Tree Closes for Mozilla 1.0Wednesday March 27th, 2002The tree just closed in preparation for Mozilla 1.0, and so far, it's looking promising. What does the tree close mean? This time around, as drivers have been in control of the tree for the entire milestone, the actual process won't change, but drivers approval will begin to get harder and harder to get for a checkin. As we approach 1.0, we'll keep you up to date on current status and other interesting news. Will Mozilla 1.0 have Debug and QA-menu\'s? I don\'t think it should, but I seem to remember them being available in previous milestones, not just nightly builds. I imagine that the Debug and QA menus will be there - Mozilla 1.0 will still be a test release, rather than a browser product like Netscape Navigator. Dave. According to CNET <<http://news.com.com/2100-1023-869412.html>> IE 6.0 has 30% of the browser market after just six months or so of availability. In an odd way, I see that as good news for Mozilla since it means that users are still willing to download browsers. The question, then, is what killer feature would compel the world to try Netscape again? The killer feature for me is tabs, but my browsing habits probably aren't typical. It needs to be something so compelling that consumers who don't have Netscape/Mozilla will feel like the world is passing them by. Past examples could have been instant messaging or music downloads. This needs to be comparable. Ideas? Doesn't IE 6 come with Windows XP? I'd attribute these numbers to operating upgrades more than browser downloads. I think it does, but I don't think WinXP has that kind of market penetration yet. I don't have any stats though, so I could be proven wrong. As well as the IE6-pre-installed-with-XP issue, there is also the Windows update feature. I think the impact of this should not be ignored - MS has a system in place to alert users when an IE upgrade is available, and shout about how great it is. Does Netscape have this? Does AOL? Dave. #24 Re: Re: Re: Re: Hard bug? Why?by Tanyel <tanyel@straightblack.com> Wednesday March 27th, 2002 4:01 PM America Online has similar announcements. I have wondered why Netscape does not have alerts of available upgrades. #27 Re: Re: Re: Re: Hard bug? Why?by AlexBishop <alex@mozillazine.org> Wednesday March 27th, 2002 5:10 PM "MS has a system in place to alert users when an IE upgrade is available, and shout about how great it is. "Does Netscape have this? Does AOL?" The next version will. Go to Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Software Installation. I don't think it does anything in Mozilla but you can bet it will in the next Netscape version. The spec <http://www.mozilla.org/xpapps/updates/spec.html> has more details. Alex this should be to be disabled in a two step way, at first an update-notification on each update, the next on very important updates (for example the first one with the CSS3-Selectors compleatly supported. I think a big part of what drives adoption of new IE versions is the update check they do every so often when you start the browser. I would imagine that many computer users wouldn't even think to upgrade unless prompted. Additionally, getting users into the Microsoft update track probably reinforces their long-term market share because the users always have the "latest and greatest" version, which may address previous bugs and gives you the gee-whiz satisfaction of having the new toy. Netscape should do the same, both to maintain existing users and drive the web forward. For a long time Netscape 4.x has been hampering the web design world with non-conformance - an auto-update prompt in Netscape (that could be turned off, of course) would have gone a long way towards getting people to upgrade to a standards compliant version. And since web standards continue to evolve (CSS3 is in the works I think), even Gecko users should upgrade from time to time. Not to mention minor implementation bugs, etc. that make it hard to use certain CSS features. Even Mozilla releases might want to consider it since a lot of the linux distros package Mozilla and a few of those users might not think to upgrade to the latest release. Not many perhaps, but a fair number of people (Debian users excluded) don't upgrade except when a new version of their distro comes out. I'd say the killer feature would be the ability to turn off pop unders and pop over ads. That shit sucks and when I discovered that feature, I converted another 20 people over to Moz. ;) AOL is unlikely to do anything to hurt advertisers. That would be bad for business. Even if it did, though, bear in mind that the popup suppression only works for now because Mozilla's market share is so low there's no incentive to break it yet. If AOL adopts Mozilla with popup suppression, then advertisers will either develop ways around the suppression or come up with an even more annoying form of ad. #25 Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hard bug? Why?by Tanyel <tanyel@straightblack.com> Wednesday March 27th, 2002 4:06 PM "Popup suppression" eliminates those stupid "Try Aol!" advertisements on the AOL homepage. They would hate that. X10 would only receive visitors from the three people searching for their site. #28 Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hard bug? Why?by MozSaysAloha <hoshie@hotpop.com> Wednesday March 27th, 2002 6:55 PM I\'ve always believed AOL will reject the built in pop up killer in Mozilla when the next NS build ships...why? Simple. With all the pop ups being killed, AOL would lose money. shhhhhh! don\'t give them any ideas! #61 Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hard bug? Why?by jesse <jruderman@hmc.edu> Thursday March 28th, 2002 7:19 PM What if the feature would double Netscape 6's marketshare? Would you still suggest that they reject it due to lost revenue on the netscape.com and aol.com portals? IE supports ad-blocking and popup elimination and all the stuff users would want ALREADY. it's just simply not turned on by default. i guess this is because of all the blame microsoft would recieve if the advisors found out... but it can easily turned on using tweak XP <http://www.totalidea.de/cgi-bin/dlpal.pl?id=1663> or similar tools. and this support is IMHO even better, since it can load lists of servers to block and such nifty features, where you have to add each server manually in mozilla. so, the marketing guys must have spoken over the techies... and this would happen to mozilla, too. so enabeling this my default is a bad idea. I don't use IE anymore (except for the rare cases where a site using proprietary html is completely unreadable). So I would liketo know if IE6 has pop-up blocking, window size and bookmark managent (any silly site can add "Favourites" to your computer) blocking preferences that can be easily modified. My impression is that the user interface for pop-ups (not counting external tweaking utilities) is complicated, confusing and counter productive. Let alone that you can prevent pop-ups only, not the window resizing and Favourite addition. As for the per site based blocking, I think it's useful but personally I prefere a generic blocking (without completely disabling javascript). first of all: i don't use IE anymore, too... only if i'm forced to, but usually i just don't go to those sites, or to check out, how IE messes up a page, i've written. but to your question: it has pop-up blocking and such restrictions, without disableling JS alltogether. i don't know the details, as i've mentioned above, i don't use it. i just wanted to point out that IE has the feature. it does not have the GUI (probably becuase of some marketing guys issues with them, as mentioned in the last post). and remember: good old mozilla also has lots of nifty features only accessible only in form of the prefs.js or similar. and the point was all about this one: can we afford to offer such GUI since AOL might not like that? we're not netscape, sure, and i personally think it's cool, but won't the advertisers invent even worse ads we can't block? just wanted to point that out. MS can't affort to have this GUI. netscape will not do this too, i assume. they all earn money. we don't. can we? should we? that's the point we're discussing here =) The biggest Killer-Feature is the Popup-Blocker, but also the Tabs are very good to spread Mozilla. I've never figured out why debug and QA are on the menubar and not under tasks. They logically fit there and I don't use them THAT often anyway. I know MPT has complained about the number of items on the menu and this is a simple way to reduce them. Also, I would like QA get a better name, something like "Help Mozilla!" or "Get Involved" or something like that, it took me two months to actually wonder what it was and click on it. I'd prefer Tools to be a menu item there instead rather than on its own sub menu, I use DOM Inspector, JSConsole, and JS Debugger far, far more often than anything on the Debug or QA menus. I can't believe it! After...wow it's more than two years now since M13 of using Mozilla I seem to be looking the first time at the QA menu, cause of your post. Why didn't anyone say that earlier? That's cool, even for downloading the latest build there's a link. Although I don't need it anymore, I'm building my own Mozilla every day for some months now. That's crazy....after being involved in Mozilla's fate for so long I just discovered such a cool thing that has ever been under my nose... Hi Does anyone have any links to a definitive list of CSS support for Mozilla 1? These I already know of at developer.netscape.com/docs: <http://developer.netscape…note/gecko/n6release.html> developer.ntscape.com/tech/css <http://developer.netscape.com/tech/css/index.html> Check out <http://www.mozilla.org/catalog/web-developer/css/> and specifically <http://richinstyle.com/bugs/table.html> My last run through Richinstyle's "bugs in Mozilla" shows the following results: ~33% real bugs ~33% bugs in their CSS ~33% used to be real bugs but are now fixed. So it's a crap-shoot at best. If you want the skinny on Mozilla's CSS1 support, check out <http://www.johnkeiser.com…lla/REC-CSS1-mozilla.html> which is always up to date and pulls directly from Bugzilla. #48 Re: Do _not_ buy what rishinstyle saysby choess <choess@stwing.upenn.edu> Thursday March 28th, 2002 10:16 AM But not yet comprehensive, AFAIK; I haven't had much time for it lately, with the mailbombing, etc. Up until now, after having branched for a milestone, the pub/mozilla/nightly/latest link always pointed to the latest trunk nightly. I'd suggest, that before the 1.0 release, the link should point to the 1.0 branch so we get more people testing 1.0. Let's make 1.0 rock! Go Moz! Great to see Mozilla's first major release! It's been a long time, but I tell you guys behind all this: it's definitely been worth it! A lot is made in that article ( also in <http://www.statmarket.com…amp;feature&week_stat> ) about the increase in IE6's market share (now 30.5% apparently), but surprisingly actually fails to suggest the reason for the jump. My theory? Well, Windows XP happened to be released about the same time IE6 was and, unsurprisingly, was bundled with XP. I'd be willing to bet that most of its market share came from the upgrades to (and the new PCs pre-installing) XP - I suspect that only a few percent of people actually upgraded from IE 5.X to 6.0 (and judging by the comments on download.cnet.com, a fair chunk of those downgraded again because 6.0 didn't work too well on their non-XP OS !). If you read that StatMarket report, you'd think it was IE6 aggressively grabbing market share from Netscape (would be interesting to know the NS 4.X vs. 6.X split - sadly this isn't mentioned at all). However, as I've said on here before, if MS ships a free "good enough" browser with their OS (and you try uninstalling IE 6.0 - you'll have "fun" !), the vast majority of users won't bother installing a second browser, especially one that takes a 25MB+ download to get, no matter how fantastic it may be. To sum up - I'd actually be quite surprised if Netscape had managed to hold onto its double-digit market share in the past year - what with the XP/IE6 launch plus AOL's failure to use the Gecko rendering engine (yet...there's hope on the horizon) which would have levelled the playing field for Netscape 6.X, I'm actually surprised it's still got even 7%. BTW, does AOL include a full Netscape 6.X installer on their AOL CD-ROMs? If not, why not ?! After all, they own Netscape and it would be a nice extra use of the AOL carpet-bombed CDs...people might keep them to install Netscape 6.X without needing a big download... #14 Re: IE6 gains over Netscape....cos of XP surely?by rgelb <nospam@nospam.com> Wednesday March 27th, 2002 10:54 AM According to the logs on my website, IE6 users are by far win2k and win98 users. XP and Win ME are a very small part of the market. "Well, Windows XP happened to be released about the same time IE6 was and, unsurprisingly, was bundled with XP." That is only true to some extent. XP users are very still very marginal and DEFINITELY do NOT explain why 30% or more of all users (this includes Macintoshes and Linux etc. too) are using IE 6. The vast majority of those IE 6 users have actually taken time to download it. Here's another source for stats that also shows you the NS 6 vs NS 4 distribution: I like the fact that the statistics at that site are accompanied by a caution that statistics can be misleading. Their Source 3 stats show a rather different picture for Netscape/Mozilla than Source 1 & 2. I wish that they told what their Sources 1, 2, and 3 were instead of the generic labels. Opera numbers are smaller than those of Gecko based browsers by a factor of 2-10! Many people in this forum have claimed that : a) Opera is a decent browser and much faster than Mozilla/NN6 b) Mozilla ui bugs and performance problems is the sole reason for low market share Then, how do they explain the above numbers? Opera by default identifies itself as MSIE5... >Opera by default identifies itself as MSIE5... If you check the entire user agent string (navigator.userAgent or HTTP_USER_AGENT as opposed to navigator.appName or navigator.appVersion), I believe you\'ll find that it contains the string \"Opera\" no matter what the user \"spoofing\" settings might be. #49 Re: Re: Re: Did you notice Opera stats?by rgelb <nospam@nospam.com> Thursday March 28th, 2002 10:22 AM >If you check the entire user agent string (navigator.userAgent or HTTP_USER_AGENT as opposed to navigator.appName or navigator.appVersion), I believe you'll find that it contains the string "Opera" no matter what the user "spoofing" settings might be.<< Unfortunately, neither WebTrends or FastStats actually check the user agent string that deep. They just check the name in the front of the string and the os. Yes, and only 1 of 100 sniffers can recognize it -_- "Many people in this forum have claimed that : a) Opera is a decent browser and much faster than Mozilla/NN6" I wonder if we can find ANYONE who claims that Opera is NOT a decent browser and much faster than Mozilla. Please note that I'm not saying anything negative about Mozilla here. I'm merely saying that Opera *IS* a decent browser and I am also claiming that it's faster than Mozilla. It sure feels faster than IE 6.0.. I don't like the Opera UI at all.. Of course you could claim just about anything due to the word "much" that you used. "Oh, ok, it seems it's faster. But it's not *MUCH* faster." "b) Mozilla ui bugs and performance problems is the sole reason for low market share" "sole reason"? Who claimed that? There are many reasons for Mozilla's / NN6 low market share. Overall quality ("it feels a little shaky and toyish") and performance have surely been reasons as many, many people agree. Other reasons are bad reputation after the first NN 6.0 version, Microsoft's marketing machine and just plain lazyness / unwillingness to switch browser cause "IE works fine so I'll stick to it". Forgot to mention that I have never used Opera so far, therefore I wasn't intending to compare it with Mozilla. All I wanted to say is that performance and ui bugs cannot be the sole (ok, let's call it "main") reason for Mozilla's low market share. I do recall some people claiming that, though. Just reminding it. But I am glad we agree this doesn't hold true. I don't remember where, but somewhere on their site, not too deep, they do list their sources. If memory serves, Source 3 is actually their site. " * Source 1 stats are from sites that use a hit counter, which excludes many popular, professionally-made sites. * Source 2 stats, from Proteus the Internet Consultancy (<http://www.proteus.co.uk>), are primarily from UK sites, with a somewhat regional audience. Note the anomalously high NN3 percentage: this may include browsers that mimic Netscape, which other sources classify as 'other' browsers. * Source 3 stats are from this domain (<http://www.upsdell.com>): because of its special audience, its stats apply to a narrow segment of the population. Note the anomalously high 'other' percentage: the stats report program (WebTrends) is likely doing a poor job of identifying browsers." That is enough detail for me, source 3 is obviously a more technical site with more linux users and more users who have changed their browser. That is just to the bottom left of the stats table BTW ;) Thanks. Guess I was just tired (it was 6am and I had not gone to bed yet) when I looked at it. From my point of view (i'm a web developer) the real killer feature of mozilla (and netscape 6+) is the standards endorsement. In this area mozilla really shines. This should be installable with the AOL install.. definetly help the market share.. #19 Yeah, yeah, it's spam. I just can't help myself.by groovestar Wednesday March 27th, 2002 2:29 PM Aaaaaahhhhh! 'Tis the beginning of the end! The next thing you know hell will be freezing over! #20 Yeah, yeah, it's spam. I just can't help myself.by groovestar Wednesday March 27th, 2002 2:33 PM Aaaaaahhhhh! 'Tis the beginning of the end! The next thing you know hell will be freezing over! #30 Spell Check in mail composerby xraytwo <seanmcoleman@attbi.com> Thursday March 28th, 2002 12:00 AM Hopefully the spell checker will be enabled and complete for 1.0. Netscape 6 seems to have this enabled by deault <http://www.mozilla.org.uk…cs/spell-checker-faq.html> is the spell-checker FAQ. I can summarize the answer to your hope, however: "no, it will not". There is simply not enough time to finish writing a spelling checker and then test it properly. The Netscape 6 spelling checker is proprietary. The SpellChecker XPI works great for me, the dictionary isn't huge, but it works fairly well. grayrest I find it works fine for my useage, both English (of course) and German work quiet well Install it <http://spellchecker.mozdev.org/installation.html> and see for yourself. It does have a few bugs, but the add to dictionary is just adding a line into the prefs.ja ( ah the good old days of putting in your own mailbox info--anyone else remember M 5 ) Here is the info to rid this little pest. Add a line user_pref("spellchecker.savePDEverySession", true); to your prefs.js I've just read somewhere that if you've got the exact version of Mozilla that a Netscape has been mode from, you should be able to get Netscape's spell checker installed. I know it worked in the past. Let's hope a new Netscape comes out soon after Mozilla 1.0 and that this does indead still work. I tried the spell checker of Mozilla/OpenOffice, but have to say that - in Dutch - it's not as good is L&H's (or how are they being called now-a-days) which, correct me if I'm wrong, is being deliverd with Netscape and StarOffice. I agree with what Boris Zbarsky said above. It will not be tested in time. But they do hope it will be available in the 1.0 branch. And rather than trying to use the Netscape spelling checker, I would recommend getting the Mozilla spelling checker XPI and helping to test it. <http://spellchecker.mozdev.org/> For those of you not in the know, the Matzilla browser is also about to be released, just in time for Passover. Here\'s an old article-- <http://web.archive.org/we…&id=38fde210-070f7380> W I've come across this nastly little bug that can result in dataloss for anyone who manages webpages from a browser. It needs some attention now. I hope that it doesn't make it into 1.0! This bug looks like one that's been around for a while, probably a duplicate of bug 64799 <http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=64799> or bug 127043 <http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=127043> might be worth adding your test case to 64799. It is mostly a dup except that it seems to have only recently started messing with comment tags. I realize now that this is mostly an issue of strict standards compliance and I'm all for standards but this is liable to cause dataloss problem for a lot of people and I'm worried about it getting into Moz 1.0 and Netscape 6.whatever as it could have an affect on browser acceptance. will mozilla mail have any PGP/GPG support. I use Kmail sometimes when I want to send encrypted message. Other than that Mozilla Mail is my preferred mail program. Check mozdev.org <http://www.mozdev.org> I think they had a project for PGP mail. It's also being worked on (or was) in Mozilla for a later release. --Asa Here you go, updated for every release: <<http://enigmail.mozdev.org/download.html>> Enigmail can only encrypt messages but not Attachments or full mime-mails. According to the developers it is unsure if attachments will be encrypted, at least it will take some more monthes. R. Saravanan writes in the enigmail-newsgroup: > Enigmail simply scrapes the HTML that is displayed by Mozilla\\\'s mail window. It does not have access > to the attachments etc. The API for truly integrating decryption into > Mozilla have not yet been released/documented (see Mozilla bug 22687 on <http://bugzilla.mozilla.org>) Does enybody know more about the developments on this bug? I wonder what are people going to use as an excuse for Mozilla's problems now that they cannot say, "It's still beta software!" mozilla.org provides binaries for testing and feedback. We say this on the front page and we say this on the releases page. We've always said this (from the release of the very first binary. I remember when it popped up on ftp, do you?) and we will continue to say this. If you want Mozilla software which is not for testing and feedback then go get a Netscape 6.2 browser or Beonex or wait for their next release. You can call it excuses but you're the one that wants mozilla.org test binaries to be more than they are, not mozilla.org. I challenge you to find a statement from mozilla.org that says we distribute binaries for general consumption by casual end users. You won't find it because you're the one making that claim, not us. #65 Re: Re: Think of new excuses.by Tanyel <tanyel@straightblack.com> Thursday March 28th, 2002 11:33 PM Now I know what they are going to say. Period. The sooner you understand that, the least disappointment you will get from the "product". You may ask Netscape for their excuses (the majority of code distribution comes from there), when they release their next version (based on Mozilla 1.0 or whatever). Feel free to bash them, as we all did after the 6.0 release. We all know there are problems. Following activity on some well known bugs (originally targeted for 1.0, now pushed to future milestones) indicates that they will continue to exist in 1.0. Discussing here the reason doesn't interest me. You may ask Mr. Strauss on that. He will be prompt to answer, that's for sure. I am not affiliated to mozilla.org or NS. But this doesn't prevent me from understanding a statement claimed a long time ago (I mean that on the title of my post). Is this so hard for you to understand it too? Whether or not Mozilla.org produces builds for consumption by end users, it is quite obvious that Mozilla is an end user product. The fact that Mozilla 1.0 is intended to be the basis for end user products with little change other than branding and bundling makes this clear. It makes no sense if Mozilla.org is not an end user product and mozilla.org customers are going to have to rewrite major parts of it to be end user acceptable. That would waste everyone's time and energy. I believe that Mozilla.org is deluded about what they are producing. When users complain about obvious and serious usability issues in the browser, they are told it's not an end user product; go get Netscape. But since Netscape is based on Mozilla, it has the exact same end user problems. And even if Netscape (or other distributor) wanted to fix problems, maintaining a fork of Mozilla code is practically impossible because of the time and cost required to stay in sync on the important bugfixes. What would be the point of complaining to Netscape when it's clear the problems lie with Mozilla? This is absurdity. >The fact that Mozilla 1.0 is intended to be the basis for end user products with little change >other than branding and bundling makes this clear I think you are wrong. Netscape 6.x releases were always more polished than the Mozilla branches they were based on. Besides the polishing, there were additional features like simple mapi that only very recently started to work on Mozilla. They were not major rewrites, of course. Netscape and other corporate contributors aren't that foolish to make Mozilla a full open source browser. If not and Mozilla becomes a fully functional browser, how do you expect from them to pay off their investment? I think it is pretty obvious that there is a large demand for a basic, mozilla.org like, build without all the debuging, etc. There are many, many reasons why someone might not want to use the Netscape, or other "Value-Added" version. I know that mozilla.org has said time and time again that they will not be doing this but why not? #77 Re: Re: Mozilla is not an end user productby gwalla <gwalla@despammed.com> Saturday March 30th, 2002 1:45 AM Because that's what Beonex is for. Hi ASA and all I've used this subject line before and it passes to this theme as well. End user, customer- I really don't understand those terms in relation to Mozilla. Some people still seem to live in the world of Star Wars--duh Browsers Wars what ever that was. Any way, when a program is always pushing the edge of the possible there are going to be problems to be solved. And is the way I like it. Mozilla is on the bleeding edge, there was a time when just above the download link it said, Are you sure you really want to do this crazy thing? What I'm trying to get at Mozilla will never be finished and good so. There is always going to be a show stopper that the new bug in using the Adobe SVG Viewer plugin. 2 weeks ago this bug <http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=133567> was not there, but now it is, so what. Someone with the power of checking in made a mistake Just what the hell is that icon on the right side of the color picker supposed to mean in the Composer? The tooltip says "choose highlight color for text", so I would assume it's another color picker, but.. how?? What?? it seems to 'highlight' text like taking a highlight marker to a textbook. that's just my guess after testing it for about 10 seconds. --Asa That's what I assumed it would do but I couldn't get it to work. I selected text and clicked it but nothing happened. Anyway, the icon sure is strange.. It looks to me like it's the outlines of a isometric 3D eraser or something. Based on the description, maybe it's supposed to apply a :hover style? Perhaps it only works on links because of bug 5693. I did the following: 1. type some text 2. mark some of it 3. use that button, select a color 5. un-select the text Et voila, the previously selected text is highlighted. I follow your procedure and at #3 (use that button, select a color), i click on the button and absolutely nothing happens. If I then select a color normally, of course the text color changes. But it does so without clicking the "highlight" button too. And the icon REALLY doesn't look like it's right.. It looks like it's disabled and it doesn't really look like ANYTHING. I assume that when it's clicked, a color picker should pop up. However, that doesn't happen. It is simply not reacting at all when clicked on and it looks like a bunch of random pixels vaguely forming the outlines of a 3D eraser or something similar. I'm still completely puzzled about what that button really does. Yep, I get a color picker when I press that button. Odd.. I wonder what the difference is.. I'm just simply opening up the composer app by clicking on its icon on the lower left in the status bar. Then I type some random text (a few words), highlight about half of it (center part), hit the button and notice that its disabled and nothing at all happens. Weird.. Go to Edit, Preferences and check the \"Use CSS styles instead of HTML elements and attributes\" box. Now the highlight feature should work. Ah yes! Thanks.. Now it works. I still maintain that it's a little.. odd.. An icon that is disabled by default and doesn't really look like anything except a bunch of random pixels. Oh well... If it looked more like a pen (even when disabled), I guess it would make more sense. And the grouping is a little odd now (it's right next to the color pickers, yet it's a button with an icon like bold / italic / etc.). |
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