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Mozilla The Internet

Mozilla 1.1 Alpha Released 464

Posted by timothy from the from-good-to-great dept.
theBrownfury writes: "Mozilla.org has released Mozilla 1.1 alpha, the first post 1.0 milestone. This release has been in the works for almost 2 months now incorporating over 1700 bug fixes and more than a dozen new features. Including: Quartz rendering for OS X 10.1.5 users, new layout performance enhancements targeted at DHTML, faster startup times and more. Here are the release notes and the link to the releases page or FTP for downloads."
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Mozilla 1.1 Alpha Released More

Mozilla 1.1 Alpha Released

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  • Wooo! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Clay Mitchell ( 43630 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @07:37AM (#3685024) Homepage
    Hopefully this version will fix the problems I get loading pages with lots of dhtml... takes forever to load those :( (for example, flat mode comments @ shacknews.com)
    • > the problems I get loading pages with lots of

      > dhtml... takes forever to load those

      There's a bug with large background images slowing page rendering; I haven't checked for a few weeks, it may be fixed now. Otherwise, perhaps it takes a long time because it's, like, a big file? Have you tried saving it off locally and reloading? (clear the cache if you want to be really anal about it ;)

  • Java Problems... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by PoiBoy ( 525770 )
    Hopefully they've finally fixed some of the problems running Java applets. For example, I can't play games at http://games.yahoo.com using Mozilla. I've seen tons of bugs at Bugzilla, but not being a Java expert I don't know what is what.

    • Re:Java Problems... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @07:59AM (#3685087)
      Mozilla needs at least Java 1.3.1_02 on Windows and Java 1.4.0_01 on Linux for applets to work properly.

      Even then, lots of applets are MS pseudo-java (and only work in the Microsoft VM) rather than real Sun/IBM/etc. Java. AFAIK the games.yahoo.com used the MS-Java specific crap (for no good reason) last time I checked.

      Applets actually written for Java 1.3/1.4 work brilliantly, I find, and the fact that 1.4 applets get the DOM of the page they are embedded in is cool, too. Next step: drag-n-drop applets in Composer :-).

    • Re:Java Problems... (Score:2, Informative)

      by GnomeKing ( 564248 )
      I was playing dominoes on games.yahoo.com just last night - on mozilla 1.0

      I had a lot of trouble installing java on moz 0.9.8 a while ago, but when I did a full reinstall with 1.0 it went without a hitch, installed, and runs absolutely perfectly...
    • Not true I just played Collapse right now in a tabbed window with moz 1.0 and it worked fine.

      Make sure you have the Java plugin installed!
    • wow. I have ZERO trouble playing games at yahoo.com.
      did you follow the steps to get java correctly installed? I followed both proceedures on the mozilla site to get java working well and both make the java-intense yahoo.com games to play pretty much flawlessly.

    • Strange, I've been playing there with mozilla since version .96 on Linux and I've never had a problem.

    • Previously I had just copied the entire plugins subdirectory over to the most recent Mozilla release. For the past few versions, whenever a Java app tried to launch it's own window, Mozilla would completely crash.

      Here's the solution: cd over /usr/local/mozilla-1.0/, remove all Java-related files and the java2 directory. Then go to java.sun.com and reinstall.

      Everything now seems to work fine. Don't ask me why it works, though.

  • For some reason... (Score:5, Funny)

    by OccSub ( 572282 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @07:46AM (#3685046)
    getting to that FTP server before it gets slashdotted kinda reminds me of when Indiana Jones is diving under some massive stone door, which is about to shut him in the acient temple.
  • Once again we have to say well done to the Mozilla team for finally delivering a very usable product. It's great to jump between Linux and Windows and to have the same browser. Some people have complained about its memory use, but if your machine is halfway decent, it's really a simple Web browser that gets the job done.

    However, there are several things that stop me from using it 100% of the time. I still stick to IE for about 25% of sites, because.. of all the little bugs! I'm hoping some have been cleared up in this Alpha. They include:

    * Keyboard not responding sometimes when you open a new Mozilla window (this is in Bugzilla)

    * When you click on some links, it doesn't go to the destination.. and it just displays a picture off of the current page! Hit Refresh and you finally go on your way.

    * Mozilla is less system tolerant than IE. Mozilla is often the first application to lose its icons and its interface starts falling to pieces. This is probably because of my memory or the CPU overheating.. but IE remains stable until the last minute.

    * Mozilla often bawks if you're loading large JPEGs into it direct from hard disk.. and it just displays a blank/white screen with scrollbars.

    * Many sites still don't display well in Mozilla. This is the Web developer's fault, but still.. Mozilla can do all of those DHTML menus and stuff, yet I still run into problems on sites that use them. An optional 'IE compliancy' patch in Mozilla would be very very useful!
    • * Selecting text for copy/paste is difficult. I often have to select more than I want, and then trim it down.

      * In the Windows browser, selecting text will even do strange things like go back the the previous page, or close the browser window! It may be the gestures getting confused, but it's highly annoying.
      • * Selecting text for copy/paste is difficult. I often have to select more than I want, and then trim it down.

        huh?, this is one of the main complaints I have about IE, stoping a selection mid-word is almost impossible using it. Mozilla handles it much more gracefully.

        Set your gestures to the middle mouse button and never worry about it again, it's simple really.
      • About the gestures.

        This seemingly random behavior is due to the mouse gestures being mapped to the left mouse button by default. You can change which button you use to use mouse gestures in the preferences panel.

        -inq

    • Re:Well done to the team (again) but.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Cally ( 10873 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @08:09AM (#3685127) Homepage
      * "IE compatability mode" -- if you do View / Page info, you'll see that pages without a DTD at the top are rendered in "quirks" mode. This tries to cope with broken HTML of the sort that litters the web.

      Tobe honest, I don't see the other problems you mention. When you say "mozilla is often the first app to lose its icons and its interface starts falling to pieces..." -- well this just never happens to me, on NT4 or Linux. Are you trying to use win9x or something? If so, I suggest you nuke that PoS first, install a real operating system (I'd count NT as "real", others may disagree ;) and a pound gets a penny most of your issues will clear up.

      The other major cause of issues is installing over a previous version. Try nuking your ~/mozilla (on Windows: %SYSTEMROOT%/profiles/[username]/Application Data/Mozilla ) and reinstalling.

    • Re:Well done to the team (again) but.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Nerant ( 71826 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @08:09AM (#3685129)
      Some points you raise:
      "* Mozilla is less system tolerant than IE. Mozilla is often the first application to lose its icons and its interface starts falling to pieces. This is probably because of my memory or the CPU overheating.. but IE remains stable until the last minute."

      And this is a problem in Mozilla why? You yourself state that it's because of your RAM or your overheating CPU. I don't understand how changing software will fix your hardware problem.

      "* Many sites still don't display well in Mozilla. This is the Web developer's fault, but still.. Mozilla can do all of those DHTML menus and stuff, yet I still run into problems on sites that use them. An optional 'IE compliancy' patch in Mozilla would be very very useful!"

      This wouldn't help anyone: sticking an IE compliancy patch would only encourage web "developers" to stick to supporting IE specific html. Mozilla renders standard HTML, not "Microsoft HTML". You want more sites to display properly in Mozilla? Email the webmaster and ask him/her to write standard HTML. Once again, you expect the Mozilla team to make such a terrible compromise when you clearly state that "This is the Web developer's fault"

      • You want more sites to display properly in Mozilla? Email the webmaster and ask him/her to write standard HTML.

        While I agree with you, I'd like to defend the original poster by saying that this isn't always an option. Especially not when dealing with corporate web pages, even those of small companies.

        Many web designers charge more, sometimes much more, to produce standards-compliant web pages without all their Javascript and IE-specific tricks. And a lot of companies, especially small ones, will fight tooth and nail against anything that makes their web page less flashy or "attractive" to users.

        (The biggest irritation here for me is the thousand-and-one nonstandard ways of using drop-down navigation menus. To say nothing about the horrible usability of said menus in the first place!)

    • They also include:

      * Not supporting my (home) wheel mouse. Telling users they need new drivers is not an option!

      * Losing an entire folder of bookmarks being dragged. The bookmark section in general needs a fair amount of work

      Despite that, the pop-under tabbed browsing is the best thing since er the wheel mouse. I just want 'em both!

      • Not supporting my (home) wheel mouse. Telling users they need new drivers is not an option!

        How many times have people had to go to a hardware company's support site to get the latest drivers for their hardware? Or even the latest version of ActiveX to support the new game they want to install? In windows this has been a fact of life for years and this is not a mozilla only problem. At least you have an option of getting a new driver, most hardware companies are completely oblivious to anything but windows.
        I've been using mozilla for almost 2 years. I've never had a problem with the wheel mouse. I've installed it on both linux & windows machines. And I've used several brands of wheel mice including the genius net mouse which is'nt even a wheel but a toggle switch really. And they all worked perfectly. You need to give alot more information.
      • I don't know if this is a Mozilla problem or not (but I have read the bug reports) - but I've installed mozilla on umpteen computers, both windows and linux, and never had a problem with a scrollwheel.

    • IE compatibility patch... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gusnz ( 455113 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @08:15AM (#3685153) Homepage
      Well, there's one IE emulation script here [eae.net] that I know of. It's a regular .JS script, designed more for designers to adapt scripts easily than for clients, but it shows off the advanced side of Moz's JS 1.5 support (getters/setters for properties...).

      This brings up one of my older thoughts: you know how we can format sites with user-defined stylesheets, how about user-defined .JS files added to each page you load (without a local proxy)? Is it possible to add DOM properties with the user prefs JS files somehow? This could be very useful -- emulate IE, any other browser, customise the behaviour of any document function...

    • Re:Well done to the team (again) but.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Neil Watson ( 60859 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @08:57AM (#3685361) Homepage
      When you click on some links, it doesn't go to the destination.. and it just displays a picture off of the current page! Hit Refresh and you finally go on your way.


      If you are using a proxy like junkbusters then This [mozilla.org] will solve your problem:


      10.3. I'm using a transparent proxy (such as Junkbuster) and I'm having weird browsing problems. What's happening?

      Some transparent proxies (including some versions of Junkbuster) do not handle HTTP/1.1 properly. The first thing to try is to go to Edit | Preferences | Advanced | HTTP Networking and select 'Use HTTP 1.0'.

    • Many sites still don't display well in Mozilla. This is the Web developer's fault, but still.. Mozilla can do all of those DHTML menus and stuff, yet I still run into problems on sites that use them. An optional 'IE compliancy' patch in Mozilla would be very very useful!

      Um, no. It would be a Bad Idea to perpetuate IE crap.
    • A few addictions from Mac OS X...

      - Quartz integration? Looks the same a 1.0 did. Ok, they used the standard file dialog but I think they have a lot left to do in this department. Not that I'm complaining... I like it. I just expected more from a release that gets Quartz Integration in the Release notes.

      - Download Manacore? I'm sure the download manager is cool and all, but when I download something it doesn't use it... and when I try to open it, mozilla politely goes away leaving me a core.

      I shouldn't complain too much though. Mozilla 1.0 was great and this is just an alpha... Keep up the good work.
  • Quartz rendering for OS X 10.1.5 users

    Woo-hoo! I wonder if this is using that Silk [unsanity.com] program I haven't gotten around to installing yet.

    Doesn't matter. Mozilla was the only thing I was going to install it for, because decent looking text is the only thing I miss from OmniWeb.

    --saint
    • wonder if this is using that Silk program I haven't gotten around to installing yet.
      Yes and no. Previous to OS X 10.1.5, if you wanted the new antialiased text, you had to redo your graphics routines to use Quartz/CoreGraphics. In OS X 10.1.5, Apple changed things so that an application could get the better text while continuing to use QuickDraw. However, because this actually breaks a number of apps (AIM and AOL being biggies), the application must request the better text, which of course means that you'd normally have to wait until a new version came out. Silk simply tells the system to let all QuickDraw apps get the new text by calling QDSWitchText whether they do or no; it has almost zero logic within itself, and all the Moz developers had to do to get better text is call QDSwitchTextDraw().

  • Hallelujah! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by larien ( 5608 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @07:57AM (#3685078) Homepage Journal
    From the release notes:
    Image blocking for Mail & News has been implemented
    This is one feature I found missing from 1.0 which I felt should have been in. Other than that, I've found Mozilla to be a good mail client, despite my normal hatred of intergrated mail clients in software; best of all, I can use the same program in Windows and linux to access my IMAP mail!

    Next step is to figure out an easy way to automate transferring my contacts from Outlook (I've got an iPaq with all my contacts which syncs to Outlook) to LDAP, then both Mozillas (and my webmail program for externally accessing email) can use the same contacts list.

  • Zilla (Score:2, Funny)

    by Konster ( 252488 )
    In other news, Gnuzilla, the Open Source RMS P2P Rantware was released today. Milestones included with this release are Dogmas We Don't Care About and The Kernel That Make Us Wonder Why.

    Kazilla was released today, in version 0.000241. Although there is nothing noteworthy about this release of Kazilla, the popular P2P application, please be aware that it includes Spyzilla and Spamzilla software that may or may not install Screwmezilla based upon your approval, acceptance or non not acceptance of the EULA attached to Kazilla.

    The ever anticipated front-end to Slashdot's popular moderation system was also released to the public. Modzilla 0.7,28.90 is a GUI interface that streamlines and integrates popular random client-side interactions with www.slashdot.org's acclaimed moderation system.
  • Good to see the Mozilla team pushing forward from 1.0. Unfortunately for me, I just finished compiling 1.0, and I don't think I'll be upgrading any time soon. What we need now is that elusive spell-checker (not for me - for .... everyone else .... at work - seriously), the calender to stabalise and maybe get a MySQL backend, and the SkyPilot theme to be included alongside 'classic' and 'modern'.
    But anyway, I am no longer scared of demonstrating Mozilla to friends and colleges. Crank on Mozilla! You've come a LONG way since I first tried you out (Mozilla M5).

  • latest build... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Zadig ( 26610 )
    if you want the latest build, you can always download it from :
    ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/nightly/lates t-t runk/

  • Download manager (Score:3, Insightful)

    by barnaclebarnes ( 85340 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @08:08AM (#3685124) Homepage
    I assume that 'Download Manager' is something akin to Gozilla or Getright but without all the Spyware/Adware crap.

    About time too. This feature should be a core piece of any Browser. I should be able to schedule downloads, do segmented downloads and autmatcially resume downloads right from within the browser, not have to use some thirdparty app that is not integrated.

    /b

    • Re:Download manager (Score:5, Interesting)

      by chabotc ( 22496 ) <chabotc@ g m a i l.com> on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @08:47AM (#3685294) Homepage
      Actualy could not disagree stronger. Scheduling and a nice overview of downloads is very nice, but segmented / multithreaded download is the worst thing that ever happened.

      Multithread/segmented download is based on the assumption that the other people downloading are using one download process. And by using more your self, you get more bandwidth which you steal away from the other people. This is a extremely anti-social stance.

      Also, it is a bitch for sysadmins. If everyone used multi-process downloads, suddenly your site has to keep in mind that those 50 people downloading all use 5 processes, so you have to cater to 250 download processes (which eats mem, slows your machine down, and is generaly unfair for people who do play nice!)

      What i have done on all my FTP servers, is to put this line in the /etc/ftpaccess file:

      throughput /var/ftp * * 20000 0.2 *

      The 20000 is the max download speed (set to 0 for unlimited), but the 0.2 is the interesting part. It means that every extra download processes for the same client only gets a factor 0.2 of the download speed! This way if someone is anti-social enough to download using 5 threads, his download is actualy _slower_ then when he would use a single process. Thus keeping the bandwidth available for the people who play fair.

    • Re:Download manager (Score:2, Informative)

      by aoty ( 533561 )
      The download manager, as far as I can tell, is nothing more than window that shows all your current and past downloads in a compact list. It lacks a resume feature, bandwidth throttling, or a sequential download function for multiple files. These are all features that I hope are added soon.

  • DoS in Mozilla/X (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kyhwana ( 18093 ) <kyhwana@SELL-YOUR-SOUL.kyhwana.org> on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @08:11AM (#3685137) Homepage
    Anyone know if this has the fix for the remote DoS
    when X/XFS is running?
    (For those of you who don't know, you can kill X
    by including "body { font-size: 1666666px; }" in a stylesheet

    • Re:DoS in Mozilla/X (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MavEtJu ( 241979 ) <[gro.ujtevam] [ta] [todhsals]> on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @08:17AM (#3685156) Homepage
      As you can read on bugtraq, the general attitude is that it's more a problem within X and/or XFS than in Mozilla.

      • Re:DoS in Mozilla/X (Score:2, Informative)

        by kyhwana ( 18093 )
        Well, the DoS doesn't happen in any of the other browser for X, so it'd be nice if mozilla could handle it the same way.
    • Anyone know if this has the fix for the remote DoS when X/XFS is running?

      See, this is why I'm keeping with ext2. ;)

  • New release very soon after 1.0 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TuringTest ( 533084 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @08:26AM (#3685191) Journal
    It's a Nice Thing than Mozilla goes on dropping new releases after 1.0, because the release often approach of free software brings new features quite often.

    If someone there is worried about people facing this 1.1 new release when, in press releases they have been told about 1.0, then don't worry. The big milestone of 1.0 is about compatibility: the interfaces have been frozen so further development will be easy to do. This is a concert only for enterprises developing applications based on Mozilla technology (PDAs, portable aps, embedded devices), not for the desktop end user.

  • Text comparison. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by saintlupus ( 227599 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @08:46AM (#3685279)
    I took a couple of screenshots of Slashdot rendered with and without the Quartz rendering of Mozilla 1.1A.

    Wow. What a difference.

    http://www2.canisius.edu/~graciem/mozilla.html

    --saint
    • Call me crazy, but I reckon the Mozilla 1.0 looks much better. Maybe it's just the display on my laptop....?

      • Re:Text comparison. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by edwdig ( 47888 )
        I agree. In the 1.1 screenshot, the text looks like a blurry mess to me. If I look at it from up close, the blurring is painfully obvious and just doesn't look good. I tried backing up away from the screen, and it's hard to read. I don't get why it's supposed to be an improvement.
    • Not to sound like a Troll or anything, but do you not find that rendering to be far to blurry? It actually hurts my eyes trying to read it.
      • Not to sound like a Troll or anything, but do you not find that rendering to be far to blurry?

        Seems okay to me now, but I'm on my work machine with a Studio Display LCD - the original Moz rendering was jagged because the display is so crisp.

        I've got a CRT on my system at home - it'll be interesting to see what it looks like there.

        --saint

  • GTK2 port of Unix versions? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Turmio ( 29215 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @08:55AM (#3685347) Homepage
    In traditional /. style I prefer to ask silly questions instead of go googling or reading Bugzilla so here it goes.

    Does anyone know if they're planning to replace GTK 1.2 with GTK 2.0 soon as default toolkit on Unix platforms? By default I mean it uses GTK 2.0 if found without having to use --with-toolkit=gtk2 configure option of whatever it's called. I think basic GTK 2.0 support has been in since February or so and I personally tested it sometime in April or May (had to get some patches somewhere and apply to source from CVS, wasn't yet committed back then) and it worked fine on my mainstream system (i686 PC running Debian/unstable). Also some days ago I grabbed some snapshot debs from an APT repository announced on galeon-devel mailing list. Packages included Mozilla with GTK2 support and Galeon compiled from source from the HEAD branch of their CVS. That GNOME 2.0 version of Galeon is already almost quite usable, very cool.

    Anyway, IMHO, it would be appropriate to begin public testing of new rendering back-end in early stages of 1.1 alphas by compiling official snapshots for Unices with GTK 2.0 support enabled. Any words regarding the issue?

    • Xlib (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Per Abrahamsen ( 1397 )
      Last I heard (which is a long time ago), the plan was to use pure Xlib. Mozilla already uses its own XUL widgets for almost everything.

      People who prefer Gtk over XUL should probably use Galeon [sourceforge.net] instead of Mozilla.

  • I can't manually log into the ftp server, and the link from the releases page returns a 0 byte file. I know others have gotten this version, so where is it? Anyone got a reliable mirror out there?

    Eric
  • Why haven't they put the 1.1a source up? I don't want to do all the CVS jazz (yes I know it isn't hard).
  • Kudos on the excellent browser. I couldn't be happier with it... well, maybe a little happier.

    I'd love to see a way to allow/block particular plugins for certain websites, as we can now with cookies. A way to globally turn all plugins on/off easily would be useful as well.

    OT... the start up speed from 1.0 to 1.1a is significantly faster on my machine, and 1.0 was fast enough for me!
  • Not sure what it is, but from the looks of another user's screenshots it seems to improve font rendering. What can I do for !686? I'm running RH7.3 with Radeon 8500 on one machine and ATI Rage Mobility 128 on another. The fonts looks look crappy. Like reading a page where the ink has bled.

    Not to mention that I can't get the screen resolution below max (16KX12K) on my laptop. I've run Xconfigurator a dozen times and tried the CTRL-ALT-Minus trick but it won't change.

    • Poor mozilla font rendering in Red Hat 7.3 (Score:4, Informative)

      by jonabbey ( 2498 ) <jonabbey@ganymeta.org> on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @10:36AM (#3686044) Homepage

      Actually, I found that the biggest problem with Mozilla in RedHat 7.3 was that I had installed the AbiWord word processor when I installed the system. AbiWord happens to have some really poor quality fonts named according to the Microsoft convention.. Arial, etc. So any web page that gives you something like

      <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">

      will cause Mozilla on X to go and find the lousy AbiWord fonts, no matter what you try and do in the Mozilla font preferences.

      The solution is to comment out the reference to the AbiSuite fonts in /etc/X11/fs/config from finding the AbiWord MS-named fonts.

      Mozilla on RedHat 7.3 was totally unusable until I did this.

  • Too bad it doesn't run on UFS (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Karl Cocknozzle ( 514413 ) <kcocknozzle.hotmail@com> on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @11:00AM (#3686226) Homepage
    Unfortunately, due to a bug in one of Apple's libraries (not sure which, IANADH -- I am not a darwin hacker) Mozilla (any version since .8.x) crashes instantly if launched from a UFS partition in Mac OS X.

    Really sucks, because when I got rid of OS 9 on my tiBook, I reformatted it all UFS, thinking I'd never have need for HFS+ again. Oops...

    At least Chimera doesn't have that problem (although there are a slew of others...)

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