Mozilla 1.2 Betas Start Flowing

Asa Dotzler writes "Today mozilla.org released Mozilla 1.2alpha. This is a preview of what's to come with Mozilla 1.2 expected in early November. The new alpha contains great new features like Type Ahead Find which allows quick web page navigation when you type a succession of characters in the browser. In addition to the new features Mozilla 1.2a contains stability and perfomance improvements including a major boost in the speed of downloading mail on Mac OS X.This release comes on the heels of the security and bugfix follow-up to Mozilla 1.0. If you're a 1.0 user and you're not upgrading to Mozilla 1.1 or newer then you are strongly encouraged to get Mozilla 1.0.1 for security and stability fixes."

Re:Well at this rate...

[evilquaker]

Mozilla will become feature complete when compared to IE6 sometime in the beginning of next year :-)

Really? IE6 has mouse gestures, tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking?

Sounds to me like Mozilla is already more feature complete than IE... little conveniences like type-ahead find really don't compare to the three I mentioned above...

Re:Umm.. Just a question...

[psykocrime]

What can the new mozilla do that I can't already do in Opera or IE?!?!?

That you can't do in Opera? Don't know, I don't use Opera.

That you can't do in IE:

1. Tabbed Browsing

2. Use mouse gestures

3. use radial context menus

4. use type ahead search (ala Emacs)

5. Use Mycroft search plugins to search from the URL bar or Sidebar.

6. Use other neat Sidebar plug-ins

7. use custom themes to "skin" the browser.

8. chat on IRC

I'm sure there are other things as well, but those are the first ones that come to mind.

Re:No major news, and still a memory hog

[jo-do-cus]

I personally rate improvement of the interface much (yes, very much) higher than performance improvement. I stick to Mozilla because i like its look and feel, even though opera might be a little faster, but i dont like the interface.

Having many features and good accessibility is far more important if you want to reach a big crowd of users. IMHO it's mostly the techies and programmers who keep whining about it being too slow or too big.
Yes, i can imagine my mother complaining about speed, but only if there is a very excessive lag (which is not the case in moz.), and even then she would probably blame it on the connection or so. Something like a memory footprint would never even come up in the mind of most regular users. It is easy handling, accessibility and standards support that will make mozilla a big player, and the type ahead feature is just one of the things i was waiting for.

Fixing performance can wait, companies like MS and Apple know this (remember releases of Win95, 98, OS X etc)...

Re:Umm.. Just a question...

[Anonymous Coward]

9) Block adds

10) Block pop-ups

11) Trust that the browser is not spying on me

The 3 "killer features" of mozilla for me.

Re:Umm.. Just a question...

[N3WBI3]

Yes it is bloatware, if you install it that way! I just do a browser only installiation all of the features pointed out above are browser featuers (except irc chat). When I install mozilla it does not "become a part of the os".

Re:Well at this rate...

[mshiltonj]

You misunderstand: what Mozilla allows you to do is block *unrequested* pop-up windows. Other, requested pop-ups work just fine.

Mozilla *thinks* the popups are unrequested, but, as part of the application, the behavour is desired.

At times, the onLoad event of the document object opens one or more new windows as part of the application.

Among other things, this is what the pop-up blocker blocks. 99.9% of the time, this is exactly what I want. But for this particular application, I really *do* want (need) one or more new windows to be opened on a document onLoad event.

I have not found a way to enable or disable Mozilla's behavior in this regard on a per-site basis.

After make the earlier post, I realized that what I need, for pop-up blocking, is the same as already offered with cookie and image management.

Mozilla lets me block or allow cookies and images on a per-site basis. I'd like the same level of granularity for pop-up blocking.

Is this possible? Does anyone else have this need?

Re:Well at this rate...

[Sj0]

use the quickloader. IE has it's stuff loaded already, why not level the playing field?

Re:Opening new windows

[sjbe]

I've been slightly annoyed by this behavior, though you can work around it pretty easily. Mozilla to the last tab you were in so I just usually open a new tab (hit Ctrl-T) and then do the link. An annoying extra step I'll concur but I think if that is the only thing holding you back work around it. Mozilla has too much OSS goodness to let something so small ruin it for you. :-)

Usability bugs

[flend]

I'm always surprised that yet another Mozilla version does not fix big usability bugs.

These include the broken line wrapping that happens occasionally, the bizarrely greyed-out `launch file' option after downloading some types of files and finally, the irritating way in which if you download a file which turns out to 404, mozilla happily creates the file on your disc containing the 404 html and doesn't tell you!

Re:Usability bugs

[bunratty]

I'm always surprised that yet another Mozilla version does not fix big usability bugs.

If you give us the bug numbers, we can vote for them or even nominate them to be fixed in an upcoming version. Throw us a friggin' bone here, people!

Re:Well at this rate...

[MatriXOracle]

Maybe if you read your own link (bugzilla bug 28568, copy link and paste in address bar) [mozilla.org] you would notice that this is fixed in 1.2a, but you have to use a hidden pref to enable it:

user_pref("browser.xul.error_pages.enabled", true)

So next time, try READING instead of posting a useless flame about your favorite bug.