Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Netscape The Internet

Mozilla M6 released 128

Posted by CmdrTaco from the getting-closer dept.
ZuperDee writes "The Mozilla Organization has just put out their 6th Milestone Release of SeaMonkey. I highly recommend downloading it from their ftp site. Some of the new things in this release include more mail/news functionality, the beginnings of the profile creation wizard and install wizard, and of course, lots of bug fixes. " Seems sluggish right now, but hopefully they'll be mirrors.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Mozilla M6 released More

Mozilla M6 released

Comments Filter:

  • Re:Question (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Microsoft claims it is using "temporary memory" and that is why the usage in the "About this computer" looks so high. Whatever they call it, I can verify this does indeed happen. After surfing for about an hour I've seen IE claim 70 megabytes of RAM (after being allocated a generous 8 megabytes) and start pounding on my hardrive to the point it just accesses my hardrive and decides it can't view any page. The only solution is to quit IE and restart. Opening another app does NOT surrender memory to the newly opened app as MS claims (See their FAQ off the Mactopia site) nor does a utility like MacOSPurge do anything.

    IE 4.5 also doesn't let me view 95% of the pages that use DHTML. There's just no implementation of the Netscape DOM and without ActiveX support on the Mac you can't view IE DHTML.

    That said, IE does have a snappier rendering engine, has more options for use, and better CSS-1 support. However, it will never equal Mozilla on the Mac.

    Right now, if I surf for under 30 minutes, I'll use IE4.5. If I will be online for sometime, I'll use Netscape 4.5.
  • If you are having a problem with updating from a previous build to M6, and are getting error messages concerning it not finding files when you run apprunner, and it appears that its looking in the wrong directory. Delete windows\mozregistry.dat this stores info about file locations.. it will be recreated on the next load
  • I hve gone through the same problem. Rerunning
    apprunner seems to work, though, as the Profile
    Manager is not started again. It is this that seems to crash apprunner the first time it's started.

    Hope this helps.

  • OK, I just reran the test. The banners now seem to be coming in, in full. But are they supposed to be at the bottom of the page or down the middle column like that?

    Here's a screenshot. [nic.com] I had to shrink it and decrease the colors to get the size down, so it won't look pretty, but it'll show you the outline of the page.

    -Augie

    P.S. Wait. Nevermind. I take it all back. I just looked again and the banners are at the bottom of the page now. Really weird. Maybe I just had to wait longer, but the throbber thingy had stopped throbbing, so I thought it was done. Maybe that's a bug? (Total time: 153.7 seconds at 36,000 bps. Might just be a clogged ISP pipeline, though.)

  • Woohoo - post from within m6 (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Woohoo....
    posted this from within M6....
    working quite well...

    Just remember, kids, that there are
    several reasons why this is slower than the final
    product will be - most obviously,
    it's presently spewing loads of debugging + status
    information out.

    Hey....the preferences nearly work now !
    No more manually cutting+pasting the configuration
    from ~/.netscape/preferences.js
    to ~/.mozila/profile/prefs50.js




  • The build you got from /last-built/ was a nightly build, not the Official M6 one. At last word, Mac had a super nasty bug holding it back. Someone said it would be ready Tuesday. The version you have is not quite as polished as the Milestone will be.

  • Actually, MSIE 4.5 Mac is rock-solid on the machines I've used. If one has random crashes, one usually has to trash the "Internet Preferences" file from the Preferences folder.

    MSIE PPC is fast, stable, and has a very slick UI. Not too surprising, since some members of the development team are from Claris.

    Other than being made by Microsoft, the only real problem it has is all that crap it spews all over the system folder. Wait, is that redundant?

    Of course, there are some other browsers -- iCab is very good. But I'm really hoping (like everyone) that Mozilla comes in and saves the day for all platforms everywhere.

    - Scott

  • Re:Mac Version (Score:3)

    by Freshman ( 9729 ) on Saturday May 29, 1999 @08:42PM (#1874645) Homepage
    If you ever download it from "last-built" or if it has a name like "05-18-99-M6" It is not M6, it just means that the code checkins are from the M6 pool (correct me if wrong)

    That's why there are 05-28-99-M7 builds, even though M7 is far from done.
  • The page is divided up several ways with DIVs... some of them are there for physical layout, others for font colors and such. The relevant ones to the banner placement are the two that contain the columns, which are float: left and float: right respectively, and defined to be 45% width, so they should resize freely but always be able to sit side-by-side. The HR and the banner images are contained in another DIV which is clear: both, so it shouldn't allow floating elements on either side of it. Since it comes after the columns on the page, it should drift down until it's below the floating columns. If the DIV enclosing the banners weren't clear: both, it could legitimately fill in the space between the columns, but that's not the case.

    And I think trying to group DIVs with SPANs falls into a kind of hazy area in the standard... I'm too lazy to check the standard right now, but I think the way it works is block-level elements can enclose other block-level elements or inline elements, but inline elements can only enclose other inline elements, not block-level elements.

    DIV is sometimes a block-level element and sometimes an inline, and SPAN is always an inline, which means enclosing DIVs inside SPANs is legal until the moment you do something with the DIV that an inline can't do, thus forcing it to be block-level... such as enclose another block-level element - like a P - in it. Since the DIVs on that page do contain Ps, I believe enclosing them in SPANs is illegal...

    DIV and SPAN appear to be functionally identical, anyway, except for the block vs. inline thing, so I'm not sure there's ever a reason to use SPAN...
  • For me Netscape 4.08 is much more stable than IE 4.5 on MacOS (G3 266/MacOS 8.6). It renders pages a little slower, but is actually less of a resource hog than IE. I've had IE suddenly using 70 megs of RAM and 1000 MB of my harddrive for no apparent reason. And it has a tendency of getting into infinite loops and when I kill it, it leaves stale processes that cannot be killed so a restart is necessary.

  • Re:Looks like vapor. (but really just a typo) (Score:4)

    by thal ( 33211 ) on Saturday May 29, 1999 @05:07PM (#1874649) Homepage
    Well, the website still doesn't say anything about it, but the ftp link just has a case-sensitive typo in it. Here's the real [mozilla.org] link.
  • This is just about the first time that mozilla worked for me! I was suprised. Although it does run a bit slugish on my computer, it's usuable and displays webpages right. Although the one weird thing was when I went to slashdot and went to the preferences, it messed up all the boxes, but I fixed them.
  • even bigger problem is that it's hard to set the cache to what I want. I don't want 1% of my 14 gig hd for cache-that's alot of megs

  • m6 mirror in australia (Score:4)

    by jason andrade ( 17150 ) on Saturday May 29, 1999 @10:33PM (#1874653) Homepage
    i've run a manual update and m6 is now available
    at mirror.aarnet in australia. you can get
    it from

    ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/mozilla/mozilla/r eleases/m6/

    or

    http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/mozilla/mozilla/rele ases/m6/

  • IE has a major flaw in regard to the handling of it's cache.

    Netscape also has a major flaw in it's cache handling,
    in that these are kept in per user directories.

    Also the multi user handling is weak and inflexiable,
    both under Unix and Windows.
  • Get the libstdc++-2.8.glibc2-compiled package
    from Brian Dial's excellent
    ftp://lrasputin.linuxos.net/pub/slakware-packs.

    It installs in /lib, and therefor you can run a libc5 stdc++ and a stdc++ for glibc2.

    way

  • Re:Where's the Mac version? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You should really calm down. The mac version should be coming shortly. Windows/Linux/Mac are practically at platform parity as far as development cycles are concerned.
  • From my experience IE handles CSS better than Mozilla, there are some problems with it doubling up properties like underline && overline, and some support for cursor: among other things is quite bad.

    I wish Mozilla was better, and it seems to slowly be getting so but at the moment IE5 is sexy.

    Compare browsers on this HTML tutor [vision.net.nz] that i'm slowly writing (404's aplenty, don't bother reporting).
  • Have to stick with using the menu to open new windows...

    I guess I could hack a button for the toolbar, but it's not functionally different than using the menu bar.

    On another not, anyone notice M6 expanding to suck up all the free CPU cycles? Anyone know why?


    -AS

  • Those tools are not all great. Esp. VB which I suffer at the moment. It sucks monumentously, but this company love M$ (which is why I'm leaving in a month or so :-) )

  • Mozilla... Is it even worth the download? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Is mozilla worth it for anyone out there?

    I've never had good luck with it. It crashes a little less than netscape and is even more of a memory hog on my machine. It does seem a hell of a lot faster though.

    Also, has netscape made any real progress in the last few quarters? beyond cosmetic changes in version 4.6 and the extra AOL crap that comes forcibly bundled with it I cannot see any. On my rh6.0 and debian 2.1 boxes netscape 4.08 works remarkably better then versions 4.51/4.6. I realize that some of the code is made up of netscape's, why didn't the mozilla team choose a better browser to model? ( KDE's browser rushes to mind, in my experience with it last year it was already faster/stable/more usable than netscape.

    Does anyone know of a browser for the gnome desktop? Am i correct that mozilla makes use of gtk? Do any other browsers out there?

    I'm sure i'm the only linux user who really hopes the rumor to be true, but I for one cannot wait for IE for linux (assuming that it is not the poor hack i've heard the other unix versions are) IE on the MACs at work is much better than netscape and uses considerably less resources.

    [disclaimer: yes MS is not the most 'kind' organization, but IMHO Internet Explorer is a damn fine piece of software (on win32 and mac that is)]. i hope the linux version is usable.

    -matt

  • Re:European mirror (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...or another european mirror, at NTUA@Greece: ftp://ftp.ntua.gr/pub/www/Moz illa/mozilla/releases [ftp.ntua.gr]
  • Posted by Matt Bartley:

    When you click on a reply to a comment, read it and want to return to the index, netscape would return you to the beginning of the page, while IE would return you to where you left off.
    This alone has made it worth it to set my /. preferences to ``light HTML.'' This problem doesn't seem to happen then.

    Netscape 3.04. Linux.

  • According to the release notes [mozilla.org], the Mac version is available on June 1.

  • excellent (Score:3)

    by bog ( 12897 ) on Sunday May 30, 1999 @06:58AM (#1874666)
    This is really starting to look good. The Mozilla team have made a lot of progress since the last release. I bet that by this get to beta it will be ready to replace 4.XX (and IE for those of you who use that). It renders pages faster than the 4.XX releases on my box (the text loads a lot faster and that is usually the important part 8).

    I was not able to crash it at all.

    I think the gui design is starting to look very interesting, I always preferred the netscape gui to IE anyway, but I think maybe Mozilla is going to make this even more so. I run linux as a workstation at home and at work, so IE is
    not an option for me anyway. Even if M$ was to port IE to linux and it performed any thing like it does under windows, It would probably be
    slower than Mozilla anyway. I did some testing with IE 4.and win98 vs Netscape 4.XX and linux, the last combination was clearly faster on my
    system, linux may be a big factor here but I bet the IE port to linux would be at least as bloated as the sun port. Anyway I really need IE for linux like I need cancer.

    This is excellent work by the Mozilla team and I am really looking forward to the beta and the final release.

  • interesting mozilla projects (Score:3)

    by arielb ( 5604 ) on Saturday May 29, 1999 @08:54PM (#1874667)
    1) Daniel Roberts is working on a Motif port 2) Christopher Blizzard is working on implementing the platform specific parts of gecko (gfx (rendering) and widget (widgetry)) using xlib only. That is without using an x toolkit. 3) Check out the MathML project at http://www.mozilla.org/projects/mathml/
  • Hmm.. that's odd. You using M6? The banner graphics worked for me in both the Win98 and Solaris versions of M5...
  • If the cache were shared, people would be screaming bloody murder about how everyone could see the pr0n that was dropped into the cache. That netscape CAN'T use a shared cache is something of a problem. That it DOESN'T by default is not.

  • Re:Mozilla... Is it even worth the download? (Score:3)

    by jamus ( 1439 ) on Saturday May 29, 1999 @07:51PM (#1874670) Journal
    I've tried using IE 4.0 and 5.0 under Solaris. I can't remember exactly, but I think IE 4.0 did a font scan each time it booted up. I do remember that it took five minutes to start up. Not very pleasent.

    I think it was supposed to do the scan only when something changed. Since I used it so infrequently, I wouldn't be surpised if whatever it looked for changed by the time I used it again.

    IE 5.0: I don't think I could get past the first install screen. It probably required patches that the system didn't have. I don't have root access, so I didn't spend much time bothering with it.

    I'm not too optimistic about IE for linux. I am much more optimistic about Mozilla.

  • Re:link to m6 (but this works :-)) (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 29, 1999 @05:06PM (#1874672)
    M6 [mozilla.org]
    bob
  • Ok, here's the deal as far as I'm aware. I'm loath
    To report it as a bug, since its only a bug with
    the binary, not with compiled source.

    The libstdc++ library contains a symbol, __iostream8 or similar, which normally only has
    one "_" in front of it. However the library which
    is being compiled against by the binary builder
    is an old, broken one, which gives this particular
    symbol TWO underscores. Both Debian and Redhat
    appear to distrubute, as part of the standard distrubution, a copy of the old, broken, version
    as well as the newer versions which fix the bug. Thus the binaries work fine on them, but not on slackware and possibly a couple of other distributions, because they DON'T include a copy of the broken lib. There isn't anything you can do
    afaik, Your only option is to attempt to compile the source yourself, and thus gain a binary which uses the correct symbol for iostream8

  • Just core dumps for me ... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I must be being stupid here, but running ./mozilla-apprunner.sh on the Linux version goes through a pointless `set up profiles' dialog, and then just stops. I think it core dumps (although it doesn't leave a core file). Has anyone actually got this running on Linux?
  • I'm sorry, but I /still/ cannot see any JPEGs in Mozilla. This is trying the main branch and M7 both. I even had it link with its own copy of libjpeg, rather than mine, and it won't help. If this simple thing doesn't even work, I find Mozilla totally unusable.

  • yeah but... (Score:3)

    by _damnit_ ( 1143 ) on Sunday May 30, 1999 @01:05PM (#1874680) Journal
    the problem with win98/IE integration is that when IE crashes, my system is hosed (reboot and get another beer). When Netscape crashes, I restart it and get on with life. Using History makes this usually pretty easy. I personally cannot abide using a program that screws up my entire computer when it misbehaves.

    Chris

    PS. the last time I used IE 4.5 on a mac it had significant problems. It actually slowed down all other programs! There was stuff on this at www.macintouch.com such as this dated 2/1/99:

    John Kordyback supplied another example of Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.5's penchant for reducing performance of other
    applications (see also Peek-a-boo, a utility for displaying resource usage):

    "I've noticed that Interapplication Communication is much slower when Internet Expolorer 4.5 is running on my Mac
    (3400c/8.5.1/80 megs RAM). For example, if you run the following do-nothing AppleScript for Excel:

    tell application "Microsoft Excel"
    Activate
    ClearContents Range "R1C1:R100C1"
    ClearContents Range "R1C2"
    set startTime to current date
    repeat with i from 1 to 100
    set rowString to i as string
    set rngString to "R" & rowString & "C1"
    set FormulaR1C1 of Range rngString to rowString
    end repeat
    set totalTime to ((current date) - startTime) as string
    set FormulaR1C1 of Range "R1C2" to totalTime
    end tell

    It averages 4.8 seconds without IE 4.5 running and 13.9 seconds with. I've also noticed that OLE communication (which
    really uses AppleEvents for communication) is similarly slower."
  • The problem with Netscape 4.5 and 4.6 under RedHat is due to missing fonts interacting with poor error checking in the Java implementation. By adding the non-scaled 75dpi fonts to your server's font path, you can fix the crashes. This is described in detail on RedHat's support site.

    Netscape also has (and has had) a problem with lots of dialog boxes popping up about bad widget sizes. You can't get rid of the messages, but you can send them to stderr instead where they do no harm. Check DejaNews for how to configure that.

    With those two fixes applied, 4.5/4.6 seems as good or better than 4.08.

  • I used Opera until the time limit was up.
    Nice browser. It would go back to the right place in the thread, too. I liked the multiple window feature.

  • The cache and password issues you mention seem to have been fixed in IE5 (although you need to change the password policy in the security settings).

    Note that on Windows NT, Netscape does use a cache shared between all users, where IE does not.

    IE has the nice feature of allowing you to enable features (JavaScript, Cookies, ActiveX) selectively for "Trusted Sites" versus general untrusted Internet sites.
    --
  • Hey you, under the bridge --

    Goto http://style.verso.com/.

    View the pages there in IE4, IE5, NS4, and a recent version of Moz. All of these browsers except one suck royally at trying to render the CSS tests found there. Guess which one? (Hint, it's not NS, and it's not either version of IE.)

    Then come back and tell us who's spreading FUD-dillyishusness.

    --Z.

  • yep, it seems to have a problem centering tables. I have noticed this on a number of sites, so your not alone.
    btw
    This is still only a beta, and while a little rough around the edges, I think it shows alot of potential. ;-)
  • Yeah,for a Beta, iCab is pretty good!
    Fully Navigation Services and Net Services
    compliant, totally Drag&Drop everywhere, renders pages
    fast as IE, and the best part: image filters!
    I wish these guys the best of luck.
    It does crash on occasion, like most betas should,
    but with MacsBug, it crashes very cleanly, and you
    can relaunch right away with no problems.
    Pope
  • What version of IE are you running on the Mac???! I was a longtime "I'll-never-use-anything-from-evil-MS" person, but after the horrible speed + memory usage + crashing (program AND entire system) of Communicator/Navigator, I gave in to The Dark Side and realized that it wasn't all that dark. Since switching to IE about 5 months ago, my computer has crashed maybe 3 or 4 times. You have no idea what kind of a record that is. If I tried running Netscape and playing any MP3s the system would bomb. Netscape would bomb randomly, often taking the rest of the system down with it.

    As much as I love to root for the underdog, in my experience, Netscape is too big, too slow, and too horrible to use. Explorer (I'm using 4.5 and Communicator 4.5. All of 4.x all gave me the same problems) runs much more quickly, has a MUCH better user interface (eg it lets me use my own email program when clicking on mailto: links, as opposed to Netscape's super-annoying habit of forcing me to use communicator's email regardless of my IC prefs) and has hosts of other nice features from which Netscape could take some serious hints. Another example that comes to mind is the "Go" button next to the URL box. Yes, I know it's a symptom of my supreme laziness, but if I cut&paste a URL, it's a pain to have to go and hit the enter key. As I said, I am that lazy. And like I said, it runs several orders of magnitude faster and more stably than any Netscape 4.x.

    Maybe Netscape has given up on the older Macs and is designing programs that work fantastically on the g3s or something, I have no idea honestly. All I know is that on this little ol' 7300/180/32MB [apple.com], IE kicks Navigator/Communicator's ass wayyy around the block. A few times.

    I'd be interested to know what kind of Mac you're using as well as which versions of the progams.

    -----BEGIN ANNOYING SIG BLOCK-----
    Evan

  • It is slower than N4.6 right now, definitely.

    The jerkiness, I have found, seems to be tied to a bug(?) in which M6 'expands' to suck up all the free CPU cycles. Anyone know why it does that?

    Likewise, any way in Windows to click on a link and get a new window? The menubar->file->close option doesn't seem to work, meaning I don't think one can close a window without killing all of them.


    -AS
  • I very much doubt that they have done overall speed optimisations yet. The layout engine itself is very fast and very stable. Don't judge it as if it a release version -- it isn't.

  • Is it even worth the download? Yes! (Score:5)

    by John Campbell ( 559 ) on Sunday May 30, 1999 @06:06AM (#1874692) Homepage
    Okay, for starters... Mozilla is *not* Netscape 4. Not any more. Anything you thought you knew about Netscape, it does not apply to Mozilla.

    If you think that Netscape's CSS support is atrociously bad, you are entirely correct. If you think that that means Mozilla's is too, you are completely wrong.

    Yes, IE is much better CSS-support-wise than Netscape. That's not hard... Netscape's CSS support is literally worse than none at all. IE is far from perfect, though. There's some fairly useful stuff they didn't even try to implement, and they don't seem to have any plans to do so. And, of course, being Microsoft, there's a lot of useless flash added that isn't mentioned in the standard anywhere. Embrace-and-extend, always...

    Mozilla does CSS. Period. Oh, there are a few minor things that aren't there yet (there doesn't seem to be any support for text direction, for instance) and a few bugs where things that are implemented don't work right (try setting up a transparent GIF with the background-image for IMGs set to a different GIF that's fixed to the background, and see what happens) but for the most part, it just works. And it blows IE away.

    If you want proof, take a look at this page [unctv.org] with Netscape (careful... it crashes 4.06, and possibly other versions), IE, and Mozilla, in turn. I wrote the page to the standard without regard for how real-world browsers rendered it, just to see how well they'd do.

    Netscape 4.51 makes a mess of it, and manages to get the text color screwed up so that it's black on black in one place. IE (4 and 5 appear to act the same) gets all the basics... it ignores the first-line and first-letter stuff and some of the fixed background-image stuff - and possibly also the line-through on the DEL tag, I don't recall just now. Mozilla gets it all perfectly.

    Oh, as a side note... has anyone gotten Mozilla to work on a libc5 Linux system? Or am I going to have to wait for my Slack 4.0 disk with the glibc2 runtime libs to arrive? I've been using the Solaris version with the display redirected (gotta love X) at work, but I don't have that option at home (would be nice if I had a spare Enterprise 5500 kicking around at home, but somehow I don't think that's going to happen)...
  • I've seen it do that with the banner images while it was in the process of rendering, but it's always moved them to the bottom where they should be when it got the rest of the page figured out...
  • well it is a total rewrite so you have to expect the bugs

  • link to m6 (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    M6 [mozilla.org] this link works bob
  • Thanks for the web page to look at. I've got it in all three web browsers right now, but have one slight problem. Mozilla (I'm using it with Win98) doesn't render the two banners properly, of all damn things! The boxes are there and in the right place and size, but the graphics inside of them are just messes. I can almost make out the feather in the Apache graphic, but the Slackware box just comes up gray with a thin grey line in the upper left quadrant.

    IE renders it close to well, Netscape stinks, and Mozilla is _so_ close to perfect. . .

    -Augie
  • It's page structure is similar:
    Table divides the page into 'panes', left hand side control/menu, right side sectioned into comment blocks.

    Renders fine.
    Slashdot renders fine, and it has something akin, left side is comment blocks and right side is control/menu...

    I suspect(browsed through the page source, but it was too cluttered to see anything at a glimpse) it's either an obscure HTML compatibility issue that you violate(or they violate), or you're using a tag incorrectly... What does an HTML verifier say about your site?


    -AS
  • I've somehow gotten M6 to explode, grabbing all idle CPU cycles.

    I've also gotten it to crash whenever I touch the preferences dialogue.

    Have you seen anything else?

    Your sig:
    Wasurenaide - where did you go and what did you do as well(?)


    -AS

  • Re:Mozilla... Is it even worth the download? (Score:3)

    by tjoynt ( 23563 ) on Saturday May 29, 1999 @06:59PM (#1874700) Homepage
    I would like to point out that while IE 4 may be pretty, when it crashes (yes, it does crash), it takes out other system resources with it (either explorer.exe or win.exe, can't remember at the moment). And MS says that browser integration is in the best interests of the user! :P
    -- Tom
  • IE has a major flaw in regard to the handling of it's cache. It keeps things in it's cache that it shouldn't even if you set the proper parameters.

    This makes IE a real security threath along with the default behaviour of storing passwords for sites even after stopping and starting it.

  • Re:Is it even worth the download? Yes! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I was able to get it working on a Libc5 system.
    You just need to compile the NSPR system with
    support for the user threads. See mozilla bug
    3949 for more info.

    http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3949


    mo
  • Wanted to say a few good things, test M6 on Slashdot, give it a few rounds...

    Some things cause it to crash immediately; opening preferences under edit, and hitting okay(even if you don't do *anything*), for example.

    Haven't otherwise caused it to crash.

    Was able to replace the throbber and some other minor graphics to suit my taste.

    Colors suck, but otherwise okay.

    Once in a while I lose focus from the window; don't know what is happening...

    The executeable is very small, but has a 17mb footprint under NT task manager... Perhaps optimization will shrink this in the future?

    Hasn't crashed yet, through normal use, and loading is very fast, if not quite smooth or polished. Anyone notice this?

    Under N4.5 or 4.6, it may take a tad longer to load up a page, but the redraw isn't as jerky, and scrolling was definitely smoother. Perhaps an 'animation' issue, like page flipping or double buffering?

    Still, much better than m3 and m4. It *seems* stable enough to be my main browser, except I can't right click and open new windows.

    Now I have to navigate Slashdot threads one at a time.

    Perhaps the capability will be added again in M7?


    -AS
  • Please report this problem to bugzilla.mozilla.org and submit the url to them also.. will help in determining the problem. If you do not have a login for bugzilla simply type in a email address and not a password and hit the e-mail me a password button this is all that is required for registration

  • blik (Score:1)

    by Evro ( 18923 )
    Communicator just grew on me. It's not as snappy at rendering, but it does a better job of it. It doesn't crash as often (for me) and when it does crash, it crashes cleanly and doesn't take my system down with it, unlike IE, which sometimes dies so horribly that a hard reset is needed. Your machine might well respond differently.


    Boy, I'll say they're different. The problems you're describing with your IE experience are the ones I had with Netscape. Not to repeat my original post, but Netscape would usually crash the entire system several times a day, whereas IE has only crashed 5 or 6 times in the past few months, and has never taken down the rest of the computer with it. It wasn't until I stopped using Netscape that I realized how bad it was.

    I guess this is just an example of the idiosyncracies of computers. One program behaves nicely and another badly on one system, and the exact opposite occurs on another system. Weird. I guess when I get my new Lombard (yeah, right) I'll have to reevaluate the browser situation. Though with all the UI prettiness of IE, I'd probably stand some crashing. God knows I did for 2 years with Netscape... Hopefully Mozilla will change things around for Netscape.

    BTW, I assume you're referring to LinuxPPC PRE-R5, right? They didn't release R5 without telling me, I hope.

    -----BEGIN ANNOYING SIG BLOCK-----
    Evan


  • When/if IE comes out on Linux, we'll *finally* have a useful browser.

    We?

    Heh. Maybe they'll port COM, VC++, SQL Server, Exchange, MTS, IIS and (oh, please, please, please) Visual Basic.

    And then we can just throw all these crappy GNU tools away, chuck sendmail, nuke all these silly Internet protocols and, God, never have to use any tools with stupid names like 'awk'.

    And then I can be a Microsoft Certified Professional on Linux. Cool.

  • (This comment is based on M5, I'm d/ling M6 right now)

    I don't get it... The renderer engine is fast as hell and works great (at least that's my experience) but the GTK-based front end is buggy (lots of warnings and criticals) and slooooow. I've written some programs in GTK-- (BTW, if Mozilla is C++, why doesn't it use GTK-- instead of GTK+?) and I have no idea why they found it so difficult to make the front-end bug-free.

  • Here is the post [deja.com].


  • If the cache were shared, people would be screaming
    bloody murder about how everyone could see the pr0n
    that was dropped into the cache.

    As opposed to being able to both see which "pr0n" and
    *who* downloaded it, which you get with the current model.
  • I got M5 working through a proxy no problem.

    in ~/.mozilla/prefs50.js ensure you have lines like the following:


    user_pref("network.proxy.http", "junkbuster");
    user_pref("network.proxy.http_port", 5865);


    I think you can get the same effect under Micros~1 by copying your netscape preferences file to the mozilla directory. Or something like that.

    --

  • Re:Just core dumps for me ... (Score:3)

    by mpe ( 36238 ) on Sunday May 30, 1999 @03:18AM (#1874712)

    running ./mozilla-apprunner.sh on the Linux version goes
    through a pointless `set up profiles' dialog

    Nice to see someone agrees with me about this "profiles"
    mechanism under Unix. (Even if it is an AC.)

    IMHO there is benefit from taking ideas from Unix to other
    platforms. e.g. global configuration files, ability to read
    different "mailbox" formats (especially those which are
    network exportable), etc. (Thus having interoperability
    with other programs.)

    Whereas copying Windows workarrounds (especially
    those only suitable for stand alone machines) into Unix
    is not the best way to do things. What next emulate the
    Windows registry, as IE for Solaris does?

  • It exists (Score:5)

    by mmontour ( 2208 ) <mail@mmontour.net> on Saturday May 29, 1999 @05:11PM (#1874714)
    The ftp directory has a case-error, "/M6" instead of "/m6". I just downloaded the package (240 Kbytes/sec, I *love* my ADSL) and am about to try it out.

    http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/milest ones/ says a bit about Milestone 6, and some of the upcoming ones.

    I wish the Mozilla folks luck, and I'm looking forward to the day when it becomes usable enough for me to switch. Netscape 4 just has *way* too many bugs and security holes, and I really want to move to an Open Source product (where hopefully the problems will be easier to find and fix).

  • when you go back, Lynx will return you to the right place (the place you were looking at, not the top of the document). And Slashdot (and most other sites I find worthwhile) are quite readable in Lynx.
  • Actually, most if not all of the front end is created by the rendering engine itself using XUL (subset of XML). Look for a file called navigator.xul -- that's what supplies the specifics for your front end.

    One the one hand, this creates an extra layer between the browser core and what you see on the screen, if you will -- on the other, it means you can create new skins for Moz with a text editor. :-) XUL and RDF: The Implementation of the Application Object Model [mozilla.org] is a good starting point if you want to learn more about it.

  • ^^^ Oh yea forgot to mention I'm refering to Windows 95/98 but I guess thats ovious.
  • I wrote a nice comment, and it got lost in preview. Whoops. Basically, it does let me read slashdot, so it qualifies as a browser. :-)

    Also, it doesn't seem to display the ads at the top of the page, which I think is a nice feature. ;-) Keep up the good work!
    ----------------------

  • Not that this is a good excuse for it being so buggy, let me add...

  • Mac Version (Score:4)

    by NII Link ( 45533 ) on Saturday May 29, 1999 @06:33PM (#1874723)
    A Bunch of pplz are wondering about the Mac version of m6 - I got it from ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/nightly/last-bui lt/ before m6 was even announced. And the creation date seems to be a while ago. I guess they just didn't post it to the m6 directory.
    It's not that great actually, it still can't replace 4.6 (and I REALLY would like it replaced). And I had to rename my hard dive before using it b/c of some obscure bug that prevents it from running when your hard drive has a name that uses weird characters - and this bug has been around for a long time. It is making progress though, albeit very slowly.

  • Re:If it just kept bookmarks (Score:4)

    by broken ( 1648 ) on Saturday May 29, 1999 @06:51PM (#1874725)
    You can copy your current bookmarks to your mozilla directory, like this:

    cp ~/.netscape/bookmarks.html mozilla/package/res/rdf/bookmarks.html

    That's discussed on the release notes [mozilla.org].
  • You are correct.. I just got off my lazy butt and went and checked the standard. Hmm. I could've sworn I'd seen somewhere an example of DIV being used as an inline...

    This reinforces my original statement that the DIVs on my example page can't be grouped using SPANs; they have to be grouped using other DIVs. It does indicate, though, the use for SPANs... you use 'em inside Ps and stuff where DIVs aren't allowed...
  • Hmm, IE. Perhaps when it can make even a half-decent effort of rendering things correctly, supporting CSS-1, etc., it might be worth thinking about.
  • The Mozilla website says nothing about Milestone 6 and the ftp directory linked here doesn't exist.

  • Re:JPEG still doesn't work (Score:3)

    by John Campbell ( 559 ) on Sunday May 30, 1999 @05:01AM (#1874729) Homepage
    Hm... JPEGs have worked fine for me, at least in the Solaris and Win32 versions (haven't gotten the Linux version working yet... libc5/6 problems, I think). I had the GIMP unable to use JPEGs for quite a while, and finally went and deleted every trace of libjpeg from my system, then installed the very latest version (available on ftp.gimp.org) and recompiled GIMP, and finally it's fixed. Maybe that would work for you?
  • I found this very annoying also. So I just launch a new browser to read the threads under the main and when I close off the thread window the main is exactly where I left off. Works quite well.

  • Re:Weird problems with M6 (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Are you sure it's mozilla at fault.
    Maybe there is an incompatibility with the HTML definition in your site.
    And since mozilla is only supposed to render completely HTML-compatible sites, ...

  • Re:FYI (Score:3)

    by Freshman ( 9729 ) on Saturday May 29, 1999 @08:38PM (#1874732) Homepage
    The mac M6 build will be available tuesday afternoon. They had a nasty blocker bug in mailnews if I recall.

  • Re:Molasses (Score:4)

    by Chris Siegler ( 3170 ) on Saturday May 29, 1999 @10:33PM (#1874733)

    Well, I suppose enabling asserts slows down the code a fair bit

    It's not the asserts. There was a recent post [deja.com] about the slow reaction you get when moving the mouse. Follow the next few replies to that post. There are several good explanations of what is causing the slowdown. The short summary is that rollovers are causing the entire document to get redrawn when you move your mouse around. But redrawing the whole browser is complicated, so everything slows to a crawl.

  • no...it's that mozilla redraws too much and other bugs
  • Don't quote me on this but as far as a i know it doesn't yet do Java by default. I think that they are eventually hoping to use Japhar as the Java implementation with their Open Java Interface (OJI) ? but it will probably be a user selected choice to aloow you to use which ever VM you want.

    Try checking www.japhar.org for more details


    Iggy
  • it's these reflow bugs that slow down everything

  • Re:Mozilla... Is it even worth the download? (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 29, 1999 @08:13PM (#1874740)
    if you have "browse in new process" checked in internet options, then the browser won't take out the shell

  • There is a workaround (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm a Slackware user (Slack 3.6 + kernel 2.2.6) and experienced this with RealPlayer G2. The same fix worked for M6. Note you need glibc2.

    Grab libstdc++ from RedHat 5.1; package name was libstdc++-2.8.0-14.i386.rpm.

    Extract the actual library from it (I've heard rpm2targz does this, I don't have it, I stripped the header off, gunzipped, and used cpio to extract it from the resulting file. Don't know if I could do it again).

    Put libstdc++.so.2.8.0 somewhere handy - I just put it in the M6 package dir.

    cd /dir/where/it/is

    ln -s libstdc++.so.2.8.0 libstdc++.so.2.8

    setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH /dir/where/it/is # adjust to shell

    ldconfig -v | grep stdc # check if found right copy

    Also make sure your path includes "."

    ./run_mozilla.sh

    GOOD LUCK!

    --Indigo

  • Netscape vs Mozilla -> M6 (Score:3)

    by Strumpur ( 7534 ) on Sunday May 30, 1999 @03:33AM (#1874742)
    I'm using IE5 now and slashdot is the only reason I do so!
    Let me explain.
    When you click on a reply to a comment, read it and want to return to the index, netscape would return you to the beginning of the page, while IE would return you to where you left off. Normally this isn't all that bad, but when you have pages with 100+ comments on them and you're somewhere halfway down the page, it is very irritating that netscape returns you to the beginning of the page after reading a reply.
    I hope they change this with Mozilla, and I'll w
    quit using IE.
    For the rest I don't really care. I must agree to a post earlier that I also though MS was the evil empire, and I also turned to the dark side when I started using IE. But, if it suits me better, then I'm going to use it.
  • Well, using M6 I can now
    • view /. conversations in "flat" mode without getting a screenful of garbage; and
    • LOG IN!!
    Both of these seems like considerable improvements to me.

    And, yes, the CSS support kicks ass. :-)

    And yes, O Naysayers, CSS does matter. It's a friggin' standard already -- so learn to live with it.

    --Z.

  • Netscape also does the tempory memory crap to.. Visit a page with lots of tables and graphics and it will start using alot more memory then it was assigned.

    This has something to do with the way web browser need more memory on complex pages..

    At any rate Netscape nor Internet Exploiter don't release memory properly when done. (Until you quit the application).

  • Re:Mozilla... Is it even worth the download? (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 29, 1999 @05:35PM (#1874749)
    I realize that some of the code is made up of netscape's, why didn't the mozilla team choose a better browser to model?

    The Mozilla project was initiated by Netscape, and most of its developers work there. Not so much of the code derives from the Navigator codebase anymore; a good deal has been rewritten from scratch (which is why it's been in development so long).

    Does anyone know of a browser for the gnome desktop? Am i correct that mozilla makes use of gtk? Do any other browsers out there?

    Yes, Mozilla uses gtk. Another gtk browser (still alpha) to check out is Gzilla [gzilla.com].

    [disclaimer: yes MS is not the most 'kind' organization, but IMHO Internet Explorer is a damn fine piece of software (on win32 and mac that is)]. i hope the linux version is usable.

    Ha! It's not too bad on Win32, but MSIE on the Mac is a joke. It's plagued by random crashes and inexplicable slowdowns. Navigator is far from bulletproof, but at least it works passably well on most platforms.

    AC
  • I've used this "browse in new process" and it has a habit of LOCKING UP the OS when everything goes down, instead of just crashing IE. That feature doesn't help much.

  • Where's Mac M6? (Score:3)

    by Chris Siegler ( 3170 ) on Saturday May 29, 1999 @07:48PM (#1874751)

    The Mac build has regressed a bit, but is due on Tuesday [deja.com]

  • Well, I suppose enabling asserts slows down the code a fair bit, but on my machine, the highlight can't even keep up with the mouse on the menus. Web pages take 3x as long to load as on Netscape, and it takes forever to load all of the images on an image-heavy page. If this the "Raptor" I was looking forward to,I must say I'm underwhelmed.

  • Considering that you have to manually set the memory allocation for programs on the MacOS, how did IE arbitrarily grab 70MB of RAM? (This is an honest question - I didn't think that was possible.)

    On an old Quadra 950, I'd take MacIE over Netscape any day, I do know that. Friends with newer Macs favor Netscape, but they also allocate 50MB of memory to it.
    --
  • I would have to agree completely here. Its all about attinuation.

    First we will get used to having a MS browser. Then the MS web server will naturally follow to support the proprietory features of the browser. Of course, bundled with the browser will be an e-mail client, which of course works best on your network with Exchange, so you better migrate to that too. Then you will be needing some tools to build applications that work with all the great MS software you have, because you cant make anything compatible without them, since none of the software MS is offering is open source. Next thing you know, most of the software you use is propritory MS garbage.

    I thought the best thing about Linux was that it and most of the software you can use on it is open-source stuff. I don't understand how anyone could be wanting MS in the Linux arena - I thought MS was what we were trying to get away from.

    I guess this marks the main difference between the newbies (who are only after mainstreaming Linux) and the more seasoned users (who just want good, open source software).

    Just a thought before hitting the coffee... :)
    --SONET
  • Agreed, IE on Win95/98 works well. It even crashes less than Netscape or any other browsers. But then again, MS has the advantage of being able to fully integrate IE into Windows. IE on the Mac is another story altogether. Though it's less of a resource hogger, it's slow and prone to crashing. Judging from their porting abilities, I won't count on MS to provide a good browser for Linux.

  • Re:Mozilla... Is it even worth the download? (Score:5)

    by Grell ( 9450 ) on Saturday May 29, 1999 @06:12PM (#1874757) Homepage
    hmm.. Good points, but lets examine one of the under emphasized opportunities about M6.

    You check the fact that your offered the option to grab M6 w/ the FullCircle bug-logging program? I'm no programmer, so I can't give much to open source projects except my good wishes, until now.

    If there's one thing I AM able to do, it's lock up Netscape like a finger trap, almost 2 or more times every day. (I surf a lot :)

    So if I use a pre alpha (not EVEN ready for prime time) browser, I know I can fry it on a regular basis. Generating lots of bug reports.. which lead to a better OS browser, which helps people.

    So if altruism is your thing, hey you could do worse than to loan a few extra cpu cycles to a nice little project... even if your not as hard on software as me.

    ~grell
    grell_@hotmail.com
    Wasurenaide - doko e itte
    mo soko ni iru yo.

  • Weird problems with M6 (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I tried the nightly builds and they work fine on my website....but when I try M6 my website is all out of order. Check it out. Use netscape 4.x and go to Civ:CTP for Linux news site [natas.kfa.cx] Now try it with the most recent nightly build (the one before M6) see how it puts the page together perfectly? Now try it with M6...its all wacked out :P I hope that the final version will render my page correctly! Natas
  • Sorry you have had such issues w/ NS. I suppose I am REAL lucky (or not). Admitingly, I have to use both, being a webdeveloper of sorts, and have had IE crash, or not crash, just as much as Netscape. Crashing is a non-issue with me and my "personal" choice of browser, however, is NS due to it's ease of use and speed. Of course, on my Linux box, NS is THE browser of choice and is significantly faster (even with a slower connection!) then NS on my Windows box!

    You've got me thinking, now: What is it that is wrong with your PC that causes Netscape to crash so much OR, what the heck am I doing "right" to cause it to NOT crash?!!? ;)

  • European mirror (Score:3)

    by sfid ( 33738 ) on Saturday May 29, 1999 @10:44PM (#1874762)
    /.ers in europe should try this link [sunsite.uio.no] (in Norway - 300 users max).
  • Just downloaded it, and I have to say, it feels like a step back, to me. It just crashed on me for
    the first time ever, and seems slower (certainly mozilla-viewer.sh is heading towards snail like, IMHO, and run-mozilla.sh doesn't feel as fast as the last version).

    Anyone else experiencing this, or do I kick my system a few times until it decides to play nicely?

Slashdot Top Deals

"Marriage is low down, but you spend the rest of your life paying for it." -- Baskins

Close