M8 Released!

Friday July 16th, 1999

M8 is now up on the FTP site. Get it while it's hot! Versions for Linux, Mac, Windows, and Beos are available.

Click "Full Article..." below for some of the new things in this release.

Full Article...

#1 geez, that didn't take long

by cyeh

Friday July 16th, 1999 1:50 AM

The content got pushed out at 12:05 am.

There was an article at 12:30.

#2 geez, that didn't take long

by bergie

Friday July 16th, 1999 1:57 AM

...but there is no mention yet on Mozilla.org

The new milestone looks quite good, altough HTML forms still get very messy in Linux.

#3 Some observations

by Quelish

Friday July 16th, 1999 2:15 AM

M8 looks good, but on several sites that I visit (including this one) on the Win32 version not all the images seem to load. Even on a reload some images still do not appear.

Startup time is getting better...though I hope it improves to eventually start faster than IE. Hey, if it can render faster why not start faster too? :-)

So when are we gonna see the ability to get rid of a few of the toolbars instead of just folding them up?

Finally, when are we gonna see the bookmarks built into the main toolbar as a button? or are we?

#9 startup

by arielb

Friday July 16th, 1999 4:43 AM

IE starts up along with Win98. One way of finding out the startup time is to use 98lite to remove IE from the system and then compare

#16 So can Mozilla...

by thelem

Friday July 16th, 1999 7:26 AM

All that needs to be done is that most of it is loaded into memory in the same style as Office Startup by MS and SuiteStart by Lotus.

It should be an option in the install, by default checked.

BTW Where do you send suggestions?

Lemming

#26 loading at startup is a bad idea.

by Anon

Friday July 16th, 1999 12:30 PM

Mozilla developers are quite aware of what Microsoft do with IE.

The fact is, that IE loads at startup quickly, then consumes your memory permanently, at the expense of the performance of other programs on your system.

Microsoft have started a trend that should not be continued. Taken to the extremes, what do you think would happen if all programs loaded at startup?

#30 loading at startup is a bad idea.

by BehrQattz

Friday July 16th, 1999 2:38 PM

If every program loaded at startup, we'd finally have an excuse for Pentium-III's on the average user's desktop. ;-)

#43 Don't like Form buttons

by Anon

Friday July 16th, 1999 11:04 PM

I don't like the form buttons in the M8 or any of the other versions of Mozilla 5. I have a Mac, OS 8.6 and I make several websites with a button which says, "Go!" on it. it's normally a nice small button, now it's twice as tall. I don't like it at all. I am part of an HTML based chat room and the bottom frame is designed with the size of the buttons in mind and now they're much larger. It's a bummer.

#44 Don't like Form buttons

by Deliduka

Friday July 16th, 1999 11:13 PM

I'm the one who sent the previous message, I wasn't a member then....

#54 Some observations

by Anon

Sunday July 18th, 1999 4:05 PM

The fast start of IE is evidently tied-up with components already on the Window OS (9X/NT). Would be possible to have some components of the mozilla loaded at start-up so that when openning it only needs the specific part of it? (a feature maybe to be a nice add to some beta release...)

#12 Find a bug? Fill the bug report!!!!!!!

by Anon

Friday July 16th, 1999 6:47 AM

Don't just say it here!

#4 M8 Released!

by Anon

Friday July 16th, 1999 3:21 AM

when does netscape release a beta version of navigator?? i've heard that m9 is beta...

#14 M8 Released!

by ERICmurphy

Friday July 16th, 1999 7:08 AM

I know there are supposed to be seperate XUL interfaces already.

My bet is that it will be a little while. M10 at the earliest.

You never know, though.

Eric

#39 Displaced a bit by Necko, I thought.

by Kovu

Friday July 16th, 1999 6:41 PM

Feature freeze was M9, but got displaced a bit by Necko, I believe. M10-11? Release of Communicator 5.0 is sched'd now for December, so you have that to judge by anyway. Beta Oct./Nov. latest? For December release?

#5 Why is linux version so huge?

by Anon

Friday July 16th, 1999 3:45 AM

Why is it that the Linux version of Mozilla is three times bigger than the Win32 version? Is everything statically linked into the freekin´ thing?

#36 Re: Why is linux version so huge?

by Anon

Friday July 16th, 1999 5:56 PM

Seems that at least half of the stuff is duplicated under package/bin... No idea why. Seems like a one-time packaging bug.

#51 Why is linux version so huge?

by james

Sunday July 18th, 1999 3:57 AM

In previous versions, it looked like they included GTK+. Maybe it would be better to just ask people to install GTK+ on their machines before mozilla.

You need gtk+ anyway, and it does not change much (interface wise, it is frozen) between milestone releases.

#6 Image Loading

by Anon

Friday July 16th, 1999 4:17 AM

I've noticed this before and it's probably well documented somewhere but why is mozilla having trouble loading images? Gifs are apparently not well supported (I get the text name only) Is it because gif is copyrighted? Is it a bug?

#7 Image Loading

by Anon

Friday July 16th, 1999 4:18 AM

..And mozillazine seems to be one of the examples that loads pretty badly (christopher.cook@completions.com)

#13 Image Loading

by ERICmurphy

Friday July 16th, 1999 6:49 AM

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6949

Has the same problems reported by me. Looking at M10 fix.

Eric

#34 Image Loading

by Anon

Friday July 16th, 1999 5:15 PM

Trouble loading images...does this mean images never show up? or don't look right when they do?

Which gif properties do you miss?

#57 Image Loading

by Anon

Monday July 19th, 1999 6:47 AM

Images appear sometimes other times they appear corrupted or only show up as a blank space with the name of the image (eg transparent for transparent.gif). Deleting the cache does give you a fresh start but doesn't stop the problem recurring.

#8 Java?

by Anon

Friday July 16th, 1999 4:39 AM

This release wouldn't happen to support java applets, would it? Or is that in another project?

I'd really like to use _something_ besides Communicator for a client to the Lotus Notes R5 web interface since the latest Communicator crashes when ever you try to load a couple applets at once...

#50 Java?

by Anon

Sunday July 18th, 1999 3:09 AM

You may or may not be able to run Sun's Java Runtime Environment with Mozilla, it depends on the version, your platform, the version of JRE (I think you need a develepment version) and the position of the moon. Linux doesn't support even JRE (see the release notes) and crashes are possible with other platforms as well (release notes and bug reports). Your best bet would probably be to use a new develepment version of JRE (if you can get it) as the mozilla team is also working with development versions for their support efforts. Its still probably pushing you luck though.

#10 M8 Released!

by cmad

Friday July 16th, 1999 5:17 AM

Does annyone know how to make it work with a proxy server? It looks like the old proxy config doesn't work anymore...

#11 startup

by arielb

Friday July 16th, 1999 5:40 AM

startup is definitely much faster. It would be nice to see more improvements before thinking of doing radical things like aligning or keeping it in memory all the time

#15 libjpeg6

by shomon

Friday July 16th, 1999 7:10 AM

I get the following errors when running run-mozilla.sh or mozilla-apprunner.sh:

... Talkback loaded Ok. Registered Ok ************************************************** nsComponentManager: Load(/home/ale/moz/package/components/libnsjpg.so) FAILED with error: libjpeg.so.62: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory ************************************************** *** Registering html library ************************************************** nsComponentManager: Load(libnsappshell.so) FAILED with error: /home/ale/moz/package/components/libnsjpg.so: undefined symbol: QueryInterface__15nsJPGDecFactoryRC4nsIDPPv **************************************************

I'm running the suse 6.1 dist of linux. I've compiled a source for libjpeg, jpeg-6b, which should be in the right directory with the shared library options there and everything. But it still makes the same mistakes. I know this is a newbie question, but I have no idea where else to ask it. Also, if everyone who is trying to run m8 on linux from a suse distribution is getting this error, perhaps there should be some instructions as to how to resolve this problem in a short time(thats 3 hours I've spent on it).

I'm using m6 so far. It's doesn't need libjpeg6, and crashes much much less than netscape!

#35 M8 Released!

by Anon

Friday July 16th, 1999 5:25 PM

It looks like your jpeg lib isn't linking with the jpg component wrapper. Nuking your config.cache and rerunning autoconf could help if an old setting is the problem. And besure to do a top level clobber before you rebuild.

#17 Windows 2000?

by Anon

Friday July 16th, 1999 7:58 AM

I tried M9 and it don't work on RC1 of Windows 2000.

Is MS doing something to keep it from running? or ...

#42 Windows 2000?

by Anon

Friday July 16th, 1999 10:02 PM

Nah, it's probably just because M9 doesn't exist yet.

#18 Proxy server settings

by Anon

Friday July 16th, 1999 8:24 AM

I'm not sure where the best place is to put these, but you can add proxy server settings into components/config.js. The format is the same as for Netscape's preferences.js.

I'm using M8 through a proxy server to post this talkback :)

#23 Proxy server settings

by Anon

Friday July 16th, 1999 10:45 AM

Is there anyone who can help how to configure M8 to use proxy. From M3 to M6 I was able to use proxy, but with M7 and M8 is not able to connect.

#56 Proxy server settings

by Anon

Monday July 19th, 1999 6:11 AM

The proxy configuration in Prefs50.js is not loaded at startup in M7 and M8. You have to go to Edit->Preferences/Advanced/Proxy and select Direct Connection then OK then again and this time select Manual Configuration then OK to get the preferences reloaded correctly.

#58 Proxy server settings

by Anon

Monday July 19th, 1999 7:39 AM

This worked for me - one tip though: when I bring up the preferences window, the last option is Advanced, with no other options under it(cache, proxies, smart update). In order to see these, I had to expand the width of the window. This is using win32 version.

#49 Proxy server settings

by Anon

Sunday July 18th, 1999 1:49 AM

use apprunner with SocksCap32! http://www.socks.nec.com/

It give firewall support for program which don't natively support Firewall, or proxy like Free Agent.

#19 libjpeg6

by shomon

Friday July 16th, 1999 9:24 AM

I get the following errors when running run-mozilla.sh or mozilla-apprunner.sh:

I'm using m6 so far. It's doesn't need libjpeg6, and crashes much much less than netscape!

#59 libjpeg6

by rtvkuijk

Monday July 19th, 1999 8:00 AM

I had the same errors, UNTIL I started mozilla-viewer.sh (wich works immediately) and then mozilla-aprunner.sh

#20 libjpeg6

by shomon

Friday July 16th, 1999 9:25 AM

I get the following errors when running run-mozilla.sh or mozilla-apprunner.sh:

I'm using m6 so far. It's doesn't need libjpeg6, and crashes much much less than netscape!

#21 M8 Released!

by rgelb

Friday July 16th, 1999 9:42 AM

So is this the milestone where the rendering engine is complete??? In that case, Adam Lock's control can now be used in all types of apps.

#22 News Now Sticky!

by Anon

Friday July 16th, 1999 10:25 AM

With M8 on SuSE 6.1, once I went to newsnow.co.uk, It kept reloading every time News Now refreshed even though I was at a different URL!

#24 Table bug?

by Anon

Friday July 16th, 1999 11:01 AM

Looking at MozillaZine.org, the column on the right hand side there overlaps the top image by a few pixels. Selecting the column does some sort of truncate on the image, which then reverts if you click on it in some particular way.

wierd

#25 M8 Released!

by megaloB

Friday July 16th, 1999 12:17 PM

I think maybe the image loading is a cache problem. clear the /cache, and then try loading stuff. I know that was a problem with M7 with images when you went to a page previously visited. Or at least, it was for me.

#27 M8 Released!

by zontar

Friday July 16th, 1999 1:44 PM

Definitely starting and running a lot faster on Win95 "B" -- UI seems a little smoother, too.

Good job, coders.

Let's go for a spin... :-)

#28 GREAT

by Anon

Friday July 16th, 1999 1:56 PM

GREAT Coders keep up the good work. Seems like we can have Mozilla 5.0 soon :o)

#29 Bug Reports

by Cynic

Friday July 16th, 1999 2:16 PM

Briefly scanning through these last few TalkBacks, I see lots of people with bugs to report. Do it at bugzilla.mozilla.org -- it takes FIVE MINUTES of your time, literally, and the bug is fixed within weeks if not days of a report.

So report thine bugs, people.

Also, how to config the proxy:

1. ERASE your mozregistry.dat file from the windows directory.

2. Start up apprunner, you should get a nice install screen that wants you to set up a profile. Set up a profile wherever it wants you to.

3. NOW go find the directory where your profile has been set up, and find the prefs50.js file, replace it with a prefs50.js that has your proxy settings in it.

I don't guarantee this to work with M8, but it worked on the last nightly I downloaded (~a week ago, my connection has lagged since then).

Happy surfing, Mozillans!

-=Yusuf=-

#40 Bug Reports

by Anon

Friday July 16th, 1999 8:24 PM

"3. NOW go find the directory where your profile has been set up, and find the prefs50.js file, replace it with a prefs50.js that has your proxy settings in it. "

Umm... what if we don't know what those settings are supposed to be?

#41 get your proxy settings

by k3davis

Friday July 16th, 1999 9:52 PM

Ask your system administrator. (If you are the system administrator, get off the computer and call your mother.)

#46 get your proxy settings

by Anon

Saturday July 17th, 1999 11:06 AM

OK. I'll type it slowly so it's easier to understand. I know what my proxy address is. I know what my proxy port is.

I also know that there are an infinite number of possible configuration lines that I could type into my prefs to indicate to mozilla what these values are. Perhaps someone could indicate the actual FORMAT of these lines. Both my administrator and my mother have not been informed of the actual format of these lines. Thanks for your sarcasm.

#31 M8 Released!

by Anon

Friday July 16th, 1999 3:12 PM

So is chromezone going to be updated to M8 anytime soon? I would love some more electric green on black.

#33 M8 Released!

by sdm

Friday July 16th, 1999 5:10 PM

Little chrome monkeys are working on this now. There is a bug or two with manipulating rdf datasources, which makes the xul tool hobbled. The Chrome and XUL APIs change constantly. But, hopefully soon, things will be workable again. Remember, we're accepting contributions ;)

#32 M8 Released!

by Anon

Friday July 16th, 1999 4:15 PM

Great. I am dead tired and was going to take a nap but now I am going to have to download this over my slow dialup line and try it before I could fall asleep. :( But I am so sick of Netscape crashing under Linux that I will do at least this to see if there is anything better than Communicator.

I will post my comments here after I have tried it.

Mubashir

#37 Forms working now?

by Anon

Friday July 16th, 1999 5:58 PM

At least it looks like the answer is 'yes'...

#38 Something odd is going on...

by Anon

Friday July 16th, 1999 6:02 PM

This keeps popping out in stdout/stderr on my box (Debian 2.1 + Gnome 1.0.5 for Debian 2.1 (www.gnome.org)): Gtk-CRITICAL **: file gtkwidget.c: line 1394 (gtk_widget_destroy): assertion `widget != NULL' failed. Gtk-CRITICAL **: file gtkwidget.c: line 1395 (gtk_widget_destroy): assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed. Is that a bug or a wrong assert? Looks more like a bug.

#48 Something odd is going on...

by Anon

Saturday July 17th, 1999 7:43 PM

GTK versioning problems. Not unusual. If you want it to work without the errors, the best thing to do is download the M8 source and compile....

#45 Deliduka

by zontar

Saturday July 17th, 1999 9:43 AM

I haven't noticed any significant differences in form button display between Moz and other browsers on Win95...

Try applying some CSS to those form widgets (submit buttons, what have you). There are still a few bugs (I found a couple relating to styles used on dropdown lists), but most of it seems to be working now.

#47 Is this the Interface?!?!?

by Anon

Saturday July 17th, 1999 6:58 PM

I keep expecting to see a nice interface and animation, but it's not here yet!!

Don't tell me this is it!

#52 First time

by dhickey

Sunday July 18th, 1999 5:53 AM

This is the first milestone that hasn't crashed on startup for me... I like it.

#53 Proxy Support

by Cynic

Sunday July 18th, 1999 2:34 PM

OK to answer the proxy question....

Just go find your current prefs.js file (run a search on your hard drive for it) and open it in notepad, NOT DOS edit!! Edit adds one excess line to the bottom, which is bad.

Now find the parts that have your proxy settings in them, and copy them over to prefs50.js. Voila! You should have a nice proxy connection now.

If you're having trouble, send mail to ssym@hippo.ru.ac.za, I'll help with any config problems if I can.

-=Yusuf=-, showing sysadmins (and their mothers) how to config Mozilla ;)

#55 AOL.com looks bad ... and the form widgets suck

by danielhill

Monday July 19th, 1999 3:16 AM

AOL.com doesn't work properly ... hee hee hee. Also, the form widgets need some work, the default font for all is 'Times New ROman 12" (on Win98, I haven't tried 95 yet, must wait till I get home), even textarea which should be Courier 10.

#60 Re-re-re-redraws on Macs

by Anon

Tuesday July 20th, 1999 5:16 PM

Every M# release I've tried on Macs have suffered from the same problems:

(1) Takes forever to fire up (and this on a G3!)

(2) Re-re-re-redraws! Why does this client repaint the whole window so often? It used to do a repaint every time I moved the mouse over a button; M8 stopped doing that, but when I click on a link, it repaints the entire existing window like two or three or even four or five times before going to the page!

I know, I know, "submit a bug report, Anonymous Coward". But I don't really know whether I'm the only one seeing this problem or not ... can I get a witness?

I can see that things are improving, but these 2 things are pretty much show-stoppers for me. Oh well ... back to iCab 1.6a ...

#61 why mail and news?

by Anon

Wednesday July 28th, 1999 1:16 PM

why in the heck would mozilla find it necessary to include mail and news clients? why don't they just concentrate on the browsing piece? it's not as if they don't have enough work to do already. there are plenty of decent free and open source email and news clients on every platform. i don't want a browser bloated with redundant client features. i just want a lean browsing machine. this seems so obvious.

#62 M8 Released!

by Lynggaard

Thursday August 5th, 1999 7:10 AM

Anyone know when they will begin to hook up the preference window ?

I hate textfile editing :-\