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Mozilla The Internet

Mozilla 0.9.9 Released 630

Posted by michael from the 0.9.9.9.9.9-right-around-the-corner dept.
OSSMKitty writes: "Mozilla.org has released the next version of Mozilla, version 0.9.9. Highlights include MathML enabled by default on Unix and Win32, and TrueType font support on Unix. Read the release notes and then download a binary to test on your platform."
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Mozilla 0.9.9 Released More

Mozilla 0.9.9 Released

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  • Will 1.0 ever be out, or are we waiting for 0.9.9.1 now?

    It's still the best OSS browser out there, though...
    • The release after 0.9.9 will be 1.0, but it's possible that 1.1 alpha will be released before 1.0. If that happens, I'd expect to see a "1.0 beta" or "1.0 release candidate" before 1.1 alpha. (See the Mozilla Development Roadmap [mozilla.org] for more.)

    • Re:So close, yet so far... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Patience, patience! Check out the Mozilla roadmap:

      Mozilla Roadmap [mozilla.org]

      They're on track so far. Looks like 1.0 should be out in late April.

    • 0.x is good enough for most open source tools... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jelle ( 14827 ) on Monday March 11, 2002 @11:35PM (#3146670) Homepage
      Lets see part of dpkg --list |grep " 0\."

      amp version 0.7.6
      aide version 0.7-11
      apt version 0.5.4 (_the_ debian godsent tool)
      aspell 0.33.7.1-8
      atftpd 0.5
      c2html 0.9.4-1
      daemontools 0.70-20
      dia 0.88.1-2
      ed 0.2-19 (yes, _ed_ is still at 0.2!)
      fakeroot 0.4.5-2.1 (for dpkg-buildpackage)
      finger 0.17-9 (but nobody even uses finger anymore)
      ftp 0.17-9 (ftp client never actually reached 1.x, so who's going to worry about the http client)
      gedit 0.9.6
      mpg123 0.59r-11
      mpt321 0.2.3
      openssl 0.9.6c-1
      telnet-ssl 0.17.16+0.1-2
      usbmgr 0.4.8-5
      usbutils 0.9-1
      wmaker 0.80.0-3
      word2x 0.005-4.1 (they expect a lot of versions to go!)
      xscorch 0.1.14-2 (Clone of Scorched Earth, the best oldtimer multiplayer game ever)

      If it's in the true spirit of open source, it will achieve full acceptance by the users before the developers think it's perfect, hence by the time 1.0 comes out, all users will respond 'duh, 0.9.9.4pre4-test2-rc4-pl9 already was just perfect for me'

  • Cross Platform Performance Improving (Score:5, Interesting)

    by reaper20 ( 23396 ) on Monday March 11, 2002 @10:11PM (#3146356) Homepage
    I commented [slashdot.org] on Mozilla's cross platform performance during the .9.6 release, and I must say, thought still noticeably slower in linux than windows - the linux performance has improved substantialy. Mozilla has been my standard browsers on my win32 platforms and it's startup time has improved enough in linux to really be useable.

    /me raises beer to the mozilla linux guys.

    On another note, anyone feel that that "turbo mode" should be kept in the windows builds only? This might sound silly, but I expect every program to jam itself in my window system tray, but for some reason, I don't want it anywhere near my linux box, it's Just Not Right(tm).

  • Can't wait for 1.0 (Score:4, Informative)

    by BJH ( 11355 ) on Monday March 11, 2002 @10:12PM (#3146357)
    On Linux, I switched from Netscape to Mozilla around M18, I think, and quite frankly although it's taken forever to get there it's now just about the best browser around (for me anyway).

    At work the desktops are all NT4, but I use Mozilla there as well, rather than IE. Why?

    - Tabs. Can't live without them, and on Windows it means that your taskbar isn't cluttered with 10,000 unidentifiable icons.
    - Keyboard operation. Open a new tab (Ctrl-T), type your URL, switch back to what you were reading (Ctrl-PageUp) and wait for the new tab to stop spinning. Switch back (Ctrl-PageDown), read it and close it (Ctrl-W). I know you can control IE with the keyboard as well, but to switch windows you have to use Ctrl-Tab, which is an incredible pain if you've got a bunch of windows open.
    - Speed. It's damn quick.

    I just wish they'd build for more platforms... anybody got an Alpha build that doesn't need glibc2.2?

    • bettter config (Score:3, Informative)

      by straponego ( 521991 )
      Configure your middle mouse button to open links in a tab in the background. Click on any interesting links, such as /. stories, while you're scanning a page; when you're done with the first page, they're all loaded and you never lost focus from what you were reading. Well, unless you have a jealous cat... And yes, Mozilla rocks my 'fro.
    • With 0.9.9 you can now also type an URL in the bar with whatever page/tab you're viewing. Instead of Enter, hit Ctrl-Enter and you'll get a new tab. As a bonus, you can set Ctrl-Enter to open new windows in the background.

      Enjoy!
      Christopher
    • Ctrl-W...I've been using Ctrl-F4 for some time now (on Windows), and it usually works (usually). Is this unsupported, and, more importantly, is it supposed to do that? It is consistent with the 'doze scheme for shortcuts (Alt for OS, Ctrl for program; meta-F4 for close). Didn't know about the PgUp/PgDn bit either...that's going to be useful.
    • In IE, if you enter ALT-D, your cursor moves to the address bar and you can enter a new URL without using the mouse. Is there an equivalent shortcut in Mozilla? I need to use Netscape at work and I always find myself typing ALT-D. :-)
    • fyi: if you want your IE and want tabs, try netcaptor: http://www.netcaptor.net/ [netcaptor.com]
      unfortunately it's not free.

      ah well... back to moz.
  • I've been using as my "daily driver" exclusively since 0.9.2, and each new build is better.

    It's even at the point where I recommend it to the non-tech savvy crowd...

  • fonts (Score:2, Interesting)

    by nslu ( 532403 )
    note, now mozilla has xft&freetype libs compiled in (still it will use system libs if they are avail), so fonts (yes, with AA) will work on any X server, even those who don't provide xft extension or truetype support.

    guess what, next, there will be own xserver inside mozilla, so you won't need X to run it! mozilla, the queen of bloat. ;-)

  • MathML. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by saintlupus ( 227599 ) on Monday March 11, 2002 @10:16PM (#3146379)
    Highlights include MathML enabled by default on Unix and Win32

    Why only those two?

    (I'm a Mac user, and just wondering why I get left out.)

    --saint

  • Thanks for the attempt (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PhysicsGenius ( 565228 ) <`moc.oohay' `ta' `rekees_scisyhp'> on Monday March 11, 2002 @10:17PM (#3146381)
    MathML is great and I use it for my personal pages. But it isn't going to be useful until I can type it in on blogs. And can I? Well sure, if the site supports the <math> tag. Does Slashdot? Does K5?

    No.

    Even worse, adding support is going to be a bitch because, to quote from the Mozilla MathML Project page [mozilla.org]

    Mozilla does not yet support the mixture of XML and HTML within the same document. Thus a fragment inside a HTML document is not rendered in Mozilla. [1]

    In other words, the doc (and therefore the whole site, practically speaking) has to be in XML/XHTML to be able to use MathML with Mozilla. We've seen time and time again that Slashdot (and to a lesser extent K5) is not even really HTML compliant, what are the chances of meeting the higher standards of XML validity?

    Slim to none.

    So thanks for the attempt, but until the slow among us [cmdrtaco.net] start being good netizens then it is too little, too late.

    [1]Yeah, I know it says "not yet" but

    1. This is 0.9.9. If it isn't there now, when will it be?
    2. I can't find a reference to this issue in Bugzilla

  • tabbed browsing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RestiffBard ( 110729 ) on Monday March 11, 2002 @10:18PM (#3146388) Homepage
    I switched to mozilla on windows as soon as they added tabbed browsing. it is the ultimate addition to web browsing. just so much simpler to manage then the old way of having 800 windows up. and no its not just for porn sites :) I've really been impressed with the latest iterations of mozilla on both win and linux. i stopped using galeon a while back and now i even use mozilla-mail. i never expected to be such a mozilla fan but I really am impressed with what they've done. my congrats to the team on doing so much for so very little.

    • Re:tabbed browsing (Score:5, Funny)

      by Jester998 ( 156179 ) on Monday March 11, 2002 @10:43PM (#3146481) Homepage
      "...tabbed browsing. it is the ultimate addition to web browsing."

      Sshhhh! Shut up or M$ will steal our ideas. :)
    • I want to start using Mozilla Mail, but until they add PGP support, I'm going to be using Outlook on Windows and Evolution or Kmail on my Linux box.

      There are a lot of people who appreciate a nice integrated PGP or GPG function to our mailer, and hopefully someone will write a PGP plugin once the Mozilla APIs are final in version 1.0.
    • Tabs are a nice idea, but they're still quite immature in Mozilla. For instance, they don't close in the correct order [mozilla.org], so they're no substitute for real tabs or MDI, as found in Galeon [sourceforge.net] or Opera [opera.com].

      I accept that Mozilla [mozilla.org] is still in development, but many good ideas that make the GUI work better (like this one) are actually being turned down.

      Something else that reminds me of this is there is no Apply button in the Themes Preferences dialog box [mozilla.org].

      I'm getting into many bad habits using Mozilla's interface, and when I go to use something that works properly I find myself doing what I would've done in Mozilla, and it doesn't work (and nor should it). It's a bit like people who double-click on web links. :-)

      It seems to me that Mozilla's GUI is made to pacify Netscape [netscape.com] 4 users, rather than making it as usable as it should be. I think this is bad for several reasons, not least because Netscape 6 still has a smaller market share than Netscape 4, so Netscape 4 users aren't migrating at all! To me this means that:
      a) some users are sticking with Netscape 4
      b) some users are moving to Internet Explorer or something else, because they're better, regardless of the menus being somewhat different

      Maybe this shows us that open-source projects really need to spend more time on proper GUI guidelines, because as much as I hate products made by certain other companies (that one that makes Windows in particular), I find their apps much easier to use (when they don't crash, etc.).

      I think I'm going to end up using Galeon or SkipStone [muhri.net], because the Mozilla rendering engine seems quite good -- it's the GUI holding Mozilla back (regardless of how pretty the "Modern" theme is!).

      Having said this, I'm still downloading 0.9.9 :-)

      • Re:GUI still too basic, counter-intuitive (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        >>so they're no substitute for real tabs or MDI

        MDI has got to be the worst UI idea ever. Having three windows inside a window just means that if you want to see anything at all then you have adjust 3 scroll bars. The worst is that most of the time in windows you have MDI combined with modal windows and you find yourself craning your neck in a vain attempt to see something useful. Then when you maximize the window it's completely confusing as to how to minimize the inside one.

        I have been using computer for 14 years and I still have problems with MDI interfaces. No wonder new computer users hate technology so much.

        Tabs are better than MDI. I don't like them for browsing because I have a superior window manager set up--the only WM and theme that I have found which comes close to meeting my needs. (Both Apple and Windows fall far short of my demands).

        I use tabs in xemacs even though those are screwed up. It's better than just `C-X b.'

  • Fix the MailNews bugs... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Monday March 11, 2002 @10:21PM (#3146404) Homepage Journal
    I can hardly wait until a release of Mozilla that fixed the annoying behavior of Mozilla's mail and news system - you cannot select a message without displaying it, thus you cannot forward a spam onto Spamcop without Mozilla starting to render it (and fetching any webbugs in it).

    They supposedly have a patch to fix this, but I don't see that bug fix listed in the release notes for 0.9.9

    • Re:Fix the MailNews bugs... (Score:5, Informative)

      by asa ( 33102 ) <asa@mozilla.com> on Monday March 11, 2002 @10:27PM (#3146418) Homepage
      you cannot select a message without displaying it, thus you cannot forward a spam onto Spamcop without Mozilla starting to render it (and fetching any webbugs in it).

      Try collapsing the message area (expanding the threadpane to the bottom of the window). You can do this by dragging the splitter or clicking on the splitter's grippy. When the message area is closed it doesn't load the message.

      --Asa
    • does anybody know how to disable that stupid html rendering of mails completely? i hate that.
    • Yes, I've been thinking about this recently. It would be very nice to have a feature where network requests from the mail utility could be blocked. I'm sure spammers use this a way to verify email addresses and get some open rate statistics.

  • So close, so very close (Score:2, Informative)

    by geek ( 5680 )
    The MacOSX build is great, there is one strange thing however. I have a nightly from the 8th that displays msnbc.com just fine, however nothing before or after that nightly will display it correctly.

    Additionally the startup speed still lags by about 5 to 10 seconds behind IE 5.1 on MacOSX. This is largely a non-issue since I usually start it up once during the day and it runs all day long.

    Now if only I could get a version without all the crap. I just want a browser, not a PIM and mail client.

  • A testament to open source... (Score:3, Informative)

    by BuffJoe ( 307408 ) on Monday March 11, 2002 @10:27PM (#3146422) Homepage
    This mozilla release (as mentioned in the release notes), has a fix for the zlib vulnerability, just a few hours after the vulnerability was discovered!

    • Re:A testament to open source... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jesser ( 77961 ) on Monday March 11, 2002 @11:04PM (#3146551) Homepage Journal
      It's not accurate to say the vulnerability was discovered "just a few hours" ago. I got an e-mail from a Mozilla security list on Feb. 19 with the subject "serious zlib vulnerability". The first line of the message was "It's very important that this doesn't leak out until after March 11th, when vendors should have fixes available." If you look at the references from Red Hat's page about the vulnerability [linuxsecurity.com], you'll see documents with dates like 2/5 and 2/7.

      Asa informs me that the zlib bug and its announcement on Slashdot today didn't influence the decision to release Mozilla 0.9.9 today. He was already planning to release today, and since the zlib vulnerability was made public this morning, it made sense for the release notes to mention that it is fixed in this build.
  • Unfortunately, there are still 133 bugs [mozilla.org] targeted for 0.9.9 still open. One of these is mine, and I am not happy that it's still open, but that's the way things go. People demand a new release.

    Alas, there are 891 bugs targeted for 1.0, plus the 133 0.9.9, plus bugs that are yet to be reported that need to be fixed for 1.0. Now, I am starting to sound like that MozillaQuest retard, but I really doubt that even 1/4 of these will get fixed before 1.0.

  • Two things that need to be fixed... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cswiii ( 11061 ) on Monday March 11, 2002 @10:29PM (#3146430)
    ...and I hope they are (as I download my copy over my slow-ass 56k connection)...

    1. Forms. Entering text in a TEXTAREA has been continually troublesome, release after release. Sometimes you'll hit the space bar, but the cursor won't move until you type a letter. Sometimes you get this insipid "jumping text", as the scrollbar on the righthand side continually decides to draw and redraw each time there is a keystroke. From a user's perspective, this is a terrible oversight

    2. Printing has, at least on linux, been a sorry state of affairs, for a long time, up through 0.9.8. I have deep worries that 1.0 is going to get released without fully functioning print capability, and that just seems asanine.

    OTHER THAN THAT --

    I've been extremely happy with Moz, and have been using it in a near exclusive manner (FSCK YOU, CapitalOne.com) for many releases now.

    Although it may be a bit premature, here's a hearty congrats to the Mozilla team. Looking forward to 1.0

    • Re:Two things that need to be fixed... (Score:5, Informative)

      by asa ( 33102 ) <asa@mozilla.com> on Monday March 11, 2002 @10:46PM (#3146492) Homepage
      You should try 0.9.9. Both of your problem areas have received a lot of attention in 0.9.9 and should be greatly improved from your experience in 0.9.8.

      --Asa

      • thanks (Score:3, Insightful)

        by salmo ( 224137 )
        Asa, I just wanted to say thanks. You're always answering lowly user's questions on Slashdot and Mozillazine and such. You don't get peeved because people don't keep track of every minute detail of the Mozilla construction process. You only rant at the people who act like complete tools. Your informative answers to people's problems and questions have definitly made my Mozilla experience much better and I'm sure you've had the same effect on others.

        Thanks for putting up with all the crap that you put up with and for helping us little guys out. I appreciate it.

  • Autocomplete sorting (Score:5, Interesting)

    by abischof ( 255 ) <alex&spamcop,net> on Monday March 11, 2002 @10:32PM (#3146446) Homepage

    When you start typing in the URL bar, wouldn't it be handy if the result-list was sorted by most-frequently-accessed, or most-recently-accessed? Well, that has been proposed [mozilla.org] (bug 78270 [mozilla.org]).

    However, it's also marked Priority P4 and Future :(. But, you can vote for the bug [mozilla.org] to show your support (of course, you'll need a free Bugzilla account [mozilla.org] to vote).

  • Anti-aliased font support! (Score:3, Informative)

    by daserver ( 524964 ) on Monday March 11, 2002 @10:33PM (#3146447) Homepage
    I've been waiting for this for quite a while and now it finally looks like it's here. Yes! Read the changelog it's not truetype font support but anti-aliased fonts.
  • So I'm taking the plunge and trying to download it. Of course, the ftp site is slashdotted.

    I guess you could say that the distribution network of mozilla hasn't reached that 1.0 milestone either yet.

    I hope the distribution capacity catches up with the code sooner rather than later.

  • Damn! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by PlaysWithMatches ( 531546 )
    I just fired up this new release, and I must say I'm impressed. Every one of the recent releases has sped things up by around 50% (just my own visual approximation) in the interface. There used to be perceptible delays in switching sidebar tabs, opening new browser tabs, etc. which have now been eliminated. Kudos to the Mozilla team! Now all I have to do is get that TrueType font rendering working. ;)
  • I'm a whiz in calculus, and even I can't tell if this infinite series converges to 1.

  • Help get Roaming Access included! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mattdm ( 1931 ) on Monday March 11, 2002 @10:55PM (#3146523) Homepage
    Netscape Communicator 4.x had a primative but extremely useful Roaming Profiles [mozilla.org] function, but Mozilla doesn't. A lot of people have voted for it, but it just hasn't been a top coding priority. All is not lost, however:

    Ben Bucksch of Beonex [beonex.org] fame has offered to help complete this oft-requested oft-marked-as-no-time-to-implement feature. He's doing the work as a tip-jar sponsored project, so check out bug #124026 [mozilla.org] and contribute a little bit if you can.

    Even if you aren't particularly interested in the roaming ability, it's an interesting situation to watch -- any open-source project the size of mozilla must have lots of opportunities for independent developers to jump in and work on a open-source-for-cash basis. If Ben is really successful here, it's a great case-study in a way for small developers to make money working at open source / free software. I'm curious to see how this example turns out....
  • After talking to a couple people today, it seems like the impression that many non-Mozilla users have of Mozilla is that it is still slow and still buggy -- something that hasn't been true for many months. This belief is so intrenched that one said if forced to use Netscape, he's sticking with the last version that worked; 4.7.

    Last week I gave another friend a couple CDs with OpenOffice and the current Netscape and Mozilla on it. OpenOffice was worth trying, but he refused to give Mozilla a try. Today, on hearing news of the AOL switch to Mozilla, he replied "Well, what are they going to do when web pages don't load?"

    Folks, I'm speachless.

  • Spellchecker, yes! (Score:5, Informative)

    by abischof ( 255 ) <alex&spamcop,net> on Monday March 11, 2002 @10:57PM (#3146529) Homepage

    For those wondering, yes, there is a spellchecker for Mozilla [mozdev.org] (bug 56301 [mozilla.org]). Or, if you're in a hurry, the installer is right here [mozdev.org].

    I've been using David Einstein's spellchecker for week's now without problem. Of course, it has its own quirks [mozilla.org] (such as there being no way to dismiss the spellchecker and avoid sending the message) but it's still a tremendous effort.

  • If you're using mozilla, just right click the ad, select "Block images from this server." Presto, you just deprived slashdot of revenue!

  • Slashdot is not bugzilla. (Score:5, Informative)

    by sinserve ( 455889 ) on Monday March 11, 2002 @11:00PM (#3146539)
    If you have a bug to report, or a suggestion to
    make, can you take it to here [mozilla.org]?

    --
  • I use Mozilla under both Windows and Linux, and in both cases I find the middle mouse button VERY problematic. I scroll with my mouse wheel, which frequently causes middle button clicks. This often results in tons of windows opening all over the place. This is very very irritating. What's more, under Windows, the middle click and scroll functionality is broken making this app rather inconsistent with others. I find this feature under Windows very useful, especially on longer pages.

    Other than that, 0.98 was very good. The best yet. Not quite as reliable as IE, and certainly not as speedy (e.g. big pauses with 100% CPU before pages start to render).

  • cool feature (Score:2, Informative)

    by shao ( 70467 )
    if you are on linux/freebsd, check this out:

    ctrl+left click, then paste somewhere else, very cool!

  • Breaks Galeon :( (Score:2, Informative)

    by aarondsouza ( 96916 )
    Unfortunately the new release still needs support from Galeon [sourceforge.net]. Installing the RPMS on my machine cause Galeon to segfault. Had to revert back to 0.9.8. Guess I'll just have to wait for Galeon 1.0.4.
  • If you find that you use IE's window cloning (perhaps without even realising that you've started using) and really miss it under Mozilla, please vote on these bugs:

    Bug 18808 [mozilla.org] - vote [mozilla.org]

    Bug 110535 [mozilla.org] - vote [mozilla.org]

    Bug 36269 [mozilla.org] - vote [mozilla.org]

  • Full screen on Linux! (Score:5, Informative)

    by ihatelisp ( 529132 ) on Monday March 11, 2002 @11:36PM (#3146672)

    Enter this into the URL field:

    javascript:void(window.fullScreen=true)

    And you get full screen! Note that this implementation is incomplete, and does not work with all window managers. But it's a start

  • Mozilla needs columnar bookmarks! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sigma ( 53086 ) on Monday March 11, 2002 @11:41PM (#3146685)
    I've been using Mozilla for several months now, and the only thing I wish they'd implement is Netscape 4.x style bookmark scrolling.

    I have a good 60 or so bookmarks, and I hate taking the time to scroll to the bottom of the list. It's so much nicer in Netscape where it just spills over to an additonal column.

    Of course, I'm sure that others prefer the current IE style scrolling, so I'd be happy if it is implemented as an option. If you agree with me, please Vote for this bug! [mozilla.org]

  • New Feature: Pop-Up Blocking! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lord Ender ( 156273 ) on Monday March 11, 2002 @11:51PM (#3146720) Homepage
    I am posting this with 0.9.9 right now. I just went for a trip around some pr0n sites that have multiple popups (when using internet explorer). With this version of Mozilla, if you go to:

    Edit/Preferences/Advanced/Scripts, then unclick "Open unrequested windows"

    You will get no more popups! Pages that use javascript to open in new windows when you click on something still work, but pages that open up other windows when they load (popups) have no more power over your browsing experience! Yay!
    • That feature was already available in 0.9.8.
      I've only disabled "resize or move" and "raise or lower".
    • As has already been pointed out, blocking popups at page load/unload is not a new feature. A sort-of related feature is, however: You can now prevent <a href="something" target="_blank"> from opening a new window by flipping the "Open a link in a new window" switch in the Scripts & Windows panel.

      If you just hate it when someone makes all their external links open in new windows, this feature is for you! :)

  • What about Opera? (Score:3, Informative)

    by sean23007 ( 143364 ) on Monday March 11, 2002 @11:55PM (#3146735) Homepage Journal
    Does it strike anyone else here that everything good that everyone has said here concerning Mozilla is already available in a web browser? Of course I'm talking about Opera, which I've been using for a few months now, and am extremely impressed with it. Tabbed windows, ultra fast page renders, fast startup time, can be controlled completely by either the keyboard or the mouse (really innovative and awesome).

    Mozilla is open source and free, which is good, and Opera is one of the few browsers that is not free, but the penalty for not paying is a little banner ad that sits on your browser all the time while you browse. It isn't particularly annoying, but the Opera browser is totally worth the price. I absolutely recommend that everyone try it out, especially if you like the features of Mozilla or are unsatisfied by IEXPLORE.

    Just thought I'd point this out, as Opera is a very viable alternative to other browsers, and it absolutely rocks.
    • That's nice. Hope you're happy with it. I'm not. That's just fine, though--in fact, it's the way things should be.

      You like Opera. I like Mozilla. There's no reason I have to switch to Opera, or you have to switch to Mozilla. There's also no reason that the six people who live in a cave and prefer Netscape 4.76 have to switch either.

      The thing that makes Opera and Mozilla (and Netscape, and ye randome othere browsere) good and important is that they're choices and alternatives. That's why we shouldn't be fighting about which one is better, and evaluating them honestly for ourselves.

  • Salon Article on Mozilla (Score:5, Insightful)

    by twjordan ( 88132 ) on Tuesday March 12, 2002 @12:33AM (#3146869)
    Check this article [salon.com] out. In it Salon's Tech Editor describes his 180 turnaround on mozilla.


    Before:

    The last time I tried it, a year and a half ago, it was so buggy, slow and lacking in features that I gave up in disgust after a week of software pain. Ever since, I had dismissed as overly idealistic advocacy the mumbling I kept hearing from various developers who touted each new Mozilla "milestone" release as incrementally better than the one before.


    Now:

    As I write these words, I've been running Mozilla for Windows for almost five hours. While that's obviously not enough time to make a detailed technical appraisal, I can say that Mozilla has already become my default browser and that it is as fast and slick and full-featured as I want.


    Nuff said!

  • moz (Score:4, Interesting)

    by passion ( 84900 ) on Tuesday March 12, 2002 @02:20AM (#3147303)

    Mozilla is quickly becoming the poster child of the open source movement. You don't need to know how to recompile a kernel, and yes - it'e easy enough for your grandmother to use.

    It has been kicking some major butt on my linux desktop for over the past year, though it's been kicking my butt on OS X for the past 2 months... constant crashes with no log files can drive a man nuts.

    Maybe I should take up Moz hacking

  • I want my XML! (Score:5, Funny)

    by extrasolar ( 28341 ) on Tuesday March 12, 2002 @02:56AM (#3147423) Homepage Journal
    MathML on by default! That is great!

    The old notation for math is so boring and obsolete:

    x^2 + 4x + 4 = 0

    I much prefer:

    <mrow>
    <mrow>
    <msup>
    <mi>x</mi>
    <mn>2</mn>
    </msup>
    <mo>+</mo>
    <mrow>
    <mn>4</mn>
    <mo>&InvisibleTimes;</mo>
    <mi>x</mi>
    </mrow>
    <mo>+</mo>
    <mn>4</mn>
    </mrow>
    <mo>=</mo>
    <mn>0</mn>
    </mrow>

    because it is XML and standardized and non-proprietary and cool. I want my <elite>XML</elite>!

    • Re:I want my XML! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by vidarh ( 309115 )
      I hope that was meant to be a joke? You fail to see the point completely. For the simple example you gave, sure text will convey the meaning realtively well. The problem starts once you want to present really complex equations, and you'd preferrably want to be able to cut and past to/from various tools.

      The problem in presentation alone means that equations published on the web is often being published as images, because presenting it as text can be a nightmare.

      Allowing cut and paste of mathematical expressions between different tools (and HTML editors for instance) also isn't an easy task if you don't have a uniform, standarized way of expressing yourself.

      Thats all MathML is: A uniform way of expressing maths. XML or not is a secondary issue - XML is useful because it means you don't have to deal with writing your own parser, and because it easily let multiple domain specific data representations coexist in the same document, but thats just icing on the cake.

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