Phoenix 0.1 ReleasedMonday September 23rd, 2002Asa Dotzler writes: "The first Phoenix milestone, 0.1, has been released. Phoenix is a redesign of the Mozilla browser component, similar to Galeon, K-Meleon and Chimera, but written using the XUL user interface language and designed to be cross-platform. This first Phoenix release includes great new features like a customizable toolbar and quicksearch filtering for bookmarks and history. See the Phoenix release notes for more information or go directly to the builds." [troll] If you don't understand why a platform-independant UI framework is important, would you mind keeping your silly comments to yourself. Alternatively, why not grab the source, and write your own browser, like some resourceful OS X developers have done? platform-independant UI framework? That's why on the mac the toolbar isn't attached to the window, and shortcut keys are different, and Mozilla inherits the Operating System's look and feel in classic? Mozilla once had the intention of being the same everywhere. It simply didn't turn out that way. Users want their app to behave like all the other apps on their machine. Users don't care what a given app looks or behaves like on someone else's machine. Joseph Elwell. After reading this morning's Slashdot, it appears Slashdot commenters agree with me. I just don't know if that's good or bad! I have a feeling it's bad. doh! Joseph Elwell. With classic theme, Mozilla IS supposed to use native OS widgets, that's the whole purpose of the Classic Theme and that's why there is a classic and a modern theme. The point I'm trying to make is the *technology* is important. You're talking about implementation - I don't personally think the UI for Mozilla is brilliant. > With classic theme, Mozilla IS supposed to use native OS widgets, > that's the whole purpose of the Classic Theme Ooh, he speaks with such authority! He must be right! :-) Actually, Classic uses system colours and fonts, but XUL widgets, just like any other theme. Gerv [troll] Why don't they try to make a new theme instead of relying on the old Communicator 4 icons? In todays world, those icons are way out of date and can be replaced with much smoother ones in the way that Modern does. But modern lacks any native feel. Does anybody else feel like there needs to be a new native skin? We could call it classic 2 for all I care. I don't think there is a bug for this, but I could be wrong. download Phoenix. install Phoenix. start Phoenix. look at the theme. Phoenix does have the native look and feel. It utilizes nsITheme to reflect the system theme for winXP or GTK (we don't yet build the nsITheme support on linux by default because of a bug in some GTK themes that cause a crash). Yes, on Win98 :-) There is no system theme engine on that platfrom, right? Of course, it's a matter of taste, but I use Modern and I like it. So I'd rather like to see a speed-up of Modern rather than a replacement for Classic. Pizzach said "Why don't they try to make a new theme instead of relying on the old Communicator 4 icons?" to which I responded "have you even tried Phoenix?" That you use windows 98 and so don't get the OS theme has nothing to do with "icons". Even users of winXP don't get a different set of icons. The icons in Phoenix are not communicator 4 icons. People suggesting that Phoenix uses Communicator 4 icons either haven't used Phoenix or haven't used communicator 4. --Asa Great Job! Asa, when should we see installers for Win32? MozSaidAloha, The "great job" really goes to hyatt, blake, pch, and the others that made this happen. I'm just doin' web pages for it and stuff. --Asa I tried it and it does appear to be slightly more responsive on my slow machine (500Mhz). The launch time however is similar and I noticed it is already an 8MB download (only slightly less than the real Mozilla). To summarize, I'm a bit sceptical about bloat&performance reduction. The main reason phoenix appears to be faster is because there are less menu items. For the moment I'll keep on using moz1.2 (I am sort of addicted to mozdev). Some of the enhancements in phoenix are great though and should IMHO land in moz 1.2 as well. Themes (of which there are only a handfull) are broken already anyway so that no longer is a valid reason to hold the enhancements. It would be nice to see the phoenix/orbit theme adopted by Mozilla. I can't stand the classic look, it is beyond ugly. The speed improvement you'll notice lessens as your cpu speed increases. For example, new window on my machine seems almost equal for both Mozilla and Phoenix, because both are < 1s. But on slower machines the improvement is obvious and significant. Stop worrying about the size. Phoenix has currently everything Mozilla has PLUS tons of new files, minus mailnews. Phoenix has a whole new jar that replaces one that Mozilla comes with, but we haven't yet stopped shipping with the old Mozilla jar. Plus we're still shipping with Modern and Composer files. > The main reason phoenix appears to be faster is because there are less menu items. This hypothesis is so ridiculous it almost doesn't warrant my quoting it.
Oops, forgot to answer the question :) We'll probably have installers in future releases. Right now we're concentrating on the core. Is unzipping a build too difficult? It seems easier than any installer I know. Regardless, I suspect that a lean and mean installer isn't too far away. --Asa Fair enough. How about a source tarball for daring folks that want to play with it? It's a lot faster to download a tarball than to do a pull from CVS. Wow it really it much faster than Moz proper. You know I wasn't really very keen on having an offshoot by core Moz developers, but so far its looking great. It just needs a few of those prefs add back :-) I also see the ever whining JennyC is now posting here. What did too many people in the Netscape groups Killfile you? If any of you don't know who this whiny, negative, obnoxious, windbag is, do a search for Jenny Craig and Mozilla in the newsgroups. >>I also see the ever whining JennyC is now posting here. What did too many people in the Netscape groups Killfile you? << Hey, that's a great idea - let me just reach up here on the Mozilla mail & news menu and create a newsgroup filter so I never have to read another JennyC post agai- HEY! JennyC is an annoying unimaginative cunt, but Mozilla's news reader is useless until the newsgroup filter lands. It's been - what - three years? I've become convinced that Jenny Craig is actually a bloke in a dress (Craig Jenny?) Awesome... this thing rocks.... BUT: I have a huge amount of questions, but only a few I will mention. First off, how much time of"Mozilla" development is this taking away from the core? Secondly, why not implement; Satchel, Plug-in and Add-on Manager, and Download Manager to MOZILLA's core and not only Phoenix, I would hate to see Phoenix have better "features" than mozilla, (mabey - the costomize toolbars until later [I'd feel bad for skin developers]), while Phoenix should be a BROWSER onlt version of Moz? I though that was the point? Even if I am correct, I don't see why improving on those 3 mentioned features in Phoenix and not implementing them to Moz would be productive to the community. While Phoenix rocks, and is good for those looking for a SOLE BROWSER, I think most of the Moz community would like to see the main trunk sport these improvments/features.. Just my lame 2 cents. cheers.... and AWESOME work with Phoenix (I honestly love it) They reasoned it would take too long with all the checkin and code review rules in place. And they think not very good of their collegues coding skills. But Mozilla staff and them promised to incorporate good work back into Mozilla. Which will be a good thing for plugin/add-on manager and the download manager. Dunno about the wallet. What is in the wallet? "Accounting info" or also forms and passwords? Well, I'll probably see when it is ready. > But Mozilla staff and them promised to incorporate good work back into Mozilla. Where did either staff or the Phoenix team promise this? If somebody wants the Phoenix work back on the trunk, he can port it over himself. But there are no plans to do that. People here seem to be judging Phoenix's worth against Mozilla's, not realizing that Phoenix is intended as a viable replacement for the trunk in the future. > Where did either staff or the Phoenix team promise this? I thought that I remebered an announcement or post where someone (who?) wrote something to that effect. Must have been wrong. Sorry. > People here seem to be judging Phoenix's worth against Mozilla's, not > realizing that Phoenix is intended as a viable replacement for the > trunk in the future. What part of the trunk? I mean as a user you see only the outside which uses a different skin. Personally, I'm happy with Modern and would like it to stay. Will it go away when Phoenix "replaces the trunk"? I'm not sure if I understand what and how it will be replaced. Is it intended to be Mozilla 2.0? Seems the Phoenix differences will kill custom skins and add-ons. It is my personal opinion, that Phoenix is not taking any time away from the core. I feel this for a few reasons. The first is Phoenix *is* a part of the Mozilla project. Work on Phoenix is work on Mozilla, just as work on Netscape is work on Mozilla. This code is going into the same CVS repository with the rest of Mozilla, just a different branch. As the developers stated, they are "using this as a prototype to demonstrate possible optimizations to the trunk" http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/source/browser/README.html . This is not the first branch for doing development before folding all or parts of the work back into Mozilla http://komodo.mozilla.org/planning/branches.cgi . Other examples include the Calendar, SOAP, BIDI, and other important contributions to the Trunk. The work that is being done with Phoenix will have a direct impact on the Trunk. A new wallet, plug-in manager, download manager, etc. would probably not have been developed in the Trunk anyway. They would have needed a branch of their own. The second is that the more consumers of the Mozilla core (gecko, nspr, nss, etc.) the better the code will be forced to become. Using the existing Trunk is new applications helps to uncover ways that the shared code can be improved and made more general. This is an indirect benefit to the Trunk but a benefit none the less. The third is that by demonstrating that XUL can be fast and efficient, with low overhead compared to a native toolkit, more developers will be encouraged to work with XUL. Right now, some perceive XUL to be too heavyweight for use in other tools. Once again, this will not directly or immediately impact the Trunk but it will make the Trunk better in the long run. My final opinion is that I would rather have developers doing things they enjoy and viewing their work as a drudgery or a boat anchor around their necks. By keeping the Mozilla developers interested and productive, this is a big win for the Trunk, since they will continue to do work on problems they find in the Trunk while working on Phoenix. But those are just my opinions. I think Phoenix is a Galeon or Chimera for Win32. And since it is made on Mozilla Tech, it is multi-platform. I agree with you, I want more Bugs Fixed too, not new products. But, also programers need to have fun, so, this is what Phoenix is about. Having fun. :-) Well, this Browser is o.k. for me, but... * I have a slow internet connection (64kbit/s), and working on Linux, 850 MHz Athlon TB, and I experience no speedup of my standard pages compared to Mozilla. * I really need the mail-client of Mozilla, which is the killer-application here on Linux for me... without it, I also could use Konqueror... * Well, if there would be a stand-alone-Mail-client based on Mozilla, I would also use Phoenix more often... but this would be stupid on the other hand, 'cause it'd waste ressources... * Hey, the favicons are displayed here, without being linked explicitly :-) * Well, and I love the customization of the skin :-) => This is a nice piece of software, but I won't change... > * Well, if there would be a stand-alone-Mail-client based on Mozilla, I would also > use Phoenix more often... but this would be stupid on the other hand, 'cause it'd > waste ressources... Give it time... http://mozilla.org/mailnews/minotaur/index.html Why do you need a mail client? There are many good ones available for every platform. How could a mail client possibly be a browser's killer app? Finally the mozilla crowd is getting sensible and creating what they should have set out to create four years ago: a stinking BROWSER!!! > Why do you need a mail client? For reading mails? ;-) Well, it's o.k., that they build a browser, but the Mozilla-Mail-Client is still one of the best for Linux/Unix, and I'm glad, that this is so... Have you used e.g. KMail? It's aweful, compared to Mozilla Mail... > How could a mail client possibly be a browser's killer app? It is the killer application for using Mozilla at all... Don't understand me wrong, I'm happy with Mozilla, but if there was no Mail-Client, I would maybe never had looked at Mozilla... Konquerror is a nice Browser here on Linux, too. It's o.k., I said, Phoenix is nice, but I won't use it often, because I always read my mails with Mozilla when I'm online... so why sould I launch another Browser, when I already launched Mozilla, and I'm happy? Hello, I seek has to install Phoenix but this does not work ldd phoenix-bin finish by libstdc++-libc6.2-2.so.3 => not found libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x4047a000) /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000) libstdc++-libc6.2-2.so.3 => not found i'm run gentoo-gcc-3.2 (lib-compat libstdc++-libc6.1-1.so.2 but no 2-2.so.3) I think that this because i have no gcc 2.96 ? Why mozilla Nightly, others projects mozilla is'not build with gcc3.2 now ? ok, i check cvs moz+Phoenix if make not error this will be well. Explanation, binary gcc-3.2 ... thnaks. have a good day Check out bug 158385(http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=158385). Moving to gcc3.2 does not make sense until the major distributions also move. I am running Mozilla 1.2a and Pheonix 0.1 and I can't tell a speed difference on this machine. I have a T1 connection, a 1.2 GHz Celeron, and 256 MB of RAM. The speed seems the same and the memory footprint is actually larger for Pheonix! About 16 MB for Mozilla and 18 for Pheonix right when they are started... I am on a WinXP box... Does this make sense? The memory size and speed of Phoenix will be exactly the same as that of Mozilla since they both use the same engine to render content and UI. Phoenix is just a UI specification. (Anyway, Mozilla will usually be between 8-12 MB at startup, so I don't think you're reading the memory size correctly - use 'Private Bytes' instead of 'Working Set' in PerfMon.exe, or 'VM Size' instead of 'Mem Usage' in TaskMgr.exe) Actually, you're not correct. The memory size is slightly smaller and the speed is considerably better. (my tests show about 30% better on startup and about 40% better on new window as compared to Mozilla). --Asa Ah yes, start-up and new window times are dramatically better. I should have actually tried it before opening my big mouth. I would like to know the memory footprint of Phoenix 0.1 compared to Beonex Communicator 0.8.1. I am on Windows 98 and when I tried builds 20020915 and 20020920, at times it ran out of memory too fast. I have 128 megs of RAM with a 5.9 ghz hard drive. I have good performance with Beonex 0.8.1 without the mail/news and chat clients, and with the smallish YAMC (957 KB download) as my email client. If, the memory footprint of Phoenix drops below BC (browser and composer only), I would consider switching to Phoenix. Hi, It really is a nice clean browser! specially the about box!! I also have an old machine which is not i686 so I want to build it from source, but where is the source?? since the it is released under the Mozilla Public License and Netscape Public License I would presume that the source should be available... Ruud The source code is kept CVS with the rest of the Mozilla codebase. The directions for getting the source code is covered in the README for the Phoenix Project http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/source/browser/README.html . Look for the "Getting the Source" header and follow the directions. I am running Mozilla 1.2a and Pheonix 0.1 and I can't tell a speed difference on this machine. I have a T1 connection, a 1.2 GHz Celeron, and 256 MB of RAM. The speed seems the same and the memory footprint is actually larger for Pheonix! About 16 MB for Mozilla and 18 for Pheonix right when they are started... I am on a WinXP box... Does this make sense? it looks really interesting for a first version. How can i put my proxy server address in phoenix? copy the "user_pref("network.proxy....." lines from your mozilla prefs.js into the pheonix one ( mozbroser ) . The automatic proxy configuration URL will work. The manual proxy does not; it will for pheonix builds from last week. I think they picked up the bad fix for <http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=105340>. Yesterday's trunk builds didn't work for manual proxy configuration. Today's do. I expect Pheonix must have picked up this code. I'm expecting/hoping Pheonix "latest" builds will have the fix so manual will work again. copy the "user_pref("network.proxy....." lines from your mozilla prefs.js into the pheonix one ( mozbroser ) . Anyone know if they're planning to add the ability to change mouse wheel behaviour in combination with different modifier keys? I find myself missing the ability to scroll faster with CTRL pressed down... Otherwise I'm quite pleased with Phoenix, seems like a very interesting project. Find the prefs.js file in the Phoenix directory, then search for the word "mouse" in it. I'm sure you can work the rest out for there. You'll need to restart Phoenix for any changes you made to come into effect. Phoenix is very fast on my system (P3-650 laptop) and so far has been stable (not one crash). I was worried about plugins working, since there is no way to tell whether a plugin is installed without actually going to a web site that requires one. Apparently it pulls the Mozilla trick of using the plugins in Netscape 4.x's plugin directory. Also noticed the memory usage was about 27 MB started up for me on WinXP. I'm going to assume that this will go down in future releases as the unused parts of mozilla are discared. I know that there's been a lot of criticism in the Mozilla project about the quality of some develoepers and some of the code. For example, David Hyatt writes on his weblog that one of the main reasons he started working on Chimeras was due to frustration with the quality of Mozilla. Now, he writes: "A lot of people seem to be missing the point of Phoenix, as evidenced by the responses on Mozilla News and MozillaZine. Let me emphasize something here: if you think Mozilla's current UI is acceptable, then you are clearly not the target audience for Phoenix." I've been criticizing the quality of the Mozilla UI for quite some time and the reason I am *STILL* not using Mozilla as my primary browser and email app is due to the UI bugs so I can totally understand his point here and I welcome this project.. I hope this becomes the Mozilla for us that won't settle for less, just because "it's not Microsoft". Now, is there some kind of symbolism in the name "Phoenix"? You know, the bird that rises from the ashes. I hate to be "that guy" who can't get it to work, but after downloading the zip and unzipping it into it's own directory (getting a bad CRC in the process by the way), double clicking on Phoenix.exe does nothing. Well it in my Win2k taskmanager it's in there running and that's a great thing, but there's no application running. Nothing in the applications tab, nothing on my screen. Seemed like the simplest install (and uninstall ever) too. Pity, I would like to have the fun that you are all having. test i read about the release on slashdot using IE5 within 20 minutes i had downloaded the 0.1 release had it running and had posted a comment to slashdot this made me very happy - am using a low end pentium 133 with 114MB RAM - i had tried mozilla several times before but it wasn't practical on this hardware phoenix runs very adequately on this hardware so, thankyou very much to the mozilla team and to the phoenix team especially i look forward to the 0.2 release (so i can disable these animated gifs) Could you please not edit out what trolls say? Perhaps locking the thread so that it can't grow would be a good (ish) idea, but deleting the text is sorta wrong. And would it also be wrong to edit out biggoted text or calls to violence? How about language that would make this site inappropriate for younger folks that really like to read mozillazine? What's "wrong" about deleting offensive or otherwise inappropriate posts? --Asa Nope they did the right thing. This is a private site and there is no reason for them to have to put up with this crap. As far as I'm concerned once a poster has proven that the only reason they are here is to make an Ass of themselves and cause trouble they lose the right to post here. Its as simple as that. Nobody's right to criticize Mozilla has been taken away, but a Troll has been put in its place. |