The Mozilla 1.0 Media CircusFriday June 7th, 2002The release of Mozilla 1.0 was reported by most tech news sites including BetaNews, CNET News.com, evolt.org, eWEEK, ExtremeTech, Geek.com Geek News, IDG.net, internetnews.com, Internet Week, LinuxMAX, Linux Today, MacSlash, MozillaNews, NeoWin.net, Slashdot, The Register, vnunet.com, WinInfo and ZDNet News. More mainstream news sites are also taking notice. BBC News has an article and smh.com.au (the online edition of The Sydney Morning Herald) reported on Mozilla a few days ago. Taking a slightly different approach, PC Magazine marks the release with an interview with Mitchell Baker while ITBusiness.ca talks with Mike Shaver. Meanwhile, kuro5hin has an opinion piece about the release. Mozilla 1.0 scored 7 out of 10 in CNET's review, which describes Mozilla as "the best free alternative to Microsoft IE." Meanwhile, eWEEK's analysis notes that "Mozilla makes it possible for any developer or company to customize the browser to be whatever they need it to be." NewsForge also discusses Mozilla's customizability. In addition, there's a Slashdot piece on the Mozilla 1.0 reviews. On a related note, CNET has a video that recaps the browser wars and asks if Netscape 7.0 will revive the battle. Thanks to everyone who sent us links to news and reviews. The Swiss newspaper "Neue Zürcher Zeitung" also reviewed the new browser. It's the best review from a non-tech newspaper I've read so far, they've done their homework as journalists: <http://www.nzz.ch/2002/06/07/em/page-article87DU6.html> (German) Hm, how do I put external links here? That's the "plain-text" link: http://www.nzz.ch/2002/06/07/em/page-article87DU6.html I am very pleased to see that many of the reviews just rewrite the Guide http://mozilla.org/start/1.0/guide/ . Which is what it's there for ;-) Props to Ralph Mellor, Brian Heinrich, Mitchell Baker and Catherine Corre. I found this article to be very upbeat. The author - Tina Gasperson - has done her homework and has used Mozilla for sometime. ARGH, I have never fugured out how to install the RealPlayer of WinMediaPlayer plugins. The links "get plugin" don't seem to work with mozilla. Any advice? Thanks :-\ See http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/ - MXN Don't feel all along. I can't get either Windows Media Player or Real Player to work with Mozilla. As for the CNET video. Not a chance. It tried to run Media Player, which promptly crashed Mozilla 1.0! As for the help button in Mozilla. WHAT A JOKE! It directs you to the Netscape Plug-In web site. The lamest site I've seen yet. Streaming video? Just say YES to IE.
They say that the chat client doesn't support the major IM networks, well it's an IRC client, it's not supposed to, they're different things That's to be expected. C|Net's reviewers tend to not know much about old school Internet protocols (which IRC is, being older than the oldest IM networks by a good half dozen years :) ). If they took the time to read some of the faqs on the start page then they would come to the project page of chatzilla http://www.mozilla.org/projects/rt-messaging/chatzilla/ and then perhaps they'd learn to type in /help But that would be to simple. ;-) They might even make a stop at dmoz.org and do some more reading http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Internet/Clients/Chat/IRC/Help/ dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Internet/Clients/Chat/IRC/Help/ Of course that would mean doing some reading. um, it's even simpler than that. When you load chatzilla it says: Welcome to ChatZilla... Use /attach <network-name> to connect to a network, or click on one of the network names below. For general IRC help and FAQs, please go to <http://www.irchelp.org>, for information about ChatZilla go to <http://www.mozilla.org/projects/rt-messaging/chatzilla/>. [INFO]Available networks are [dalnet, efnet, hybridnet, moznet, opennet, quakenet, slashnet, undernet, webbnet]. [INFO]Type /help <command-name> for information about a specific command. Wouldn't they actually have to use the thing to see that? You seem not to get the idea here . . . some of these reviews are obviously at second hand. I have spoken with Rex Baldazo before and know he's well aware of the difference between IRC and IM clients. I think the general public, which is Cnet's audience, doesn't care about IRC clients. And with Netscape mixing in AOL IM and ICQ and Microsoft mixing their MSN Messanger with Internet Explorer, it's becoming the public expectation to get an IM client with browser software (IMO). Mozilla brings Chatzilla to the table which won't statisfy the general public. Of course there's also Jabberzilla to consider, but that's an extra that we can't expect the reviewer to take into account. I wish he could have graded the browser, mail, chat, and address book separately and put them against the best in the industry. To give Mozilla a 7 out of 10 based on evangelism and a complete misunderstanding of the chat client is just silly. ...news sites: - InfoWorld http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/06/05/020605hnmozilla.xml - Blogzilla http://www.deftone.com/blogzilla/archives/mozilla_10_released.html - Grayrest's Mozilla News http://www.grayrest.com/moz/ And, unfortunately: - MozillaQuest (No, no link here. Find it yourself.) - MXN > MozillaQuest (No, no link here. Find it yourself.) Why Bother? I'm pretty sure Angelo did his usual "review", so without reading it I'll offer a condensed version. Buggiest ever.... thousands of bugs.... BUGS BUGS BUGS !!!!! ;-) I'm not sure what the right way to ask is, but are we done with the remove-all-files-from-any-previous-version routine after 1.0? "... are we done with the remove-all-files-from-any-previous-version routine after 1.0?" If you are upgrading from one 1.0.x branch build to another then I expect you would not need to scrap your profile. Any changes on that branch should be restricted to bug fixes and improvements that preserve backward compatibility with earlier branch builds. The trunk, on the other hand, is a different matter. The trunk *might* at some point accept a major change to the code that will obsolete your profile. This might be necessary to accommodate new features or new implementation of existing ones. Those seeking a stable profile should restrict themselves to using 1.0.x branch builds. Hopefully before the 2.0.x branch is cut (-: 2010? :-), mozilla will have migration tools that will make the need changes to upgrade a 1.0.x profile to whatever a 2.0.x profile will look like. > Is the profile stable? I'm using the same profile for a year and 2 months now without a single problem (that got to be something like Mozilla 0.8). > are we done with the remove-all-files-from-any-previous-version routine after 1.0? I'd still remove the build from your system before upgrading, but I know people who don't do that. "I'm not sure what the right way to ask is, but are we done with the remove-all-files-from-any-previous-version routine after 1.0?" *Should* be. Cross fingers! The profile bit in the FAQ is inadequate, but is the best we have at the moment. More stories of profile recovery needed - email me at fun@thingy.apana.org.au . Hopefully we can get a good enough procedure documented that it can be automated. Can't we just record the build/version that the profile was created by within the profile, and if a different version comes up, it does some selective "pruning" or migrating to bring over most (if it is impossible/impractical for all) of the settings and configurations? This would REALLY improve the upgrading process if we only have to reset a couple of minor settings, rather than scrapping from the beginning and creating whole new subfolders with new "salted" profile directories. At least two "big" danish news sites have stories about the Mozilla 1.0 release from www.pcworld.dk - "Mozilla 1.0 crosses the finishing line" Short blurb about the release and a pointer to a eralier review of RElease candidate 1 from that review: "There is not much new stuff in the new mozilla compared to the versions that fuelled the netscape 6 series,The biggest news is that it has become stable and fast" "Mozilla 1.0 will properly not overtake Internet explorer as the dominant browser, but it is a excellent product in ifself" the review highlights: Speedy rendering, improved startup performance,Tabbed browsing,the sidebar and the cookie manager. from www.comon.dk (Mozilla 1.0 has been released) this is a very positive review, that begins with the following headline "One of the worlds biggest open source projects has reached it first big milestone - a milestone that gives millions of users around the world a real (complete) alternative to Internet explorer" "Mozilla is the world most standard complient webbrowser, it supports rendering of HTML according the specifications set forth by the W3C. this means that all pages written in corrrect html/xml/css will be displayed correctly. Besides HTML mozilla also has full javascript and plugin support" the review then goes on to saying that sadly not all webpages are being written correctly, mostly becasue they have been written be a microsoft program, or with Internet exlorer in mind, and then it continues to explain the comcept of IE homemade tags. All in all a positve opinion by the two sites At least two "big" danish news sites have stories about the Mozilla 1.0 release from www.pcworld.dk - "Mozilla 1.0 crosses the finishing line" Short blurb about the release and a pointer to a eralier review of RElease candidate 1 from that review: "There is not much new stuff in the new mozilla compared to the versions that fuelled the netscape 6 series,The biggest news is that it has become stable and fast" "Mozilla 1.0 will properly not overtake Internet explorer as the dominant browser, but it is a excellent product in ifself" the review highlights: Speedy rendering, improved startup performance,Tabbed browsing,the sidebar and the cookie manager. from www.comon.dk (Mozilla 1.0 has been released) this is a very positive review, that begins with the following headline "One of the worlds biggest open source projects has reached it first big milestone - a milestone that gives millions of users around the world a real (complete) alternative to Internet explorer" "Mozilla is the world most standard complient webbrowser, it supports rendering of HTML according the specifications set forth by the W3C. this means that all pages written in corrrect html/xml/css will be displayed correctly. Besides HTML mozilla also has full javascript and plugin support" the review then goes on to saying that sadly not all webpages are being written correctly, mostly becasue they have been written be a microsoft program, or with Internet exlorer in mind, and then it continues to explain the comcept of IE homemade tags. All in all a positve opinion by the two sites I am not sure I am missing something, but the mozilla.org's press release at http://www.mozilla.org/press/mozilla1.0.html is titled "Open Source Security". |