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Mozilla The Internet

Mozilla 1.0 Delayed Again 259

Posted by timothy from the point-nine-beats-six-oh-anyhow dept.
Capt. Mubbers writes: "Both Mozillaquest and RootPrompt have pointers to the new Mozilla 'Tree Management' diagram which is now showing a delay until Q4 2001. Hey, I don't mind, later should mean that they are taking the time to get it right! Cough, cough Netscape 6.0." Sometimes I wish large projects would just use a series of intriguing codewords (or name+code release date), so this point-oh anxiety never had to surface.
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Mozilla 1.0 Delayed Again More

Mozilla 1.0 Delayed Again

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  • Heh. You use fvwm because you don't like all that "extra desktop stuff", yet you prefer Mozilla as your web browser? That's like saying an Oldsmobile is your favorite compact car.

    - A.P.

    --
    Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?

  • I completely agree. Our company uses build numbers, so customers get build 1300 or build 1422 and not "version 1.0". This is great for us developers, but the salespeople hate it! They want the ability to say [fanfar]new! version 2.0 is out![/fanfare]

    With commercial products this is a sad fact of life. I think we're moving to doing it the way that VM Ware [vmware.com] does it, with a version+build ie: "1.1 (build 1321)" Guess we'll see how that works :)
  • If you're looking for good .debs a dude by the name of christophe has made patched 0.9 .debs which are available at ftp://ufies.org/pub/galeon/people/christophe [ufies.org]

    They are made for the galeon [sourceforge.net] project, but don't rely on any external (ximian, etc) debs. They are IIRC just recompiles of kitame's .8.1's.

    Apt-gettable even via:
    deb ftp://ufies.org/pub/galeon/people/christophe ./
  • Y'know, I love Mozilla. I really do. But I'm very tired of these sorts of responses. They're supposed to be working toward a 1.0 release and they're still rewriting major portions of the software? That is completely unacceptable.

    'Course some of my jadedness has to do with the lack of good Mozilla support in Debian. Yeah, yeah, I know all the reasons and it's a volunteer project, etc., etc., etc. It's time to stop the excuses.

    Debian rocks. I know this. Someday Mozilla will as well. But probably not before kmail shows up in Debian with IMAP support at which point I'm long gone.

    --

  • "Some even leave their platform of choice (such as Solaris on the desktop)..."

    I don't believe you, what you write makes no sense. Nobody would ever call Solaris their desktop platform of choice. =-)

    -Paul Komarek
  • What they really need to do, though, is only allow popups in response to user-initiated responses. I.e., you can't popup on load or unload.

    Popups can be nice -- for glossary terms, for instance. But only when the user asks for them. Otherwise they are almost universally annoying.

  • Umm... You must not be aware that Mozilla started from the Netscape code base. Netscape released their source back in '97, what was then probably a later 4.x release.

    Mozilla appears to have spent the last 3 years cleaning up the mess, trying to get it to handle standards compliant HTML, etc.

    My suspicion is that the Netscape code was a complete utter mess, and the Microsoft code is much more clean and object-oriented thus making it easier to maintaing and extend.

    This may be more of a battle between hackers and mature software engineers than it is open and closed source.
  • Even so, does that mean they all belong in Mozilla? The UNIX philosophy is "do one thing and do it well". So, there should be separate applications for P2P, mail, news, and whatever. The argument is that if you bundle everything together, it's a bad idea, which I agree with. Since everyone for their daily tasks uses a notepad, a browser, a filemanager, a spreadsheet, and a word processor, does that mean that they should all be one application? I don't think so.

  • Galileo^WGaleon (Score:4)

    by Booker ( 6173 ) on Monday May 28, 2001 @12:27PM (#192438) Homepage
    Don't you mean Galeon [sourceforge.net]?
  • Here's the thing: Konqueror and Opera both stink. The reason they have been developed quickly is that neither of them correctly implement HTTP, HTML, DOM, or CSS. Mozilla implements these things more correctly than Opera and Konqueror and consequently takes a development speed and runtime performance hit.

    If anyone is really interested, I'll post a list of sites that Opera and Konqueror foul up that Mozilla get right. There are a lot of such sites. Browsers like Konqueror and Opera, that pay lip service to standards but don't implement them, are holding back the development of new techniques and technologies on the web.

  • You missed my point. I am not interested in developing Konqueror. I already have Galeon, a wonderful browser that I use everyday and help to develop. Further, I am not talking about poorly-coded websites. I'm talking about full-blown w3c code that exercises all the exciting technologies like CSS and DOM.

    Konqueror will soon come to a roadblock. Their HTML layout code it uses takes shortcuts that prevent them from implementing interesting things like DOM access to CSS, DOM animation, and even HTML 4.0. Let's take a short tour, of test cases that have been developed by the W3C, and some for testing Mozilla:

    Prefer some real-world sites? How about a site for HTML writers who are sick and tired of broken browsers like Konqueror? [alistapart.com] Here's something totally stupid, but cool [hixie.ch]. How about another goofy test [richinstyle.com] that Konqueror butchers?

    Mozilla has a large set of tests that it fails, too, but it is much smaller than Konqueror's. As a web monkey today, supporting Konqueror is in the same league as supporting Netscape 4.7. If Konqueror ever becomes standards-compliant, then it will be useful, but until then it will be just another on a large pile of browsers that are getting left behind by new, innovative content.

  • If 2.2 will cover more standards correctly than 2.1, I'm all for it. Every browser that implements a standard correctly is another group of users that I can rely on reaching by writing code to standards. Anyway I am not worried about Konqueror users. They are the kind of people who can and do change the browser they do in a heartbeat. I really start to worry when a buggy browser (NN 4.x, or IE) become entrenched in markets that never upgrade.

    I think you are wrong about your IE comment. There is a large and growing group of web authors who see IE and other non-compliant browsers as obstacles. The members of this group are the people driving the next generation of web content and applications. When the others see what this group is doing with standards, they will start wondering "How can I make my site look like that and do those things?" The momentum is on the side of the standards. Soon enough we will see IE 6.0, with hopefully improved standard behavior. Millions of people will get it via Windows Update. AOL users will all get a next-generation browser as part of some future push upgrade. This will provide a sufficiently large group of users for standardize web authoring to be taken seriously.

  • Please understand that Konqueror wouldn't get me so steamed up if they would take a rest from trumpeting their standards (non-)compliance. On their own web site [konqueror.org] they boldly claim CSS1 compliance "except for 3 properties", a claim which is strictly false. In only fifteen minutes of testing, I was able to find numerous CSS1 bugs in Konqueror 2.1.1. Their claim to support "about 60%" of CSS2 is even more bizarre: released versions of Konqueror barely scratch the surface of CSS2 compliance, especially with regard to table layouts, backgrounds, horizontal and vertical formatting, and floats. Konqueror developers should give the rhetoric a rest and honestly assess the quality of their product.
  • (or name+code release date)

    Oh, you mean like Windows 95/98/2000 and most any other Micros~1 product? I had always (or at least since 1995) thought that was rather annoying...
  • Well, it's an up-to-date clone of a 30 year old OS. And since the basic idea behind computers hasn't changed all that much in the last 30 years (excluding clustering and stuff like that), I think that is fine...

  • Re:Does it matter? (Score:3)

    by cluening ( 6626 ) on Monday May 28, 2001 @12:08PM (#192445) Homepage
    Does Linux really matter? On the x86 side we have Windows, Solaris, and *BSD, and on the Mac side there are a couple versions of MacOS that act fairly differently. Hasn't the ship passed already?

    Of course it hasn't. If we just settled with what there was, we would all be using horribly out-dated software that all came from the same company. And anyway, Opera isn't open source, and Konq is fairly tightly tied in with KDE. What about Gnome users or people like me who tend to just use fvwm and no extra desktop stuff? Mozilla is great in my mind...

  • Um... (Score:3)

    by MikeV ( 7307 ) on Monday May 28, 2001 @12:30PM (#192448)
    Does Linux matter anymore? We have Windows. Does Netscape matter anymore? We have IE. Does BSD matter anymore? We have Linux. Does C matter anymore? We have C++. Does C++ matter anymore? We have C#. Does Gnome matter anymore? We have KDE. Dude, listen to yourself. If you like Opera - knock yourself out. Mozilla lives because people are honestly interested in it. I'm interested in it. Not because it's better than so-n-so. There are features in Mozilla that extend it beyond just being a browser - in fact it seems to be heading towards the next generation of web-based application services via XUL. If you don't want all that jaz, grab Opera and be happy. But don't say the ship has passed - you don't say that about an Open Source project. Ships only pass commercial ventures. Hell, Windows has the basket of eggs when it comes to market-share. So does that mean the ship has passed for Linux? I couldn't care less if every commercial venture using Linux fails - as long as there is Open Source, I'm happy. For me, the ship is in and will remain so as long as I'm happy with the choice I've made. If you prefer Microsoft, or KDE or balloons in your ears - it's fine by me. That's the beauty about true freedom.

    Please be aware that most of the software you use every day on your Linux box is pre-1.0. Even then, it's often better and more stable than any MS product. Most of the rest is some beta version of this or that - pretty much, to use Linux is to live with the bleeding edge. Just because Mozilla hasn't released a 1.0 product doesn't mean 0.9 sucks. Hell, check out the versioning of Windowmaker and Enlightenment. Or Bluefish. Better yet - the time it took for kernel 2.4 to be released. Does that mean that 2.2 sucks or that the ship has passed for Linux? Hell no - I still use 2.2 on my box. It suites me fine. One of these days I'll mosey around to getting it upgraded to 2.4 - but at my convenience. I'm in no hurry. I use Mozilla 0.9 as my primary browser, mail client and test platform for web applications development. It tickles my fancy. I'll continue using Mozilla because I like it. Its got bugs, but I can live with it. It may not be as fast as Opera, but my system kicks butt, so it's not such a big deal for me. But I'm the last person to critisize someone for using Opera or Konquerer. I use Opera on my win-boxes to test CSS layout. And IE 5 and 5.5. And even Netscape 4.77. (all but Mozilla strictly for testing purposes). If you think Mozilla has some problems, rather than complaining about the "ship passing", contribute to the project and make it better. Code, or debug, or whatnot. That's how Open Source works. There's no room for complaints without offers to help.

  • Reminder on Performance... (Score:3)

    by MikeV ( 7307 ) on Monday May 28, 2001 @01:26PM (#192449)
    The cycle of software development (at least for OSS that I know of) seems to follow this pattern:

    Features
    Debugging
    Optimization

    Mozilla, as of v0.9 is now entering the serious Optimization faze. That's why it was a serious mistake for AOL to produce Netscape 6 based on Mozilla v0.6. Lotsa features, but lotsa bugs and virtually zero optimization. Bad Form, AOL. I'd be happy if AOL killed Netscape altogether - Mozilla certainly isn't dependent on Netscape - of course a few of the developers may have to find other jobs so I'll bite my tongue :). Sure, there's still a lot of debugging going on - that'll happen right up to and after the 1.0 release just like it happens with every other OSS project, Linux included, but the concentration now is making things more efficient and faster. While we probably won't see as quick a Mozilla as, say, Opera, it'll certainly be as quick as or faster than the Netscape 4 series, which for decent computers (or even slow ones) was fast enough. Work is also progressing on making startup faster. IE only seems to start up faster because the core of it starts up when MS Windows starts up. Mozilla and other apps don't have that luxury, but there are other tricks to get things cooking a little faster.

    Mozilla is also more than just a classic browser. It has to be to survive in the upcoming state of computing. Ideally, there will come a time when the only app you'll need is Mozilla. You'll have your Office apps, messenging, graphics and general applications rolled up into one shell. These apps will be able to either be located on your system, or remotely on servers. This may not set will with everyone, but then that's what freedom of choice is for.

    If you're not satisfied with the speed of things but still like Mozilla, then jump in and help out. There can't be too much help. OSS projects are what you make of them - and as long as there are interested developers and users, the project will live on.
  • What all of the different daily builds for Linux do.

    What's the difference between the following:
    mozilla-i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.gz
    mozilla-i686-pc-linux-gnu-sea.tar.gz
    mozilla-gcc295-i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.gz

    Not to mention the various embed-* versions?

    I alternate between the sea and not sea versions and notice no difference. I'm assuming they use gcc295 to compile the -gcc295 version, but what do they use to compile the other versions, and why is a gcc295 version needed? Also, what do and don't the embedded versions give you?

    My thanks go out to the person that clarifies all of this.

  • The last answer I heard for this is "We're waiting on an okay from a major contributor, but work is still ongoing on this". Now, I have no idea which "major contributor" this could be: I don't think it's Netscape themselves because they were the ones that initiated this, so I guess the top candidates are Sun, IBM and maybe ActiveState... but those are just names pulled out of the hat that have done a lot of work on Mozilla. It could be anyone, but "we're waiting on a major contributor" is the official line.

    Stuart.
  • (re debian support: Just unpack the 0.9 tar.gz in /usr/local as root, cd to the installed directory, run the following:

    export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=. ;
    export MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME=. ;
    ./regxpcom ;
    ./regchrome ;
    touch chrome/user-{locales,skins}.rdf

    then edit /usr/bin/mozilla from the debian package to run /usr/local/mozilla-whatever/mozilla instead of /usr/lib/mozilla/mozilla. Works great.)

    As far as the "major portions rewrite", I partially agree. However, I'd still much rather see this work done before 1.0 than after - the image library had major structural problems, the old cache was completely crap (and was the primary cause of the appalling behavior of "view source" on form posts), and some of the newer rewrites (CSS rule matching, XPCDOM) are major performance and memory gains (in other words, answers to all the "it's slow/bloated" criticism). It speaks poorly of the *early* mozilla development that these major rewrites are necessary, but it's still good to see them happen - as a mozilla user myself I can see the benefits every time I download a new build and I certainly wouldn't trade my new cache or image library for the old ones.

    Stuart.

  • Re:MozillaQuest is complete garbage (Score:5)

    by sab39 ( 10510 ) on Monday May 28, 2001 @05:17PM (#192458) Homepage
    Damn, 2 days ago I had moderator access and nothing I wanted to do with it - now here's a post that I want to mod up and I don't have any.

    Folks, MozillaQuest has been clueless from day 1. I've found numerous factual errors in their articles, all of which were obvious to me even as an outsider who just follows the various n.p.m.* newsgroups and reads *real* mozilla news sites like mozillaZine. I haven't read a single article at their site that told me anything I didn't know, except for the ones (like this one) that are just plain untrue (see other posts: the roadmap was updated weeks ago and all they changed was the "you are here" X).

    I suspect this site is actually run by someone with an anti-mozilla agenda. Checking the whois indicates that the same person (Mike Angelo) owns the domains and posts practically every article on the site. And the front-page has at least 5 "Mozilla 1.0 delayed until XXXX" articles - nothing about all the great new features that have gone in recently, the giant leaps in mail/news stability and performance, the pre-loader for better startup time, Dave Hyatt's new CSS rule matching code that gives a 10% performance improvement and saves hundreds of K in runtime memory, or anything. Just "Mozilla 1.0 delayed". Way to not tell the whole story.

    Read mozillaZine if you want mozilla news, or better yet, subscribe to the newsgroups and follow interesting issues in bugzilla. If only the MozillaQuest editor would bother to do that.

    Stuart.
  • Hey, PD. Sure looks like a case of plagiarism to me...

  • Does it matter? (Score:3)

    by Dionysus ( 12737 ) on Monday May 28, 2001 @11:59AM (#192462) Homepage
    I'm wondering if Mozilla matters anymore. On the Linux side we already have alternatives in Konquerer and Opera. On Windows and MAC, IE does a good job. And these alternatives don't try to be anything but browsers.

    Hasn't the ship passed already?

  • is this really a suprise?? (Score:3)

    by josepha48 ( 13953 ) on Monday May 28, 2001 @01:23PM (#192467) Journal
    If you look at open source projects, do they ever really meet a deadline? Mostly they just move along until they think that it is good for release. Usually this waiting pays off in the end too. Look at kde 2.0 it was worth the wait, and they quickly cleaned it up and put out 2.1, which has Konqueror, and is actually pretty sweet.

    The Linux kernel is another example. They wanted a 1 year deadline and it turned into about two.

    Now there is really nothing wrong with this in my opinion as it is better to release software that is good and works right than to just release software.

    I know that there are many software companies that believe in 6 month release of their software and rolling it out not fully tested. The clients test it and then report the bugs and then we fix them. It sort of works and prevents scope creep.

    I think that mozilla has suffered from scope creap. Rather than taking Netscape 4 and improving lets say the rendering system and the networking they redid it from scratch. They could have started on one or two systems and then release a 5.0 browser. Then made bug fixes, then started on other systems. I thought the initial goal was to make a small light browser. At 12 Megs or so of a download it is relly not much smaller (if any) than netscape 4.x.

    WIth AOL not shipping AOL 6.0 with mozilla / netscape, who is their target audience at this point? I run linux and use konq or netscape 4.x. Untill I get my 850Mhz or better with loads of RAM (512Mor more) I think I'll steer clear of mozilla.

    Yes I know this will probably be flamed, but am I wrong?

    I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
    Flame away, I have a hose!

  • Re:Um... (Score:3)

    by Zico ( 14255 ) on Monday May 28, 2001 @01:30PM (#192471)

    Funny how the wind changes so quickly around here. Of course, when Microsoft came out with C#, there were numerous people around here asking why another language was needed. (As opposed to the false situation that you put forth. Where are all these people saying, "Does C++ matter anymore? We have C#."). Microsoft came out with SOAP, and again many people around here tell us that it's not needed because there's other ways of doing it. And so on.

    Please be aware that most of the software you use every day on your Linux box is pre-1.0. Even then, it's often better and more stable than any MS product.

    Complete bullshit.

    to use Linux is to live with the bleeding edge

    No it isn't. Bleeding edge means that there's a certain amount of pain involved with being on the forefront. You have the certain amount of pain, all right, but there's nothing about Linux which is out in front of the pack. Unless you really consider a Unix rehash, MS Office ripoffs, COM imitations, or ways to make your desktop look and act more like Windows/MacOS to be on the forefront of software design. I'm sure someone will mod me down for pointing this out, although I'd rather someone try to prove my points wrong, instead.


    Cheers,

  • You, of course, bring up good points.

    However, I would say that, at least in my own personal preferences as stated in my original post, would prefer the codename + build number.

    That way, the builds continue growing (so build 1138 is always older than 2100), and nice names are given to appropriate places in the build count that mark a massive upgrade to the product equivalent to the major number change in the X.x system.

    As I said, it's only a personal preference, but being that in all too many cases the tradional numbers tend not to mean what they should, why not use a nice sounding codename, plus a build numbher which accurately dates the release.

  • ...! (Score:3)

    by SimplyCosmic ( 15296 ) on Monday May 28, 2001 @12:09PM (#192475) Homepage
    As a user, the traditional X.x numbering system really hasn't helped in the least, as I've seen many a 0.xx applications that work better than 6.xx versions, and so forth. I'd much prefer the codename + build number system

    Besides, it's not like the salespeople couldn't use attractive codenames to sell products. Think of the number of slashdotters who'd by your widgetapplication with a codename like "NataliePortman" ;)

  • If you think Mozilla is slow and unusable then head over to the build [mozilla.org] documentation on mozilla.org and read through how to pull the CVS tree and roll your own version. It's actually quite simple. Last weekend I pulled the tree and used the build configurator to turn off all the debugging code and turn off a lot of warning flags and little things like that. What I ended up with is a fairly fast running version that has SSL, java, flash, and runs through ESD as well. Ever few hours I close it down and restart it because top says it's eatting up memory, but it is definatly bettner than Netscape 4.7, Netscape 6, or any of the milestone builds.
    ----
    "War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left"
  • This comment posted with a KDE free Konqueror 2.2. Hell, I don't have a "desktop environment" of any kind. Just a bare window manager and an xterm to launch apps with.

    I don't know about the multiple platforms thing in the sense you're talking about.. Should work on other POSIX like OS's... MacOS X, Solaris, QNX, HP/UX, AIX... you get the idea.
  • Mozilla has progressed very far over the past few weeks or so with many rewrites landing in the tree (image loading, cache re-write, new skin, new history etc.). The new skin, Modern 3, is much nicer than any proceeding it, reminding me of MSN Explorer in pleasing asthetics. The guys working on this have put in a hell of a lot of effort and time, I think we can all wait a little longer. I would hate to see them rush right at the end and prove all the naysayers right.

    -ShieldWolf
  • Opera is great on machines with little memory. I just installed it on my fathers five year old pentium 120/16Mb over the weekend. It runs great & fast too, unlike nutscrape!
  • There must be plenty of moderators with a sense of humour floating around today

    Forgetting how much of a bad idea it may be, the Linux kernel is GPL'd and Mozilla isn't so you simply cannot combine them legally.

    That said, Mozilla now has a -turbo startup parameter which will make the browser start up and show no windows, so Mozilla can be made to load at boot time for faster later use on Windows. I think this "turbo" mode is also planned for other OSes in time.
  • hem, one word:
    Konqueror.

    It's as good or possibly better tha Mozilla and IE and was developed in a true OSS fashion with no commercial backing in less than two years (i think - anyone know when konq. dev started?).

    -henrik

  • ...which is why they abandoned the 4.7 codebase and started from scratch, so it doesn't actually share any code. Mozilla has actually been written from the ground up.

    Which was their choice. They still started with a mature codebase; scrapping the old stuff mid-go is no excuse if you're a commercial software engineer - you still have to hit your targets.

    Simon
  • Just speaking for the linux side of things. Opera doesn't do java. Opera's free version tries to generate ad revenue which I pretty much ignore (but is there any other ad out there beside the AARP one?) and, I'll be honest, it's just a browser. I wouldn't spend $40 for just a browser and I used to spend a lot for browsers (anyone remember Cyberjack?) $40 is a game, a good technical book, some CDs, toys or outfits for my son but what it is not is just a browser. Even when Opera gets java and plugin support it isn't worth $40.

    And then there is the DMI interface, which is very cool for some things but positively sucks for others. Opera is very nice for casual browsing. I often use it to check up on /., LinuxToday, and the mrtg pages I have up to monitor the network. But for things like the Sun web training site I use, DMI is a hinderance. I want one web page maximized and I want it to stay that way when I click on a popup window to compare the information with the main lesson. Opera, when it generates a popup window resizes all my pages and I have to manually maximize a page again. Do this a number of times and it gets very annoying.

    Then there is the memory footprint issue. For me, it means nothing. Mozilla runs fine on my PII 233 with 192M of ram, just like Opera does. Complaints of mozilla startup being slow is like complaints of linux starting up slow - a non-issue. Rendering speed is about the same between the two afaic with the only benefit to Opera being it is more responsive to my input. And as mozilla improves I have to ask again "Why should I pay $40 for Opera?"

    As for Konquerer? I have no opinion. I don't use it or KDE. It might as well be a Mac or Windows only browser afaic since I can't find a static build of it. I use 3 browsers on linux now and if I must pick up a fourth it will be Galeon. I know Konquerer makes a lot of people happy and I think that's good. But I just have no interest in it.

    So no, the ship hasn't passed. There is no one true browser for linux and there probably never will be. And considering Opera costs money to get rid of the ads and Konquerer requires KDE I don't think mozilla is out of the running. Quite honestly, I can wait.

  • It isn't? Seem awful simple for me to use the installer and get just the browser. No mail client, no newsreader, no chat program. Just the browser.
  • What exactly do you mean by "commercial strength"?

    What's lacking in Konqueror or Opera that you don't consider them "commercial strength"?

    Personally I still use Netscape 4.73 on Linux, and have never seen reason to switch. I've tried Opera and Konqueror just out of curiosity, and have tried Netscape 6.0 on Windows, not to mention Mozilla ? very briefly on Mandrake 8.0, but at then end of the day Netscape 4.73 is working fine for me, and I see no reason to switch.

    On the odd occasion I use Windows I use Netscape 4.73 there too (plus I use it on Solaris at work, for which IE is also available), even though enough people say IE is better that I'm willing to believe them. Netscape does everything I want, so I'm sticking with it!

  • This [linuxtoday.com] is the proper link to my LinuxToday post. I blew it the first time.
  • That's the word I was looking for. Merci.

  • Lack of originality? (Score:4)

    by Platinum Dragon ( 34829 ) on Monday May 28, 2001 @06:17PM (#192504) Journal
    Hi.

    I happen to be Mark Bialkowski [24.42.105.140], the guy who made a very similar comment [iworld.com] to LinuxToday [linuxtoday.com]. You don't read LT, do you?

    Nice modifications to the comment. I specifically ignored w3m, because last time I used it, I thought it was ass. I suppose I should try it again, though.

    Since I was specifically referring to Linux users who bemoan a lack of "good" (re: IE) browsers, I also ignored K-Meleon, though that's a good example of Gecko's cross-platform advantage.

    I appreciate the sentiment, though I'm a bit perturbed by your lack of originality. Looking at it another way...were my words that good?:)
  • People seem to under estimate the cross platformness of Internet Explorer. Remeber that it's available on Windows and Mac with very good quality implementations. That already gives it a good 97-98% market. And then there's HP-UX and Solaris, putting the total near 99%.

    Even though Mozilla is ported to many more platforms in absolute numbers, the coverage percentage isn't much better than that of IE.
  • MSIE 3.0 did support JavaScript (1.0), while Netscape 3.0 was at version 1.1. MSIE 3 also had limited support for CSS1.

    Now.. 7 years for MS is grossly changing history. If you count MSIE 2.0 for MS, you should also be counting Netscape 1.0 for Mozilla. MSIE 4 was a major rewrite and just about everything from MSIE 3 was thrown out the window.

    And look at Opera.. There's a small group of people in Norway, in a company nobody has ever heard about, who put together a browser that stomps all over Mozilla. And they did that in what? 2 years?
  • There *IS* a good web browser available on these platforms - Internet Explorer. Why would anyone want to change, except for political reasons? Do you have any idea how little people care about the politics about IT? I bet 2 out of 3 people have never even heard that Microsoft would be "evil" and even if they did, they wouldn't care enough to download some other browser that was more politically correct.
  • IE for MacOS X is in a horrid state of affairs right now, to the point where running IE5 in Classic is a better option.

    A better comparisson would be Mozilla .9 and IE 5.0 running under MacOS 9.1 (not in Classic -- machine booted into MacOS 9.1) In that environment, IE wins hands down as the speed demon. Mozilla seems very slooooooow on window operations under MacOS 9.1

    ----
  • That would be Mozilla then.

    user_pref("capability.policy.default.windowinter na l.open","noAccess");

    http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/compone nt s/configPolicy.html
  • I'm wondering if Mozilla matters anymore. On the Linux side we already have alternatives in Konquerer and Opera. On Windows and MAC, IE does a good job.

    ATM, it is an utter pain trying to design an interactive, HTML-based web site (even something comparatively simple like an online shop). It's incredibly labour-intensive. MS is gonna start pushing proprietory technology which will do this more easily. Oh, but your users have to be using Microsoft technology. Then you can start to kiss goodbye to things like Apache's market share.

    There are a few things out there that may yet stop this happening. Java is one of them; XUL could potentially be another. Opera and Konqueror are "just trying to be browsers". That's fine for today, but if you're anxious about tomorrow then hope Mozilla takes off.

    Just my 2p.

  • When Mozilla comes out, it really is going to have to be heads above everything else. Since it is not officially tied to a company trying to make a profit, it is going to have to include the "gutsy" features like per-domain cookie management, *ad blocking*, spam blocking, etc. Things that will heighten the user experience, possibly to the chagrin of those trying to commercialize the web.

    But Mozilla is really more than a browser...it's a UI engine, and that should probably be exploited. If you look at the Windows XP interface (and the prototype "Odyssey" interface before it), it is (or at least appears to be) web-centric rendered markup language. Perhaps Mozilla could play a role in providing a similar UI for potential first time home users?

  • I still don't understand all the fuss... (Score:5)

    by SmileyBen ( 56580 ) on Monday May 28, 2001 @12:14PM (#192520) Homepage
    I just don't get why people think that Mozilla is taking so long. Everyone says 'Look at IE5.5, it's really good now'. But Microsoft have been developing IE for what, 4 / 5 years? Which basically means if by Q4 Mozilla is as good (and I honestly believe it will be better - and certainly technically more impressive, which will translate to future improvability) then mozilla.org has done what Microsoft did in a year less.

    Mozilla appears chronologically after MSIE. So what? I know all the arguments about the browser war being lost, but I'm not so convinced, especially will the emergence of all the new platforms. Fact is, come 1.0, anyone will have the tools available to zap their new improved browser / internet suite / revolutionary cutting edge killer app into being in a very short time. Perhaps people won't adopt Mozilla, but the opportunity to do so and not reinvent the wheel is /surely/ what free software is about?
  • Erm. You're half right. The Netscape code was a complete and utter mess...

    ...which is why they abandoned the 4.7 codebase and started from scratch, so it doesn't actually share any code. Mozilla has actually been written from the ground up.

  • This is what kernel modules are for (Score:4)

    by ikekrull ( 59661 ) on Monday May 28, 2001 @01:42PM (#192524) Homepage
    But I wonder how much performance you could really hope to gain from this approach though..

    Mozilla, being a heavily graphical app, probably won't benefit much from kernel integration, since fetching the pages from the web via the network stack, storing them in memory/disk, and reading the data back out - typically kernel operations, probably take no time at all compared to the thrashing, blocking and redundant redraws that contribute to mozilla's perceived slowness.

    XML support in the kernel - hmm.. i'm not sure if you'd see much performance boost here either - building node trees and traversing them might benefit from kernel integration, but if youre worried about parsing performance, then why use XML?

    If youre going to put an XML parser in the kernel, then why not embed Perl in there as well? And once you have Perl in the kernel, it makes sense to add Python too. Pretty soon, the idea of having a 'kernel' disappears.

    Word processing in the kernel?? Now i *know* the crack where you live is really good.

    Remember there are good reasons for separating kernel and user-space activities. This stuff just plain doesn't belong in the kernel at all.

    Keep the core kernel as lean as possible, and focus on doing the few things you need to do extremely well i.e. hardware interfaces, memory management and synchronisation functions.

  • I don't like codewords. For the uninitiated, it is completely unclear what release a codeword stands for (i.e. is it in the future or not. what is the order etc).

    An example is the Sun JDK. They use codewords internally. In the bugtracking system you see messages like: "fixed in merlin". Wtf does that mean? Is that the next release, or a release that is already in the past?

    If I have 1.4 now, and it says "fixed in 1.5" than I know it'll be fixed soon or even be in a release that I can already download. If it says "fixed in 1.3" than I know that I already have the fix. With codenames, there is no proper ordering.

  • More and more people are "defecting" to IE. Some even leave their platform of choice (such as Solaris on the desktop) to be able to use a decent browser (purely from a user POV).

    The longer it takes for a real and finished alternative, the longer this steady rise of IE market share will continue. This will make more and more websites "take the jump", and design their website for "IE only". For a long long time website designers have gone through great lengths to support both IE and NS, but with IE approaching a market share of 90% some (more and more) don't think it is worthwhile or necessary anymore to support anything else as IE.

    Should Mozilla be too late, then when Mozilla is a finished and great product there will be no more website that it can view. All sites will simply require IE, especially with .NET coming up.

    If the Mozilla people want to do something relevant and produce a product that is not only great, but also useful, they must give utmost priority to quickly releasing it, finishing the core product and forget about less important stuff such as the IRC client, newsreader, gopher etc.

  • Well said. An "everyone else" Internet, i.e. a non-microsoft Internet could be very refreshing. Kind of like the old days before commerce took over the Internet/web and spoilt so much.

    There have been ideas put up many times to split off a "good old days" Internet and start anew. Instead it might go differently where we don't split ourselves off, but are split off by an external (evil) force. The effect would be the same.

  • But... But... (Score:3)

    by Jailbrekr ( 73837 ) <jailbrekr@digitaladdiction.net> on Monday May 28, 2001 @12:03PM (#192534) Homepage


    I thought the proper procedure for releasing a program is to release whatever you have on the original release date you set. I mean, if Apple says so, it must be true.....

    For the ignorant with too many mod points, that was humor. Just so you know.....

  • No software engineers here!! (Score:5)

    by Rexifer ( 81021 ) on Monday May 28, 2001 @01:07PM (#192537)
    Many of the comments here summarize all that I hate about the software development field. First, never, ever, ever, *ever* beat anyone over the head for being honest about delays. Always let developers be upfront. Second, the "point-oh" thing used to mean that "this software meets the functionality specified in the RCS for this version." The "build number" let's-give-them-a-compile-drop mentality that Microsoft has pushed on us has put software engineering standards a few generations, and I find it funny that Slashdot is officially sanctioning it.

    Aargh!!!!
  • Does it matter?

    Yes SIZE does matter, and when you take a look at how big mozilla is then ofcouse it matters. :)

    On a serios note, yes it really does matter. Mozilla is aiming at being the most standards compliant browser out there. There's a reason for mozilla being large: It needs to implement a lot of standards.

    One part of me wishes the best for the mozilla project bacause it will show us the web as originally envisioned: Same look of pages across any OS. Another part of me is filled with sceptism about the price (in terms of performance and/or memory usage) being paid for the standard compliance being too large.

    In any case it'll be interesting to see what comes of it when the project is over. In any case it is worth the effort. Either we'll go: "it could be done but what a slow browser, lets go make something else", or we'll really appriciate what the mozilla team did.

  • Concentrate on getting it right (Score:4)

    by AirLace ( 86148 ) on Monday May 28, 2001 @12:04PM (#192542)
    Quite frankly, Mozilla is usable for day-to-day home use now. I would much rather the Mozilla team take as much time as they deem necessary to reach a "1.0" release, rather than end up with another Netscape 6 debacle. If you find Moz too slow, or just don't want to try anything prior to 1.0, Konqueror is quite good. Opera is OK if you can get past the clutter and stand that it's proprietary, and one of the Gecko-embedded projects like Gaelon [sourceforge.net] or K-Meleon [k-meleon.org] might be more up your alley.


    If all else fails, there's always w3m, lynx and links - pure content, no frills :)


    There are already several good browsers for Linux. And Mozilla will be around long after nobody can remeber just quite what Internet Explorer actually used to be.

  • MozillaQuest is complete garbage (Score:5)

    by twjordan ( 88132 ) on Monday May 28, 2001 @01:15PM (#192544)
    This isn't a troll, just a warning. Take anything you read on MozillaQuest with a planet-sized grain of salt. The guy who writes the articles is, unfortunately, clueless.

    Tony

  • Ok, this is just nuts, not insightful. I'm no kernel wizard either (far from it!) but I do know that integrating these things in to kernel space is just a bad idea. Preloading the mozilla libraries is something that can and possibly should be done at startup, although you don't want to integrate them in to the kernel by any means.

    The reason you don't want them in kernel space is, should one crash, you'll take down the entire system. Not having protected memory for things like browsers and word processors is a very bad thing for any system. IE doesn't load anything into kernel space, and while IIS does apparently, you sacrifice stability and necessary reboots for the speed gain.

    Konqueror does load up all its libs at KDE's startup making it a much faster start than Moz, although C++ has linking issues (see Waldo Bastian's paper on the subject).

    And as for the assertion that taking MS's lead could lead Linux to desktop domination, then maybe you should read some of the other discussions on a KDE or Gnome story to get a better idea of what Linux does need to get on the desktop (this [slashdot.org] was a good one) and I can tell you it's not tying the browser to the kernel! Not having your system crash on you is a much better selling point than the slight speed gain from integration.

    In conclusion: load libs at startup: good. Put apps in kernel space: bad.

    "I may not have morals, but I have standards."
  • What makes you think Windows is the best and most modern OS? My copy of windows sucks ass in terms of stability and configurability compared to my copy of Linux. It's less fun too :-)

    I've got way better app support via apt-get (consistent updates, security fixes for all apps on my system), I don't have to reboot my system every time I make a network change, I don't have to reboot my system every time I load a new driver/module, and I've got the ability to boot multiple versions of my system with different features depending on what I need.

    Oh yes, and I don't have such wonderful modern operating system type features such as Outlook and IE security holes.

    Wow... my OS must be antiquated to allow such things and still not crash as much as my modern copy of windows. Personally, while Linux has a lot to learn from other systems, I think Windows has a long way to go to catch up to a ten year old clone of a thirty year old operating system.

    "I may not have morals, but I have standards."
  • AOL signs a major deal with Microsoft to support IE for 5 years. Soon after the 1.0 release of Mozilla is delayed. LAUNCH ALL CONSPIRACY THEORISTS. Of course let us ignore the comment above by the creator of the Mozilla roadmap, I want to read some crazy conspiracy theories. World domination is at stake here!
  • When a lot of people misinterpret what you've written, rather than think "man, what a bunch dimwits," I'd look at what you could have done better yourself. I think the widespread misinterpretation, which you seem to attribute to uninformed or careless viewers, is really traceable primarily to a poor method of visually depicting the information you're trying to convey. When you label Mozilla 1.0 in the May graph as "When it is ready", yet attach a line between that and the first part of Q4 2001, it's easy to misinterpret, and in fact hard to interpret it correctly. I realize technical communication probably isn't your fortee, but if you think about it, can't you see the cause of the problem here? Show that image to 100 professional software engineers, ask them when they think version 1.0 will be done, and I bet a majority will say the early part of Q4 2001. Since what you're really trying to indicate is the earliest possible date along a wide range of dates when it might be done, perhaps you could depict target ranges (earliest foreseeable to latest foreseeable) for some of the milestones. Or if you don't want to go into that sort of detail, omit 1.0 from the graph, but include a footnote toward the bottom describing the situation textually, since it's not easily conveyed within that diagram format. Something like "Version 1.0 may be ready as early as Q4 2001, but will likely take several months longer, and won't be released until meeting our release criteria." One more thing: saying the 1.0 release date hasn't slipped at all is true in a sense. But it's also true that the optimistic ("if we're lucky/when it's ready") release date has been slipping - it was 5 months away in December, and 6 months later, it's still 5 months away. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it is a real change to one aspect of the timeline, and it's obviously an important aspect to many people. Brushing it off as a mere misinterpretation seems to sidestep that point.
  • Regardless of how Konqueror and Mozilla render pages, if they render them differently from Internet Explorer then they are wrong and IE is right, in the only sense that most end users will care about.

    Sadly, this is probably true. I have always seen it as part of the role of Mozilla to help improve the quality of the web by 'doing the right thing', even if it breaks existing sites.

    I can understand the Konqueror pragmatist approach: 'I want a browser that I can actually use on the real web.'

    Given this apparent gap in philosophy, it does matter. Designing purely for IE shouldn't be an acceptable practice. It's too early to call that battle lost.

  • This might be a secluded idea of my own, and I have no idea if it would fly, but in programming my own stuff, I always use greek letters to describe its progress. We half-use it already, with alpha and beta versions, but all I do is say alpha10 or beta20, describing its stage and its build in that stage.

    Only difference is I extend it further, giving the title "gamma" to a completed work (a gamma2 or gamma5 would be like v1.2 or v1.5), and a "delta" would be a completed work with a significant amount of bugs fixed.

    Course, this is just a "home-brew" version system of mine. Who knows how well it would fly in the business world.
  • 1) Whats the rush for AOL to release the new browser now that AOL is going with IE [slashdot.org]? None.

    2) The release schedule in actuality has not changed. Go to mozillaquest [mozillaquest.com] and compare the two graphics for yourself - they only moved the 'X' further along and pushed the 1.0 grey branch down - the point releases have not been moved, hence, the production schedule remains the same.

    3) I use mozilla day-in-and-day-out - i'm using it right now. It beats the sh*t out of IE. Why? Because if we have no other choice, and we all had to use IE, as soon as M$ sees no more competition, they will stop producing the crappy thing for other platforms. Oh, sorry Steve Jobs, we decided that Mac's are too difficult to support, bye. Then what would us Linux, BeOS, Sun, Amiga, HP, and others do? Stop using the web. Riiiiiiiiight. Time to swtich to Windows! What else has M$ showed over the years other than the ability to twist peoples arms and make them use Windows?

    4) For the love of God, people - quit frickin' cutting our own throats. Mozilla is our ONLY major OpenSource platform for web applications. (Which, hopefully, some of you more intelligent slashdotters realise is the future of the web.) If you dont like it, download it [mozilla.org] and try it again - like now, today. If you still dont like it - SHUT UP! We could kick each other in the teeth day after day about how Redhat is more secure than LinuxPPC, or how Mandrake is better for newbies, ow what have you, but what does that accomplish? NOTHING. The best thing you could ever hopw of your competition is that they attack each other - united we stand folks, divided we fall.

    Mozilla - you're soaking in it.
  • I've recently switched to Opera, and although it may not be free (yes, I did pay for it), it certainly has given me more pleasure than Netscape or Mozilla has so far.

    Mozilla is far too expensive in wasted time... (which in my opinion is worth more than the money I paid for Opera...)

    One crash a week is too much, and validates the money I pay for a stable browser.

    IE 5.5 is stable and free as well, but it then locks me to Win32, which sucks.

    In my opinion: (score out of 10)

    Stability:
    IE 5.5 9
    Opera 5.1 8
    Netscape 6 6
    Mozilla (pre-release) 6 (We'll see about Moz 1.0)

    Cost:
    Mozilla 10
    Netscape6 9 (takes away some choice)
    IE 5.5 8 (takes away some choice)
    Opera 7 (pay for something that's free?)

    Portability:
    Mozilla 10
    Netscape6 10
    Opera 8 ( It works on Epoc too! :) )
    IE 5.5 3

    My R 0.2e-1
  • I was aware of the Mac version 5.0, but I cannot find any reference to Unix, HP-UX or Solaris versions, and besides, those are not for home users. (I have seen references to HP versions of IE 4, but when I try and get a download, the windows site returns a blank)

    I use Beos, Linux, Epoc and Win32... which points to Opera.

    I've seen some Unix references, but the links point nowhere.
  • Ah... sometimes I forget that I live in a third world country.

    -sigh-
  • You can do a test yourself, if you area a bit of C programmer (or know one ):
    • Write a dummy app that does noting, but happen to be linked with all the mozilla libraries (or the eaviest one). The only goal of this app is to stay alive.
    • Write a script in /etc/init.d that starts the app at boottime, also changing the proper /etc/rc?.d directories
    • Done. Now you are sure that Mozilla .so are permanently loaded ( though they might be swapped out, according how many memory you have/use ). Your boot time will be longer, but Mozilla start-up time should shorten.
    Mind you, this is not a real solution, because you end-up using more memoy and having some resources locked by the dummy program. But it will show how much good (if any) this could do.

    A possible solution could be to design a browser as a two-layers program, with a back-end started at boot and a front-end started by the user. This would also make easier to realize multiple front-end for the same engine, in a quite old-fashioned-unix-way (though embedded components are the fashion today).

    A definitively tougher proposition would be write a kernel module which acts like a HTTP proxy: living in kernel space, I'd imagine it would make data transfer faster. But then, this is not - probably - the real Mozilla bottleneck : just look at how fast is lynx, with no help from the kernel. But then, this is open source: you have what you think is a good idea, you just go and try it (openly discuss it may save you some effort, however).
    To the 'design purists' out there, I can only remember that Linux ALREADY has implemented specific help for serving static HTML pages: why should not do it for getting them? If a clean interface can be conceived, I mean. And if it is a real advantage for browsers (which I think is not).

  • *sigh* You definitely are *NOT* tech saavy and it shows. Integrating Mozilla in the Linux kernel is the worst idea I've ever heard. Why?
    1. The kernel would be even more bloated/slower than its now and it would not help a single bit.
    2. The kernel would be less secure and stable because of the additional code.
    3. Microsoft did not integrate IE into their kernel, my god. They integrated it into their OS, which is VERY different. There is no special code for IE in any M$ kernel!
    4. M$ integrated IE into Windows at the level of shared libraries and highly reusable shared components.
    5. And this is exactly what is Mozilla doing now. Its a set of shared libraries and highly reusable components used to build several basic applications. (Browser, Mail, News, Chat, IM, Image Viewer, HTML/XML Editor, and others.)

    So please stop talking nonsence and look better on what is actually done on both sides.

  • > Untill I get my 850Mhz or better with loads of RAM
    > (512Mor more) I think I'll steer clear of mozilla.

    Yes, this used to be the case. But their recent releases are much faster. I'm quite happy running Mozilla on my 333Mhz with 128MB. Startup time is still a bit slow, but even that is scheduled to be fixed 'real soon'. It really is stunning the progress they've made.

    > WIth AOL not shipping AOL 6.0 with mozilla / netscape,
    > who is their target audience at this point?

    Ah, now that's the problem. Once Mozilla is out, how on Earth are we going to get (normal) people to use it? This one scares me, since I don't see any realistic paths to prevent MSIE from completing its browser monopoly.
    --

  • I figured this is the best place for this, despite my timing (hopefully you're watching for such a reply):

    the roadmap page has two problems that I can see. first, there is no FAQ, so take away the link at the top. second, you changed the ideal release date of 0.9.1 to june 6, 2000? if you mean 2001, it isn't on the table as that... so you either mean 6/1/01 (and table is wrong) or 6/6/01.

  • The image loading/rendering library for Mozilla is internally known as libpr0n. An appropriate name IMHO.

  • Re:Mozilla 1.0 was not delayed (Score:3)

    by hixie ( 116369 ) <ian@hixie.ch> on Monday May 28, 2001 @08:12PM (#192566) Homepage
    I'll bear this in mind when I make the next roadmap image (soon, probably, since we're about to release 0.9.1). Thanks for the idea! :-)

  • Mozilla 1.0 was not delayed (Score:5)

    by hixie ( 116369 ) <ian@hixie.ch> on Monday May 28, 2001 @01:37PM (#192567) Homepage

    I drew the roadmap.

    Mozilla 1.0's ship date has been the same for around 3 years now: "When It's Ready".

    When I drew the first roadmap which mentioned a 1.0 release [2] [mozilla.org], I placed it "in the future", faded out and labelled "if we're lucky". The accompanying text explained that Mozilla 1.0 would be released "when it is ready". When I next changed the roadmap significantly [4] [mozilla.org], it was to add in another milestone (0.8.1) which had been requested by groups who use the Mozilla codebase in their projects (like Nautlius and AOL). So far, nothing too serious.

    The next big change [5] [mozilla.org] was to simply move the roadmap along a bit so that there was more room. Mozilla 1.0 was still a faded out, but I also took the opportunity to move it along a bit too, thus keeping it at the end of the roadmap. The release date for 1.0 was not changed, it was still "when it's ready".

    However, when that roadmap diagram was published, I discovered that I had previously a undiscovered power among the Slashdot community! People were outraged that the faded lines had been moved! The text hadn't changed, the release date hadn't changed, but the image was adjusted a bit and this is clearly what matters!

    Wary of this amazing power, when I made my next update to the roadmap image [6] [mozilla.org] I was very careful about making the release date of the Mozilla 1.0 product extremely clear: the branch is labelled "Mozilla 1.0 (when it is ready)". I figured that would prevent another outburst from my fans.

    Clearly not! Both RootPrompt and Slashdot have me as their top article! My power remains untamed! Woohoo! :-D

    The roadmap images:

    1. http://mozilla.org/roadmap-images/branching.gif [mozilla.org]
    2. http://mozilla.org/roadmap-images/branching-15-Dec -2000.png [mozilla.org]
    3. http://mozilla.org/roadmap-images/branching-13-Feb -2001.png [mozilla.org]
    4. http://mozilla.org/roadmap-images/branching-01-Mar -2001.png [mozilla.org]
    5. http://mozilla.org/roadmap-images/branching-05-Apr -2001.png [mozilla.org]
    6. http://mozilla.org/roadmap-images/branching-09-May -2001.png [mozilla.org]

    So when will Mozilla 1.0 be ready? We have a definition document [mozilla.org].

  • OK, so I'll reply rather than moderate.

    First, he is not implying that anyone is actually saying "Does C++ matter anymore? We have C#." Just as Theo, in his comments referenced in another /. article today, probably can't think of any software projects offhand which specifically deal with baby-muching. The poster was making an analogy to demonstrate the fallacy of the original comment. Yeesh.

    You've also completely and utterly dismissed this statement in its entirety:

    "Please be aware that most of the software you use every day on your Linux box is pre-1.0. Even then, it's often better and more stable than any MS product."

    Let's examine this statement:

    1. "...most of the software you use every day on your Linux box is pre-1.0" Perhaps such a versioning scheme is silly, but it is what is. The output of dpkg -l on my system shows that at least half the installed software has a version starting with 0, and most of the stuff that doesn't is a library.

    2. "Even then, it's often better and more stable than any MS product." OK, this should have been worded better, but at least he used "often." However, I have found that _counterpart_ products are often better than those on the Win32 platform. I think that XChat is much nicer than mIRC, fidelio is better than the official Hotline client, and everybuddy is better than the official AIM client. And even you surely cannot argue that the command-line portion of Linux does not far outshine any MS "equivalent", or that Microsoft does not still have problems with stability (which they are taking steps to lessen). OK, fine, I'm one of those people who mostly uses X-windows to manage my Eterms (with a few GUI apps). But it works better for me, or I wouldn't be using it.

    As for the "bleeding edge" comment, I think that my post is long enough already, so I'll try to be brief. We can all name the Linux/*nix projects that are too similar to their MS counterparts. Fine, but there are plenty that are not, and are even traveling in new directions (enlightenment with its OpenGL file manager, for example). Linux also had Kerberos and IPSEC long before Windows did, so I don't want to hear about any coattail following from the MS crowd (and NFS might be nasty at times, but SMB is just ooook.) And for being "on the edge", what about IPv6? Microsoft still doesn't have native support for it in any OS, and Cisco only got around to support for it a little while ago. Linux has had it in 2.2 for quite some time.

    Did you really read all of that? Go play outside now! :)

    Sotto la panca, la capra crepa

  • how about an idea like having an application load .so libraries into RAM on system bootup or something

    How about writing a short C program that calls each library's get_version() and then goes to sleep(), keeping the library code in sharable memory? It'd be similar to how the 'sticky bit' worked in old UNIX systems.

    like say load all the KDE libs or GNOME libs or both on startup so when you login to your KDE or GNOME session, everything loads faster

    You can already do that: graphical login. If you boot your Linux box into runlevel 5, or you do something similar on BSD, it will automatically start X and your desktop environment's display manager, causing the widgets and other libs to be loaded by the time you get the login prompt.

    or is that not the core speed issue here?

    The core speed issue is that we're used to graphical file managers and web browsers that share a rendering engine (Explorer and Konqueror; now I see where Konq's name comes from). A sleep()ing C program (as described above) would provide a similar speed win.

  • IE on the Mac is alright, but it has some incredibly annoying behaviour, such as the hardcoded limit on the number of bookmarks it will show in the drop down menu, or the download manager that forgets the location its told to put files, or the broken multi-column selection, or lack of keyboard shortcuts for selecting text fields.
  • Don't worry, the Mac is my backup computer :) It's just convenient to leave a browser/mail open on it while my Win32 or Linux machines are used for real work.

  • Re:Mozilla is being delayed (Score:3)

    by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Monday May 28, 2001 @12:55PM (#192573)
    I am writing this from a nightly build which I have had running all day without a crash. Considering that its running on a Mac where ever MS IE crashes every couple of hours I think that speaks volumes for its stability.

    Certainly there are a few bugs, but this really is a becoming an extremely solid browser.

  • Remember back in August 2000 it was announced that Mozilla would be relicensed under the GNU GPL [mozilla.org]. It was covered in this slashdot article on August 16, 2000 [slashdot.org].

    Sure, complain that 1.0 is late, but the fact is that you can download nightly builds and regular milestones (and even CVS), so there's virtually no delay from the developer to the bleeding-edge or even somewhat adventurous user. A 1.0 delay is really just a delay in name game.

    Some of Mozilla is currently dual-licensed, but saddly much of it is not. Is the dream of a GPL'd Mozilla dead??

  • "Based on NCSA Mosaic. NCSA Mosaic(TM); was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign."

    From the Help/About box in IE 5.5...

  • I wouldn't.

  • Interface-picky? We're spoiled like that :-)

    Mozilla can be taken as one of two things: an open-source project of mediocre popularity but great utility, or a broken-but-still-barely-working car carcass waiting to be stripped for parts. Take from that what you will...

    /Brian
  • I know all the arguments about the browser war being lost, but I'm not so convinced, especially will the emergence of all the new platforms.

    I agree, though for most people they neither know or care about browsers -- it's all 'The Internet' to them. Here's part a real conversation I had with someone when helping them out with thier new laptop;

    1. Me: "What browser do you have?"

      Them: "Netscape. I always use Netscape."

      [A few painful minutes go by as I ask them to go to a specific menu, and they say they can't find it.]

      Me: "In the upper right hand corner, what do you see?"

      Them: "Looks like an E with a swoosh through it."

    Most people I deal with don't have a clue about what they use, and don't understand the difference between Browser and Internet. I've had multiple short conversations with someone who insists that the browser that thier ISP's dialer shows them at home is "The Internet". I've even shown this person on the network other programs that work and work over the Internet, and they still refer to the browser this way. This person is a PHB and makes buying decisions.

    The browser used has nothing to do with technology or if something is more user friendly. It has everything to do with bundling arrangements. The only way to stem this tide is to advocate Mozilla / Netscape. Mozilla is great, Netscape 6.0.1 isn't.

    If Microsoft suceeds in making non-IE browsers second class citizens, the previous efforts at making Active-X a requirement to surf will look like a demo of the new MS-branded Internet.

  • Mozilla is not just a browser. (I don't mean at the app level, such as the mail client, etc.)

    It is much more than that. What is interesting I find about the process of Mozilla in and of itself is the fact that considering what had to be done 3 years ago, and looking at the quality of the code in the Tinderbox Seamonkey CVS tree, I am impressed with the design quality of the code compared to commercial efforts in this area.

    (A rewrite wouldn't have been required if commercial efforts didn't produce such a poorly designed product.)

    Obviously, a lot more thought went into the engineering and design of the browser first, before development began. I suspect, like a Tsunami that travels thousands of miles as a 1 inch high wave, hardly noticeable, Mozilla will really start to tower over other browsers in the next 6-9 months as it approaches shores of a 1.0 release. I am not talking about feature sets either.

    The largest impact Mozilla could have in the areas of browsers could very well be cell/Yopi like devices that require easy to build sharp looking interfaces for embedded systems like PDA's with wireless internet access.

    That is perhaps just one area, but with these thoughts in mind, a browser of this capability, available on all platforms, could very well break Linux and other operating systems onto the desktop in the next 3-4 years, making native apps a non requirement for doing business on the desktop.

    For example, Linux is more than a match with Kernel 2.4.x for poor Microsoft 2000, in the server room. Not yet on the desktop though, but only because of the apps situation.

    But in any case, if the mozilla team decided to stay focused on the 3 things below:

    1) Speed.
    2) Bugs.
    3) Feature Set Freeze for the API/Browser apps.

    If these things can be done over a 6-9 month period of time, I am sure the release 1.0 will be a very shiny product.

    AND IT WILL BE POSSIBLE TO RUN EVERYWHERE.
    (BeOS, Linux, Windows, Sun, PDA's, Cell Phones, etc.)

    More than a match for poor little IE.

    That is the first thing that needs to be done to get rid of IE's growing influence, which if left unchecked, could make every dialup/cable session a very painful experience for one's checkbook with .NET just around the corner.

    Microsoft has some very very nasty things planned during the .NExT 4 years for all of us should they succeed.

    I really would hate to see a "Microsoft Internet" and a everyone else internet.

    (The subtle currents part running through this drama...could be a rant, or the truth. You decide.)

    We already are starting to see this sort of philosophy with patents. Scientific research is slowing to a crawl in BIOTECH, because information cannot be used, or obtained, while millions around the world are delayed the cures they need for diseases and die as a result. Pay as you go absurd patents don't do science any good, unless you want to take another THOUSAND YEARS to develop a cure for the common cold!

    Obviously, a single organization with perhaps a few thousand employees is not going to do the research faster for ANYTHING vs. the millions of people world wide in BioTECH could do if and only if, they cold get access to the information they need to do research.

    Sound familair? Welcome to .NET philosophy my friends.

    Now, instead of taking a few hundred years to make advances in science, we can take a few THOUSAND years to do the same thing because 10 times the amount of people and infrastructure can't look at information unless they pay as they go!

    We don't need one company controlling the entire internet with a default install out of the box that asks you to pay everytime you click on the mouse!

    Philosophically, a lot hinges on Open Source development and the nets future to establish precedence that sharing information is far more economically attractive. Hopefully, will in the end, not only win out, but demonstrate that these sorts of philosophies (.NET, absurd biotech patents, etc.) lead to a great deal of misery for those that lack power and wealth in the world.

    -hack

  • Re:Does it matter? (Score:5)

    by Pinball Wizard ( 161942 ) on Monday May 28, 2001 @12:17PM (#192589) Homepage Journal
    I think it matters. Its true that Mozilla won't make a dent in Windows browser usage, unless it turns out to be a significantly better browser than IE, which is unlikely.

    However, since I started using komodo [activestate.com], which was built on top of Mozilla I realized Mozilla has a really great potential for writing cross platform applications. Check it out. Also, if you primarily write server-side web apps, as I do, you can use browser components as the shell of your app, say to handle files and printing, while the bulk of your application runs on your web server.

    I'd also have to give Mozilla the award for being the single best source of sample code out there in the open source world. Because everything is in there, there is a very good chance that you can learn about what you are trying to do by looking at the code. Hopefully, universities will pick up on this and use Mozilla to help teach CS. That would lead to more Mozilla users(and coders).

    Additionally, having a complete, open-source browser suite forces MS to keep on their toes and release a high-quality, standards compliant browser, while at the same time preventing them from having a total monopoly on the browser market.

    Yes, I'd have to say that Mozilla matters.

  • Mozilla doesnt just provide the code for one browser, but it is also used as codebase for other browsers. One, called Galileo, is a very fast, slimmed plain brower based on the rendering code in Mozilla.

    It should be available on freshmet.net (is down at the moment though, so i cant give the URL).

  • On certain sites Netscape will break, especially if you have cookie eaters, and block access in a proxy to the ad/spam servers. IE doesn't break as badly.

    as a feature request, I would like a javascript on/off toggle button, just for those sites with obnoxious javascript.

    of course, if I turn off the cookie eaters and other security, it tends to work better.

    Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip

  • Better URL (Score:3)

    by ChrisCampbell47 ( 181542 ) on Monday May 28, 2001 @12:13PM (#192603)
    The "tree management diagram" is also known as the "roadmap" and is located at

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

    and it was updated to the current state three weeks ago (i.e. this is not news). It's done when it's done. In the meantime, the milestone releases (0.9, 0.9.1 soon) are very very good. Nightly builds are bit more risky but addin/fix/improve features and performance.

  • Mozilla + Linux (Score:3)

    by mizhi ( 186984 ) on Monday May 28, 2001 @12:08PM (#192606)
    I had an amusing thought that perhaps Mozilla is patterning it's release schedule after the one between Kernel 2.2 and 2.4 =)

    In all seriousness though, I've been using .90 for a while now, and while there are bugs, it always seems to improve with each release. Mozilla has been in development for what, 2+ years now? Arguments about code bloat aside, I'd rather they do a good job on the bloated code than rush it out to satisfy a release schedule. Mozilla is one of the only browsers out there that does CSS to standard (Opera I think does as well, but I don't believe it's free).

    Not that I'm ecstatic about the delays, but I want a browser that's a joy to use at the end.
  • THIS IS FUNNY?

    Methinks the Moderators doth smoke crack too much.

    krystal_blade

  • ...considering that the developers have been learning how to write a browser at the same time as they have been constructing it: Netscape's code was scrapped. And how many mozilla components have been rewritten twice? Or three times?

    If you see this http://mozilla.org/roadmap/mozilla-1.0.html [mozilla.org] document you'll see that there are only about 400 bugs to be fixed for 1.0, which is good news.

    The mozilla developers are working on a very significant project, and I am glad that they're taking their time to make it a high-quality product.
  • It used to be that the internet was nothing more than email, newsgroups and webpages. That is no longer the case. We now have P2P applications like Napster and Hotbot. So all of these people who are saying that Mozilla is crap because it is bloated and they should be making just a browser and they should just give up, I say to them, you are living in the 90's. That sort of argument might of been true 3 years ago, but now if you want to connect to the internet you need a browser, mail client, newsgroups reader, and a 1,000,001 P2P application.

    This is where mozilla will really shine through. Is IE P2P capable? Mozilla certainly is. Go to http://www.mozdev.org [mozdev.org] to have a look at all the applications currently under development for Mozilla

  • ...posted with a recent daily build of mozilla, yes? There's a funky regression whereby the urlbar briefly displays the URL of whatever *file* is being downloaded - so it usually ends up holding the URL for the last ad or screen furniture graphic to be pulled from the server.

    WHilst I'm here - the current dailies are getting really, really slick (on Windows, at least) as the optimisation effort really gets going. I've been using moz more or less continuously since the first usable release of gecko; for much of that time I did it almost entirely as a gesture of support for Free software, and as a kiss-off to Microsoft. Now, I find myself cursing IE's little 'features' when I'm forced to use the damn thing. To all those people who post to every mozilla story saying "sadly I have to admit that IE is by far the best browser" -- don't you find it an enormous pain having to clear all the cookie and active scripting warning dialogs? What's that - you use IE at the default security settings? Hey, I must remember to post some links to one of my extra special sites... :)
    --
    "I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"

  • Being stuck on a slow (33.6) dialup connection at home, I tend to compile lists of interesting URLs in emacs, then go online, grab a dozen or so in one go, then drop the line and read them at my leisure offline. This often takes more than one session, so when I come home the following evening and want to check Slashdot|UserFriendly|space.com whatever, I can't restart the browser without losing a few pages I've already DL'd. The net result is that I often end up with browser sessions lasting many days, sometimes more than a week, during which I've opened and closed tens of windows. A stable build (i.e., a milestone release or a just-before-milestone nightly) copes with that without any problems. (Occasionally I come across a page concealing a lurking browser-buster, but these are getting rarer and rarer these days.)
    --
    "I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
  • Hmmm,... the bugzilla links on the definition document to " total bugs nominated for 1.0 [mozilla.org]" shows list of 397 bugs. A rough glance through the most recent status update [mozilla.org] seems to show something like 170 bugs resolved per week (and that's not including groups that didn't submit a status update.) OK, most of those will be targetted at 0.91, and there are still 318 listed for 0.9 (er, which was out a month ago, no?) but - it seems to imply that 397 / 170 == less than three weeks. What's expected to change - presumably more bugs will be found, or re-targetted at 1.0? Or is it that QA progress is expected to slow down? Or that the bugs that remain are real stinkers? ;) WHat have I missed?
    --
    "I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
  • The OS integration means that people are not inclined to use additional resources starting up a browser when they esentially have IE loaded from start-up


    This is what I have realised for a long time. Various things that Microsoft does could be learned from by the Linux kernal developers. Perhaps Alan Cox or Linus Torvalds should investigate whether or not it would be technically feasable to integrate Mozilla with the GNU/Linux kernal.


    It makes sense to have the browser be part of the OS, since it is what most people use their PC's for all the time, might as well hide the overhead of starting it up by integrating it with the kernal.


    Linux could easily start to make inroads on the desktop if it took the lead from Microsoft's very highly skilled geeks. (You can't patent putting the broswer in the OS, after all :-).


    XML support could go in there too, and possibly word processing also. They could fork a separate distro for the propellorheads that did not want all the 'extras' in their kernal. (it could all be #ifdef'd in the kernel source.


    I am not a tech savvy hacker so I don't know if there are any technical reasons why this cannot be done (put Mozilla in the GNU/Linux kernal) but surely the potential upside of this approach cannot be ignored.

  • united we stand folks, divided we fall.

    So we should all unite under the Microsoft banner and use Windows 2000/IE? ;)

    Sorry, but your argument sounds like you favour division over unification and, in a bussiness environment, I think you're right. Competition is highly important.

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