Review of Mozilla's 2002

An anonymous reader writes "MozillaZine is currently featuring an article looking back at the last 12 months of the Mozilla project. It's amazing to see how far things have come in 2002. A year ago, there was no Mozilla 1.0, no Netscape 7, no Phoenix, no Chimera and no shipping AOL clients using Gecko (Mozilla's rendering engine). An interesting read."

I just started ....

[craenor]

Using Mozilla, and I love it. There's only one small problem. I really miss being able to click my mouse wheel and move the mouse up and down to scroll through the page faster.

Mozilla is great for web development

[Gortbusters.org]

I like the sample demos that the 1.0 start page used to show for mozilla.

Even more so, tabbed web browsing is great for testing various web applications.

Finally, I love the HTML composer... it's great for composing little slashdot messages ;)

Re: Validation

[tradervik]

Which earliest version of IE? IE on Win 95, Win 98, Win Me, Win NT, Win 2000, Win XP or IE on the Mac? All of these platforms represent significant portions of my company's client base.

a year ago

[re-Verse]

I could tell people "I use Mozilla" and most people would look at me like i was speaking greek (except the greeks, they'd look at me like i was speaking inuit).

Now I tell people i use Mozilla, and Some of them actually know what it is, or have heard of it. Not to mention that since there is a 1.X release out, i can confidently install it on a friends or clients machine without a lot of worry of weird crashes and bugs.

Once Mozillas spam filtering becomes easy and useful, I can see myself converting a LOT more people a lot more easily than i already have. So far i've converted about 25 diehard IE users... and i wonder how many they have converted.

Re:Technical advancement not the issue.

[Anonymous Coward]

The common answer to this is "Mozilla is not for end users". Bah! There's no point in developing the thing if it ain't for end users. Please read "The 'Mozilla is so for end users' FAQ" [phrasewise.com]

To make the long story short, mozilla.org doesn't want to promote mozilla.org Mozilla builds, because Netscape pays the bill, so they want to direct people to Netscape instead. This is understandable, but it doesn't mean Mozilla-based browsers don't need users or that the Mozilla technologies are not intended to fall into the hand of end users.

So how are Gecko-based browsers going to be successful?

• Chimera is the best OS X browser. If you are using OS X and aren't using it yet, give it a try. (Remember to update the Flash plug-in, though, to avoid a crasher in the version of Flash plug-in that came with the OS.)
• Mozilla and Galeon come by default with Red Hat and Debian. Galeon rocks. If you are still using Netscape 4.x on Linux, it is time to upgrade.
• If you are on a *nix platform that doesn't have Galeon, consider using Mozilla or porting Galeon or Phoenix to your platform.
• But the key to market share is Windows. AOL could do a lot if they just used Gecko in AOL for Windows. What's holding them back? They already use it on OS X and in Compuserve.

Browser good, Mail/News not so good

[tradervik]

The browser is excellent. At work, I use both IE and Mozilla (mainly because Windows launches IE when I click on a URL link in Outlook and I haven't been able to find out how to change that). Mozilla does a better job rendering complex pages. Take a page with a big table that uses CSS to control the layout. Mozilla is able to display the table progressively (i.e. display the rows as the data arrives at the browser) while IE seems to need to wait for the entire table to arrive. IE also crashes trying to print out that page if the table is big enough to take more than 2 or 3 paper pages.

Mozilla also has tabbed browsing, a popup blocker, etc. etc. The only area I have noticed where Mozilla still lags is in some DHTML (JavaScript/DOM) stuff. For example, pages that implement animation using DHTML can be much slower than IE.

The Mozilla Mail/News client, on the other hand, has not been so successful, in my opinion. For example, the last time I tried to use it, it would do strange things when I tried to insert blank lines between quoted lines in a reply.

Re:Chimera

[otis wildflower]

I'm also a big fan; there's really no reason to go with OmniWeb anymore as Chim handles pretty much every website I visit better. Chimera also imho handles tabs better than Opera for OS X, and I like that it integrates with OS X proxy settings (though I'd like the developers to make that a little more obvious in the doccys ;)

Obvious features I'd like to see though:

more OSXisms, like glowing borders around selected textareas (ala omniweb)

Better theme support, including a theme/preference for 'Textured' (aka brushed metal). This stuff can be done with external apps like InterfaceBuilder, but it should be easier.

UserAgent quick-selects and customization within Preferences, ala Opera

SOME added mail functionality, such as include full webpage as attachment. I like 0.6 adding send link, but I want send page as well to mail copies of 'registration required' pages.

more stability.

better 'threading' behavior: I notice that tabs behave 'blocked' by other tabs' slowness or failure to load pages. Each tab (and browser window obviously) should download and behave independently of any other.

more features, including autofill, more keyboard shortcuts, etc.

better documentation

better interface into 'Helper Application' settings, such as RealPlayer and QuickTime. Ideally Chimera would ask me before it loads something that runs within a helper app whether I want to save or run. This should be configurable and is pretty much a standard item in modern browsers. 0.6 addresses this a bit, but I'd prefer to have an additional option to choose per-click, in order to best avoid rogue code.

Integrate Privoxy :)

Better performance and stability :)

I don't change web habits often, but I have gone from Mozilla web+mail to OS X Mail + Chimera and I'm quite happy with the switch. Chimera should be the only web browser ANY OS X user ever needs, from Grandmas to Geeks. And, of course, being an OS X program, it needs to be pretty, easy to use, and very very powerful. In fact, as it stands now, it IMHO should be the standard OS X browser distributed by Apple, but only when it's a bit more stable (it crashes often on the NYTimes site, and particularly when closing tabs or going from one site to another by cmd-l, typing a new url, and hitting enter when a different page was already loading).

I only hope that moving to the 1.2 (or any other post 1.0) branch won't be too painful or duplicative of work.. I already don't like that the kill-tab behavior is 'backwards' and that throws me when I use Moz..

Mozilla and Mac OS X

[The Glory of Witty]

Mozilla for Mac OS X is a nice browser and it gets better everyday, but I still think that in terms of speed it lags behind Internet Explorer. Chimera on the other hand is the fastest web browser I've ever used and it renders websites just about as well as IE. Its light, its fast, its cocoa, if you are using OS X you owe it to yourself to at least check out this amazing browser. I feel that its the most exciting thing happening on the OS X platform right now. Now all we need is for Chimera to reach a final version so Apple can bundle it with OS X and new Macs that are sold. Think about it: Apple's license with Microsoft has expired, so they don't even need to ship IE anymore, although I'm sure they will continue just because IE is the standard. Chimera is a cocoa product which is exactly what Apple has been emphasizing for its speed and usability. Whatever the case is, the future looks bright for this amazing browser!

Re:Technical advancement not the issue.

[Soul-Burn666]

XP has a built-in zip functionality? Didn't know that......

I know XP has a built-in image viewer, yet most people prefer downloading ACDSee instead.

XP has MSN Msngr in it. Yet people prefer ICQ.

Re:mozilla rocks!

[Guppy06]

In Soviet Russia, the browser changes to suit the website!

A trick to speed up Mozilla v1.2.1 and previous...

[antdude]

Paint Timeout is too high in the current stable versions. This is why Phoenix works so fast in rendering. Hopefully, the next stable version will have this fix. Here's the copy of Mozilla thread in newsgroup:

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Great performance tuning pref setting
Date: Wed, 25 Dec 2002 18:16:37 +0100
From: Markus Hübner
Organization: Another Netscape Collabra Server User
Newsgroups:
netscape.public.mozilla.win32,n etscape.public.mozi lla.performance
References:

Olaf Dietsche wrote:
> Markus Hübner writes:
>
>
>>Jonathan Arnold wrote:
>>
>>>>>http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_ bug.cgi?id=1 80241
>>>>>is highly interesting!
>>>>
>>>>Can't wait for the pref additions to try it out, looks interesting.
>>>
>>>It's in Moztweak.
>>>
>>
>>cool - but it would be really needed to tune the default value.
>>the "standard mozilla user" doesn't have Moztweak nor does the typical
>>Netscape (Gecko embedded browser) user.
>
>
> Well, every user has an editor. You can put the following line
> into prefs.js or user.js:
>
> user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 500);
>
> I tested this with various values, but couldn't see any difference
> until I tried:
>
> user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);
>
> This is in sync with:
>
>
> Regards, Olaf.

Thx for the pointer to mozillazine, Olaf! :: markus

2003 is the year of Mozilla's dead....

[KAMiKAZOW]

This is not a troll post!

2003 is the year of Mozilla's dead.... at least of Mozilla's current form.
The reason? AOL Communicator [betanews.com]! I downloaded a beta version from www.datakill.com [datakill.com] and I think, it has a bright future.
The reasons:

1. It seems that AOL is finally going to push Gecko to the masses (It's branded as AOL product, not Netscape)
2. AOL Communicator is split up in single applications (ac_mail.exe, ac_im.exe,...) - no ''all in one'' like Mozilla or Netscape.
3. (And that's my peronal favourite, 'cause that's what I prayed for since ages) AOL Communictor is written using wxWindows [wxwindows.org]!
   Yes it's true. Finally they got rid of the sluggish XUL interface and still being multi-plattform.
   Phoenix (or whatever the future name will be) has helped, but Phoenix' interface is still somewhat slow compared to native Windows apps. Phoenix' GUI toolkit is also not fully aware of Visual Styles (skins for WinXP) - the menus look ''old school'', while the other apps have flat/skinned menus.
   AOL Communicator (thanks to wxWindows) uses native widgets everywhere.
   Quote from the included copyright-notice.txt:

   AOL Communicator uses the following libraries and modules:
   
   wxWindows libraries Copyright (c) 1998 Julian Smart, Robert
   Roebling. The wxWindows source code, available under the
   wxWindows Library License, Version 3, can be found at
   http://www.wxwindows.org [wxwindows.org].

While the beta version does only consist of an eMail app and the Instant Messenger (compatible with AIM and ICQ), AOL is also developing a browser component.
If you have a look into the file ''AOL Communicator\locale\cat\ac_help.mo'', you can find the following strings (BTW, ''Photon'' is the codename for the Communicator):

About Photon Browser

Photon Browser is not currently your default browser.
Would you like to make it your default browser?

Oh yes, I can't wait for the final release. I hope there will be an open source version of it (without the AOL specific stuff like AOL Mail or the Instant Messenger - called Mozilla 2.0 or something like that), to allow porting it to other platforms.

Oh, BTW... I did an experiment and it worked: You can move the mail folder from Mozilla's profile directory to AOL Communicator's profile directory. All your mails stay intact.

Honestly, I don't know why the Mozilla/Netscape developers waste their time in creating a new toolkit (the one that Phoenix uses), if they should better convince their bosses from AOL to open the source of the Communicator.

PS: Thanks for reading this post and (hopefully) not modding me down as ''Troll'' :)

Likely explanation...

[mahlen]

I believe that much of the website design for Mozilla.org is/was done by Shepard Fairey, of Obey Giant [obeygiant.com] fame. He has a fondness for early 20th century Soviet propaganda styles that suffuses much of his work.

Also, there is a "revolutionary" quality to much of the Mozilla work, which the red star also harkens to.

mahlen

Playzilla

[Jack Zombie]

Youre not understanding the Playboy article: its promoting Mozillas qualities as a porn browser, not as a general use browser; just notice the features they highlight in the article and consider what kind of audience Playboy has. I guess we can assume you wont ever read in a general living, or style, magazine about how great Mozilla is when you want to jerk off to pictures of scantily dressed girls.

Oh, and heres a link to the Pornzilla project [netscape.com] -- theyre the ones whove been putting pressure on the developers (and contributing some code too) to make Mozilla a wonderful browser for all the perverts out there.

Re:Wrong direction, guys

[Tablizer]

What the hell is a "remote mozilla application"?

I believe they mean a server-centric application where the client is Mozilla. It would not be conceptually much different than a web app, but you would be allowed to use XUL's GUI widgets and have GUI-like functionality like not having to redraw the entire page just to change one item on it.

The server may have nothing to do with Mozilla, other than sending Mozilla-recognized commands or markup to the client. But the server could be runing PHP, Java, ASP, ColdFusion, or whatever.

Re:2003 is the year of Mozilla's dead....

[Anonymous Coward]

The real problem Mozilla is facing right now, imo, is not the UI toolkit but the fact that Gecko is likely to be very much obsolete in 2-3 years unless a good deal of major work happens...

May I ask why?

Re:Technical advancement not the issue.

[pyrros]

No, the problem is really one of adaptation: Once it's build, once it's available, how do you make people come and use it?

It goes like this:

x: here's a CD with mozilla
o: what does it do?
x: it's an internet browser, like IE, without the pop-up ads, and a mail client like outlook minus the viruses.
o: cool, i'll try it!

OK, it's a bit optimistic, but you CAN get your windows-using friends/relatives/coworkers to try mozilla without too much effort. I bet that almost half of them are going to WANT to try it once they hear about pop-up blocking, and a good number of them will like tabbed browsing. They might even like type-ahead or gestures or google search in the location bar.

We are not talking about stuff like standards compatibility, personal data encryption, or being open-sourse that your average windows user could not care less about. Mozilla has cool features, and is reasonably easy to use. Sure, it's a little slow, but that is becoming less and less of a problem, as cpu speeds go up and mozilla gets more optimized/ less bloated (think phoenix).

Getting people to use linux is not as easy by a long shot: young peolpe who have plenty of free time and a desire to try things are instantly put off by the lack of games (and no, things like winex, don't cut it), while older people are VERY afraid to change their working enviroment (learning windows took them long enough, they sure as hell ain't changing now) no matter how much more stable/fast linux is. Plus, when trying to get people to use linux you probably have to help them back-up their files (think mp3), install linux and get it to a working shape, which takes a LOT of time, both yours and theirs.

Mozilla on the other hand takes 2 minutes to install, 5 minutes (with mailnews) to configure and one minute to tell people to middle/ ctrl click to open tabs.

So yes, i do believe that mozilla has an easier job than linux in getting to the end-users desktop.

Re:Tired of IE users.

[DeadSea]

I get between 1500 and 2000 unique visitors a day. Most of my stuff is programming related, so visitors to my site are not representative of the entire intenet population. I do have a significant number of students and teachers that visit my TI Calculator programs.

Re:Chimera

[ealar dlanvuli]

As a Mac user who uses Chimera as my main browser I can say the following safely.

Chimera is *SLOW*. Every time I switch back to phoenix I'm awe struke at it's speed. The Chimera team really should fold considerable chunks of the phoenix code into themselves, or something rather drastic.

Alternatively Phoenix should release a version that has "apple look and feel", but I get the impression there might be an under the table deal between Apple and Netscape to leave Chimera as the only viable browser.

I love phonix, I just wish it was about twice as fast.

Re:Browser good, Mail/News not so good

[jesser]

The Mozilla Mail/News client, on the other hand, has not been so successful, in my opinion. For example, the last time I tried to use it, it would do strange things when I tried to insert blank lines between quoted lines in a reply.

Yeah, replying to e-mails using the Mozilla mail client is painful. Not enough to stop me from using it, but enough to get me to swear occasionally. Most of the problems involve working with blockquotes: adding reply lines in the middle of them, merging them, moving text in and out of them. A quick bugzilla search brought up 178899,155609,144998,115498.

Re:I used IE

[riscthis]

I wonder how feasible it would be to use IE's ActiveX / Install-On-Demand features to easily offer the download of Mozilla/Phoenix/etc to the user's machine?

e.g. the first time a user browses to a particular site, they are met with a dialog stating "We believe this site will display better in Mozilla. Would you like to download and install Mozilla now? (This will take roughly x minutes at your current connection speed.)"

If the user clicks "Yes", the new browser automatically downloads, installs and launches with the original site displayed. If the user clicks "No", the dialog never appears for that site again.

No heavy-handed tactics, just a simple one-off question for the user.

After all, people already use this mechanism to download browser plugins (or some adware/spyware etc) so it should be very familiar.