Moving towards Mozilla 1.0 412
fluedke writes "The latest Mozilla CVS identifies itself as "Mozilla 1.0". It looks like this source will become the official 1.0 within the next days. Read the news posting here." And if you're one of the missing hackers, speak up.
Bugzilla.mozilla.org (Score:5, Informative)
Check out http://bugzilla.mozilla.org
Re:Bugzilla.mozilla.org (Score:5, Insightful)
The open source community will likely cause the mozilla.org people more work by all reporting 500 versions of the same problem - especially with all the publicity 1.0 will be getting.
And, if you report a bug, please follow through. There are umpteen bugs in bugzilla that are sitting there with a bug reporter that's MIA.
Re:Bugzilla.mozilla.org (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Bugzilla.mozilla.org (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Bugzilla.mozilla.org (Score:4, Informative)
All the reports I've submitted have been dealt with seriously. Sometimes that means, "sorry, we're not going to fix this for a while." That's understandable, they need to prioritise.
Sometimes, the report is closed because it's not a bug - a particular thing behaves in a way I'm unhappy with, but which most people would prefer over the alternative I suggest.
Most times, though, the bugs are just dealt with. I've never submitted a bug report which didn't get a reply of _some_ form within a few days.
This is just in my experience. But I have to read a lot of bug reports myself (for Debian), and I gotta tell you, there is NOTHING more frustrating than somebody filing a bug report, saying "it doesn't work."
WHAT doesn't work? In what way does it not work? How would you expect it to work?
The more serious you are, the more serious you'll be taken.
Re:Bugzilla.mozilla.org (Score:2)
--Robert
Re:Bugzilla.mozilla.org (Score:2)
Which is why yeah, I'd rather spend 2 minutes bitching about 'em here (where maybe some concerned developer will notice) than waste a couple hours preparing and filing proper documentation on Bugzilla, where I've been taught to expect it'll be blown off as just another whine from a lowly user.
Competition (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Competition (Score:2)
Re:Competition (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Competition (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Competition (Score:2, Insightful)
I've always figured some people in microsoft thought so much of IE, or rather the fact that people wrote pages for IE instead of to w3c compliance that not releasing IE on Linux would keep people from moving to that operating system.
OK, it's a crazy conspiricy theory. But seeing some of Microsoft's statements about Linux in the past, or their view of themselves as benovlent shepards of the ignorent computing masses I wouldn't put it past them.
Re:Competition (Score:2)
Remember, the EULA for a WindowsCE developer kit prohibited releasing any software you write under the GPL. As if to imply that the license could retroactively relicense any software you come into contact with.
something tells me ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:something tells me ... (Score:2)
Re:something tells me ... (Score:5, Funny)
romulan interegator: how many bugs do you see?
missing mozillian: THERE ... ARE ... TWENTY ... THOUSAND ... BUGS!!!!
romulan interegator: wrong, there are 20,001 bugs.
Re:something tells me ... (Score:2)
As buggy as Mozilla may be, its still great to see this project hit version 1.0. I've long prefered Mozilla for my Linux web browser (that is until Galeon came along), so lets stop all the whining and arguing for a moment and remember to tip our hats (Red or otherwise) to the Mozilla team!
Thanks guys!
Re:something tells me ... (Score:2)
Re:something tells me ... (Score:2)
Yeah, but that still doesn't excuse confusing Romulans and Cardassians :)
Anyway, that was the funniest thing I've read on slashdot in a long while.
Re:something tells me ... (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, they couldn't have Picard actually say he saw five lights--he is rescued before that can happen (although he confesses to Troi later that in the end he could actually see five lights).
Re:something tells me ... (Score:2, Funny)
I didn't know Colm Meaney was in that movie!
finally (Score:2, Interesting)
IE monopoly (Score:3, Insightful)
What excites me is to see another open-source project that potentially can become a best-of-breed app, like Emacs or Apache. We're getting closer and closer to the day when nobody can object to open source because they need application X, and the open-source alternative isn't as good.
Re:IE monopoly (Score:4, Insightful)
**********
Because more and more sites are being written with on ly one standard in mind - the IE standard.
Re:IE monopoly (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't tell you how many sites ask me to upgrade to a more "modern" browser, and give links for either Netscape or IE.
Many of them work just fine when I tell Opera to lie about the identification, but there's certain broken javascript that people use to test cookies in Netscape and IE that doesn't work in Opera (Opera doesn't have this "bug").
Very annoying that I much switch to a different browser to access my bank and investments, and yes I have complained, and I'm sure my complaints are duly filed in the circular file cabinet.
Re:IE monopoly (Score:3, Interesting)
Opera fakes document.createElement() and returns true, so sites that identify DOM-compliant browsers by this test will assume all is well, but the method doesn't actually do anything, so the site fails without an error. Last I checked, this was something the Opera programmers were "going to get around to" someday.
On the flip side, more and more sites are now supporting Mozilla... even my bank, which I could never get to work with any browser but IE, now looks great in Mozilla (or Galeon).
And that's the thing: every killer feature that made me switch from IE to Opera (when I was running Windows) was there in Galeon on Linux. I've got Opera, but these days Galeon is faster, renders more correctly, and has more truly useful features than Opera.
When I design websites, I'll still keep inserting workarounds for Opera, just as I still keep kludging ugly workarounds for Netscape 4 (icky, icky). Hopefully, though, Opera will eventually become fully standards-compliant, and then we won't have a problem.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:finally (Score:4, Insightful)
Now don't get me wrong I reckon Mozilla is a great browser, better than IE ver 5 in my opinion but I think it's in for a hard time making a huge dent in MSIE's monopoly, at least as long they bundle and integrate IE with their operating system.
Re:finally (Score:3, Insightful)
Mozilla has a lot of features that are better than this, but this one feature hits a such known problem area that it could get a large group of people to switch.
Of course, since Mozilla has no marketing budget, it is unknown whether anyone will ever know this besides us.
Re:finally (Score:2, Funny)
Obviously what we need is a large pop-up announcing that Mozilla can stop these pop-up adds.
Re:finally (Score:2)
Of course I have no real data to back any of this up, but in my experience IE has been chosen, not forced. Once/if Opera or another browser comes out significantly ahead, I'll be happy to switch - even if I have to pay for it.
Re:finally (Score:3, Interesting)
It's too late to affect de-facto standards. It's too late to have any chance of becoming the most popular browser. But overall, I'm extremely impressed by RC3. The only major problem I have with it is that plugins are very hard to install (on Win2K) compared to IE. The positives are turning off pop-ups, and turning off Doubleclick BFAs.
Actually my other problem isn't so much with the product, but with the source code. I wish it would compile without using Visual Studio. Then the fact that it was GPLed would actually mean something to me.
Re:finally (Score:2, Informative)
Re:finally (Score:2, Insightful)
It's too late to affect de-facto standards. It's too late to have any chance of becoming the most popular browser.
Really? When was the deadline?
Re:finally (Score:5, Interesting)
What about:
In the short term, Mozilla/Netscape7 will almost certainly destroy the de-facto IE-standard (even with only 10% marketshare, webmasters can't afford to ignore Mozilla), in the long term (5 to 10 years) I'd say it has good chances to overtake IE.
Re:finally (Score:2)
If we make some quick guesses for the next 2 years: (yes, purely speculative)
AOL/Compuserve users: ~20%
People who hate popups/love tabbed browsing/modem users loving http1.1/pipelining: ~10%
People not liking Microsoft/People liking Mozilla-interface better - so much that they are willing to switch: ~20%
If we sort out multiple hits (people using http1.1 AND not liking Microsoft, etc.), we maybe get about 40% of people leaning over to Mozilla.
Of course people don't like switching, so maybe only 20 or 30% switch, still a huge number.
Add PS3 and Linux-desktop penetration coming in the next 4 or 5 years and you might get over 50% marketshare.
Re:finally (Score:2)
Second, even if only 20 million convert to 7.0 or higher in the next 2 years it's an amazing number and more than enough to make webmasters go away from creating IE-only sites.
Re:Standards? (Score:3, Interesting)
That's funny.. Mozilla isn't trying to change the standards [w3.org]. Get this... it's actually FOLLOWING THEM!
You obviously don't understand what "de-facto standards" mean. That means that the standards came about by sheer use and popularity. The W3C "standards" are arbitrary standards... a third party that has no control whatsoever over web site creation (other than their own) or browser development. The W3C hasn't been truly influential for a long time. Just because somebody writes something and calls it a "standard" doesn't make it so.
Re:finally FEATURES (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:finally FEATURES (Score:2)
Re:finally (Score:4, Insightful)
And I retort, who fricking cares?
Mozilla is open source, freely available, and heavily cross platform. Even if AOL mothballs netscape and lays off everyone that can't be changed.
Why's it always gotta be about "conquering microsoft"? Can't people just USE the software and get on with their life? Let the dominance, or obscurity, come naturally. Long as you get software that does it's job well for you, it shouldn't matter one iota what other people are using.
Re:finally (Score:2)
Reality check! If everyone else except you are using IE, then what is the chance that anyone will bother fixing their web-pages so that they're viewable by your Mozilla browser?
Mats
Re:finally (Score:2)
If everyone else except you are using IE, then what is the chance that anyone will bother fixing their web-pages so that they're viewable by your Mozilla browser?
I would, and I'm likely not alone. Mozilla isn't asking anyone to code to a special set of Web specs. If Mozilla is asking anything, it's asking that people code to a common set of specs, or at least the set most closely approximating that dream [W3C Standards]. And designers can freely ignore that request (of sorts), whether that's a wise choice depends on how many people one wants to turn away at the door before they really see what is offered in terms of content.
And I wouldn't do it for Mozilla alone, I'd do it for all the other "fringe" browsers out there: iCab, Omniweb, Lynx, Links, Opera, WebTV, etc. Again, I don't think I'm alone in trying to serve as many user agents as much usable content as reasonably possible.
Xzzy is right, it shouldn't matter one iota what other people are using insofar as caring about the particular branding of a user agent accessing the contact you deploy. Focus on capabilities and standards. It's not about IE or Mozilla, it's about the reality you seem to ignore: people will use what they have in front of them to view your work. That could be anything. Be prepared.
Re:finally (Score:2)
The Big Picture (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Any future technological advancements (or 3rd party plugins) for the web are subject to Microsoft's approval. If it's not in their financial interest, it doesn't get included in the browser.
2) msn.com is the default page for IE. Most users don't change their default page. Microsoft can then charge lots of money for people to place their ads on msn.com. Secondly, Microsoft can use msn.com to promote their own products by either placing ads for them, writing "news articles" that promote them, or simply because they control the search engine results.
3) Microsoft's Media Player could be integrated into the browser and IE could more simply and easily play WMA files. If most people use WMA to encode their media files and it becomes the "standard", Microsoft can charge money for encoding music in that format.
4) Microsoft can gradually change HTML (or add a completely new proprietary web format) in their favor so that other browsers (and other operating systems) don't work properly.
And on and on and on...
Why do you think Microsoft wanted to "choke off Netscape's air supply"? Controlling the way people access the Internet gives them almost complete control of the Internet and allows them to further stifle competition as well as become very wealthy.
Re:finally (Score:4, Interesting)
Too late to become the dominant browser on Windows? Probably. But too late to help Linux continue its march into mainstream operating system land? No way! And the fact that it runs on Windows is a definite help there.
Also not too late to put a stop to Microsoft's attempts to privatize web standards, not to mention put a serious kink in attempts to force
Also, not too late to make all those surfers who like to kill popup ads very happy.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:finally (Score:2)
Places that run multiply operating system platforms, such as Solaris, Linux, Windows, and Mac (just to name a few) will love Mozilla.
Same great browser, same great features, runs on all of them.
IMO this is the real value of Mozilla. Its available on just about anything you would want it on.
Re:finally (Score:2)
Re:Hope for Anyone. (Score:2)
4) Use separate Moz profiles.
Re:Good News: Mozilla +3 to +6, MSIE -3 to -6 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Good News: Mozilla +3 to +6, MSIE -3 to -6 (Score:2)
Open Source (Score:5, Insightful)
Good job Mozilla! Mozilla is proof that a very large open source project can exist and still do the Right Thing (i.e. attempt to be standards complient). Mozilla 1.0 is an amazing piece of software and 2 years from now everyone will realize this. This is probably one of the most important software projects in history.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Open Source (Score:2)
For me, it's enough that there's no security hole of the day. Not being "integral" part of OS has plenty of advantages, too. I stopped using IE in development environment last year. Mozilla just doesn't let everyone snoop around in my desktop's files.
Re:Open Source (Score:3, Interesting)
1. It's cross platform. Yes it might not directly make windows users to switch, but when you've got a project that requires cross platform compatibility, mozilla is the choice browser.
2. It's alive and kicking. While IE has seemingly run out of innovative ideas for a new browser, Mozilla has implemented some kick ass features, eg. tabbed browsing, popup blocking, etc.
3. It's open source. We know open source is the way to go, don't we?
4. It's (supposedly) more secure than IE. (although it can be argued that security problems were not found because less number of people use it so less try to exploit it)
Re:Open Source (Score:3, Informative)
And it works on Win95, something that versions of IE after 5.5 can't do. This faux pas on Microsoft's part will cost it dearly.
The next version of IE probably won't work on Win 95/98 due to Microsoft's end of life policies. This creates a large market of users who are unable/unwilling to upgrade their OS who will be looking elsewhere for a modern browser.
Re:Open Source (Score:3, Informative)
From http://www.mozilla.org/docs/web-developer/faq.htm
5. JavaScript doesn't work! Why?
Some proprietary document objects such as document.all and document.layers are not part of the W3C DOM and are not supported in Mozilla. The method document.getElementById() can be used instead.
Makes sense to me. I don't know what self-respecting site author doesn't have some browser-checking code to see exactly how he should access elements and properties. It's just a fact of life that you have to deal with.
It's not as though the method you mentioned is some Holy standard that all browsers should support.
Re:Open Source (Score:2)
That is about uninformed as saying "Emacs is only a text editor." Mozilla is a complete platform for development.
Re:Open Source (Score:2)
It's only a web brower, but .. (Score:2)
.. there is one noticable difference. Mozilla puts the USER in the driver seat, giving power to the USER of choices concerning cookie control, javascript abuse and image squashing that IE will never have; because IE is market driven, not user driven.
This is Mozilla's added value, and to my mind is one of its biggest selling points.
Macka
"1.0" might not mean "1.0" (Score:3, Informative)
Those dated build numbers are much more important to look at. When those freeze up there is either a huge bug or a new milestone coming out.
Re:"1.0" might not mean "1.0" (Score:4, Informative)
Re:"1.0" might not mean "1.0" (Score:3, Informative)
This is what it means (Score:2)
My problem with Moz. is the way they handle bugs. (Score:2, Interesting)
After similar things happened to about 20 of my bugs reports I just thought I had enough of it. I still submit bugs from time to time, but I am not that interested anymore. I would rather spend my time developing and testing ebuilds for the Gentoo Linux portage system.
Re:My problem with Moz. is the way they handle bug (Score:2, Interesting)
Gave up on the idea of submitting bugs after being flamed on (and then apparently banned from) the NNTP server just for arguing (as civilly as this post) that removing certain features was highly undesirable from a user's POV.
A shame since I would really love to be able to embrace and endorse Mozilla with no reservations.
Re:My problem with Moz. is the way they handle bug (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone who has banned people from the software devlopment list from my own open-source project, I think it may help you to understand why open-source developers sometimes do this.
People often times fail to understand that an open source project is different from a commercial project. In any releation where one person is paying another person, there is an implied releationship where the person paying the money does not have to respect the person whom they are paying. The person with the money can be pretty irrespectable and still act in a socially acceptable manner. The recipient, after all, is getting paid.
People who are used to using commercial software approach open source software in the same manner. They join a NNTP server or a mailing list for the project in question. They start ordering around the open source software devlopers, tell them what features the program must have. They don't say "please"; they certaintly don't give the open source devloper an ounce of respect. They act as if they were paying the free software developer. But they aren't.
This kind of person gets rather flustered when they realize that the releationship between an open source devloper and a user is different than the one between a customer and a company. The open source developer is, in the hierarchy of computer geeks, higher up on the ladder than an end user who can't code is. The sooner the end user understands this, the sooner they can treat the developer in a way which will not result in them getting flamed and banned.
People write software and give it away for a number of reasons, of course; but one main motivation is to obtain respect. The more open source projects one has worked on and finished, the higher the person is in the strange pecking order of the world of free software. Make enough code, and you too can be a demigod like Larry Wall, RMS, Linus Torvalds, or Dan Bernstein. Even if you are not a demigod, saying "I am a developer for this project" where the project is well known will cause you to commanded more respect.
It's simple. Respect the developer, and they will respect you. Don't respect them, and they will not respect you. Once you understand this, you are on your way to having your bug reports being acted on. Pretty soon, you will be patching; if the patch is good, you will gain more respect from the developers. Eventually, an open-source project will call you and you will respond to the call.
Good luck in your journey.
- Sam
Re:My problem with Moz. is the way they handle bug (Score:3, Flamebait)
But turn it around -- the problem I see, with Mozilla and too often elsewhere, is that testers get no respect, no matter how good they are at that job (IMO, itself as necessary as coding! What use is beautiful code that doesn't work right?) Coders too often consider testers a nuisance at best and a hazard at worst ("how dare those scum break my perfect code!")
Coders need to respect testers' work as well, but all too often the tester is treated as a second-class worker who has no right to a viewpoint on how the program should behave, at least if the coder doesn't feel like fixing the issue at hand. How does a coder expect to get and keep respect from testers if they don't feel they need to respect their testers in return? I realise bugs need to be prioritized and all that, but there's a difference between marking one "low priority" and entirely blowing it off as being too much of a PITA, or "not what *I* want" even when users are clamouring for it. (Ooops, I forgot, Mozilla is for *developers*, not for lowly users!)
And *that* is the problem I've observed with Mozilla. There are open issues that have hundreds of "votes" to fix, which remain unfixed because the coder doesn't LIKE that feature. (Check out some of the context-menu issues for examples.) Not part of the coding group? Then your opinions, and your bug reports, don't count.
Re:My problem with Moz. is the way they handle bug (Score:2)
dnaumov, please post some Bugzilla numbers so we can see what you're talking about. I've submitted lots of bugs, and 90% of them have been resolved acceptably, even if it wasn't the answer I wanted.
For all we know, you could be asking for stuff like "I want to be able to dragdrop a picture of my face onto the toolbar and use it as the throbber".
Re:My problem with Moz. is the way they handle bug (Score:2)
Mozilla.org also has a long standing problem of ignoring patches from outside developers too.
NS is the worst thing for web developers (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:NS is the worst thing for web developers (Score:4, Insightful)
You've tested "lots of various DHTML - I want to bet they all failed because of the same two or three issues. If you're a "real web developer", fixing them is a matter of minutes. Don't complain about Mozilla just because you are incapable...
Bah! (Score:2)
I'm just glad I don't work with people as unprofessional as you...
Re:NS is the worst thing for web developers (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:NS is the worst thing for web developers (Score:2)
I'm sorry thay our www.mydogfluffy.com dynamic floating text widgets only work on antique browsers but the truth is, most major websites DO actually follow the standards (which are simpler and make more sense).
It's a standard. Tough. Deal with it. Everyone else has. "DHTML" in the sense that microsoft defined it, isn't a standard. And before you say another word, IE 5.5+ also supports the w3c DOM standard... making it quite a good standard in my book.
Re:NS is the worst thing for web developers (Score:2)
Did they fix the upgrade bug? (Score:2)
Re:Did they fix the upgrade bug? (Score:3, Funny)
Time to file a wishlist bug.
Re:Did they fix the upgrade bug? (Score:2)
Must NOT be released till some bugs are resolved (Score:2, Insightful)
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=825
Forum for Mozilla users (Score:3, Informative)
snews://secnews.netscape.com:563/netscape.mozilla
Slashdot is dumb (Score:2)
Thanks, Mozilla hackers (Score:2, Interesting)
Best thing of all is... (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know how many of you have checked out XUL and the Moz extension API's, but with them you have the ability to write literally any kind of application with an Open Source, Cross Platform, UI built using Moz via XML, HTML and a little javascript. This, I believe, is the most revolutionary thing about Moz! Using it for a UI surface, I can encapsulate routines that require speed in a C or C++ module (or even Python, Java and some other languages) and do the rest in not too much a different way than creating a DHTML web page. And the resulting UI code is portable...
And the end result is fairly fast as well. All of the browser itself, all of the built-tools like the mail manager, the calendar, the IRC chat and so on are implemented this way. The potential of Moz as a UI development API is huge, assuming anyone creates a decent IDE for it. Nonetheless you can do things right now without an IDE, and (because the API's are frozen) you can be confident it will work with bug fix releases until they do a major update.
During development many projects demonstrating these capabilities were obsoleted when the API's changed out from under them, causing the developers to stop work until the API froze. With this at an end I fully expect to see some really cool stuff fairly soon. Check http://www.mozdev.org for some example projects (most of which probably won't go anywhere soon, but some of which are the kinds of thing I am talking about).
Jack William Bell
Mozilla 1... (Score:2, Funny)
Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?
Re:Release quality (Score:2)
Moreover, 1.0 will also give way to adoption by 3rd parties and OS vendors. You'll start to see browsers based off of Mozilla 1.0 (ie Netscape 7), and you'll start to see OS vendors such as RedHat switch to Mozilla as the default system browser.
Re:Release quality (Score:2)
You shouldn't develop web content for Mozilla any more than you should develop web content for Internet Explorer. You should be writing to the established standards [w3.org]. I'm a fairly recent convert to Mozilla (started with 1.0RC1) and have seen too many pages that don't render properly because they were written to deal with IE's idiosyncracies. A web full of pages that do the same with Mozilla would be no better.
Re:Release quality (Score:2)
As for web content. Yes standards are nice, but all browsers have bugs. I'm personally aware of quite a few bugs with mozilla's JS implementation, regardless of the fact that it is awesome. It will be nice to have mozilla at a standard milestone where web developers can put faith into known strengths and weaknesses. Most web developers develop browser specific scripts and work-arounds all the time.
What will be special about 1.0 (Score:5, Informative)
Of course 1.0 is also more stable and polished than 0.9.9, just like 0.9.9 was more polished and stable than 0.9.8 and so forth, but the main thing is the API freeze.
See also the Mozilla 1.0 Manifesto [mozilla.org].
Re:Release Party... (Score:2)
Jamie Z is throwing a Moz release party? Are you sure? Does that mean he's sorry about quitting the project and dissing it, just when it was starting to move?
I love it, if it's true.
Yes he is! (Score:2, Informative)
Also check out his backstage log entry [dnalounge.com] about this party; interesting stuff.
Big scary lawyers from Apple (Score:2, Informative)
I'm using os x, and those windows-esque controls look like ass.
What's anybody supposed to do about it? Mozilla developers can't use native widgets because the Aqua widgets do not support the rendering options required by CSS, and Mozilla developers can't use look-alike widgets because of Apple's hard-ass policy against Aqua look-alikes [slashdot.org].
Don't like it? Make a skin that looks like KDE Liquid [mosfet.org] and submit a patch.
Haunted by the ghost of Sonny Bono (Score:3, Insightful)
So what happens if the hacker dies in between?
In that case, tough beans.
United States copyright law, 17 USC 302 [cornell.edu], provides for a perpetual copyright on all works created on or after January 1, 1978. Currently, it's 150 years (life plus 70), but Congress reserves the right to pass a 20 year copyright term extension every 20 years [wikipedia.com], and if Eldred loses the Supreme Court case this fall [eldred.cc], count on an immediate 1,000 year extension act.
And don't count on being able to talk the heirs into re-licensing the software. In general, heirs tend to be greedier about copyrights than the author was.
Re:Why is Mozilla such crap? (Score:3, Insightful)
Umm... good morning
---"Truth to tell I last used Netscape 3 or was it 4. Then I turned to the evil empire and used MS IE. Recently I decided to go back and see what Netscape had been up to. Of course since then Netscape got taken over and Mozilla got to be separate from Netscape and all that stuff which we know."---
Netscape 3 was great. I ended up hacking all the nasty code outta of it and making my own modules using resource hackers and assembler. 4 was starting to be big browersaurii.
---"I ran Netscape 6.2 and also Mozilla. Boy oh boy. They are bloated and slow. Now how did a group of really very clever people come up with this? Four men and a dog (woof! - well ok, a lot more than four but you get my gist) in Norway have come up with a browser in Opera than beats the daylights out of Mozilla and/or Netscape."---
Opera's fast, Ill give you that. But it messes up on some standard webpages. It just either crashes or mis-renders. NutScrape 5 or 6 whatever just plain sucks. Bloat for nothing. Mozilla isn't as bad, but it chews up CPU like candy.I have a 333 p2. When I load up Moz, it takes minutes to load up. That aint right.
---"So how is it that all these clever people with brains the size of a minor planet screw up?"---
If you want to screw up something, put it in committee.
---"I recall the leaked MS documents. ISTR they were called the October papers or something like that where Bill gates and his cohorts saw the open source communal development projects as a serious threat. Sleep well Bill. You have no need to worry. And yet this saddens me so. I am no definitely apologist for Bill Gates and I would love MS to have a bit of serious competition but Netscape/Mozilla isn't going to worry them much."---
True, IE seems faster and Moz slower, but dont forget that IE is your desktop in Windows. In the newer NT os'es, they seperated memory so that an IE crash doesnt take down your desktop. Add that consideration to that Mozilla will be able to run on nearly every playform. MS has put IE to HP(s)UX and Solaris, but wont with Linux (duh!).
---"Like my subject says, this is not a troll but I would like to try and understand why things turned out as they did. There has got to be an explanation. Back in 1994 or thereabouts I was so pleased with Netscape 0.98 and Mosaic but it all seems to have turned sour since then.
It doesnt seem like a troll, just thought out complaints with Moz. There's a simple explanation: Look at US lawsuit against MS. It's based on that when MS gave away Netscape, the destroyed the company (no more development)
Re:my question (Score:4, Interesting)
Because Parts of the old skin keep showing up in the new skin. This mainly happens when the old skin has a css rule that the new skin lacks. going to reboot flushes the old skin out of memory. They drop it to cut down on the number of bugs in an impending milestone release, then pick it up again later only to drop it again for another release.
Re:Mozilla problems (Score:2)
Since the 1.0 RC's memory consumption seems to be much more realistic - no more leaks. Its getting very nice.
ostiguy
Re:Failure? (Score:2, Interesting)
Or as michael, the poster of this particular story, have said before [slashdot.org]:
Personally, I'd recommend beta-testing IE 6, since IE not only has won the browser wars, it's clearly a better browser - and will remain so.
Ahem.
Re:Mozilla is not ready for 1.0 (Score:3, Insightful)
Right now AOL embeds a microsoft rendering engine in its AOL 7 client and a Mozilla rendering engine in its Compuserve cleint. Users shouldn't notice the difference between the microsoft and Mozilla rendering engines. Your usability arguement doesn't make a lot of sense in the embedded context (with the exception of web applications and other "in content" usability issues).
--Asa