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Mozilla The Internet

Mozilla Tree Closes for 1.0 751

Posted by CmdrTaco from the bring-it-on dept.
fire-eyes writes "After many years, the Mozilla cvs tree just closed for 1.0. " It's been a long time coming. And I'm glad that on Unix we still have a browser war since Konqueror and Mozilla are both excellent browsers. Congratulations to every developer who committed a line of code, but mostly to you guys in the middle who had to wrangle the whole project.
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Mozilla Tree Closes for 1.0 More

Mozilla Tree Closes for 1.0

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  • In other news... (Score:4, Funny)

    by eth1 ( 94901 ) on Thursday March 28, 2002 @01:18PM (#3242395)
    Several airliners were hit by airborne pigs today, and ACME sweaters reports their largest order ever has come in from Hell.

    • other reports indicate... (Score:4, Funny)

      by mikeee ( 137160 ) on Thursday March 28, 2002 @01:40PM (#3242615)
      ...that Mozilla 1.0 will be the default web browserin the GNU/Hurd OS.

  • Go moz! (Score:3, Funny)

    by InsaneCreator ( 209742 ) on Thursday March 28, 2002 @01:19PM (#3242400)
    They grow up so fast... it brings tears to my eyes

    *snif*

  • its good to see how far mozilla has come. ive been using it for a long time in linux, and now i am ready to make this switch on all my win computers as well. my only complaint about that browser is that it doesnt support the ability to change the colour of the scroll bars found on certain webpages.
    • You know, I've been seeing that coloured scroll bar thing more and more lately. The New Yorker even has it. I must be missing something, but what is the purpose? How does this enhance my experience?

      Maybe I'll try out the 1.0 release anyway, although it will have to be pretty impressive. The previous versions I looked at did little to convince me to give up OmniWeb.
      • You know, I've been seeing that coloured scroll bar thing more and more lately. The New Yorker even has it. I must be missing something, but what is the purpose? How does this enhance my experience?

        The same way Netscape's introduction of the <blink> tag did? ;)

    • Re:finnally i can ditch explorer (Score:5, Informative)

      by shobadobs ( 264600 ) on Thursday March 28, 2002 @01:39PM (#3242609)
      Gee, did it ever occur to you that it is becuase that's not in the CSS Standard [w3.org]? Scrollbar colors are an IE "extension" to CSS, and web authors who use it are rather ignorant of their readers. Users have their scrollbar colors the way they want them; and there is no reason for authors to consider messing with their UI. It can only decrease the usability of a web site. For information about how to prevent web deezyners' screwing with your scrollbar's default settings, go to this page [allmyfaqs.com] and scroll down a bit.
      • No, it's not part of the standard. The reason they even exist is that FrontPage and other HTML editors don't set the document type declaration. Even setting the 4.01 loose DTD will ignore scrollbar colours in IE, as well as the onScroll and onResize Javascript events, etc. At least IE will obey the document type to the letter when it's set; trouble with most pages is that it is not set, so the broader HTML spec as extended by Microsoft is assumed.

  • Diehard IE User (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pgrote ( 68235 ) on Thursday March 28, 2002 @01:20PM (#3242409) Homepage
    As a diehard IE user who made the switch from netscape to IE 3.x, I am quite shocked at how well Mozilla performs in the .99 version.

    I've kept tabs on the performance and functionality as various betas came out and was always extremely disheartened that it just wasn't there. I was beginning to think that one of the most visible efforts by a community to really create a useful application was going to fail.

    With .99 my view was changed completely. I don't use an integrated bookmark manager or email, but for browsing I find myself opening up Mozilla more and more during the day.

    Congratulations to everyone involved in the development and testing. This is quite a success and one that I hope garners a ton of attention!
    • it does not perform well.

      http://onlinebanking.huntington.com does NOT work.

      Most porn sites flash the single picture up and then show only the text of the image (usually the
      URL).

      thus, for my usage it is worthless.

    • Diehard Netscape user (Score:3, Interesting)

      by zeus_tfc ( 222250 )
      A coworker of mine was complaining the other day about how Netscape 4.7x was being disabled for most webpages. He knew that Netscape 6 "Sucked @ss" and absolutely refused to have anything to do with IE. His problem was that Netscape 4.7 had trouble displaying nested tables. They took forever to load and locked up all the browser functions until the page had finished. I have not used Mozilla, but knew that it was supposed to be very good, so I recommended it. He downloaded and installed it last night.

      This morning he came in raving about how good it was. He loved how easy it installed, how it detected all his preferences from netscape and allowed him to access his netscape mail, and how many useful options there were, not to mention that it displayed the nested tables even faster than IE.

      Looks like I'll be spending time downloading tonight.

    • Try the bookmark manager (Score:5, Informative)

      by Ami Ganguli ( 921 ) on Thursday March 28, 2002 @02:27PM (#3243011) Homepage

      It's very nice. I just found out about custom keywords [mozilla.org] today, and they rock.

      You can set up a book mark that takes a parameter and has a shortcut keyword. So now when I type "g keyword" into the urlbar it searches Google for my keyword. Browsing will never be the same :-).

  • AOL Timewarner (Score:3, Interesting)

    by thenextpresident ( 559469 ) on Thursday March 28, 2002 @01:20PM (#3242413) Homepage Journal
    It seems interesting and maybe coincidental that AOL Timewarner starts testing Netscape, and Mozilla seems to quiken its pace to 1.0. Maybe I am just reading to much into this, and its probably all just coincidental, though, it is something for the conspiracy theorists to work out.

    • Re:AOL Timewarner (Score:3, Informative)

      by zoward ( 188110 )
      It occurs to me that AOL and their ilk committed quite a bit of code to the Moz CVS tree over the years. If they choose to conspire to help provide a free-as-in-speech alternative to IE, they have my blessings...

    • Re:AOL Timewarner (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mark_lybarger ( 199098 ) on Thursday March 28, 2002 @01:31PM (#3242520)
      i don't see a conspiracy.

      they (TW/AOL) want a solid browser (an alternative to IE).
      they own a browser.
      they pump money into their browser to get it finished.

      seems like normal business to me.
    • It's pretty easy to understand. Mozilla is getting close to 1.0, so AOL started testing it.

      Correlation doesn't imply causation - but sometimes it's to do with causation in the *other direction* :)

      BTW, the plan to have 1.0 after 0.9.9 has been the intention for *ages*. Personally there are a few issues that I'd still like to see fixed that probably won't be for 1.0, but it'll certainly be nice to not have to qualify everything with "of course, it's only a pre-release".

      Stuart.
    • actually, if it weren't for a certain multi-year agreement with MS to ship IE with AOL, they'd be using NS long ago. That contract will expire very soon (or be nullified?) and some version of NS will find it's way onto the (*shudder*) #1 ISP in America's main distribution.
    • No, that's far to coincidental to get the conspiracy theorists going. They need something like:
      • Mozilla was designed by the guy on the Grassy Knoll
      • The SSL code was derived from code lifted off alien spaceships in Area 51
      • The NSA/CIA/FBI/MI5 has embedded code that will allow them to feed subliminal messages into the X10 popup ads
      • Microsoft is a major contributer to Mozilla, which explains why it's been in development for so long
      • Mozilla actually died in 1967, and was replaced by a Mozilla look-alike. If you compile the source code backwards, you'll get error messages like "I buried Moz". Mozilla's death is the real reason behind the breakup of Netscape.

  • opera (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Transient0 ( 175617 ) on Thursday March 28, 2002 @01:21PM (#3242419) Homepage
    browser war between Mozilla and Konqueror?

    yes, both are excellent browsers, but I was pretty sure that Opera has at least as large of a share as Konqueror on *n*x desktops.

    Sure, the free version has ads, but it's still free, and it seems to render sloppily coded IE-compatible/W3C-incompatible pages with more flair than either of the other two. Opera [opera.com] recently released the TP3 of their version 6, and it is excellent.

    just a note.

    • Re:opera (Score:2, Interesting)

      by qurob ( 543434 )

      Opera, a browser which has built in ads, is the herald of people using it to stop seeing other ads?

      Hrm

  • great browser! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by afidel ( 530433 )
    It is the most standard compliant browser with some of the best features out there (popup killing, tabs etc). It's been a long road to 1.0 but it's been worth it. But remember 1.0 is not the end of the project, just the freezing of the API's there will continue to be improvements and enhancements made.

  • Google cache... (Score:3, Informative)

    by thenextpresident ( 559469 ) on Thursday March 28, 2002 @01:23PM (#3242429) Homepage Journal
    for those that like to click: http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:sSfdrcUvpF0C: www.mozillazine.org/+&hl=en [google.com]

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday March 28, 2002 @01:23PM (#3242431)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Congratulations...BUT... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by CanadaDave ( 544515 ) on Thursday March 28, 2002 @01:24PM (#3242447) Homepage
    Congratulations to the all the developers who have made Mozilla into a great stable browser (and better than Konquerer in my opinion, at least at viewing a lot of the websites I frequent). However, I think the main thing that is holding back this amazing browser is its speed. It is too slow at rendering pages, too slow at going back/forward through cached pages, and too slow to start up (although there is a quickstart feature for Windows, but not in Linux AFAIK).

    Until it approaches Opera for speed, it will still be not a preferred browser. Opera's mouse gestures are also an excellent feature which help improve browsing speed. I think that improving Mozilla's speed should be the developers main focus going forward.

    • Re:Congratulations...BUT... (Score:5, Informative)

      by inquis ( 143542 ) on Thursday March 28, 2002 @01:27PM (#3242480)
      Learn to love tabbed browsing if you have complaints about startup time. Once it's running, hit CTRL+T under Windows to open a new tab; it's much faster than opening a new window because of the reduced window manager overhead. Hell, if you're ambitious you can configure Mozilla to open a new tab whenever you middle-click on a link; that's a KILLER feature.

      Add the Mozilla mouse gestures package and you will be setup to browse.

      -inq
      • Yes, I LOVE this feature. It reduces clutter, and is speedy to boot. Truly a great innovation in web browsing.

        a) Next major release of IE
        b) A soon, minor release of IE
        c) never

        i personally love it, and MS would be dumb to not include it in their browser.

  • "And I'm glad that on Unix we still have a browser war" Trolling in the news post?

    The browser war on Windows is joined as well!

    IE may come installed with all copies of Windows but that doesn't mean that Mozilla can't compete. In fact, Mozilla .9.7 was already better than IE in almost every category. .9.9 just blows everything else out of the water. The browser war is alive and well on Windows.

    Moz 1 will be a great breakthrough for open-source software. And there were a lot of people who thought we'd never see it. Now it looks inevitable. Moz already runs fast and load times are generally 2 secs, I can't wait to see what it does fully optimized.

    So, hats off to the Mozilla crew. And bravo. Hoorah for OSS and openness, modularity and custizability in user software!

    Sweat
    • IE may come installed with all copies of Windows but that doesn't mean that Mozilla can't compete. In fact, Mozilla .9.7 was already better than IE in almost every category. .9.9 just blows everything else out of the water. The browser war is alive and well on Windows.

      As someone who uses Mozilla as my primary browser, I'd like to see some benchmarks supporting what you're talking about. I'd love to know what I'm (not) missing. :)

      Got a link?

      • Benchmarks. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by HanzoSan ( 251665 )
        ok lets benchmark the load of slashdot. Moz, Konq, Opera. I'm going to load the main page, everyone here can do it too and make sure its accurate.
        Mozilla .9x nightly vs
        Konq 2.2.1 vs
        Opera 6 beta 1.
        Slashdot mainpage Mozilla 1.06 seconds.
        Reload
        Slashdot mainpage Mozilla 1.25 seconds.

        OSDN main page Mozilla 1.498 seconds.
        Reload
        OSDN main page Mozilla 3.4 seconds.

        Slashdot main page Konqueror 3 seconds
        Reload
        Slashdot main page Konqueror 1 second

        OSDN main page Konqueror 4 seconds
        Reload
        OSDN main page Konqueror 3 seconds

        Slashdot main page Opera 2 seconds
        Reload
        Slashdot main page Opera 2 seconds

        OSDN main page Opera 6 seconds
        Reload
        OSDN main page Opera 4 seconds.

        This debate needs to be ended once and for all, I challenge ANYONE to host an official benchmarking test suite where thousands us at slashdot can go and benchmark Opera vs Mozilla vs Konq vs IE and once and for all prove Mozilla is fastest.

        I know it wins at OSDN and Slashdot.

  • Need testers now! (Score:5, Informative)

    by lw54 ( 73409 ) on Thursday March 28, 2002 @01:25PM (#3242453)
    Remember Mozilla 1.0 will still be a test release. This means the debug and QA menus will still be there.

    Don't assume that just because it's 1.0 means that it's perfect.

    Many people will try Mozilla for the first time in 1.0. People more than ever need to go out there and download [linux [mozilla.org], mac [mozilla.org], win32 [mozilla.org]], test, and give bug reports [mozilla.org].

    If you want to help open source but can't hack the code, this is your chance to help! :-)

    • Re:Need testers now! (Score:5, Informative)

      by CanadaDave ( 544515 ) on Thursday March 28, 2002 @01:34PM (#3242549) Homepage
      "Many people will try Mozilla for the first time in 1.0. People more than ever need to go out there and download [linux [mozilla.org], mac [mozilla.org], win32 [mozilla.org]], test, and give bug reports [mozilla.org]"

      Yes I totally recommend doing a bug report if there is something about Mozilla that you really hate. Bugzilla is excellent, and far nicer than OpenOffice.org's IssueZilla. I don't know why, I just hate IssueZilla, it never works well for me, and seems slower.

      I've been submitting bug reports for Mozilla for a while now. Sometimes I miss a previous bug, and so mine ends up being a duplicate, but I actually managed to find 2 unique bugs already (in composer), and they got implemented in 0.9.9! It was really cool to have helped made an improvement, without doing any programming.

      You can also vote on bugs. This is a great way to tell the developers which bugs you want to see fixed.

    • People more than ever need to go out there and download , test, and give bug reports.

      I agree with your point, but why link to old builds? Asa says [mozillazine.org] the -03-26 [mozilla.org] (linux and mac) and -03-27 [mozilla.org] (win32) builds are very good.

      Don't just report bugs! Join the QA effort [mozilla.org] and help triage the bug reports!

      Christopher
  • It's great to see that they are on schedule (finally ;). I remember the "old times", when I downloaded my first mozilla build. I believe it was early '99. I didn't really know ehat exacty mozilla was back then and I completely freaked out after seeing how my homepage was rendered (not much worked back then). But that made me do some more reading about Moz and now I'm a proud user of this web lizard. :)

  • Site is down, (Score:2, Informative)

    by let the storm ( 567735 )
    google cache [google.com]:
    "
    Tree Closes for Mozilla 1.0
    The tree just closed in preparation for Mozilla 1.0, and so far, it's looking promising. What does the tree close mean? This time around, as drivers have been in control of the tree for the entire milestone, the actual process won't change, but drivers approval will begin to get harder and harder to get for a checkin. As we approach 1.0, we'll keep you up to date on current status and other interesting news.
    "
    Incidentally, at the time Google cached that, it had zero comments. That was fast.

    Anyway, I'm kind of disappointed. This is like the Year 2000. I always pictured some cool technological advance when we hit the y2k figure, but we didn't suddenly have anything special. In the same way, I always thought that when Mozilla finally hit 1.0, it would be this super-stable, killer ap with special competition-eradicating I-Need-Thats that make any other alternative simply laughable. Instead, 1.0 is just a glorified 0.9.9.998
    Oh well.

    (On a side note, when did we all stop saying Un*x for Unix. I think 'taco was one of the first people I heard saying this...)

    --
    m iso socially aware artistic geek pen-pal, m or f, in '1337 edu. jazz, poetry a must.
    email me (click my user info for addy) if you're interested.

  • Get Involved in Mozilla! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Christopher Whitt ( 74084 ) <cwhitt@NOSpAM.ieee.org> on Thursday March 28, 2002 @01:27PM (#3242484) Homepage
    Mozilla has been on a pretty well-known schedule [mozilla.org] for quite a while now. There are a lot of great fixes [mozillazine.org] landing for 1.0, and a lot of exciting feature work that is just around the corner to land post-1.0.

    I've said before that Moz is my number 1 browser, and I just want to plug it again: GET INVOLVED [mozilla.org]. While I'm at it let me also plug my favorite mozdev [mozdev.org] project: Optimoz. Yep, I love gesture navigation and it pains me to use a browser without it now that I have it.

    It doesn't take much effort to get oriented in the project and start contributing. The website has much more information about getting involved, but even simple stuff like helping sort through the piles of bug reports is a very constructive way to help the project.

    Christopher
  • The last milestone (0.9.9) has some nasty bookmark bugs. Just caused me to loose 2 folders of bookmarks a few hours ago. Now I'll have to go look for them in the backups when I need them :)

    • Yep... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Danse ( 1026 )

      That's one of my main complaints with Moz. I've been using it as my primary browser, both at home and at work, for a while now, but the bookmarking features suck. Filing bookmarks doesn't work at all for me on Win98. I click the "File Bookmark..." option and it opens the window. I select a folder and click "OK", and nothing happens. It doesn't create a bookmark at all. Yet the filing seems to work on Win2K. I don't like the way it imports IE favorites either. It creates a link to the favorites folder, and you can't really modify those bookmarks from within Moz. I want it to give me the option to import those favorites into Moz rather than just link to them. Oh yeah, the bookmark management window doesn't work very well under Win98 either. There are all sorts of problems with moving bookmarks around. I've lost plenty of bookmarks trying to resort or refile them. Even Win2K has problems with it. If you select a bookmark, right-click and select "cut", then try to paste it into another folder or anywhere else really, it won't work.


      Anyway, I love Moz, but I really wish they'd fix those problems. If I had a clue about C coding, I'd take a shot at it myself, but I'm a total novice at that.

  • View Source (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tazzzzz ( 203300 ) on Thursday March 28, 2002 @01:31PM (#3242512) Homepage
    Sigh... 1.0 comes along and they still haven't fixed the view source [mozilla.org] bug. Yep, still can't view the source of a dynamic page. The bug is labeled as "Future".

    Is it me or does the ability to view the source of whatever your looking at seem to be something that even a 1.0 browser should do correctly?

  • Not much there... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by NOT-2-QUICK ( 114909 )
    But for anyone interested in the actual link posted in the story, here is the google cache version [google.com]...

  • Moz based projects (Score:4, Informative)

    by InsaneCreator ( 209742 ) on Thursday March 28, 2002 @01:34PM (#3242545)
    What I find most interesting about Mozilla is in how may ways it can be used. Just look at all the different projects using Moz engine, like text/programming editors, irc clients, media players, and others. A really interesting piece of work. You can find a lot of Moz-based projects at Mozdev.org [mozdev.org]

    • Re:Moz based projects (Score:2, Interesting)

      by xZAQx ( 472674 )
      The single coolest thing I've seen done with mozilla:

      http://oeone.com/

      This is a little iMAC-ish PC that uses -- get this -- Mozilla code as it's GUI WM!

      These are very cute, check them out.
  • ...since Konqueror and Mozilla are both excellent browsers.

    The very first time I loaded up Slashdot in Konqueror, all the links were broken. When I tried in Mozilla, it segfaulted. I had to resort to Netscape for any useful browsing.

    Of course that was when Linux would go through massive swapping storms every few hours leaving the system completly useless.

    This is truly a testimate to how far we've come and how far we have to go! Now the important question: How long do we have to wait for 2.0?

  • Link is slashdoted... (Score:3, Informative)

    by OneFix ( 18661 ) on Thursday March 28, 2002 @01:36PM (#3242568)
    While you're waiting, try the Tree Status [mozilla.org] and the Roadmap [mozilla.org].

    From these links, you can tell that 1.0 is scheduled for release in about 2 weeks, but from the current Tree status it looks like that might not be a realistic time frame...more like 4 weeks...

    When MozillaZine is back up, make sure to check out the newest Build Comments [mozillazine.org]...there's been alot of fixes recently...

  • AOL's Pressure To Close (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Rathian ( 187923 ) on Thursday March 28, 2002 @01:36PM (#3242575)
    It is both good and bad that AOL has decided to use Mozilla in the next AOL release. Unfortunately they are applying pressure to the Mozilla team to wrap it up and get the product out the door.

    Case in point, bug 99344 [mozilla.org]. The Mozilla team has known about this one for at least six months, yet the bug still lives. Now it is unlikely the fix will be made before 1.0. The project managers are being pressured to "back burner" bugs like this one to ship the product.

    Why rush? AOL pushing them is a bad thing since bugs like this one are now getting out the door and tarnishing what *has* to be a near perfect product. Rushing out the door will NOT recover any market share, it is far too late for that unless AOL/others plan to show us why everyone *must* use Mozilla/Netscape 6.x. instead of IE. For your normal "Joe Sixpack" websurfer it is going to be difficult if not impossible to convince him to change since IE works for 99.9% of what he likes to do, regardless of security holes.

    On the whole I am very happy with Mozilla, I use it as my primary browser on all platforms. Still, I can't totally hide my disappointment that some knowns issues are going on neglected, leaving web developers, yet again, to deal with the bugs. *sigh* nothing changes. Things have gotten MUCH better, yet...

    • Except every Joe Sixpack who uses AOL will have his Windows default browser quietly changed to Mozilla next time he upgrades his AOL.

    • Re:AOL's Pressure To Close (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jesser ( 77961 ) on Thursday March 28, 2002 @02:37PM (#3243121) Homepage Journal
      Case in point, bug 99344 [mozilla.org]. The Mozilla team has known about this one for at least six months, yet the bug still lives.

      I'm surprised at how often users complain about that a bug or enhancement request "has been open for 6 months" or "has been known for 2 years". The age of a bug is not a good measure of its severity. In fact, severe bugs generally get fixed more quickly than minor ones, so most old bugs are minor ones. Instead of complaining about how long a bug has been known, complain about how many sites it breaks, whether it's a regression from older versions of Mozilla, and what standards it breaks.

      Some classes of bugs, such as security holes, are important to fix quickly. For other classes of bugs, you have to explain why this bug is more important than one reported a week ago that could be fixed by the same developer.

    • Re:AOL's Pressure To Close (Score:4, Informative)

      by asa ( 33102 ) <asa@mozilla.com> on Thursday March 28, 2002 @02:46PM (#3243212) Homepage
      It is both good and bad that AOL has decided to use Mozilla in the next AOL release. Unfortunately they are applying pressure to the Mozilla team to wrap it up and get the product out the door.

      This is a rediculous statement. AOL could care less about when 1.0 ships. Netscape 6.x and other AOL efforts haven't been delayed in their prior releases becuase Mozilla wasn't yet at 1.0.
      The pressure to make a 1.0 comes from within Mozilla, not from outside. We have a great set of technologies and it's time to let the world know. There are dozens of commercial projects (and even more non-commercial) using Mozilla technologies and we're working hard to give them a stable and long lived 1.0 branch on which to work. The 1.0 release is just the beginning for many consumers of Mozilla code and it will ba a fine place to start.

      --Asa

  • Pretty funny actually... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mysticalfruit ( 533341 ) on Thursday March 28, 2002 @01:36PM (#3242580) Homepage Journal
    We've got an internal web system thats supposed to be IE only. They only enforce the IE only stuff on the production site, not the development site. One of the developers was having an issue with cascading style sheets and kanji rendering properly. He came into my office and mozilla 0.9.9 rendered it perfectly while IE went to hell in a hand basket and was "generating an error log"

    Needless to say, The developer went back and installed mozilla (though they still target IE) and I've been lobbying the manager of the project to widen the browser scope.

    Three Cheers for the hard work put into the making of Mozilla. Its good to see what comes out of a development model thats based on quality, not time to ship.

    Horray for a browser that at least makes an attempt at following standards (instead of trying to create ones!)
  • I'm glad they have finally reached this milestone. Kudos to the Zilla gang!

    I will say that I sure hope they've managed to get some bugs fixed. Last night, 3 times in less than a hour, Mozilla 0.9.9 crashed on me when trying to use two tabbed windows of cruisercustomizing.com [cruisercustomizing.com]. I just stumbled across another bug in this very slashdot comment window. When I scroll to the end of the text field, it wraps around and starts scrolling from the top. Weird. I also hope they get some javascript problems ironed out. I still can't administrate my PacketShaper 4545 with Mozilla because the popup menus don't work. Still kudos to the Zilla folks for their biggest milestone.

  • Oops, too late... (Score:5, Funny)

    by chinton ( 151403 ) <chinton001-slashdot@nospam.gmail.com> on Thursday March 28, 2002 @01:41PM (#3242626) Journal
    Nobody will want to use it now because web surfing has lost it's luster [slashdot.org]...
  • I really like Mozilla. It's got a lot of excellent features, it looks good, it's come a long way, etc. But unfortunately it (v. 0.9.9) brings my work computer (Linux, 128MB RAM) grinding to a halt. It takes over 30 seconds to load, and there's a several second delay between when I highlight text or try to type anything.

    Opera, on the other hand, loads in a flash, now supports all the plugins I need, has tabbed browsing, renders things very well, and aside from the JavaScript console has everything I ever needed from Mozilla and more. In fact, I even paid for Opera and have had no regrets.

    At work I mostly only use Mozilla when I get to a site that assumes I have a lame browser that supports nothing because it's not Netscape or IE. Unfortunately it's a painfully long process to get to a page. I'm not flaming it, I love the browser, but I just can't use it on my low end work system.
    • There's gotta be something else wrong . . . I use Mozilla on all my machines, and while it does take longer than I'd like to load on some of them, it seems entirely usable once it's up on all of them. My systems:
      • 450MHz P2, 92MB memory, dual-boot linux/windoze
      • 400MHz P2, 64MB, Windoze
      • 833MHz P3, 256MB, Linux (well, of course it's gonna be good on this one)
      It also ran acceptably well on my 233MHz Cyrixorwhatever w/ 92MB memory before I swapped the motherboard out (dual-boot linux/windoze). Honestly, I haven't seen speed problems like those in a long time (I've been using it since M18).
  • With faster page rendering there is now an improved chance at first post ;)
  • ok i've found two things (not sure if they qualify as bugs) about .99 i dont like.

    A: i prefer larger text size on my browser because of a huge monitor and high resolution i run at. On IE, i can set the text size from smaller to larger and IE remembers that preference forever. Mozilla forgets my text size (i prefer 120%) as soon as i close the program. Any way to make that 120% permanent ?

    B: I have a HUGE hosts file that i block crap like doubleclick.net, known spyware sites, porn sites, etc.....anything i dont like :) On some sites i visit a LOT, such as slashdot and cnn.com, i block the ad servers. Mozilla gives me an error of "connection refused when attempting to contact foobar.spyware.site.com". I know the connection was refused (grin), how do i keep mozilla from bitching about my blocked sites in my hosts file?

    if i could solve those two issues, i'd almost never use IE again (dont get me wrong, i like IE6 a lot, but i dont like the idea of being trapped on one platform because of a browser, I want to be able to use win 32, linux, mac os X, etc, and have the same browser no matter what).

    • I'm not sure what you can do about (B), but (A) could be solved by adding this line (with the default font size & types you prefer) to your prefs.js file:


      user_pref("font.minimum-size.fixed", 14);
      user_pref("font.minimum-size.variable", 14);

    • Mozilla forgets my text size (i prefer 120%) as soon as i close the program. Any way to make that 120% permanent ?

      Sure is. I do it myself, as I don't like to squint when browsing - I have a desktop resolution of 1600x1200. Add the following line to your prefs.js file - it's in ~/.mozilla/default/XXX.slt/, where XXX is something unique to the user:

      user_pref("font.minimum-size.x-western", 18);
      You can replace 18 with whatever you like, of course. Enjoy!

  • Will mozilla 1.0 = Netscape 7? (Score:4, Funny)

    by joshv ( 13017 ) on Thursday March 28, 2002 @01:44PM (#3242655)
    I think this would be a good point for Netscape to release version 7.

    -josh

    • Re:Will mozilla 1.0 = Netscape 7? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Lendrick ( 314723 ) on Thursday March 28, 2002 @01:53PM (#3242730) Homepage Journal
      I'm not sure I agree with that... Mozilla has picked up some nifty new features, and is certainly improving a lot in terms of performance, but there really isn't enough of a difference to warrant a completely new version number. Call it Netscape 7, and you get a lot of disappointed 6.2 users wondering what the big deal is.

      Better, perhaps, to jump to 6.5 or somesuch. Major performance increases, and a few nifty new features, like tabbed browsing.
  • After just d/l and installing 0.9.9 on a home & work pc's I have to do it again? *sigh*

    Well at least I can use secure documents with my bank now, and don;t have to use Netscape.

    BTW the tar for the binaries is large- 12mg or so. The source is even larger. If you want to compilehave at least 600mg on a drive somewher.

    • Re:Oh crud! not again (Score:3, Informative)

      by cjpez ( 148000 )
      No, the branch has just been closed; I'm guessing for new features of any sort. They're still going to be testing and doing bugfixes and stuff. Check out the roadmap [mozilla.org] for more info. It'll be a little while yet before 1.0 is actually out.

  • Recent speedups (Score:5, Insightful)

    by IvyMike ( 178408 ) on Thursday March 28, 2002 @01:56PM (#3242762)

    Whenever there's a slashdot mozilla article, there's also the seemingly required collection of "It's too slow" comments.

    However, if you haven't tried a nightly build recently, you aren't seeing the full picture. this graph shows the recent large performance gains [mozilla.org] that have recently gone into mozilla.

    Personally, I find mozilla outrageously fast on Windows; faster than anything else I've tried. However, on Solaris and OSX, the performance isn't where I'd like it to be. (But as the graph above shows, it's getting better, and I've noticed it on OSX.). If you're a user of the Windows platform, and have heard the "slow performance" chatter that goes on, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

    (In spite of the "I'd like it faster on Solaris" comment, that doesn't mean I don't like it. I still use mozilla exclusively on Solaris too; the tabbed browsing, integrated searching, and killing of popups would make it worthwhile at half the speed.)

    There are also a large collection of performance bugs that probably won't make Moz 1.0, but do have a good chance of making 1.0.1. So there's even more good news just a little down the road.

    • I'll agree that Mozilla renders fast -- my main complaint is that it "feels" jerky, unresponsive, or in layman's terms -- slow.

      For example, if you are (say) loading a large slashdot page in the background, the UI and the scrolling of your foreground window becomes very unresponsive. This gets kind of annoying if you click the wrong link and find that your Stop button doesn't want to register and the page loads anyway. (2x PIII-600, 512MB, Win2K)

      This is all probably threading issues rather than actual performance -- it's just that perceptually looks like a performance problem.

      Also, IMO, the incremental renderer adds to this perception. On IE you might wait just as long, but when the page appears it looks right. Mozilla shows you various half-done bizarro-versions of the page along the way, which can look klunky on some sites.

      (The graphs are interesting because they show the OS X version to be much slower than the Windows version. Yet because the competition is worse on Mac, Mozilla feels much better there for some reason, on much slower hardware than my Winbox.)

  • Hope for better plugin support (Score:5, Informative)

    by CanadaDave ( 544515 ) on Thursday March 28, 2002 @01:57PM (#3242770) Homepage
    One thing holding back Mozilla from widespread use by the average non-geek user, is that getting all plugins to work is not always easy in Windows at least. For example if you install RealPlayer 8, you won't get the plugin. You have to have Netscaple 4.x installed in Windows. RealPlayer will detec the Netscape 4.x directory and install the plugin. I have never tried creating these empty directories, because I assumed it actually relied on some registry entry for Netscape 4.x

    And the biggest plugin annoyance of all time....installing a JRE. For the non-geek user this is just a pain. They don't want to have to download and install this as well as the browser. It makes things too complicated. I wonder if an open source JRE like Blackdown.org's [blackdown.org] JRE with the Mozilla could be included with Mozilla.

    Also, Shockwave Flash has to be installed afterwards as well. IE on the other hand includes this in their browser. IE basically works out of the box, Mozilla doesn't. And the auto-plugin-installer crap doesn't work perfectly yet.

    • I understand that for your "average" user, it's desirable to have JRE and Flash come bundled with Mozilla. Personally, I'm glad they don't. I haven't installed either and have no plan to in the near future. If anything I'd make these optional componets in the installer which are selected by default, but can be removed with a click of the mouse.

      And Mozilla *does* work out of the box. Let's not call seperate programs part of Mozilla.

  • Metabug... (Score:3, Informative)

    by OneFix ( 18661 ) on Thursday March 28, 2002 @01:58PM (#3242783)
    If you wanna track the progress, you can always go to the Make Mozilla 1.0 not suck [mozilla.org] metabug. This has been done for all releases since I can remember.

    Take for instance the same bug for Mozilla 0.9.9 [mozilla.org]...all bugs are tracked in here up until the final release.

  • It's not over yet (Score:5, Informative)

    by asa ( 33102 ) <asa@mozilla.com> on Thursday March 28, 2002 @02:30PM (#3243044) Homepage
    We've still got a ways to go here. Check-ins to the tree are being tightly managed by the Mozilla "drivers" and we're working on getting it into shape for branching. When we get a handle on a few more bugs we'll create a Mozilla 1.0 branch and do a fairly quick Release Candidate 1. This will be a preview of what's to come with the final Mozilla 1.0 and an oportunity to gather feedback and TalkBack crash data that we will respond to over the following weeks as we approach the Mozilla 1.0 release.

    --Asa

  • What makes Mozilla different... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by chrysalis ( 50680 ) on Thursday March 28, 2002 @03:51PM (#3243734) Homepage
    Mozilla is *not* exactly like IE, Opera or Konqueror. Yes, you can browse the web with all these products.

    But Mozilla is more than a browser. Mozilla is a developpment framework. It's also a graphic toolkit, and a powerful language, whoose other components are based upon.

    It means that Mozilla is far more flexible than other browsers. You can write games or word processors with Mozilla without any external library. And the result will be clean, based on fully documented standards, and portable across all platforms Mozilla can run on.

    So when Mozilla 1.0 will be released, it will only be the _beginning_ of the story. The framework will be there and solid, and applications will show its true power.

    • Mozilla is a development framework.

      I'm actually amazed that the developers have gotten that development framework to the state it is in right now. When the switch from native Win32/Motif to XUL was made, I had sinking feelings over whether the whole thing wasn't going to collapse under it's own weight, and until 0.9.7, experience surely didn't contradict that gut feeling.

      As a browser user, I don't want a frigging development environment. I couldn't care less about skins and other window dressing. I want the pages I wish to view to render, that's about it.

      My acid test is my Win95 machine at work. It's a Pentium 75 with 64MB of RAM and a slow disk (and the only reason I still have it is that I want to be able to see how my own code behaves, if it works there it'll work anywhere). Starting with 0.9.7, it has become bearable. That's one heck of a job by the Mozilla team.

      The killer feature for me is the granularity with which you can set your preferences. "The site AdsTillYoureBlueInTheFace.com wants to load an image. Do you wish to allow this?" I've thought about hacking the thing up to even store JavaScript preferences per site. Push never came to shove though.

  • Mozilla Mail not ready for prime time (Score:4, Informative)

    by jgarzik ( 11218 ) on Thursday March 28, 2002 @08:27PM (#3245598) Homepage
    Mozilla browser is pretty decent, though it still has rendering problems I occasionally run into.

    Mozilla Mail is a different story. Functional, but very unpolished and not ready for heavy use. I should know, I've been using it heavily for the past two weeks as a trial run. Basically it needs a UI guy to go over it and flesh out the bugs.

    • Scrollbar insanity. If your message has attachments (this occur sometimes in other conditions, too) you have no scrollbars. Or to be more accurate, the scrollbars are present but completely obscured and inaccessible.
    • Blank messages. Crossing folders when going to the next unread message, the message text doesn't appear at all. One must highlight another message in the folder, then return to the chosen message.
    • Problems with large selections and large attachments. UI freezes for a looong time, and occasionally crashes.
    • Multi-folder navigation. "Next unread message" and similar commands take you to the next unread message... but still leave the folder highlighted. Read the message, hit delete, and you just deleted a folder.
    • Constant subwindow resizing. Going from a message with attachments to one without causes multiple redraws of the same window... at different window sizes.
    • Crashes once per day, typically.
    • ...and more. If you live and die by your email, as I do :) there are other buglets you run into as well.

    In short, works but definitely not ready for prime time.

    Jeff

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