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Mozilla M13 (Alpha Version) is Out!
Related Links Top of the: day, week, month.
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." -- Bertrand Russell
Gee, thanks... (Score:1)
M13 Impressions (Score:3)
You can FINALLY get rid of that dang sidebar (view menu, uncheck sidebar)
Properly coded pages actually look better (for the most part) than they do in IE5. Slick.
CSS is done well.
Crashes FAR less often than M12 on my P2-333 64megs, Win98 box. Haven't tried it under Linux yet.
Bad:
Font Prefs aren't done yet (I want sans-serif by default, dangit!)
"Theme" selector not done yet (Really, I just want to get some win-standard chrome rather than the "Mozilla" interface)
Still crashes more than NS 4.7 (but it's getting close!)
Back button intermittant (This just ain't right)
Overall - not too shabby for a 1st alpha. I would've liked to see all the prefs panels actually be functional, but this release does indeed show that Mozilla is "getting there".
Nice job to all involved.
Re:I never looked at it closely before, but... (Score:2)
What are you smoking? Here's a number for ya... go to this site [beltsander-races.com]. What is standard about the tag "meta http-equiv="Site-Enter" content="revealTrans(Duration=6.0,Transition=1)""? ??
IIRC their DOM is not W3C either. Embrace, extend, lather, rinse, repeat.
Re:Is M13 as slow as M12 (Score:2)
Plus, the stupid FullCircle program won't let me explain to it that it needs to go through a proxy that requires a password!
I am less than impressed with M13, and at the rate of improvement that I have seen, Mozilla won't be useful until about M30...
A pity, since I'd love to see Mozilla win....
Re:Stabler than M12? (Score:1)
win32 library requirements (Score:2)
It was a requirement for M12, that *if* your msvcrt.dll and msvcirt.dll were *below* 8.0.8168.0, you needed to run the installer (.exe) to update them. Otherwise you would crash (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19165 ). Many non-bugs were reported on this issue (oh .. *those* release notes ... me too? Yes, you. ;-))
This is *no* longer a requirement in M13, the code was changed to avoid the crash. The installer will not upgrade these dlls (it's no longer required).
Re:um... still not there (Score:1)
Re:SSL (Score:1)
Try Open SSL. The web site [openssl.org] doesn't seem to be accessible at the moment, but the FTP site [openssl.org] is. Good luck integrating it into Mozilla. :)
Re:I never looked at it closely before, but... (Score:1)
Now only if I can get this release to build on Sol (Score:1)
um... still not there (Score:1)
i guess i'll wait until the next release, at least this new one didn't crash the computer this time.
Re:Mozilla w/ Proxy, but no auth (Score:1)
Re:Alpha/Beta? (Score:1)
Re:First (Score:1)
Re:They need tighter integration with the OS. (Score:1)
Your *JOB*?
Your JOB may be that...but you are asking the OpenSource community to listen to you.
Exactly HOW do you intend to influence them? Money? Fame? Saying that if they invest thousands of hours of their life so a browser/OS becomes marginally faster and less stable? (When, if they want more speed, they can go buy a faster computer with more memory for less of an investment than the code changes)
>but trust me we in marketing know what sells and that's the bottom line.
Trust me, the bottom line matters. And free at $0 for 250 boxes VS $400 for 250 boxes makes a decision easy.
>My corporation believes that Linux has the potential to become the next "Pokemon".
Well, the cats out of the bag.
(background singers in ()'s and a jamacian accent)
Each time a Linux distro is mentioned, a picture of the box is flashed on the screen.
Now on Kids WB
Got install them all
Got install them all
(linuxmon)
Red hat
Turbo linux
SuSE
Zentropics
(linxmon!)
Storm
Corel
Debian
Mandrake
(at least 150 or more to install
to be a linux distro geek is my destiny!)
Slackware
OpenLinux
mklinux
stampede
Watch next time as Taco, Hermos and Roblimo
continue their quest to become linux distro masters.
You got to install them all!
(install, install)
(got to install them all, linuxmon)
(install, install)
(got to install them all, linuxmon)
(install, install)
(got to install them all. linuxmon!)
The collectable cards you can buy, but you can also download and printout the cards, or just photocopy them and use them in sanctioned play. (the GPL strikes again)
Player 1: I choose RedHat!
Player 2: And I choose Corel, because the blue box more powerful against red boxes.
Player 1: Ok, you beat my RedHat, so I choose FreeBSD!
Player 2: Hey, I didn't think we were able to use Linux compatible modes in the battle! No fair!
Player 1: No, I'm using the optional GPL licence compatibilty rules.
Player 2: you are truly a Linux Distro master. I yeild.
Emmet: Opens Transmeta PDA
"Hi I'm Dexter, your LinuxDex."
Emmet: "What kind of linux distro is that?"
"Scanning hard drive...RedHat 6.1, the evolved form of RedHat 5.2. Its more powerful packaging includes the RPM, Deluxe and Professional release sets."
And with your Linuxball you can keep only 6 CDs in it, other CD's are left at the office or home.
Good luck on your plans. *waves fingers bye-bye*
Go for the name LinuxMon!
Re:Is M13 as slow as M12 (Score:1)
MS never releases completed software. They're in a constant state of 'Public Beta'. ;) It's just unfortunate that it's a public beta one has to pay to get in.
--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
Re:Stabler than M12? (Score:1)
view -> sidebar (boolean toggle)
that's funny, i had no problems with {necko,mscvrt}.dll... i did get this:
JavaScript Error: TypeError: treeitem.getAttribute is not a functionURL: chrome://related/content/related-panel.js
LineNo: 216
Segmentation fault (core dumped).
also doesn't work with linux (Cordless Wheelman Mouse).
They need tighter integration with the OS. (Score:1)
So it is with this (maximized market share) in mind that I offer this small piece of advice. MOZILLA MUST BE TIED TO THE LINUX KERNEL ASAP.
Just in case you didn't catch that, I repeat: MOZILLA MUST BE TIED TO THE LINUX KERNEL ASAP.
My logic is irrefutable, and I will prove it: So long as Mozilla is available on the WinTel platform, and not exclusivly on Linux, there is no reason to ditch Microsoft. Every time a Windows user downloads a windows version of Mozilla, a potential consumer for Linux is lost forever.
From a marketing perspective this is a classic manoever. It worked wonders for Microsoft in their battle with Netscape, if could be just the thing to bring Linux to the mainstream, and achieve revenues for RedHat, Suse, SlackWare and Debian, like they have never seen before. The VAResearch IPO will look like small change once Linux achives total penetration of the domestic marketplace.
The only thing holding it back now is the inability of the Linux developers (most of whom are long-haired left-wing idealogues) to react to market requirements.
The market demands the OS be dependant on the browser. Who do these elitist zealots think they are to query the absolute wisdom of the free market ?
Get with the program guys.
Here is my admittedly non-techno savvy view of how to do it.
1) Make Mozilla independent of XFree86 (e.g. a native SVGA version). Or at the very least turn it into an ICCCM-Compliant window manager. Then we can put an end to the futile GNOME/KDE/fvwm95/twm/olvm holy-wars once and for all, and new Linux users need not be confronted with the 18 different ways of specifying resources to X11.
2) Make sure the graphics subsystem runs in the kernel space as it does in NT. This will give blistering performance (at the expense of a little bit of stability, but the market has spoken on that subject already - it doesn't care about reboots).
3) er - thats it.
hardy har har? (offtopic) (Score:2)
Re:um... you're still not there (Score:1)
Crash bug on SMP machines (Score:1)
Re:Customisation (Score:1)
Don't forget the mirrors... (Score:4)
Logitech mouse scrolling problems (Score:1)
Re:I never looked at it closely before, but... (Score:1)
Re:iCab (Score:1)
Re:IE use (Score:1)
I'm using M13 under NT right now, and even though it doesn't render Apple's home page correctly (the tabs are off to the right), everything else seems pretty good. Bookmark editing is broken, but I can surf without crashes (so far).
-jon
Yes, its quite bizzare (Score:2)
I dont think moderation does anything, theres a rand() call somewhere.
First post with M13 (-1, Smartass) (Score:3)
Just downloaded it now. It's working a hell of a lot better than previous releases, so if you were put off by it a while back, give it another go!
Note to Win32 users: You must grab the install version, as there's a few library files that need to be bang up to date which the normal version can't fix.
strange priorities? (Score:2)
Layers & control (Score:3)
However, I have tested it on a site that uses layer hiding/showing and it does not show/hide the layers ... at all :(
Still, this looks and feels really nice, and will use it to browse sites without layers.
Keep up the good work.
Re:a bug (Frames) (Score:2)
Well, I'm not about to hit a www.victoriassecret.com link through the company network. I have my Ricochet modem here on my 'Book, but I haven't installed M13 on it yet, so I can't test it that way.
However, I don't think what you're describing is anything specific to that link. I'm seeing the same behavior with contextual menus in a frame on some of our pages (for an intranet application that I'm working on): the page has a left and right frame. When I try to use it in the right frame, the contextual menu comes up to the left of my mouse, by what looks like exactly the width of the left frame. When I do it in the left frame, it comes up correctly. It looks like it's getting the mouse coordinates relative to the frame I'm in and then forgetting to convert when placing the menu in the parent window's coordinate system.
All right, now I've tried it on the included frame test page (Debug->Viewer Demos->#9 Frames). The behavior seems pretty consistent across all the frames, sub-frames, etc., and I'm pretty sure it's because of a missing coordinate conversion. Spacecraft have been lost this way, you know.
By the way, this is on a G4 Mac with MacOS 9. I've noticed two other things about contextual menus, which are probably Mac-specific: first, it only appears when I Control-click; click-and-hold does not bring it up -- control-click is the standard Mac way for it to work, but Communicator 4.x also had it with click-and-hold, even before contextual menus were added in MacOS 8. Also, I have to click once to bring up the menu, then click the selection -- I can't do it in a single click-and-drag movement; that just selects text on the window.
All in all, though, I'm very impressed with this build. If it could only log in to Slashdot, it would probably become my default browser. As it is, I'll probably be using it a lot for reading Slashdot, because of the incremental rendering of tables -- on a slow modem, multi-hundred-KB pages with TABLE tags wrapped all the way around them are extememly painful otherwise, because nothing can be displayed until everything has loaded. This renders Slashdot just about perfectly, and it finally lets me see comments as they load.
David Gould
Re:i686? (Score:2)
Go ahead and download it. It should work. If you want, just get the source and compile it from scratch.
Pissing in the wind. (Score:4)
Native system widgets CANNOT BE USED FOR A WHOLE LOT OF LAYOUT due to W3C specifications. They are just NOT the right thing for the job. Deal.
Yes the interface on the mac is probably going to suck for a while. Perhaps forever.
**THE USER INTERFACE IS COMPLETELY MUTABLE BY YOU!**
Read the release notes before talking about replacing X11.
Yes it crashes. Yes it's slow. Yes it's NOT DONE YET.
No it doesn't need to be 'pared down like icab'. Icab is icab. Mozilla is mozilla. Learn why they made the technology decisions they did and starting THINKING about the problemspace these products are addressing.
Most previous versions of Netscape had email clients and news readers and stuff.
AOL is probably going to spend around $100,000,000 on mozilla development all said and done. Perhaps MUCH more. You have paid $0.00. Netscape 5 is their product. Mozilla is yours. Bitch accordingly.
Internet Explorer 5's implementations of HTML4, CSS1, XML, and the DOM are broken according to specifications. Mozilla's generally are not.
Mozilla NEVER PROMISED CSS2 and will probably not deliver on it.
Finally, for the severely clue impaired, MOZILLA CODE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH NETSCAPE CODE. AT ALL.
Toodles.
Why does your box crash? (Score:2)
If your box is crashing every ten minutes, then there is something wrong with your box, not your browser.
Since you are using IE5, I would assume you are using Windows. That might be your problem, right there.
With a good OS, a bad application cannot and will not bring down your whole system.
Now, I'm not saying Mozilla is bug free, but if it can take down your whole system, you've got much bigger problems then a bad browser.
Re:Mozilla uses its own UI widgets for a reason (Score:2)
(there is one thing that occurs to me: is the problem related to the fact that you can't put widgets inside a canvas or drawing area?)
Daniel
Re:Pissing in the wind. (Score:3)
Daniel
Mozilla uses its own UI widgets for a reason (Score:2)
Actually, it really is a feature.
In order to embed UI widgets in an HTML document (as Mozilla needs to do to fully support the W3C's DOM and CSS), they had to write their own widget set. Native widgets simply didn't work for them.
How many times are we going to see this gripe before people figure it out?
Re:Stabler than M12? (Score:2)
Re:They need tighter integration with the OS. (Score:2)
Yes, but where are you going to find well-known (in the US) European Golf Pro's to endorse your distro and do commercials for you showing off the golf clubs, huh?n You'd be better off sticking to the euro performance car metaphor. Get Jackie Stewart or some other well-recognized gran-prix legend to re-inforce your branding image!
A great name would be Linux One-2-One. Capitalize on the LinuxOne brand confusion and also ride the name recognition coattails of a popular UK wireless service provider, Mercury One-2-One.
I think this Linux branding and marketing is exactly the way to go! Why aren't there more marketing visionaries like you out in the community making these kinds of contributions?
The rest of these dreadlock, greasy hippie types don't have a clue about how to push their OS product out into the international spotlight!
Integrate Mozilla with the kernel, stroke of genius!
still crashes on smp (Score:2)
Re:They need tighter integration with the OS. (Score:2)
Some anonymous coward dun said:
O_o
Erm...who in the name of Ithaqua let Stef out of User Friendly [userfriendly.org] and onto Slashdot? :)
*makes mental note--remind Iliad that some parts of reality should not be bent without serious thought :) Or tell Miranda to watch the swing with the Louisville Slugger, because she has apparently knocked Stef clean out of the Ufie Universe :)*
Re:First post with M13 (Score:2)
At any rate, I stand corrected. In my favor, I can say that I started wondering about it, went and read the release notes in full [mozilla.org], then wandered back in here to eat a little crow. Thanks for setting me straight. :)
(Posted with M13/Win95.)
Zontar The Mindless,
A View On Mozilla (Score:2)
The Case For A Happy Dance
1. M13 finally works with a proxy
2. Lots of bugs ironed out
3. Shows some real promise.Some aspects of speed are very snappy, others - well, not so.
4. A piece of code I can work on!
5. Open source aspects seem to be picking up - lots of external folks mentioned in the CVS logs. Hooray!
The Case For Despair ... well ... not done, to be charitable.
1. A whole team of code shuckers, plus lots and lots of outside eyeballs, and the result after (a long time - I want to say 2 years, but don't want to do the research to verify) is
2. Inscrutable code. C++ just sucks. Walk through some of the code and try, just try, and grasp some semblance of structure. It's just one damned indirect reference after another. Has C++ really helped ANY project achieve its goals easier than equivalent careful manual data abstraction in C? It's disturbing to look at this code, not the least because apparently, different committers are using different indentation styles. Yuck!
3. Incredible code bloat. Look, the whole integrated mail/news issue has been hashed out, but honestly, why not split the package into a shared library and two or three loosely integrated applications? I think it couldn't hurt but to improve stability, at least.
I suppose I gravitate towards Happy Dance, mostly on the promise of Mozilla and the honestly enormous strides this gargantuan code base has been making over the last few revs (a huge improvement on my Solaris box). I can't understand how these code meisters are keeping this beast in its pen without getting run down, but they certainly have my respect.
Re:i686? (Score:2)
Yes, "optimized for" doesn't necessarily imply "only runs on"; "optimized for" might just mean "instructions scheduled for", "instructions that run fast on used and instructions that don't run fast on not used", etc.; it'd be "only runs on" if it used instructions available only on the processor family in question, e.g. the conditional moves on P6 processors.
YHBT (OT) (Score:2)
Should Slashdot's motto be changed from "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." to "YHBT. YHL. HAND."?
Re:Stabler than M12? (Score:2)
set the environment variable
GECKO_FONT_SIZE_FACTOR = 1.2
Re:Customisation (Score:2)
Does IE5 crash my box every 10 minutes? Nope!
They should concentrate on the stability problems before adding on all these other unnecessary bells and whistles.
Why native widgets are troublesome (Score:2)
Basically, they need to be able to do things like apply CSS styles, layer widgets, composite them, and do other things that many toolkits/platforms don't support.
This also results in having the same UI regardless of what platform you're running Mozilla on. This goes back to the Netscape goal of turning Navigator into a development platform. There are pros and cons to this approach, but I guess they figured they were already most of the way there, so they might as well finish the job.
It also reduces platform-specific code, which any developer will tell you makes your life easier.
Given that both Mozilla and GTK are Open Source Software, I'm sure someone will eventually do the work to merge the two, even if it requires rewritting GTK.
Re:Mozilla gtk themes ? (Score:2)
I really hate the new look of mozilla, and it sucks to have to make Yet Another Application Specific Theme To Match My GTK Theme. *shrug*
Re:A real user's reasons why Moz is better than ie (Score:4)
for those using IE that haven't changed the default settings after they installed or upgraded, you should check under
Internet Options > Advanced
for the settings
Enable Page Hit Counting and Enable Profile Assistant (both are checked by default)
Make sure and right-click to read the "What's This" description and hate M$ all over again. You don't have to hide this stuff in code, just put it under "Advanced" "Security" settings and newbies will steer clear.
Re:First post with M13 (Score:2)
Using it to post this, even.
Above offered FYI. Thank you.
Zontar The Mindless,
Lowered Expectations (Score:2)
It is considerably slower. I don't understand why people are posting comments like "It Rocks" or "This is so stable"
It's not. An app like this, even at Alpha stage, would NEVER make any headway in the MS Windows world. People there expect applications to be relatively stable and to follow standard GUI guidelines.
It seems that in the Linux world people have lowered their expectations to the point where they can be happy with sub-par apps. It's a trick of the mind to make you feel better.
That's why I stick with the console! I don't need no stinkin' graphics to get the kind of work I do done. The average user on the other hand...
--Spudnic
Re:First post with M13 (Score:2)
In Zontar's case, he probably had the 6.x DLLs already, so everything ran out-of-the-zip. The release notes [mozilla.org] list the exact versions Mozilla expects. Newer versions should work, but Your Milage May Vary.
Keith Russell
OS != Religion
slashdot database follies (Score:2)
Or, in other words, Slashdot's RDBMS backend doesn't use place moderation updates inside a transaction. This should be simple enough to fix unless they're silly enough to use a database that doesn't support transactions. But who would do something silly like that? :-)
If I'm right about this, the Postgresql folks [postgresql.org] are entitled to one collective "nyeah, nyeah, we told you so!" on this topic.
3rd time lucky maybe (Score:2)
Re:NOOOOOO! (Score:2)
Apparently, there's another text mode browser called "links" that is not lynx, but I haven't found it anywhere yet.
Get links at http://artax.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~mi kulas/links/ [mff.cuni.cz]
W3m can be found at http://ei5nazha.yz.yamagata-u.ac .jp/~aito/w3m/eng/ [yamagata-u.ac.jp]
You are blaming system problems on an application (Score:2)
I wouldn't go that far. Netscape Navigator is a case of code pressed beyond the entropy point. Any non-trivial code base which is being modified will experience a case of gradually diminishing returns. Eventually, the system becomes unmaintainable and you have to start over.
Navigator 3 was pretty good (for its day), but Navigator 4 really shows the age of the codebase. And, as the Mozilla project found out, trying to do anything major with the V4 codebase resulted in a total collapse.
This doesn't make the software "badly written junk"; it makes it software which should have been thrown away after the V3 series. Unfortunately, management so rarely recognizes such cases.
Read Fred Brooks's timeless work on software engineering, The Mythical Man-Month, for more about this and other software principles.
More seriously, Netscape on Linux needs 64 megs of memory.
Um, I'm not sure what version of Netscape you're running, but on my system, right now, Navigator 4.7 has a virtual segment size of just under 15 MB and a resident size of just under 11 MB.
If Linux can't swap Netscape in and out fast enough, Netscape gets impatient and dies.
If a process needs more memory, it will block until the kernel satisfies the request or fails it. It cannot "get impatient"; it will not be run by the kernel while memory is being managed.
Netscape seems to have a HUGE memory leak that causes it to eat up memory, especially on pages with lots of images (ahem!).
Here you have found the real problem. There is a memory leak in Navigator V4 related to pages with complex layouts and/or lots of images. This causes Navigator to gradually leak memory over time. It isn't using this memory, but it eats up swap space and slows down the system. If you don't exit and restart it, Navigator will eventually exhaust virtual memory, resulting in failed memory allocation requests and a program abort.
This is, of course, a Bad Thing. My workaround (until Mozilla V5 becomes viable) is to keep an eye on the memory gauge in the GNOME Panel, and exit and restart Navigator if it grows beyond a reasonable size.
Netscape can bring the entire system down if a) your CPU overheats or b) your video card overheats.
That's a very misleading statement. The cause of such a crash is a heat problem. Anything could cause that. Blaming Navigator because it was the forground application at the time is silly. If your system is overheating, you need to fix your system cooling, not blame the software!
Netscape can also bring the entire system down if by some random chance it happens to eat memory just as another process (syslog, etc.) tries to grab it, but for some reason Netscape wins the race. In this case, I've seen INIT panic and Ctrl-Alt-Del get disabled.
Again, here you're blaming Navigator for a system problem. It is a known problem that Linux handles out-of-memory situations poorly. I believe the 2.3 kernel addresses this, by making sure system processes have a proper reserve and doing a better job of killing processes to free memory in an emergency.
Anything that eats memory will cause this problem. while(1) malloc(10000); will do it. Are you going to blame GCC for that, next?
What I recommend doing is instituing user resource limits (using ulimit) to prevent any single process from exhausting your system's memory.
In the end, if an application crashes your system, there is something wrong with the entire system. It doesn't matter which application did it.
this is potentially...ummm... (Score:2)
Re:Layers & control (Score:5)
Most notably, and are gibberish to Communicator 5 and will be ignored. The same goes for the Navigator 4 DOM extentions -- if you use document.layers[] in your JavaScript, it will fail. In fact, Communicator 5 will be more similar to IE 4 and IE 5 than to Communicator 4.
Re:A few impressions (Score:3)
TROLL?!?!?! (Score:2)
Lucky 13? (Score:2)
2. Don't forget, kids, not only to use Moz from home, but be sure to follow your kindly old Uncle Zontar's example and install it on your machine(s) at work as well... Let the PHB's see you using it... Let it be known to them that you regard it as something to be taken seriously, and that it's not just some toy. Thank you.
3. Slightly offtopic: Why does M12 support my scroll wheel under Win98 but not 95? Both are MS Intellimöuser both using the v 3.0 drivers.
Using M12 to post while I download M13... :)
Zontar The Mindless,
ActiveX for Mozilla? YES! (Score:2)
Adam Lock [mailto] has a homepage for the Mozilla ActiveX Project [www.iol.ie]. I haven't played with it myself, but from looking over the page, it appears that the project is well along. Also, it allows Mozilla to replace IE as an ActiveX control using the same API! [www.iol.ie] They're also working on allowing Netscape and Mozilla to use ActiveX controls as a plug-in, [www.iol.ie] but this appears to be an early effort yet.
Will it really be so hard for Netscape to reclaim the browser market from Microsoft if Mozilla can replace IE easily, is more powerful, and supports web standards better? I guess we'll see...
Mozilla w/ Proxy, but no auth (Score:3)
Indeed it seems this alpha build can not remember your proxy password, which means that you have to enter your id and password dozens of times (frames + images) for each url you visit. I finally gave up after visiting my third bookmark. Sigh.
Initial thoughts (Score:2)
M13 is definately worthy of being called a browser now. The rendering speed has substantially improved, and there doesn't appear to be suffering any of the old rendering glitchies. Scrolling is finally nice and smooth. Slashdot appears to render pretty much exactly as NS4.7 does it.
I'm quite impressed with the rendering speed of complex tables. A stats matrix I generate as part of a traffic tracking system produces a page with several thousand elements... M13 was able to rip through that in about a second, give or take .5. Verrry nice.
There's still some UI issues... text centering, odd ugliness here and there. For example, it'd be nice to have the mouse switch to a pointy-style when hovering over a scrollbar, rather than staying in the "I" shape (which only occurs periodically, so there's obviously some sort of glitch there). It IS still alpha though, I won't sweat it too much.
Keep up the excellent work Mozilla peeps. You're almost there.
--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
Re:First (Score:2)
But will it be much better than MSIE 5.0? Other than it running on Linux, what advantages will it have over IE?
-- acb, running Netscape 3.0 but tempted to buy a more powerful machine to run vmware and IE5
Re:Argh!! (Score:2)
New XFMail home page [slappy.org]
Want to know what they fixed? (Score:3)
As just a rough estimate, it looks like about 760 bugs were fixed. Cool huh?
Re:Stabler than M12? (Score:2)
ln -s
that took care of my problem. there may be other things that will need symlinked, but i haven't seen them yet.
Re:Pissing in the wind. (Score:3)
Use your favorite system-native toolkit. Ask it to draw a pushbutton three-hundred pixels wide, forty pixels tall, with a png image as the surface, with a 14-point font of arbitrary type colored blue that turns red on mouseover, and have it change the font black and spawn any number of system events on a clickevent. Now insert it and many others like it on a document. Now repeat for EVERY system-native toolkit you would like to support. Make sure they can report their status to whatever application would like to know about it. Make sure they can be changed on the fly. WHOOPS! Kind of a pain in the ass!
gfx makes everything easier for everyone. =P
Thanks for the micro-troll though!
Stabler than M12? (Score:2)
The bad:
The good:
It's been slash-moderated (Score:2)
It's very simple. In this case, 3 moderators decided at roughly the same time that the post in questions deserved to be a 'Score:2, Informative', while a fourth decided an instant later that it should be a 'Score:2, funny'; pow: it's a 'Score:5, funny'. Since when you posted, one moderator then wasted another point giving it an overated, so now it's a 4. Hopefully it won't get slash-moderated down to -1 when 5 moderators all decide at once that it's still overated, since I think it really does deserve a 2. But that's life at Slashdot
Chris
Is M13 as slow as M12 (Score:2)
Great, let's give this a shot. I pull down the RPM for M12, install it, and run it. Displaying web pages isn't any faster than Netscape, the UI responds glacially, and certain sites still crash it.
Am I missing something? Am I doing something wrong? I'm running these tests on a PPro 200 with 288M of RAM, running RH6.1. From all the comments I've heard, M12 should have flown on my system. Has anyone else seen this? Do I have a stale library?
I plan on pulling M13 down later today (at work, over the fat pipe, rather than my 28.8 link at home) but, really, is M13 really better than M12?
Re:First (Score:2)
If it's stable, and, while I'm not in a position to get it right now, but hear that it is, then that's really all it needs to do to hook most people.
When I'm in a win32 environment, I prefer IE5 (God, save my soul) to Netscape, and version. I still detest IE4, and won't use it simply on principle, but IE5 is stable, and supports standards (translated: all I want out of a browser). I don't want Outlook Express, I don't need any other package inclusions, simply stability, and the ability to render pages correctly.
If Mozilla can do that, AND run on Linux, that's mighty impressive. Now all they've got to do is find a way to redeem themselves to the public that has turned to the darkside (yes master, it will be done.)
Re:Is M13 as slow as M12 (Score:3)
P2-333 w. 128mb, Riva TNT video, RH6.1.
There's still some work to be done with certain aspects (scrolling is nice and clean, UNLESS you wiggle the scrollbar up and down... then it gets kinda sluggish. Oh, and the key repeat rate is friggin' painful. Use the mouse to navigate around text entry boxes). It's apparent that it's still in beta, but it's come a *LONG* way.
At the very least it's worth checking out.
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rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
Stability - Read this! (Score:2)
Installed M13, saw that it kind of sucked, and was about to delete it. Then, on a whim, I decided to copy the libraries from the Mozilla distro (lib* from the package directory) to
Just my little contribution to this conversation.
"Software is like sex- the best is for free"
-Linus Torvalds
Re:Alpha/Beta? (Score:2)
A full(?) schedule is at http://www.mozilla.org/projec ts/seamonkey/milestones/ [mozilla.org].
Currently the Milestones are scheduled approx. 1 month from each other.
Milestone 17 (the last in the schedule) is scheduled for 5/19/00.
Re:strange priorities? (Score:2)
On the other hand, if the bug here is in the backend code, I retract my defense.
Daniel
Customisation (Score:3)
I predict that when Mozilla will be finally released (and relatively bug-free), there will be plenty of improvements that people will do to it. I know I want to add things to Mozilla, but I will wait until it's stable.
Re:Mozilla gtk themes ? (Score:2)
Daniel
Re:this is potentially...ummm... (Score:2)
I see mozilla as a real threat to IE's hegemony. This is why:
Linux + Mozilla + Transmeta = Kick Ass Web Device
Embedded Systems, Net access appliances, Web pads...call them what you will, they don't want to run WinCE unless they have to. These devices want powerful, low-cost systems that offer flexibility. Everything Windows isn't. Everything Linux+Mozilla can be.
The competetive advantage of Windows as a development platform ("guarantee" of compatibility and existing market) is diminished in the handheld/embedded systems market, particular if we are looking at apps delivered over the web (in which case technologies such as Java and XML will really shine, and platform becomes less relevant).
In the web-access-device scenario, speed, uptime, bang-for-the-buck systems have the advantage, hence the attention being paid Linux in this area. Throw Mozilla into this mix and you have a total software side solution for web access devices, thin clients, etc. etc. etc.
I personally can't wait to see what happens with these possibilities...
Ethan
Re:strange priorities? (Score:4)
(I kind of agree though from a user POV, but I know from management experience that they're doing the right thing).
Re:Screenshot (Score:4)
Re: Turning sidebar off. (Score:2)
Also, regarding crashes - make sure you deleted your old registry and install directory.
AOL and Mozilla? (OT) (Score:3)
How is Netscape going to pull itself out of the pit and back into direct competition with IE? Can you say "Mozilla on every single AOL users desktop" ?
A few impressions (Score:3)
The thing on the left (a copy of window's extensible explorer bands?) doesn't expand properly after it's colapsed, it kindda dissapears and doesn't draw itself properly.
Fonts, does Mozilla not support native windows fonts? I now portability is an issue, but I'd kind of like mozilla to honour my exotic fonts if they're installed in windows.
CSS seems to work nicely now, like IE
I'm going to start testing web pages now with mozilla as well as IE (i gave up on NS4.7 ages ago).
I know mozilla is supposed to be 'standards compliant' and all, but I still find that IE always seems to be able to render and support the more exotic parts of the standards while mozilla is till 'getting there'.
Oh well, looks promising. Anyone know if there's an ActiveX wrapper for mozilla yet (IE has had that since IE3)....which is why so many apps have integrated HTML (WinAmp, Neoplanet, Office, and other 3rd party ones I can't remember
Re:I never looked at it closely before, but... (Score:5)
The first cut was a monstrosity because it was simply the snapshot (more or less) of the current Communicator code with some minor changes. We all know Communicator is enormous.
The second cut was a total rewrite; basically what you see today. The key improvement here, besides the fact that it was a total rewrite, is that the HTML rendering engine is FAR more efficient and handles all the standards properly as per specifications (you can't say that about Communicator, IE or Opera!)
The rendering engine (Gecko) is more or less completed; they are still tweaking and adding minor features to it, but without a program to wrap around the engine, what's the point? Now what you're seeing is the addition of a mailer, news reader, preferences, history, etc. etc, eg. all the other crap that makes a modern web browser. Yes, this stuff is going to add to the code size, but the most important part of Mozilla is that the HTML rendering engine is quite good and very efficient.
Now only if I can get this release to build on Solaris... ;-)
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NOOOOOO! (Score:2)
Lynx is as small and efficient as ed, and that's all there is to it!
(hands over ears)
LALALALALALALALALA
Usable (Score:2)
I'm actually in M13 now, and it is nicer than Netscape when it renders. I believe the saying is, failure is an orphan, but success has many fathers. I think Mozilla will be one of those with many fathers.
Simple: AOL (Score:2)
As much as we may hate AOL, you can't underestimate the power of their marketing. I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing free CD's by the thousands with copies of Mozilla on them.
You've also got to place some trust in Joe User who is fully capable of downloading a new browser, he's just using IE because PC Mag said it was better. When NS5 is released and wins those comparos (which I have no doubt it will), that will cause a lot of people to try it. If they try it, I bet they'll stay.
Don't underestimate the power of Linux. As more people start using Linux, Netscape is pretty much their only browser option. Lynx is a non-starter...people want their pictures.
So in conclusion, while it'll be a challenge for Netscape to regain lost market share, it won't be impossible. I don't think we're ever going to see NS share at the level it was in the version 2 and 3 years again, but it'll definitely be higher than it is today.
Re:Stabler than M12? (Score:2)
Re:strange priorities? (Score:2)
Re:Screenshot (Score:2)
The parent is offtopic, but the reply to the offtopic question is +3 informitive. Yay!
Time to turn off scores again.
Re:I never looked at it closely before, but... (Score:2)
The point is very very fundamental. Gecko has been kept separate, as with the entire modular design, and can be embedded freely in other applications and used for many other things. This was one of the priorities of the project, I believe, and I expect the flexability will be easily one of the greatest selling points.
to people having problems of ANY sort... (Score:5)
Re:strange priorities? (Score:2)
You simply can't throw people at a rendering engine and expect it to be somehow better. The people who are developing the mail/news client (which is able to NOT be installed by using the Installer.exe) are trained in the standard protocols of mail and news transfer and know what features they should implement. But do they know the most efficient methods of handling every sort of rendering needed by a standards-compliant browser?
Likewise, would anyone working on the renderer know the mail specifications off the top of their head?
It's split up into teams because it actually works quicker when people are working in the areas they're experts in.
A real user's reasons why Moz is better than ie5 (Score:3)
Two simple reasons.
Yes, for browsing web pages in any of the Windows operating systems, ie5 is much better than Netscape 4.x. You'd be crazy to say otherwise. But, the way it is now, I have to close ie5 and open Netscape in order to view research papers. I know I can use ftp and gzip and a postscript viewer to do it, but it's easier with a browser, now that the preprint servers have nice front ends [ucdavis.edu].
I know people say Mozilla is open source and therefore better. I agree, abstractly, but most people ain't gonna read it anyway. It does give a kind of confidence that nothing sneaky is going on (like personal information being tranmitted to web sites) and that is important to me. But when it comes to performance, the inability to handle gzipped postscript is absolutely unacceptable. I have heard of workarounds, but haven't been able to carry them out.
That's my honest opinion.
Re:Fails to work at all on this NT box (Score:2)
Not too bent out of shape at this point, tho. I think 12 actually worked better because it didn't seem to be proxy-aware and I could use it on internal servers with no problems. Methinks I'll wait and see if it warrants a bug report (do they even want those yet?)
Re:Layers & control (Score:2)
I work for a software company and maybe I'm getting hung up on the word alpha...but IMHO an alpha product should be pretty hard to lock up. It's my understanding that an *alpha* is feature complete and for the most part *works*, but has many bugs which need to be uncovered. Alpha software should not lock while doing simple tasks.
That said... this seems to be much better than M12 and that's what is important here.