wasnt 1.3 beta supposed to come out weeks ago?
Can I ask completely off-topic question? I was just heading over here because I just loaded yet another page that needed plugin. When XP was installed on my work machine the other day, i used IE for a couple of hours until I had download Mozilla to have a better browsing experience. It was so natural that I only thought about it later.
Thinking about why I did it so naturally in retrospect, it seems to me that the reason is that Mozilla is better than IE in four respects:
1) Tabbed browsing
2) Download manager
3) It feels more stable
4) You can easily block pop-ups
It seems to me that there is a real value proposition here, compared to IE.
Which leads me to the real question. What remains of inconvenience compared to IE is that pages everywhere have plugins that takes some effort to install, and even when i do, it doesn't seem to work properly.
Could this situation be rectified somehow? The ideal thing would be to click on the missing plugin, and it installed itself without leaving the page and clicking "OK" more than once. Or perhaps they could be installed at once during the original installation of the browser?
It seems to me that if this situation improved, then Mozilla will quite objectively be a better and more convenient browser than IE.
One minor point in addition though. The splash screen with the dragon seems awfully amateurish, and I can't understand how has managed to stay for so long. It gives the first impression of the browser each time you start and make you think you are launching product made in a garage. The best thing would be to have professional designer make a new one, but the situation can be improved right way by simply deleting it until something better is found.
Anyway, thanks to the developers for making such convenient and high quality product for me. I use it several hours heach day, so I have every reason to thank you.
#5 Re: Easier installation of plug-ins
by antony
Thursday February 6th, 2003 6:16 AM
I second this. I must admit I think that's one thing IE has gotten done pretty well -- if a page wants/needs a plugin and you don't have it, it makes it damn easy to obtain it without any hard work on behalf of the user. A dialog pops up, you click 'yes', and away you go.
The unfortunate consequence of this is that a lot of irritating things (eg. CometCursor) install themselves when users see the dialog and think, "oh, well I must need this *clicks Yes*". Perhaps if Mozilla had some kind of "whitelist" of known 'legitimate' plugins (Flash, Shockwave, etc) that can be easily installed with a one-click response to a dialog that pops up... for "unapproved" controls, a caution is issued indicating the plugin may be a "hidden nasty".
I seem to recall skimming over something somewhere about XPI plugin installers - would this facilitate the quick&easy (compared with the current process) installation of plugins?
#6 Moz can already active plugins without restarting
by tjwhaynes
Thursday February 6th, 2003 8:58 AM
You can get all the way there already - it's just not as nicely packaged.
Install the plugin as normal (so that can be nice or fiddly depending on the plugin you are trying to configure and most of the praise or blame for that lies with the plugin packagers). Now to activate the plugin I have a bookmark containing the following Javascript instead of a URL
javascript:navigator.plugins.refresh(true)
Now the new plugins will be available without having to restart. Now all we need is a standardized plugin installer that calls this at the end of a successful installation.
#12 Re: Moz can already active plugins without restart
by grahams
Thursday February 6th, 2003 3:54 PM
you can also just go to the URL "about:plugins" which rescans/refreshes the plugins for you..
#7 Re: Re: Easier installation of plug-ins
by AlexBishop
Thursday February 6th, 2003 9:18 AM
"I seem to recall skimming over something somewhere about XPI plugin installers - would this facilitate the quick&easy (compared with the current process) installation of plugins?"
That would be this http://devedge.netscape.com/viewsource/2002/xpinstall-guidelines/ and yes, it would facilitate the quick and easy install of plug-ins. In fact, it's already possible. It's just most plug-in vendors and page authors don't take advantage of it.
Alex
#10 Re: Re: Re: Easier installation of plug-ins
by PC1
Thursday February 6th, 2003 10:24 AM
How about unistallation problems. Every time I need to remove a plugin, I need to remove and reinstall mozilla...
It is impossible to unistall plugins.
I view uninstallation as a more urgent issue. http://devedge.netscape.com/viewsource/2002/xpinstall-guidelines/#uninstall
#11 Re: Re: Re: Re: Easier installation of plug-ins
by dave532
Thursday February 6th, 2003 11:29 AM
Actually removing plugins is fairly easy as long as you know the filename of the plugin (see about:plugins)
Just goto the plugins directory of your Mozilla/phoenix installation and look for the files then delete it.
Add on components may be a bit more difficult to remove, but not impossible
Most plugins are easy to instal. Most are, however, impossible to uninstall...
Easier methods for uninstallation of plugins is needed
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