Mozilla's Year In Review For 2003 192
An anonymous reader writes "Like last year, MozillaZine has published a review of Mozilla's world in 2003. Obviously, the year was dominated by AOL's decision to murder Netscape (though various acts of 'brand necrophilia' will ensure that the Netscape name lives on in one form or another). This, combined with Mozilla Firebird's and Mozilla Thunderbird's steady progress towards replacing the Mozilla suite, made 2003 very much a transitional year for the open source project. Other memories to tell your grandchildren include mozilla.org's fifth birthday, the new roadmap, the Firebird name debate and a new chapter being added to The Book of Mozilla."
Having just tried Firebird... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I wonder (Score:2, Interesting)
Although... (Score:5, Interesting)
Mozilla and /. (slightly OT) (Score:4, Interesting)
As much as I like Mozilla, Mozilla does a miserable job rendering ./'s site. It worked great for a very long time, doing a better job than MSIE, but now what I get is digital peanut butter when I come to ./ with Mozilla. Sometimes, it just skips the articles and leaves a bunch of little buttons all over everywhere. Other times, everything gets rendered to the same line. Anyone else have the same problem?
I have not tried the new Firebird on /. yet, maybe that'll fix whatever's broke?
My thoughts on Firebird (Score:5, Interesting)
After reading a lot of Stallman's writings I decided to let go of even Opera and totally switch to Free software. I was very apprehensive because Opera was the second coming of Jesus as far as I was concerned.
Went to Mozilla.org, Decided against getting the full fledged mozilla because I remembered it being bloated as all hell, got Firebird instead. Downloaded a ton of plugins, fixed everything to where it felt right.
I'm a total convert. Firebird will kick oh so much ass by the time it hits 1.0. It's design is as simple as IE, which is the #1 reason people cite IE as their favorite browser. It's small, almost as fast as Opera, all the features that I loved in Opera are available through plugins, and all the features I didn't use aren't in Firebird because I didn't install them. I have since fallen in love with tabbed browsing. Used to think that browsing three or four sites at once was kinda stupid, but once I got used to tabs in Firebird I began to see myself doing the exact same thing.
The Mozilla project has come a VERY long ways since it first came to be. If you've tried Mozilla out earlier and were disappointed, get it now. Get Firebird. Get Thunderbird. Install plugins to your hearts content. You will be very well surprised.
And hey, you'll be using Free software so that's a huge plus, in my eyes.
Re:Mozilla and /. (slightly OT) (Score:3, Interesting)
I have this problem with Mozilla (V 1.5) as well.
I have 1.4 (have not bothered to update yet), and you have described the exact problem I am seeing. Weird part is, it was fine up until recently, and now it just doesn't quite fly. Maybe ./ changed something...
I also have found that when I download various media files, such as mpg's, the file achieved from the download is not readable/usable by my media player. Have you seen this problem?
No, I haven't had this problem. Downloads aren't a problem. I usually use a third-party download manager instead of the one built in, but Mozilla's d/l manager has never posed a problem.It was a bad year for Mozilla. (Score:1, Interesting)
But they failed completely to incoperate the rising new mark-up technologies like XML-Signature [ietf.org] or WebCGM [w3.org].
If this development continues this year, Mozilla might lose it's technical lead to IE or Opera. And open source software might be again only the second winner.
Re:Mozilla and /. (slightly OT) (Score:1, Interesting)
It's been some while since I stumbled across that, and it would be very nice were the Slashdot coders to adopt it.
Sorry But ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:My thoughts on Firebird (Score:5, Interesting)
They're quite prepared to install junk like bonzai buddy and various dancing things on their desktop but categorically refuse to try another browser. "I use Internet Explorer", they say and look at me like I just suggested they make love to the electric pencil sharpener.
I've long since given up trying.
Re:My thoughts on Firebird (Score:4, Interesting)
What, don't you have ADHD like the rest of us? *grin*
Seriously, I find it to be too much of a PITA to browse without tabs anymore, but to each his own.
How about security, though? You know, there are still huge gaping holes in IE that will allow "untrusted" software to install itself without user interaction. Heh, I witnessed it the other day, as I didn't believe it and had to see for myself.
Watch your step... err... mouse. p /.
Re:Having just tried Firebird... (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Opera 7.2x
2. Firebird 0.6/7
3. MSIE 6.0
4. Mozilla 1.5/6a
Firebird is very promising, and it'll make a good drop-in replacement for IE. I use Thunderbird as my mail client (hint to Opera: innovation's good, but not when it's a synonym for shitting - eliminate M2) - it's got great spam filtering (it gets the occasional false positive, but it's learning - bayesian filters will take over the world).
Microsoft broke IE in November (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, I could replace the offending file myself, or use the PgUp/Dn keys, but really, a security patch for IE that breaks IE is too much.
I've been using Mozilla Firebird about half the time, and IE the other half since it's just easier to keep using it after I've opened it to get to sites reqiring IE.
But to hell with those sites. To hell with Microsoft. I'll be spending the rest of my holidays purging the last remnants of MS from my desktops and my laptop. I'd been straddling the fence for years... thanks Bill, you've made up my mind for me.
I disagree. Firebird is great, but it's not Opera (Score:4, Interesting)
Firebird is awesome, but there are still a lot of things that Opera did better.
Most of them are minor, but they're things I used regularly and I miss greatly.
For instance.
1. When you browse forward and back the keyboard doesn't have the focus on a page, so if you use the page up/down keys you get nothing. If you hit control F to search the page, it pops up but doesn't search the page.
2. I liked Opera's save session ability. Mozilla has this and it works pretty well, but not quite as well as Opera. For instance, I like having the ability to force my groups of pages load up in a new tabbed browser. Mozilla throws them into the current browser.
3. I really really miss the ability to save the pages I was on when I close the browser and also to load those same pages up in the event the browser crashes. Mozilla *almost* has this setting. It has visit the last page on startup, but I want to visit the last tabbed group on startup.
4. This one really bugs me. Maybe it's just a bug because it doesn't happen everytime, but when you jump forward and back through pages, sometimes the page doesn't go back to where you were scrolled, it goes back to the top of the page. Ugh! Makes it a pain to search ebay because you go to an item and then go back and you're at the top of the page, you hit page down or control F but the page doesn't have focus! argh!
I think those are my top 4 pet peeves. As a developer there are a couple of css issues (margins and borders) that I don't like, but those are minor and generally workable.
the Firebird name debate (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the name's daft too but found myself defending it to my Dad. It's probably a silly corporate thing...
Re:Although... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a tradeoff, and it all depends on whether or not your network is homogenous. For example, if all of your computers run windows, firebird using GTK probably sticks out like a sore thumb because it doesn't look consistent with the native widgets. Whereas if you have to switch between linux, mac and windows all the time, it's probably nice to have an app that looks and acts the same on all platforms.