MozillaZine

Mozilla 1.7 Alpha Released

Monday February 23rd, 2004

The Mozilla Foundation has just unveiled Mozilla 1.7 Alpha. This release features improved popup blocking, with a better method for detecting and stopping popups and the ability to open blocked popups. Mail & Newsgroups now supports multiple mail identities per mail account (though there is no user interface for this yet) and also sports several usability enhancements. In addition, this version of Mozilla adds support for the onBeforeUnload event and includes a newer and enhanced version of ChatZilla, which now understands the /ignore command. Mozilla 1.7 Alpha is also smaller than 1.6 and page load times have improved since the last release.

Get a build from the Mozilla Releases page or direct from the mozilla1.7a directory on ftp.mozilla.org. More information can be found in the Mozilla 1.7 Alpha Release Notes.

#1 Please use the mirrors

by ercan

Monday February 23rd, 2004 1:54 PM

... to reduce the heavy traffic on ftp.mozilla.org

http://www.mozilla.org/mirrors.html

#3 Re: Please use the mirrors

by asa

Monday February 23rd, 2004 2:45 PM

ercan, this isn't necessary. Each of the mirrors listed at the top of that list are actually part of a round-robbin that lives behind the domain ftp.mozilla.org and most of the location-specific mirrors listed below aren't updated to 1.7a yet (with a few exceptions, listed below).

http://www.zentek-international.com/mirrors/mozilla/releases/mozilla1.7a/

ftp://fr2.rpmfind.net/linux/mozilla/releases/mozilla1.7a/ and http://fr2.rpmfind.net/linux/mozilla/releases/mozilla1.7a/

ftp://ftp.fredan.org/mozilla/mozilla1.7a/

ftp://archive.progeny.com/mozilla/releases/mozilla1.7a/ and http://archive.progeny.com/mozilla/releases/mozilla1.7a/

#7 Re: Re: Please use the mirrors

by remline

Monday February 23rd, 2004 4:48 PM

Until ftp.mozilla.org itself goes down. ;-)

#8 Re: Re: Re: Please use the mirrors

by bzbarsky

Monday February 23rd, 2004 4:52 PM

Maybe Asa was not clear?

~% host ftp.mozilla.org ftp.mozilla.org has address 207.200.85.49 ftp.mozilla.org has address 64.12.168.21 ftp.mozilla.org has address 64.12.168.243 ftp.mozilla.org has address 128.193.0.3 ftp.mozilla.org has address 129.79.5.133 ftp.mozilla.org has address 130.207.108.135

So when you ask for ftp.mozilla.org you get a random (or possibly load-balanced; I don't know how it's implemented exactly) address from that list.

#22 why not offer p2p links?

by jilles

Tuesday February 24th, 2004 7:45 AM

The last few major releases each time implied severe stress on both mozilla.org and related sites. I'm sure the new hosting scheme addresses some of these issues but such solutions cost real money (something that the mozilla foundation can use for other things as well). Many users have p2p clients installed and the cost of providing links for such clients in addition to the regular http/ftp links is minimal and could significantly reduce bandwidth and improve availability. The obvious networks to support would be kazaa, bittorrent and ed2k. Two of those networks require only a hash key in a link and bittorrent requires a small file to be hosted somewhere.

I know this issue has been raised before but considering the appeals for donations on the mozilla website, it deserves an answer.

#2 onbeforeunload

by thelem

Monday February 23rd, 2004 2:32 PM

To save other people researching exactly what onbeforeunload is, it basically allows you to run some code and then display a confirm dialog box asking the user if they really want to leave the page (for example, when there is unsaved data).

Is this in any standard? I can't see any mention of it in a quick search of w3c.org

#4 Re: onbeforeunload

by marcoos

Monday February 23rd, 2004 2:51 PM

It's a proprierary Microsoft event, it's not part of any W3C (nor ECMA) specification.

#29 Re: onbeforeunload

by james

Tuesday February 24th, 2004 11:06 PM

Can you use it to prevent people from leaving a page?

#5 broke my theme

by Ark42

Monday February 23rd, 2004 3:04 PM

The arrows by back/forward disappeared in the theme I was using in 1.7a

#14 Re: broke my theme

by durbacher

Tuesday February 24th, 2004 12:57 AM

> The arrows by back/forward disappeared in the theme I was using in 1.7a

Of course you didn't mention the theme you were using, but if it's a third-party theme then you probably have to wait for a updated version. This happens.

> the theme I was using in 1.7a

Ah, and it broke when? When you changed from 1.7a to err... 1.7a?

#16 z

by Ark42

Tuesday February 24th, 2004 3:37 AM

It broke when I changed from 1.6final to 1.7a - the theme is called hoverclean, its basically classic with only single pixel borders around the buttons on hover and greyscale->color icon changes on hover.

#6 Uh oh

by Anthracks

Monday February 23rd, 2004 3:30 PM

Time to brace for the deluge of "WTF, why are you guys still putting out Mozilla? I thought Firefox was taking over, idiots" posts if this hits Slashdot ;).

#9 !

by Dizzle

Monday February 23rd, 2004 5:41 PM

firefox is not ready. still cooking.

#10 Nice release-works on MacOS 10.3.2 (10.2.8???)

by pkb351

Monday February 23rd, 2004 6:15 PM

Not sure if this release will work on 10.2.8. There is a bug filed about nightlies not launching with 10.2.8--hopefully this has been fixed.

#13 Re: Nice release-works on MacOS 10.3.2 (10.2.8???)

by MozSaidAloha

Tuesday February 24th, 2004 12:09 AM

1.7a works on 10.2.8 on an iBook G3/900. I tried a Camino nightly this week that crashed on me, though.

#24 profile problem under 10.3.2

by BjarneDM

Tuesday February 24th, 2004 10:58 AM

I had a problem with the bookmarks not displaying in the bookmarks menu and the prsonal toolbar. I think it has to be a combination of GUI and extension, as deleting all files related to the GUI in my profiles restored things. The culprit is most likely MultiZilla as this has been an issue before - but only on Mac :-(

#25 Re: profile problem under 10.3.2

by bugs4hj

Tuesday February 24th, 2004 3:09 PM

"The culprit is most likely MultiZilla as this has been an issue before - but only on Mac :-("

I don't think so. We only had that problem during the 1.4 cycle, when I was away for months, and even that turned out to be a mozilla bug!

#32 Re: Re: profile problem under 10.3.2

by bugs4hj

Wednesday February 25th, 2004 9:11 PM

Oh lord. Shit happens. We do have a regression with mozilla 1.7a. I don't know (yet) what it caused but we will find out soon enough.

Not having a Mac and still (trying) to support it is almost impossible but I might have one soon ;)

#37 Re: Re: Re: profile problem under 10.3.2

by buff

Friday February 27th, 2004 3:43 PM

No, No, No, No. Oh God, don't bother to go Mac! -- expensive, proprietary stuff with little benefit over Linux except lots of nice gooey eye candy. Just download Mandrake Linux for free and delete your windows partition when you are done. :-)

#11 Reply

by napolj2

Monday February 23rd, 2004 7:54 PM

I like the new style in the "What's New" (README) page. However, there is something odd I observed. Start selecting some text in the Chatzilla section, such as "Chatzilla has moved forward...", with your mouse. Move the mouse up over the "Chatzilla" title, and suddenly the focus of the window gets shot down several lines. The same things happens at several other parts of the page. It has to do with the style information position: relative (set on the legend class). Could this be a bug? I couldn't find anything on this in Bugzilla.

#12 Re: reply

by rajbhaskar

Monday February 23rd, 2004 11:04 PM

I see this too with build 2004-02-10-08 on win2K. It doesn't happen with the "Browser" section, but it does for all the others.

#38 Reply

by napolj2

Wednesday March 3rd, 2004 10:31 AM

Now that I had a chance to search thoroughly, it turns out this is already filed as bug 93188.

#15 New Seamonkey features and Firefox

by qaelith_2112

Tuesday February 24th, 2004 3:34 AM

Not quite being familiar enough with the code migration process, I'll ask... Any guesses of how long it might take for the improvements in this release (particularly the popup blocking enhancements) to make their way into the Firefox nightlies?

#20 Re: New Seamonkey features and Firefox

by polidobj

Tuesday February 24th, 2004 4:46 AM

No guesses, it went in 2004-02-03.

http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/archives/000314.html

There is no code migration. There are three places for code - Seamonkey UI , Firefox UI, or GRE. GRE is where this went which is common to both browsers. There is no UI for using this except for using about:config. It's dom.popup_allowed_events and dom.popup_maximum.

#17 Wow... Do I undertand it correctly?

by ezh

Tuesday February 24th, 2004 3:53 AM

1.7a is also the first Mozilla 1.x release with support for relative paths for mail folders in prefs.js. This makes it easier to copy profiles around without having to fix up prefs.js afterwards.

Does in means it is now possible to easy share a profile to Linux and Windows on one machine?

#30 Re: Wow... Do I undertand it correctly?

by MvD

Wednesday February 25th, 2004 5:22 AM

Well, TB you can share mail folders, you just have to change the local directories in your accounts settings. I guess this should work with the Suite. Btw, has anyone been able to share address books between Linux and windows?

#18 Wow... Do I undertand it correctly?

by ezh

Tuesday February 24th, 2004 4:03 AM

This is the first Mozilla 1.x release with support for multiple identities on the same mail account. See the Multiple Identity Support documentation for more details.

#19 Front-end

by ezh

Tuesday February 24th, 2004 4:04 AM

I meant is there a bug for the frond-end?

#33 Re: Front-end

by leafdigital

Thursday February 26th, 2004 1:28 AM

Do you mean bug 44863 perhaps?

--sam

#21 Wow

by fedetxf

Tuesday February 24th, 2004 5:04 AM

The rought changelog is really impressive, lots and lots of bugs, some new, some really old (like bug 24655). I'm glad mozilla keeps improving and getting better in aspects more than eye candy and obvious bugfixes. When Firebird was anounced I thought the suite would stay there freezed, but thankfully Firefox is just a new UI over the 90% of the code the suite uses, so the suite gets more and more improvements even when many people are working on firefox.

#26 Re: Wow

by bugs4hj

Tuesday February 24th, 2004 3:33 PM

I hate this one way mozilla -> mozilla Firefox route. All the good stuff goes into mozilla Firefox, which is good, but nothing of the goodies comes back to mozilla. Why is that? What you ask. Well, I would love to see the Toolbar Configurator, or whatever its name is, implemented in mozilla. It can be done, but they don't do this, but why not?

I might be wrong or misinformed. I guess Asa, Ben or Blake would know best. Please let me know what I've been missing.

I also like to know if Sun is going to support/use mozilla Firefox or that they stick to the suite for their 'new' desktop software.

#28 Re: Re: Wow

by Waldo_2

Tuesday February 24th, 2004 7:11 PM

From what I understand, toolbar configuration would be very difficult to code using the old XPFE toolkit. The limitations of the old toolkit were some of the reasons Phoenix was created with a new toolkit, I believe (along with complete frustration with the bloated although ridiculously feature-rich UI the Suite has).

As for Sun, I'd imagine they will eventually, but <guess type="uneducated">I wouldn't predict it for *at least* a year</guess>.

#34 firefox vs mozilla

by leafdigital

Thursday February 26th, 2004 1:30 AM

Firefox etc. are designed to become the main end-user browsers. I would assume that companies such as Sun may begin to consider moving to Firefox/Thunderbird once they hit 1.0 in the summer.

I completely agree with the concentration on the new single-function software, even though personally I still use the suite [only for its browser feature].

--sam

#23 Wonderful

by kguru

Tuesday February 24th, 2004 8:20 AM

I think its wonderful that the suite is still being improved. I use Firefox sometimes, but generally use the App Suite most of the time.

#27 Good to see progress with the suite.

by johann_p

Tuesday February 24th, 2004 4:02 PM

I much prefer the suite to FireFox and TB and I hope that development of the suite will continue with this pace. Keep up the good work!

#31 Re: Good to see progress with the suite.

by mlefevre

Wednesday February 25th, 2004 8:58 AM

Just to make sure everyone's clear... Pretty much all the changes noted in these Mozilla release notes also apply to Firefox and/or Thunderbird. Because most of the code is shared, most development work is good for the suite as well as Firefox and Thunderbird.

#35 Forwarding messages as attachments

by quaser

Thursday February 26th, 2004 11:35 AM

In every single release I hope and hope for a little change to the way forwarding of mails work.

It would be so much easier if attached emails would get the extension ".eml". As it is right now I need to save the email to desktop and attach it like a normal file, if I want to be sure that the receiver knows how to open it.

Ex. outlook will just say its unsave to open it, making it greyed out, or something, with the default settings.

I have found a single "bug" report on it once, but it doesn't seems there is anybody working on it. So my question is, why is I the only one, and my colleague who always complaince about all the extra work he has to do to open the emails I forward to him.

I'm not really into the bug-system and such, and maybe this is a feature request and not a bug?

#36 Reply

by napolj2

Friday February 27th, 2004 9:11 AM

I haven't used Mozilla Mail or Thunderbird, so I don't know about the behavior you are talking about. Which bug report are you talking about?

>So my question is, why is I the only one,

Well, there are tons of "must-have" features that users request (see the comments for "Critical Review of Mozilla Thunderbird 0.5" for a partial list); developers are busy and can only get to them when they can. Some bugs sit around for years before someone fixes them. You can vote for your bug to show that there's interest in it, and you can can attach your email to the CC list for the bug to be notified when someone works on it. Some people even attach bounties to bugs, i.e. mention in the bug report that they will pay $ for anyone to fix it. And there's always the option of trying to fix it yourself...