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Mozilla The Internet

Mozilla M17 Is Out 372

As the title says - Mozilla M17 is out. Release notes are available at that Web page as well. As usual - please test it and submit bug reports.. (please note: this is NOT the nightly build that was posted here previously). Update: I just got note that Netscape 6.0 PR2 is also out. Netscape bug reports should be reported here only!
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Mozilla M17 is out

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  • by Anonymous Coward
    yes it is, it was discussed on Mozillazine.org under the "Netscape 6 PR2" thread. Take a look for instructions on burning to a CD.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    6_PR2

    ------------------------------------------------ ------------------------
    Welcome to the Netscape Communications Corporation FTP server.

    If you have any odd problems, try logging in with a minus sign (-)
    as the first character of your password. This will turn off a feature
    that may be confusing your ftp client program.

    Please send any questions, comments, or problem reports about
    this server to ftp@netscape.com.

    *********** October 13, 1995 **********
    Private ftp is now only on ftp1.netscape.com. Anonymous is supported on
    ftp 2 through 8. If you are accessing a named account please use ftp1.

    Guest login ok, access restrictions apply.


    1995? Time to update, fellas...
  • by Anonymous Coward
    Actually, Blackdown has the OJI / Java plugin running now with JDK 1.3. There are still bugs on Mozilla's end which didn't get fixed in time for the M17 but hopefully will get it fixed soon.

    Check out bugzilla bugs 46087 and 46089 for info on some of the holdups.

    Kevin
  • by Anonymous Coward
    Yeh, I used Konqueror a lot over the past several months - compiled from source. However, I removed the Kde2 stuff completely and probably won't give it another try until the final 2.0 release. Here's why.

    Konqueror is fairly stable now and is fairly fast except when encountering large pages. By large I mean any plain old html page over a few thousand bytes in size, which ain't very big. Then it grinds to a halt. Scrolling becomes next to impossible, and the various "parts" never get completely fleshed out because they time out before the entire page can be loaded into memory and then rendered.

    This seems to be true of any Kde 2 application with a large number of "parts" such as even medium sized KWord docs. Slows to a crawl and then chokes.

    Konqueror, in the latest beta, crashes occasionally but not too often, so you may want to give it a try. However, I've found that Netscape 4.x is AT LEAST 10 times as fast as Konqueror, and so is Galeon. But Galeon curently lacks some common gui features. I'm hoping they add them soon - page scrolling with the keyboard, etc. So it's back to Netscape 4.x for now.

    Be aware also that the infrastructure of Kde 2 keeps changing from week to week or even day to day despite promises that this wouldn't happen. The version of Qt on which it is based also keeps changing - just changed again yesterday. That was the final straw for me.

    I think that the Kde team will improve the performance of Konqueror a little as well as the performance of the entire Kde 2 platform, but this can only be done in an ugly, hackish sort of way without a basic redesign. They need at least a 10 times performance increase, and may be able to sqeeze out twice the current performance with optimizations. But not 10 times without a redesign. (This is with no debugging by the way). So even with a 700 mgz Athalon and 256 megs ram it's molassas city.

    It's too late for a redesign because they have committed to a design based entirely on "parts" and the performance is not acceptable because there are simply too many "objects" in memory at any one time, and stability also becomes iffy in such circumstances. Yes, I know they tried to improve performance by abandoning CORBA and using dcop, but they didn't go far enough. Kde 1.12 is several orders of magnitude better than Kde 2, regardless of the cheery reviews (which are quite dishonest). If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Build on what works. Does anybody really want to embed a spreadsheet in his file manager? I sure don't. I think Kde actually believes the propaganda Microsoft uses to hype it's component model but most Windows users know better. It's the old 90/10 rule again. Bloated with features and io-bound to the max to the point that even the simplest operation requires the loading and unloading of myriads of "parts" and vicious thrashing of your hard drive. These aren't bugs, they are features. Yeah.

    The only improvement I can see is the graphics engine - rendering of pixels and gradients, etc., is better, and of course the new Qt 2.x is better than Qt 1.x. Otherwise, it's like they made a concious decision to ruin a good thing in order to mimic Microsoft's COM with Kparts. Well, that don't work with Linux. Kde 2 makes both Java and Mozilla look lean and mean.

    Kde has fixed it all right, and now I happily use Gnome, until Gnome ruins it with bonobo in another stupid effort to mimic Microsoft, and then I guess I'll just eat my words and use Winders. Since they both seem dead set on mimicing Winders may as well use the real thing instead of a sorry imitation that doesn't work. Way to go Kde. Don't make the same mistake, Gnome.

  • by Anonymous Coward
    I think this is a case of clueless documentation writers. Maybe it should have been marked "Windows Only" or some such.

    The linux version of M17 unpacks with the user and group id's set to 8482 and 10. Same as in M16. In a Red Hat system, gid 10 is the wheel group, which has root as its only member (unless you change it).

    Most files in the release unpack with permissions set to "rwxrwxr-x" (in M16 the mask was "rwxr-xr-x"). Either way, both builds run fine for normal users.

    I did a 'chown -R root:root package/' and a 'chmod -R g-w package/' and it runs fine.

  • by MagPulse ( 316 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @12:57AM (#872094)
    They seem a lot better to me, and mozillazine [mozillazine.org] agrees (There are quick links to M18 builds there too). Also, for me the Windows build is much much better for me than the Linux one. Most notably for rendering times.. on average Linux is 1.5-10 times slower at rendering pages for whatever reason. This is with XFree86 3.3.x since I haven't seen any distro that's confident enough to release XF4 to the masses.
  • Does the installer work through a proxy? If so how do you configure it?
  • Advanced? I don't see no advanced button (installing on Linux).
  • I installed M17 and brought up Slashdot, opened an article, (then realized I wasn't logged in), I then entered my name and pass in the box in the upper right of the screen. Well, as I typed each character, it kept bumping the box to the left and the story area's (but not the comments) width kept shrinking with each keystroke. Is this a problem with Mozilla or Slashdot? This is on Win95b, btw.

  • This stupidity is easily solved by using object detection, rather than browser detection. Theres lots of resources on the web documenting it.
  • I work in a company that is quite distributed. In fact, I've moved around quite a lot myself. So I keep in touch with friend's and co-workers via Yahoo! Messengers. Unfortunately under Linux one has to use the Java client for Messenger. Anybody else tried using it? It seems like it crashes every 20 seconds! It's next to useless. WINE support for Messenger is non-existent. Netscape 4.x is never going to be fixed so that it is stable. What are the alternatives? We were hoping that Mozilla would fill the gap. Unfortunately it seems that Java support is only available for Win32. Anybody have any idea when it'll be available elsewhere, or even what's going on in that department?
  • I've been playing with the Mac version of Mozilla for about an hour so far, and it's really disappointing.

    The best I can say about it is that this is the FIRST milestone of Mozilla on the Mac that doesn't trash my maching in interesting ways. All versions of Mozilla I've tried before this have done strange and wonderful things like rendering web pages outside the app window (including in the menu bar), hosing networking until a reboot, or causing the operating system to stop noticing my mouse clicks.

    But that's damning with faint praise, so let me be a little more direct with my condemnations. Mozilla M17 goes to enormous lengths to reinvent the wheel, and ends up doing a half-baked job of it. Rather than using Mac OS Toolbox calls to draw lists (as in the 'Manage Bookmarks' window), it draws its own lists which work almost, but not quite as quickly or as flexibly as, lists in the native GUI (Mozilla's columns can't be resized or rearranged). Rather than using the standard GUI's scrollbars in the main browser window, it draws its own scrollbars, which don't work with a wheel mouse yet. Rather than relying on the operating system to render menus for it, it draws its own menu when I right-click in a window or click on a pulldown, and sometimes little fragments of this menu don't get drawn in quite the right places. Curiously, however, it implements clippings just fine (select a range of text from a web page then drag that text to the desktop). Overall, Mozilla appears to go to great lengths to look like it's trying hard not to be a standard Mac application; its interface elements just look (and sometimes work) different for no obvious good reason.

    I admire the Mozilla developers for the immense amout of work they've put into this project, but I wonder why they decided to reimplement many GUI elements which the operating system could have easily handled for them if they'd abstracted their GUI calls a bit more. As a result, over the history of the Mozilla project, it seems like the developers have had a lot more trouble making Mozilla a well-behaved Mac application than making it a good web browser.

  • That approach makes some sense... but it gets back to the age-old debate of just how cross-platform to make a cross-platform application. In this case, Mozilla has gone for the lowest-common-denominator approach, resulting in the fact that it doesn't take advantage of any particular operating system's features and that it doesn't look/feel like any other application on that OS. I can see why it's beneficial if you want web pages to look completely identical on every operating system, but it comes at a huge cost in having to duplicate basic OS-builtin GUI features, having to make sure they work reliably, and having to add support to Mozilla for any GUI-relevant feature that's added to any OS it supports.

    In hindsight, I think a much better use of the Mozilla development team's time would have been to have Mozilla rely on each operating system's GUI calls, but meanwhile to spin off the effort to come up with a consistent cross-platform GUI into another project altogether, so that it could be more easily shared across other applications as well.

  • by suprax ( 2463 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @06:27AM (#872111)
    I attempted to install Netscape PR2, but after 3 secs on the download bar, it closes and dosen't let me read the error message. Even after changing the servers in config.ini it still does it. Well, so much for PR2.

    I'm currently downloading the latest nightly Mozilla build, and I'll try it like I do every once in a while. Mozilla is getting there, but I just can't stand the oversized browser buttons. I guess I like when buttons are slick looking and small.

    I just never thought I would be passing up the latest Netscape release, whatever version, for Mozilla. I always saw Mozilla as a buggy, unstable, unlikeable browser, but the more and more I try it I'm starting to grab hold. I don't know whats going on over at Netscape, but it certainly isn't working anymore.

    Heck, does anyone remember going to the store and finding nice, packaged boxed of Netscape on the shelves? Even though they cost money, it was nice seeing Netscape proudly displayed. Now, if it's not put out by Microsoft, you won't see it there. The only thing I could find locally was Netscape Communicator Browser "tools". What "tools" do people need for a browser?

    Well, it's sad to see this but Netscape has dug it's own grave with me. Maybe if they get their head on straight and release something installable and usuable again, I'll try, but for now, I'm headed for the red monster [mozilla.org].

    --
    Scott Miga
    suprax@linux.com
  • by Tet ( 2721 ) <.ku.oc.enydartsa. .ta. .todhsals.> on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @01:18AM (#872112) Homepage Journal
    The installer dumps core after downloading the first few files.

    More to the point, there shouldn't be an install at all. I want a full download. This sucks. Maybe Americans just forget that Internet access costs us money in Europe. Phone calls aren't free. Normally, I'd download stuff like this using the leased line at work, burn it to a CD and take it home. With poxy installer programs like this, that's no longer an option :-(

  • by acb ( 2797 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @04:49AM (#872113) Homepage
    When will someone make a Mozilla-based browser that works with XView? There are still some people using olvwm and this much-underrated toolkit..
  • If you've installed Mozilla (or Netscape 6) before (or you think someone else has on your machine) try the following: delete the C:\windows\mozregistry.dat file. This may solve the problems you are having.

    Otherwise start with mozilla.exe -console and see if there's any useful info in the console. Try reading the release notes and if you can't solve the problem report a bug to mozilla.org/
  • OK everyone, repeat after me, "HTML describes content not layout".
    False. If that were true, there wouldn't be width and height tags in the official HTML specification.

    It's all well and good to claim that HTML is not primarily intended to describe layout, but the fact is that a lot of layout-related tags are in there, because in the real world it was necessary.

    Nowdays CSS is preferred, but until the layout-related tags are actually removed from the HTML standard, a standard-compliant browser should render them properly.

  • Personally I think that they should have just focused on creating a fast functional browser, made it very modular and OO to add in porting to other platforms and released it.
    I agree. That's why I have high hopes for Galeon [sourceforge.net].
  • Oh man! Thanks for the link, it's awesome, I'm posting from it now, and it's absolutely SLICK. Great job!
  • by Chris Burke ( 6130 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @06:08AM (#872129) Homepage
    The designation "i686" refers to the Pentium Pro, which was dubbed the "P6" prior to its release (and it should have been called that, since it is a completely difference core than the Pentium... but I digress), not the PII. Anyway, any processor made after the PPro will run the mozilla binaries, and that includes your K6-2. And I think saving the masochist who wants to run mozilla on a 486 from himself is a noble goal unto itself. ;) Posted using Mozilla M-17 on a K6-2 300, so there. :P
  • by Jeffrey Baker ( 6191 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @05:18AM (#872131)
    Yes, please try an M18 build. These build can be found at the mozilla.org FTP site [mozilla.org].

    The PR2 release is a complete disservice to the mozilla.org community. There are really two products here, the Mozilla browser and the Commercial browser. The Mozilla browser is a very fine product. The Commercial browser is a steaming pile of shit. Unfortunately, Mozilla.org, the makers of the Mozilla browser, are going to get skewered by Slashdot and trade press magazines because the Commercial browser, which is made by AOL, is such a joke.

    Why is the commercial browser so lame? From out site of the walls at AOL/Netscape, I can only guess. But I can tell you that as an active tester of the Mozilla browser, Netscape Product Development Team's bug-fixing priorities are infuriating. Hours before the release of this PR2, I filed two "smoketest blocker" bugs. This is the most severe kind of bug, and should have prevented the release of the browser. A blocker is a bug which prevents the browser from passing the defined smoketests [mozilla.org]. These are tests of basic functionality. Not passing these tests means that the browser is not ready for release.

    These two serious bugs were marked, by AOL/Netscape people, as "MOZ ONLY", which essentially means "to hell with you we're releasing the product anyway." Of course, the product is released, and the Linux installer doesn't work at all if you have bash2, and the browser will dump core if you try to load ftp.netscape.com in a particular way.

    The quality control process at AOL/Netscape has completely failed. They do not follow the quality guidelines of the Mozilla project, as defined on the Mozilla web site. By releasing the Commercial product in such a sorry state, they have embarrased everyone who works so hard on Mozilla, and I suspect that they have lowered morale across the entire project.

    Shame on you Netscape.

  • If you actually kept up with Mozilla, you'd know that memory footprint is something they are working on.

    ---
  • by SEE ( 7681 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @11:25AM (#872137) Homepage
    Er, yes, they haven't made Irix builds recently, but they don't treat Linux as the only Unix. M16 supports Solaris, FreeBSD, HPUX, True64 and OpenVMS. That looks like five "other Unix" ports.

    And a delay in ports of M17 arguably can be justified by the fact that the guy who maintained many of the Unix ports just died.

    Steven E. Ehrbar
  • When both browsers are available on CD, then fair enough, your point stands.

    However, I (and quite a lot of the rest of Europe) am on a 56K dialup link to the internet at home. And under this circumstance the difference between 6 and 25 megabytes becomes quite crystal clear.
    --
  • When will the programmers realise that all we want is a simple browser that supports industry standards such as CSS, XHTML, DHTML, JavaScript, VBScript and XML? We don't need an integrated browser/mail reader/newsreader/coffee maker.

    In that case, you want Galeon [sourceforge.net], a subset (so to speak) of Mozilla.

    Also, the programmers don't have to realise anything. They do what they want, when they want, and for their own reasons. If you don't like that, get the source and do it yourself. The coders aren't working for you, you know.
  • as of now, mozilla is my main browser. it finally got to the point where it works better than NS4.7x in day to day use. the latest NS 4.74 for linux was even more unstable than the previous ones: it crashes whenever you open a few windows (with lots of middle clicking) and then close a few with ^W. so that's it, exit netscape, enter mozilla. the UI feels slower, but the rendering is so much faster that it more than makes up for it. with the classic skin, bigger fonts and JS off, it's pretty damn usable.
  • My rant of the day:

    Since when did Linux basically become the only 'nix out there? After clicking on the Unix link for the Netscape PR2 download, the only link present was linux22. Uh, excuse me, but what about other 'nixes? I use SGIs, which means I run IRIX. Netscape is complete and utter crap for IRIX, and I was hoping that this release might set things right (yeah, right). But what was a thinking? I don't run Linux, therefore I don't run Unix. It is understandable that Netscape did not compile forev every type and version out there, but please, only Linux? What about the Sun BSD, HP, AIX users? Sigh, Linux will be the Windows of the 21st century.

    As far as Mozilla goes, the last compile for IRIX was done is January. Says alot about cross-platform code doesn't it?


    --weenie NT4 user: bite me!

  • First of all, my rant was mainly with Netscape. My secondary, two-line rant against Mozilla is minor.

    Did you read my post? Obviously you did not. You mentioned that I should wait awhile. In case you missed it, I clearly stated that Mozilla has not done a binary release for Irix since January. Go back and read it. There you go, found it? Go for you! How much longer does one have to wait? And yes, I have tried to compile Mozilla, but found numerous problems with the UI code, mainly due to the GTK libraries. Like I said, my rant is against Netscape's defintion of Unix and not Mozilla.

    BTW, it appears that some think my opinions are flamebait. Oh well, I have plenty of karma to post at +1.

    Cheers,

    --weenie NT4 user: bite me!

  • by RayChuang ( 10181 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @04:47AM (#872146)
    After reading the comments about the horrid install of Netscape 6.0 PR2, it appears that Internet Explorer will become the web browser of choice on both Windows and Macintosh platforms not because of Microsoft's market share, but because of Netscape's incompetence since the AOL takeover. :-(

    You can gripe about IE all want, but it loads very fast on Windows and the Mac and also renders pages quite quickly, too. And Microsoft designed IE so it can be quickly updated to add new features, fix bugs, etc.

    With all the complaints about the NS 6 install and startup times, if Netscape doesn't address these issues soon they will be finished, which is too bad because the "basic" Mozilla code itself is actually quite good.
  • by VValdo ( 10446 ) on Monday August 07, 2000 @11:59PM (#872147)
    (I just posted this to Mozillazine. Note that most of this has to do with the Netscape repackaging of Mozilla, not with the Mozilla browser/platform itself)

    Well I guess I'm the first one to review this for the Mac.

    HOLY CRAP. We're in trouble.

    All I can do is hope to holy hell that Netscape buries this release and no one in the general public ever downloads/installs PR2, ever.

    Oh, and by the way, let me say in advance to whoever will argue the usual "this is pre-beta
    software, blah blah blah blah" let me remind you that THIS IS THE FIRST EXPOSURE MANY
    PEOPLE ARE GOING TO HAVE WITH NETSCAPE 6. Their opinions will be formed largely
    on their earliest experiences. The fact that netscape has released this is.. oh jesus....sweet jesus help
    us.

    I'm sorry, I'm still just totally stunned.

    Let's start off with the download/install. I loaded the installer (very small, admittedly, though it
    was located in a directory labeled for Mac OS 8.5. I use Mac OS 9, but after downloading the
    readme confirmed it worked on 8.5 OR ABOVE) and took a look inside the folder. There's a
    README file with astonishingly dry, boring installation instructions, and there's a License
    Agreement file. No personality whatsoever. Nothing discussing this as an open source project,
    nothing about what this release is for, no notes about reporting bugs, and no reminder that what
    you're about to see is a work in progress and you can expect that it's going to be fixed and check
    out a nightly of mozilla and if you want to help build it, here's what you do and....on and on.

    What a totally missed opportunity to introduce the project.

    Anyway, so I ran the very unappealing installer which asked me which components I wanted to
    load (I have no need for German, wanted to try a mail/news free install, etc.)

    1. It then installed everything, totally ignoring the components I selected.
    2. It took about 50x
    longer to download than the Mozilla nightlys. Why can I get the whole of Mozilla's .sit in less
    than a minute on my DSL, unstuff and just run, but to get Netscape I had to go through a whole
    rigamarole of downloading each peice, then processing them all which took over 10 minutes?!
    (don't tell me the bigger size is the reason either. The "extras" might account for a little more
    time, but not this astounding install-a-thon)
    3. It then ran a profile manager thing and then, at my
    foolish request, converted my Netscape 4.x profile to Netscape 6. This took, on my Powerbook
    G3 about 5 drive-churning minutes.
    4. Finally it finished. It then asked me to enter all kinds of
    bizarro Netcenter-related stuff. I THINK I have a netcenter account (that's my.netscape.com,
    right?) so I entered some info, which it took without asking for a password or anything. All I
    have to ask is-- what the hell was it going on about? I just wanted to try the browser, not apply
    for an East German exit visa.
    5. FINALLY after more whirring churning, gurgling and spinning, I finally got something that looked like a browser, albeit wearing the CRAPPY "modern" skin.
    6. Displayed on the screen was a totally ugly page with some kind of layered animation that was
    moving so slowly I could see the redraws. The computer felt like it had ground to a halt.

    I should mention that the above process took about 15 minutes. A typical Mozilla install for me
    is, oh, maybe 3 minutes from download to running it. During the install, there was no caveat
    about (1) how the zillions of files were temporary and that (2) I can expect vast improvements in
    future versions and that (3) gosh, you can help with this fun internet experiment, and here's how.

    In short, the installation experience just plain sucked.

    I should also mention that PR2 starting up for the first time on my Mac feels about 1/3 the speed
    of Mozilla's recent builds. The AIM client in the sidebar made me laugh out loud it was so slow
    and awkward. After getting no response from double-clicking a buddy's name a few times to
    send an AIM too, I suddenly locked up as about 9 IM windows slowly tiled themselves on the
    screen. I stopped laughing and my jaw just hit the floor.

    I must also add that during the install, the fake non-native widgets looked totally half-baked. I was
    having flashbacks to Mac's infamous Word 6 port. I swear to god Java's Swing looks about 5x
    classier than this awkward mess. Netscape, can you at least use "Classic" for the installer part so I
    can see some normal looking buttons?

    When i finally switched to the classic theme (the preferences wouldn't open at first, and then after
    I selected it, I couldn't hit the OK button, I had to Cancel) things looked MUCH better, but it's
    still abominably slow.

    WHY OH WHY doesn't this default to classic?

    Anyway, I honestly don't know what Netscape is thinking. I'm have a feeling this will be one of
    the kinder reviews by a Mac user in the next few days. (I *LOVE* the Mozilla project you
    guys...)

    To anyone who may have come here who is not really familiar with Mozilla, please do NOT
    judge Mozilla on the Netscape PR2 release. It doesn't have to be like this...

    Wait for PR3, or go grab one of the M18 nightly builds: (LINK) -- it's a lot better.

    W

    PS - I hope that they've got better bug report handling than they did for PR1 cuz I have a feeling
    they'll be overwhelmed.

    PPS - Sorry for anyone I've offended. I'm still a believer in this project, and if I made any errors
    I'm sure they'll be corrected quickly.

    PPPS - Stupid new menu items of the day: "Print Plus" (?!!!!)

    -------------------
  • Wouldn't it be easier to modify the config.ini file that comes with the Netscape installler to point to a local FTP/HTTP server (or even a directory?) You can also get at the "hidden" parts that are installed by default.

    (By the way, the person who posted that the installer is a Trojan was off-base; the sweetlou.mcom.com URL he spotted is apparently a backup URL for the installer. You can comment it out of config.ini or change it to another URL.)

    I haven't had any luck hacking it to recognize a directory on a local machine; I may try setting up an FTP server or HTTP server and see if I can get the installer to recognize it. But this trick should work for a LAN install...

    Jay(=
  • I guess I should be using it... There are SOOO many posts that say that Mozilla/NS6 suck and IE5 is a GOD... I mean, if it's THAT good, why wouldn't I want it? Where can I get a copy?

    Oh, by the way, I'm running RedHat 6.2


    It's at the same FTP site that has my MacOS version of Galeon [sourceforge.net]...

    Jay (=
  • This isn't flamebait, it's an honest observation.

    With hard drive prices well under a penny a meg, who really cares about size? So IE takes up 25+ megs, and Mozilla takes up 6.

    If having access to the useability of IE5 costs me a quarter's worth of HD space to have, then so be it.

    From a user standpoint, I want something that is useable and works. If i have to spend a quarter for the space to get it, then I'm all for it.

    Just my two cents.
  • From Win2K Taskmanager:

    Netscape 4.73 -
    11,370K Mem Usage

    Mozilla M18 nightly build 8/7/2000 -
    29,870K Mem Usage

    I would list internet explorer but it's so integrated into W2K that it's hard to get an accurate number.

    The M18 nightly build is the most stable mozilla I've used yet, but there are still some serious issues. The bloat is one of them. The fact that the preference windows are still screwed up is another. They either display incorrectly or, after clicking on a few of them, the "OK" button stops working and you can only cancel and start all over.

    Best things about M18? It's free software and it has a "Don't load images from external sites" feature which is great for stomping web bugs and banner ads.
  • by dreamt ( 14798 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @04:45AM (#872162)
    Well, I know under the PR1 release, they had a full downloadable file, to install for N machines, if you are on a lan. I can't find it for PR2, so I just did the next best thing, make a hack... :)

    1. ftp ftpi.netscape.com
    2. cd /pub/netscape6/long obvious path/
    3. grab all the files (recursivly) including the xli and lps directories
    4. set up a FTP server locally to mirror above directory structure
    5. edit hosts file on machines to install, point ftp.netscape.com to be host of your FTP server
    6. run their install, and it goes local
    7. take ftp.netscape.com out of hosts file
    Of course, could do DNS tricks to do the same...
  • I don't know how your post got modded up to "Insightful" when you obviously don't do things like read release notes or keep up with what Mozilla is doing.

    Here, yet again, is a quote from the M17 release notes for those that are clueless:

    "The M17 development cycle included the last of the major feature work
    that is planned for Mozilla 1.0 From this point forward the development
    focus will be performance, stability and footprint."
  • by Photon Ghoul ( 14932 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @02:53AM (#872166)
    If you READ the release notes, you'll notice that it says:

    "The M17 development cycle included the last of the major feature work
    that is planned for Mozilla 1.0 From this point forward the development
    focus will be performance, stability and footprint."

    So, the point is that performance, stability, and footprint are going to be the focus for the next milestones. Anything confusing about that?
  • Why would I want to store vast quantities of software installation programs that I will likely never use again, when I can just as easily download the latest version in a few minutes

    Because often the new version sucks rocks, and you want to go back to the old version. But -- oh, wait -- you deleted the old version. Too bad. Now you're stuck with Netscape 4.x forever!

    (Having seen what Netscape did, I now keep copies of anything that's good enough that I might ever need to go back to it. No more you-can't-go-back for me. Never again.)

  • by crow ( 16139 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @06:35AM (#872169) Homepage Journal
    <I>I really like IE5. It's easy to develop for,</I>

    Huh? Why would you develop for a specific browser? Just follow the standards, and your stuff should work with all browsers.

    Well, obviously, most browsers have some standards deficiencies, but usually they're in areas that you don't really need to be using anyway.

    I think the real problem is that web page creators think they're "developers" instead of "authors." The web is about information, not programming. If you're putting more effort into JavaScript than into your content, your site will suck. If someone goes to your web site with Lynx, will they still find it just as useful, even if it is less cool looking?
  • Mozilla is suffering from feature bloat to the Nth degree

    Yep, it is, because Mozilla is trying to be all things to all people, just like the IE/Outlook Express combo has done. However, you notice the stunning availability of the IE/OE combo on any platform other than 'dows. Mozilla is attempting to bridge the gap between Windows and Linux/*nix usage so that the "average" user can understand it.

    And a mail client is a useless addition too -- everyone just uses web-based e-mail like HoTMaiL or Yahoo! Mail these days.

    I'm not entirely sure what rock you've been living under, but, at least for me, I still use my "old fashioned" e-mail client (helloooo IMAP4!), as well as my "old fashioned" Usenet reader. Most of my non-technical friends prefer a regular e-mail client, as their web browser combined with a modem keep giving them "500 Internal Server" errors, especially when the silly thing disconnects during a mail session.

    A post like this is indicative of how elitist some in this community have become, even moreso than the old-timers who already do it well enough for us. Remember: not everyone has the technical savvy to do what you do on a regular basis, nor do many of them have the patience. If our holy grail of an OS is to survive, it will definitely need to climb out of the hotly contested business server market, and extend beyond the "oo this is a neat geek toy" range.

    --------------------

  • Please point out to me one place in this where it says I am not allowed to have height="100%" and width="100%" on an image:

    Line 51, column 66:
    ... ages/ul.png" width="39" height="40">
    Error: required attribute "ALT" not specified

    Line 57, column 69:
    ... s/hor.png" width="100%" height="11">
    Error: required attribute "ALT" not specified

    Line 63, column 66:
    ... ages/ur.png" width="40" height="40">
    Error: required attribute "ALT" not specified

    Line 73, column 107:
    ... f" width="11" height="100%" border="0" align="top">
    Error: required attribute "ALT" not specified

    I am not arguing that the rest of the page does not have it's problems. I am arguing that height="100%" and width="100%" are legit and have not worked ever in Mozilla.
  • Bzzzzt! Wrong answer!

    Check this out [w3.org].

  • Unfortunately, no.

    Yes, the bug is there per this one - but only 1/2 way, as it is only dealing with width=, not height= (unless I missed something in reading over it).

    I have been submitting this bug to there since around March/April of 1999 that I know of for sure, and I am pretty sure I was submitting it way before then as well when I saw it break in Netscape, which is what prompted my comment in my original message.

    Thanks for bringing this one to my attention though. It verifies I am not crazy. :)

  • So what? IE had *NOTHING* and then Microsoft marketed the snot out of it. If you think AOL won't market the hell out of Netscape 6 when it is released then you probably have another thing coming. AOL will probably ship an AOL CD for every single platform that they can using Netscape 6 and it will be everywhere. It comes down to the amount of money, and the gain that the end user will get (or not) for going with a different browser. Sure I.E. is "there" for every Windows user, but even they don't want to HAVE to use it. Mac users are waiting for something better than IE to show up. And as for the rest of us Linux zealots -- well we can't seem to wait for an alternative.

    When it comes down to it Netscape 6 will do big and wonderful things, but it will not be the Netscape we used to know and love - the days of 3x and early 4x are now very long gone.
  • Thats IF AOL decides to market it. AOL bought Netscape more because of its Netcenter portal than because of the technology. And presently AOL is in a contract with MS that binds it to use IE in their AOL CDs

    Have you ever known AOL *not* to market something that they spent even a dime on? Or didn't even develop? And as per the contract, I doubt that AOL will even bat an eye about it. Microsoft doesn't want any bad press about it, and if AOL makes the option then they are helping to expand the customer base beyond just windows.

    And let me guess: this will happen Real Soon Now (C)

    I'm lost - are you being cynical, bitter, or just downright elitist?

  • by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @12:56AM (#872186)
    From the release notes [mozilla.org] -
    Make sure the directory is writeable, Mozilla requires that the person who runs the application have write permission to the directory where Mozilla is installed.
    We've all been expecting clueless Windows developers to start insisting on this kind of thing once Linux gets popular enough for ports, but I'm a bit surprised that there's no one on the Mozilla team that knows what multi-user systems are all about.

    --
  • No, Galeon depends on gnome libs
  • by nd ( 20186 ) <nacase AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @04:27AM (#872189) Homepage
    We get those same type of requests everyday on the mailing list, so we added them to a temporary FAQ. We don't support them yet because they weren't possible with the gtkmozembed API at the time. It's not as trivial as you would expect at all.
  • For those of you that think the default modern skin sucks (like me). Check out x.themes.org there are many cool skins there including my own, Mozbilla, which makes Mozilla look like IE on Windows 98/2000 ;)

    -ShieldWolf
  • I finally got Galeon up and running myself. I have mixed feelings about it. It's nice and fast, first of all, and I like the minimalistic approach. Up to a point. It's still missing a couple of key features that I need to do serious browsing with it. One is the ability to go back (or forward) more than one step at a time. The other is being able to open a link in a new window (middle click in Netscape). I use that all the time. Anybody know offhand whether the developers plan to add these features?
  • Did you try compiling it yourself with --enable-optimize and --disable-debug passed to the configure script? That helps a whole lot (you may also want --disable-mailnews if you only want the browser).
    --
  • People keep claiming this, and when you have Active Desktop running, the arguement probably has merit.

    However, on my computer with NT4 SP6 there is no basis for this. Yes, some DLLs used by IE are already loaded into memory, and this does account for some of the speed up, but actual application itself isn't. I know you are going to say "The actual application isn't the major part of IE" - well, that isn't really true either. IEXPLORE.EXE on my computer (which I guess is the UI to the browser, the support functionality - bookmarks etc -, the rendering engine, and maybe some networking code) is taking up over 8Meg rendering Slashdot. If I close it, that application disapperars, and I get 8Meg back.

    This is comparable to the 10Meg or so it takes Netscape to do the same task.

    Therefore, I conclude than IE isn't loaded into memory, at least on my computer.

  • Well.. it depends what you mean. Do I think that task manager is a totally accurate picture of memory usage? No, I don't. But do I think MS has somehow rigged it to make it seem like IE isn't running when it is? No, I'm not that paranoid.

    Just in case you aren't convinced, here's an edited dll usage thing (Just showing dlls I was watching for):

    With IE loaded:
    0x4550000 0x100000 * 5.00.2919.6307 11/5/99 12:00 AM C:\WINNT\system32\MSHTML.TLB

    0x1650000 0x188000 * 8/8/00 11:09 PM C:\WINNT\Profiles\Administrator\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\index.dat

    0x17E0000 0xC000 * 8/8/00 11:09 PM C:\WINNT\Profiles\Administrator\Cookies\index.dat

    0x1A60000 0x4000 * 8/3/00 3:54 PM C:\WINNT\Profiles\Administrator\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\MSIMGSIZ.DAT

    0x70C30000 0x241000 5.00.2919.6307 11/5/99 12:00 AM C:\WINNT\System32\mshtml.dll

    0x70EB0000 0x3C000 5.00.2919.6307 11/5/99 12:00 AM C:\WINNT\System32\mshtmled.dll

    0x711F0000 0x77000 5.01.0000.4615 11/5/99 12:00 AM C:\WINNT\System32\jscript.dll

    0x400000 0x12000 5.00.2919.6304 11/5/99 12:00 AM C:\PROGRA~1\Plus!\MICROS~1\iexplore.exe

    (Sorry about the formatting)

    Now, with not running, guess what? Those Dll's aren't loaded!?!? Wow! Amazing, hey!

    Now this tool wasn't written by MS, but maybe they rigged the API so it would hide IE dlls, right?

    Okay - so what I did was close IE, and then renamed jscript.dll (which windows wouldn't let me do if it was in use). That was okay.. Lets try another... hmmm mshtml.dll! I bet it can't hide using that. Nup... that was okay too. Well... maybe they have a hidden file system with copies of those files... so I start up IE.. nup.. big crash.

    My conclusion: If IE is running on my computer when it says it isn't, then I sure want to know how, because it is one of the most impressive bits of windows programming I've seen and I bet I could make a lot of money duplicating it.

    Sorry if I sound a bit over the top here... I just think the MS paranoia goes a little far sometimes.

  • by Dacta ( 24628 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @01:03AM (#872202)

    I'm a big IE5 fan. I think it is stable, fast, and reasonably standards compliant - despite the general view on Slashdot. I doubt anyone can argue that it is better than Netscape 4, anyway.

    I tried Galeon [sourceforge.net] the other day. If you haven't heard of this, it is a GNOME/Gtk based browser, which uses the Mozilla "Gecko" rendering engine. I was very impressed. You remember all that stuff everyone was saying about how Mozilla was going to be the fastest render on the block? Well.. it's a close call, but I'd say Galeon is pretty close to achievig that now (This with is M16 - it might be quicker now).

    As for startup time (always the problem with normal Mozillas) - it is now much, much quicker than Netscape 4 on either Windows of Linux, and getting close to IE5 (which is the fastest starting browser I've ever seen, except maybe Lynx or something).

    It's not quite ready for everyone to use - there are a few niggling problems (no animated "Page Loading" icon so you know when it is doing something for instance).

    The cool thing is that using this doesn't stop you from using XUL as well. For instance, I used it to ftp a file, and was surprised to see a new window pop up with a XUL based download monitor.

    Very Impressive. If you can't wait for the Mozilla UI to get better, give this a go. At least it will start putting a few "Mozilla 6" in web server logs around the place.

    Oh yeah.. I found you needed Helix-Gnome for it to work correctly on Redhat 6.2

  • by skryche ( 26871 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @02:54AM (#872203) Homepage
    All praise the mighty lizard... for the first time, Mozilla has displayed the PNGs at http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/pngs-img.html flawlessly. Good work, Mozillans!
  • Absolutely. Running an installer program like this feels like dealing with a call-center.

    'Thank you for installing Netscape, Your are in a queue. Your download request will be answered shortly'

    At least it doesn't play the 'William Tell Overture' in four part square-wave harmony or force you to listen to Phill Collins whilst it installs...
    Only a matter of time of course.
  • I'm really impressed with this milestone -- the first that I tested that actually works fine.

    My question (I read a Mozilla FAQ but I didn't find an answer): I have Sun's 1.3 JDK installed. The JDK of course includes all runtime classes and a virtual machine. Is there a guide on how to activate the VM under Mozilla? Is Sun's JVM OJI-compliant?
  • Am I the only one experiencing these problems: o Under Win98, it seems to render pages perfectly fast, but downloads many sites very slowly. On the same machine Communicator 4.7 or MSIE downloads these sites 3 or 4 times faster. o Under Win98, after 4 or 5 minutes of use, M17 and PR2 both with grab buckets of RAM for an instant and then give it back -- often enough to generate a "90% of resources in use" warning. If I run resoure meter, I can see the system resources take a dive and bounce right back as I load pages. These two problem make either version unusable for me. As I type this, I also notice that the cursor disappears from the text box when there's no keyboard activity. Very annoying.
  • by bgarcia ( 33222 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @02:32AM (#872210) Homepage Journal
    <rant>
    Mozilla maintainers - please, PLEASE, when you are creating a mozilla tarball, make the top level directory something like "mozilla-M17", or even "mozilla". When I untar that archive, I do NOT expect it to create a directory called "package". Please follow the lead of every other well-behaved program installed from tarballs.
    </rant>
  • That's funny... I clicked your link in IE 5.5, and all I got was a blue page. (Blue screen, anyone?)

    Almost as good as the IE easter egg showing the IE 'e' logo smashing Godzilla.
  • You really shouldn't be running Mozilla on a 486 anyway. If you need it, there's Galeon, a slimmed down version of the Mozilla rendering engine. But seriously, Mozilla is just now getting usable on my PIII 550; Whether it was optimized or not, it's going to be garbage on a 486.

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • They probably want to be able to brag about "X million copies of our latest beta were downloaded."

    Doug
  • by thing12 ( 45050 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @03:39AM (#872224) Homepage
    If you don't want to use the installer to download everything, just do it yourself - grab everything in the xpi directory and copy the installer to your local xpi directory and run it. No more autodownloading...
  • by weave ( 48069 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @03:50AM (#872226) Journal
    I certainly don't want to bother unless I get the neat feature that Netscape 4 has where you run a java app and it covertly turns your entire hard drive into a docroot for a hidden web server.

    :-(

  • I posted this basic thing to Mozillazine: I'm sick of the previews. Either Netscape should put out a *real* product, or just make us wait, but not tease us with "Netscape 6" previews which are basically a nightly build with some funky Netscape installer. If we get another preview that will be pushing it. One preview, fine. Two, and we know that you're schedule is slipping. But three and beyond we realize you are just toying with us while you putz around. This is not really helping Netscape's image. I sure hope the next thing the get out has actually had some effort put into something called "packaging", not just taking a nightly and slapping on AOL AIM and saying it's done. I'm getting really frustrated (yeah yeah it's free, but it's still frustrating being tempted with intriguing downloads that are just loosely assembled nightly builds and AOL junk).
  • If there is no other way than this then I call "bullshit". Their installer shouldn't be so brain-dead it doesn't even have the option to install off a file system. One shouldn't have to trick the installer with hostname games. What *do* they do at Netscape?
  • by Hard_Code ( 49548 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @05:33AM (#872229)
    It seems to be fashion to claim that Open Source is slow and never releases something final, and that's just plain FUD.

    Well, I have to play devil's advocate here. There is as much FUD about the benefits of Open Source as there is about deficits. Let me state it plainly: I do believe that Open Source in *general* can often be slower to develop, incorporate, and release *new* stuff. Open Source has been proven *excellent* for incremental development and bug fixes. The turn around rate is amazing *once there is a solid foundation*. But because Open Source projects are based on personal will, often things don't move as fast in the *consumer's* direction as a traditional cathedral monk-to-the-grindstone approach. Please, let's not be so blind as to not realize the reality of Open Source projects - their great benefits and their real deficits...it is only doing a disservice and reducing credibility. I have faith that *when* Mozilla comes out it will be of a quality much greater than any other commercial product of its type, but the price has been the long time to delivery. Suck is not doing any "marketing shit". I find Suck actually to be rather clueful. Let's just not spew venom just because somebody has insulted our baby.
  • by QuoteMstr ( 55051 ) <dan.colascione@gmail.com> on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @12:05AM (#872233)
    Mozilla is has been rewritten and shares no code with Netscape. Netscape 6.x releases *are* Mozilla releases.
  • While I applaud and Mozilla effort it is a shame that the newer browsers and the old all appear to require an excessive amount of if statements for the pages to all work the same. Plaudits to Slashdot for sticking with 3.2 but many sites suffer from code like the following:

    browserName = navigator.appName;
    browserVer = parseInt(navigator.appVersion);
    var browseR = "bad";
    if (browserName == "Netscape" && browserVer >= 3)
    browseR = "good";
    if (browserVer >= 4)
    browseR = "good";

    (from Dilbert [dilbert.com])

    And the rise of WAP has increased the problems. Roll on the days of XML and XSLT and at least things will be easier to manipulate even if they are still working differently.

    Standards would be a nice idea
  • Well -- I have to say... I just downloaded Mozilla M17 and I was very impressed. It is fast, seems fairly stable, renders things right... but one thing I did notice is that when I went to /. to post my reaction and tried to type my username into the "username" slashbox, the whole left side of the screen started scrunching itself until it was very small! Did anyone else see this? I thought it was pretty funny, myself. =) I'd report it as a bug, but with hundreds of other /. readers probably noticing the same thing, I'm not sure if it would be worth my time.
  • Have you used it lately?

    Just because news.com doesn't comment on Mozilla daily doesn't mean its dead.

  • I guess I should be using it... There are SOOO many posts that say that Mozilla/NS6 suck and IE5 is a GOD... I mean, if it's THAT good, why wouldn't I want it?

    Where can I get a copy?

    Oh, by the way, I'm running RedHat 6.2
  • As for startup time (always the problem with normal Mozillas) - it is now much, much quicker than Netscape 4 on either Windows of Linux, and getting close to IE5 (which is the fastest starting browser I've ever seen, except maybe Lynx or something).

    Internet Explorer 5 seems to start up so fast because it is already loaded. It gets loaded into RAM during the Windows bootup. Of course, this is also why it takes so long to bootup.

    :-)

  • I didn't really stress-test M17 or anything (was too late at night for that :) ), but frankly I thought it worth the download just because it came with a skin already installed that WASN'T their puke 'modern' one. I wonder how familiar-sounding is the story of going all over the Web for various alternative skins for Mozilla M16, searching for something that might be appropriate, finding, downloading, and finding out that it DOESN'T WORK ANYWAYS. :)

    I've also been using Galeon, and yes, admittedly it's rather impressive. I've never used Netscape 4.anything on my linbox/laptop/current computer/whatever - morals dictate against it :) - but Galeon is defintely able to get the job done faster than Moz, mostly because it doesn't have the rendering engine running four or five different times over just to get the UI working.

    I've also been trying out the Opera tech preview [opera.com], and, Qt notwithstanding, it's even more impressive in terms of speed. From one alpha to another, it can fairly easily beat Galeon on my comp, and Mozilla... it makes Mozilla look like frozen molasses. Of course, it's also based on Qt (good for some, bad for some), closed, proprietary, shareware, crashprone as any alpha app, and still uses an MDI interface at the moment. But at least for the last two it'll get better... :)

    Oh, and what's happened to Konqueror? I must have tried at least four times to get that damn thing working on my laptop (and trying to avoid having to install the whole of KDE2 beta for the first two tries), and each time it just doesn't want to start up. Might there be a plan of some kind to take the various sundry libraries that Konqueror uses out of KDE and repackage it into a seperate application? Something like that would be very nice...

    -Jo Hunter

  • It all revolves around this page of mine...It is 100% legit HTML

    Um, no, it's not. I'd suggest running it through http://validator.w3.org [w3.org] before you make a claim like that. Your page has numberous violations of the HTML 4.01 Transitional DTD.

  • Not to knock the rest of your comments but testing load times on Slashdot is a _very_ poor benchmark. I'm sure you're smart enough to know some reasons why but in my own experiences both seem nearly identical in speed.
  • by Stonehead ( 87327 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @12:32AM (#872268)
    I skipped the initial suck.com discussion, but I'll bite here. Let's face this fact: Microsoft can't be beaten on its own platform. Mozilla, however, is intended to do all the things right that both IE and Netscape did wrong. That costs time and you know it! There's a reason that features are being added..
    It seems to be fashion to claim that Open Source is slow and never releases something final, and that's just plain FUD. Because you, and I, and Suck are users and not developers, we have the right to beg and complain about final releases. But please, keep this Suck marketing shit in /dev/null until the Mozilla crew actually made it to 1.0! I tested yesterday's nightly build and except for keyboard shortcuts not being working under Linux, I thought Mozilla was fast, neat and stable. Give it a try and help Mozilla rather than just asking to bury it. Shame on you.
  • I don't know why people don't like mozilla (havn't tried netscape SP2) for windows. I'm using it right now (to post this) and it's fine. It loads is 2 seconds and is as fast as any other application.

    I don't know much about the mac version, but I can see people still use IE for the mac. For some reason IE for mac is much better then the windows version anyway (this could just be the API used). It would be hard for mozilla to compete
  • As usual, there is a mirror via:

    SourceForge FTP [sourceforge.net].

    ---
    Drew Streib

  • by zedman ( 98578 )
    It's not bad, but.. 38M for three windows? Ian

  • Lots of crap while downloading, *ads* while downloading (It better not have installed that advert.dll nonsense), tedious registration (note to developers: if I have to uncheck boxes to remove myself from mailing lists, that is OPT OUT, not OPT IN!)... Then it crashed on startup.

    Vanilla Mozilla is good. I wish it had working https support and (sometimes) Java -- that's what NS6 should be, really. I am worried.
  • by Sir_Winston ( 107378 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @01:41AM (#872305)
    Just like the subject line says. Of course Netscape 6 sucks ass, it's made by AOL, the same fine folks who brought us that helpdesk nightmare and lawsuit waiting to happen, AOL 5.0. Seriously, no one can blame Mozilla for AOL's incompetence. And, I don't care if Netscape 6PRwhatever is going to be most people's introduction to Mozilla, because there's still plenty of time for Mozilla/Netscape 6 Final to prove themselves. After all, did you ever run Netscape 0.9, the prerelease version of Netscape 1.0? It was horrid, horrid, and evil, and made Mosaic look like the future of the Net. Or, ever run early versions of IE? My GOD, the hooror that was IE before way into version 3.x still haunts me in my dreams.

    Fact is, these days people are more adventurous about what software they install, as evidenced by stuff like Neoplanet, the front end for IE which many, many people download just to get skinning functionality, and other eye candy like WindowBlinds (think Enlightenment for Windows). When Mozilla gets final, people will download it, and people will be pleased. They'll not only get skinning, but more/better functionality than IE, and other useful integrated apps. All in all, this snafu has absolutely no effect on the viability of final releases of Mozilla/Netscape and their future popularity, except of course for the fact that AOL will probably fuck it up again when they release Netscape 6.0 final.

    And as an aside, why the flying fucking sweet mother of jeezus h. christ would anyone want to install over the net, DSL or no DSL, when the sane thing to do is just download a complete installer and then work from there? that's a very disturbing trend I've been bothered by. For the love of God, you should always download a whole installation program, and store it for possible future use. Why would anyone want to risk getting disconnected during install, or getting a slow connection to the server during install, or having to download the whole thing over again later for a re-install? I think people are getting too used to getting programs for free, that they no longer bother to keep potentially useful installers around. After all, the version you love of a piece of software might be a pain in the ass to find a good ways down the line, but if you keep a local copy you'll never have to download again barring tragic accidents. It especially annoys me when companies make only the barebones installer easy to find, hiding the complete package on the server someplace; Apple has done this with Quicktime, making it difficult to find the full installer, but linking the Net installer all over the place. People ought to complain loudly about such foolishness.

    And some of the problems you mentioned were possibly due to poor multitasking by MacOS; as improved as OS 9 is, it still has very poor multitasking. All it takes is too many processes running, and it'll sometimes choke and run too slowly. And, let's see--you were installing over the net, and that's at least two and probably more programs running; two or three programs can usually run fine, but any other running apps could have contributed to a slow system. And then, after it had installed and you were running Netscape 6PR2, how much stuff altogether was running, in addition to Netscape and AIM? AOL deserves most of the blame for their ineptitude, but never underestimate the ability of MacOS to bog down because of poor multitasking, either. OSX will fix that for good, but it's a little late--shitty multitasking in MacOS was one of the big reasons I switched to Windoze.

  • You don't want Galeon if you don't run Gnome...

    Does anyone know if there is a non-Gnome project like Galeon? All i want is a normal, simple, GTK or Qt front end!! Please?
  • Hey if I tell you that this is a known bug and give you a bug number will you give moz a few (dozen) more tries? :)

    I think that bug 39901 [mozilla.org] is what you are seeing (I submitted it a while ago). Yes it is valid bug and yes it is important. I'm very sorry that your bug was not being entered into bugzilla - you don't describe what was going wrong though. Do you have any bug numbers of bugs that have gone wrong? I haven't really heard of this happening before (but then again I'm not as active in moz as I used to be).

    Bugzilla can be a pain to use and most of my bugs end up being duplicates but it's better to have duplicates than for a bug to go undiscovered. Maybe if you had tried the newsgroups or irc (/server irc.mozilla.org /join #mozillazine #mozilla) you would have found someone who would have helped you out...

  • I'm pissed because all they wanna release for a downloadable linux binary package is some shit compiled for i686. Sorry, kids, not everyone runs Intel PII or better. I'm using AMD K6-2 500 and I'd much rather have binaries that would run under Mandrake (i586-optimized binaries). Howzabout a bit of a selection? I pity the poor bastard who runs Slack on a 486 and would like to take a look at M17.
  • by yerricde ( 125198 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @06:32AM (#872323) Homepage Journal

    By "footprint" did they mean "getting Mozilla to run properly in a GNOME desktop without crashing"? Guess they should add "sprocket" also for KDE.

    GNOME vs. KDE: the game [8m.com]
    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
  • Mozilla has been in feature freeze since M16 - a fact that would have been apparent if you'd stayed in touch with recent developments instead of recycling uninformed Slashdot comments.

    And to suggest that it should be dumped! I was using M17 last night and I found it to be remarkably stable and fast considering that the "final" release is supposedly 5 months away. Yes there are bugs but generally they're more of the "quirk" than the "crash" variety. It's definitely beta quality now and it's just going to get better.

    I'm sure Opera is great for some people - those who value speed over standards compliance, but I'd rather have an open source, feature complete and *free* browser any day.

    And if you're so upset that Mozilla/Netscape has a mail client, then I suggest you choose not to install that component when you're given the option during installation. Gosh that was difficult wasn't it?

  • I agree completely, but, the internet is now owned and used largely by L^Husers who don't really know what they are doing. There are often ways to get around these annoying net installs though since the installation source is usually installed in the system temp directory (this in windoze of course) so it is sometimes possible to copy this directory somewhere else and then try to restart the install.

    Or, OTOH, you could just download the mozilla zip file instead.

  • by Salsaman ( 141471 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @01:04AM (#872357) Homepage
    I think the bug [mozilla.org] that required running (once) as root has been fixed in M18.

  • by Salsaman ( 141471 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @02:59AM (#872358) Homepage
    Java being missing is not Mozilla's fault: see this bug report [mozilla.org]
  • by Salsaman ( 141471 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @03:05AM (#872359) Homepage
    The feature bloat issue is a red herring. Read the facts of the matter here. [linuxtoday.com]

  • by Aerosiecki ( 147637 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @02:17AM (#872369)
    Ack - okay, so this is actually being posted from PR2. That's not bad. PR1 wouldn't even run long enough to get here, but we'll see.

    Just some opionions right off the bat, though:

    First of all . . . fix the installation, folks. I selected a really minimal custom config. and what did I get? EVERYTHING. This is just bad. I din't want any stinking AOL crap, or instant messaging, or whatever. And I already have Java, and I develop in it, so don't install another JRE for me, please. Whoops, too bad.

    That initial annoyance asside, let's look at some nice things. Namely, the interface. I actually design interfaces all day long, and this one isn't all that bad. The widgets are a step above the standard win32 API, I must say. Had to tweak it do death though because it had so much clutter! Ick.

    But worst of all, what the hell . . . isn't this a browser? Can't we just have a browser by itself? I already read my mail with something else, I already use Instant Messaging with something else, and I really don't need another program taking up space to do these things! And if I wanted to register with your crappy Netcenter home pages, wouldn't I? Do I have to click past 3 screens just to tell you NO!?

    But rants aside, it's getting there . . . still slow, still renders a whole lot incorrectly, but hey it IS a preview.

    --
  • Emmm did you just put down IE's security in the face of the Brown Orifice bug in Netscape!!!!!!!!

    And rather than patch a bug that's so prolific it's already been on national tv news, netscape suggest you "just turn off java"

    :) Go microsoft
  • I just tried to run the NS6 installer and it is asking for username/pass. Did AOL decide to lock it up temporarily for some reason?
  • Well I'm using netscape too. Not because IE is unstable, but because I don't have the money to hire someone fulltime to install the security updates for it.
  • While I suggest using CVS for the Mozilla nightlies [mozilla.org], here are a list of mirrors for the Netscape v.6 beta;
    1. ftp://ftp1.netscape.com/pub/netscape6 [netscape.com]

      ftp://ftp2.netscape.com/pub/netscape6 [netscape.com]

      ftp://ftp3.netscape.com/pub/netscape6 [netscape.com]

      ftp://ftp4.netscape.com/pub/netscape6 [netscape.com]

      ftp://ftp5.netscape.com/pub/netscape6 [netscape.com]

      ftp://ftp6.netscape.com/pub/netscape6 [netscape.com]

      ftp://ftp7.netscape.com/pub/netscape6 [netscape.com]

      ftp://ftp8.netscape.com/pub/netscape6 [netscape.com]

      FTP sites for Netscape above ftp8 exist -- I'm using ftp13 now -- Netscape recommends ftp1 to ftp8.

  • by heatdeath ( 217147 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @02:50AM (#872450)
    I really like IE5. It's easy to develop for, it's easy to use, it's fast, usually not very buggy...

    And up until this release, I thought that seamonkey sucked. However, this is a very stable release. It's much easier than IE to install. It was a mere 6 meg download, and installed in about 2 minutes. The load time is also about 3 times as quick as the last release (which, if I remember correctly, took 17 seconds to load on my computer). It's also far less buggy. I've managed to post this, haven't I? :-) The biggest relief is the lack of memory leaks. M15 bled my system resources to death. This isn't even making my computer break a sweat.
    Another thing that impressed me was the time it takes to parse a web page. M17 kicks IE's tail (and, quite obviously, NN4.x). The slashdot home page takes 6 seconds to parse on IE, and only 1.5 on M17.

    Before this becomes widely used, however, I think that the following things need to change:

    • The remaining bugs need to be worked out. I've already encountered one bug that froze a window. No sweat, though, I just closed the window and opened another one. It's fine now. Of course, this isn't anywhere close to a production release, so bugs are expected.
    • It needs to have the freakin' JRE automatically installed. Most everyone who uses this browser will want it. At the very least it should come with it, and you should have the option of installing it.
    • I really have no other complaints about it, though. From installation to using it, this is a great program. Now the only battle that is faced (and an uphill one, at that) is to have web developers start writing their DHTML code for Mozilla. I have yet to see a site that works with it.

    I applaud the Mozilla team. They've taken what I thought was an unreal fantasy, and turned it into a reality. Minus some minor bugs, this browser is already on par with IE. Now the real battle will be to get it into widespread usage.


    --

It's a naive, domestic operating system without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.

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