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Mozilla The Internet

Mozilla 1.5 Alpha Available 437

An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla.org released Mozilla v1.5 alpha today, with flavors available for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. Some of the new features include Composer enhancements, Chatzilla logging, multiple tab window closing confirmation, and quicksearch support in about:config. A more detailed rough changelog is also available. In a somewhat related note, Mozilla 1.4 has been downloaded over a half million times in the past 3 weeks (not counting mirrors)."
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Mozilla 1.5 Alpha Available

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  • sweet (Score:5, Funny)

    by qewl ( 671495 ) on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @10:41PM (#6507738)
    Now I can enjoy some new and completely unnoticeable changes!!
    • Re:sweet (Score:5, Insightful)

      by CanadaDave ( 544515 ) on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @10:44PM (#6507764) Homepage
      tell me about it... I thought Firebird and Thunderbird was supposed to be integrated into 1.5a. That sucks. I guess we'll have to wait until 1.6.
      • Re:sweet (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        "I guess we'll have to wait until 1.6."

        You'll be waiting a lot long than that...

        *Mozilla Firebird 0.6.1*

        - Need to start selling it as a technology preview
        - It'll take a year to get something shippable to end users (brendan)
        - Depends on hyatt's and ben's time

        http://groups.google.com/groups?as_umsgid=3F1C4D 5C .5090400%40mozilla.org
      • Re:sweet (Score:5, Funny)

        by TummyX ( 84871 ) on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @11:58PM (#6508257)

        tell me about it... I thought Firebird and Thunderbird was supposed to be integrated into 1.5a. That sucks. I guess we'll have to wait until 1.6.


        Why would you want to integrate a database into a webbrowser?
        • Re:sweet (Score:3, Funny)

          by BlueGecko ( 109058 )
          Why would you want to integrate a database into a webbrowser?
          That's certainly a question that the EMACS development team would never have asked, and I would certainly hope that Mozilla can be every bit the browser that EMACS is.
  • Quicksearch (Score:4, Insightful)

    by paul248 ( 536459 ) on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @10:43PM (#6507748) Homepage
    Quicksearching in about:config was a much-needed feature. I always had trouble locating stuff in there, especially when I didn't know exactly what it was named.
  • stats? (Score:5, Funny)

    by di0s ( 582680 ) <cabbot917@gm3.14159ail.com minus pi> on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @10:44PM (#6507756) Homepage Journal
    Mozilla 1.4 has been downloaded over a half million times in the past 3 weeks (not counting mirrors)
    Is that the *official* count, or the RIAA count?
    • Re:stats? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @10:46PM (#6507776)
      If the RIAA was counting, we'd have to consider how much bandwidth each user has, and how many times they could download it within a month. So, by their method, Mozilla has been downloaded 72 billion times in the past 3 weeks.
      • Re:stats? (Score:2, Offtopic)

        by tupps ( 43964 )
        And I would therefore assume that it would be shown to the RIAA accountant who would work out it has cost the economy 27 billion trillion dollars in lost revenue?
  • Firebird based? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by doormat ( 63648 ) on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @10:44PM (#6507757) Homepage Journal
    Isnt 1.5 and forward supposed to be based on Firebird and not Mozilla? I didnt see that change anywhere in the simple release notes...
    • Re:Firebird based? (Score:5, Informative)

      by reaper20 ( 23396 ) on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @10:49PM (#6507800) Homepage
      Read the updated roadmap, they're not going to make it for 1.5 it seems. Considering that Mozilla recently gained its independance, and a good portion of fulltime gecko developers have been let go, I think they're due for a milestone or two of of getting their bearings and realigning around the *birds.

      Besides, IE7 comes with longhorn, Mozilla has plenty of time, and is already in the lead, Firebird and Thunderbird are already proving to be ready for prime time .... give them a month or two to straighten things out, it'll be worth it.
      • Firebird and Thunderbird are already proving to be ready for prime time

        That's all well and good, but when will Trans Am and Viper be out?

      • by patrickjolliffe ( 645138 ) on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @11:17PM (#6508024) Homepage
        Unfortunately it may take a bit longer than that. It'll take a year to get something shippable to end users (brendan) [google.com]
        This is disappointing to me as I use Firebird regularly and am really impressed, but I guess they (the developers) know what they are talking about.
        • by Brendan Eich ( 663436 ) on Wednesday July 23, 2003 @12:47AM (#6508552)
          That quote from staff minutes was out of context. I was citing the agreement I'd reached with all-volunteer Mozilla Firebird developers before the Mozilla Foundation was announced, where 0.7 would coincide with 1.5, 0.8 with 1.6, etc. I went on to say to staff, at that meeting, that if we get more time from the developers, the schedule could be shortened.

          Now, we hope to hire a Firebird developer fulltime at the Mozilla Foundation, and we expect to go faster. No promises yet; the roadmap will be updated in due course.
      • Re:Firebird based? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by archen ( 447353 ) on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @11:20PM (#6508038)
        Besides, IE7 comes with longhorn

        Yeah, I'm sure we'll se ASSLOADS of innovation from IE7. Like "a send a DRM report to Microsoft" button added, along with a few other "enhancements" 99% of the population would find useless and annoying like the pop up image toolbar. Well I'm half joking, but MS isn't going to innovate until they see some sort of serious threat, and as it stands now, I doubt they'll make any significant improvements.

        I think the "browser wars" are probably over. It's not really about browsers anymore as they're practically considered essential OS components. Mozilla probably will play a key role in spearheading the Linux movement, along with providing a good open source cross platform browser across many different venues.
        • Re:Firebird based? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by enomar ( 601942 ) on Wednesday July 23, 2003 @12:15AM (#6508356)
          I think you may be underestimating the innovation behind some of these alternate browsers. IE is just not keeping up. I have a seriously hard time using it anymore. Features like tabbed browsing and mouse gestures are now an itegral part of my browsing experience. They almost feel like...essential OS components.
        • Re:Firebird based? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by PeterHammer ( 612517 ) on Wednesday July 23, 2003 @12:28AM (#6508447)
          Mozilla probably will play a key role in spearheading the Linux movement

          That sounds like a boring dismisal of Mozilla. I use windows regularly at work, and at home, and Mozilla is my browser of choice. I have also successfully converted a number (probably around 20) regular joes who like to call me their tech geek

          I think Mozilla needs to promote a consumer oriented browser, particularly now that the AOL cord has been severed. It is certainly light weight enough if you strip all the geek features - Venkman, DOM inspector, Chatzilla, Composer etc... - and I think most web developers who target standards would agree that it is vastly superior to what IE would provide. My team would love to be able to drop IE as an obsolete monster. But its hard to convince users to install the whole Moz suite, let alone Netscape 7.1.

          Firebird needs to evolve. And it needs a grass roots movement promoting it. If every developer out there could convert 10 people - and those 10 convert 10 more. Well I don't have to tell geeks how to do math. Do I?

          • Firebird needs to evolve. And it needs a grass roots movement promoting it. If every developer out there could convert 10 people - and those 10 convert 10 more. Well I don't have to tell geeks how to do math. Do I?

            Nope, and we'll all count correctly despite the fact you didn't tell us how to do ;)

            Binary 10*10 = Decimal 2*2 = 4 = Binary 100
            Decimal 10*10 = 100

            100 no matter how we count.
        • by blibbleblobble ( 526872 ) on Wednesday July 23, 2003 @08:08AM (#6510103)
          "Yeah, I'm sure we'll se ASSLOADS of innovation from IE7"

          Longhorn being a large, dumb animal which consumes vast quantities of resources and turns most of them into shit?

          pic [geocities.com]
      • by Anonymous Coward
        and Thunderbird are already proving to be ready for prime time .... give them a month or two to straighten things out, it'll be worth it.

        That sounds eerily familiar to those proclamations back when Mozilla M14 was released...
    • by CanadaDave ( 544515 ) on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @10:53PM (#6507835) Homepage
      No, that was never fully decided upon. The roadmap is a joke. ahem, I mean it's not exactly accurate.
    • Re:Firebird based? (Score:5, Informative)

      by tfreport ( 458641 ) on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @10:56PM (#6507868)
      I was thinking the same thing. Apparently that was the plan but they have been forced to change things (perhaps due to the Netscape break).

      Buried deep in the To Do list on the official Roadmap [mozilla.org] page is one small but significant change. This is the passage that has been added. (There are probably other changes today as well but that is the one I noticed and pertains to this question).

      It's clear now that we will not be able to switch to Mozilla Firebird by the Mozilla 1.5 final milestone. Instead, we expect Mozilla 1.5 to coincide with Mozilla Firebird 0.7. But we intend to implement the new application architecture in the next several milestones, till most of the community is won over to the new apps.

      Hmmm... At the bottom of the page, the Roadmap states that it was last changed July 22, 2003 - so it appears that they were forced to make the change and only sort of let it be known. Wonder what is going on?

      Well, until then, I will keep using Firebird. But for those migrating - another positive is that 1.5alpha is 1.4 Mbs smaller.
      • Re:Firebird based? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Gerv ( 15179 )
        I was thinking the same thing. Apparently that was the plan but they have been forced to change things (perhaps due to the Netscape break).

        You imagine we didn't see that coming? :-)

        it appears that they were forced to make the change and only sort of let it be known

        Not really. Admittedly, this change could have done with being posted elsewhere as well, but there's no conspiracy or coverup. The roadmap just changed to reflect reality. I think most people who looked at the issue could have seen that the
  • by Jeffrey Baker ( 6191 ) on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @10:45PM (#6507766)
    Does camino have a future? No releases have been made since 0.7, quite some time ago. Should MacOS X users switch to Mozilla, or Firebird.

    ObSafariSucks
    • by Rura Penthe ( 154319 ) on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @10:47PM (#6507789)
      Mike Pinkerton [mozillazine.org] as well as others continue to work on Camino. It is by no means dead, but nightlies are highly variable in quality.

      That said, the bug button in Safari still exists (it is disabled by default in 1.0) so report those bugs so it can get even better! This will help KHTML advance more quickly as well!
      • That said, the bug button in Safari still exists (it is disabled by default in 1.0)
        It's still in Safari, under the Safari App menu. If you are finding enough bugs, you can still still do as the poster says and add the button. I've only found 1 website that has problems with Safari, and the page works in Konqueror, so I would say that KHTML is off to a great start :-)
  • by Comsn ( 686413 ) on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @10:46PM (#6507775)
    will mozilla ever put MNG support back in?
    • I dunno but PNG support is extremely broken. In XFree86 4.something.something, Mozilla makes the entire display slow to a crawl whenever a PNG is on the screen. Other apps that display PNGs do not have this problem.

      It's probably due to something unaccelerated in my exact setup, but whatever it is only cropped up recently and only happens with moz.
      • Other apps that display PNGs do not have this problem.
        Have you ever used Internet Explorer?
  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @10:47PM (#6507782)
    I'd like to see Mozilla getting leaner with each release.
    And stop with the features already.

    Safari is where it is at anyway.
    • How about actually looking it up? Tinderbox keeps such statistics...

      http://tegu.mozilla.org/graph/query.cgi?tbox=co m et &testname=codesize_embed&autoscale=1&size=&units=b ytes&ltype=&points=&showpoint=2003%3A07%3A23%3A01% 3A32%3A23%2C13244550&avg=0&days=100

      shows the codesize of the core engine graphed over the last 100 days (on Linux; Mac and Windows numbers are a little different but show the same overall trend).
  • omg 500!! (Score:5, Informative)

    by atari2600 ( 545988 ) on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @10:47PM (#6507783)
    Those guys actually list about 500 issues they've taken care of with this release. Go people go!
    some useful ones imho
    *Mozilla crashes when magnifier is used
    *Browser crashes when javascript closes a window [@nsDocShell::InternalLoad]
    *Save As > withoua> extention result is a html fila> and a directory > *When saving a .zip file "as...," Moz appends a .x after the .zip extension
    *mozilla can't subscribe to existing imap folders
    *Browser crashes on HTTPS urls - Trunk M140RC1 [@cert_get_next_general_name
    *Loading personal certificates
    *pop3 password failed error msg missing
  • Bloat (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @10:48PM (#6507798)
    Has the Mozilla crew ever thought of quit making the browser as one giant, bloated super-applicaton and separate all the components into distinct, different programs in the spirit of IE/Outlook/FrontPage as well as Safari/Mail/iCal?

    I know Firebird/Thunderbird/Dodobird exist but they seem like separate distinct projects, and the apps are definitely not as stable as stock Moz; trust me, I've used em all.

    I mean, does my web browser REALLY need an IRC client?!

    At this rate, Moz 1.6 will have an included oral sex plugin.
    • Re:Bloat (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @10:56PM (#6507865)
      At this rate, Moz 1.6 will have an included oral sex plugin.

      Fuck, I just installed Firebird.
    • Re:Bloat (Score:2, Interesting)

      by lune tns ( 683021 )
      Yes, it does need an IRC client. I managed to convince the IT staff at work to install mozilla on my computer, boasting of the integrated mail client, etc...now I can feed my IRC addiction at all hours. ...although what this says about my company's IT staff is rather depressing.
    • Has the Mozilla crew ever thought of quit making the browser as one giant, bloated super-applicaton and separate all the components into distinct, different programs in the spirit of IE/Outlook/FrontPage as well as Safari/Mail/iCal?

      I know Firebird/Thunderbird/Dodobird exist but they seem like separate distinct projects,

      Looks like you just answered your own question there.

      On a side note, can we call the next spinoff standalone project Dodobird? I'd appreciate that. Or at least Goonybird.

    • Re:Bloat (Score:3, Informative)

      by Adam9 ( 93947 )
      This was addressed in a few Slashdot articles awhile ago. Check out the Mozilla Roadmap [mozilla.org]. They explain how things will be modularized. This means Firebird will be used instead.
    • Re:Bloat (Score:5, Funny)

      by rolocroz ( 625853 ) on Wednesday July 23, 2003 @12:07AM (#6508315)
      At this rate, Moz 1.6 will have an included oral sex plugin.

      Some people tell me Mozilla sucks, but this would be proof.
  • My settings (Score:5, Informative)

    by Skeme ( 687563 ) on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @10:49PM (#6507805)
    I always set

    user_pref("dom.disable_window_flip", true);
    user_pref("dom.disable_window_move_resize" , true);
    user_pref("dom.disable_window_open_feature .close", true);
    user_pref("dom.disable_window_open_feature .directo ries", true);
    user_pref("dom.disable_window_open_feature .locatio n", true);
    user_pref("dom.disable_window_open_feature .menubar ", true);
    user_pref("dom.disable_window_open_feature .minimiz able", true);
    user_pref("dom.disable_window_open_feature .persona lbar", true);
    user_pref("dom.disable_window_open_feature .resizab le", true);
    user_pref("dom.disable_window_open_feature .scrollb ars", true);
    user_pref("dom.disable_window_open_feature .status" , true);
    user_pref("dom.disable_window_open_feature .titleba r", true);
    user_pref("dom.disable_window_open_feature .toolbar ", true);
    user_pref("dom.disable_window_status_chang e", true);
    user_pref("browser.block.target_new_window ", true)

    to keep crappy web pages from disabling my menus.
    • Are most of those set by default? I never changed any of those settings, and I don't recall any webpages taking over my browser as some of those settings seem to imply. Or am I misunderstanding you?
    • Re:My settings (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Malcontent ( 40834 )
      Wow imagine that. A browser to make surfing easier and more pleasant for you. As opposed to a browser whose main purpose is to make you load MSN 50 times a day so they can sell more advetising.
  • by CryptOntology ( 597072 ) on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @10:50PM (#6507809)
    I've been fairly impressed with Firebird and hope the move to 1.5 will start the integration of Firebird concerns, bugs, and issues to the main trunk to be hashed out.

    I think the Mozilla developers have been doing an excellent job lately, especially with respect to choreographing releases with future development needs. --- the switch-over to Firebird could have been disasterous or annoying, but it's been smooth.

  • by zymano ( 581466 ) on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @10:50PM (#6507813)
    add it to their cd's so people can get a feel for it ?
  • Mouse Gestures (Score:4, Informative)

    by Acidic_Diarrhea ( 641390 ) on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @10:51PM (#6507818) Homepage Journal
    Great! But Mozilla isn't complete until you've got MOUSE GESTURES [mozdev.org]. Honestly, I've found that mouse gestures coupled with tabbed browsing is such a more pleasant experience than anything that Microsoft is peddling. It seems that the best innovation is still coming from elsewhere and Microsoft is playing catch-up. Didn't I hear about IE having tabbed browsing in the next release?
    • Couldn't agree more. When I first learned about mouse gestures, I thought "That's interesting but probably pointless." I decited to try it anyway, and after learning a few basic gestures, I was hooked. It is one of those things that don't seem that great until you actually try it.

    • Re:Mouse Gestures (Score:3, Informative)

      by magnum3065 ( 410727 )
      I prefer RadialContext [gamemakers.de] myself. It makes things just as quick as the mouse gestures, but since you still have a visible menu you don't have the problems of screwing up a gesture. I remember some gestures where if you screwed up a little it would end up doing the wrong thing. I never have this problem with the RadialContext, plus you don't have any of the complicated gestures either. Some of the gestures I found to be frustrating, like drawing an 'S' to view the source, or an 'h' to go home.
  • by fedaykin42 ( 588488 ) on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @10:53PM (#6507830)
    Mozilla.org released Mozilla v1.5 alpha today, with flavors available for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. Some of the new features include Composer enhancements, Chatzilla logging, multiple tab window closing confirmation, and quicksearch support in about:config. A more detailed rough changelog is also available.

    ...usability without having to have a monster machine. I use Mozilla, but damn is it slow for even the most mundane of pages. If you want to load a plugin, forget it. I'm running a 1.3GHz Athelon with 512MB of RAM and it gets bad. Personally, I couldn't care less about a good deal of the wiz-bang bloat features...make it fast and reliable.

    • So use Epiphany or Galeon, if you don't mind Gnome. Or maybe Skipstone, if that is still alive. Even Firebird is supposed to be snappier, even if I could not see much improvement myself.
    • by Slurm-V ( 513189 ) on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @11:16PM (#6508015) Homepage
      I have a grotty old PII 350 with 64mb on win98 (not SE - for some absurd historical reason that I no longer believe and I don't expect anyone else to either) and I use Moz exclusively for tabbed browsing and spam filtering goodness. It's faster than IE from my perspective and, unlike IE, doesn't fall over more often than a one legged man in a falling over competition.
    • I'm running Moz 1.4 on a PIII/500 laptop. It's about the same speed in Windows as IE6, and in Linux it's a bit faster (except at getting it initially fired up, of course). If moz is bogging down on your machine there's something wrong.
    • Well, I have a 1.4GHz Athlon with 512 MBs of RAM, and Mozilla seems fine to me. I guess it's that last 100 MHz that really makes a difference... :)

      Actually, the latest 1.4 was really speedy, relative to 1.3 at least. I admit that mozilla is one of the slower browsers, but every release is faster than the previous one, in my experience anyway. I haven't tried this one yet, but I'm about to.
    • I use Mozilla, but damn is it slow for even the most mundane of pages. If you want to load a plugin, forget it. I'm running a 1.3GHz Athelon with 512MB of RAM and it gets bad.

      Eh? I'm typing this on a system with an 800 MHz Duron, and Mozilla doesn't seem slow to me.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @10:53PM (#6507838)
    I see Mozilla news almost daily on Slashdot but where's the Opera news? Every small release of Mozilla however unimportant gets mentioned but not even the biggest Opera news gets mentioned. Opera doesn't even have it's own news Icon [opera.com] here on Slashdot. We should demand more Opera news because Opera 7.2 beta 2 came out today and I must say it's the best Opera ever (much better than that memory hogging vile beast of a pig Mozilla). Although no Linux version of beta 2 is out yet, only Windows, it is still news worthy of being on Slashdot. Here's [opera.com] the news announcement and heres [opera.com] some forums to talk about the new beta.
    • by dubious9 ( 580994 ) on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @11:49PM (#6508215) Journal
      Why predominately Mozilla?

      Mozilla is one of the biggest open source projects out there. Slashdot has lots of people that like open source stuff.

      Mozilla is more than just a broswer, it's a runtime (Gecko Runtime Engine), GUI language (XUL), bayesian mail client, html composer, etc.

      People can actually contribute and test mozilla beta releases, as opposed to opera releases.

      Mozilla is available on more platforms than opera, and is 7.2b2 even available on linux?

      Mozilla has a 30% share of slashdot traffic, and thus is more directly popular with slashdot readers in general.

  • by Cutriss ( 262920 ) on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @10:55PM (#6507855) Homepage
    Some of the new features include Composer enhancements, Chatzilla logging, multiple tab window closing confirmation, and quicksearch support in about:config.

    Oh thank Dog.

    This is my only gripe about tabbed browsing, as it makes life annoying for people who are switching over from IE and haven't used a tabbed browser before. I can't count the number of times I've absent-mindedly clicked on the closing X in the window bar as opposed to the lower X for the tabs...

    Now, if only they could fix the issue with multi-language support in Moz 1.4 Win32. Every time I go to a Japanese website I get a notification telling me that I need to install a language pack, but so far as I can tell, I've done this. The popup doesn't say exactly where to go to configure this in Preferences, and as far as I can tell, I've done set it up already (Preferences -> Navigator -> Languages), and it's not doing anything. So, either the language support is broken, or the instructions/setup procedure are non-intuitive.
    • by Cutriss ( 262920 ) on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @11:02PM (#6507903) Homepage
      Funny.

      It hasn't been five minutes since I posted this comment and I've already figured out what the problem is.

      In order to set up the language support, you must go to View -> Character Coding -> Customize..., and add the language support you want for browser rendering. This is *not* at all what the popup message indicates, and seems like something that needs to be present in Preferences as well, and more clearly labelled. If a person is likely to be using a web browser in more than one language, then they'll probably want to configure all the language options all at once, so there's no sense in putting them in two separate places in the application.

      So, kudos to Moz for a lightweight multi-language browser, but demerits for making it counter-intuitive to configure.
    • There have been patches out for the confirm-on-close bug for a while, but they were difficult to apply - especially under windows if you don't have a real "patch" tool available. Here [cmu.edu] are the various files for 1.4 with the patch applied.
    • by suss ( 158993 )
      Now, if only they could fix the issue with multi-language support in Moz 1.4 Win32

      In windows 2000, go to Control Panel, Regional Options, General. Check any of the languages you need in language settings.

      It will copy the necessary files from your windows 2000 cd... i'm guessing it will be much the same in XP.
  • by dyj ( 590807 ) on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @10:56PM (#6507867)
    At least if you just want the browser, Mozilla Firebird seems already much better than Mozilla.

    I have been using a recent nightly build of Mozilla Firebird as my primary browser, and it has been very stable and already feels much more polished than Mozilla.

    Small things like the Ctrl-Enter shortcut and automatic mouse scrolling make Mozilla Firebird feel more like a polished product than Moziila does.
  • by cavegrub ( 558060 ) <cavegrub@fin.ods.org> on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @10:59PM (#6507881) Journal
    After typing about:config and browsing to the bottom of the list...
    timebomb.first_launch_time 1034222022286000
    I always knew that IE had a built in crash timer, but Mozilla? ;)
  • by Pvt_Waldo ( 459439 ) on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @11:06PM (#6507933)
    If they could get Chatzilla and Mail in the main tabbed interface it would roxorz IMO.
  • by Emperor Tiberius ( 673354 ) on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @11:15PM (#6508009) Homepage
    I don't know if I'm the only out there who's noticed, but, Firebird development has slowed considerably with all the Mozilla fuss. The next FB milestone (0.7 Indio) is going to be late almost two months in a few days. Meanwhile we've had the Mozilla 1.4 RC1, RC2, Final and 1.5 Alpha come out.

    CVS checkins to the Firebird suite have also lagged behind. Personally, I would like to see FB development accelerated instead of put on the back burner.
  • by Bill Dimm ( 463823 ) on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @11:25PM (#6508069) Homepage
    The problem that I've had with every version of Mozilla I've seen so far is that I can't tell when I have new email under Linux. Under Netscape 4.8, when new mail arrives the mail client icon on the KDE Kicker panel changes so I can see that I have mail even if the mail client is iconified. In Mozilla 1.x or Netscape 7.1 this does not happen, so I can't tell when new mail arrives if the browser and mail client are iconified or covered by other windows. I realize there is an option in preferences for audio notification, but it doesn't seem to work and I really don't want to annoy everyone in my office ever time I get email anyway.

    Is there some simple work-around that I don't know about? Are there any plans to fix this? I've raised this issue on mozillazine.org and reported it to Netscape (a few weeks before AOL killed Netscape), but it seems to get no attention. This is a total showstopper for me. Someone please rescue me from having to use Netscape 4.8 for email...
  • Draggable tabs (Score:4, Interesting)

    by CaptainSuperBoy ( 17170 ) on Wednesday July 23, 2003 @12:27AM (#6508435) Homepage Journal
    This is my one feature request: Draggable tabs. There is no way to rearrange the order that the tabs are displayed in - you should be able to drag them left and right in the browser window. Once you open a tab, you are stuck with its position relative to your other tabs. Doesn't seem hard to do, and it's been in bugzilla for years.
  • I have to say Mozilla/Firebird has really grown onto me. At work i have to use IE and what bugs me is that while Mozilla has evolved fast IE has been standing still. Things like popup kill, tabs, privacy and cookie management etc, i just cant be without them now that im used to them. Today Mozilla is the best browser out there without a doubt.

    To the Mozilla decelopers and Netscape/AOL, thank you!
  • Composer Tips? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ewhac ( 5844 ) on Wednesday July 23, 2003 @01:01AM (#6508637) Homepage Journal

    I've been doing a fair amount of mucking around in Mozilla Composer lately and, while it's okay for writing first-approximation Web pages, I've found the UI to be really inconvenient for some things.

    The thing likes to pollute the document with line breaks (<BR>) everywhere, which is darned annoying. Creation and maintenance of directory lists (<DL> <DT> <DD>) is really finicky -- do things in the wrong sequence and the formatting will be ruined. I find myself making constant trips to the source window, fixing up broken or unnecessary HTML. It also offers no help at all in composing and previewing style sheets.

    I'd really like Composer to be a good WYSIWYG HTML editor, but it seems to be sorely lacking. Is it just me? Is there some Secret Book of Composer Power Usage Tips that I haven't found yet, or does it really fall as short as I think it does?

    Schwab

    • Re:Composer Tips? (Score:4, Informative)

      by glazou ( 691682 ) on Wednesday July 23, 2003 @04:11AM (#6509407)
      About <br> : yes, I can agree with that. We currently use a lot of <br> because Gecko forces us to do so. If there is no content, there is no frame (basically, that's how we call the abstract boxes rendered on the canvas); and if there is no frame, we can't place a caret... Given how much the layout team was axed last week, I don't think we'll have a fix for this very big issue any time soon. I am myself working on another approach, ie make Composer get rid of any useless <br> as soon as possible. You have to understand that's not a simple task _at all_. I currently have a fix in my own tree, but it's not fully satisfactory yet.

      About definition lists: I agree too and I am working on it.

      About nested lists, bug 54479: that's a major issue, and solving it is a HUGE work. I have a partial fix for this that helps **creating** valid nested lists but does not handle copy/paste yet.

      About editing stylesheets, you were probably on another planet during the last year and a half ;-) I recommend you take a look at http://cascades.mozdev.org/ or build yourself the editor in mozilla/extensions/editor/cascades.

      Daniel Glazman, Mozilla Composer module owner and author of CaScadeS.
  • Roaming? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Jahf ( 21968 ) on Wednesday July 23, 2003 @01:09AM (#6508679) Journal
    I still don't see roaming. There needs to be a final monolithic version (ie, not Firebird/Thunderbird) that supports roaming. That way companies who are still stuck on Netscape 4.79 for its roaming capabilities can migrate to a newer engine.

  • what timing (Score:3, Informative)

    by buddha42 ( 539539 ) on Wednesday July 23, 2003 @01:23AM (#6508741)
    Today I just so happened to be testing out my new mod_log_sql setup on the small college website I run in part. In the 650,000 GET/POST requests we've gotten since friday morning, only about 2.5% were from anything with "Gecko", "Netscape6", "Netscape/7", "Firebird"Galeon", or "Camino" in the user agent string.
    Interestingly enough, Netscape/4.7 came up with about 3.2% (3/4 of which were from on-campus).

    fortunatly we're approaching 1-year of being xhtml & css devotees and its suprisingly easy to be xhtml1-strict compliant and use tableless or low-table layouts that work in 96+% of our 'human' traffic (which btw IE 6.0 is more than 65% of).

    Anyway, sorry for the stats ramble, I just though it was really cool to have access to real numbers today, not just rumors and zealous flamewars.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23, 2003 @03:27AM (#6509254)
    Despite CRAM-MD5 being finally fixed, the amazingly obtuse way Mozilla handles secure IMAP is still there: You either use plain, unencrypted IMAP on port 143, or you use IMAPS over 993.

    There's no STARTTLS support [mozilla.org] (on port 143) yet, which renders Mozilla Mail and Thunderbird useless in some ultra-paranoid corporate settings...
  • Mozilla tips ! (Score:5, Informative)

    by MythMoth ( 73648 ) on Wednesday July 23, 2003 @05:29AM (#6509638) Homepage
    Lots of tips & tricks for mozilla at MozillaTips [mozillatips.com] logically enough.

    They've got some good stuff already, but could probably use the extra traffic !

    D.
  • Mozilla Composer (Score:4, Interesting)

    by onco_p53 ( 231322 ) on Wednesday July 23, 2003 @06:26AM (#6509797) Homepage Journal
    What really bugs me about composer is that when you view the HTML source it is in mono-colour text. How hard can it be to use the same scheme as the "view page source" window when you are examining a webpage.

    The different colours make identifing the code much easier

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