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Mozilla The Internet

Planning For Mozilla 2.0 579

Posted by timothy from the what-at-this-time-of-night dept.
wikinerd writes "The MozillaWiki maintains a number of pages on Mozilla 2.0 which reveals lots of possible new features of the popular browser. What does your wishlist include about Mozilla 2.0, and how has the release of Firefox affected your use of Mozilla?"
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Planning For Mozilla 2.0 More

Planning For Mozilla 2.0

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  • 2.0? (Score:5, Funny)

    by keesh ( 202812 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @08:00AM (#11333309) Homepage
    What's with Mozilla 1.4, er, I mean 1.5, er, I mean 1.6, er, I mean 1.7 being the Last Release Ever?

    • Re:2.0? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by bunratty ( 545641 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @09:28AM (#11333858)
      Talk about ancient history! When mozilla.org first decided to focus on Firefox, they were going to "replace" the suite with FIrefox/Thunderbird. They quickly junked that plan when they realized that many large organizations, including ones that support Mozilla with money or developers, preferred the suite. Dropping support for the suite would mean losing those companies' support for Mozilla.

  • Who has firefox affectd my use of Mozilla? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @08:00AM (#11333311)
    It has ended it.

    • Re:Who has firefox affectd my use of Mozilla? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gandell ( 827178 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @08:08AM (#11333345)
      Ditto. Mozilla was bloated anyway. If you wanted its full features, you could take advantage of it, but I preferred the lighter Firefox, anyway.
      The features I wanted are already found in Firefox (i.e., tabbed browsing, popup blocker, themes & extensions). I just don't need Mozilla any more.
      • Same here. The only thing that I find more useful/easier in Mozilla is the dialogue box for saving a file - in Firefox you have to expand the window several times to save to a different directory than you previously used. This can get a bit annoying if I'm saving multiple files which need putting in different directories. A small problem, but it does annoy me.
    • I had the opposite reaction. After trying Firefox I found it so spartan that I realised just how much I would miss the Mozilla suite if its development would ever stop.

  • New Theme (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Frogbert ( 589961 ) <frogbert@gmail . c om> on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @08:01AM (#11333315)
    How about a new Theme? I personaly dispise the current theme and the way the various toolbars interact within mozilla.

    Also how about a way to manage Mozilla using Windows group policies?

    What about a MSI package?

  • Simple (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @08:02AM (#11333317)
    Mine are pretty simple.

    A graphical history record (i.e. one that keeps a stored image of places where I've been, rather than a mere text description, as most give very limited info of what that particular site was).

    And, an RSS reader equivalent to FeedDemon [bradsoft.com].

    • And, an RSS reader equivalent to FeedDemon.
      Sage [mozdev.org]?

    • Re:Simple (Score:2, Insightful)

      by hokie99cpe ( 825807 )
      Personally, I'm digging the Firefox/Thunderbird duo.

      I have never had any major problems in Firefox. Most of my problems stem from simple-minded web devs relying too heavily on IEs mechanisms and not putting enough emphasis on interoperability.

      And, Thunderbird is turning out to be one of the best email clients I've used in a while. With its bultin in RSS reader and junk mail filter, it is, for me, a complete package.
    • i.e. one that keeps a stored image of places where I've been

      You mean that it would be easier to find again those p0rn sites you've already visited?

    • Re:Simple (Score:5, Interesting)

      by KlaymenDK ( 713149 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @08:48AM (#11333592) Journal
      [A graphical history record]

      That, combined with a history TREE instead of a linear, self-overwriting history (go back 3 pages and click another link -- those 3 pages will drop out of the history). That's what I wish for.

      And for the troll/poster thinking this is for prn -- nope, it's for retrieving pages with 'unknown' URLs. Surfing page to page, one is likely to not read the URL or page title, but to recognize the page body.

  • Wishlist: Slashdot (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ZeLonewolf ( 197271 ) * on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @08:02AM (#11333318) Homepage
    My wish is that Mozilla properly render Slashdot. What an embarassment! Someone even went so far as to make a Mozilla plugin that fixed the Slashdot rendering bug! I mean, c'mon people, you'd think that Mozilla would properly render Mozilla's biggest supporter.

    • Re:Wishlist: Slashdot (Score:3, Informative)

      by byolinux ( 535260 ) *
      The problem is not Mozilla. The problem is Slashdot's piss poor HTML.
      • Is that right? What's the nature of the problem (as one who's never looked at Slashcode very deeply), out of curiosity?

        • Re:Wishlist: Slashdot (Score:3, Informative)

          by tehshen ( 794722 )
          Slashdot does have piss-poor HTML, but there's also a minor Gecko bug (see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21752 7) which is why it works fine in other browsers.

          A List Apart did an article on how to fix it [alistapart.com] but nothing seems to have happened.

      • Re:Wishlist: Slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)

        by vrt3 ( 62368 )
        A browser should, if given the same HTML multiple times, render it the same every time. Mozilla doesn't: when I encounter the bug, changing the font size up and down (or vice versa) or going back and forth in the history (or vice versa) fixes the layout.

        Granted, Slashdot's HTML is ugly, but there really *is* (or was) a problem in Gecko.

      • Re:Wishlist: Slashdot (Score:3, Informative)

        by c0p0n ( 770852 )
        Nope, not true. It's a Mozilla problem with relative table sizes. It simply calculates the distribution the wrong way (before the end of the document load), so it can only render the page properly if it's on the cache.

    • Granted. (Score:5, Informative)

      by sethadam1 ( 530629 ) * <ascheinberg&gmail,com> on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @08:09AM (#11333358) Homepage
      This has been fixed in the trunk for a long time (but not the branch Firefox 1.0 comes from), and will be in Firefox 1.1, whether Mozilla increments to 2.0 or not.

      Bug 217527 [mozilla.org]
      Bug 264913 [mozilla.org]

      If you really, really need a fix now, visit this URL [scarlet.be] and download one of the nightlies from the trunk [fair warning - some nightlies have some annoying bugs in them, but generally, are pretty good]. It works just fine there, but I'm told requires too many changes to backport into the ff1/mozilla whatever branch.
      • Just out of curiosity, which, if any, extensions do those nightlies break?

        I'm currently using Adblock, downTHEMall, Right Encoding, Tabbrowser Preferences, Wikipedia, Farkit, Rot13 Encoder/Decoder, and Download Manager Tweak. I can live without a few of them, but Adblock, Farkit, and Tabbrowser Preferences are fairly essential to my browsing habits.

        any ideas?

        • 1. Backup your Mozilla profile, or at least copy it, before using the new one. You certainly may break extensions.

          2. If you're on Windows, rename \Program Files\Mozilla Firefox to \Program Files\Mozilla Firefox.old or somesuch. That way you can revert. Your extensions are generally in the profile anyway. If you're on Linux, just keep the old files.

          3. Upgrade to the nightly.

          4. Open a new tab, type about:config search for app.extensions.version. Change it to 1.0 to avoid the extensions disabling them
          • Cool. Thanks for the reply. I'm using FireFox on MacOS X 10.3.7, so backing up and restoring the profile should be easy. :)

            I'll give it a shot. Thanks for the advice.

    • Re:Wishlist: Slashdot (Score:3, Informative)

      by S4t0r1 ( 766443 )
      Slashdot rendering bug was fixed too late for firefox 1.0. It's going to be in version 1.1 (march) or if you cant wait download a nightly ( here http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nig htly/ )
    • MY mozilla renders slashdot properly. At least what I see seems "proper" to me.

    • It's also the HTML (Score:4, Informative)

      by SamMichaels ( 213605 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @08:46AM (#11333578)
      Slashdot won't let you validate it...so I had to save a copy and validate it:
      File: slashdot.html
      Encoding: utf-8
      Doctype: HTML 3.2
      Errors: 60
      With a community full of nerds, you'd think SOMEONE would make an XHTML 1/CSS 2 version...that is, unless slashcode is such a mess that it's nearly impossible to make the changes.

      • Re:It's also the HTML (Score:3, Informative)

        by STrinity ( 723872 )
        Slashdot won't let you validate it...so I had to save a copy and validate it

        You've obviously missed this nifty little tool [mozilla.org] -- it let's you run the W3C's Tidy in Firefox's view-page-source window. The only thing it's missing is a way to send the cleaned up HTML back to the browser window.
      • Thanks for the hint. Wanting to see the details, I managed to get another HTML validator to actually return a result. Apparently Slashdot has only blocked http://validator.w3.org/checklink -- not http://valet.webthing.com/page/ or http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/ -- Yet. :) I'm sure they will now that I've posted this information. But anyway:

        The results were mostly complaints about using features not available in this version of HTML. Slashdot sends a Doctype claiming HTML 3.2 compatibility. Gee, i
    • IIRC, it works on the nightlies.

      To be honest though, I think Slashdot's shitty HTML may be at least partly at fault.

  • Firefox never worked for me... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Bloodlent ( 797259 ) <iron_chef_sanji AT yahoo DOT com> on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @08:03AM (#11333323)
    So I always used Moz. Personally I think the best change for Moz would be to make it less bloated, and make it totally modular. Basically make it so you can strip away most of the program and turn it into something closely resembling Firefox if you so choose.
    • I thought that this was the whole point of FireFox? Is there actually anything you can do in Mozilla that can't be done in FireFox?
    • I was never excited about Firefox (or whatever it was called at the time) because it looked like if took away all my power settings and generally dumbed things down. Then I found out about 'about:config', and haven't loaded mozilla since.

      I think it's time for all the mozilla people to just accept the inevitable and focus their development effort on Firefox.
      • I use the browser and the mail client, I much prefer Moz's interface to Firefox. I've never seen Thunderbird.

        What would I gain from Firefox & Thunderbird?

        (I'd personally rather they sort of went in the middle and became modular but tightly linked and bundled. Help each drive adoption of the other.)

    • Re:Firefox never worked for me... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Mornelithe ( 83633 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @08:16AM (#11333395)
      Mozilla can be compiled without a lot of frills. For example, on Gentoo, there are Mozilla flags as follows:


      mozcalendar : Enable mozilla calendar extension, http://mozilla.org/projects/calendar/
      moznoirc : Disable building of mozilla's IRC client
      moznomail : Disable building mozilla's mail client
      moznocompose : Disable building of mozilla's web page composer
      moznomail : Disable building mozilla's mail client
      mozxmlterm : Enable mozilla's XML-based command-line terminal


      There may be some I missed. In other words, you can install Mozilla with just the browser. However, you have to compile it for yourself if you want that.
      • In other words, you can install Mozilla with just the browser. However, you have to compile it for yourself if you want that.
        Or use Debian and just install the parts you want. I'd think other distros break it up too.
        -N
    • Wasn't that the point of the firefox project?
    • I would still use Mozilla if it could handle extensions properly. By handling, I mean the ability to uninstall any extension at any time, the new Firefox Extension Manager is wonderful. Port it to Mozilla please.

  • Use of Moz (Score:5, Informative)

    by StevenHenderson ( 806391 ) <[stevehenderson] [at] [gmail.com]> on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @08:03AM (#11333326)
    Personally, I use Mozilla a lot less now that I have a Gmail account. With having a web-based e-mail service, I really have little use for a bundled email client.

    Plus, Firefox seems quicker and more stable to me since I have been using both.

    • How about support for Gmail accounts in the mail program? Like outlook can handle hotmail accounts. That would be totally sweet.

      They could even draw ideas from Gmails conversations in the way they display mail.

      • Re:Use of Moz (Score:2, Informative)

        by space_dude_27 ( 838047 )
        erm, I thought it could... I'm having no trouble using Thunderbird to get mails from pop.gmail.com anyway. Would be nice to see Mozilla Mail and/or Thunderbird do the GMail conversations thing though :-)
        • Doesn't help, though, since I wouldn't do this unless it had IMAP functionality. I access from different computers and want them all to be able to access my mail. Sure, I guess I could pop them and leave a copy on the server but that's too much work for my lazy ass. :)

  • Maybe... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Doolspin ( 844298 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @08:04AM (#11333329)
    Mozilla and Firefox will merge into one super borwser....MoFox... or perhaps FireZilla

  • Magnifying (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Szentigrade ( 790685 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @08:04AM (#11333332)
    I would like to see something like what opera has with web page magnification. Its on firefox too but you cant make images any bigger then they already are like you can with opera. But i still like FF better.
    • What's the point in magnifying raster images? Do you expect to see more details?
    • optimoz.mozdev.org
      gesture "3" (down-right diagonal) - zoom in, "7" (upper-left) smaller, "1" (down-left) default. (alternatively assign to "wheel rockers" and use with mouse wheel)

      BTW, don't bitch "But Opera has it built in and for Firefox you need extension".
      Firefox is ALL about extensions. The rule is "install bare bones, add whatever you need", not "install everything, remove what you don't need".
    • I'd like to have 2 pass image rendering.

      Linear interpolation on the first pass (for speed), and bicubic on the second pass because it looks great.

      Resized images look horrible in firefox today. All sorts of jaggies because firefox always uses linear interpolation.

  • Not at all.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dynamoo ( 527749 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @08:05AM (#11333333) Homepage
    Firefox hasn't affected my use of Mozilla at all. I guess that most/many Mozilla users had been using it for a while before Firefox came out and see no reason to change.

    I'm very happy to recommend Firefox for IE users though - Mozilla's Netscape-style interface can be a bit confusing if you haven't seen them before.

  • Wait till FireFox... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AC-x ( 735297 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @08:09AM (#11333355)
    I don't know what these new features are (not even the google cache of the page is loading) but I'll certainly be waiting for these features to make it into FireFox rather then change to Mozilla temporarily.

    Of course depending on what the features were I'd probably install Mozilla to see if they cause any issues with the web design work I do.

  • build in page validator. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AeiwiMaster ( 20560 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @08:11AM (#11333366)
    I would like to see a build in page validator.

    There is a lot of badly coded web pages out there.

    It might take a rewrite of gecko by I think it is wroth it.

    The normal web based validators really don't cut it
    when your developing dynamic cgi scripts.

  • A feature I'd like to see... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ChrisK077 ( 667911 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @08:13AM (#11333374)
    A kick-ass feature I'd like to see in Mozilla and Firefox would be to automatically break up long words/numers/urls at the edge of the screen.

    Since I have a TFT with 1280x1024 resolution, I often increase font sizes when browsing the web to reduce eye strain, but that often causes horizontal scroll bars to appear when long words or urls are in the text, making it much less convenient to read, e.g. in those ubiquitous phpBB based forums.

  • How Firefox have changed my use of Mozilla (Score:3, Interesting)

    by akaiONE ( 467100 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @08:15AM (#11333384) Homepage Journal
    ..to the better.
    Since Firefox 1.0 came out I have used the Mozilla suite for email and Internet-browsing at work while I still stick with Opera at home. Firefox is there on both locations and are used from time to time. What Firefox did do when it came along was make it clear to me that Mozilla had improved over the years and no longer required me to have a heap of other browsers installed for visiting particular webpages with picky code. So, you may say that Firefox made Mozilla shine in it's own true light.

  • A Manual (Score:5, Interesting)

    by obender ( 546976 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @08:19AM (#11333410)
    I know it does not sound like much but I think a manual is what Mozilla really needs. Many users that switch from IE get to use Mozilla/Firefox the same way they used IE and not more. And there's much more to Mozilla than just tab browsing.

    I still remember the day when I tried running two separate instances of Mozilla on the same Windows machine. Neither Google nor the forums helped. Luckily I can still read C++.

    Open source should mean you can look into the source if you want to, not that you have to look into the source every time you try something non trivial.

    • I agree, and one of the problems with open source tends to be the lack of user documentation. Being an English major, I try to contribute when I can (to Gentoo) but with mozilla I think it's a different story:

      Is there documentation for IE?

      Not really. The web browser really, for the average user (and those are who we worry about switching from IE), is a point and click affair. It should stay that way too. The preference menus are pretty well labeled, so if you need to change something, chances are you'll f

    • Re:A Manual (Score:3, Informative)

      by asa ( 33102 )
      I know it does not sound like much but I think a manual is what Mozilla really needs.

      Like this? [mozillastore.com]

      --Asa
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I used different cybercafes around China the last few months, and they had very different ways of "protecting" my security in IE. Many of them had applied a Windows security mechanism that made it difficult or completely impossible to delete your own cookies.

    My solution was to download nifty little Firefox with IE. No matter how mad the sys admins were, one could always delete history, cache and cookies with Firefox after each session. (Except at Shanghai City Library, where Firefox wouldn't even install.)

  • Since Firefox has been decently stable, i've been using it for browsing. I see no need for an 'integrated browser suite'. After a recent HD-crash which lost me all my locally stored mail, I'm only using web-based email (hooray for gmail!). No more POP-clients on my PC. TML-editors suck ass on general principle, and I have no use for an IRC-client.

    If I were the mozilla foundation, I'd settle for the standalone products. This will get them better brand recognition, and focussing of their coding efforts. But

  • My picks (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @08:24AM (#11333442)
    • SVG support.
    • Make it easier to disable flash temporarily so I can turn it off on those sites that abuse it.
    • Make a better interface for managing plug-ins and extensions. Let me enable/disable them and check for updates for them.
    • Change Mozilla 2.0 to basically be Firefox+Thunderbird sharing the same rendering engine (for reduced memory usage if you use both).
    • Improve the download manager. Show the date/time something was downloaded, and let me sort by that field. That way the download manager becomes a download history as well. Allow plugins to use new download methods that integrate with the download manager (eg Rsync, BitTorrent)
    • Jpeg2000 support.
    • I like to browse with text size increased. But every time I open a new tab or window, I have to re-increase the text size. So let me set an option so the text size is always 125% or 150% of normal, unless I reduce it. And no, changing font sizes in options does not do the same thing.
    • When increasing or decreasing text size, my place in the current web page is lost. I have to scroll around to find where I was. Make changing text size preserve my current place on the page.
    • Remember what tabs I was reading (and my place in those tabs) so if Mozilla crashes or I close it, I can go back to where I was instantly.
    • Ship with more themes and a few of the more popular extensions already installed.
    • Add an HTML verifier to Mozilla. Let me choose an option from the menu, and Mozilla will verify the HTML of the page I'm viewing.
    • Do a thorough security audit. Mozilla is gaining in popularity, and security bugs are starting to be more common. All new patches should be reviewed by a group of security-minded folk.
    • Produce more and better documentation and examples for XUL. Try to get more people writing extensions.
    • Port Mozilla to the last great platform it doesn't yet run on: Emacs.

  • Gecko Rendering Engine (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lwells-au ( 548448 ) <lwells@[ ]pond.net.au ['big' in gap]> on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @08:26AM (#11333446)
    Though its not directly related to the Mozilla Suite (sorry, I tried to RTFA, but its down) my biggest wish is to see the Gecko Rendering Engine (GRE) finally split from the Mozilla/Firefox/et al code base. This seems to have completely dropped off the road map despite being discussed for months (years?).

    The idea of running the GRE as a service (started at boot) and then simply launching the frontends for the various Mozilla apps (in my case, Firefox and possibly Thunderbird) appeals to me immensely.

    I value "snapiness" greatly when it comes to my web browser and email apps. Having to run multiple instances of the same rendering engine is a bit of a downer IMHO. (Yes, I realise there are some benefits. Yes, I realise we all tend to have ample computing power.)
  • Heck, Netscape 4 had it, and it's basically the standard Unix way to read local mail.

  • Still use mozilla (Score:2, Interesting)

    by SteveXE ( 641833 )
    I've been using Mozilla for about a year now, I've used FireFox and I dont really see a reason to change, Mozilla has the plugins i use and they work without any problems and its just as fast if you ask me. I dont use the email client...but i dont install it either so bloat isnt really a problem.

  • feature requests (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mirko ( 198274 )
    • Like Opera/Zaurus, make pages zoomable (not only the text but also the pics and the css effects)...
    • ...eventually add some "fit in window" or "fit width"
    • fix the popup killer as I keep getting some popups on MacSlash (often but not always)
    • add an rss browser

  • In Internet Explorer you can block certain "dodgy" URLs - but you can't do this in Firefox!

  • Get rid of 10 "managers"... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Vo0k ( 760020 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @08:51AM (#11333615) Journal
    ...and include one central firewall-like facility that lets you perform advanced selection of media you allow/deny from a host, domain, IP range etc. (plus access to ports, like 8080 hurting Mozilla for a long time...)

    ad.* DENY images, flash, cookies
    *.mozdev.org ALLOW xpi
    *.yahoo.com DENY flash
    *.gmail.com ALLOW cookies, store-passwd
    *.microsoft.com DENY all
  • If Mozilla 2.0 is to be started, some major changes are needed to how the overall software suite works. The current setup for the Mozilla software suite works just fine and as such, there's little need to fix what isn't broken. However, there's a problem amongst the picky.

    We all love Firefox for its speedy startup and simple UI. At the same time, we also love Thunderbird for its speedy startup and simple UI. Well, there's a bit of conflict here. What if we use both? Is it any better than Mozilla? Fo

  • Nice features (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Paul Townend ( 185536 )
    I'd love to be able to set my live bookmarks to automatically update at user-defined periods of time; so, for example, I may want my BBC News bookmarks to refresh every 10 minutes, while my slashdot bookmarks can refresh every 30 minutes. At the moment, they only seem to refresh when the browser is first started.

    Also - and this is a niggle, but... - the "find" toolbar (accessible by ctrl+F)... they really should move the close button back to the right side of the bar... as far as I can tell, every other pa

  • Some changes I would like to see (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @09:02AM (#11333682)
    • load in less than 5 seconds on 1+G CPUs, all O/S
    • use less memory when a large number of pages are loaded (I can easily use most of my 256M on my laptop), maybe provide a max memory limit option
    • include mozilla.org packages for Linux O/S (rpms, debs, etc.) released along with the default tarball and accessible for update programs (e.g., yum) (O/S/package release managers?)
    • support Active X controls under Windows
    • option to shrink the text (reduce font size, ec.) when I shrink a window
    • include integration with desktop search and include a free search add-on for non-Windows O/Ss
    • include an easier ability to get updates, plugins, etc. and load them in via current native format without a cycle of "download, save, rpm -Uvh, etc." but not without prompting and some type of verification (easier but not automatic and not a virus/trojan vector)
    • updates, packages, etc. for Linux should be in the native package formats (rpm, deb, etc.)
    • include an RSS reader
    • provide some form of diagnostics to the user when mozilla fails to properly start (I've had this with multiple O/Ss and multiple versions -- it fails to start and no error is displayed)
    • provide some form of reset settings/options when you can't get mozilla to properly load
    • include a mode where mozilla can run under a chroot jail and possibly under a secure account under Linux/UNIX
    • include option for pdf printing
    • include 3d rendering and VRML as plugins
    • provide some xquery support (plugin?)
    • include a wget type mirror tools (plugin?)

    Of course, some of the above may alreay be planned but as I can't get on mozilla's web site, I can't check.... Maybe it was slashdotted?

    • Re:Some changes I would like to see (Score:5, Insightful)

      by glsunder ( 241984 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @01:57PM (#11337435)
      support Active X controls under Windows
      NO!! NO!! NO!!

      Active X is the worst security model anyone could think of. Not having active X support is the #1 feature of Mozilla/Firefox. You can say tabbed browsing, better png support, etc all you want, but not having active X support is the number one reason it's better than IE at keeping spyware off of clueless user's computer. Clicking yes/no is not a good security model.

  • Missing the point... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by alyosha1 ( 581809 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @09:12AM (#11333733)
    One of Mozilla's greatest strengths is not as just a web-browser but as a cross-platform application development platform [xulplanet.com].
    Just try playing around with XUL a little. It's surprising what it can do. I'm just starting out with it, but having worked my way through MFC, QT, TCL/TK, WTL, GTK++, FLTK, wxWidgets etc. etc. in search of the One True UI Library, I'm liking what I've seen so far.

  • Fix the bloody build system! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Greg W. ( 15623 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @09:40AM (#11333969) Homepage
    Use standard GNU autoconf for the builds. Get rid of all the code that says things like "#ifdef HPUX ... then do this and that and this and that because HP's C++ compiler (no, not that one, the other one... and that specific version, too!) can't make a negative zero or some such tomfoolery ... #endif". When I try to build Firefox 1.0 (One Point Fucking Oh!) on HP-UX 10.20 it falls over and dies because I'm not using HP's C++ compiler... nor the other one... and especially not that version... I'm using gcc! What do you think I am, an idiot? Why would I use anything but gcc/g++?

    But it's worse than that. A few simple platform-checking #ifdefs could be fixed, the code converted into autoconf checks and replaced with HAS_FOO macros... but no. The build tree isn't even a tree -- it's a fucking forest! There are like 17 different build trees, each one gnarly and moss-covered and subtly (or not so subtly) different from the next, all plastered together into one shambling mass of code. Some of the sub-trees hard code ld -foo -bar -ZxCvB commands instead of invoking $(CXX) to be the linker. Some of them hard code cc as the compiler instead of using $(CC). I shit you not. Oh, and you can't type "make" in a sub-trees to build just that sub-tree. You have to start all over from the top level. After a few days, I gave up.

    It's bad, folks. Really, really bad.

    I'd be embarrassed to release something like that as a 1.0 version. 0.6 alpha 2? Sure thing, no problem. But 1.0 is supposed to be finished.

    P.S.: your "Firefox" code still unpacks itself in a directory named "mozilla". Not "mozilla-1.7" or "firefox-1.0" either... just plain "mozilla". It looks like a CVS snapshot to me.
    • P.S.: your "Firefox" code still unpacks itself in a directory named "mozilla". Not "mozilla-1.7" or "firefox-1.0" either... just plain "mozilla". It looks like a CVS snapshot to me.
      It is a CVS snapshot. It unpacks to "mozilla" because the cvsroot for both Mozilla and Firefox is shared - Firefox is the mozilla source plus the browser/ and toolkit/ directories. The rest is shared.

  • Cookie rejection notice (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Art_Vandelai ( 596101 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @09:43AM (#11334002)
    I want something like IE's cookie notice, which tells you for whatever page you're on who tried to send you a cookie, and what the browswer did with that cookie.

    I don't know how many times I've gotten a "you must accept cookies in order to see this site" message, and had to pull up a page's HTML source code just to try to find out what address the cookie was coming from.

    Firefox is ahead of IE on so many levels, but is years behind on this one.

  • platform platform platform (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ramGits ( 661303 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @10:37AM (#11334599)
    As a web app developer, what I would love to see for the Moz & FF 2.0 series is an expanded set of capabilities as an application platform. The top few items on my list would include:
    • SVG

      This will allow interactive graphic applications that are just not possible now with primarily text-oriented DHTML.

    • A better client-side VM.

      Like real compiled Javascript 2.0 or perhaps a Python VM. You can do some amazing and surprising things with client-side JS, but as web apps tackle what are now primarily the domain of "fat" installed apps, we're going to need some real client side power. The ability to create and call libraries of routines will prove to be important.

    • Heavy duty form support, including the ability to create and use form "widgets"

      These issues are being addressed in both Ian Hickson's WHAT-WG and W3C's Xforms. Implementations of these in compiled code would be great.

    • Client-side persistent store

      From what I gather, Moz 2.0 will embed the small SQL engine SQLite to store it's configuration data, etc.. How about providing access to this engine for web apps? Think of it as maybe a cookie on some relational algebra radioactive steriods. Imagine being able to download chunks of data from your server-side store and work with them locally. You would effectively have web apps that continue to work when disconnected from the web.

    Want to compete with MS's upcoming XAML platform? I believe this list will go a long way toward that.

  • I would love to use Mozilla or Firefox BUT.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by shancock ( 89482 ) * on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @11:48AM (#11335508)
    For some reason the Firefox engine will not print from my Samsung ML1750 printer without skewing the text up. Everything else prints on it fine. This is a show stopper for me and I am using Opera (which works fine with the printer).

    I want/prefer/like my email integrated into the browser. Firefox/Thunderbird works OK but not as well as Mozilla. But overall I prefer the Firefox browser for tabbing, speed and ease of user. It just feels good. It's nice to have choices again. I am a happy camper even with the problems.

  • Pull-away tabbed browsing (Score:4, Interesting)

    by PhrackCreak ( 136718 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @04:55PM (#11339836)
    I would like to see an extension to tabbed browsing where you could grab a tab and make a new window out of it and pull it out of the current window. And I guess the inverse transform would be handy - allow merging of windows into tabs.

    Most of my boxen have virtual desktops, so it's handy sometimes to have different windows on each desktop each with several tabs on the same subject. For example, I'll have one desktop with slashdot and a few links alongside IRC and another desktop reading API documentation for a project.

    Another reason this is useful is so that when you open links from the mail program in a new tab, it does not always put the tab in the window you want.

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