Re: Re: Top Usability Bug List

by gerbilpower

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 4:35 PM

That isn't exactly a list of usability bugs, although a number of them are listed there. But if a lot people are filing bugs on it, I guess anything could be considered a usability bug.

Alex http://www.gerbilbox.com/newzilla/

#91 a query for this

by dipa

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 2:01 PM

Mozilla.org definition for nscatfood: "This indicates a bug nominated as serious user satisfaction issue with the product"

Below is a query you can use for "ncatfood" :http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&email1=&emailtype1=substring&emailassigned_to1=1&email2=&emailtype2=substring&emailreporter2=1&bugidtype=include&bug_id=&changedin=&votes=&chfieldfrom=&chfieldto=Now&chfieldvalue=&short_desc=&short_desc_type=substring&long_desc=&long_desc_type=substring&bug_file_loc=&bug_file_loc_type=substring&status_whiteboard=&status_whiteboard_type=substring&keywords=nsCatFood&keywords_type=anywords&field0-0-0=noop&type0-0-0=noop&value0-0-0=&cmdtype=doit&order=Importance

#48 history

by archen

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 1:18 PM

Ugh.... the history thing on my sidebar still doesn't work. I really like this idea (taken from IE), but it's been doing a lot of nothing for a long time now. And like someone said before, windows need to show up faster... not in a matter of seconds. Overall Mozilla is looking better and better.

Is there any reason javascript always seems to be turned off when I get a release, or is this just imported from my N4 profile where I have it turned off?

#59 Re: history

by bzbarsky

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 6:58 PM

It's imported

#51 Good stuff!

by starky

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 3:44 PM

There are so many improvements, particularly with regards to performance, with this release, following close on the heels of the last 0.8.x release, that I hardly know where to start with the praise.

There has obviously been alot of hard work by the Mozilla team.

As a long-time Netscape user, since the days when I was a Windows through my conversion to the joys of Linux, I have seen the Mozilla project come an incredibly long way.

This release has given me alot of confidence in the Mozilla project, and I\'m eagerly awaiting a fast, stable 1.0 release. Now I just need to get off my butt and start contributing :-)

#60 good but...

by billi_kid

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 7:21 PM

mozilla is getting better but process is too slow.... compared with KDE konqueror...do something.... mozilla still starts "two years"... i can start and close IE five times and mozilla first window is still somewere else but not on my screen

#63 Re: good but...

by gerbilpower

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 8:08 PM

That's why we're not release Mozilla 1.0 yet :)

Seriously, there are a number of bugs on the start-up issue. Not sure when they'll be fixed.

Alex http://www.gerbilbox.com/newzilla/

#82 i have

by billi_kid

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 12:38 PM

PII 433 MHZ 96MB RAM

#68 Re: good but...

by asa

Tuesday May 8th, 2001 11:50 PM

I guess you have an old machine. For me the first startup of IE on my win2K machine with a PIII650 and 128 MB RAM is about 3.5 seconds and then about 1 second for all later launches (start page set to about:blank). The first startup for Mozilla takes about 5 seconds and about 2 seconds for all later launches. I don't consider this to be much of a problem at all.

--Asa

#69 Re: Re: good but...

by pirat

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 2:44 AM

Same here, only Opera starts half of the time IE or Mozilla does. So what's the answer? If you don't need DOM (or in other words "if you need just the browser for 95% of web pages"), use Opera. If you're working on web-applications, there's no other choice than IE and Mozilla. I hope once Mozilla is finished (means useable) there will be "just the browser" port. That's exactly what most people want.

#70 There already is.

by SmileyBen

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 4:26 AM

There already is a 'just the browser' option. Use the installer and select... er... just the browser...

#81 Re: There already is.

by pirat

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 12:30 PM

I never use installer, it introduces only problems. Maybe I should give it a try ^_^

#94 Not so fast for me

by dipa

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 3:26 PM

At first I warn that arguing about start up times is not my intention since I know there are many system factors that affect it.

In my K6-III/400-192MB ram-eide drive, startup time on Win2000 is 10 sec (5 sec for subsequent reloads). I get similar numbers on Win98 (see related post below).

Measured after restarting (not simply logging again). Disk defragmentaion might improve those numbers a bit.

No chance when comparing to IExplorer (1.5 sec startup time) but this is mostly a MS preloading trick. Most users are not aware of it though.

A faster cpu / hd drive (scsi) should give a big boost and reduce differential with IE. That might explain Asa's numbers.

#71 Essential things missing/broken ...

by johann_p

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 5:14 AM

A lot of work is being put into Mozilla, but it seems people sometimes concentrate on the wrong issues.

I wonder why these things are still missing or broken: 1) no "quote original message" function; 2) no bounce/redirect; 3) no disabling of HTML mail content 4) no protection against multiple instances on LINUX 5) LINUX: wrong handling of modal dialogs, no minimization of some other dialogs. 6) the old back button bug.

Of course its not for me to decide on importance, but am I really wrong in thinking that these things are higher priority than, say, having a nice hierachical history list, or another way to list attachments?

Of course this is just yet another opinion on "whats" important for Mozilla ... what is actually the best place to discuss this question?

All this of course, 'cause I cant wait to just use Mozilla everytime, everywhere! :)

#97 Re: Essential things missing/broken ...

by afranke

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 4:52 PM

1) is known in bugzilla as bug 70478: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=70478 ``The "quote original message" option is missing when creating a reply or new message'' Found by searching for "quot orig" in the textbox at http://bugzilla.mozilla.org (aka QuickSearch)

#98 Re: Essential things missing/broken ...

by afranke

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 4:58 PM

2) is bug 12916: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12916 "Allow bounce/redirect of mail messages" Found by searching for "bounce redirect" with Bugzilla QuickSearch

#99 Re: Essential things missing/broken ...

by afranke

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 5:05 PM

3) seems to be bug 69529: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=69529 "[RFE] Pref to disable HTML mail"

Found by searching for "disabl HTML" in Bugzilla QuickSearch (the query returned 7 bugs).

#100 Re: Essential things missing/broken ...

by afranke

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 5:19 PM

For 4), there are several bugs. Here are some from a query for "multiple instances":

Bug 47393: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47393 "Possible to get multiple instances launching; may crash in some cases"

Bug 23952: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?ie=23952

Bug 31575: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31575

Bug 76431: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76431 "Profiles need to be protected from running multiple instances of mozilla"

#103 Last but not least...

by afranke

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 6:35 PM

Wrt. 5), you need to be more precise. There are a lot of bugs in bugzilla about modal dialogs.

I just realize that you are the reporter of your 1st issue, and that you were cc'ed on the original "Saving File window not minimizable". When talking about bugs where you _know_ the numbers, you should always mention them, to save other people some work.

As for the best place to discuss what's "important for Mozilla": The best thing to do is submit a patch that fixes (one of) them. If you can't do that, you can still lobby for your bugs, but you should try to not annoy the developers. Nominate your favorite bugs for an appropriate milestone, vote for them, try to add the nsCatFood keyword, add a comment why you think that it's really more important than the current milestone/priority setting indicates. If all fails, try to convince someone else to jump in and help out with a fix, e.g. on an appropriate newsgroup, see http://www.mozilla.org/community.html

#72 rendering problems?

by ratman

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 5:55 AM

someone complained to me recently about still seeing those annoying black horizontal lines across images when using 0.9; i couldn't reproduce it on my copy.

at least one person mentioned having probs with imglib2/libpr0n in another comment - is anyone else experiencing this? with jpgs or animated gifs or both?

#73 Re: rendering problems?

by Brendon

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 6:14 AM

>someone complained to me recently about still seeing those annoying black horizontal lines across images when using 0.9

I've once seen images being drawn with black horizontal lines at first, then when the page was loaded (and presumably the entire image) the black lines were filled in. 'fraid i can't reproduce this, i've seen it once on one page.. but i cant remember the url :/

animated gifs: no clue, no problems as of yet (even though there seems to be quite a few judging from other peoples comments..)

jpgs: sometimes corrupted when first displayed, i believe this is/was a known problem. have yet to see it occur with 0.9

#75 Re: Re: rendering problems?

by schapel

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 8:19 AM

I've seen the black lines as recently as yesterday's build on the page http://java.sun.com/ The black lines sometimes appear temporarily and are erased. Sometimes the black lines remain after the page is loaded and go away only when the page is redrawn after I put another window in front of the Mozilla browser window.

#76 Re: Re: Re: rendering problems?

by FrodoB

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 9:36 AM

It actually happens to me in the UI, using Modern. Looks like I'll have to Bugzilla some (Bugzilla, the verb!) later. :)

#84 Re: Re: rendering problems?

by gwalla

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 1:09 PM

"I've once seen images being drawn with black horizontal lines at first, then when the page was loaded (and presumably the entire image) the black lines were filled in. 'fraid i can't reproduce this, i've seen it once on one page.. but i cant remember the url :/"

That's interlaced GIFs. It fills in with black lines instead of stretching the known pixels to fit (nearest-neighbor interpolation). That's not a bug per se, just an unattractive way of implementing interlacing. Nearest-neighbor interpolation is covered by this bug: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76703

For the bug of the stripes remaining, or appearing later, check this bug: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=73972

#74 Re: rendering problems?

by AgePee

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 6:59 AM

yes i have problems with an animated gif with transparet background (alpha transparency i think)

it can be seen here (upper left corner): http://www.imna.de/index2.html

Hanno

#80 Re: rendering problems?

by chinf

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 12:14 PM

It was fixed with one build a while ago (one of the late April ones, IIRC) but it's been broken ever since for me. It manifests itself as the black background on the spinning button at http://www.riscos.com/ (also, a shift-reload seems to trigger corrupted rendering of the labels on the right hand side of the screen) - and consistently with the sidebar's "loading" gif. It's not just black backgrounds - with some gifs the background is multicoloured upon first rendering!

#117 Re: Re: rendering problems?

by cochonou

Friday May 11th, 2001 12:59 AM

This is bug 77914, and as far as I know, it is not yet fixed.

#77 HOLY COW!

by gerbilpower

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 10:00 AM

Looks like it might need some tweaking, but the Taskbar has been merged with the status bar in the latest nightlies! YIPPIE!

Alex

#78 sweeeeet..

by Brendon

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 10:17 AM

..shame mozilla bails the moment i load an url.. lol, oh well.. just have to wait another 12 hours :)

#79 woah!!

by macpeep

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 10:57 AM

Wow!! And this isn't just some temporary thing or accident?!? That rules!! I never thought I'd see this day! :~)

#83 Re: woah!!

by gerbilpower

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 1:02 PM

No, there's a bug filed for this, which hasn't been marked fixed yet because the task icons and progress bar not showing up in certain places: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43797

Despite the problems some people noted, this is intentional and I'm damn happy about it!

Alex http://www.gerbilbox.com/newzilla/

#95 Re: HOLY COW!

by AlexBishop

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 3:43 PM

You're way ahead of me! I haven't even checked out 0.9 yet. I've downloaded it, unzipped it, executed it (once) but I've been too busy to give it a test drive.

Anyway, this feature is no doubt a great inprovement. I can't wait to see it myself. So... in the meantime, any chance of a screenshot? :-)

The Other Alex

#96 screenshot..

by Brendon

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 4:32 PM

..hum, so this is my contribution to mozilla.. the screenshot boy eh?.. ;)

http://195.38.200.201/screenshot1.jpg

no content, 'cause the darned thing dies the moment i load an url (apparently only on linux)..

#101 Re: screenshot..

by gerbilpower

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 5:45 PM

Well here's an identical screenshot, but with browser content:

http://www.gerbilbox.com/newzilla/images/antitaskbar.png

Brendon, I think the Linux problem was one of the blockers that was fixed ealier today. So try the next available build.

Alex http://www.gerbilbox.com/newzilla/

#111 Re: Re: screenshot..

by AlexBishop

Thursday May 10th, 2001 11:23 AM

Thanks guys!

The Other Alex

#85 Some performance "measurements"

by dipa

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 1:10 PM

Below there are some startup performance and footprint measurements I made on two milestone and a nightly release. The system was a K6-III/400 with 192 MB ram, EIDE hard disk, Windows 98. Javascript for mail & news was always enabled.

Initial footprint measurements were extracted from Windows System Monitor, thus they aren't very accurate but at least they are reproducible.

v0.8.1 BROWSER (java enabled) : 13 sec v0.8.1 MAIL: (java enabled): 15 sec v0.8.1 BROWSER MEMORY FOOTPRINT: 17.5 MB

v0.9 release BROWSER: 9 sec (5 sec on reload) v0.9 release MAIL: 10 sec v0.9 release BROWSER MEMORY FOOTPRINT: 17.2 MB

Build 2001050904 BROWSER: < 8.5 sec (4.5 sec on reload) Build 2001050904 MAIL: 10 sec Build 2001050904 BROWSER MEMORY FOOTPRINT: 15.3 MB

As you see, startup time is 1 sec faster in current trunk builds (compared to 0.9 release) since they incorporate view source on demand. Footprint is also smaller but this is usual: trunk builds initial footprints are always a few MB smaller. Anyone knows why?

#86 I forgot

by dipa

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 1:15 PM

0.9 includes jre loading on demand

2001050904 build includes jre loading on demand AND view source comp. on demand

#105 but...

by Nemo_NX

Thursday May 10th, 2001 3:00 AM

but still takes 3+ seconds to load?

#106 ugh.....

by Nemo_NX

Thursday May 10th, 2001 3:01 AM

That one was suppose to be for Alex's reply. Sorry aobut that.

#110 Re: but...

by gerbilpower

Thursday May 10th, 2001 11:17 AM

You mean 3 more seconds to startup?

From what I've been finding out, especially since updated start-up times (for comparison) are posted to the Mozilla newsgroups on a regular basis, there isn't much of a relationship between startup times and memory use. Some days when the startup time increases for some reason, memory usage has stayed the same.

Alex http://www.gerbilbox.com/newzilla/

#112 Hmmmmmmmm...

by Nemo_NX

Thursday May 10th, 2001 11:48 AM

that\'s really wierd

#113 Re: Hmmmmmmmm...

by gerbilpower

Thursday May 10th, 2001 12:01 PM

Not really, there are a gazillion other factors that also affect memory use and startup times in ways that make them behave independently from each other most of the time.

When you have, for example, a program that takes up 100 MB of memory and another that takes 1 MB of memory of course the 10 MB one is going to load a lot faster. But when you have two programs where one takes up 11 MB and the other 10 MB, the difference isn't as great and other factors comes into play.

Take the style sharing work that's been worked on in Mozilla. It's advantage is that it helped reduce memory use when visiting large and complex web sites. The disadvantage, because it made Mozilla do more work in figuring out which page styles could be shared (reducing memory), was that it had a minor hit to performance. It was judged a good trade off, considering how many new performance fixes that have been checked-in.

Alex http://www.gerbilbox.com/newzilla/

#87 Re: Some performance "measurements"

by gerbilpower

Wednesday May 9th, 2001 1:26 PM

XPCOM-DOM changes landed into the trunk yesterday, and one of the positive effects of this is reportedly reduced memory footprint in initial start (up to 2 MB as been reported).

Alex http://www.gerbilbox.com/newzilla/

#119 Re: Some performance "measurements"

by bugs4hj

Friday May 11th, 2001 8:50 PM

Well for w2k it's not that less you know. I'm running mozilla and it's using 24MB.

I start mozilla just under 1 sec. But hey, i never close it :)

#104 Whoa!

by Nemo_NX

Thursday May 10th, 2001 1:57 AM

Everyone try that new nightly out there. It fixes the bookmark issues & the 3rd Modern theme has improved a lot. Nice to see that taskbar eliminated as well. :)

I'd still like to see the startup speed for the menu selection and window pop-ups improved a bit.

Nice job guys!

#107 Re: Whoa!

by dipa

Thursday May 10th, 2001 4:31 AM

> Everyone try that new nightly out there.

I also insist on trunk builds. But since previous week, I am worried about two major issues they have not been fixed yet : a) context menus (right mouse click) work only for the first time, b) windows steal focus from each other.

> I'd still like to see the startup speed for the menu selection and window pop-ups improved a bit.

I would prefer them to focus on stability and essential features first. The performance bugs you refered to are already filed, so they will fix them in future.

#109 Re: Re: Whoa!

by Nemo_NX

Thursday May 10th, 2001 8:29 AM

yeah noticed that real quick when right clicking on this page! :) Got a bug # for that one?

#115 Here they are

by dipa

Thursday May 10th, 2001 12:28 PM

"Right click context menu" bug is 78725 http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=78725

"Windows steal focus" bug is 77675 http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=77675

#114 new nightlies...

by Tom7

Thursday May 10th, 2001 12:28 PM

0.9 seems great! But the nightlies recently have been terrible... today's crashes on a null pointer with practically everything I do!

#118 Re: new nightlies...

by gerbilpower

Friday May 11th, 2001 1:08 AM

They're regressions from some recent massive changes that landed these past days, including BiDi and XPCDOM. Considering the size of the changes, I say that they've done a good in keeping the regressions minimal. But still, it sucks until the major ones get straightened out.

Alex http://www.gerbilbox.com/newzilla/

#120 it process Chinese character better than before

by cyfer

Sunday May 13th, 2001 8:04 PM

as what I have said. it works better with Chinese.

#121 Solaris 7, anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

by RiotNrrrd

Thursday May 17th, 2001 2:50 PM

Am I the only person who's tried to build Mozilla 0.9 on Solaris 7? There's a Solaris 8 build, I know, but we're a Solaris 7 shop.

If I build it with some optimizations in the .mozconfig file, it locks up the Solaris 7 "Xsun" server solid. Total spin lock. If I do a vanilla build - which worked fine for Mozilla 0.7 and Mozilla 0.8 - I get a bunch of errors spewed out when I try to run it.

So, as a first pass - anyone else encounter the same kind of experience?

#122 Java freeze bug

by thoffman11

Saturday May 26th, 2001 9:00 AM

Is anyone else affected by the bug that causes mozilla to hang when leaving a page with an applet on me? To me, it\\\'s THE one bug holding back Mozilla from being a usable browser