MozillaZine

Mozilla 1.8a3 Released

Wednesday August 18th, 2004

mozilla.org today has released the third alpha build of 1.8. Mozilla 1.8 Alpha 3 release includes a large amount of backend work, including site-specific CSS rules, transparent windows on Windows and GTK2, and undetected document.all support. See the What's New page for more on what has changed in this release. Builds are available from the mozilla1.8a3 directory on the FTP site, and a full set of 1.8a3 Release Notes is also available.

Update: The attack of the alphas won't stop here: a Mozilla 1.8 Alpha 4 is coming soon. As recently as 1.7, each release cycle had just one alpha milestone; a second alpha was added in time for the 1.8 cycle in May. A few weeks ago, Mozilla 1.8 Alpha 3 was announced to prevent 1.8 clashing with the 1.0 releases of Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird.

#1 "What's New" link broken

by steeler_fan

Wednesday August 18th, 2004 2:36 PM

the URI has an " at the end, which 404's.

So, are there going to be more than 4 alpha's?

#2 Re: "What's New" link broken

by AlexBishop

Wednesday August 18th, 2004 2:53 PM

"the URI has an " at the end, which 404's."

Thanks. Actually, it was more the lack of a matching quotation mark at the beginning that caused problems.

"So, are there going to be more than 4 alpha's?"

I believe there's only going to be three.

Alex

#3 Re: Re: "What's New" link broken

by mlefevre

Wednesday August 18th, 2004 3:00 PM

There's going to be four (although not many people know, because MozillaZine hasn't carried the news :) The announcement is at http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=cfgn76%24i971%40ripley.netscape.com

#4 Re: Re: Re: "What's New" link broken

by AlexBishop

Wednesday August 18th, 2004 3:17 PM

No-one ever tells me anything.

Alex

#5 Re: Re: Re: Re: "What's New" link broken

by mlefevre

Wednesday August 18th, 2004 3:28 PM

Actually I was about to submit the extra alpha earlier - I submitted the minutes (I guess those are still in the queue), but then got interrupted and never got around to submitting that one. If you're not reading n.p.m.seamonkey, I'll make the effort to submit things when I remember...

#7 Re: Re: Re: "What's New" link broken

by steeler_fan

Wednesday August 18th, 2004 6:49 PM

Well, hopefully 1.8 will kick ass when it finally comes out. There is plenty of time to work on new stuff and bugs, and whatnot.

#6 Slashdot

by IMarvinTPA

Wednesday August 18th, 2004 3:32 PM

Yay, Now I can make IT.slashdot.org look good. And I can make slashdot stories not be in all italics! Yay! Yay! IMarv

#8 npruntime plugin scriptability API

by spliffster

Thursday August 19th, 2004 12:55 AM

from the Release notes: "The new npruntime plugin scriptability API has been added to Mozilla 1.8a3 (bug 250666.)"

what does this mean for extension developers. does any one know where we could find more detailed information on this ?

Cheers, -S

#9 Re: npruntime plugin scriptability API

by dave532

Thursday August 19th, 2004 2:06 AM

It means nothing to extension developers, just plugin developers (e.g flash, java, etc).

#10 IMHO Fx could put the extra testing to better use

by Linuxn00b

Thursday August 19th, 2004 2:42 AM

>> "A few weeks ago, Mozilla 1.8 Alpha 3 was announced to prevent 1.8 clashing with the 1.0 releases of Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird."

Hmmm... Actually, I figure Fx could have used a couple of extra prolonged betas (or "Preview Releases" as they are gently called those days) instead, to ensure that Fx 1.0 doesn't clash with Moz 1.8 (which would probably get by with just 2 alphas anyway)... After all, Fx 1.0 will be the first Fx not having that "Technology Preview" excuse for the bugs that get shipped... But I know Ben et al have a different view on things. Perhaps unfortunately so.

#13 Agreed!

by ronin65

Thursday August 19th, 2004 9:14 AM

Yes indeed! This is backwards. Firefox needs a great deal more work on the versions I have used. They have gotten much worse than they were and are slowly recovering, but Firefox needs the extra time. Let's move along to Beta/Preview Release for Mozilla!

#14 Agreed!

by ronin65

Thursday August 19th, 2004 9:16 AM

Yes indeed! This is backwards. Firefox needs a great deal more work on the versions I have used. They have gotten much worse than they were and are slowly recovering, but Firefox needs the extra time. Let's move along to Beta/Preview Release for Mozilla!

#11 Uploading still not 100%

by hobbes78

Thursday August 19th, 2004 3:00 AM

I tried a1 and a2, and in both, uploading didn't work for me. The same happens in this a3. I guess this stems from the fact that I use an Automatic proxy configuration URL. Nonetheless, HTTP uploading works fine (e.g., when I try Yahoo! Briefcase).

The authentication seems a little buggy, too. I first tried to access the server passing the login information via the URL (e.g., ftp://user:password@ftp.acme.com/), then Mozilla said the site didn't require authentication and that I could be being tricked. Then I tried uploading a file, which yielded a progress dialog. Then I tried to refresh the directory listing, which in turn started requesting my username and password and, when I introduced this information, Mozilla kept requesting it over and over. Then I restarted Mozilla and then not even the login encoded in URL worked, as it seemed to “remember” that across browser sessions, and a dialog requesting login and password was prompting me over and over.

It's kind of weird.

#16 Re: Uploading still not 100%

by asa

Thursday August 19th, 2004 2:43 PM

And the number of the bug report you filed is....?

;-)

--Asa

#17 Re: Re: Uploading still not 100%

by hobbes78

Friday August 20th, 2004 7:02 AM

And so I filed my first bug: bug 256289

#12 Site-specific CSS in Firefox?

by theuiguy

Thursday August 19th, 2004 7:48 AM

Anyone know if the site-specific CSS rules (bug 238099) will be in Firefox 1.0? I know there are some extensions that do similar things, but this fix seems a more complete solution.

#15 Re: Site-specific CSS in Firefox?

by mlefevre

Thursday August 19th, 2004 9:41 AM

Doesn't look like there's any plan for it, and I would think it's unlikely. The Firefox devs chose to work from the 1.7 code, so they could focus on fixing up the Firefox stuff without worrying about back-end changes introducing bugs underneath them and having to wait for 1.8 to stabilise.

Firefox 1.0 is supposed to be out some time in the next couple of months - all of that time is needed to work on the front-end features. Firefox will pick up all the back-end 1.8 improvements later on. They're not aiming for any kind of perfection with Firefox 1.0 - they want to get a 1.0-quality release out the door, and then they'll move onto fixing more stuff up and adding stuff in for 1.1, 1.5, 2.0, etc.

#18 Windows XP freeze

by sn0wflake

Monday August 23rd, 2004 8:24 PM

I tried the Mozilla Alpha 2 and 3, both freeze. Maybe it's just my current Mozilla 1.7.2 installation that is damaged. Every time I close Mozilla 1.7.2 it crashes. The error started after installing digital signatures for use in Mozilla Mail. Is there a way to completely uninstall Mozilla? Uninstalling by Windows XP doesn't clean out all files since I can install Mozilla 1.8 and then back to 1.7.2 and still have all my settings, XPI's, bookmarks, etc.

#19 Homepage button

by sn0wflake

Wednesday August 25th, 2004 11:28 AM

There's three things I don't understand about Mozilla. The first is why there's no homepage button. It's not annoying for me that's used to just hit F6 and start typing an URL, but my parents would find that very hard so that would be a showstopper for them. Secondly there's no easy way, if at all, to remove XPI plugins. I find that extremely annoying. Thirdly is the Mozilla Mail rules. I've set up a filter to delete certain emails from my POP3 server, but emails continue to be downloaded. Why is that?