Mozilla 1.1 News ReportsTuesday August 27th, 2002Though not as major as 1.0, a few tech sites noted the launch of Mozilla 1.1. A Mozilla release just wouldn't be the same without an article from Slashdot and the site offers up the usual collection of user comments. The more mainstream ZDNet News concentrates on the speed and stability improvements of the new version while internetnews.com delivers little more than a rehash of the Release Notes. Thanks to everyone who sent us links to news. UPDATE! CNET News.com has an article focussing on consumer reaction to the new release. The report sums up the feedback as "mixed", though this does seem to be largely based on a single Slashdot comment. I'm a convert and have no/very minor complaints with Mozilla. The roadmap (as linked in the news item announcing 1.1) doesn't announce any particular features that are scheduled for any particular release. What new doodads can we look forward to ? Are the optimoz tools going to be integrated ? What's already in 1.2a ? CNet is digging pretty deep for dirt if they must use Slashdot as the source for negative feedback. The day you get all positive reaction from Slashdot will be the day we all have implants that "suggest" how we should respond ;o) . As with all "news" it is subject to spin and tech news is proving to be no different. Especially since MS people invest in CNet. You want negative feedback? I'll give you some negative feedback. Why the heck do we support marquee by default? It should be disabled by default. Mozilla is getting off track. What happened to the old idea of just putting out a good, high-quality browser? What's with the stupid default support for marquee? I've got even lamer negative feedback "oh why do I have to download mozilla? Why can't I get with the OS like I do with IE???" <marquee> is not part of any standard, and is thus not recognized by Mozilla in standard-compliant mode. To the best of my knowledge, <marquee> is only supported in quirks-mode, a mode specifically designed to emulate quirks of other browsers to make the browsing experience smoother while sites transition to standard-based markup. Hence, I see nothing wrong with implementing support for <marquee> in quirks-mode. Marquee is supported by default because not supporting it breaks some major web sites. Mozilla is about displaying web pages in the way that web designers intended. Sometimes that means using quirks mode instead of strictly following the standards. In the case of marquee, it sometimes means recognizing HTML that is not part of any web standard. Mozilla has always been about providing an excellent browsing experience, not blindly and mindlessly following web standards. Mozilla is getting better with each release, and I cannot find any evidence that it's "getting off track." >>Mozilla is about displaying web pages in the way that web designers intended. No, it's obviously not about that. Marquee annoys most everyone except 30 Chinese developers, who could be easily sent to dynamicdrive.com for a xbrowser marquee script and we'd all live in peace. This tag also grossly violates the content/presentation distinction. I can see why Netscape might add marquee by default, as they like annoying their users, but it shouldn't be in Moz, or should be easily turned off. When is the new <slideshow> tag going to be added? Or do we still have to write a script for that? By all means let Netscape put support in for as many market-share gaining features as they see fit. Mozilla on the other hand should be kept pure!! I rely on Mozilla for (amongst other things) a standards reference - please Moz don't slide into the proprietary quagmire!! > I rely on Mozilla for (amongst other things) a standards reference Mozilla is not good as a standards reference. It supports invalid HTML and nonstandard and deprecated tags. If you want to validate your HTML, use an HTML validator. > please Moz don't slide into the proprietary quagmire!! As I've mentioned several times, Mozilla has supported proprietary tags for years. What is it about the marquee tag that suddenly seems to change things? For everyday testing I use Moz because it's support for HTML, CSS and Javascript is light years closer to spec than anything else around. I agree about using an HTML validator, which I do when in doubt. > As I've mentioned several times, Mozilla has supported proprietary tags for years. I was aware of a few proprietary Moz css attributes (like moz-opacity), but I couldn't think of any proprietary tags. Had a quick look around and found that EMBED, NOBR and WBR (I hadn't even heard of these last two!) are supported by Moz and not in the HTML spec. Ultimately I'd prefer if any non-spec tags were pulled (I don't think anyone would miss NOBR and WBR). EMBED is possibly the only exception I'd make until (IF!) MS decide to make their implemenation of the object tag work properly. > What is it about the marquee tag that suddenly seems to change things? It would be nice for at least one decent reference browser to exist in the world - w3c's Amaya is supposed to be that browser, but unfortunately it's just not that good. For now, Mozilla is the best hope we have. Each time Moz moves further from that goal (by *adding* support for a non-standard item) a few peoples hopes get dashed. Like I said before, keep Moz pure, let Netscape chase the market, or at least provide a big switch for 'Specification True Rendering' or some such. "It would be nice for at least one decent reference browser to exist in the world - w3c's Amaya is supposed to be that browser, but unfortunately it's just not that good. For now, Mozilla is the best hope we have." Sounds like you've got a problem that should be taken up with Amaya developers. Why is Amaya "just not that good"? I claim it's just not that good because it's a standards browser and not a Web browser. It wasn't designed with the Web in mind, it was designed with the standards in mind and because of that it's got a user base of like 3 people. If Mozilla was a pure standards browser like you want and it only displayed half of the pages on the web as the author intended then no one would be using it and no one would be developing for it and no one, or very few, would be developing on it. If you took away all of the parser and layout non-standards behaviors that were implemented to handle broken or proprietary markup then Mozilla would be pretty useless as a Web browser. Given the choice between being a good HTLM validator and being a useful and widely used Web browser, I'll opt for the latter. --Asa But I thought it was Netscape's job to get end-users? AIUI Mozilla is supposed to be a technology demonstration aimed at embedders. It sounds more reasonable that <marquee> is added to the Netscape branch only but not Mozilla. "But I thought it was Netscape's job to get end-users? AIUI Mozilla is supposed to be a technology demonstration aimed at embedders. It sounds more reasonable that <marquee> is added to the Netscape branch only but not Mozilla." It's not a branch. It's a separate and closed source tree. Distributors maintain a separate tree with their distribution specific changes. You're suggesting we make life difficult for a lot of distributors. I don't know for sure what their numbers are but RedHat also distributes Mozilla, and as the default browser shipping with their OS. They want marquee and all of the other "make the web browser display web pages" fixes. You want them and Netscape and Galeon and all the others to maintain anything non-standard in their own trees, independently? Everything that goes into Mozilla makes it that much easier for distributors (and there are more than just Netscape) to ship a well tested product to end users. If changes don't land in mozilla then RedHat and OEOne and AOL and Galeon and Nautilus and Netcape and Beonex and Compuserve and others all have to duplicate the work in their own trees. Then they all have to duplicate the testing. I don't see Beonex getting hundreds of thousands of beta downloads every few weeks (or any of those distros, for that matter) so I'm sure they appreciate that Mozilla does and that the changes they take in every new release are well tested. The point is that yes, we could say "not in Mozilla" to literally thousands of fixes based on the fix not being the perfect fix or not being "pure" but we're making a web browser here and the better we make it and the easier we make it for distributors to turn into products the better the chances of Gecko spreading across the web. If we backed out all of the non-standard features (as defined by the various web standards groups) and said that those kinds of changes had to land in the individual distributors' trees I'd wager that all but one of those distributors listed above would go away. On top of that, Mozilla would have about 13 users, just like Amaya, and so we wouldn't even be providing the testing for the one remaining distributor. Not a world I want to move toward. --Asa Good point about implementing it once, and getting it right the first time. Just pretty please turn marquee off by default. That's all I care about. I understand. I am a volunteer for the Bayanihan project (http://bayanihan.asti.dost.gov.ph/) in the Philippines and I am preparing a Mozilla-based browser that we will distribute with it. Our Bayanihan Browser will have marquee and hopefully even some patches that didn't make it into Mozilla. I just feel sentimental about the pureness of Mozilla that we used to flaunt about. "I just feel sentimental about the pureness of Mozilla that we used to flaunt about. " When did you flaunt about Mozilla "pureness"? From the first apprunner builds with XPFE Mozilla's been far from pure (if by pure you mean not including extensions beyond what is specifically proposed by the w3c). http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/source/content/shared/public/nsCSSPropList.h shows non-standard extensions to CSS going back to 1999 and I'm sure there was plenty non-standard before then. I have been known to flaunt Mozilla's world-beating standards support. Mozilla supports more of the standards properly and with fewer bugs than any other browser on the planet. That is very different from saying that Mozilla supports _only_ the standards and anyone that's been bragging about Mozilla supporting _only_ the standards has been praising Mozilla for something it isn't and hasn't ever been since it's inception. --Asa > Sounds like you've got a problem that should be taken up with Amaya developers. > Why is Amaya "just not that good"? I claim it's just not that good because it's a standards browser and not a Web browser. > It wasn't designed with the Web in mind, it was designed with the standards in mind and because of that it's got a user base of like 3 people. Amaya is fine for what it is, but it's not really up to speed with support for some things, especially CSS - For example check out Eric Meyer's ComplexSpiral demo, or even W3C's own CSS page in Amaya. Both of these pages use vaild HTML + CSS, but still don't present the way the spec says they should. It's not Amaya's dedication to standards that lets it down, its just that there's only a few people working on it and not everything is implemented yet. I agree Moz is not (and should be) a validator, but it's the excellent standards support that really sets Moz apart. As it says on the 'Mozilla.org At A Glance' page: "Mozilla is an open-source web browser, designed for standards-compliance, performance and portability". "I can see why Netscape might add marquee by default, as they like annoying their users, but it shouldn't be in Moz, or should be easily turned off." You're absolutely right. But isn't there any way to disable it? Hidden pref, anything?! So why are reviewers treating it like one? The CNet article says "...the software still has a ways to go, some consumers say.". Who cares about the "consumers" anyway. They should review Netscape 7 and stick with it. Moz is a tool for building browsers and if the press don't know that, it should be made clearer! > Marquee annoys most everyone except 30 Chinese developers, who could be easily sent to > dynamicdrive.com for a xbrowser marquee script and we'd all live in peace. The evangelism approach was tried, and was unsuccessful. I hope you are volunteering for evangelism because you find it so easy!!! > This tag also grossly violates the content/presentation distinction. Correct. So does the blink tag, which Mozilla has supported for years. Why haven't we heard a cry to remove support for that tag too? Not supporting it wouldn't even break page layout! > [It] should be easily turned off. I agree. The effects of both the blink and marquee tags should be turned off easily. > When is the new <slideshow> tag going to be added? Apartently my comments were taken as in support of the marquee tag. I'm not in support of using that tag or any other nonstandard or deprecated HTML tag or attribute. I write in strict HTML and validate my HTML. But that doesn't mean Mozilla should not recognize nonstandard tags or invalid HTML. If it did, it would be a far worse browser than it is. >>The evangelism approach was tried, and was unsuccessful. I hope you are volunteering for evangelism because you find it so easy!!! Really? Chinese emails, or English? Were they emailed xbrowser marquee code? Did someone Chinese call these 30 key people up seeing as how they are seemingly so important as to warrant a new tag the Moz user base generally hates? Cheaper and easier and better than coming up with a marquee implementation. Or maybe they couldn't care less about Moz/Netscape because no one uses it in China, or is going to use it even if you add marquee. So there goes the case for adding it in. I'm not going to evangelize them because I don't care if they support Moz. -Only Netscape cares, so let Netscape have marquee. Done. Seems a very clean, clear solution. Why Netscape forced it into Moz, and Moz allowed it, I don't understand. Pull marquee and blink out and let Netscape have them in their proprietary implementation. If marquee were some wonderous tag the w3c simply hadn't got around to, I'd say great. But there is no case for adding marquee into Moz. If you want to test it, as some suggest as a last resort argument, test in Netscape. > Why haven't we heard a cry to remove support for [blink] too? Not supporting it wouldn't even break page layout! Take a vote. How many people want the blink tag supported??? Then rip it out. Moz users want a cleaner browsing experience than most, I think, and that is why everyone hates marquee and blink, even those who would allow them in. And looping animations, and popups, etc. Why not dare to build a different - "better" - browser with Moz rather than appeal to the lowest common navigator? (BTW, it's a bit embarrassing that this website uses font tags and tables for such a simple layout. A year ago I submitted an xhtml/css implementation and still haven't heard back... http://scootRS.com/moz/) "Netscape cares, so let Netscape have marquee. Done. Seems a very clean, clear solution. Why Netscape forced it into Moz, and Moz allowed it, I don't understand." It's not just Netscape that wants it. Other _major_ distributors like RedHat want this class of fixes. They want a Web browser that displays web pages and doesn't piss off users. Netscape didn't force anything. mozilla.org was asked if we wanted the code contribution and mozilla.org staff said "yes." --Asa This is somewhat off-topic but does anyone know if there's a file upload progress bar that can be turned on in mozilla 1.1. In both opera 6 and IE 6, when you upload a file onto a server using a server side form script (perl, php, whatever), you can see the progress of the file upload at the bottom of the page if you enable View -> Show/Hide -> Status Bar (or the equivalent) in either browser. I have no idea how accurate this is but it is very useful when one has to upload large files and there's no Javascript or other facility to track the progress of file upload. I couldn't find a server side way of doing this when the server is apache. Sad to say but there are many commercial add ons to IIS that do exactly this. Anand Rangarajan This is somewhat off-topic but does anyone know if there's a file upload progress bar that can be turned on in mozilla 1.1. In both opera 6 and IE 6, when you upload a file onto a server using a server side form script (perl, php, whatever), you can see the progress of the file upload at the bottom of the page if you enable View -> Show/Hide -> Status Bar (or the equivalent) in either browser. I have no idea how accurate this is but it is very useful when one has to upload large files and there's no Javascript or other facility to track the progress of file upload. I couldn't find a server side way of doing this when the server is apache. Sad to say but there are many commercial add ons to IIS that do exactly this. Anand Rangarajan I keep reading about some new button for default browser? What button? Where? "I keep reading about some new button for default browser? What button? Where?" It's at the top right in the Navigator pane in Preferences. It's a Windows-only thing. Alex I've been a user of Moz since the last few milestones before 1.0, so I fully agree with CNet's report of 1.1 as a "mixed" product. On the one hand, it's noticeably faster at page-loading, but it also crashes regularly, which didn't happen with 1.0 and even some earlier builds. What's annoying is that some major sites can crash the browser, such as ebay's personalized pages. Before I run & download 1.1, I was wondering whether someone could tell me if my pet peeve has been fixed. When I click on a bookmark group, doet it would wipe out other tabs with the ones defined in the bookmark group or add new tabs?. Is there an option to control this behaviour? Thanks It adds the new tabs with the first of the new tabs open. #24 Apply button and bookmark sorting - in Bugzilla.by JBassford Wednesday August 28th, 2002 6:34 AM It now (as of 8/27) honours "Load links in background." If you have this set, it will not change focus to the first of the new tabs. Not any more it doesn't. In 1.1 the bookmark group is added to the existing tabs. Well, that sucks severely. I can't stand that behaviour. I wish they had provided a UI to control this. Bugzilla now has a meta bug for this issue, but it hasn't been assigned and no target milestone has been set. Back to 1.1 alpha for me. Its nice to see Mozilla 1.1 is out and running so smoothly, its quite fast i must say. I know they improved the compatability with those gimp web pages coded more for IE, but it would be nice if they added a bit more. Like http://www.nvidia.com , for example, the menu bar popups dont work (as they do in IE) and im sure this is because the page is coded more for IE it would certainly be nice to see something like this work, and obviously there are more pages that could benifit too. Nonetheless, another great release. Validating Nvidia's site found tons of minor errors: http://www.htmlhelp.com/cgi-bin/validate.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nvidia.com&warnings=yes&input=yes One sloppy error was having an extra body tag between the head tags, and they have other problems that should have been caught by any competent HTML developer. Their Javascript for the flyout menus is overly complicated, but at least it doesn't support only just IE and NS4. I don't have IE so I don't know what it's supposed to look like (besides being a flyout menu of some type). NS 4.79 doesn't work either, it throws lots of JS errors. I'm guessing that the script worked at one time (set your wayback machine for the debut of Mozilla 16 in July 2000) but no one bothered since then to see if any of the site changes ever broke anything. View selection source feature is a God´s gift to developers. Thanks Mozilla.
You're so right. It looks like such a small thing, but I've used it so much over the last day or two that I really think that I couldn't live without it now. Many thanks to the MathML developers (as I think this is where the "view selection source" feature came from). Not to break the mood, but this existed in IE since 4.0 Care to tell me how to use it in IE 6? If it existst it certainly isn't discoverable enough to be useful. --Asa it is an add-on. most web developpers have it installed. you get get it from ms site. I rarely used it because it is too slow. I can to view source, hit ctrl-f and search for my stuff in about the same time. Mozilla way of doing it is in my opinion much better. Speedier, selection highlithed within context, etc. For ms stuff see http://microsoft.com/windows/ie/previous/webaccess/default.asp I guess, one thing to add to egoine's comment is that even though the web page says that these utilities are only for ie5, they work fine in ie6 as well. You said "Not to break the mood, but this existed in IE since 4.0" But what you were really saying is that IE hasn't had this since 4.0 but rather there has been an add-on to do this available since 4.0 and you're agreeing with the commentor that it's too slow to be useful and Mozilla's works much better? OK. None of that was at all obvious from your original comment. --Asa I haven't checkd out 1.1 yet, but I did check 1.0.1 Release Candidate 2. If you have 1.0.1. RC2, then see http://my.excite.com and you should notice the trouble with tables right away. I haven't checked out the page's own source code, but it very probably contains non-braking spaces. The problem is that Mozilla does not show non-breaking spaces correctly, while all Netscape 4 and IE versions (haven's seen what 6 shows) show non-breaking spaces correctly. Here's an example of what I am implying to: When you have a table with one cell's width set to 100% and the cell right after that contains a non-breaking space, the cell's content breaks with a non-breaking space in the first row of text, another set of text wrapped to the second row and if there's a non-breaking space after that text, then it wraps after that text, creating an illusion of that table cell containing two break tags. I hope this problem will be corrected by the time the more perfect 1.0.1 will be released. I have looked on the internet... I loaded Mozilla on a clean XP machine (no prior installs of Netscape or Mozilla) and I can't find where the profile's files are. The documentation I found online says: c:Documents and Settings<mylogin>Application Datamozilla.... But I don't have a directory called "Application Data" under mylogin> Help please... Anton #53 Re: Where are bookmarks, profile, etc.. stored???by AlexBishop Friday August 30th, 2002 10:11 AM "But I don't have a directory called 'Application Data' under mylogin>" Yeah, you do. It's just hidden by default. Alex I've been using Moz1.0 since it came out and was delighted with its performance. I was really looking forward to 1.1, however, it is extremely unstable and crashes constantly. A fresh install following a complete removal of Moz had no effect whatsoever. This simply will not do! |