Mozilla 0.9.1 ReleasedThursday June 7th, 2001mozilla.org released milestone 0.9.1 today, which continues to move Mozilla towards the 1.0 release. New features include Bi-directional text support, LDAP Autocomplete in mail, new combined taskbar, an overhaul of the Modern skin with all new colors and buttons, and a slew of performance and stability fixes, with over 30 of the topcrash bugs fixed.
...explosions and fire. I like the new Modern, but I hope they finish it up before the next milestone. I'm assuming the ugly boxes around the buttons when you click them are only temporary, and the security info lock in the lower righthand corner looks REALLY out of place. Otherwise I'm content :) those boxes have been fixed in the nightlies. I aggree... this new modern theme is gorgeous. I couldnt use the old one becaauyse it was too dark and "klunky" to my eyes. I hate this washed out blue looks more IE grey than anything. Glad that Alfred wrote a nice Theme called wood. It really spuces ;-) things up. http://members.tripod.lycos.nl/AKayser/skins/themes.htm It *IS* out of place. It's not aligned to the right edge because sometime in 3 years, we're going to get a resize widget there. Until that, there will be an odd looking space between the lock and the right edge. I know that's not what you meant, but I couldn't resist commenting on that. The finishing touches are supposed to be introduced by 0.9.3 Go to bugs 84048, 84050 and 84051 for more info. Cool.. Still nothing about the silly looking empty lower right corner tho. :/ I filed a bug about that ages ago and it was more or less just dismissed as "we'll get a resizing widget at some point in the future" to put there. Until that, I'd like to see the the corner being flat to the right. You're just not looking close enough. There's a bug with a patch, review and super-review. I think it's just awaiting approval from your's truely and it should land rsn clearing that corner empty space on win32 and linux. --Asa Are you talking about the scrollbar corner? It seems silly that you can see the background of the page through it. http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30579 Or the resizing grippy? http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=27795 Doesn't look like anyone's worked on this bug in a while. Or is it a different bug? This is still a not-ready-for-prime-time UI. Installing the Mac version, I saw two windows during startup that had text clipped off the edges. Going into Preferences, I see all sorts of gaps -- unbalanced white space, disabled checkboxes that respond to mouse clicks, disabled checkboxes with labels in black text instead of gray, no stickiness of location or disclosure state when bringing up the dialog a second time, clipped list boxes in Send Format, a clickable section label (Privacy & Security) that brings up a blank pane, modal help dialogs instead of modeless (also, preferences itself is modal instead of modeless), no balloon help or tool tips on any item (including very obscure ones), radio buttons outside a grouping box, and so on. Looking in the menu bars, after I close the last window I still see enabled commands like Send Page, Page Source, and Save As which should be disabled when there's no window. And so on. The Search button works in a bizarre way, switching out a sidebar in a totally different part of the window. Feature grouping, anyone? I can't see a control to close the sidebar. In the sidebar under Bookmarks, empty folders have an enabled disclosure control that does nothing when you click it. The top left disclosure controls iterate through their states in a way that is totally unclear to me. I click on one expecting to open it and instead I close something else. In the undisclosed state the controls are blank and provide no clue as to their function. They have no tool tips in either open or closed state although their function is unclear. The top right Print button has a popup menu control attached. The button and arrow light up when you click Print but nothing drops down. If you click on just the arrow, there's a different visual pressed-down state and a single menu command comes up, which is Print -- exactly the same effect as just pushing the button. What? Sidebar control is mostly through the Tabs menu in the sidebar, but for some strange reason there's also a sidebar customization menu command under Search. Where the Window menu? Where's the Rotate Windows command? How do I deal with multiple windows open? There are two incomprehensible icons at the lower right. Clicking on the lock icon brings up Page Info, a binding that does not seem to make sense. Command-W does not close the Page Info window, nor does File: Close. Buttons in browser windows behind the Page Info window light up when you mouse over them, but clicking on them just switches the window instead of hitting the button. Page Info has a lot of menu commands enabled that only apply to browser HTML windows, but they don't do anything when you select them. The Security pane of Page Info is mostly empty except for a divider line in the middle of nowhere and a View button that does nothing. The lock icon says in its tool tip that it brings up security information, but it does not go to the Security pane of Page Info. Some tool tips are complete sentences; others are sentence fragments; and not all sentences end with a period. There's been a lot of improvement since the last time I looked, and I'm especially glad to see there aren't five different styles of popup menus scattered randomly around the window frame any more. Now there are only three or four different styles and they're not quite so scattered. I have to wonder why the organization can't deliver a professional GUI. Wasn't XUL/XBL supposed to make cross-platform interfaces dead easy to create? I don't think the teams understands that Mac users are not going to accept this kind of thing. Eli, where are you? While you make a lot of very valid and good comments, they really belong in bugzilla.mozilla.org ... posting here will accomplish nothing. I bet you 90% of them are known bugs too. And as for the "it isn't polished" comments... I wouldnt expect it to be until it is done. thanks for you comments though. Thank you for your polite response. When I have filed UI bugs in Bugzilla in the past, they have been closed as not bugs, with notes such as "That's YOUR opinion." That includes obvious problems and violations of platform standards. So I gave up. Some things that you mention such as inability to use Cmd+W to close the page info window, layout errors, modality errors, command enabling problems etc are all valid bugs. If they don't already exist they should be filed. It's the details that make the product seem polished, and we're still not so hot at the details at the moment. > they have been closed as not bugs, > with notes such as "That's YOUR > opinion." Please point me at examples of bugs where someone has been this rude. Gerv The bugs were submitted under other pseudonyms, due to the intense hostility that faces anyone whose stated attitude is that Mozilla is a project at risk. I don't like concealing my identity but I also don't care to be anyone's whipping boy under my real name. My point is not so much the specific bugs themselves. It's that I shouldn't be able to find fifty obvious UI mistakes in ten minutes of poking around in the program. That shows a lack of care on the development side, as well as an apparent difficulty in using the software UI layer to create decent UI -- even something as simple as a dialog that doesn't cut off its items. My hope is expressing this concern is that it will lead to greater vigilance by the developers in checking in UI code, as well as spark discussion on issues in the software UI layer that are contributing to broken UI. you just want to bitch about the product? You mention bugs that were throw out but when asked to "show the goods" you can't give any verifiable data. Being a programmer, I understand how difficult it is to get everything working with a small program. I couldn't imagine trying to build a project such as Mozilla. On top of that, these versions being released right now are beta (pre-release) versions. While you have valid complaints about the issues you have found, I don't think it warrants the rant you gave it.. The usual response here to any concerns is personal attack. Your message is an example. That is why I am not forthcoming about my identity, which would be revealed by the bug reports you asked for. If you don't approve, then the best way to address your concern is to stop making personal attacks. Being a programmer as well, I have created a number of cross-platform applications and UI modules comparable to Mozilla. I also know how hard it is to get things right. I also know that many programmers don't bother to get things right, especially when it comes to screen appearance. It seems to me from what I have been seeing of Mozilla that Mozilla programmers seem to be in that camp of "ah, fuggid, it's close enough." Finally, I also know that with a decent cross-platform class library, you don't run into weird problems like clipped text, dialog fields off the edge of the window, and so on. It makes me wonder about the robustness of XUL. If that simple concern is a "bitch" or a "rant" from your perspective, it might be time to re-evaluate dosage levels. ---- The usual response here to any concerns is personal attack. Your message is an example. That is why I am not forthcoming about my identity, which would be revealed by the bug reports you asked for. ---- Do you really think the people here would take up torches and pitchforks, and storm your house if they knew your email address? ---- If you don't approve, then the best way to address your concern is to stop making personal attacks. ---- Okay, I must have missed something. When did he personally attack you? ---- If that simple concern is a "bitch" or a "rant" from your perspective, it might be time to re-evaluate dosage levels. ---- Weren't you just complaining about personal attacks earlier? Apparently they're not a problem as long as they aren't directed towards yourself. "I have created a number of cross-platform applications and UI modules comparable to Mozilla." WOW! Really? Are you serious? You have singlehandedly created several (more than 1) applications comparable to Mozilla? That's amazing! How long did each one take you? Can you share them with us? Better yet, someone of your ability, could you help us make Mozilla better? Are your apps (the several cross platform ones comparable to Mozilla) open source? --Asa > When I have filed UI bugs in Bugzilla > in the past, they have been closed as > not bugs, with notes such as "That's > YOUR opinion." That includes obvious > problems and violations of platform > standards. So I gave up. Mind sending the list of bugs that were closed this way? I'll be willing to see if any of them might have duplicates or need reopening. > This is still a not-ready-for-prime-time UI. This is why it's numbered 0.9.1 :-) > a clickable section label (Privacy & Security) that brings up a blank pane, That's in the release notes, surely. > radio buttons outside a grouping box, and so on. Is that a Mac HIG thing? > The button and arrow light up when you click Print but nothing drops down. There will be in the future, and there is on Netscape Commercial builds IIRC. > Where the Window menu? Where's the Rotate Windows command? > How do I deal with multiple windows open? Ah - this is because the Mac's window manager has terrible window-switching UI. On other platforms, people use the native window-switching method without problems. But never fear, we are coming to your rescue. In the mean time, check under "Tasks". > Clicking on the lock icon brings up Page Info, > a binding that does not seem to make sense. It will when it has a Security tab. > Command-W does not close the Page Info > window, nor does File: Close. Does Page Info have a menu bar? If you mean in the background browser window, that's by design. You don't necessarily want it closed. > I have to wonder why the organization can't deliver a professional GUI. Because you aren't helping with it? :-) Also, because it's not finished yet. > Wasn't XUL/XBL supposed to make cross-platform interfaces dead easy to create? No interface with the complexity of Mozilla's is "dead easy" to create. But it's a lot easier than it would otherwise be. Try having a go yourself. > Eli, where are you? He might be back soon - you know Eazel went belly-up? Gerv >> The button and arrow light up when you click Print but nothing drops down. >There will be in the future, and there is on Netscape Commercial builds IIRC. Any idea what the options are? Will print preview go in there when it is checked in? I can't think of anything else (except one-click print, which I personally hate). >> Clicking on the lock icon brings up Page Info, >> a binding that does not seem to make sense. >It will when it has a Security tab. In my build (Windows 2001060704, as linked by the build bar) there is a security tab which shows up by default when you click the icon. There are text-wrapping problems, but I'm sure they can be fixed. >> Command-W does not close the Page Info >> window, nor does File: Close. >Does Page Info have a menu bar? If you mean in the background browser window, that's by design. You don't necessarily want it closed. ALT+F4 close the window for me no problem. It doesn't have a menu bar. >> I have to wonder why the organization can't deliver a professional GUI. >Because you aren't helping with it? :-) >Also, because it's not finished yet. I really wish people wouldn't make comments like 'if the bug annoys you, fix it', even if they are in jest. Many people don't have the skills or time to do this, and my be helping out in other area of the project (such as QA). When Gerv asks to contribute, he doesn't necessarily mean to actually write C code to fix the bug. We strongly encourage people to report the bugs they find, since developers are more concentrated on fixing the bugs assigned to them because they know those bugs exist, while the rest (myself included) do our part by finding the bugs and reporting them so the developers know that they exist. Reporting bugs is easy and only takes a few minutes. Alex http://www.gerbilbox.com/newzilla/ Hmm, when I was reporting my first bug it took me about three hours. And my two pence - bugzilla is very good, but only because there isn't anything better. > bugzilla is very good, but only because > there isn't anything better. True, and it is improving. If you have any suggestions on how it could be improve further, post a bug report on bugzilla about it. At least there should be more sample queries and REALLY not at the bottom of that VERY LONG "Help Using The Bugzilla Query Form". One example with appropriate description is much better than very long and almost complete documentation. (Some Murphy's law comming into mind here ;-) Fill the bug about it? Oh my... I'll try ;) > Fill the bug about it? Oh my... I'll try ;) I realize the irony, but there is currently no easier way. If you do file bugs on this, do put me on the CC list, I'll be interested in tracking and maybe helping out a bit. _basic@yahoo.com > Any idea what the options are? > Will print preview go in there when it is checked in? When it's written, yes :-) > linked by the build bar) there is a > security tab which shows up by default > when you click the icon. Then why doesn't the binding make sense? Surely Security is a "page info" thing? > I really wish people wouldn't make comments like 'if the bug annoys you, > fix it', even if they are in jest. Many people don't have the > skills or time to do this, and my be helping out in other area of > the project (such as QA). Did I say anything about coding? If you are doing QA, that's fab - thanks. Then take the second of my two answers. Gerv Since I don't have a mac maybe someone could check out Q-BATi which is a native mac app that uses mozilla. Same idea as Galeon or k-meleon except probably more sophisticated on the UI side http://qbati2.sourceforge.net/ Nice build, I am looking forward to seeing 1.0 :) Does anyone now more about whats going on with Netscape? German Newsmagazines report, they give up on the Browser ... :(( take care and keep up the good work! "The browser is a crown jewel. However, six months from now, you won't consider Netscape to be a browser company," Netscape President Jim Bankoff told Reuters in an interview --ZDNet I just read this on ZDNet. How could AOL/Netscape say such a thing? If Netscape is planning to back away from the browser part of the company, What is going to become of Mozilla? Sure we have outside contributions, but Netscape puts a TON into Mozilla, and without it, I don't know how we'd solve much of what we have so far. Lets hope that Netscape 6.5 blows everyone's socks off so that Mr Bankoff will rethink his statement. The ZDNet Link is... http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2769610,00.html I didn't interpret that article like that. I read it as Netscape thinks it'll gain a reputation in many other areas besides the browser, and that the typecast image that Netscape is just a browser company will be proven wrong. Wouldn't it be pretty stupid to give up on your "crown jewels"? Well they practically did. I mean Netscape 6 is a total disaster. I think that served to seriously ruin many people's faith in a browser that Netscape releases. Perhaps this will also serve to concentrate any sort of browser recourses on Mozilla - which other than a few people's complaints, pretty much has a clean slate in the minds of most people Of course so does Opera which is probably superior to every other browser, and how many people actually use that? you surely talking about heise.de, it seems that they just translated this articel http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/010606/n05260410_2.html there is allready a mozillazine comment thread called " Anyone want to comment on this? " in the previous news posting "Upcoming Mozilla Tree Plans" quite at the end. i also agree that this news is not so negative as sometimes interpreted here. it's mainly consulting like hot air that is mentioned there. Netscape is an internet company of course the ceo shouts out "in 6 month you will not see the same netscape" and things like that. AOL bought mainly the netscape.com internet site and the browser is just the deluxe addon. as far as i read this article the brand netscape will be the "AOL for not absolute newbies", so for people who know that a dial-up and the aol.com homepage is not everything out there, so for people that are not affraid to download a browser, even when there is one integrated in their os.... and so on. i think that aol is simply aware, that there are people on t3 lines that don't need aol as an isp, but loved to pay (???) for aol-time-warner-cnn.... content. so AOL.com for the people who are afraid of computer and netscape for the mature one... and one day we all get mature. with mozilla based products on aol and netscpae.com (this strange mentioned services seem to be the consulting point of view of mozilla) with the cnn-navigator, and the icq-browser, the aim-gamenet .... as long as the "evil" aol is funding mozilla and mozilla is deploying a really good 1.0 (nn7.0) i like this evil (and they don't drop real for windows media player) One key thing in the article that was missed was that it was Netscape.COM that said they are not a browser company anymore.....hint hint, nudge nudge, say no more.... Checkins require driver approval, but the tree is already en feugo. Yikes. Sometimes I think Mozilla (and other big projects) would benefit from a build farm that was so fast, you could practically serialize checkins. You'd need a machine that could build the beast in, say, 10 minutes. Then you'd REALLY know who to put the blame on. Well, anyone can contribute a tinderbox. So, all you have to do is buy the hardware for us and install it on a nice fat pipe somewhere, at your expense. We might even find someone to set it up for you. Gerv [non-Mozilla-coder] Are you serious?! 10 minutes would be good?! How long does it take now?! I\'ve heard that VC++ had one hell of a lame compiler, but - 10 minutes?!?!?!?! We\'re building apps that are IMO considerably bigger than Mozilla and they compile in three minutes max on a workstation, if you\'ve got SETI and UD running in the background... less than half otherwise. OTH this is Delphi I\'m talking about... Oliver P.S.: I do not intend to start another jihad thread here... the number just seemed so unbelievably big... Ten minutes would be great. Even on their new machines it takes quite a bit longer. On mine it takes about 40 minutes... How big are your apps? tens of thousands of lines? hundreds of thousands of lines? millions of lines? No multiple millions, but very close to the first. How big then is Moz in these terms? Although this is probably not really comparable as I usually have to write considerably less code in Delphi than in C++ to accomplish the same thing. At least that's what it seems from what I've seen so far of C++ code - I don't write C++ myself. Oliver It can take ten minutes for make to execute in each directory, let alone build anything. The tinderboxes can build in two ways, one is to pull changes and compile those changes, which can take anywhere between ten minutes (practically no changes) and 30 minutes, the second way is a complete build, which on the fast tinderbox machines can take 45mins-1hour or more. My machine (a K6-2 300Mhz 256Mb RAM) builds mozilla fully in around four hours. An overnight update takes normally two hours but obviously it depends greatly on how much of 'the world' needs to be rebuilt based on the changes. I just wanted to thank Asa for taking the time to respond to quite a few negative posts on Slashdot and pointing to the respective bugs or workarounds. This is what real advocacy is about. Great job! I just read slashdotters' comments and I've been surprised that for the first time, the majority of comments were positive ones (not the Mozilla bashing type as previously).
Maybe this is the first Mozilla release that is a clear improvement over Netscape 4.x for the casual user? This is because they are quite happy to slag us off without helping earlier in the development cycle, then suddenly it's "Wow, this is actually quite cool" when the software gets close to being finished. This makes me sick. Gerv Remeber that .91 is the first really reliable release for the general public. You also have to remember that this is probably the largest ever open source project as far as number of users go. There are a lot of non-developers who have been able to download beta software that have never been able too before. I do think that NS6 should have been labeled a beta though. That release gave people a bad first impression unfortunately. I'm only an end user, as I dont know any C, I cant really help code but, for what it's worth, thank you for all your hard work from day one. Mozilla is looking awesome. Slashdot anymore is overrun with trolls. Reading at +1 is almost as bas as reading at -1. You just don't see all the FP, goatse.cx and "thank you for letting me waste your time" posts. The editors who are blatatly anti-Mozilla don't help either because they're too jaded by their plethora of expensive techno tpys that they use with Linux drivers they just got elsewhere. They're not used to actually contributing anymore. Yeah, the following piece of bad news was reported really unfairly, wasn't it? (I'm assuming that most of MozillaZine agree that 6.0 was not release quality). Mozilla 1.0 Delayed Again Posted by timothy on Monday May 28, @03:40PM from the point-nine-beats-six-oh-anyhow dept. Capt. Mubbers writes: "Both Mozillaquest and RootPrompt have pointers to the new Mozilla 'Tree Management' diagram which is now showing a delay until Q4 2001. Hey, I don't mind, later should mean that they are taking the time to get it right! Cough, cough Netscape 6.0." Sometimes I wish large projects would just use a series of intriguing codewords (or name+code release date), so this point-oh anxiety never had to surface The -turbo argument option really is the hightlight of this milestone. I have set a shortcut in the startup folder of the start menu on Windows so that Mozilla is started when I boot. When I click on the shortcut, it starts as fast as IE4!!! I never would have thought that preloading it would make such a huge difference. This totally takes IE's speed advantage away. Hopefully, this option will be the default install in Netscape and Moz 1.0. We need to be able to turn it on/off from the advanced tab in the preferences dialog box. I do not know why anyone would be surprised that preloading makes a big difference. Well maybe the actual experience of using the preloader, rather than thinking about it conceptually, is giving people the positive and surprise-like reaction? If only certain bugs were fixed, then I would be able to enjoy preloading on a more permanent basis :) Alex http://www.gerbilbox.com/newzilla/ Actually, I wouldn't want the -turbo switch to be the default; or at least would want an install preference to turn it off. Sometimes I actually do something on my computer that doesn't require a browser . . . That's one of the major bugs filed on the -turbo command-line, a UI to turn it on and off. I don't know about the installer version, but the zipped version, obviously since it doesn't create short cuts, doesn't have it on by default. Alex http://www.gerbilbox.com/newzilla/ Erm, what exactly do I have to type/create in order to preload Mozilla ? Do I create a blank shortcut with just "mozilla -turbo" ? -Make a copy of your current Mozilla shortcut(or create a new one); -Add -turbo in the end of "target" line, e.g. "C:\Program Files\Mozilla\mozilla.exe" -turbo; -launch this shortcut; -launch your usual Mozilla shortcut Should this be with or withou "" ? Could you be a little more clearer, please? "C:Program FilesMozillamozilla.exe" -turbo; or C:Program FilesMozillamozilla.exe -turbo I don't think Mozilla should preload by default on all systems, but it should definatly be an option in the installation routine. Something like: 'Preload Mozilla to enable fast startup of new windows.' (actually, that sucks). I'm not sure if it should be on or off by default on system startup. Imagine if every application you used preloaded itself on startup. Think about it -- you run mozilla -turbo and you have no idea how long it takes until the preloader has finished its job. (Aside from watching the HD lights). I think that the preloader is the best time to display the splashscreen, which will show, and users will expect it, exactly what is loading. I don't really like having the preloader run, and not have any feedback about what is going on. Other programs do the same thing -- McAfee antivirus, ZoneAlarm etc. Of course, we'll then need a -quiet option to turn off the splashscreen. I think a tray icon would be better than a splash screen. I understand what you mean... starting it for the first time yourself with no feedback is anoying but most people will use this option as a startup shortcut and it's not very nice to see a splash screen when you boot the OS. #105 Re: Re: That -turbo thing needs to display the splby AlexBishop Saturday June 9th, 2001 6:42 AM I can see the usefullness of a tray icon, but it should be optional. I hate my tray getting cluttered with icons. Alex I disagree. I already get lots of splash screens when I boot, and I hate them all. -turbo should do the biz quietly and without fuss. Gerv #120 Re: Re: That -turbo thing needs to display the splashby fat_cow Saturday June 9th, 2001 4:43 PM Just an idea... Since IE kinda takes over your whole desktop on preload, why don't we make mozilla do the same thing? So right-clicking a desktop icon will bring up an XP menu, and the windows taskbar becomes Modern3-skinned. Of course I'm joking. That would definitely inform people of mozilla being omnipresent! #158 Re: Re: Re: That -turbo thing needs to display the splashby krmt Sunday June 10th, 2001 11:24 PM If mozilla decides to take over my linux box I'll never ever touch it again! Loading Mozilla.exe -turbo at startup is great if you've got an 'always on' Internet connection, but not so great if you've got a dial-up connection like me. On my system, the preloader loads silently, but up pops the Windows Dial-up Networking connection dialogue (it comes up whenever an app tries to use a network connection when one is not present). And if I press Cancel I get a Mozilla alert saying that it couldn't locate uk.yahoo.com (my home page). What Mozilla needs is a -offline option that would force it to load in offline mode. This could be used in combination with -turbo to make my life easier. Alex This has a fix. The patch now doesn't load anything, including home pages and sidebar panels. It looks like what it does is that it will open a window very quickly to get stuff loaded then close it back down, rather than opening a window and keeping it hidden. Unsure if this slows it down any from the way it used to work... Love this option guys, keep up the good work! Instead of adding it to the start menu, I created a "New String Value" labeled "Mozilla Preload" under the following key in the registry. [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run] Then I just added "C:\Program Files\Mozilla\mozilla.exe" -turbo to the key value. Sometimes I wonder how priorities are driven within Mozilla. At the moment it seems to be resource driven with all the rendering and program load speed increases but no print preview on a 0.9.1 release! imho im not a developer) more effort should be given to stability and functionality rather than speed increases. For example Mozilla *still* can\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'t print a table that\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s longer than a page length - see bug 80966 which was defined as a dupe of 66804 (which is supposed to be fixed) - but is it? I can understand that the nearer we get to release 1 the more exciting the imrovements in Mozilla are and there have been many major improvements recently but please do not lose sight that Mozilla is not meant for develepors but must be able to provide \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\"ordinary\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\" users with the basic functionality required. I think that the work so far in an open source environment has been incredible please keep up the good work. Sometimes I wonder how priorities are driven within Mozilla. At the moment it seems to be resource driven with all the rendering and program load speed increases but no print preview on a 0.9.1 release! imho im not a developer) more effort should be given to stability and functionality rather than speed increases. For example Mozilla *still* can\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'t print a table that\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s longer than a page length - see bug 80966 which was defined as a dupe of 66804 (which is supposed to be fixed) - but is it? I can understand that the nearer we get to release 1 the more exciting the imrovements in Mozilla are and there have been many major improvements recently but please do not lose sight that Mozilla is not meant for develepors but must be able to provide \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\"ordinary\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\" users with the basic functionality required. I think that the work so far in an open source environment has been incredible please keep up the good work. I guess a image blocking fix didn't land in time? Can't test the release here at work, so I'll have to wait and see... It didn't get done in time for 0.9.1 but works now (well, I only briefly checked, but it looks fine). Should be in 0.9.2 if you are waiting for milestone releases. --sam hello all, I have just tested a web page which has a javascript based menu navigation (based on Netscape's menu.js) with 0.9 and 0.9.1 Milestone releases and mozilla didn't open the menu!. On the other hand, I was able to see the same menu navigation correctly with 0.8.! Additionally, some "gif animations" which were again correctly displayed in 0.8 are now incorrectly displayed (generally with a blackish background behind the gif). Is there anyone else having similar problems? Are these bugs waiting to be resolved? Cheers, Orhan. The gif animations with the black background is a known bug, actually it is bug 77914 http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=77914 As for the javascript menu not working, I don't know, but it would help if you posted the url here :). Hello again, Thanks for the gif animation bug info. For jscript menus, here is an an example case: A similar site which uses pulldown menus written in dhtml & jscript can be viewed at : http://www.likno.com I have just tested 0.8.1 to view this site and it was successful. I also tried 0.9.x but it could not handle the menu structure. all the best. orhan this page has never worked for me using mozilla: http://provinggrounds.com/ (the menu should be at the top) Is it just me or is the releases page not updated yet? You mean those page where it tells what works and what doesn etc? I guess that this page hasn't been update for at least half a year or so.... like the Mouse-overs disapearing, (see <a href="www.matrox.com"> matrox </a>) Submit-Buttons Missing, but it still crashes on the Treeview of <a href="www.doxygen.org"> doxygen</a> ... Holy shit! Asa just mentioned in todays build update that 337 bugs were fixed in one week. *smacks self on head* http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?resolution=FIXED&chfield=resolution&chfieldfrom=05%2F31%2F01&chfieldto=Now&chfieldvalue=fixed&product=Browser&product=MailNews I guess what I posted on how many bugs Mozilla has can be *fixable* after all. Also factor that they're aren't too many blocker, critical, and major bugs per milestone and it seems like things are moving along nicely. here's the http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=1938&message=150&state=reply to my post on how many bugs Mozilla has. Then of couse Asa has to butt in and tell me the Mozilla developers can fix 1600 bugs in 30 days. :) Here's the http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=1938&message=176&state=reply . Asa, I saw you on Slashdot. Nice to see you there and clearing up any misconceptions that people might have. God those Slashdot'ers seem to like Mozilla nowadays. First they bash Netscape earlier in the week and then this happens. Quite funny, but nice to see happen none the less. :) Yup. The bug count really doesn't tell everything because the bug FIXING count is also very high. However, there are bugs that are a year old and still are marked "new".. Here's one of my favorites: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42821 Hi, just a tiny niggle, but this has been happening for a while. The '.tar.gz' linux net installers don't actually appear to be gzipped, only tarred. It's tiny, so it doesn't need to be, but it's still a little confusing with the filename ending - you have to use tar xfv rather than tar xfvz (or it reports an error). Is this going to be fixed, either by changing the filename, or gzipping it regardless of size? And yes, I really ought to put that in Bugzilla... The bug is that mozilla unzips it for you but doesn't change the extension (remove the .gz) It's a known bug though. it is mentioned in the release notes http://www.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla0.9.1/: Linux: There are certain circumstances when tarred and gzipped files are saved to disk in Mozilla that the file is automatically gunzipped. The file extention is not updated so the user may experience problems when attempting to tar-zxvf the file. The workaround is to simply tar -xvf the file. (Bug 35956) It's still got a ways to go. The newsgroup and mail readers crash too much. I had one crash when I clicked view message source on a newsgroup message... I only did so because mozilla wasn't displaying anything other than the header. I also crashed when I recieved an email with a hyper link in an email and I clicked on it. I also found a bug when searching through the newsgroups... the subjects returned in the search don't match the header in the window which opens when you double click, but they do match the subject line of the email. Oh well, that's why it's not 1.0 :) Reporting crashers actually gets them fixed :) It only take about 5 minutes... almost the amaount of time you might spend here on mozillazine.org :) The only thing that bugs me about Mozilla (it doesn't keep me from using it as my main browser however) is the way the Bookmarks give you one of those scrolling menus instead of cascading out into multiple vertical menus like the old Win95 Start bar and the Netscape 4.7 bookmarks. Is there a way to change it back to that way? Are you talking about the bookmarks as they appear in the sidebar? They still work fine, as cascading, when you use the Bookmarks menu item at the top. No, I've been using the sidebar bookmarks because I can't get the Bookmarks menu (in the File, Edit, etc. menubar) or the Bookmarks button below the Back,Home,etc. buttons to cascade. If you have a copy of Netscape 4.7, I'd like the bookmarks in Mozilla to act like that when I have lots of them (which I do). It does cascade. Maybe you should delete all your moz files and start fresh, because they've always cascaded. OH.... Now i know what you mean. Running at 1024 x 768, i didn't have any bookmark directories that exceeded the screen height. I built one just to test this and i must say that i'd rather it scroll than cascade. Most people in most instances will never see this. I have thousands of bookmarks(no, i'm not kidding), but i keep them well organized enough in subfolders that i never encounter this problem. If i did have a need to that many bookmarks in one folder the scrolling behavior seems like a better way to go. I'm pretty tidy with my bookmarks too, but I've also had this problem. I found a cool trick in mozilla is to bookmark a directory, and add it to the personal links toolbar. It allows you to quickly pick out whatever is in a directory - useful for web developers like me, but also has the side effect of having a HUGE list if the directory is sort of full. And yeah, I'd rather have cascaded menus too. There has been heavy discussions among the UI masters about this, and the scrolling menus have been kept because they are the "less bad" solution. See bug 45700 for a list of reasons. About all I saw in that bug was a lot of frustration expressed by an interested end-user and Matthew Thomas (mpt)'s opinion (and WONTFIX added) that this was better than cascading menus because "you shouldn't have long menus." The only strength to mpt's response was that a fix for this *might* affect the speed of all the other menus. Personally, I can't imagine wanting either scrolling or multiple column menus. But I'd imagine multiple column would be much faster to access because you can immediately see an entire extra column of items instead of having to scroll them into view. In another post, i said rather off the cuff, the i would rather have scrolling than multiple column menus. I said that because i believed this to be a more elegant solution. I have since gone into Both NAV4 and Moz0.9.1 and built multi-hundred bookmark folders. The NAV4 behavior in such situations is DEFINITELY better. Some readers have ASSUMED that Brad Barnett is lazy and just doesn't want to organize his bookmarks. But even if you do organize your bookmarks, i can see the need for having a subfolder with multi-hundred objects in it. For instance, a system admin who keeps a list of all in-house web servers(including individual users) in a folder for easy access. In a large organization like mine, that list can be very very long. Matthew Thomas says in bug 45700 that what happens when you reach the edge of the screen. Well Matt, you obviously didn't take the time to test this, did you? If you had, you would have seen that in NAV4, when it reaches the right side of the screen, the last item to appear is "More Bookmarks...". When you click on "More Bookmarks...", it opens up the Manage Bookmarks window and takes you to that directory so that you can access any that didn't show up in the cascade. This works well! It works well enough that if a seperate XP component has to be built to do this for bookmarks as opposed to other lists, then so be it. BUT, ranting does not help!!!!! Informed polite discussion will always work better. Bug 45700 would be a much better bug if it had been worded something like this: Please make large bookmark lists work like they do in Netscape Navigator 4. And then go on to detail why this is important to this particular user. This should also include detailed instructions to reproduce as per the bug reporting spec. Hi, just a tiny niggle, but this has been happening for a while. The '.tar.gz' linux net installers don't actually appear to be gzipped, only tarred. It's tiny, so it doesn't need to be, but it's still a little confusing with the filename ending - you have to use tar xfv rather than tar xfvz (or it reports an error). Is this going to be fixed, either by changing the filename, or gzipping it regardless of size? And yes, I really ought to put that in Bugzilla... That's actually a recent mozilla bug. When mozilla downloads any gzipped file, it automatically gunzips it, while preserving the original name. Bit annoying. I would love to download and submit some crash data, but the download is horrible . I can´t get above 1.x kpbs. Please help, I got DSL and it continues to slow down each time ! Is there a mirror site I might try ? Gorgeus Strange, I've DSL connection too, and with Moz I reach more than 60kb/s (near than my best apt-get rate of 65kb/s) I would love to download and submit some crash data, but the download is horrible . I can´t get above 1.x kpbs. Please help, I got DSL and it continues to slow down each time ! Is there a mirror site I might try ? Gorgeus Did you try other browsers, or ftp programs, to see if this problem is mozilla specific? Downloading from ftp.mozilla.org using http (Mozilla, NS4, IE) or Getright is slow. On my 64kb isdn modem, used bandwidth is constantly 0.2-0.3 of the maximum. It's not dependent on day time. Since I live in Greece, there's a long distance connection but what intrigues me is that I *never* show a connection better than the above 20%-30% of 64kbps (somwhere between 2.5 and 3 Kbytes/sec). Best workaround for me, so far: use a download manager with segmented downloading. DLExpert par example is freeware and works fine. As you remember, we had a poll here, about a possible new name for the Mail component of Mozilla. What happened since then? Is there still hope for a new name? When I try "File/New Navigator Window" from the menu, the new window does not open any pages. Its like a dead brower window. Is this a known bug? You should report this using bugzilla.mozilla.org. Mozilla 0.9.1 is really great! but.. The latest nightly builds and 0.9.1 is crashing when I visit www.idg.se. I'm visiting it several times every day so I hope this crash-bug will be repaired soon.
Did you report this as a bug, or at least use a talkback build, or better yet, both? If not, it might not be fixed anytime soon because the developers don't know about it. If you have, good for you, and let's hope that they figure out what's wrong and get fixed soon :) Alex http://www.gerbilbox.com/newzilla/ From http://macvillage.net/news/articles/99203175979149.shtml : <I>Whenever the Mozilla Project releases a new revision to their open source browser, the basis of Netscape 6, they call it a "milestone." This new version is much more than a milestone, it's revolutionary. It's really something.</I> I always enjoy seeing positive reviews of Mozilla, especially from the Mac community. Because news.com , zdnet.com didn't mention it ;-) Not trying to be ironic, if they don't mention it, it is a threat to big boy :-) n/t If your one of those Netscape WebMail users, like me, you might run into trouble sooner or later. If you already have seen the Invalid Browser Configuration window, then you know what i'm talking about. Tip: Make sure to copy your e-mail data with CTRL-C, before trying to send it so you can close/restart your browser and send the same data after using CTRL-V (without typing all that data again). If you don't like this solution, just use the integrated e-mail client or any other good working e-mail client. The good news is, it's on the 0.9.2 radar :) note: You can read more about this bug here: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=68321 IMO what makes Mozilla slow is not only the themes but the way it caches pages. Compare to Opera and you'll see what I mean. Mozilla seems to re-render the page each time you flip back and then forward (yes, I've set the preferences to never compare the page). Opera seems to cache the entire rendered page, so it's lightning fast. Anyone know for a fact? Yes, and then take a look at this: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=82749 that is odd isn't it? This has to do, I think, with memory caching as opposed to disk caching. Mozilla does have a memory cache, so it should be able to flip back and forth between pages as fast as the other browsers. It is interesting, though, that Mozilla's memory cache is still disabled by default on installation (see Debug in prefs). Turning it on does seem to improve things slightly, but it possible it's off by default because it's still being worked on. So, try turning it on, but be sure to turn it back off if you have any problems. 0.9.1 is truly amazing. Pages seem to render faster, but the greatest performance improvement is in image rendering. It seems like the time invested in writing libpr0n was really worth it! Cached pages appear much faster, but strangely, Mozilla doesn't seem to cache images as much as it should. At first I was a little unsure about the new Modern theme (it seemed much brighter than in the screenshots I've seen) but I've got used to it now and it's a joy to use. It's up there in my Top Three Most Beautiful User Interfaces of all time (along with Windows XP's Luna and Mac OS X's Aqua). The new autocomplete is nice, if a little slow, but it should fill in the best match like it used to. http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=78268 There's a couple of irratating bugs with textareas and paragraph highlighting, but overall this milestone represents a huge improvement. Onwards to 1.0! Alex Um.. is there any plan to make the mouse menu configurable? It seems like a good idea that you could specify what functions you can access that way - I know this isn't the place to post this sort of thing. I'm just annoyed at the HUGE list that pops up (right click on an image that's a link in a frame and you'll see what I mean). It seems like simplicity is the way to go, but I doubt everyone would agree what should be on the menu. I mean, the mouse menu is supposed to be for convenience and easy access, but when I have to sift through a ton of options that change depending on what I click on; it's anything but convenient. I find it especially aggravating in something like Netscape 4 where I end up opening a page on composer instead of in a new window - I've never even used composer. For now I'm going to have to look through some jar files, but this gets old rather fast. Other than that I'm fairly impressed (with the excepetion of not being able to open new windows). Just wanted to say congratulations! to the Mozilla team. This is the best theme I ever saw. Cheers We thought Netscape's next release was going to be called Netscape 6.5, then some people argued it should be Netscape 7, but now it looks like Netscape is at least toying with the idea of calling it Netscape 6.1. I've got no confirmation of this, but I noticed when 0.9.1 crashed (it does still happen!), the Talkback Agent said "Netscape 6.1B1". I presume the "B" stands for beta (Preview Release in Netscape-speak). The 0.9 Talkback said "Netscape 6.5". And today I noticed that a Netscape engineer had referred to "Netscape 6.1 Preview Release 1". http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=84933 I think that calling the next release 6.1 is a bad idea because: * It understates the improvements * Many people mistakenly refer to 6.01 as 6.1, so they won't be aware that there's a new release The only reasons I can think of to explain why Netscape would want to release the upgrade under the name Netscape 6.1 are: * They don't want people to think it's a really major upgrade, so they won't get disappointed * Netscape Marketing are very modest :-) Here's why I think each of the above are pretty weak reasons: * Can anyone honestly say they noticed the difference the first time they loaded IE5.5? * This is the same marketing department that skipped version 5 completely So there you have it. Remember, I've got no evidence to support any of this. I'm only speculating. Alex More speculation: Perhaps they're planning to release 6.1 based on a pre 1.0 release and then release 6.2 based on 1.0 and then keep incrementing like that? I can understand why they want to go 6.1 so that people don't expect miracles out of it compared with the current IE version. I suppose all this wouldn't have happened if they called their first mozilla based release Netscape 5, then jumped upto 6 for the first decent release. Take a look at http://ftp.netscape.com/pub/netscape6/english/ Forbidden You don't have permission to access /pub/netscape6/english/6.1_PR1/ on this server. #138 Re: Re: Is Netscape 6.5 going to be called Netscapby AlexBishop Sunday June 10th, 2001 6:54 AM Looks pretty conclusive then! Netscape usually create directories for new versions a week or two before the files become publicly accessible, so Netscape 6.1 Preview Release 1 is likely to be released shortly. Alex #129 Re: Is Netscape 6.5 going to be called Netscape 6.1?by netdemon Sunday June 10th, 2001 2:59 AM I don't agree with that. Let's talk logically. Say we want a release every 3 months (as is currently the case), and a new version every year, then it should go up by .25 each time. That shows that going to .5 would be wacky. Especially considering that 6.01 was more or less just a fixup of 6.0. Now, .1 is more reasonable than that. Besides, MailNews is still really hurting, and IMHO it shouldn't be called 6.5 until MailNews is competitive with Outlook. Personally, I think it should be called version 6.2 or 6.25, but I don't see the big deal. Only a true embecile wouldn't know the difference between 6.01 and 6.1. ...if you've read some of the posts in Netscape and Mozilla newsgroups, there are many posts that refer to Netscape 6.01 as Netscape 6.1. When the "real" 6.1 does show up, people may not even know there's a new release out. I hope it'll be called 6.5, but if it's not, it should at least be called 6.2 - just to avoid confusion. ...if you've read some of the posts in Netscape and Mozilla newsgroups, there are many posts that refer to Netscape 6.01 as Netscape 6.1. When the "real" 6.1 does show up, people may not even know there's a new release out. I hope it'll be called 6.5, but if it's not, it should at least be called 6.2 - just to avoid confusion. This build of Moz renders pages very quickly in Linux (provided you get teh build that matches your C libraries!). But I find name resolution to be very slow - slower even than NS 4.7. As well Mox doesn't seem to use the resolver libraries in the smae way (it can't find my localhost by hostname but ns4.7 can for example). Can someone explain the difference here? <p>Netscape 6.0 is able to render the frames and tables that appear here: <br> http://infobase6.ic.gc.ca/~smartpub/ <br>(this is an O'Reilly Webboard "forum") but Moz. 0.9.1 can't. <p>I filed a bug but supposedly it's a duplicate? By far the best milestone in a long time. Mozilla no longer crashes on exit like 0.9. It's noticably faster. NHL.com(ESPN page that suffered from the bug that rendered pages very, very wide) now renders correctly. GUI is very responsive compared to older versions. The only thing wrong i've noticed is the inability to delete individual items in the history list. I thought this bug was resolved a long time ago. Can anyone else recreate it? The items are getting deleted, the problem is the display isn't refreshing so you don't see the change One of my favorite new things is the removal of those web portal menus on the taskbar/status bar. Gone for good I hope. They were never in Mozilla, they were in Netscape 6. Netscape[.com] want to drive traffic to their site, so I don't see those menus being removed from Netscape 6.1 or 6.5 or whatever it is going to be called. A Netscape engineer filed bug 76930 http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76930 to merge the taskbar and status bar and marked it nsbeta1+. So it looks unlikely that Netscape will have those links in their next release. I guess it's because they got a pretty bad reaction. They'll probably hide them in menus or something. Note: Bug 79630 was marked as a duplicate of bug 443797 http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43797 Alex I wish there was the possibility to comment on the descriptions of builds in Mozillazine. I could imagine that users might have interesting additions to make which might be helpful for both users who just cant wait for 1.0 (like me) and maybe even developers. Generally, I would like to have some way of discussing mozilla-stuff on a user level, not developer level, bu maybe there are not enough users yet? More than once, I heard people insist that Mozilla is not a product, i.e. Mozilla is not being developed for end users. Doesnt that puzzle people a lot? Mozilla has is a full functioning browser+email+more, has devoted users, and when a new (pre 1.0)release comes out, that hits the news. So in a sense, it cannot really deny being product. When NS 6.0 came out I tried both NS and Mozilla and there was not one reason why I would want the NS version. I am pretty sure this will be the case with the next NX release. They put stuff in I dont like -- all kinds of predefined commercial homepages and stuff. I understand that Netscape invests a lot of money in the development of Mozilla and they want something for that. But still ... isnt that a strange situation, and wont people be puzzled by it? Well, maybe it is a strange situation but that's just how it is. Mozilla is the organization that develops the software. Netscape is a client of Mozilla that takes the software and re-brands it and puts it out as "Netscape 6". There could be any number of clients: AOL, Neoplanet, Nokia, Netscape, IBM... The "releases" (nightly and milestone) that Mozilla put out is for testing and bug reporting - not for actual use by end users. What worries me is that the number of clients for Mozilla is quickly dropping to 0. If the interpretations by some people of the recent news are correct, Netscape won't continue using Mozilla. AOL is in talks with Microsoft about continuing to use IE after all. Nokia's product seems to be vaporware. Neoplanet cancelled their plans.. If there are no clients and if Mozilla's releases are for developers only, then what's the point? You also said that Mozilla has devoted users. You are very right and you only have to read some replies to my posts here to see that. Say anything negative about Mozilla and you're going to be eaten alive. The problem is that the relative number of devoted Mozilla users in the large scale of thing is *VERY* low. Did you know that Mozilla and Netscape 6.x *combined* accounts for less than IE 3 (less than 0.5%) and only narrowly beats Netscape 3. In fact, Netscape 6 has LESS users than Netscape 3 in many web statistics reports. I would like to see some kind of editorial or clarification from "the Mozilla people" about what exactly is going on and what the future outlook is like and what kind of strategy is going to be used to get clients. After all, developing a browser for just developers doesn't make much sense. Let's see if this post gets any serious replies or if we'll just see the usual "go somewhere else with your negative comments"-type of crap. Let's be honest when Mozilla released their source code in April 1998, how many people expected that it was going to take so lang for a serious release? I know the reason it took so long was they decided to scrap the Mozilla Classic code and make a total rewrite, this was definitely the best thing to do from a quality and standards compliance perspective but for the commercial sector this was way too long to be waiting for a release quality browser. While IE was going from version 4 to 5 then 5.5 Netscape was just adding small improvements to 4.x until Mozilla was ready. It would have been better for Netscape if Mozilla.org had finished the work on MozClassic because it only seemed like a few months left to finish it. Then Netscape would have had a reasonable 5.x release to keep them going until the current Mozilla was ready. Even during the stage of MozClassic development work was still going on with raptor/nglayout/gecko and once 5.0 was ready then the 4.x tree could be forgot about and they'd have had the better 5.x series to keep them going. Ultimately the old MozClassic code hadda die sooner or later, and it doesn't really matter whether it was a mistake or not now, it's too late to change things. In the end, things have taken longer than it's expected but in my experience it happens with a lot of open source projects because the concentration is on quality and compliance with standards that counts. So instead of just having a good fast web browser you do have a platform for expansion, and also a portable toolkit. It'd have been a very narrow minded response to say just make a fast web browser, that wouldn't have offered many of the benefits that mozilla currently offers. We already have a small fast browser, it's called Opera. But Opera isn't very portable, there's separate codebases for each platform and you always see the Windows release come first and then have to wait for it to be ported, I can also imagine Opera's design won't scale up as well to support new standards but as I've not seen the code I can only speculate. Remember even if IE got 99% of the market it wouldn't mean the death for Mozilla, there was once a browser that went from no market share and toppled the market leader, that browser was IE (and you seen how crap the early versions were?), there's no reason that once Mozilla is ready that it shouldn't gain enough market share to be at least be taken into consideration when people design pages, that competition will help to keep Microsoft to the standards. If Mozilla wants anywhere near 50% market share it needs to be the default AOL browser, AOL are stupid if they stick with IE particularly as MSN gets a more prominent placement on the Windows desktop anyway. I really wish there was a preview button, I got distracted here so many times :) I'd like to comment on a few points in your post. First of all, you say Opera isn't very portable and that there are separate codebases for each platform. Both points are wrong. For example the EPOC version of Opera was programmed by coding a "Win32 API emulator" that basically maps Win32 method calls to EPOC method calls. If you've worked with EPOC, you'll know that if you can port your existing code to EPOC at all, then it's *VERY* portable code because EPOC is *SO* different from all other OS's. Second, Opera works on Windows, Macintosh, BeOS, EPOC, Linux and possibly more but I forget. What's the percentage of all users worldwide that covers? 99.99%? Saying that the the crossplaformness is weak for Opera is just plain wrong. Even Microsoft reaches near 99% with Macintosh + Windows. XP is *not* a very big competitive advantage with Mozilla. I also think you vastly over estimate the impact of AOL. AOL is very weak anywhere outside the USA so the only place you can expect any considerable amount of AOL-Mozilla users would be in the USA, and there too, we're talking in the range of 5% of users or so. And that's 5% of US users - not worldwide. If Mozilla wants to be able to compete, the areas of focus should be these: a) speed b) size c) stabilty d) coolness and quality of the user interface Right now, the only area where Mozilla has a chance is coolenss of UI. I'm confident that stability will be there six months from now because it's been improving steadily for quite some time now. The quality of the UI is absolutely horrible (form fields jumping when you focus them, scrollbars that don't appear, delete buttons that don't work, inconsistency etc.). Size.. well, memory footprint is pretty bad but disk footprint is quite good - especially without all the test apps that come bundled with the nightly builds. Speed.. Ouch! "I also think you vastly over estimate the impact of AOL. AOL is very weak anywhere outside the USA so the only place you can expect any considerable amount of AOL-Mozilla users would be in the USA, and there too, we're talking in the range of 5% of users or so. And that's 5% of US users - not worldwide." AOL has around 30 million users and in total the Internet has 400 million users or thereabouts, so if AOL switched to Mozilla and everyone upgraded, Mozilla would have at least a 7.5% market share. So I think you are slightly underestimating AOL's reach. AOL is less dominant outside the USA, but it still has some impact. Here in the UK it's the second largest Interent access provider. Alex You're probably right about those numbers. The thing is tho, the number of net users are growing much more rapidly outside the US than inside. Two years from now, there might be 800 million users but only 40 million AOL users. Yes AOL reach is limited, it's also just the second largest ISP in Germany. But for example the bigest German one T-Online (8 Mio), is quite Netscape friendly, it always ships the two main browsers on it's CDs Germans are quite big contributers in open-source (it's fancy there) like SUSE and big parts of KDE, though they surely will adopt a netscape 6.1to5. Terra-Lycos, and Tiscali are other big one in Europe, don't know if they are netscape friendly. I'm living right now in Sydney, and Australia is fully in Microsoft hand. Maybe I'm wrong but i don't think that netscapes position outside of englisch speaking countries is so bad. A scenario might be: If AOL can show how much Commerical-Blinking-Sidebars-Traffic-Causing one can make with a mozilla based browser other big isp might get jeallous and switch too. Do anyone have numbers from other countries? "Maybe I'm wrong but i don't think that netscapes position outside of englisch speaking countries is so bad." That may be the case. Netscape 6 was simulataneously released in English, French, German and Japanese, so Netscape must think that they've got a market there. Of course, Microsoft is very big on internationalisation/localisation as well. Alex Although the media in Sydney/Australia seems to be in the hands of MS, many Aussies realise the sad reality of MS's monopoly and recognise the importance of and othenticity of Mozilla/Netscape. BUT, They are waiting for the next good release to try it out... This was clearly portrayed by the Australian leading PC magasine articles, one of which had a critical analysis of the situation: http://www.apcmag.com/apcmag.nsf/all/3CF3CE354CE81967CA2569360022B180 Thats not really true, i'm doing research on UNSW (one of the biggest) and the software here starting form os over office to browser is MS. What the Australian isp (optus) also love is the possiblity that they can have this mean full-screen mode in IE which enables them to really lead the willingless customer step by step trough online subscription. As far as i follow the emb. project in mozilla, this will be also possible with the lizard. Giving the isp the full power what the new customer can see, is a chance to convince them (even if it's not really good to help treating the user as a complete idiot) XML and XUL are hopefully the keys My opera related comments were solely concerned with the fact that there's no simultaneous release of Opera on all the platforms it supports (opera for Linux is just out of beta now), the code isn't as cross platform as Mozilla's. In the short term this has lessened development time, but Mozilla aimed higher than that so it took longer. Like I said in the post Opera does the small fast web browser role well enough that the people who don't like IE have a choice, Ultimately I like XP toolkit, I also like the fact it can be embedded into native applications (galeon, kmeleon, etc), why should the Mozilla team have written a small lightweight browser when there was one already out there, they've built a platform, it's took longer than many expected but I like the result. I just hopw enough commercial projects adopt it too. > Say anything negative about Mozilla > and you're going to be eaten alive You mean "say anything negative about Mozilla without quoting a bug number and people aren't going to take much notice." Why is it that those who criticize Mozilla seem to call it "personal attack" or being "eaten alive" when other people disagree with them? > Netscape won't continue using Mozilla. This is an interpretation of people who didn't actually read the article. Netscape is currently not a browser company. They have a load of buildings, and only one contains the client engineering group. However, they are still percieved as a browser company. This is what the person speaking was saying would change. Have you seen any evidence of engineers not planning for the future, or of being pulled off Mozilla? If you have, let's hear it. > If there are no clients and if > Mozilla's releases are for developers > only, then what's the point? Fun :-) Gerv Quoted bug numbers has nothing to do with anything. Many issues I have stated are quite obvious and there are filed bugs on them - many by myself. Often when I raise questions regarding the direction or current state of the project, I get angry "shut up" and other naive comments. If someone says "shut up" to me or even worse, like has been the case, I certainly call it a personal attack. If you want, I can find you the exact commenst. When you see them, I'm sure you'll agree that they are personal attacks. Of course Netscape is no longer calling itself a browser company. They have only released one new browser in the past 5 years and that browser has less than 0.5% market share. And if "fun" would be the the only motive for the Mozilla project, I doubt AOL would be funding it. "And if "fun" would be the the only motive for the Mozilla project, I doubt AOL would be funding it." Gerv doesn't get paid by AOL to work on Mozilla. He does it for fun. Lot's of other people feel the same way, even some people that are paid by AOL. --Asa You obviously missed the point of my argument. The discussion was about the outside adoption of the project. Is it going anywhere? Is anyone going to use it? I don't doubt that it's fun to work on the project. I'm doubting that anyone except the developers (within a certian margin of course) will USE the product. I also doubt that AOL pays for it because it's fun. They pay for it because they expect to get something out of it. If they don't, they won't pay for it forever. Same goes for all other companies involved. Because it's open source, it will never fully die of course, no matter what happen. If AOL stopped paying for it today, I have a hard time imagining anything short of a complete dissaster tho. "The discussion was about the outside adoption of the project. Is it going anywhere? Is anyone going to use it?" Redhat, the leading distributer of Linux (the fastest growing operating system in the world), will be using Mozilla as their primary browser. That must count for something. Fastest growing OS measured how? Compared to what it used to be I bet, because there's no way that it's growing faster than say Windows 2000 in absolute numbers. Linux has been said to be "the fastest growing OS" for a few years now and it still has less than 1% market share. That kind of growth is irrelevant since any new OS (like Mac OS X) will get astronomical relative growth figures for the first couple of months or years. I would be majorly surprised if Linux gets more than 3% (of the whole market) market share in the next 3 years. If that holds true, it means that Mozilla only gets 3% market share form the Linux user base even if every single Linux user would be running it. Windows and Macintosh is where the battle is fought. "The discussion was about the outside adoption of the project. Is it going anywhere? Is anyone going to use it?" Only the largest computer company in the world: IBM. IBM is using and actively developing it. Mozilla is the current browser they support for OS/2. IBM has been doing the development work for Bidirectional text (BiDi) for Hebrew and Arabic. I doubt they're doing it just for fun. As someone else mentioned, RedHat will also be including Mozilla. Yeah, I admit it. Paying with it is fun. But I support it how I can because I don't like the alternatives. IE is WAY to insecure for me, and I don't like some of the ways that it functions. I just don't like Opera at all. If I wanted an MDI browser, I'd love Opera, but I don't. Mozilla works a lot like NS4 does (which I like), is more robust than Opera (and IE) and much MUCH more secure than IE. Plus, if I don't like something, I can change it, or at least try to help someone else change it. It gives me the power to do what I want, as opposed to doing what someone else wants. Being a control freak, I like that. And, it's an alternative for other platforms too, which is always good. Good reasons.. I also don't like MDI apps for some reason, so Opera feels a little odd to me. I'm not comfortable using it, tho I suppose I might learn to.. I like the way NS4 looks and works and even more so, I like the way Mozilla looks.. Unfortunately, I don't share your view on Mozilla being more robust than IE but I certainly hope it will get to that point. IE being insecure is a non-issue to me since all known bugs are patched right now.. There have been lots and lots of security bugs in Netscape browsers too (just think of all the Netscape 4.x versions!) so using a Netscape product doesn't make me feel any more secure. As far as being able to change anything you want.. yeah.. sure.. That's a good reason too. The problem is that many users (most) simply don't care. Many - if not the majority - don't even know what browser they are using! I think that's a good thing in the sense that an application should be very invisible & transparent. If it means that they are using an inferior product for no good reason, it's a bad thing of course. Does Melissa mean anything to you? All the Melissa variants have cost billions of pounds (dollars if you prefer) in server downtime and technicians wages and could have been fixed by a few simple changes from Microsoft (such as those included in Outlook XP, but not yet Outlook Express). And what about ActiveX? Netscape started writing support for ActiveX, but abandoned it because they *could not find a way to make it secure.* How is Active/X different from signed Java applets? >>How is Active/X different from signed Java applets?<< Reasonable question. Signed Java applets can have access to potentially dangerous features such as file system access, just like ActiveX does. So there's not a huge difference in security. The difference between Java applets in general and ActiveX, though, is that most Java applets aren't signed, so they're confined to the relatively safe Java sandbox. ActiveX parts don't have a safe mode, while most Java applets are not signed and are in the safe mode. That's why people say that ActiveX is intrinsically insecure. Naturally, there are a lot more differences between them in terms of platform support and so on, but in security terms that's the main difference. Java applets can be safe, while ActiveX parts can't be. Any ActiveX part can do whatever it wants on the client system. Yeah.. I always thought that cross platform was the reason Netscape didn't support Active/X. I actually don't think Active/X would have become a big thing in web browsers even if Netscape had supported it. There simply aren't enough skilled enough coders to develop for it. Java is much easier in that sense. Any idiot can do a scrolling ticker tape.. Trust me, I've seen it. :) > Many issues I have stated are quite > obvious and there are filed bugs on them Probably. But without the bug numbers I can't go and fix them (or agitate for them to be fixed), can I? > Often when I raise questions regarding > the direction or current state of the > project, I get angry "shut up" and > other naive comments. Several points: - Mozillazine is not the correct forum to raise questions about the direction or current state of the project. netscape.public.mozilla.* are, depending on the exact issue. If you have a big problem you think needs addressing, that you think they may have missed, drivers@mozilla.org would be the right place. - The question you should be asking is "do those people who are flaming me actually have any influence on the direction of the project?" Slashdot is full of trolls who flame anyone anti-Linux - it doesn't mean they represent general community views. Please find the comment list :-) > And if "fun" would be the the only > motive for the Mozilla project, I > doubt AOL would be funding it. I didn't say it was the only motive, I said it was my motive. If you want to know AOL's motives, ask AOL. But I would guess it's because otherwise they have no stick to beat Microsoft with - and a Microsoft-beating stick is a very valuable thing for a company like AOL. Gerv I'm only an italian student and my english isn't really good so i can follow our work easily, but at the same i would like to give us some advice. 1) I have installed the 0.9 build and 0.91 build. The first was less cool really stable in a month it never crashed, instead 0.91 today in half an hour crashes 5 times. 2) All the old version of netscape (2.0 3.0 4.0) had a print preview funtion which was a ponit in favor of netscape vs IE. Now Ie 5.5 has a "Print preview" instead Netscape and Mozilla, they don't have. 3) The image manager in my 0.91 build isn't working. Why dont' use the old image botton ( used in netscape 4.x and in opera). It seems a more clever way to browse. Before you download text and than if you want download images. In mozilla that button is desappeared also if you choose "dont download any images" thanks to evryone and sorry. P.S: Our work is really impressive here's what i've found in BugZilla : Bug 20943 [FEATURE] Print preview needs to be hooked up ------- Additional Comments From Paul Chen 2001-03-26 11:36 ------- Ok, so there was a print preview meeting about a week and a half ago, the upshot is that there is still low-level work that needs to be done in the presentation layer to support print preview. There is currently no resource available to implement this, so it doesn't look like print preview is going to happen for beta1. Marking nsbeta1- and setting target milestone to future. ----- Roma, there's a workaround : you can print in a file (checkbox on the top right of the print dialog) and then view the resulting PostScript file (mozilla.ps) in a PS viewer. you can then print whatever page you want... hope this helps. I am new to Mozilla. Downloaded 0.9.1 build and like it!!. It is like a vastly improved Netscape 6.01 even though it is still beta. When is Mozilla 1.0 scheduled to be released?. I hope will keep me away from IE 6.0. I like the looks of Mozilla better. I\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'m also glad the classic look is still included. Very colorful!. Also I would like to see all the major plugins included in Mozilla 1.0. As well as additional themes!. This browser has the potential to beat IE 6.0 as long as Mozilla markets it right as well as polishes it, unlike Netscape 6.0 before it is finally released. "When is Mozilla 1.0 scheduled to be released?" The official answer is "when it's ready". There's never been a set release date, despite what MozillaQuest http://www.mozillaquest.com/ says. There's only been estimated earliest possible release dates, which have gradually slipped as Mozilla's development continued. At the moment the earliest possible release date is around October this year. Keep an eye on the Roadmap http://www.mozilla.org/roadmap.html for updates to this. Also take a look at the Mozilla 1.0 definition document http://www.mozilla.org/roadmap/mozilla-1.0.html which lists the requirements to be met before 1.0 is released. "This browser has the potential to beat IE 6.0 as long as Mozilla markets it right as well as polishes it, unlike Netscape 6.0 before it is finally released." I don't think The Mozilla Organization has any plans to market Mozilla as it's mainly created for developers to make other products with. However, Netscape is going to make further 6.x releases based on the latest Mozilla code and will be releasing and marketing them. Their next release is likely to be based on a pre-1.0 build of Mozilla (but even so it will be so much better than Netscape 6.01) and will probably be called 6.1 (although 6.5 looked likely until recently). A Preview Release (beta) of this product should come out soon. Look at the last news item before this one http://www.mozillazine.org/articles/article1938.html for more details. Alex Mozilla is and will be a very good browser , mail manager etc but it will never beat IE. And I dont think its about "beating" another browser. IE is build as a part of a OS and in their next release (XP) the messenger also will be included :(. Things like this will always keep people from downloading other programs like Mozilla and ICQ. Ofcourse some will, like us, but for the common user of internet IE will be their browser also further on if not a big change in the OS changes the situation (like Linux growing or MS want to change their leading position). Humans are lazy and if there allready are a good (you cant say that IE is a bad browser) browser installed most people will stuck with it no matter how buggy or ugly looking it is. I personaly think Mozilla most of all makes the Linux market grow. They have been using Netscape 4.x to long :) IE is also hugely popular on Macintoshes, where it's not "part of the OS". Also, IE 5.5 is very popular even though - as far as I know - it's not bundled with ANY OS and people have had to download it separately. No, but it does come bundled with OS9 and OSX, doesn't it? While Mozilla doesn't (do they bundle NS4.7 too? My Mac hasn't arrived yet). And IE5.5 is IIRC the browser in Windows ME (5.0 is in 98SE, and 4.0 is in 98). Do they bundle 4.7? No probably not, that was one of the arguments in the Microsoft Anti-Trust trial. What happend was that Apple used to bundle Netscape with their OS, until one day Bill Gates said, hey Steve you really NEED to bundle IE, Steve said no, Bill said, "Ok so when should we anounce the cancelation of MS Office for the Mac." Steve backed down. True story. Apple? Yes it does NS 4.75 in Mac OS 9.1, IE 5.0. How about Mac OS X? Oh, wait, the oh-so-cross-platform Netscape browser isn't even available for it.. but IE is in a version which is supposedly really good (better than the PC version - which must make it pretty damn good). <quote>How about Mac OS X? Oh, wait, the oh-so-cross-platform Netscape browser isn't even available for it.. </quote> Do you want to take developers off Mozilla so they can carbonize NS4.7? I'm using IE for Mac OS X at the moment. As far as surfing the net goes, it's fine, it does have its annoyances (locks up for long periods of time), and it's slow. But just as compliant as the Mac OS 9 version. Running Classic is not really a nice solution. I also use Fizzilla, in fact I split my time about 50/50 between the two browsers. It's also slow (all web browsers under OS X are, for various reasons). Fizzilla isn't up to the standards of IE 5.1 yet. But it's getting there... I'd say it's got a better future, given the BSD back-end that they're working on integrating. The only really big hurdle I see with Fizzilla is getting a Mac OS X-like chrome, with Aqua-fied scrollbars setc. Erm, no, you're simply wrong on this one, Macpeep. There have been many reports of IE for MacOS X being absolutely hideous - and just about everyone is telling people to use the OS 9 version in emulation mode; it's that version which is very nice, and certainly nicer (and more standards compliant) than the PC one. Aah ok.. I stand corrected. I have never actually used Mac OS X myself but I assumed that it and everything on it must be much better than Mac OS 9 :) 'Macpeep' is a bit of a misnomer, then, isn't it? ;-) Thing is, MacOS X is a major change, so whilst theoretically things running on it are much better, that's only /new/ things running on it - things written specifically for it. I believe Mozilla is much closer to producing a very good browser written for OSX, rather than running in the OS 9 mode, that Microsoft is. #235 Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mozillas main problemby macpeep Wednesday June 13th, 2001 5:56 AM "'Macpeep' is a bit of a misnomer, then, isn't it? ;-)" Ain't that the truth! :) >>Oh, wait, the oh-so-cross-platform Netscape browser isn't even available for it.<< You know, complaining that Netscape 4 doesn't support an operating system that didn't exist when it was released is pretty silly. You might get listened to more here if you avoided comments like that one. IE on the mac is very different than IE on windows. It is possible to design a website for IE/windows that won\'t look good on IE/mac. on the other hand if it's true that mozilla will be part of AOL 7.0 then millions of people will have mozilla technology without doing anything. It's easier for them to get AOL 7 than it is to replace their operating system. What we should be thinking right now is not total domination but at least enough users to prevent Microsoft IE to be so entrenched that you can't use the internet without it. The earliest possible release has been the next milestone for the past several weeks. Look at the comments for the release of Mozilla 0.9 on the MozillaZine main page: "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". This means that 0.9.3 could be Mozilla 1.0 if the development team fixes enough bugs in the next month.
"Recently, a security breach occurred at Themes.org. We have taken steps to isolate this security breach, and are in the process of working with the proper authorities in their ongoing investigation." Does anyone know wtf is going on with this site? It's non functional for more than a month. It was a great effort and (concluding from the hundred of thousands of downloads) very popular amongst Mozilla users. In the root level, there is a link to a mirror ftp site but this is as effective as the original thumbnailed version of the site. "Recently, a security breach occurred at Themes.org. We have taken steps to isolate this security breach, and are in the process of working with the proper authorities in their ongoing investigation." Does anyone know wtf is going on with this site? It's non functional for more than a month. It was a great effort and (concluding from the hundreds of thousands of downloads) very popular amongst Mozilla users. In the root level, there is a link to a mirror ftp site but this isn't as effective as the original thumbnailed version of the site. Try my theme site: http://members.tripod.lycos.nl/AKayser/skins/themes.htm It contains copies of my themes and they are compatible with the 0.9.1 release. I remember when the source code was first released and how excited I was about the possibilities. It was crappy 4.x based code. Then Netscape/mozilla decided to rewrite the rendering engine from scratch. And the entire UI. And the networking code. And who knows what else was rewritten from scratch. And it was still very crappy. Now it was getting a little better and Netscape 6 was released and there were a few people who said they used mozilla as their main browser? Yeah right. So I kept on using Netscape 4.7x (I have IE 5.5 and 6 but only use it for windows update) until mozilla was usable! And now I can say it is. It rarely crashes and it is pretty responsive. Is it perfect? No but darnit it's much better than what I've been living with all these years. I can finally resize a window without the browser reloading on me :) Plus I love the fact that I can create my own keywords for bookmarks. So now I am committed to testing the browser fulltime because it is also my fulltime browser. I'm now using a nightly as my primary browser, but there's a bug that needs fixing: when I want to get a dump SQL file out of my databases, it proposes me to download a php file, instead of the generated SQL file... I think this bug happens with some download links that are processed by a server-side script before the file is downloaded. someone does need to fix that for Moz, as I bet it is something that is non-standard anyway .. I would think it would be an easy fix if carefully looked into mozzila doesn't work with the webmail service ( www.netaddress.com). i tried 3 times and none I succed. I saw that the browser as problem to manage userid with a lot of number. I don't know why? Bug 85220 http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85220 contains a comment saying "As we did not fix this in beta". This suggests that Netscape has finished (or at least almost finished) Netscape 6.1 Preview Release 1. However, there are still several nsbeta1+ bugs http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?keywords=nsbeta1%2B that haven't been fixed, so I could be wrong. Note: This is all just wild speculation again. Alex With 0.9.2 due out so soon, and work focused on keeping the tree as stable as possible Netscape would be stupid to base PR1 on 0.9.1 Bug 84076 : [modern] implement image pre-caching in modern skin. I think it will greatly affect UI responsiveness. Any experiences ? not sure about performance, but it's a very welcome fix. having a GUI element flash when it shouldn't gves a bad impression.. to say the very least. two other GUI performance improvement bugs [Bug 82749] chrome:// uri's load three times http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=82749 [Bug 76722] Gecko blocks the main thread for > 1 sec processing events http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76722 Sometimes I wonder how priorities are driven within Mozilla. At the moment it seems to be resource driven with all the rendering and program load speed increases but no print preview on a 0.9.1 release! imho i am not a developer) more effort should be given to stability and functionality rather than speed increases. For example Mozilla *still* cant print a table thats longer than a page length - see bug 80966 which was defined as a dupe of 66804 (which is supposed to be fixed) - but is it? I can understand that the nearer we get to release 1 the more exciting the imrovements in Mozilla are and there have been many major improvements recently but please do not lose sight that Mozilla is not meant just to impress developers but must be able to provide ordinary users with the basic functionality required. I think that the work so far in an open source environment has been incredible please keep up the good work. There's a lot of focus on speed because Mozilla is so incredibly slow that it's not usable on anything that's not top-of-the line hardware. New window creation is noticeably slow on my P3-733, for example.... ...but does anyone know anything about Mozilla for the Playstation 2? I know that AOL made a deal with Sony to port Netscape to the PlayStation 2. I'm not sure whether it's 4.x or a Mozilla-based version though. Other than that, I'm afraid I don't know any more. Try searcdhing for "netscape" and "playstation 2" on computer news sites (CNET, ZDNet etc.). Alex Has anyone tried Netscape 4.7x lately? It's easy to forget how dog slow Mozilla is until you try Navigator again. I've pretty much given up on Mozilla ever being usable on this P200MMX. (Yes, a dinosaur.) It takes almost a full minute for Mozilla to start, and it takes almost 10 seconds for new windows to pop up. Browsing with Mozilla has a noticeable effect on my load average. ugh I am using Mozilla on a Pentium 200 MMX right now. When I had 32 MB of ram, it was a horrible struggle, and I still had to use Netscape 4.x for most *real* purposes, but after I upgraded to 64-megabytes of ram, Mozilla purrs smoothly. It seems, in my experience, that mozillas slowness is mostly the result of memory footprint. the minimum system requirements are a 233MHz Processor and 64 MB Ram But I would not want to run mozilla on a 500MHz machine or below.... Is there any reason why Mozilla doesn't know how to render object tags for data of types text/plain and text/html? It does the right thing for image/jpeg. It seems to me that any MIME type that can be rendered as a top-level page ought to be renderable inline. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6260563.html?tag=mn_hd ... the 0.9.1-talkback build doesn't work on my nt4.0 box at work. It crashes on startup (before the popup-window is gone). Anyone out there with similar expirience? Found this by chance. Don't know how long it has been there already... http://home.netscape.com/browsers/6/index61pr.html took me a few clicks to many to find the download links, so for convinience: http://home.netscape.com/browsers/6/index61pr.html?cp=dowpod61pr#Preview Mozilla is so gorgeous... I am sorry I sound like a spammer, but Alfred Kayser (the IBM employee and Mozilla littlemozilla architect) has released the "Wood" variation on his website at http://members.tripod.lycos.nl/AKayser/skins/themes.htm Screenshot at http://members.tripod.lycos.nl/AKayser/skins/wood.gif Download for a high-quality dead-trees mozilla! The web looks so... dated... within the boxes. |