The Mozilla 1.0 Definition

The Evil Beaver writes: "Here we go. Mozillazine is reporting that Brenden Eich, mozilla.org's Technical Bigshot, has released the criteria to what is to be the 1.0 milestone. The 'manifesto' also explains why 1.0 is so important to reach, and why it isn't just another milestone, either. The Mozillazine article is here and the definition document here.

I18N And L10N?

[LeftHanded]

I didn't see any mention of internationalization (I18N) or localization (L10N) in any part of this list. Although the Mozilla site [mozilla.org] has a section for I18N [mozilla.org], L10N [mozilla.org] and BiDi [langbox.com] issues, these parts of the Mozilla site seem especially quiet. The Mozilla Team has obviously been working hard on these issues; you can tell that by the features in the latest 0.9.x releases. It just seems surprising that it wasn't mentioned in the 1.0 statement. They do want World Domination, right?

Re:Its not a game you know..

[StupidKatz]

Here's the REAL issue: "Standards are an evolving thing." They *shouldn't* be, and true standards do not evolve much, if at all.

Imagine if a kilogram was 2.2lb one day, then 4.3lb the next. Not much of a "standard", is it?

The major browsers were all "compliant" with ... HTML 1.0 and such base stuff, but web designers are trying to make the WWW do things it was never designed to do, and *that* is where this horrible mess of Javascript kiddies, broken CSS, and browser specific "features" came from. I don't know about you, but I'd rather not see all that flashy crap on a web site. Web sites need to contain *content*, not eye candy. :P

On a related note...

[MSBob]

Since Mozilla is beginning to look rather slick these days I have a quick question to someone enlightened. Is the new AOL (7.0?) interface based on Gecko or does it still use the IE control? Anybody in the know?

Undefined Definitions

[CptLogic]

>>Good performance and memory footprint.>If things go well, we'll be within a milestone of 1.0 after 0.9.9. If 1.0 seems to continually recede as we approach it, our definition of 1.0 in terms of bugs to be fixed is broken.

What are the definitions of bugs that need to be "fixed" before a 1.0 version can be approved?

"not too many non-crash bugs and misfeatures"

Again, what counts as "not too many?"

Reading this defintion document, I don't see any hard targets to hit, or even any tolerances, just a vague commitment to tighten the code already in existence and to hit moving "standards" targets.

Judging by these criteria, I don't see how you can then stamp a *FINISHED* label to it and "ship it" as a 1.0 version.

At some point they're just going to have to decide that an arbitrary bug fix is no longer version 0.9.10 or whatever, they're just going to have to bite the bullet and call it version 1.0

As any filmmaker knows, "Nothing's ever finished"

Chris.

Re:best standards compliance among compeditors

[jgerman]

secondly, why such a need for the standards compliance? in the past (and still currently afaik), browsers were build on loose compliance, and extending the standards to where they see the standards going into the future (css).

Which is why we have the piece of crap system we have today. MS extensions don't work in Netscape and vice versa. I find it hard to believe that you are apparently agruing the importance to standards. It's called opening up the window of choice in operating systems and applications. When you know that any application can handle the same file formats or whatever, you have much greater flexibility in what you use to do your work, and it makes it convenient to work with others who haven't made the same choices as you.

Reversing the speed factor

[ACK!!]

Listen I have been using Mozilla on and off since it began to be bundled with various distros.

When it first came out I swear the pages it could render came up as fast as anything I saw from even Opera but the program loaded really slowly. In other words, when it finally came up it was really fast unless it crashed.

Now, Mozilla can handle most any page Netscrape can handle and loads faster but the page rendering seems to be slower on regular html pages not nearly as fast as when it came out initially. I was impressed by the .94+ version I am using right now and use it for most of my work. However, I do wish the thing was quicker in rendering pages. Any thoughts on this? Is it just my perception of the program?

You are sugar coating the past...

[Carnage4Life]

They tried to code for a standard that they hoped would be *the* standard by the time they shipped. Both missed the target. But had they written for what was at the time the current standard they'd have been releasing browser that, while stable and complient, would have been miles behind the competition in terms of features. Which is why writing a standards complient browser should be undertaken by someone who isn't trying to make money. Delibrately being behind your competition would be suicidal.

Both these companies tried to strongarm the W3C into accepting their versions of standards by going ahead and implementing them anyway. This began with Netscape and it's "time to market" fiasco where they felt major versions of their software had to be released at "Internet time" which lead to them forcing such travesties as Javascript, Javascript CSS and a number of other nonsensities on the web users while not fixing basic aspects of their implementation of the HTML spec like rendering tables.

Thankfully, it seems that now the major browsers have realized the errors of their ways and no longer see "time to market" as being more important than standards compliance. The Mozilla team has been doing excellent works with regards to implementing a number of the W3C standards and Microsoft has now gone as far as to start deprecating some of their own technologies in favor of the W3C versions (e.g. XDR -> XML Schema and XSL -> XSLT).

possibly a good start?

[niall111]

If the 1.0 release turns out to be something with rock solid stability/compliance, would it be possible that ISP's would start suggesting their customers use Mozilla, instead of IE? This would cut down on support costs associated with the bugs in IE, which i'm sure any ISP would be happy to do.

Re:Its not a game you know..

[Red Avenger]

I really hate it when people try tp put things in a simple little box. The web is so much more than just "content." Thats like saying the linux kernel shouldn't end up in watches or in other devices because that wasn't what it was originally designed to do.

Don't be so close minded. The web is a constantly changing organism and I don't think there is any real appropriate definition. You can't label something that is constantly changing.

And I assure you there is much more to the web than just text. Art, music, games, and yes eye candy all exist on the web.

I for one am glad that they do.

What about S/MIME support?

[the_olo]

This is an essential feature Mozilla Mail should have - S/MIME support.
It's a widely accepted standard for digital signatures and encryption of mail messages an PKI (Public Key Infrastructure).

Re:best standards compliance among compeditors

[NutscrapeSucks]

I think there's the greater issue that AOL/Netscape doesn't really have any future vision or direction for the project (except using it as a bargaining chip for AOL client negotiations with Microsoft.)

The Netscape browser began as free advertising for the (now gone elsewhere) enterprise server products that was going to make Netscape Communications a big player.

Netscape 4 (shipped in 1996) was a 'kitchen sink' project -- intended to be the client-server platform of the future -- including every imaginable feature, and a complete rebuff to the W3C with all sorts of proprietary Netscape-only interfaces, all of it implemented in an enormously buggy fashion.

Mozilla seems to be mostly an attempt to rewrite NS 4 from scratch, except this time healing the wounds by making it standards compliant and non-buggy. And add the sidebar that didn't make it into NS4.

The end result of Mozilla 1.0 seems to achieve the goals of 1996, not of 2002. It's 6 years beyond the point when "standards compliant" and "non-buggy" would be enough to attract a significant number of users. When you get right down to it, Mozilla doesn't *do* anything all that all that interesting to the end user in this day and age.

I think that's why you get tabbed browsing and other features coming in -- it's sorta an "Oh shit!" moment over at Mozilla when they realize that their work might go for naught unless they are proactive about drawing end users in to their web.

If I were them, I'd start thinking outside of the little box that they've let the W3C define and start looking at what it will take to make people want to use their shit. Yes, this means embracing and extending a little, but I think they with their supergood compliance, they can afford it.

+ Throw in every value add feature that you can get stable -- mouse gestures, Jabber, etc etc.
+ Clone corny MS features that people like - styled scrollbars, etc.
+ Prove to us that Mozilla is really a platform and not hot air. Give me something that I can use to create an application on my intranet.
+ Stop pretending the W3C DOM is usable all by itself as an API and start looking ways to add value. One prime example is the style object that IE has (it provides runtime information about element style).
+ Make sure that the Javascript/DOM environment is solid enough that I can code a heavy DHTML interface with it. Just rendering cnn.com, etc isn't good enough.
+ Ship the Fucking Manual already -- w3c.org is not a programming guide by any means. Find the people that wrote the excellent 4.x documentation and put them back to work.

Re:On a related note...

[aozilla]

7.0 is a marketing number. It is by no means a major release. In fact, if you have 6.0 you can upgrade to 7.0 online without downloding the whole new program. Needless to say, they still use IE (which they will almost certainly always do).