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Mozilla The Internet

Mozilla 0.9.4 Released 388

Posted by michael from the fast-as-a-speeding-snail dept.
asa writes: "Lots of bug fixes (1,467 at last count) since 0.9.3 including the ability to disable the JavaScript window.open() method during page load and unload events. You can find more information on what's new at the release notes and mozillaZine."
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Mozilla 0.9.4 Released More

Mozilla 0.9.4 Released

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  • Mirror (Score:2, Informative)

    by pete-classic ( 75983 )
    I've got the new release mirrored at ftp://nerf-herder.net/pub/mozilla

    -Peter

  • Actually... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bconway ( 63464 ) on Friday September 14, 2001 @07:53PM (#2301105) Homepage
    Disabling window.open has been around for a couple of releases now, it's just not the most straightforward thing to enable. I was most pleased to find that hitting enter after filling in a form will actually submit a request everyplace I tried it, assuming that's the intent of the form (i.e. a search engine). This seemed to be a hit-or-miss thing in previous releases.

  • Looking good (Score:3, Interesting)

    by boaworm ( 180781 ) <boaworm@gmail.com> on Friday September 14, 2001 @07:55PM (#2301113) Homepage Journal
    Mozilla is turning out to be a really good browser nowdays. I missed a few features in 0.9.3 though, mostly that it tends to crash while at java-intense pages, as well as encryption.

    Hopefully these things have gotten better, it is quite annoying when the browser crashes :-(

    If Mozilla is going to be able to compete with the major browsers, it (IMHO) has to be a lot more stable. I can cope with a page being rendered badly, but not with a browser crash. IE is still a lot more stable. Or.. perhaps it is just bad Java Runtime integration ?


    Thanks anyway Mozilla team, i'm off to the download zone :-)

    • Re:Looking good (Score:4, Insightful)

      by maggard ( 5579 ) <michael@michaelmaggard.com> on Friday September 14, 2001 @08:05PM (#2301159) Homepage Journal
      If Mozilla is going to be able to compete with the major browsers...
      What other major browsers? Opera? Lynx? The legions of other 1%'ers?

      As far as most webfolks are concerned there's IE for Wintel, IE for Mac (they've different code bases and behave very differently), Netscape et al v.4x, Netscape/Mozilla et al v.6x then generic text-browsers for ADA compatibility. That leaves Netscape/Mozilla as one of the two major names and the rest lost in the "other" catagory*.

      *Yes lots of browser-partesians will howl at this but for most web sites the vast majority of browsers hitting them regularly are IE or NS. No comment on quality or anything else, just reading the logs.

      • You get that info from looking at the logs? The logs are WRONG! Opera by default identifies itself is IE. There is a huge percentage of people who use Opera primarily. For instance, four of my non-techie friends use it all the time. My girlfriend uses it. I just showed them the basics of how to use it, then the cool feature only Opera has (like gesture navigation) and they were hooked. When reading the logs, remember this: a large percentage of those IE hits are really Opera .
      • > If Mozilla is going to be able to compete
        > with the major browsers...

        What other major browsers? Opera? Lynx? The legions of other 1%'ers?

        As far as most webfolks are concerned there's IE for Wintel, IE for Mac (they've different code bases and behave very differently), Netscape et al v.4x, Netscape/Mozilla et al v.6x then generic text-browsers for ADA compatibility. That leaves Netscape/Mozilla as one of the two major names and the rest lost in the "other" catagory*.

        I'm so glad you can speak for "most webfolks"...

        Although unfortunately I can only speak for myself, I can certainly say that we see quite a bit of Konqueror usage at our site. Nothing like competing with IE, or course, but certainly up there with NS/Moz. It is the default browser on a number of major distributions nowadays and has a similar feature-set to Moz and IE, so I think it's fair to call it a 'major browser'.

    • Re:Looking good (Score:3, Interesting)

      by chabotc ( 22496 )
      From my experiances experimenting with java, it is mostly due to the fact that mozilla uses a java2 envirioment. (the jre1.3.xpi and sun java and blackdown java plugins for mozilla are all 1.3+ based).

      Most of the applets you will find on the web will still be java 1 based. (This is what IE ships, duh)

      There are some 'known' problems, leaking resources, threads and not relaunching applets when a java 1 applet is loaded in a java2 VM

      big miss feature if you ask me, but in both sun's bug DB, and mozilla's bugzilla, its gotten marked as 'solved/wontfix', so don't hold your breath to see it resolved ;-)
    • Your mileage may vary on this one.

      For me, Mozilla is a hell of a lot more stable than IE. IE crashes on me not infrequently, and it usually means a reboot.

      The fact that I use Mozilla a ton under linux and IE in those relatively infrequent times I boot in to Windows really swings it for me.

  • Wow! (Score:3, Informative)

    by zachlipton ( 448206 ) on Friday September 14, 2001 @07:57PM (#2301126)
    Wow, what a great release! I think that 0.9.3 really is a key step in the right direction for 1.0. See http://www.mozilla.org/roadmap.html for more details on the roadmap and plans for 1.0.

    Also, as a mozilla developer, I would like to thank all those who have joined the project recently and done something to help. Even if you cannot code, there is still lots that you can do. I urge you to download 0.9.4 or even better, a nightly build, and to look at http://www.mozilla.org/start, http://www.mozilla.org/qa/help, and http://www.mozilla.org/get-involved.html. There are many things that you can do to help which will help get 1.0 out the door sooner and better.

    • Re:Wow! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Gerv ( 15179 ) <gerv@@@gerv...net> on Friday September 14, 2001 @08:02PM (#2301145) Homepage
      Wow, what a great release! I think that 0.9.3 really is a key step in the right direction for 1.0.

      Has someone been cutting and pasting out of their "Slashdot comments" file? ;-)

      Gerv

  • How to manage popup windows in the new Mozilla (Score:5, Informative)

    by davidu ( 18 ) on Friday September 14, 2001 @07:57PM (#2301130) Homepage Journal
    Ok folks, here is a really cool feature:
    The Ability to manage, on a site by site basis, which sites can give you popups and which can't. A very effective way to manage pop up ads. Here's how:

    No POPUPS whatsoever:
    user_pref("capability.policy.default.Window.open", "noAccess");

    But...if some sites need popups, make a zone for them like this:
    user_pref("capability.policy.strict.sites", "http://www.evil.org http://www.annoying.com");
    user_pref("capability.policy.strict.Window.alert", "noAccess");
    user_pref("capability.policy.strict.Window.confirm ", "noAccess");
    user_pref("capability.policy.strict.Window.prompt" , "noAccess");
    ... you get the idea....

    It is very cool, and there is a lot of scripting and other trickery you can do with these prefrences.
    Btw, this is all from:

    -David

    • Re:How to manage popup windows in the new Mozilla (Score:5, Informative)

      by Spy Hunter ( 317220 ) on Friday September 14, 2001 @09:21PM (#2301404) Journal
      Actually, what is in Mozilla now is much cooler yet, which is the ability to disable 99.9% of advertising popups while letting 99% of wanted popups through, with no user intervention necessary ! No need to maintain a list of sites that need popups to function. It disables popups during page load and unload, but lets through popups that happen due to an actual mouse click.

      Of course, if this feature ever gets widespread use we'll just see javascript links that open up advertisements in addition to their targets, but that won't happen unless IE gets this feature, which is unlikely. So download Mozilla and free yourself from evil automatic popups!

  • I love it! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Brazilian Geek ( 25299 ) on Friday September 14, 2001 @08:05PM (#2301155) Journal
    I've been using Mozilla's daily builds as my standard browser since M18 and as my email client since 0.8 and I've got to say that I love it - yes, it is a memory hog but I have more than enough memory to give a fsck.

    I've been trying to evangelize the users from my work place into using Mozilla since 0.9.2 and so far I've managed to get 10 out of 90 to switch (from Netscape 4.75 of course, IE is a no-no acording to company security policy).

    Way to go Mozilla Team - it gets better every single day, congratulations!
    • Not sure what company you work for, but IT is almost m$ bought and paid for. Exchange, IE, IIS, Office2k, etc..

      But in Operations (aka we make the money), we use mostly Solaris, Apache, Netscape 4.77 and Mozilla. Some of our admin tools wont even work on IE5. (Havnt tested IE6 yet...)

  • mailer works a little better, too (Score:3)

    by BillyGoatThree ( 324006 ) on Friday September 14, 2001 @08:17PM (#2301210)
    I've been using Moz daily for almost a year now for both web and mail. I downloaded a daily a couple days ago and it's getting better all the time. The most notable improvement: The mailer isn't a time-sink like it used to be. Even in 0.9.3 it would take me upwards of 1 or even 2 minutes to click "new msg", put in 3 recip addrs, type a subject line and then start writing the body. Luckily I only write about 3 emails a week...
  • Now, in the inevitable war between the annoying ad companies and the poor downtrodden browser users we'll get no more popups, but click-thrus or something even more insidious instead.

    I can't wait for "This site cannot be viewed without the EvilPopupsAndPersonalInfoCollector plugin installed".

    Don't get me wrong, this is a good interim effort but web advertising is going to continue.

    <obtroll>
    I also find it interesting that the /. crowd decries the use of Smart Tags (because they change content) but is more than happy to change content they DON'T like (popups and banner ads). Do I smell a note of hypocrisy here?
    </obtroll>
    • Actually, I don't think so, at least in this case.

      Loving Junkbuster to get rid of ads and hating Smart Tags because they change content is being a hypocrate.

      But disabling popups is, at least the way I look at it, different. You are not actually changing the content, just preventing a response to said content.

      I like the 0.9.4 version very much simply because I can cut off 99% of the annoying popups while allowing the one or two useful, or at least, impossible to avoid, popups. Like when somebody has a web app that sometimes pops up a tip window in response to clicking on a link instead of a whole new page.

      I don't have a problem with people tracking my online usage with cookies, because I figure they are entitled to some information about my browsing habits in return for putting up their sites. I don't even mind banner adverts, even though the only ones I'd have a remote chance of wanting to buy based on a banner advert is Thinkgeek. I just hate popups.
      • Loving Junkbuster to get rid of ads and hating Smart Tags because they change content is being a hypocrate.

        No, not quite. In fact, you're not even close. In both cases, (that is, detesting smart tags while installing junkbuster) it is the user's choice what he wants displayed in his web browser. Isn't it every person's choice to have a desire to see what information they want to see and block out that which they don't?

        With Junkbuster, one has to make a conscious effort to install it and block advertisments from appearing on their computer.

        If Microsoft (et al) had their way with Smart Tags, you would have no choice. You would see the links and if you clicked on them, you would be sent to a page that Microsoft wishes you to see, not neccessarily what you want to see or what information the content creator wanted to publish. The line is drawn at how you determine what "information" is. I do not consider any form of blatant advertising as information and I presume I'm not alone. Junkbuster gets rid of ads, smart tags modify information. It's really that simple.

        Regardless, it all comes down to choice. Junkbuster is a choice for the user, smart tags are not. If you believe that smart tags are alright, then I presume you also wouldn't mind Microsoft adding dynamic animated GIFs to your Start Menu and the occasional pop-up reminding you to upgrade to Office XP everytime you opened a Word 97 document.
    • I also find it interesting that the /. crowd decries the use of Smart Tags (because they change content) but is more than happy to change content they DON'T like (popups and banner ads). Do I smell a note of hypocrisy here?

      So I go to foo.com's webpage. I expect foo.com's software to give me the content they want to let me have, and I expect my software to display it based on my personal preferences. Nowhere does a third party need to enter into that transaction. This is not hypocritical, because I extend to Microsoft employees the same priviledge: to view what web sites they visit in the way they choose. If the Apache authors were to insert code that added a "Replace IE now!" button to the top of each webpage requested by Internet Explorer, I would find that just as offensive.

    • Re:Oh Great!! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by tester13 ( 186772 )
      not at all. I want to see what I want to see and don't want to see what i don't want to see.

      I'm not averse to changing content per se. I just want to be the one changing it.
      • I want to see what I want to see and don't want to see what i don't want to see

        My point exactly (even though it was a troll). In both cases the addition and deletion of content is user controlled, explicitly installed and optional. The only difference is turning off ads will deprive the web site of revenue from your hit, and the webmaster doesn't have the option to force you to view them (he has the option of turning smart tags off). If you don't mind ripping people off for their hard work then junkbusters and popup removers are certainly useful.


  • Everyone who complains about speed doesnt know anything about how computers work.

    New software is bigger, more powerful, and NEEDS a more powerful computer, RAM IS CHEAP, dont tell me Mozilla uses too much ram when you can buy a gig of ram for under $200.

    Get a faster harddrive, if mozilla is slow you are most likely using cheap IDE crap.

    Now, if you have a modern computer THEN you may use modern browsers and modern software, if you have a computer which was made before Netscape 4.7 was released, then you should be using netscape 4.7, your computer will never be powerful enough to run mozilla.
    • Mozilla 0.9.4 still feels sluggish on my machine, a 1.1 GHz T-Bird w/ 512 MB of PC133. It feels sluggish under both Linux and Windows. Yet the GIMP and Photoshop (not to menton my games) never felt so fast. If I can shuffle AutoCAD projects with 5+ million elements with ease, I should at least be able to have a complete, yet zippy, web browser.

      Granted, newer software is generally larger and more capable, and thus often requires more cpu cycles to do its job. Yet Mosaic and early (pre 2.0) versions of Netscape ran fine on my Sun SPARCstation 10 so many years ago. With advances in coding and cache techniques, not to mention the abilities of modern compilers and the speculative processes doen in the modern cpu -- why must a modern web browser run so slow??

      My SPARCstation 10 had a single 50 MHz SPARC processor and 32 MB of rather slow ram. Has Mozilla gotten so far out of hand that even the latest 1+ GHz wizbang PC can't even handle it? Is Mozilla actually more demanding than my Maya rendering daemon??

      I say finish up Mozilla. Release 1.0 'when it's done'. Then go back to the drawing board and start over. Bring in some of the old school coders, the folks that didn't have 4+ GFLOPS CPUs. Bring in the old browser folks... Marc Andressen, JWZ, etc.

      Sure, Mozilla will be fine by next year when it hits 1.0 and when we all have 2.0 GHz PCs. Browsing will be great at that point. But I pitty the next advance in browsing, because Mozilla 2.0 will certainly bring back the slowness. It is time to start over and do it right.

      • Re:come on... (Score:2, Funny)

        by Gerv ( 15179 )
        Then go back to the drawing board and start over.

        Are you committing to coming to help us if we do what you say? :-)

        Gerv
      • Have you really used Mozilla for any amount of time?

        On a Celeron 700mhz Dell laptop, Mozilla .9.3 felt just as fast as IE, if not faster at times (when going back to a previous page, etc.). With the fast start feature, it's just as easy to start Mozilla as IE. On my iBook (366mhz, 320mb RAM), Mozilla is again as fast as IE on the same box.

        I'm using .9.4 right now, and I'm pretty impressed. If 1.0 is optimized and relatively bug-free, then IE is going to be left behind (technical not market). This browser has given me some new hope in what was Netscape.
        • >Mozilla .9.3 felt just as fast as IE
          As far as I remember Microsoft software was always slow . Now I see many comments "something is almost as fast as Word, as Excel or as MSIE - that's great!". What the hell happened? Why this is fast today?
          Even, if StarOffice is much slower than MSOffice - that doesn't mean MSOffice is fast! Dillo, links, gnumeric or LyX is fast, well written software. Mozilla (which I am using now), MSIE or MSOffice is not.
      • We can yak all we want about why it's so slow, or whether it's slow on this or that system. Fact is, the benchmark is Internet Explorer. (Opera on some systems is also very fast).

        So a better question might be, given that IE is so tightly integrated into Windows (lots of unneeded code for a browser to have) why can't Mozilla be faster than IE? I say lose the useless sidebar and other bloat and just build a BROWSER.

  • Rather than sitting around and discussing how Mozilla should load pages 1.5ms faster than it does today, why can't we all get off the ground and help. mozilla.org has made it very easy to find the resources that you need to help out, espically with non-coding work. Yes, you did hear me say it: "You can help with Mozilla without coding!"

    If you travel over to one of the following pages on mozilla.org, you can learn all that you can do to get involved. Confirming the unconfirmed (from page number 3 below) is a great way to get involved, doesn't take much time, and is of a big help when all the many bugs come in after a big release like this.
    1. http://www.mozilla.org/start
    2. http://www.mozilla.org/get-involved.html
    3. http://www.mozilla.org/quality/help/
  • Come on already.... lets get a spell checker folded into the email client. I need ALL the help I can get. I tried hacking the 6.1 checker in to the last build, but no luck. Is there any word on when - world acording to me - one of the most basic things about an email client will be included?
    • Netscape has a proprietary spell-checker which it ships. No-one has yet found time to write an open-source one. Obviously, no-one at Netscape would spend time doing it, and external contributors are busy on other things. The usual trick is to use a build close to a Netscape release and install their spellchecker.

      It would make a good CS project for someone. Fuzzy logic matching isn't all that hard. The UI is open source, it's just the back end that's currently proprietary.

      If you are interested, mail me and I'll point you in the right direction.

      Gerv
      • I used netscapes 6 spellcheck.xpi with an early version of mozilla and it wored fine. It doesnt work with 0.9.4 (just tried) hopefully someone fixes this soon.

      • The bug for getting a spell checker into Mozilla is bug 56301 [mozilla.org]. If you can help out with the effort, that would be fantastic, as the bug is somewhat stalled at the moment.

        It used to be that you could install Netscape's spellchecker, but that is no longer supported [mozilla.org].

        PS Gerv: This message isn't directed at you, but primarily at the parent post to your post.
  • In Windows NT/2000, users can set in the mouse preferences for the mouse to automagically move to the default button in dialog boxes and alerts. However, Mozilla doesn't currently cooperate with this [mozilla.org].

    The bug has keyword [mozilla.org] "helpwanted", so if you know how to accomplish this functionality, please speak up :). Or, if you aren't inclined to programming, you can also vote for the bug [mozilla.org] (of course, you'll need a free Bugzilla account [mozilla.org] to vote).
  • I've been using Netscape Communicator 4.72 for the last X years. Why? I have over 82000 email messages that I have kept! I do not want the hassle of moving over to Outlook or some other platform for email - lots of filters to set up, _lots_ of folders to set up, and many many thousands of messages to transfer. So I've been waiting for Mozilla to mature. I have tried it a few times over the last two years - and always it has not quite made the cut. In particular, importing the huge number of messages and folders has been a real hassle (often crashing). I'm getting close to switching. This release seems much better. We'll see...


    "Blade Runner" the Comic Noir, "Akira" the Film [oomind.com]
    • Mozilla???

      Netscape?????

      These are web browsers. If your email is so important to you that you can't just archive (or trash) your 8200 messages and pick a new platform, why are you using a web browser for mail services in the first place? Here's a hint: They're not very good at it!
      • What would you suggest for an email client? This is really a legacy application problem. 82000 messages (not 8200) might be easy to transfer over if it was just a matter of the headers and content. But unfortunately it is also a matter of the folders and filters. I have tried importing into Outlook (both versions), but the process has been incredibly painful and I have been very happy that I backed up my email before I started the attempts. I'm not comfortable looking at a text-based client. Nor am I (currently) in a position to pay lots of money for an enterprise-quality solution. Please, if you know of a good email client that meets these requirements, let me know! Thanks.

        • I wish I could recommend some free ones, but (fortunately) I haven't used Windows in a few years. I used to use Eudora (a *very* nice and very capable email client) back when I was using Windows. The only downfall is that it is commercial software that you must pay for. I'd say if I were still using Windows, I would buy Eudora.

          In Linux, I used to use KMail until the latest release of KDE... For some reason, loading any KDE application takes an eternity on every computer I've tried it on. So I switched to Mozilla's email client, which isn't much better but it gets the job done.

          I'm going to try out newer versions of some of the popular GTK mail clients soon.
        • In Windows, I'd say Pegasus or Eudora, although there are other nice ones two. I'm looking at Unix clients now, and am moderately displeased, but Mahogany is looking promising.

          My point on the 82000 (!) messages is _why_ do you need access to them all? Dump the whole directory tree to a CD or six, along with a copy of Netscape 4.7 (just so you can read them in the future), and then ignore them. I can't imagine needing ready access to many messages that old, even for a company that needs to keep seven years of records.
      • Here's a hint: They're not very good at it!

        I seriously beg to differ. Netscape 4.7x is still my primary mail client after years of use. I have not run across a single other client that serves my needs nearly as well. I have looked too!

        On Windows I tried Outlook out for about a weeks worth of use. Back to Netscape for a far superior handling of address auto fill. This is especially true when your addresses are coming in off an LDAP server. Tried Calypso, Eudora, Pegasus, and all of them missed some crucial feature I've grown to rely upon Netscape's Messenger for.

        On the Unix side of the house the story isn't much better. Mostly using KMail instead of Netscape due to the fact the fonts are a lot more readable. Feature wise, it to just doesn't hold up to Messenger. The other *nix mail clients I've tried couldn't hold a candle to most of the cheesey shareware mail apps over on Windows. Every once in a while I really do like the ability to bold some text, or work a little HTML into my E-Mail. Nothing stable outside of Netscape can do that at this point.

        I'm starting to really like the looks of Mozilla's Mail, but damn is it memory hungry. Still, I'd LOVE to have an E-Mail only client that offered the basic functions of Netscape's without all the rest of the browser thrown in.

        Now I'll just sit back and wait for a troll to suggest that I need to go and code this.
        • Don't worry. As a non-programmer, I have threatened to pummel all of the coders who say, "well I don't want it like that, so go write it yourself."

          I haven't played with Mozilla mail since 0.8.1, but it was such an ugly outlookalike (hah! :-) then that I'm not interested in seeing if they've got it functional now. (which it wasn't then)

          I'm looking at Mahogany right now. A friend who found that Eudora and Pegasus didn't have all of the features she needed is loving The Bat right now. Check those ones out.
    • How are the messages stored? mbox format? Then the message files/folders are mostly portable between other email clients (Eudora, `pine`, etc., all use mbox). Most other email clients either use mbox format or can import from it.

      mbox files look like this (if opened in your text editor). Each file serves as a single mailbox, containing all the messages as plain text:

      From [user] [date]
      [headers]
      [body]

      From [user] [date]
      [headers]
      [body]

      [...]


      As for filters, I dont know.
  • I can't figure out to use the new feature for blocking window.open() attached to OnLoad or onUnLoad in the latest build for Win32. Can anyone point out where it is?
  • Menu item spacing is larger for Bookmarks Menu. Vote for this bug [mozilla.org].
  • The obvious workaround for advertisers desparate to be as annoying as possible:

    var w = window.open(...);
    if(w == null)
    window.location = "popups_required.html";

    redirecting you to a message telling you that you need to enable popups to use the site
    • In which case we hack window.open() to return a value indicating success :-) It may even do so already.

      They can't win, you know...

      Gerv
      • In which case we hack window.open() to return a value indicating success :-) It may even do so already.
        Until the popup itself contains a script that directs the actual site content to load in the original window. Or they just use an interstitial and use unique requests coded on the timestamps of the interstitial (thus defeating your cache while they're at it). Or they can put the ads in flash and use liveconnect to make the last frame of the flash load the page ... now you have to hack on flash (though you could probably have a filtering proxy munge the flash).

        They can't win, you know...
        They don't have to against the minority population of powerusers. Just Joe Average. But ultimately you can always vote with your feet.
    • Not to enter the site.

      It's amazing how much less irritating browsing the web is since I disabled popups and animation in Mozilla.

    • The chances or this happening are low because the chances of IE implementing the same feature are zero. IE is designed to deliver advertising to windows users not to make your life easier. As long as the sheeple continue to use IE in massive numbers you can continue browsing without those annoying popups. Once again IE (and windows) is a kind of a stupidity tax.

  • Speed ... (Score:2, Informative)

    by konmaskisin ( 213498 )
    This release takes 17 seconds to start up on a pII-233 (about 1 second less if you use a reall small bookmark file). Sure, that's a bit slow (given the Netscape 4 takes ~ 12 seonds and Opera takes ~ 7 seconds. But 0.9.3 took 24 seconds (constistantly) so thats about a 30% start up time improvement and there's more to come. I'm not sure what the estimates are but 4 seonds faster on my machine is likey possible and that's without the BRUTAL_SHARING stuff in mozilla yet (which will make it faster) or improvements in gcc, glibc and ld which will likely get startup to ~10 seconds or less on a machine like mine.


    Rendering pages is extremely FAST but creating windows is SLOW. The main hitch I have right now is on new window creation (which takes a long time to do). For example on a test page that uses javascript to open and close 75 windows one at a time (see the super simple code at this URL and either copy and make you own test or click on the link on that page):

    http://206.191.52.79/MozTester/pagebanger.html [206.191.52.79]

    On a P233 running Linux I get the following (you'll likely want to try this on a faster machine - it's the relative comparisons that are interesting).

    * Netscape 4.7.* takes about a minute
    * Opera takes about 15 seconds
    * Mozilla takes about 5 minutes !! (actually I stopped timing it's so slow)
    * KFM/Konqueror ?? (old version doesn't work try it with KDE 2.0)
    * Galeon ??? (not timed recently - the sort of more "native" GTK GUI might be faster??)
    * Embedded Moz etc.
    * Other browsers??

    On MS Windows the Mozilla GUI is likely faster (haven't tested) and IE of course is very fast ... However IE 5.0 seems SLOWER on rendering pages and only really flies better on creating new windows.

    Some of the slowness is due to the server so I engourage you to create your own javascript tests that just openm and close blank windows or something ... but the main slowness in Mozilla comes in drawing its own GUI ... Other than that the performance and speed of Moz is pleasantly peppy even on old machines (though lots RAM is recommended).

    • I tried this with Galeon 0.11.4 and it took about 45-50 seconds to loop through the test. At the end of the test, the browser opened the last two windows and just sat there for a minute or so and didn't redraw anything. I had thought it crashed at first.

      If one has the "Open Popups in Tabs" option set, the test takes about 7 seconds.

  • note: i'm predominantly running windows lately on my desktop machine. don't start with me. it's the curse of being a gamer.

    last year i ran in to NetCaptor (http://www.netcaptor.com [netcaptor.com]), which, uses IE and, among other things, is "tab-able", and i simply can not go back now. (i'm addicted to tab-able apps. PowerShell rules! having 20+ windows open at any given time doesn't). so, my suggestion to developers is an add-on app that incorporates Moz for this. i'm sure i'm not the only one that would love to see this.

    just my .02

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