Mozilla 1.4RC2 Released

levell writes "Mozilla 1.4RC2 has been released. It looks like the final version of 1.4 may be out soon. It looks good although there are some problems with java on old linux systems (discussed here). 1.4 will be a long lived branch that some distributors will base versions of their own software on (e.g. Netscape planned release, codenamed "buffy"). 1.4 will be the last version of Mozilla released as a suite, after that the switch to separate browser, e-mail etc. applications will take place."

Watch out for new version of Hotmail...

[jkrise]

That accidentally doesn't work with this Mozilla any more... now that AOL's approved of IE and sunk Netscape and abandoned Mozilla (yet?), this is the next in line.

Browser Spoofing.

[Delta-9]

I think browser spoofing is a very bad thing. Yes it lets you load your page correctly, but it will never let the "powers that be" know that people use something other than IE.

I have stopped telling safari to use the IE "user agent" because of this. I want people to know that I use something that isn't Microsoft and sooner or later this is going to make a difference. Especially with the fact that M$ has officially dropped their IE for OS X.

Re:Browser Spoofing.

[El Cubano]

I have stopped telling safari to use the IE "user agent" because of this. I want people to know that I use something that isn't Microsoft and sooner or later this is going to make a difference. Especially with the fact that M$ has officially dropped their IE for OS X.

Boy would I love to join you there. Unfortunately there are still some websites that flat out refuse to load into anything other than IE, most notably the website where I access my payroll information to verify I was paid correctly). I emailed tech support and their reply was, "we only support IE in Windows, get partition magic and install windows on your computer." It's a tough fight righ now.

Don't cave in.

[haeger]

I emailed tech support and their reply was, "we only support IE in Windows, get partition magic and install windows on your computer."

Then do what I do. Refuse to use their service. My bank didn't allow me to use Mozilla on Linux, bye bye bank. I can find someone else to give my money to. My company recently installed a time-reportin tool that requires Windows and IE, I still send my report card to a secretary since I don't have a computer with IE on it, it's either that or they can PAY me to come in in the evening to fill out those damn web-reports in IE, and I guarantee You that I will do this on high pay time.

Don't cave in. All over the world there is one thing people understand. Money. If not supporting Mozilla starts costing them money then they'll have to rethink.

I'm sure I could install windows if they like, provided that they pay for the licese, the computer, my time to install and administer the box. If they want me to run it, they'd better pay me. I don't do boring stuff on my spare time.

.haeger

Re:Don't cave in.

[El Cubano]

Then do what I do. Refuse to use their service. My bank didn't allow me to use Mozilla on Linux, bye bye bank. ...

<snip>

Don't cave in. All over the world there is one thing people understand. Money.

I agree with you in principle. But, this the U.S. government, not a bank. It's my payroll, not an account. Believe me, I understand money, especially mine. At least for now, I can still get my pay statement in the mail, but what happens when they stop mailing them out (like when they went to exclusively direct deposit)?

At least I recently talked to a supervisor in the tech support shop (I managed to a get phone number to them) who seems to be more helpful than that twit of a tech who responded to my first email.

discrimination?

[ChristTrekker]

In which case, it's even worse. The system was built using taxpayers' money (including yours), in such a way that it discriminates against you.

Sorry, you don't have much of a case there. Your choice of browser is just that, your choice. Government cannot discriminate based on factors that people have no choice about (gender, race) or on factors that are considered beyond criticism (religion). (Private entities should have the right to freedom of association, but I digress.) But on matters of choice, th

Monopoly

[moncyb]

So what about the fact they are helping a company violate anti-trust law? A huge portion of M$'s anti-trust violations were due to deliberately making M$ products not work with competing products. It doesn't look good when the US government assists them.

Re:discrimination?

[arkanes]

More of a case than you'd think. See if that page works in a screen reader or a braille converter. If it rejects non-IE user agents, odds are that it doesn't.

BofA

[engine matrix]

Say what you want about Bank of America, but their online banking works great with Netscape/Mozilla. I think WAMU works o.k. too. Is there a website out there that lists IE only companies/services? A list like that would definitely bring this problem into the open and possibly shame companies into cross-platform development.

Re:Don't cave in.

[Cromac]

Then do what I do. Refuse to use their service. My bank didn't allow me to use Mozilla on Linux, bye bye bank

He said it was his payroll service, not his bank. It's not like he can just tell the accounting department to "go use someone else" unless he's the CEO.

My company recently installed a time-reportin tool that requires Windows and IE, I still send my report card to a secretary since I don't have a computer with IE on it, it's either that or they can PAY me to come in in the evening to fill out thos

Re:Don't cave in.

[pyros]

They can't fire us all, can they?

Sure, just ask Reagan and the 13,000 FAA employees that he fired.

Re:Browser Spoofing.

[hawkfish]

I think browser spoofing is a very bad thing. Yes it lets you load your page correctly, but it will never let the "powers that be" know that people use something other than IE.

I recently had to write some code to identify OSX browsers from their UserAgent strings, and IE is not the problem - it is Mozilla! Everything claims to be Mozilla, and the only way to know if you have Mozilla is by process of elimination using the later parts of the string - i.e. if it is not something you know, then it must be M

Re:Browser Spoofing.

[l-ascorbic]

Mozilla identifies itself with "Gecko" in the user-agent string.

Re:Browser Spoofing.

[frankie]

Everything claims to be Mozilla

What's so hard about grepping for /\) Gecko\// ? It's way easier than, say, bowling for dollars.

Re:Browser Spoofing.

[TheRaven64]

Opera's UA spoofing is ver easy to toggle (ctrl+alt+o for Opera, ctrl+alt+i for IE). I leave it in Opera mode most of the time, but when I find a site that diverts me to a 'your browser is not supported because our web site was designed by the Boss's 13 year old son who thinks IE rocks' page then I hit switch to IE mode. I then make a point of visiting the site in Opera mode and then leaving a couple of times a week to rack up the count of 'customers turned away by our refusal to adhere to standards'.

Ironically I have yet to find a page which doesn't work in Opera identifying as IE, while a lot of ASP sites fail to work while identifying as Opera.

Re:Browser Spoofing.

[berzerke]

make the browser spoofing feature hit the same page (with the no-cache pragma, or whatever it takes to avoid any intervening caches) 50 times with the real user-agent for each page it loads with the spoofed user-agent.

While I think that may prove very satisfying, it would not be a good idea. All those requests coming from the same ip in such a short time would be a dead giveaway. Plus word would get out and that info would quietly be discarded by various log analyzers.

Now if someone would write a tool that spoofs the ip address but sends the real user agent (a few times) before sending the fake user agent, that might prove more effective. A few clueless webmasters might actually change.

(Pion with clue to CIO): Sir, look at the logs showing all these people using non-IE browsers who tried to access our IE-only website but couldn't. Think of all that lost business!

(CIO): Change the website to make it standards compliant! (OK, I can dream can't I?)

Re:Browser Spoofing.

[Anonvmous Coward]

"WHo's to say IE is correct in their implementation?"

The market. They'd be more or less right, too. IE's not only good at rendering HTML, but it's also very fault resistant. I've had HTML in both Netscape and Opera cause the scrollbars to never appear. Can't say I've ever had that with IE.

"No browser follows the specs exactly (last I heard, Mozilla was closest), and that is a damn shame."

That's debatable. Who says the spec was correct in the first place? As people use the HTML, ideas about how it should be used evolve. For example, tables have a border feature. In Netscape (4 I think, it's been a while since I've done HTML) you can't set the color of the borders. You always get that ugly gray embossed table. Ie was quite happy to accept a hex code to draw the table with that color. The result? Instead of assigning a color value to the border, you had to set the table background color to what you want the border to be, and then set each cell to have a bg color that you want the foreground to be. That's pretty convoluted. It's possible that either Netscape was pretty dumb about it, or they were following WC3s flawed spec. To be honest, I don't know. The point is I don't think that following the spec is necessarily the holy grail of browser rendering. The code just plain needs to be usable. (I do agree, though, that a standard should evolve and everybody should follow it. That doesn't necessarily mean it's WC3's.)

"I wish I could earn a living as a lazy web designer, toying with Photoshop and Dreamweaver all day and not even lifting a finger as to do some actual work, like checking cross-platform or at least cross-browser compatability."

1.) Who says it's laziness? When you're a web-develoiper, you have unreasonable deadlines to get things done. My company in particular thought it took a week to design, build, and publish an entire website. The idea of spending time to test it on various platforms was ludicrous. "Just make it work in Netscape and IE, don't worry about anything else." Don't fault me for my boss's pointy-haired decisions.

2.) I can't speak for Dreamweaver, but FrontPage made it real easy to test your pages in various browsers. It had a 'preview in browser' mode that would give you a dropdown of all the browsers you had installed or setup on your machine, then it'd send the page to it. Then, it'd even ask you what window size you wanted to try it at. Want to test your site at 800 by 600? No problemo. I would assume that Dreamweaver did all that as well.

I probably wouldn't ordinarily have responded to that comment, but I've had that Photoshop/FrontPage 'lazy job'. And it's anything but lazy. You try coming up with an artistic design for a site and then hacking HTML to make it work. HTML is a lousy markup standard for doing artsy sites. You'd be surprised at the pixel-magic we've had to do.

Re: Browser spoofing problem

[Cochonou]

I think developpers have said numerous times on Bugzilla that they didn't want to implement an "user friendly" browser spoofing feature because they believe it would hurt Mozilla in the long run.

The problem is that, if many people were using Mozilla spoofing (let's say) IE6, Mozilla "market share" would appear even lower in statistics than it already is, thus making even harder for Mozilla evangelists to do their job.
Who would want to support a browser that would seem to be used by 0.003% of web surfers ?

Re: Browser spoofing problem

[D. Book]

Won't the users pay the price in the long run when corporations see that 99.9% of their website visitors are IE users, and implement future IE-specific features that Microsoft has made sure alternative browsers are unable to implement?

As I see it, this is similar to other forms of discrimination -- people are being forced to look like the majority (in this case, IE users) so that they don't get treated differently.

Re: Browser spoofing problem

[skt]

well, if the developers/company thought that they should write to the standard and leave it up to the client to render the standard.. then we wouldn't have this problem of hotmail, msn, whatever using the passed user agent to block access to people using client X. That is the point of this thread, those sites have a history of introducing rendering error into Opera/Mozilla (to name a few) to make it appear that the user is using a sub-standard product (IE renders correctly of course). Guess what, spoofing

Re:Watch out for new version of Hotmail...

[Spazmania]

The irony in that statement is that IE is still spoofing Mozilla:

"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; MSN 2.5; Windows 98)"

Hmm...

[stienman]

"We do not guarantee that any source code or executable code available from the mozilla.org domain is Year 2000 compliant."

Good thing we're not in the year 2000 anymore. Lucky for those lazy developers...

-Adam

Re:Hmm...

[TheViffer]

Oh .. time bugs will happen much sooner then that.
Unix timestamp roll over [slashdot.org]

Re:Hmm...

[Shenkerian]

I'm more worried about the year 2038 [howstuffworks.com] bug.

.

Camino?

[Montreal]

Hopefully the Camino developer(s) will now switch to this branch - from what I can see, the nightlies have been pretty variable quality ever since 0.7, which is when they switched to the trunk from a 1.0-ish branch.

But, but, but...

[Blahbbs]

..I just downloaded RC1 last night! Thank God for DSL...

Java

[graikor]

It isn't just old Linux systems that have problems with Java - in fact, Java applets are one of two issues that cause Mozilla to crash. The other is viewing too many images in tabs - even if you close tabs after you've viewed the pics, and try not to keep more than a half-dozen open at once, eventually it will die, and the Netscape Quality Agent pops up...

Re:Java

[syle]

The other is viewing too many images in tabs - even if you close tabs after you've viewed the pics, and try not to keep more than a half-dozen open at once, eventually it will die

Another case of porn driving innovation. Come on, people, try to have some self-control! Was 5 naked people at once really not enough?

Re:Java

[hendridm]

> Was 5 naked people at once really not enough?

I've run into this problem with Firebird. Moz is well suited for surfing porn link farms since you can quickly control-click (to open in new tab) down a link list. Since there is usually SO much crap thrown in with porn links, you can quickly click on one tab and hit the "X" to close the bad ones. For someone who is looking for quality porn quickly, there is no other.

Amateur

[Pac]

Any professional pornographer has a mouse with a middle button so he can middle-click the link to open it in a new tab. Do you realize Control-Click requires both hands?

Ha!

[GoofyBoy]

Do all the "important" surfing actions (Open new tab, bookmark, save image, Open every link and the all important Minimize Window!) with just one hand. :) [mozdev.org]

Re:Java

[Jaeden]

Now would probably be a good time to point out Tab Downloader [bengoodger.com], a Phoenix extension for auto-downloading all images opened in tabs.

Y'know...for "archival" purposes...

Oh ya, it doesn't work with Phoenix/Firebird 0.6 yet.

Re:Java

[jesser]

More good stuff for porn link farms (aka TGPs):

Bookmarklets (mini-extensions)

remove redirects [squarefree.com] - turns those annoying redirecting links that only redirect you to the correct site 20% of the time into real links
hide visited links [squarefree.com] - most useful for TGPs that use images (thumbnails) to link to galleries, since it's often hard to tell whether an image link is visited or not.
linked images [squarefree.com] - opens a window showing all the images linked to by the current page
increment, decrement [squarefree.com] - change the last number in the URL by 1 with 1 click.
make numbered list of links [squarefree.com] - for when you want to use increment/decrement but some pages in the sequence are missing
zoom images in, zoom images out [squarefree.com]
zap [squarefree.com] - fixes text/background/link colors and removes some common annoyances
go to referer [squarefree.com] - lets you go "back" one page after opening a link (e.g. to an image) in a new tab

User style sheet rules

Look for "Always show a border around image links" on this page [squarefree.com]. It puts a solid blue border around unvisited image links and a dashed purple border around visited image links. The Mozilla version does not interfere with site layouts.

You can also use user style sheet rules to mark or hide links to known-junk domains. This may save you slightly more time than adding those domains to your hosts file.

Extensions

linky [gemal.dk] - includes "open selected links in new tabs"
leech [mozdev.org] - adds ui for wget-type stuff

Re:Java - Tiled browsing!

[nadadogg]

I think a better way to view like this would be using Tiled browsing. Have 4 pages simulatneously loaded, and scroll to the "relavant" information at each one, and blammo! "Raised productivity" from being able to view multiple "documents" at once so that you can "deliver your report" to the "executive office."

Re:Java

[Majix]

This is because the Java plugin and Mozilla must be compiled with similiar verions of GCC to work (for C++ ABI compatibility). For example, you can't run (Sun's) Java 1.4.1, which is compiled with GCC 2.X, with Red Hat 9's Mozilla version which is build around GCC 3.X and a new glibc. Blackdown makes an Java version for users of newer glibc's and GCC's that had to be used in the past.

Now in Mozilla 1.4 the Linux builds are by default compiled with GCC 3.X so Sun's Java version no longer works. You got to either use Blackdown's 1.4.1, which is stable, or the go with the 1.4.2beta.

Re:Java

[Graspee_Leemoor]

IE for pr0n? Are you crazy, man? Going to a pr0n site with IE is like saying "I am crazy mister person who likes pop-ups! Please to pop-up many windows!"

"Oh a pop-up! I kiss you!"

"Oh another pop-up! I kiss you again!"

"Oh, a pop-up that launches 8 pop-ups when you close it! Many times do I kiss you, oh pop-up provider!"

graspee

RH 7.x is "old" ?

[DragonWyatt]

Interesting that the last great, stable RH is considered too "old" for mozilla...

Or am I just overreacting? I like my 7.3 boxes, dammit.

Re:RH 7.x is "old" ?

[asa]

"Interesting that the last great, stable RH is considered too "old" for mozilla...

Or am I just overreacting? I like my 7.3 boxes, dammit."

Yeah, forced upgrades suck, don't they? Kinda amusing tho, usually MS is the butt of that comment.

You're not being forced to upgrade anything. The mozilla.org binaries should work on stock RH7.2 and higher, and earlier 7.x if you have glibc 2.2.4 or higher. If you don't want to upgrade glibc or your OS, then feel free to compile Mozilla yourself or wait for your distro or someone else to make a build that works there.

--Asa

They still haven't fixed the a huge issue

[PhysicsGenius]

MathML. It's supported, but only in pure XML pages. This means that on legacy HTML sites, like Slashdot and K5, I can't fully get across the brilliance of my scientific and mathematical ideas, which is a lose-lose situation.

As open source projects, you'd think that Slashcode and Mozilla could meet halfway on this. But, as anyone who's tried to submit a patch to either project knows, they are open in name only. Development of both systems is really closed to outsiders and only insiders (the creators, their friends and people who think exactly the same way that they do) are allowed to submit patches. Witness the recent Taco IRC interview where his response to "when will Slashdot validate at the W3c" was "Whatever. Next."

/me starts an open-minded source revolution

Re:They still haven't fixed the a huge issue

[scrytch]

MathML. It's supported, but only in pure XML pages. This means that on legacy HTML sites, like Slashdot and K5, I can't fully get across the brilliance of my scientific and mathematical ideas, which is a lose-lose situation.

HTML doesn't support namespaces, which makes picking out your embedded mathml a little problematic. Ideally the <OBJECT> tag would support XML (or HTML). In the meantime, use an iframe -- true, it won't work on slashdot, but slashdot won't accept your mathml anyway.

Re:They still haven't fixed the a huge issue

[rdieter]

AFAIK, MathML *requires* XHTML, period. Why complain about not being able to shoe-horn it into legacy HTML when the spec doesn't allow it?

that's not a new problem

[martin-boundary]

Don't take this personally, but mathematicians and physicists have been able to communicate their ideas for three hundred years without the benefit of MathML. Typography is convenient, but if you're creative, you can find ways around the limitations. And if you're posting on sitessuch as k5, you probably want to keep it simple for the masses anyway.

Re:that's not a new problem

[Chris_Jefferson]

... that is the most stupid thing I've ever heard.

Mathematicians and physicists have been communicating for three hundred years by drawing mathematics, complete with symbol sets. Whenever I want to send / recieve mathematics nowadays, I tend to just write it in latex, because I (along with many mathematicans) can just parse raw latex off the screen. However I'd kill it have the latex (or MathML) parsed by my newsreader / e-mail client / browser in an easy-to-use way

MNG, JNG support gone, too.

[jwriney]

Not to mention the major burst of insanity that surrounded the removal of MNG/JNG support, two perfectly useful new formats.

Mind-boggling Bugzilla discussion of this is here - http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=195280 [mozilla.org]

--riney

Re:MNG, JNG support not gone for 1.4.

[mlefevre]

that's not the case for 1.4. MNG/JNG has been removed from the trunk (pre-1.5alpha builds), but it is still in 1.4RC2 and will appear in Mozilla 1.4.

Re:MNG, JNG support gone, too.

[Joe Tie.]

I'm still very annoyed by this, and trying to decide what to do with my site. I'm working on a little 2D rpg engine, and have some of the demo sprites previewed for download in mng format. While it does run in windows, Linux was my primary target, so losing IE support for the site was not that big of a deal. So now I'm stuck with the decision to re-encode the sprites as animated gifs and degrade their color quality to 256 colors, only use a single frame as an example, have some sort of script running on the

Re:MNG, JNG support gone, too.

[Mitchell Mebane]

Thankfully, it will still be in 1.4, but it is removed for all future versions.

If you want it back, vote for this bug [mozilla.org]!

Re:MNG, JNG support gone, too.

[ArmorFiend]

Well I don't actually use either, but it seems to me flash has no good Free editors. Since mng is so similar to png, and since the Gimp already does animated GIFs, I would assume the Gimp has decent support for it.

Ah, and I don't download the flash plugin. Its a clever way to not have to look at ads. As long as IE doesn't support MNG, MNG will not be used for ads, and this is a good thing. It means its the image format that's used only for content, not for ads. :)

Re:They still haven't fixed the a huge issue

[Phantasmo]

Witness the recent Taco IRC interview where his response to "when will Slashdot validate at the W3c" was "Whatever. Next."

The only reason to use tabular layout (like Slashdot does) is to make things look good in Internet Explorer.
Switching to pure CSS (as the W3C recommends) saves bandwidth (as all of the formatting and layout information can be stored in a separate, cacheable file), gives you the freedom to create far more interesting [meyerweb.com] and visually powerful [csszengarden.com] designs, and makes the page accessible.

Slashdot should take a hint from Wired [wired.com]'s excellent example and move into the new millenium.

Re:They still haven't fixed the a huge issue

[arkanes]

The other reason is that the markup is simpler, more portable, and less bandwidth intensive. How about that?

The Wired site loads and renders slowly, does wierd things when sized very small, and is much heavier on markup than slashdot (when balanced agasint the larger size of a slashdot page).

I agree that using tables for layout is a crappy way of doing things. On the other hand, it's well known and commonly supported (all modern browsers render tables more or less identically, the same cannot be said for CSS markup, especially level 2), but CSS layout semantics are crappy, overly verbose, and lend themselves to pixel-width positioning. Try reproducing all the built in features of table layout in CSS - it's very difficult. And your newly marked up pages will be noticably heavier than the table layout.

Re:They still haven't fixed the a huge issue

[IamTheRealMike]

Witness the recent Taco IRC interview where his response to "when will Slashdot validate at the W3c" was "Whatever. Next."

Where does it say that? I read the entire interview just now, and don't remember anybody asking that question, and I can't find the words "valid" nor "w3c" in the page. Please tell me I'm being blind and show me the relevant quote.

Due to being sued by the auto makers

[numbski]

Unfortunately, the auto makers have decided to sue the Mozilla team for using their trademarked names. The new names are now:

Buffy - Browser
Dawn - Mail Reader
Willow - HTML Editor
Xander - News Reader
Spike - Porn Search Plugin

Re:Due to being sued by the auto makers

[blibbleblobble]

Unfortunately, the auto makers have decided to sue the Mozilla team for using their trademarked names. The new names are now:

Adobe - Browser
Microsoft - Mail Reader
Scientology - HTML Editor
PetsWarehouse - News Reader
Echelon - Porn Search Plugin

Java Problems on old linux distributions

[levell]

I linked to it in the story but the summary of the java problems on linux is:

You need to use a version of the java plugin that has been compiled with the same version of gcc that mozilla has been, the 1.4 latest branch mozilla build has been compiled with gcc3.2 and therefore you need to use the gcc3.2 plugin that ships in the latest betas of Sun's JRE (and there is also a suitable Blackdown java).

The kicker comes if you run an old linux distribution (e.g. Redhat 7.x), - you don't have the dynamic link libraries required to run gcc 3.2 code as they weren't available when RH7.x was released. Mozilla still runs as it includes all the relevant libraries statically linked inside it - the java plugin doesn't. You therefore either need to recompile Mozilla with an old version of gcc or install the libraries for gcc 3.2.

The release notes could do with a little tidying in order to make what java works where clear to users

.

If this isn't fixed in the release version it would hint that Mozilla plan to phase out support for old distributions which would open to the door to things such as nice font rendering (via XFT) in the default builds, or do some other current distributions not come with XFT?

The most important item was missed in this story.

[Dolemite_the_Wiz]

This is probably the most important feature missing from Mozilla for YEARS.

NTLM Support.

From the Release Notes page [mozilla.org]:

Mozilla on Windows now has support for NTLM authentication. This enables Mozilla to talk to MS web and proxy servers that are configured to use "windows integrated security".

Dolemite
_______________________

Re:The most important item was missed in this stor

[driverEight]

If you want more features don't forget to donate [mozdev.org]

Re:The most important item was missed in this stor

[mkelley]

Windows 9x can't use this, neither can Linux or OS X. XP, NT, & 2k are the only supported with this release. still nothing works. as it should, after three years [mozilla.org]

Re:The most important item was missed in this stor

[Jucius Maximus]

"The most important item was missed in this story. [...] NTLM Support."

Actually the support to use Windows' built-in NTLM function was added in RC1, not RC2. I am currently blissfully using Mozilla 1.4RC1 at work now through the silly Microsoft proxy thanks to this NTLM support. Previously, I was forced to use MSIE since nothing else would work!

Most of those things in the release notes are things that were added in earlier 1.4a/b/rc1 releases. NTLM, overhauled bookmarks, composer dynamic resizing, smooth scrolling and numerous others were in previous release notes too.

Does Phoenix/Firebird support tabbed homepages?

[Gregoyle]

If they are going to drop the "suite" version I sure hope it does. This is the one feature stopping me from using Camino or even Safari. I love how all the newer browsers are supporting tabs now, but there is one feature from the "suite" Mozilla that I use every day but that none of the other browsers has added.

I just love tabbed homepages. The way you can save a tab group as a bookmark and then set that as your homepage. I use this every day; I load up my four most visited sites and just go. For some strange reason it makes a big difference.

Re:Does Phoenix/Firebird support tabbed homepages?

[SushiFugu]

Short answer: yes, it supports it.

glibc 2.2.4 required?

[SCHecklerX]

I installed rc1 yesterday, no problems. RC2 will not install without having a newer glibc installed. Ugh.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:No longer integrated?

[Cochonou]

You don't seem to have heard about the new Mozilla roadmap.
Here is for you. [mozilla.org]

Re:No longer integrated?

[edgrale]

You can do a Browser only installation right now if you want, in fact you've been able to do so for quite some time, if not for ever.

Re:No longer integrated?

[DrXym]

But the thing is, Mozilla is not monolithic. It is is a discrete set of components running in the same address space. Chrome overlays make them look like a single app but most of the code each part of the suite appears in its own distinct DLLs and .jar files under the surface. And if you don't want the 'clutter' of multiple tools, the answer is not to install them in the first place. IIRC a mailto: link in the browser will open your default email client if there is no mail/news installed for example.

The perception that running stuff seperately is going to be some magic panacea is wrong. At the end of the day you will have subsets of Mozilla running in their own process space instead of the whole lot in one. Aside from some potential stability improvements (not that Moz is bad now), the effort is more to facilitate a UI rewrite than to fix any fundamental bustage. There is also a downside that you might lose integration that some people appreciate such as a unified pref dialog, a single profile, being able to open a tab in the browser from a link in an email and so on.

The UI would definitely benefit from simplification it has to be said, but the suite has to come out the other side of this process as functional as it went in, and that also includes ensuring stuff like the editor and other less visible parts (e.g. JS debugger, DOM inspector) are not left behind in the process.

What the...

[JediTrainer]

From the release notes (emphasis mine):

Mozilla 1.4 requires Sun J2SE v 1.4.2 Beta to run Java applets

Why would they make a decision to make a browser dependent on an unreleased version of Java? 1.4.1_02 isn't good enough?

Re:What the...

[brettlbecker]

This is because the beta is compiled against gcc3.2. It's the first sun release to be compiled as such. I'm using the beta right now and it works perfectly.

It should be noted that this version of Moz is not meant for universal public use. 1.3 is still the 'default' public version. So what's the harm of requiring a development version of java if you're running a development version of the browser?

B

Re:What the...

[asa]

What if Java 1.4.2 isn't ready soon enough.

You have several choices. Use Sun's 1.4.2 beta. Wait until Sun 1.4.2 final is released. Use Blackdown's plug-in compiled with GCC 3.2 (the Sun 1.4.2 requirement is only a new compiler requirement.) Compile Mozilla yourself with an older compiler so it works with an older Java. Get someone else to compile Mozilla for you.

--Asa

The problem is with PRECOMPILED only.

[Lumpy]

I just love the FUD that flies around here...

Yes if you use a older distro you will have troubles, simply get the sources and compile it... Magically the problem goes away.

Doesn't work to well.....

[JaJ_D]

Netscape planned release, codenamed "buffy"

Buffy the IE slayer...... Hummm doesn't quite work.

Although the 'destroying the undead whose goal it is to reign the earth and bring pain, misery and fear to all' analogy may have some distance to run

:-]

Jaj

No more IRIX nightlies?

[green pizza]

As a few other folks have pointed out on the usenet, there doesn't seem to be any new IRIX nightlies. While the other platforms have binaries built about once a day, the most recent IRIX nightly is from late May.

Does anyone from the Mozilla project happen to know what the problem is? Is there something that we IRIX users/developers can do to help? If it's a hardware need, I can probably spare an Octane or two to help the Mozilla project.

Code named Buffy?

[edwardd]

(e.g. Netscape planned release, codenamed "buffy").

As in "Ready to be canceled"?

Decent SVG support on Linux

[Monkey-Man2000]

I'm sure this Mozilla doesn't have SVG support. However, I was wondering if anyone knew the status of the Adobe SVG Plugin's compatibility with the browser (whether Adobe is developing a new compatible plug-in or Mozilla compensating for Adobe's compatibility problems). My understanding is that Adobe developed the 3.0 plugin before the Mozilla API was frozen, and now it crashes the browser. This is common to Windows and Linux and for Mozilla derivatives as well (Netscape). Neither the Mozilla developers or Adobe seem to be budging. I just want to have some decent SVG support in Linux. Is SVG development something I should avoid?

Re:Decent SVG support on Linux

[IamTheRealMike]

The Adobe plugin appears to be frozen in time, focus now appears to be on a Corel plugin. I don't know if that works with Mozilla or not.

For those who don't know, Adobe used unfrozen APIs, which Mozilla then scrapped entirely, rendering their work useless. Unsurprisingly, they never updated it.

So, if you want SVG in Mozilla, you need to hack on the Moz native support, which has more potential anyway. Be warned, it's a LARGE spec :( I'm not really sure what has been happening on it lately, but iirc there have not been any updates for a long time now.

Threaded Mail

[abischof]

Threaded mail is a handy feature, especially when following multiple discussions on mailing lists. And, though Mozilla supports threading, it just doesn't remember the threaded expansion state [mozilla.org].

So, you could turn on threading (View -> Sort By -> Threaded). Then, you'd probably expand the threads (View -> Threads -> Expand All Threads). So far, so good. But, if you switch to another folder and come back to the original one, the threads won't be expanded anymore.

This is bug 64426 [mozilla.org] and you can vote for it [mozilla.org] if you like (of course, you'll need a free Bugzilla account to vote [mozilla.org]). You may need to copy-n-paste the links into your URL bar, as Bugzilla doesn't accept referrerrs from Slashdot.

RPM?

[jejones]

mozilla.org doesn't have RPMs for this version (or a few versions back, for that matter)... Should I as an RH 9 user just wait for the official release? Obviously there's some way to generate an RPM, but looking around the mozilla.org Unix build instructions web pages doesn't point to instructions. (Searching freshrpms turns up nothing.)

Re:RPM?

[tuffy]

I'm hoping there'll be an RPM of the official 1.4 release. But rpmfind.net lists of a few RawHide Mozilla-1.4 RPMs that work just fine on a RH 9 box. I haven't been able to determine just which "official" Mozilla build they are, but they have the nice antialiasing that I've come to enjoy from the GTK2-linked builds.

Re:RPM?

[Ethidium]

See the RPM HOWTO [rpm.org] at rpm.org [rpm.org] for instructions on how to build your own RPM. It's really not hard. Or just use the supplied installer. Having mozilla as a non-rpm package is not the end of the world.

Netscape, why?

[Capt_Troy]

My question is simple, and I'm not a netscape user so maybe someone can enlighten me,

But what's the point of Netscape taking the latest mozilla code, as they have done for quite a while now, and creating their own browser? Are there some added features that Mozilla doesn't include? Seems like taking one thing and calling it another, unless there is some compelling reason to use netscape over mozilla.

Thanks!

Re:Netscape, why?

[GauteL]

1. Branding. Netscape is far better known than Mozilla.
2. Some features (AIM integration for instance)
3. Disabling debugfeatures. The standard Mozilla distribution include test-menus. It is not really meant for end-users, though distributors usually do this with Mozilla as well.

Re:Netscape, why?

[Zathrus]

I asked a coworker this (I run Firebird, he runs Netscape) and he said that Netscape comes with most of the plugins pre-installed -- e.g. Java, Flash, etc. I don't know if this is true or not, but if so then there's one reason.

Yeah, fine, bitch and whine about how awful Flash and java and whatever are. But some people actually want to use the web, and some websites require their usage.

Oh, and to contradict a previous poster - Netscape no longer removes popup prevention from the preferences dialog. IIRC, it's not enabled by default, but you can enable it without having to go and edit the user.js file or about:config

Re:Netscape, why?

[skt]

Mozilla isn't really intended to be an enduser product.. its primary purpose is for testing. However, because of its stability and major releases, it seems to be appealing to endusers.. but mostly tech-saavy power users IMHO. Netscape is the product for the masses, it will have a more polished interface than mozilla and it has name recognition. It will also undergo more testing (both bug and usability) than an average milestone of mozilla. Then there is the matter of application support, netscape7 will be supported more often than mozilla. Even though anything that works with NS7 should work in mozilla, name recognition and specific quirks with releases make this somewhat important.

Notice how NS7.02 is still based on a very early build of mozilla, the focus of Netscape 7 is on stability (in terms of the interface and functionality) and not on cutting edge features that are typically found in mozilla milestones. Most people do not need the features found in mozilla, which makes netscape 7 very appealing.

Spellchecker for Mozilla Here

[alistair]

You can download a spellchecker for Mozilla here;

http://spellchecker.mozdev.org/ [mozdev.org]

It also includes links to non - american english dictionaries, I have been using the UK english one with some builds very happily.

The version for Mozilla 1.4 Beta is already there. I use Mozilla as my only mail client at work and have been using this for over a year without any major problems. If only it could test spelling in input boxes, I could even spell check my slashdot comments :-).

MNG Support Dropped?!

[BlackGriffen]

I'm not upgrading until I'm sure that mng support will be there in the future. See here [mozilla.org] and here (Bugzilla, you'll have to copy and paste the URL manually) [mozilla.org] where they dropped support despite overwhelming protests and an offer for another coder to take up maintenance of the feature.

BlackGriffen

Blockers once again seem non-corporeal

[gringer]

I have been trying to keep up with Mozilla developments, and have noticed here [google.com] that there are still bugs to be resolved that are apparently blockers (or go straight to the bug list [mozilla.org]). The strange thing is, there was mentioned a possibility of rebranding RC2 as final, according to the recent staff meeting [google.com] minutes (*1.4*, Point 3).

I find it strange that the Mozilla team is prepared to release 1.4 (which will replace the 1.0.x branch) with previously-declared blocker bugs still floating around.

Re:Blockers once again seem non-corporeal

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Just to be silly, I opened the Bugzilla link; 3 of them are already fixed, and a 4th is a licensing issue if you link statically against gcc libstfc++ (which I don't think is the default).

Of the remaining bugs, one is about the status bar, which doesn't seem to be a blocker, and the other two remaining are mem leaks which I would consider blockers. That just leaves two big ones. They probably have time to get thse and so they're probably good for 1.4.

mozilla mail

[PhiberOptix]

Am i the only one using mozilla mail? I love the spam filter, and after a few tweaking, i can block most of the crap that comes to my inbox.
I recently tried the email standalone mozilla thunderbird (aka minotaur) and wasnÂt impressed. Lacks multiple accounts, no bayes spam filter and lots of other nice things found on mozilla mail that are simply not there yet on thunderbird.
I hope that they get the thunderbird up to the level of mozilla mail before going thunderbird only.
I love mozilla firebird, and hopefully thunderbird will follow the same path as its browser counterpart.

Re:mozilla mail

[jmertic]

What? Thunderbird has everything that is currently in Mozilla Mail 1.4. The only difference is a better looking interface ( much like Mozilla Firebird ) and redesigned preferences screen ( also like Firebird ). Check out the roadmap [mozilla.org] for Thunderbird.

Re:Finally!

[jridley]

Ditto that. Also maybe the mail/newsreader apps will get attention if they're split out.

I wouldn't even call the newsreader "mediocre" - "barely adequate for a few uses" is more like it.

The email client is OK but it certainly needs attention.

Re:Finally!

[DrXym]

I use the mail & news component all day and it is IMHO one of the most powerful apps on the market. It's certainly a lot better than Outlook (Express), Apple Mail and Evolution.

That doesn't mean it's perfect (the news reader could do with better filtering and other things) but frankly I can think of no other client I'd rather use in place of it.

Re:Finally!

[DrXym]

What the hell are you talking about? If you didn't want the mail/news component why did you install it?

Yes, that checkbox in the installer does indeed control whether you get the mailnews component. If you're using a .zip or .dmg that gave you no choice, then a little surgery such as removing the mail/news chrome does the same trick.

Re:Finally!

[jonadab]

For email, try Pegasus Mail. You'll *never* go back to Messenger.
The one bad thing about Pegasus Mail is that it's tied to a
specific platform (Windows), so if you're on another platform
or anticipate moving to another platform you have to settle for
less in the mailreader department. Or you can use Gnus, but it
has a big learning curve.

Usenet is trickier. The only usenet client I've found so far that's
any good whatsoever is Gnus, and it's a long way from perfect. (It
has a huge learning curve, plus some substantial problems in the
offline-reading department, and it's not properly multithreaded.)
You could try Agent; it's arguably better than Messenger, but that's
not saying a great deal.

Regarding Mozilla, the Navigator component is without question
*way* better than the Messenger component. However, with the
split for 1.5, Navigator is being set aside in favour of the
Firebird browser (formerly Phoenix), which while not altogether
bad is not yet up to the level of Navigator, feature-wise. (It
is smaller, though, and so performs better on older systems.)

After 1.4, I don't expect another good solid release until at
least 1.6 for the browser, probably more like 1.7 -- and I don't
expect the Thunderbird project to produce anything that resembles
a usable mail/news reader 2-5 years. Note, however, that I am
using higher standards here than most people do; email is important
to me and I expect a great deal from my mailreader. If you consider
Eudora and Outlook and the current Messenger to all be perfectly
wonderful, then Thunderbird may reach that level a good deal sooner
than the timeframe I'm predicting (say, 1.7 maybe).

Re:firebird

[mhifoe]

If you don't want the email and news functionality I wouldn't bother.

The next major Mozilla version (1.5) will use Firebird as the browser. Check out the roadmap [mozilla.org] for more details.

Re:Mozilla 1.4 RC1 mail send crash bug

[truth_revealed]

The bug [mozilla.org] in question (moz bug ID 208300) appears to be fixed for 1.4 RC2.

Re:One thing FireBird is missing.....

[Matchu]

run firebird with -p, and it brings up the profile manager. If you're running windows, set up a shortcut to firebird.exe" -P Username and it should run automagically as that user.

Re:Anyone know if the DHTML menu problems are fixe

[frankie]

doesn't seem to work with the dynamic menus we use. It's as though all menu options are written on top of each other.

As a bugzilla member who's worked on a lot of evangelism bugs, I can tell you that the problem is 99% likely to be bad DHTML on your site. Please post the URL here, or submit it to Bugzilla for investigation.

BTW, the exact symptoms you describe are often seen in HierMenus [webreference.com] 4.0, due to non-compliant CSS-P. If your site uses HierMenus, updating to v4.2 or higher will fix the problem.

Re:Anyone know if the DHTML menu problems are fixe

[weave]

Ha, your meyerweb.com link example works in every browser I tried it with except for IE 6. Hence all of the other ones are busted and Microsoft rules.

Next time maybe the guy should make his pages with Front Page. If it really has to work on "non-standard" browsers, about 50k of javascript browser sniffing code and branches produced by Adobe Golive might be just the ticket.

/sarcasm

The JDogg Collection - A Troll's Penthouse Forum

[gdiersing]

I put on my robe and wizard hat

J-Dogg> Baby, I been havin a tough night so treat me nice aight?
BritneySpears27> Aight.
J-Dogg> Slip out of those pants baby, yeah.
BritneySpears27> I slip out of my pants, just for you, J-Dogg.
J-Dogg> Oh yeah, aight. Aight, I put on my robe and wizard hat.
BritneySpears27> Oh, I like to play dress up.
J-Dogg> Me too baby.
BritneySpears27> I kiss you softly on your chest.
J-Dogg> I cast Lvl. 3 Eroticism. You turn into a real beautiful woman.
BritneySpears2

Re:Question

[iapetus]

There are computers in England?

Seriously, though, to answer the original questions: Mozilla is nothing like Netscape 4.7. Early Netscape browsers were some of the biggest crimes against HTML ever seen. Mozilla, on the other hand, is considerably better-written and far more standards compliant. Sometimes too standards compliant for its own good, in fact, since some sites that rely on IE broken features or extensions to work won't give the same results under Mozilla. There are also an irritating few sites that will just refuse to serve pages to anyone not using IE. I figure if they can do without my custom, I can do without their services.

The overall browsing experience in Mozilla (particularly Mozilla Firebird, IMO) is considerably better than that in Internet Explorer in my experience. Plenty of extra (useful) features that IE shows no signs of including, such as tabbed browsing. And it's free - other than the hefty bandwidth charge to download it. :)

If you can get hold of a copy while you're in England, do so. Hopefully you'll be converted before you go home. Otherwise, put it at the top of your to-download list when you get back home.

IHBT, but....

[mikey504]

Sometimes when I am fishing I wonder if fish sometimes bite knowing they are going to encounter a hook. Anyway, I get tired of the "give us news, stuff that matters" rants.

There is an awful lot of information out here on the net. It is your job to sift through it all, determine what is of interest to you, and IGNORE THE REST. Along the way, if you feel you have something to contribute, please share.

Really, if this story is of no interest to you, move on to the next one. I think, as I'm sure many other people think, that announcing releases on a site with a high geek population is a good way to recruit quality beta testers who will fill out useful bug reports and help to drive the software development process forward. This means you get your free software faster and with less bugs. It's fine if you don't feel like taking the time to help out yourself, but give us the few tenths of a second it should take you to read the headline and decide to skip the story. Think of it as your way of helping to keep free software moving forward.

If you take the time to click on the headline, scan down to the bottom of the comments, and compose a mini rant about how you didn't feel you needed to know the information the story provides, people might get the impression that you just felt like whining.

It seems a bit hypocritical to rant about wanting stuff that matters within a post that almost everyone will consider noise, not signal.

Have a nice day.