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Mozilla The Internet

Mozilla.org Relaunched 427

mpeach writes "Mozilla Organization has launched its new Web site and it's looking a fair bit sleeker than it used to. No new product releases to go with the new look unfortunately, but, according to the Firefox 1.0 Roadmap, release candidates of the latest browser are getting closer by the day."
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Mozilla.org Relaunched

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  • by acariquara ( 753971 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @05:42PM (#10132871) Journal
    Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040901 Firefox/1.0 PR (NOT FINAL)
    as of 09/01/2004... Broke some extensions BTW!
    • Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040901 Firefox/1.0 PR (NOT FINAL) as of 09/01/2004... Broke some extensions BTW!
      I'm not a developer - Just a user... Where do you see a 1.0 in the Firefox nightlies [mozilla.org]?
    • Asa Dotzler (Mozilla.org's QA guy!) says:

      Last night our champion hackers got a new update infrastructure landed into Firefox 0.9 branch builds and set up the new server and the new server-side code, moving away from the slow Java based stuff to some much faster not-Java based stuff. Grab today's branch builds and go hammer on this new stuff. Update should be working better and everything should be faster, hopefully.

      http://ftp24moz.newaol.com/pub/mozilla.org/fire f ox /nightly/latest-0.9/
    • by samhalliday ( 653858 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @09:22PM (#10134531) Homepage Journal
      Mozilla/5.0 (Windows

      why is the latest version of firefox so hard to find for windows? all the download links are for gnu/linux! (or is this new page so "smart" that it detects what OS you are on and only print a link for that?)

      • by Hooded One ( 684008 ) <hoodedone@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @10:25PM (#10134978) Journal
        It looks like they do check your system to provide the relevant download link. Interestingly, changing your UA doesn't affect this. The relevant code is this:
        function getPlatform()
        {
        if (navigator.platform.indexOf("Win32") != -1)
        return "Windows";
        else if (navigator.platform.indexOf("Linux") != -1)
        return "Linux";
        else if (navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Mac OS X") != -1)
        return "MacOSX";
        else if (navigator.platform.indexOf("Mac") != -1)
        return "Mac";
        return "Other";
        }
        I guess navigator.platform is independent of UA string. What doesn't make sense is why they use userAgent for OSX.

        What also doesn't make sense is why they used client-side Javascript for the rotating screenshot image, when they're already doing server-side scripting to include the latest RSS information, or why they have the screenshot as the background image for a DIV instead of an inline IMG.

        It's still a lovely layout though.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @05:43PM (#10132878)
    So /. renders really poorly in Gecko, as do a myriad of other sites.

    Is that Firefox's problem for not gracefully accepting broken HTML? Or is it those web developers who write the broken HTML?
    • THAT is the issue web developers have been fighting for a long time. If you want a browser that will render line noise, go for MSIE. Of course, this only encourages bad coding (see the decline of HTML quality since 99 or so....)
      • I'd say HTML coding's gone up in quality, not down. Aside from a few errant copies of FrontPage floating around (you know who you are), the introduction of the stricter-formatted XHTML has given quality-concious designers something they can put faith in.

        Instead of malformed tables possibly breaking the whole page, XHTML means that the page HAS to be formatted correctly, and with that, it damned well better work with all the browsers out there. The more strict standard makes less guesswork for HTML tool dev
    • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @07:17PM (#10133677)
      http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=217527
    • by Anonymous Coward
      So /. renders really poorly in Gecko,

      It's a huge problem for me as well! Firefox renders /.'s IT section in an absolutely putrid color scheme spawned from at least the 9th circle of hell. I wish those lazy developers over at mozilla.org would actually get around to fixing some bugs instead of just working on a slick web presence that looks incredibly tight and professional.
  • Finally sheesh (Score:3, Insightful)

    by (54)T-Dub ( 642521 ) * <tpaine.gmail@com> on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @05:44PM (#10132882) Journal
    I'm glad that the creative designers behind the firefox look finally got a crack at the homepage. IMO it gives the browser much better more credibility if it has a professional looking website. Not just like some hodge-podge browser. *warning ... blatant plug to get me free stuff following
    • Re:Finally sheesh (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jelwell ( 2152 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @06:33PM (#10133346)
      I'll third that, also not anonymously. The problem isn't the links themselves. It's that the content of the message posted is so hastily written to try to get moderation points quickly.

      Is the new Mozilla site actually more professional looking? No. Maybe compared to the link in the article from 1998, but not compared to how mozilla.org looked a month ago.

      It just seems like this kind of ill-informed comment only serves the purpose of promoting said website.
      Joseph Elwell.
  • by adam mcmaster ( 697132 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @05:44PM (#10132883) Homepage
    Why not actually compare it to the previous design [archive.org] they had?
    • The new design isn't a poor excuse to show off CSS positioning effects, it uses them to it's advantage. Everything joe blogs needs is clear to show, anything else is much more clearly displayed due to the lack of clutter.
    • Compared. The older design's bold black and intense orangish yellow, combined with serif fonts, make it look amateurish compared with the previous design's Verdana font and soft colors.

      But now ... now they've gone corporate!

      But I guess beauty's in the eye of the beholder ...
      • Not that I care, but did anyone notice that they're using some mozilla-only CSS stuff?

        So when an IE user goes to the site, some stuff appear to be broken (like the green box that says "Free Download" doesn't have rounded corners on IE)... Small details, but still...

        On the other hand, looks very good on mozilla. :D
    • by Curtman ( 556920 )
      Or the hideous one before [archive.org] that.
  • Duh (Score:5, Funny)

    by over_exposed ( 623791 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @05:44PM (#10132884) Homepage
    ...release candidates of the latest browser are getting closer by the day.

    Isn't that kind of how time works?
  • Woot (Score:2, Interesting)

    Nice.

    Sorta OT, is anyone else irritated with how they are hiding the zipped binaries for windows now? You used to be able to get them as easily as the installer, and before that there was no installer. I just don't trust it...

    • Re:Woot (Score:3, Informative)

      by PReDiToR ( 687141 )
      They stopped showing the Zips on the main page because they wanted to test the installer properly.

      There were still problems with it on 0.9, I don't know if they are fixed yet.
  • Firefox (Score:4, Insightful)

    by danormsby ( 529805 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @05:45PM (#10132892) Homepage
    I'm a big fan of Firefox. Only bit I don't like is upgrading the software where "installing over the top of an older version may cause unpredictable problems [mozilla.org]."

    Soon as that is fixed I'll recommend it to my mother.

    • I'm a big fan of Firefox. Only bit I don't like is upgrading the software where "installing over the top of an older version may cause unpredictable problems."

      The beta versions of Mozilla had this problem. Not sure if this is still the case, though. (Back when I ran Windows) I installed each release in a separate (new) directory under C:\Program_Files.

      In this case, let's say I installed a version of Firefox under C:\Program_Files\Firefox_0.9.2. When the new version comes out, I dump that in the Tra

    • Re:Firefox (Score:5, Interesting)

      by anakog ( 448790 ) <anakog@yahoo.com> on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @06:27PM (#10133295) Journal
      Frankly, I am not much worried about that, because I am sure the distros will take care of packaging it nicely to avoid these kinds of problems.

      What worries me though is that very old and critical bugs like Bug 115174 are not considered important enough as to be release blockers. For the lazy to look this up, this bug manifests in realoading a dynamically generated page in certain cases, which may result in double-charging your credit card when you have just made a purchase and simply want to save your receipt. This bug is present in both Mozilla and Firefox and has been an issue since 2002!

      I have been using Mozilla and Firefox exclusively for the past couple of years and have to say that this is a PITA. I got used to it and know which sites I regularly visit are problematic and how to get around it (save as text or print to file). But a lot of users might get hit by this bug if Firefox becomes more widespread and they would rightfully be pissed.

      Another problem I have is that since about version 1.3 (or earlier?), Mozilla, and later Firefox, have been unstable and crashing a lot (e.g. once or twice a week under heavy load). I don't know is this is a Linux-only issue (I only use Red Hat 9 and Fedora core 2), but they seem to have a memory leak and that's not good if it creeps into the 1.0 release. I would gladly submit a bug report for this if I only knew how to reproduce it...

  • by grape jelly ( 193168 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @05:45PM (#10132906)
    I, for one, think they have made some great UI improvements. Most people don't hit moz.org seeking news and whatnot about the project. Instead, they just want to know where to get The Better Browser(TM). More than once, I've had to hold a few slower-than-I'd-like hands in finding where to download the latest and greatest version of Moz and variants. I just wonder why they featured FireFox so prominently and put the full version of Moz in the "bottom" row.
    • by Lispy ( 136512 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @05:52PM (#10132980) Homepage
      Try Firefox and you'll know.

      Honestly. Mozilla includes everything and the kitchen sink. That's overkill for most users. As the Gnome folks learned the hard way a few good options are much more welcome than every little tidbit of configurability.

      Firefox is lean, fast forward, and one tool for the job. Just what mom needs. And what I need. The features can be added with extensions, if you really have to. Most people love Firefox from day one because they "get it".

      Mozillas default interface also resembles the old Netscape Navigator interface wich feels kinda old to the people that switched over to IE back in 1996.
      • Despite the zeal with which Firefox advocates push it, I still prefer Mozilla. I don't like Firefox. It lacks features I use like encrypted password storage and it's buggier than Mozilla. I've tried every milestone since 0.6 and it still hasn't won me over.

        People seem locked in this belief that Mozilla Browser (Seamonkey) = Mozilla Suite and therefore it's bad if you don't want email et al.

        OK, so the download is larger - big whoop - I've got broadband and it doesn't bother me. The browser components are e
      • by Anonymous Coward

        Try Firefox and you'll know.

        I use Firefox as my primary browser, and I'm equally confused as to why it suddenly has centre stage. It's not ready for primetime. The current release version has got a half-assed incomplete default theme, there are still problems upgrading from version to version, there's still filler text where there should be text that is actually useful... it's not a finished product. That's why it isn't 1.0 yet.

        Seeing as 1.0 is not too far away, why couldn't they have postponed pu

        • Firefox is perfectly ready for prime time, both for geeks who understand what a 0.x version is, and for Windows users who are accustomed to the remarkably woeful IE, and general incompleteness of most Microsoft products when they first ship. Firefox may not be perfectly polished yet, but it's certainly able to compete with Internet Explorer, and with other offerings like Opera which are intimidating to first-time users because of their complexity.

          I have not encountered a single person who has been turned

    • Wasn't it official that Mozilla was going to be unsupported? Like, bugfixes but no new development?

      Firefox is their flagship product now. Mozilla in its previous incarnation was a bloated hulk which many of us are trying to forget.
  • Camino? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by wtmcgee ( 113309 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @05:45PM (#10132908) Homepage
    camino is barely mentioned on this site...

    sad.
    • Re:Camino? (Score:2, Informative)

      Not on the homepage, but it's not really hidden either [mozilla.org].
    • If you click on the "Products" tab, you'll see the link for Camino. I'm assuming they've decided to include the big three products on the main page and relegate the lesser requested ones (like Camino & Bugzilla) to the Products tab to lessen confusion for newcomers.

      Just out of curiosity, what does Camino give you that Firefox doesn't?
  • Is there anything significant in this relaunch? Are they designing (show-casing) a site that utilises every feature in Firefox, for instance?
  • Slow News Day? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @05:48PM (#10132933) Homepage Journal
    Ok, this is bordering on infatuation. "Mozilla Organization has launched its new Web site and it's looking a fair bit sleeker than it used to. No new product releases to go with the new look" This is effectively saying we looked at 500 submissions and this was the best of them.

    Slow news day or infatuated with Mozilla? Heck, I like Mozilla and use it at home and work, but I don't drop everything to see what's happened with their website in the last day. Gee willikers.

    Here's some other fine articles which could probably have been posted:

    Philadelphia Considering Free or Low Cost Wireless For All [forbes.com]

    Microsoft to Exploit Japan's Post Offices to deliver SP2 (their word, not mine!) [japantoday.com]

    The Road Ahead, According to Steve Ballmer [computerworld.com]

    X-Rays Reveal Mummy Faces (Low Cancer Risk to Mummy) [iol.co.za]

    Owls Use Poop to Lure Beetles [discovery.com]

    • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @06:22PM (#10133264)
      While I don't agree with most of your post, I do agree that this item didn't really deserve its own article. The problem is that we don't get Quickies anymore. Remember those? One article that referred to several small items, all worthy of a nerd's attention but not important enough to warrant their own separate articles. For some reason, we don't see those anymore. I thought they were quite fun. A lot of fun's been taken out of /. lately... :(
  • Interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by InternationalCow ( 681980 ) <[moc.cam] [ta] [lesneetsnaveciruam]> on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @05:48PM (#10132934) Journal
    how Firefox is being plugged. It's pretty obvious IMHO from the site that Firefox has the wind in its sails so to speak, as it's offered for download (geared to your OS, nice) with a biggo font. If you want Mozilla, you have some more clicks to go. Does that mean that Mozilla will be superseded at some point by Firefox??
    • by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @05:52PM (#10132983) Homepage Journal
      how Firefox is being plugged. It's pretty obvious IMHO from the site that Firefox has the wind in its sails

      Let's talk understatement here. You don't offer this kind of thing [mozillastore.com] without a significant commitment to the package.

    • Re:Interesting... (Score:3, Informative)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 )
      yes. afaik that's the whole point.

      and really why not: lighter, faster and just as good if not better. firefox tries to be what most people seem to be looking from mozilla anyways: a good web browser(very few use the extra stuff in the 'full' mozilla anyways and if they're available as seperate in the future there's no problem there either).
    • Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Informative)

      by barcodez ( 580516 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @05:57PM (#10133033)
      Does that mean that Mozilla will be superseded at some point by Firefox??

      Yes, this has been the plan for sometime. See the Roadmap [mozilla.org] in particular point (1.) under "a new roadmap" and also Rationale [mozilla.org]
    • Yup (Score:4, Informative)

      by CurbyKirby ( 306431 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @05:58PM (#10133042) Homepage
      # Focus development efforts on the new standalone applications: the browser currently code-named Firefox, the Mozilla Thunderbird mail/news application, and standalone composer and other apps based on the the new XUL toolkit used by Firefox and Thunderbird. We aim to make Firefox and Thunderbird our premier products.


      # Updated: Maintain the SeaMonkey application suite, currently built by default, for enterprises and other organizations with large existing Mozilla deployments. SeaMonkey remains an important product for many customers.

      from http://www.mozilla.org/roadmap.html [mozilla.org]

    • by jeti ( 105266 )
      It looks like the start page for Firefox is accessed nearly eight times as often as the start page for Mozilla.
    • Re:Interesting... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Mprx ( 82435 )
      Downloads geared to your user agent is a stupid idea. Any Linux user probably already has Firefox, so the only reason they'd be going to the website would be to download the Windows version for family/friends.

      It takes 4 clicks for a Linux user to download the Windows version from the front page now, compared to 1 click for the old version. Generally everything has been dumbed down, and is more ugly looking. This new design sucks.

  • Bad choice of hook (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cicho ( 45472 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @05:52PM (#10132974) Homepage
    They shouldn't be using "Free download" as the prominent eye-catching link. "Free download" does not mean the software is free, only that it costs nothing to download it. This semantic fuzziness is often used by commercial software vendors (and spammers) as a way to entice people to download trial and/or crippled software. They should instead say something like "Free software", "Free to get, free to use", anything that doesn't have the bad vibe that comes with "free download"

    • They should instead say something like "Free software", "Free to get, free to use", anything that doesn't have the bad vibe that comes with "free download"

      What bad vibe is that, exactly?

      Consider the target market for Firefox....
    • by justforaday ( 560408 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @06:10PM (#10133157)
      They should instead say something like "Free software", "Free to get, free to use", anything that doesn't have the bad vibe that comes with "free download"

      I'm sure posting a big flashing "Free as in Beer" graphic will boost it's popularity with the college crowd.
  • by Beautyon ( 214567 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @05:52PM (#10132985) Homepage
    Links to the bleeding edge 1.8 Alpha versions are not immediately apparent...why?
  • Sunbird (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Feneric ( 765069 )
    It's a pity that Sunbird isn't given any sort of prominence along with Thunderbird... it's already very usable and fills its niche nicely.
    • It's only at 0.2 - I'm sure once it reaches a reasonable level of functionality and stability they'll start including it with all of their other products on the front page.
    • Re:Sunbird (Score:3, Informative)

      by sgtsanity ( 568914 )
      I thought that too... until I tried to print my schedule and it froze up. That said, it's good enough that I use it for my calendaring. But isn't anywhere near as polished as Firebird and Thunderbird.
  • by flend ( 9133 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @05:54PM (#10133000) Homepage
    Were they stuck for something to do when they realised they no longer had to keep renaming Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox?
  • Mirror (Score:5, Funny)

    by romper ( 47937 ) * on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @05:54PM (#10133008)
    Mirrored here [microsoft.com].
  • by methano ( 519830 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @05:54PM (#10133009)
    OK, so this is off topic. But I just tried the new MSN music site and some of the buttons (like search) don't work in FireFox. What a piece of crap. I'm going back to IE. (just kidding, about going back that is. The search button really is DOA).
  • If you've been to mozilla.org recently, make sure you refresh once or twice. I discovered an odd-looking page when I followed the link, and I was sure that the designers must have gone crazy. Turns out that my browser (Firefox) was using a cached version of their old CSS file and was applying it to the content of the new site. Yuck. Refreshing fixed this.

    I think the site looks beautiful. Clean, slick graphics. The old site made great use of CSS, but the color scheme here is a lot more likeable. And

  • Firefox PR1 (Score:2, Interesting)

    by eegad ( 588763 )
    This roadmap indicates the PR1 for 8/30. Where is it? Hmm...
  • Looks OK. The screenshot of the much-debated Slate article is a nice touch, though.
  • Looks nice! (Score:5, Funny)

    by lpangelrob2 ( 721920 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @06:04PM (#10133115) Journal
    Rumor has it they also tried to change the name of the site to http://www.firelizard.com, but the technical barriers were too high to overcome.

    (Yes, I use Firefox ;-) )

  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @06:09PM (#10133153)
    Looks nice, And valid [w3.org] too!
    --
    Slashdot only allows a user with your karma to post 2 times per day (more or less, depending on moderation). You've already shared your thoughts with us that many times. Take a breather, and come back and see us in 24 hours or so.
    -
    I'm still posting :-)
  • by Allen Varney ( 449382 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @06:16PM (#10133208) Homepage

    I wish the Firefox page had easy front-page links to both the Extensions list [texturizer.net] and the Plug-ins list [mozdev.org]. Maybe I missed the link, but the most convenient way I know to find the plug-ins is through a search engine. Does anyone know why extensions and plug-ins have to have separate pages?

  • by vitaflo ( 20507 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @06:19PM (#10133237) Homepage
    It seems the website knows what system I'm running, as they offer for me to download the OS X version of Firefox, yet the screenshot of it to the right shows the Windows version. It'd be nice if they tailored this page to me a bit more and showed a screenshot with OS X chrome.
  • by i_r_sensitive ( 697893 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @06:21PM (#10133254)

    until Oct 11 next year for Debian to percolate it out of unstable!

  • All I can say is wow, this is a great change, almost too great! I came here this morning looking for the latest nightly build, I saw the new design and almost had a heart attack, I thought I had mistyped the URL or something!

    I think the new design gives it much more of a professional look, which is good, I think it will attract more people, and overall be better for there company.

    The blue look deffinatly looks professional. Regarding the old design, something about all that red made me see red :P

    Conclusi
  • Just glad (Score:5, Funny)

    by A_Non_Moose ( 413034 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @06:23PM (#10133269) Homepage Journal
    I'm just glad the got rid of that damn "find toolbar".

    Dear $deity in heaven, why would they screw up a perfectly good feature like find as you type?

    Insult to injury was when typing in passwords to my Novell server, the new find bar proudly displayed my password in plain view. Thank the same $deity no one was around, and my monitor faces a wall.

    Why didn't they just add a Clippy type character that can speak through the voice software in windows:
    "It looks like you are typing in "$password" as your password, would you like some help typing in your passwords?"

    Whoever thought that find bar up deserves 10 lashes with a cat5 o' 9 tails.
  • Nitpicking (Score:3, Interesting)

    by faust2097 ( 137829 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @06:28PM (#10133302)
    The tabs need an selected state, right now if I click on 'Products" it takes me there but when I go into a subpage there's no indication that I'm still in the Products section.

    Also, a lot of pages like Module Owners are still pretty nasty.

    Nice work though, it's always nice to see more standards compliant websites that actually look good.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @06:34PM (#10133350)

    Does anyone know how well Firefox integrates with Thunderbird? Specifically, if I click on a "mailto" link in Firefox, will it pull up Thuderbird without any custom configuration (assuming Thunderbird is installed)?

    Last I looked into this, Firefox and Thunderbird would not work together like this "out of the box". This was a real bummer, and it made me wonder if Firefox wasn't being targeted a little too much at the geek community. Compared to the simple integration of IE and Outlook Express, the Firefox/Thunderbird integration was really clumsy.

    (On a side note, it kinda irritates me that Firefox is being pushed so hard over Mozilla. I've had a few clients download Firefox (thinking it was a Mozilla update), and then wonder why they couldn't get to their email program anymore when it replaced all of the Mozilla icons...)

  • by Eric_Cartman_South_P ( 594330 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @06:43PM (#10133439)
    It looks great. Awesome. Great new site.

    Expect lets make it more clear that Moz is free. "Free Download" makes me think of a demo, or a trial, or the __download__ is free but might cost more later.

    It should say "x is a FREE product. Free to own and use forever."

  • by TravisWatkins ( 746905 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @07:15PM (#10133669) Homepage
    Like the topic says, in IE I get 'Error: Object Expected'. If the site is broken in the browser people are going to be using to look at the site for the first time, what are people going to think about the browser Mozilla wants you to use?
  • beautiful ... (Score:3, Informative)

    by polyp2000 ( 444682 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @07:37PM (#10133824) Homepage Journal
    great! [w3.org]

    No further comment!

    Nick

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