A Mozilla Desktop Environment? 197
Andreas writes "A discussion at the mozilla.dev.planning list has given the birth to the idea of a Mozilla Desktop Environment. This sure sounds like a possibility for Mozilla as it already has many of the applications needed; and the company is thoroughly familiar with XUL, which is a more-than-potent language upon which to build a desktop environment. By building a desktop environment Mozilla wouldn't have to worry about drivers (and such) and could choose from a variety of kernels, and still be in the center of attention. Mozilla has to expand some of the applications for this to work, though, like adding local file management with Firefox."
I have an idea (Score:5, Funny)
Deja vu (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I have an idea (Score:5, Funny)
All is needs now is a decent web browser. *ducks*
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Vi users can stick to lynx.
=)
Re:I have an idea (Score:4, Informative)
First off, it's not an OS. It's a Desktop Environment. ("Graphical Shell" in old skool parlance.) The Desktop Environment goes on top of the OS. Which could be Linux, FreeBSD, or even OpenSolaris.
Secondly, it's not that crazy of an idea. I've played around with the concept a bit myself. Both through the HTML engine and the XUL engine. The HTML engine makes more sense for "thin" (or "rich") applications that are downloaded on the fly and communicate with a server. The XUL makes more sense if you want a heavyweight desktop that can integrate with the X11 framework. Programs based on the XUL/XPCOM framework would use XULRunner to launch. All neat and tidy; though a bit of a pain to develop XPCOM interfaces between Javascript and C/C++.
The concept works because X11 is about as flexible as you can get for a desktop system. All you need is a Window Manager that recognizes standardized messages and Atoms [freedesktop.org] (the X11 kind, not the Mozilla kind) and you can position, place, float, stick, minimize, or maximize any window you want pretty easily. So you throw a taskbar window out there to track the other windows, throw a start menu applet on there, have a file-browser application stuck as the Desktop, and you're pretty much ready to go.
XPCOM is even reasonably complete enough to where it provides services similar to the NeXT/Cocoa APIs. They'd need to be extended some if you wanted to support access to the complete environment (especially fixing that mess they have for File I/O), but it's a very workable base.
Re:I have an idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Here is what I want my browser to do: Browse the internet.
Here is what I want my email client to do: Handle email.
Here is what I want my FTP client to do: Transfer files.
Just make a good fucking browser and stop trying to branch out.
Re:I have an idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, wait, they went on to make dozens of other great products. My bad.
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Re:I have an idea (Score:5, Insightful)
But did they integrate Tomcat with httpd? Of course not. GP is saying that they shouldn't integrate a browser with all the other things they're making.
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Yes, actually. [apache.org] It's shocking to me that you don't know that.
The mods usually do a pretty good job, but when it comes to this topic it would seem that they've all been on crack.
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No-one is suggesting that Mozilla shouldn't create their own desktop environment if that's what they want to spend their time doing - I
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Choice? The entire point of OSS is to provide choice. If you don't like it, don't use it.
The Mozilla Platform is a platform first, a browser second. That's why it took them so damn long to develop it in the first place. Modern web technologies actually demand that web browsers be application platforms. Moz
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Before they shipped browser, email client, calender, HTML editor, and all the core technologies to support it.
Now, instead of shipping a browser and the core technologies to support the browser, just ship the core technologies. The browser could simply be an extension you can install if you want it.
Re:I have an idea (Score:5, Informative)
Doesn't have to be. Actually, this idea has already been done, and done beautifully. It was called OEOne Homebase Desktop. It was a complete desktop environment built on XUL [mozilla.org], and incidentally "XUL desktop environment" is the appropriate name for something like this. "Mozilla" is either the foundation or the former browser suite built on XUL. XUL is the platform.
So, you can see what the OEOne desktop looked like if you search Google images for oeone [google.com] or oeone homebase [google.com]. It was a fully integrated environment, which means mail, calendar, contacts, browser, text processor, image album, music and video player, basically everything you'd need for your basic office/home desktop.
OEOne still appears in the Mozilla Hall of Fame [mozilla.org] as such, even though they renamed themselves Axentra.com at some point. The Homebase desktop still appears in their press releases up to 2002, then it was released as open source as the Penzilla Desktop [sourceforge.net] and abandoned as far as OEOne was concerned. But while it ran it also sponsored a few other developments, such as AbiMoz [mozdev.org], which integrates AbiWord inside Mozilla.
Homebase wasn't a "traditional", "generic" desktop, but more of a specialized environment, aimed specifically at office productivity and entertainment. It had a "home page" which aggregated news, weather, contacts, new mail and whatnot. It would have been ideal for PDA's. I never understood why it was so poorly publicized and why it seems to have missed so many trains.
Will XUL stabilize enough to build on it? (Score:2)
But having recently tried the Songbird demo, I think it may be time to take a sec
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This is yet another idea doomed to fail. Stick to making a better browser and email client please...k?
Byzantine Linux - (Score:2, Informative)
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Meanwhile, some of the purpose-built X-servers do a good job. X-Glx with Beryl makes Aero look like ass. KDrive is light enough to fit on a floppy. X-Ming is a great tool for porting X apps to windows.
Also, your demands for an end to X-Windows based on a story about Mozilla Desktop Environment is kinda dumb; MDE would run atop XWin, just like any other DE.
'course, you're just trolling AC, so yo
Think of the memory (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Think of the memory (Score:5, Interesting)
In my opinion, Mozilla should really leave this kind of idea to other developers. Songbird developed by itself just fine and I'm sure after this idea's been mentioned there will be other random developers toying around with the idea. Firefox and Thunderbird are good but attention should be focused on them before moving on to bigger, wilder ideas.
Not necessarily (Score:3, Interesting)
The bloat comes from Mozilla itself. (Score:5, Interesting)
I just did that sort of a test on my Linux system, visiting a variety of sites (Slashdot, BBC, Tom's Hardware, FSF, Digg, etc.) with both Seamonkey 1.1.1 and Konquerur 3.5.5. I've also used Opera 9.01. Checking via top, I see that Seamonkey currently has a virtual memory image of 357 MB. Konqueror, on the other hand, is using a rather minimal 43 MB. Opera is just over Konqueror, at 45 MB. As this is the total size in virtual memory for each process, it also includes the overhead of any shared libraries.
So from those results, I think it's safe to say that there's a major problem with Seamonkey. Both Konqueror and Opera manage to keep their memory usage within reasonable bounds. As for the cause of Seamonkey's excessive memory usage, I can't say. It could be due to memory leaks. I'd guess it's partially due to their extreme overarchitecturing of their software. Regardless, it's a troublesome issue for them.
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Given
-Your machine has lots of memory
-Firefox uses lots of memory
False assumption
-Firefox's base technology is a memory hog.
Could be more accurate
-Firefox scales well.
Ever run Firefox on a Linux box with 64MB? Its still snappy and very usable. Firefox seems to do a decent job at scaling back its memory usage. But if you have the GB of memory, why not let Firefox use it? Every run Minimo? It runs on handhelds.
XUL DE? (Score:4, Insightful)
In all honesty, unless Mozilla Corporation/Foundation has an actually INCREDIBLY AMAZING NEW idea that CANT be done with any of the existing DEs this is probably the stupidest ideas I've heard in a LONG time.
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why (Score:5, Insightful)
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The primary goal of any organization is to survive and grow - it doesn't matter if the name on the door is Microsoft or Mozilla.
Oh no! Don't do it! (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe we need to remind ourselves of the trials, tribulations, and pitfalls of both cruft (old junk) and feature creep (glitz and glam just for the sake of glitz and glam are neat--but they don't make for a good project path until it's stabilized).
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And don't forget that on *nix XUL uses GTK's widgets... I can see the OOM Killer going wild already!
Re:Oh no! Don't do it! (Score:5, Informative)
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How are they going to pull that off?
Don't you need a Java VM to run Java code?
So if the kernel would be the first thing ran on the system, where would it get its VM?
Seems like a chicken and egg problem...
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Firefox Slowness (Score:2)
Firefox's GUI is incredibly slow in places. For instance, if I invoke the File/Save dialog, there's a perceptible pause before a gray, empty dialog box appears; then another pause before it's painted.
After I click "save", the button depresses and stays depressed for almost a second. Then the dialog box goes back to plain gray, and lingers for several seconds before disappearing. This is absolutely ridiculous. I have no idea if it's javascript-r
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No. That is why you use a "standard" Window Manager like MetaCity. It's intended to do the heavy lifting of screen layout while the application instructs the WM according to the agreed upon protocols [freedesktop.org].
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Choice is the epitome of Open Source. Learn to deal with it.
Considering that most of those bugs are actually in the Win32 APIs, I'm not exactly sure what yo
A hit (Score:2)
0-day, TS and better, free! (Score:2)
would require the current browser to be nearly bug free
It's good that you recognize this mitigating factor.
businesses are beginning to run nearly strictly on web interfaces
It's a security nightmare. Even at highly classified military subcontractors they're using webapps for timesheet maintenance. Who audits the code for the webapp? Next thing you know the new intern (maybe even a part-time temp-to-hire who came in just to handle shipping and receiving) has rooted the timesheet server, knows all the project numbers, knows all the project names, and knows who spends their time on exactly what--from the QA secretary up to
Don't bother clicking links... (Score:5, Informative)
The Google Groups link is a dozen or so messages from a handful of people. It's a thread of "I like XUL and I think this could be a neat idea but there's no special work being done on this."
This is an article about something being possible, a something which has been thought of a hundred times before.
Breaking news!!
Re: (Score:2)
Imagine a world where Slashdot readers actually read BEFORE commenting...
xul would be the new vbs? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I remember that, and like you, it's been a long, long time since I last looked at StarOffice.
That is pretty much the reason why. I utterly loathed that fake desktop thing. I already have a desktop, thank you, now stop trying to replace it and work with it just like every other application does.
Just what we need (Score:2)
If history is any guide... (Score:5, Insightful)
20 Merge applications into single suite.
30 Steadily add programs and functionality to suite until it does everything badly.
40 Announce innovative new project to create simple, lean apps that break up bloated suite.
50 GOTO 10
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
line 50 should be:
50 GOTO 20
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5 GOTO 70
Potentially too much like javascript/flash... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why I've taken a liking to Eclipse [eclipse.org] recently - it takes a nice set of the fast-development architecture of java development, and allows them to be used by C/C++, Python, and others cross-platform. Has anyone started working on a really nice integration of Eclipse into a Firefox plugin?
Ryan Fenton
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XUL (Score:5, Interesting)
It's great if you want to do things like, say, a custom web browser or write your own iTunes -- The kind of thing that you'd usually write as a web-based app but you need local file storage and maybe access to online content that cross-site scripting preventative rules would prevent you from accessing in a regular browser.
If you need to do more than that, it's quite a chore. You have to start writing your own XPCOM components, which you'll have to compile on each target platform separately. There goes your easy cross platform compatibility.
The documentation for XUL and XPCOM isn't very helpful or well organized, and that's putting it nicely.
Language support is thin. C++ and Javascript are pretty much your only choices, although Python support is coming soon, apparently.
The question is, if you were going to develop a desktop environment from scratch, would you start by writing XUL? Would you then extend that by embedding JavaScript? I don't think so. Both Gnome and KDE tried the whole component thing with CORBA and abandoned it for performance and complexity reasons. Cross-platform is nice, but Java, GTK+, QT, and even C# provide better cross platform benefits with greater support and language compatibility than the XUL suite of tools.
Not only that, but I'd wager a Java desktop environment would be a better performer than one based on XULRunner. Not to mention, it would support more languages through Jython, JNI, etc.
It's a shame, because XULrunner could be a great platform. I hope they focus more on documentation and supporting other languages than redundant pie-in-the-sky projects like this one.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actually KDE came up with KParts, which are used all throughout KDE. In fact, Konqueror is pretty much just a universal KParts viewer (which feeds the KParts info from KIO-Slaves).
Re:XUL (Score:5, Insightful)
Comparing XPCOM to KParts will give you an idea of the insanity of this proposal. Heck, just comparing the documentation for the two is evidence that the XUL desktop is a non-starter. From this page [freehackers.org]
When the KDE core-developers realised that Corba was becoming an unmanagable nightmare, they wrote in a few days a lightweight and efficient component technology to replace it: KPart.
KPart is based on Shared Libraries. This makes the component appears directly as a C++ object. There is no need to wrap its features with an IDL language, everything is accessible without extra effort.
What I'm guessing is happening is some guys started working with XUL, thought it was pretty cool, and said, "Hey! We could make a WHOLE desktop environment out of this if we wanted to!" But just because you can do something doesn't mean it's a good idea. There's plenty of history here to back that up, too.
It's also possible that XPCOM itself is a hindrance to the Mozilla project. Have they realized the assumed benefits of using a component architecture? Not when I can only write for their platform in maybe four languages, if we're being generous.
It wasn't that long ago that CORBA and DCOM were new and exciting, people were running around talking about how you could assemble standard applications like word processors that pulled components from "all over the Internet." It never happened, because quite frankly, it's a stupid idea for desktop apps. Not everything needs to be a distributed application.
XPCOM came along at about this time, and I'm afraid it's still around more because it's a holdover from that era than because it's a good idea. There are benefits to using a component architecture, but the much simpler KParts, QT, or wxWidgets approaches have those same benefits, are much more usable.
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So you'll take ugly Swing apps and merge them with ugly XUL apps?
That'll compete well against other operating systems.
Ick (Score:2, Interesting)
XUL seems like a decent enough idea to begin with, but in practice it's horrible. Anything more complex than your average browser extension, and it really starts showing its design weaknesses. It's buggy as hell too. That last point is particularly difficult to emphasise properly. It's buggy as hell. It seems like a natural step from the web to cross-platform desktop applications, but quite frankly, you are better off using your favourite scripting language and whatever bindings you can get to Qt/Gtk/
Mod Parent Up (Score:2)
deja vu (Score:2)
Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
I thought the whole point of Firefox was to create a slimmed-down-yet-extensible browser that wouldn't suffer from the "kitchen sink" mentality that plagued the Netscape/Mozilla suite in the past. Sure, I guess it's possible to do a whole XUL based desktop environment . . . but why??
(and yeah, I know the same logic of Firefox --> d.e. bears similarities to the GIMP --> GNOME, it just seems odd to me to go through the massive effort required when there are so many simpler options to do mostly the same thing these days.)
Mezzo Desktop Environment & Symphony OS (Score:5, Informative)
I remember searching for such a Desktop Environment a year or two ago after experimenting with XUL, I ran across Symphony OS (http://www.symphonyos.com/) which uses the Mozilla platform for rendering and applications. It is called the "Mezzo Desktop Environment" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mezzo_%28desktop_env ironment%29 [wikipedia.org]), and is available in Debian package format.
I remember testing a live-cd of symphony about a year ago and it seemed pretty intriguing. I really liked the desktop interface.
But anyway, from what wikipedia says, the Mezzo Desktop Environment is an incomplete platform (whatever that means), and if it is correct there appears to be work unfinished. However, anyone interested in contributing might want to take a peek under the hood and see if that project can be helpful and exactly what is "incomplete" about it.
Symphony OS (Score:2, Informative)
This idea isn't new (Score:2)
I thought about how cool a Gecko-based desktop environment would be a few years ago, and I'm sure I'm not the only one to think of it. Literally, replace Qt and/or GTK+ with XUL+XBL. Probably not very feasable now, but since the 1.9 branch is moving to the Cairo graphics library, it would be a lot easier. With embedded Python support coming (and other languages soon after), no one would be limited to writing their app logic in C/C++ or Javascript.
Reminds me of SymphonyOS (Score:4, Interesting)
not a good idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
I got a better idea (Score:2)
Instead, why not work in making your browser take hints from the existing desktop like all other well-behaved desktop apps do? Then I don't have to apply a s
If they are serious (Score:5, Interesting)
quick take (Score:2, Interesting)
Except... (Score:2)
Except for a window manager, file manager, task manager, session manager...
Didn't Netscape want to do this 10 years ago? (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately, Netscape was in the crosshairs of Microsoft already, and with the company losing money like crazy, WebTop never saw the light of day...
Until now!
Thanks,
Mike
Browser/File Manager (Score:2)
Am I alone in finding it annoying to use the same app for file management and Internet browsing?
I know that Microsoft, Apple, and Linux have all tried to present a seamless universe of data and documents, but really they're two entirely different functions and environments, and for me at least they need two distinct applications.
Browser Integration (Score:2)
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But never mind that, we want to do something (almost) totally new! We want to integrate the OS into the browser.
What's that you're saying? It sounds like you're saying... is it "eMax"?
Already been done... (Score:2)
commercial consideration (Score:2)
beancounter1: we have loads of market share for our browser and mail client
beancounter2: yeah but we're not making enough dough
beancounter1: what if we leveraged our name and OSS credentials to push into the DE/OS market
beancounter2: i just wet myself
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Did that. It was called "Mozilla" (Score:3, Insightful)
We've been through this already. Remember Mozilla, and how it turned into bloatware, then had to be slimmed down for Firefox? Rmember how XUL was going to be a "platform" that would make Netscape into a Microsoft competitor?
Then there was XPCOM, the Mozilla answer to Active-X, Microsoft's bad idea.
We don't need another stupid "platform". If you want to run programs in the client, we have Javascript and Flash for the simple stuff, and Java for more complex tasks. Cross-browser compatibility, even.
The irony is so rich... (Score:2)
Let's see, the similarities...
-- Cross-platform runtime? Check. (No Linux for Apollo yet but will be soon.)
-- XML-based UI description language? Check.
-- ECMA-based standard scripting language to drive it? Check.
-- Robust HTML engine? Check.
On the other hand...
-- High quality IDE for developing apps?
-- High quality video and multimedia support?
Hmmm....
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Check [mozdev.org]
Check [videolan.org]
:)
And now allow me to qualify those statements.
MozCreator is still in development. However, the desktop hasn't been developed at all. So there's not much of an issue there, yet. Also, you can always use a generic IDE environment like JEdit until MozCreator is ready. (Seriously? IDEs are overrated anyway.)
VLC is about as high quality as you can get when it comes to video and multimedia support. It regula
I look at Firefox on Linux and (Score:2)
StarOffice (Score:2)
The idea itself sounds great, but why add yet another layer of abstraction? It's the OS's job to provide the desktop and be able to run smaller subprograms to do all your tasks.
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The OS should have one and only job IMHO (or not so HO): Manage and control access to resources.
The desktop layer and even the command shell should in an ideal world be divorced from the underlying OS core layer. And taking this one stage further if a common OS interface API (something akin to POSIX) existed I should be able to take core-OS and put whatever GUI or CLI (yes CLI is still better for some tasks) I like ontop of the base layer.
The base layer can then concentrate on running th
don't see the point (Score:2)
But I just don't really see the point.
Better idea for Mozilla (Score:2)
Learn to Write Extensible Software FIRST (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Why, oh why, when I install an extension, it merges XML configuration with several other files? Do you know how hard it is to manually take all that crap out if the uninstall works (which it often does)? And still leave Firefox stable? Didn't they learn ANY lessons from Windows Registry Hell?
2. To make this "your configuration is scattered and merged with other VERY IMPORTANT FILES" phenomenon worse, why are they linked with GUIDs? GUIDs?!?! So now, if I want to uninstall "Craptastic Extension 0.7", instead of searching for "Craptasic", I have to find out what its GUID first and then hunt down instances of the GUID. Thanks a lot.
3. RDF. Ugh. Wouldn't a domain-specific XML schema have been better. I find RDF too abstract, not human readable, and contrarian to many of the design goals XML was supposed to bring in the first dang place.
4. Inconsistency of layout structure across extensions. How is this possible? The too-open-endedness of RDF. When I first tried to learn how to develop a Firefox extension, I decompressed the archives of four of my favorite popular extensions. To my dismay, the severe differences in project layout structure from extension to extension didn't allow me to see any pattern. Because the RDF can make anything point to anything, the individual developers could just layout all the directories however they damned pleased. Constrast this a Java project organized by Ant and you'll want to scream.
5. Look at Eclipse, ffs! Now THAT is how you build extensible software! Consistent. Clean install. Clean uninstall. No Registry Hell. No &$^#ing GUIDs. No RDF as obfuscated as a bad Perl or Lisp program.
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1. Why, oh why, when I install an extension, it merges XML configuration with several other files? Do you know how hard it is to manually take all that crap out if the uninstall works (which it often does)? And still leave Firefox stable? Didn't they learn ANY lessons from Windows Registry Hell?
What do you mean, most extensions seem mostly self contained in where they are stored. The only thing they may store in other places are preferences but those aren't that much of a problem. I have yet to see any problem with installing/uninstalling extensions.
2. To make this "your configuration is scattered and merged with other VERY IMPORTANT FILES" phenomenon worse, why are they linked with GUIDs? GUIDs?!?! So now, if I want to uninstall "Craptastic Extension 0.7", instead of searching for "Craptasic", I have to find out what its GUID first and then hunt down instances of the GUID. Thanks a lot.
I'm assuming it was to prevent conflicts, they're allowing other ways of naming now so its a moot point for new extensions.
4. Inconsistency of layout structure across extensions. How is this possible? The too-open-endedness of RDF. When I first tried to learn how to develop a Firefox extension, I decompressed the archives of four of my favorite popular extensions. To my dismay, the severe differences in project layout structure from extension to extension didn't allow me to see any pattern. Because the RDF can make anything point to anything, the individual developers could just layout all the directories however they damned pleased. Constrast this a Java project organized by Ant and you'll want to scream.
Part of this is that they change the format once in a while to make it easier but some extensions still use legacy formats. Ho
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Are these lyrics to a song in particular (if so which one), or are they just something he said?
Would it run on top of Windows ? (Score:2)
Adobe Apollo ? (Score:2)
OEOne Desktop (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's an article on it [newsforge.com] (from 2002).
If I remember correctly that was where the original calendar code came from.
Obligatory question (Score:2)
Summary is wildly misleading (Score:5, Informative)
Mike Beltzner and Stuart Parmenter, who actually work for Mozilla, respond by saying "no, that idea actually sucks".
Somehow, this makes it onto Slashdot as "ZOMG Mozilla is making an os CONFIRMED!!!!!111oneeleventy!!11" Please stop spreading ridiculous, baseless claims.
Brain fart (Score:2)
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Deja Vu!
This time it's an OS instead of an Office Suite, and for some reason, overzealous CNet reporters are nowhere to be found...
It's been done (Score:2)
The Byte article also mentioned that one of the head guys at Netscape had i
Bad idea if they don't change some things. (Score:2)
The glitch is that, in my case, I have a good number of bookmarks. My bookmarks.html file is 560K. I know that sounds a bit excessive, but I have a single folder that has about 150 booksmarks, each to a specific
Those mozilla guys just like going after people (Score:2)
Now they are going after Emacs!
does it interpret perl yet?
--
CJK
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http://doc.trolltech.com/4.2/stylesheet.html [trolltech.com]