Mozilla 1.2 Alpha ReleasedWednesday September 11th, 2002Mozilla 1.2 Alpha is here! This latest release adds an Emacs-style Type Ahead Find feature (not currently available on Mac OS), the ability to add multiple attachments to an email or newsgroup message via the Attach File dialogue (Windows only) and enhanced keyboard accessibility. There's also stability and performance improvements, including a fix that dramatically speeds up IMAP mail header downloads on Mac OS X. Check out the Release Notes for more details and a list of known issues. As usual, builds are available from mozilla.org's web site or FTP server. Looking further ahead, 1.2 Beta should be released next month with the final version of Mozilla 1.2 expected in November. If you still don't understand how all the different releases fit together, take another look at the Roadmap. How stable is it? I know its 1.2alpha but 1.1alpha seemed pretty stable when I was using it. Well, although it's alpha-software, it feels rock-solid. It did not crash yet although I installed some additional stuff from MozDev. It feels quite stable (I have also Netscape 7.0 and Mozilla 1.0.1 installed, but already prefer Mozilla 1.2a) and has these additional features like the type-ahead-thingy. It's just something I would not have expected to find in a webbrowser. But now it's included I think I am going to use it. Pretty cool to use some vi-skills in your webbrowser on a Windows-system surfing through a Microsoft-proxy (which is bypassed with a Python-script running on a Linux-system) ;-) Wow 1.2aplha is out and flying! Great stuff. Shame it includes no new features of interest to general users, apart from possible performance improvements. (I'm all for accessibility features, but they're not terribly exciting to me personally, and I don't use mail at all, never mind on MacOS X.) It could be argued that Mozilla doesn't really need many new features at least in the browser (email still isn't nearly flexible enough for me to use it, with RFEs like bug 30057 and bug 44863 still remaining) but here's a couple, one of which could possibly make 1.2 (I sincerely hope): 1. Download manager that doesn't suck Having a download manager that appears by default, but is useless, so that you have to figure out how to turn it off, is not good design. 2. *USER-VISIBLE PREF* for links from other programs opening in new Mozilla windows Links from email, etc. always used to open in a new Mozilla window, which was fine by me. In 1.1 it was changed to reuse an existing window, which means that my procedure for opening a link changed from 'click on link' to 'switch from email program to a mozilla window; press ctrl-n; switch back to email program; click on link'. Clearly some people prefer the 'open in same window' option, so having that possibility is good, but it shouldn't be the only choice. IE has an option for this in its preferences. Why don't we? (Bug 155402; 17 votes so far, go add yours if you're of the same opinion; also there is a hacky workaround in that bug description.) Don't get me wrong here, I'm not 'dissing' the 1.2 alpha, just pointing out that there isn't very much to excite most people. (Actually, XML pretty-printing would make one less thing I have to use IE for, and I presume that'll be properly in there by 1.2 beta.) Clearly as the release schedule is quite fast, there *won't* be many new features each version. That's fine. But it does mean that a new minor release is not always a terribly fun occasion, with 1.2 alpha being a case in point. --quen >'switch from email program to a mozilla window; press ctrl-n; switch back to email program; click on link'. Another way is to select "Open Link in New Window" from the link context menu. Or you could CTRL+click on the link. What about a "open link in new tab"-option. Oh, I really love tabbed browsing. So you can read through your emails, open each interesting link in a new tab and then go through them to read all of the interesting articles. Why is it that some features have the "Open in new tab"-option and others don't ? I would suggest adding an "open in new tab"-option underneath every "open in new window"-menu-item. That's the best to give all users what they prefer: tabbed browsing or the old-style opening of new windows. BTW, is there an option in Mozilla to open every new window in a tab instead ? I've seen this option in Galeon1 and it would be nice if Mozilla could also be configured that way somehow. Another nice feature of Galeon: a simple warning whether you want to close the browser-window when you have multiple tabs open. Multizilla saves and restores all tab-sessions by default, but such a warning-option would be very confenient. Does anyone know whether something like that can be configured for Mozilla ? You can just change the options in tab browsing so that you can open link in new tab by click on the link with your middle button of the mouse. Also, you can hold on Ctrl key when clicking on a link to open it in a new tab. Don't know if you agree or not, but in my point of view, this give you the flexiblity of opening the link in a new/same window or new tabs. Yes, those options are also things I already use. Not the middle-mousebutton (I have 2 buttons and a scrollwheel), but the CTRL-key. I just saw that they also added an "open in new tab"-option to the Personal Toolbar folder. So they are working to get this option everywhere where they "forgot" to include it. Are you sure your scroll wheel isn't also a middle mouse button? I have a Microsoft mouse, and a Logitech mouse, and they both have scroll wheels that act as middle buttons when pressed. I use my middle mouse button (scroll wheel button) all the time in Mozilla to open links in new tabs, or to open links from e-mail in a new window. You can also click on a tab with the middle mouse button to close it. Mozilla is the first app I've used to make good use of the middle mouse button, and I love it. - Eric, http://www.InvisibleRobot.com/ Please don't pressure anyone to implement bug 30057. I have about 7 different accounts in my Mozilla mail all of which are used for different purposes, and I'd never be able to keep track of which came from where, and what it's for. Keep the mailboxes separate. It's easy to set up a rule/filter to send all new mail to the Local Folders inbox, it's far more difficult to create one to separate one inboxes worth out into separate TO addresses (with mail lists, BCCs etc complicating matters). It's not an either/or situation for all users of the entire client. There should be an option, presumably first visible when you add a second mail account. I know preference proliferation is seen as a problem for Mozilla, but for something like a mail client, if it's to be widely used, it needs to be possible to set it up the way that's comfortable for everyone. That means preferences for some things like this. Anyway, I'm sure other people have other priorities and I'm sure there are a lot of other RFEs for the mail client, some of which are equally valid; I just threw those in as two examples for why I think the email client is less feature-complete than the browser. Those are the two that need to be fixed before *I'll* try the mail client again. Until then, while Mozilla is way ahead of Internet Explorer, Mozilla mail still lags behind Outlook Express for my usage - even though it does have other important features that OE doesn't, such as the ability to turn off HTML mail viewing. So it's a bit frustrating that I can't switch. (As for the other response, I was referring to links from outside Mozilla, such as links from email programs like Outlook Express or Pegasus, IRC clients like leafChat or mIRC, and so on. There is currently no way - short of hacky workarounds - to make these links open in a new window.) --sam I have had pretty good luck with the 1.2a build but I noticed the Netscape 7 Spellchecker XPI I have been using with Mozilla 1.1 final no longer works. Installing the spellchecker XPI causes Mail 1.2a to crash at startup. I had to manually uninstall it to get Mail working again. The type ahead find feature looks pretty cool. Very usefull instead of reaching for the mouse. Other relases have been available as zipfiles. I miss them as I use several Mozilla version in parallel with my own directory naming scheme. Please can someone roll them and put it up? Masi Um, we have zip builds. Did you actually look at the ftp site? http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/releases/mozilla1.2a/ --Asa Does it work for anyone? I try typing / some text and nothing happens. Well, works for me. Just click somewhere on a webpage, and type a character. Something should happen. By clicking / first you can search for whole words.. Doesn't work for me either (Using 20020906). accessibility.typeaheadfind true accessibility.typeaheadfind.linksonly true accessibility.typeaheadfind.startlinksonly true accessibility.typeaheadfind.timeout 5000 It turns out, if you ask for a minimal install, it won't install typeaheadfind. Make sure you have typeheadfind.dll on Windows or libtypeaheadfind.so on Linux. As far as visual feedback, you should be getting it on the status bar. If typeaheadfind is working but you get no status bar feedback, check to see that you have typeaheadfind.properties. I don't know why you wouldn't, but in the past when that's been missing it caused the status bar messages not to show. Are you on mac? (doesn't work on mac yet, as noted in the article under which we are posting). are you sure you installed 1.2a? What build did you install? Installer or zip? --Asa I had the same problem after installing the browser only with the installer. I uninstalled, downloaded the zip and that worked. I'm using Windows XP. I have both 1.2a and 1.0.1 installed on my computer. Mozilla 1.0.1 is really slow compared to 1.2a, especailly when you start the browser. Is there any reason at all to use 1.0.1? For the stability? My experience with 1.2a is that it is very stable. :-) I had a crash after 10 minutes of browsing, went back to NS 7.0. But I liked what I saw. very fast. can't wait for NS 7.1 :) installed it, as I did with every version before (including Pref Toolbar2, Calendar and Mousegestures), started and - no Mail Menu, no Mousegestures, no Pref toolbar. After a chmod a+rw -R on my Mozilla-Folder the first was fixed. Pref-Toolbar2 needed a reinstall in this mode (which makes it totally unusable for Multiuser installations!). Also the mouse gestures needed that chmod. Will one day everybody learn, that testing on Windows 9x is NOT the best idea? That there are systems out there, which know about user rights? Well...as a developer of XUL applications I have to say that it is hard to test on all platforms... I do test my application on Windows and Linux but that's all. The thing about chmod! When you use XP:s built in ZIP function it sets the files to read-only. That's why you have to use chmod. A big recommendation for developers is to use Winzip instead. I'd also like to know whether there's any way to install XPIs as non root. Also are there any special precautions, developers of extensions should take? The standard procedure is to tell the xpinstaller to copy the files to a subfolder of chrome. Only this doesn't seem to work for non-root. Can the chrome folder or additions to it be places under /home/user/.mozilla/chrome or something? Typehead find is very cool, but it'd be nice to have visible feedback of what's going on -- whether you're in full-page or links-only mode, and what exactly your current pattern is. This could go in either the status bar, or in a floating tool-tip sort of thing. I looked in bugzilla to see if anyone had suggested this before (it seems like someone would have) but didn't find anything. Anyone know of an already-existing bug for this suggestion? I agree with this statement. Often times I wondered if what I typed had been processed. It would be nice to have some feedback in the UI for type ahead. My recommendation is to put it in the status bar at the bottom. Hopefully identical to how the Mouse Gestures show the current mouse movements. Is anyone else experiencing problems with the HTML Sanitizer? http://www.bucksch.com/1/projects/mozilla/108153/ Since I upgraded, it looks as if it doesn't pay attention to my setting of mailnews.display.html_sanitizer.allowed_tags in user.js. When will it be possible to use another Mail-Client with mailto-links in Mozilla? Just install Mozilla without installing the mail client. In Windows, Mozilla will start up your default mail application. If, like me, you wish to be able to use the newsreader (in which case the mail program gets installed too), just add this line to user.js: user_pref("network.protocol-handler.external.mailto", true); You will need to exit then restart Mozilla (if you have QuickLaunch enabled, I think you have to exit from that too.) No problems with 1.2a (Win32/2k) until I went to access the calendar and it kills Mozilla every time. Sent the talkback info on the issue and wanted to share in case anyone else experienced this problem and/or has a solution for it. "No problems with 1.2a (Win32/2k) until I went to access the calendar and it kills Mozilla every time." From the Mozilla Calendar http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/ page: "The calendar does not work in Mozilla 1.2" That would explain it then! :-) Alex Are there any special plans for the forthcoming 1.2 (Beta, final) releases? I'd embrace, if there were no more additional featuers (like iSearch, which I like very much :-) ) added, but the remaining problems with the existing features (iSearch, linkToolbar) fixed. I'd also like, if the crash-BugCount would decrease a little bit... The spellchecker available in Mozdev.org does not seem to work in M1.2a. I have gone back to M1.1 The spellchecker available in Mozdev.org does not seem to work in M1.2a. I have gone back to M1.1 Have both Mozilla 1.2a and Mozilla 1.0.1 installed in my computer. They dont use the same profile, so every time I start one of them I have to select the correct profile. I think I read somewhere that you can avoid this somehow, that mozilla can start with a certain profile. Is this correct? How? Whenever I view am MozillaZine page I get a popup labeled "Select User", which ask me to choose between a number of options, each being a title I have given a comment. The Title field is then initialized with that value. This is very frustrating. You can remove stored passwords and form entries with Tool->Password Manager->Manage Stored Passwords. Yes this was confusing me for a while too. The reason is you have multiple entries in Password Manager for this site. Remove all but one (or remove all) of the entries in Password Manager for this site. In the future: If you're still asked about saving password/form-combinations when entering MozillaZine even though you already have one combination saved, then say "no". When I try to drag and drop a message in a particular subfolder, the main folder won't expand. I first have to manually expand the main folder before I can drop the message in the subfolder. In 1.1, the drag and drop works just fine. Could anyone confirm this behaviour? Patrick I have to go look at Mozilla Theme Park. But where is it? Since Netscape 6.1 is old hat (very old), why does every new release of Mozilla take us to that page the first time Mozilla starts up? If it must take us to Netscape, shouldn't it at least take us to Netscape 7.0??? It doesn't. I think you have some cruft from Netscape 6.1 sitting around. We all get the Mozilla start page. Where, by chance, would this 6.1 cruft be hidden at? Old profile? Win2K registry? I install each new Mozilla in its own directory. I'd have thought the first place to check would be your Home Page setting. Click "Edit" menu -> "Preferences" Then near the middle of the box that pops up you should see a section labelled "Home Page", if the text input box has a netscape.com URL, then just delete that and type in your favourite page (or http://www.mozilla.org/start/ if you want to see what Mozilla's first start up page is). Actually, I found the offending code about 4 lines from the bottom of the prefs.js file in the profile. There are all sorts of neat things to play around with in there. Now Mozilla takes me to my personal home page even on first startup of a newly installed new build. Life can't get any better than that. Or can it. ;-) I found the offending code at the bottom of the prefs.js file. I changed it to the URL of my home page. Changed several other things also. I am a happy camper now. Thanks!!! |