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Mozilla The Internet

Mozilla RC3 Released 555

Posted by timothy from the moz-developers-deserve-laurels-and-gold dept.
pjdepasq was one of many reader to submit the news that "Those fine folks at Mozilla.org rolled out RC3 on Thursday I noted. They say it's the last planned release before 1.0, which I'm guessing is right around the corner. As a fan of the project (I'm using it on 3 platforms!), kudos to all of you!" Here are the release notes.
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Mozilla RC3 Released More

Mozilla RC3 Released

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  • Netscape 7 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mbrix ( 534821 ) on Friday May 24, 2002 @03:01AM (#3577607) Homepage
    With the upcoming release of Mozilla 1.0, Netscape 7 will be based on that. I really hope reviewers, developers and users will take a new view on Netscape so Netscape can gain some of the lost market share. I'm tired of seeing websites which simply don't care about Netscape/Mozilla support...

    And don't start saying "hey, I don't need Netscape, I want plain Mozilla!". You're right, but Netscape is for (l)users. If Netscape 7 has success, you'll also have more luck surfing the internet with your Mozilla browser.

    By the way, MozillaZine [mozillazine.org] is also a great source of information for Mozilla-fans.

    • Re:Netscape 7 (Score:2, Interesting)

      by oever ( 233119 )
      Unless AOL really starts using Gecko or Linux becomes bit, there's no big chance of Mozilla regaining the market share Netscape lost.

      It's just too easy for people to use Internet Explorer. Then there's the issue of embrace and extend: it's easy for M$ to implement the same standards as Mozilla. Then they just add a few new features that are not in the standards, but in all the tools to make webpages M$ sells. And people will feel obliged to use IE.

      A few things could help (highly theoretical): lawsuits, ranting users, OSS breakthrough.

      • Re:Netscape 7 (Score:3, Informative)

        by HanzoSan ( 251665 )
        AOL is using gecko. AOL 7 was switched to gecko, thats also why netscape 6.5 was renamed 7.0

        • Re:Netscape 7 (Score:3, Insightful)

          by aengblom ( 123492 )
          (Above is incorrect). AOL 7 is NOT using gecko. AOL is testing gecko with a version of AOL 7, but the 2x million AOL members are still using IE.

        • Re:Netscape 7 (Score:3, Funny)

          by mattbee ( 17533 )
          AOL is using gecko. AOL 7 was switched to gecko, thats also why netscape 6.5 was renamed 7.0

          And surely not because IE is 'only' at major version 6, and a version 7 browser has got to be better than a version 6 browser. I'm sure nobody in Netscape's marketing department would stoop to making such a facile point :-)

    • Re:Netscape 7 (Score:2, Interesting)

      by visualight ( 468005 )
      And don't start saying "hey, I don't need Netscape, I want plain Mozilla!". You're right, but Netscape is for (l)users. If Netscape 7 has success, you'll also have more luck surfing the internet with your Mozilla browser.

      Well, I need netscape anyway because some sites won't let you install a plugin for mozilla but only netscape or explorer. The installer gives you a choice of one or the other and if you pick netscape it says it couldn't find it. So I install netscape, install the plugin, then copy the files to my mozilla folder.
      • Well, I need netscape anyway because some sites won't let you install a plugin for mozilla but only netscape or explorer. The installer gives you a choice of one or the other and if you pick netscape it says it couldn't find it. So I install netscape, install the plugin, then copy the files to my mozilla folder.

        You might be able to save yourself a step in there somewhere with a symlink. You could either link Netscape to Mozilla or link your Netscape Plugins directory to your Mozilla Plugins directory. If you do it right, you should be able to select Netscape and have it automatically drop into Mozilla instead.

      • Re:Netscape 7 (Score:5, Informative)

        by bunratty ( 545641 ) on Friday May 24, 2002 @05:30AM (#3577920)
        Well, I need netscape anyway because some sites won't let you install a plugin for mozilla but only netscape or explorer.
        The Mozilla PluginDoc project [mozdev.org] was created to help Mozilla users with installing their plugins. Go to that website to get instructions on how to install your favorite plug-in without needing Netscape.
        • I'll say this: mozdev.org is great!

          Not only did it explain how to set up various plugin programs to work with Mozilla 1.0 RC builds, but also has a lot of great explanations on other aspects of Mozilla 1.0. Whoever runs this page is a genius.

  • Something interesting about Moz on Windows XP (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Nailer ( 69468 ) on Friday May 24, 2002 @03:18AM (#3577638)
    It uses native widgets. I.e., unlike a lot of other apps - eg, Microsoft's own Office XP - Mozilla actually uses Windows XP's `styles'. If you get rid of the GreyModern / Netscape 4 themes and replace them with the IE theme, Mozilla actually looks and acts like a rather pleasant and featurefilled native looking web browser for Win32. Without the security holes of IE, plus tabbing, popup control, and lots of other goodies IE doesn't have.
    • And without the speed of IE too. Honestly, Mozilla (and Netscape 6 for that matter), really redefine the concept of slow and bloated.

      /Pedro

    • Re:Something interesting about Moz on Windows XP (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Webz ( 210489 ) on Friday May 24, 2002 @05:11AM (#3577884)
      You are only partially correct. Mozilla does not and probably never will (in the near future) use native widgets for any OS because of (I think) XUL. Mozilla has its own rendering engine, controlled by JavaScript and style sheets. This allows for mucho customization, by web developers and users alike. It does not, however, earn any brownie points in usability.

      You are, however, correct in that Mozilla on XP inherits the visual style of XP's interface (anything Luna or Classic). But that's all. Mozilla does not inherit the accessibility features in XP. Should XP suddenly support a new input device for navigating sheets (or similar), Mozilla wouldn't have any part of it. The Mozilla team has had many a debate on how to mimic the keyboard shortcuts in Windows since none of the interface is native. For the majority of Windows users, however technical ye are, this is a moot point, because it just looks the same and does its job. This argument is most apparent in Mac OS X, an environment associated with pretty colors and UI guidelines provided by Apple. Many, many OS X users have not used Mozilla because it looks and functions like nothing on OS X. And of course, Linux users either don't care or don't have enough time/energy to choose a standard interface and then care. =)

      Mozilla, in all of its open source and standards-compliant glory, will always be a second-rate browser if not native to each platform of operation. Don't get me wrong, I love Mozilla to no end... I'd just like a native version. (See Internet Explorer, OmniWeb, Lynx, etc.)

      PS - I don't recall any version of Office using Windows's UI controls... Office always shipped with some new, bleeding edge control of its own, often to be reincarnated into the controls of the next version of Windows. Even Office XP, of all things, has no correlation to native Windows XP controls.
      • *Sigh*. I think we're all aware that Mozilla is using XUL and that XUL is an alternative to real native widgets. I also think everybody that read the above comment was knew that by `use' XP vidual styles, I meant `inherit' Windows XP visual styles to the point most users wouldn't notice the difference between XUL and native.
        • XUL is merely a nifty declarative way to construct GUIs. There's java implementations of it as well, and there's really no reason XUL couldn't be used to build native GUIs. The fact that Mozilla's XUL currently only targets the gecko engine is simply a consequence of the implementation -- it should be quite possible to make it render into native widgets and have them control mozilla "from the outside" through some sort of COM/XPCOM adaptor. But they really have no reason to -- end users are getting used to applications like mp3 players and the like that look and feel nothing at all close to "standard" -- witness RealPlayer, or even MS's latest windows media player on non-XP systems, for example.
      • > I love Mozilla to no end... I'd just like a native version. (See Internet Explorer, OmniWeb, Lynx, etc

        I read that sentence it is a bit misleading, if you want a "native mozilla" rather than just a native browser check out the following gecko based browsers (gecko, the mozilla rendering engine).

        For windows Try K-meleon
        k-meleon.sf.net
        windows look and feel, gecko rendering engine

        For Mac see Fizilla: or, for the boring, "Mozilla for MacOS X"
        http://www.mozilla.org/ports/fizzilla/

        This page is quite informative
        http://www.mozilla.org/projects/distr os.html
        http://www.mozilla.org/projects/embedding /examples / ndex.html

  • Any ideas as to when... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gusnz ( 455113 ) on Friday May 24, 2002 @03:19AM (#3577641) Homepage
    ...the DHTML performance will increase?

    The current series has a bad bug in DHTML animation performance [mozilla.org] that I've noticed -- performance regressed in the 0.97 -> 0.98 release, and ever since then rapid animations etc. have often not rendered correctly.

    Read through the bugzilla entry there -- apparently some experimental builds have 450% increased JavaScript animation speed, some test are linked to try it out yourself. Does anyone more in touch with the Moz project internals than I have an idea as to when this will be integrated with the main branch of the code -- I heard 1.01 was the target a while back?

    I say this as Moz is looking more and more likely to turn up on user's desktops as part of AOL/Compuserve/whatever as they escape from MS's browser licensing terms. Bugs in release candidates are fine (that's what they're there for) but if mass-market NS7 has shortfalls like these, it could spell trouble for JavaScript developers like me.

    Anyway, more power to the Mozilla project! It's good to see a truly free, standards compliant, cross-platform browser out there. Looking back a year, I wonder what it'll be like in a year's time...
    • sorry to tell you this, but your link to bugzilla is pointless...

      you see they are one of the few sites out there that knows to block referrer hits from slashdot (guessin it killed em once or twice, but hey at least they learned)

      doesn't mean your point is any less valid, just that bugzilla knows better than to be slahdotted ;)

  • Some Questions I can't find Answers to... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    1) What version of Mozilla is Netscape 7.0pr1 based on?
    2) Is Mozilla ever likely to support the auto-update function that Netscape has just included? (Being a sys-admin of 50-odd M$ boxes makes it a nightmare contemplating to update them all with the latest release)
    3) I know the party for 1.0 is June 12th but what is the projected/updated release date?
    • 1) What version of Mozilla is Netscape 7.0pr1 based on?

      As the userAgent string says : "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.0rc2) Gecko/20020513 Netscape/7.0b1"
      Thus on the 1.0 branch.

      2) Is Mozilla ever likely to support the auto-update function that Netscape has just included? (Being a sys-admin of 50-odd M$ boxes makes it a nightmare contemplating to update them all with the latest release)

      It is in the prefs but I doubt it will happen since Mozilla releases are not targeted towards end-users.

      3) I know the party for 1.0 is June 12th but what is the projected/updated release date?

      The usual response: "when it's ready" :)
      But I think it will be ready for that date (pure speculation)

    • 1) 1.0RC2
      2) I don't know, but I can't find anything in bugzilla about it.
      3) Judging from the article at Mozillazine, could be as early as next week.

  • Moz on 64bit platforms ? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by jarkko ( 40871 )
    Any comments on mozilla running with native 64bit machines ? I'm "running" 1.0rc1 on NetBSD-alpha and it's slow. I could render pages faster using pen and paper. Typing an URL takes about 15 seconds for slashdot.org and rendering the page gives me enought time to fetch coffee.

    So, has any tried it on sparc64 or *-alpha ?

  • Building a great barn door after horses are gone (Score:4, Insightful)

    by schnell ( 163007 ) <me&schnell,net> on Friday May 24, 2002 @03:34AM (#3577675) Homepage
    Please don't get me wrong. I *really* like Mozilla for Linux and MacOS X (Fizzilla) - and this certainly isn't intended to be flamebait - but I can't help but think that these notices are only of interest to the geek community (yes, I know that's Slashdot's audience, but I'm talking about the larger user base here).

    I'm very interested in Mozilla's progress (and by extension, Netscape 7.x's progress), but I can't help but think that I'm part of a very small minority of the web-browsing world. (Once again, yes I know that as a Mac user I'm already part of a small minority, but bear with me here). It's great to see that Mozilla is finally nearing the magical 1.0 release, but I can't help but feel that all the time it's taken to get there has made the upcoming blessed event moot for the vast majority of web users.

    Regardless of how circumstances have changed in the meantime, we should remember that the Mozilla project was launched at the height of the browser wars, with the objectives of 1.) developing a supremely standards-friendly next-generation browser, and 2.) being an IE-killer. It's pretty clear now that while they superlatively achieved goal #1, they also miserably failed at goal #2 (marketshare figures for any mainstream [especially business] website will attest to this).

    As a web designer, I certainly applauded the demise of Netscape 4.x. But I also noticed the lack of adoption for Netscape >=6 and Mozilla, and found (much to my disappointment) that instead of standardizing on standardization, I instead needed to standardize on IE (for Win and Mac; between the two, that's all my company's bosses cared about).

    I'd love it if this was really a widely-awaited release along the lines of a new Windows or MacOS version, a new release of Office or Photoshop, or even a new major-number Linux kernel. Instead, this looks like an unfortunately vocal-minority-based event, like a new release of Opera or KDE.

    So, I guess my question for other Slashdotters to answer is: how much do we think that the world at large cares about this? Should Mozilla have turned out an inferior product before the larger, non-geek world stopped caring?
    • Well, the AOL/Compuserve shift to Mozilla as a browser will certainly have an impact. That's a lot of users about to start using Mozilla, and hopefully as a result a lot of sites providing HTML that works with it, rather than relying on the flawed assumption that everyone who counts uses IE5.5...

    • 2.) being an IE-killer. It's pretty clear now that while they superlatively achieved goal #1, they also miserably failed at goal #2

      If AOL started using it, things might easily change.

      That's the idea, anyway...
    • I think that from a webdesigner point of view mozilla as such may not be that big a deal, but in time the underlaying engine WILL show up in all kinds of applications, pda's, phones, cashregisters and software. Since it's cheap, standards-compliant engine with source available.
      If this will force the web towards real standards (instead of MS defacto standards of the week) it will be a good thing.

      Besides that, I think that a lot of applications which are being developed in Moz. are waiting the 1.0 release before comming out. As I understood, the api's haven't been stable until now.

    • AOL, IBM etc may disagree... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MosesJones ( 55544 ) on Friday May 24, 2002 @04:16AM (#3577780) Homepage

      Today its a mute point because its IE all the way, however with Big Blue pushing Linux to all and sundry, Sun with its StarOffice suite not exactly hindering progress this means that Mozilla does have a chance to push back in the same manner as IE did over netscape first time around.

      And the final, and critical, element is AOL... don't underestimate the worlds largest ISP, if AOL switch to Netscape then suddenly its game on again.

      So no one cares today, but then no-one cared about IE when it was first released.
    • Your right most people don't care about "mozilla" as a browser.

      Why should they but the truth is that it's the engine that people will care about. The truth is that all the IE browsers AREN'T IE. Some of them are infact custom browers like NeoPlanet [neoplanet.com] that use the IE API. The same goes for a lot of ebooks, Info Terminals(At Malls etc), AOL (an all the other ISP that come with a custom browser) use the IE api.

      Most mum's and dad's will never change the browser or upgrade it. Most of them still probable use IE 4 or 5(depending on when they bought there computer)

      Mobile phones are getting browsers and while this is a small market currently it will get bigger and mozilla will most likely get a larger slice of it than IE.

      Basically the point I am trying to make is that Mozilla isn't really going to make a big splash as a browser but then again it was never supposed to(One of the first things you read at the web site is for "testing purposes only"). What mozilla does have is alot of partners = other companies that use the rendering engine in there product and this is where I expect mozilla to go well. After all there is nothing worse than to have to say "for my pogram to work you have to first download someone else program which I can't provide legally" or "to fix X bug in my custom browser go to Y site and download the patch to fix there broser which will fix there bug"

      The biggest problem is that MS won't fix IE bugs to make it standard becuse that will a)make other browsers work better. b)break either the current IE or the older versions IE. This means that MS is actually encouraged to stay non-standard complient.
    • I'm hoping that Mozilla's 1.0 release will be a stimulant for other apps bearing different names, but still being Mozilla. AOL will be one, and Netscape will be another, but who's to say it'll stop there?

      Mozilla will have become a platform to build things on. And I'm not talking about the enormous potential to build full apps on it like Komodo, but the simple fact that anyone can make a web browser in to whatever they want, and release it now. The Fastrack platform's biggest derivative wasn't that of its own creators (Kazaa) but that of someone who took the platform and put their own spin on it (Morpheus). Similarly, Gnutella is still kicking with the likes of Limewire and Bearshare. They're all running off the same basic springboard, but they do it their own way.

      I think, and hope, what we'll see with Mozilla is much the same thing. People will come up with some wacky idea and use Mozilla to implement it. Sure, they might have embedded the IE component in to an app and called it a day, but who's to say that'll continue? Mozilla will hopefully be the basis for something great, but what it is I can't say. It'll sneak up on us from behind.

    • Re:Building a great barn door after horses are gon (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rseuhs ( 322520 ) on Friday May 24, 2002 @05:31AM (#3577925)
      In the long run, Mozilla has good chances of becoming the standard webbrowser:

      • 35 million AOL users will sooner or later upgrade to a Mozilla-based browser.
      • There are 100 million Playstations and 30 million PS2 sold. PS3 will use Linux and Mozilla for Internet connectivity. If PS3 sells as well as those (and I've no doubt it will) -> More millions on Mozilla. Of course Mozilla can and will be used on many other embedded applications, too.
      • Yes, Linux is also starting to make inroads on the desktop.
      • Mozilla's ability to be truely cross-platform will appeal. People will use it at work because they know it from their PS3 at home etc.

      Of course this doesn't happen overnight. It will take a couple of years, but the people I have shown it to were quite positive about Mozilla.

    • how much do we think that the world at large cares about this? Should Mozilla have turned out an inferior product before the larger, non-geek world stopped caring?

      I think you're taking the wrong approach. Mozilla is very important, but not for desktop Windows users.

      There are increasing numbers of consumer electronics items which will have an embedded web browser. Mozilla gives developers the choice of not using an MS product to do this. It is of course also important for Linux distributions - Linux on the desktop hasn't happened yet, but at least with a good alternative browser to IE, it can happen.

      The web browsing sphere is exanding, and is much bigger than just Windows desktop users. Without Mozilla, that expansion couldn't take place without Microsoft's blessing. With Mozilla, it gives developers a chance to innovate without having to do Microsoft's bidding.
    • "2.) being an IE-killer. It's pretty clear now that while they superlatively achieved goal #1, they also miserably failed at goal #2"

      Looking for a 800 pound Gorilla as an "IE-killer" is the wrong approach. Mozilla is going to be more like a school of Piranaha taking lots of little bites out of IE's market share.

      AOL will take a bite when they switch to Gecko, though all the AOL users won't upgrade at once. Linux desktops will take a bite. Embeded devices wil take some bites. Netscape and other Mozilla based browsers will take some bites. With the 1.0 API freeze the projects at Mozdev will start to mature instead of endlessly being rewritten to work with the latest milestone, and they will extend Mozilla's capabilities taking more bites.

  • Heres the post everyone should read first (Score:5, Informative)

    by HanzoSan ( 251665 ) on Friday May 24, 2002 @03:48AM (#3577714) Homepage Journal


    Basically, this is what posts you'll see.

    "IE is faster, Mozilla cant beat IE"

    Lets respond to this post right now. OF course IE is faster and always will be faster because its build into the damn OS. MSN msger is faster than ICQ and AIM, anything made by Microsoft should be the fastest considering Microsoft has advantages in terms of knowing the source code of the entire OS.

    "IE has won, its too late, Mozilla team should just give up"

    Isnt this exactly what the IE team should have done back in 1998 when Netscape 4 was winning 70-30 in terms of percentages?

    "Opera's done it all first, Mozilla is copying"

    Of course Mozilla and Netscape will copy Opera the same way Opera and IE copied Netscapes Bookmark system.

    "Opera is better than Mozilla and IE because its faster"

    Are you using Windows? Perhaps you should try linux on your 486, its faster. What? You arent using a 486? Well stop complaining about speed, if Mozilla is slow, its because you are too slow to upgrade

    "Mozilla/Netscape cant render page X"

    Maybe it WOULD render page X if you stopped using IE and wrote that same msg to the site owner

    "Mozilla is bloated and slow"

    Try Kmeleon, Galeon, or if both those are slow try lynx.

    "AOL isnt supporting Mozilla, why wont they put gecko into their AOL package?"

    They have. AOL 7.0 gecko beta. Also try Netscape 7


    This ends all arguements you people will have before they begin, the rest of the arguements will be about bugs in mozilla, when will 1.0 release, why mozilla isnt availble for your obscure OS, or why the mozilla team took 4 years to build the best browser.

    • OF course IE is faster and always will be faster because its build into the damn OS.

      This is something I'm tired of hearing. IE is not built into the OS. It just happens to come with it. It also happens to use a bunch of DLLs that other pieces of Windows use, rather than writing its own (*cough* XPCOM *cough*) And just because something is "built into the OS" doesn't mean it's necessarily going to be faster. On my machine (P2 400, 640 MB of RAM, Win2K), K-Meleon [sf.net] loads a couple seconds *faster* than IE does. It also opens new windows faster than any web browser I can remember. Not all 3rd party software is slower than MS software.

    • I'm running Mozilla 1.0 Release Candidate 3 under Windows 98 (original release with all Microsoft patches installed).

      I have to say that the Mozilla developers really need to take a bow for four long years of hard work and taking a lot of abuse. It is now an impressively fast browser with pretty accurate page rendering; one really nice thing is that the Mail and Newsgroups module has finally got rid of a lot of the quirks that made the Messenger module in Netscape Communicator 4.x releases a major pain to use.

      Now, I hope Netscape ships Netscape 7.0 in three versions: 1) Base install, which is the web browser and Mail/Newsgroup reader module only; 2) Standard install, which adds JRE 1.4 and Flash 6.0 to the Base install; and 3) Complete install, which adds AIM, ICQ and RealOne to the Standard install.

  • Mozilla/Netscape usage & anti-Netscape sentime (Score:4, Interesting)

    by galaga79 ( 307346 ) on Friday May 24, 2002 @04:02AM (#3577742) Homepage
    This is not intended as flamebait by any means, but does anyone know what sort of browser share Mozilla/Netscape have? I have been following and pushing both browsers for the past year, encouraging others to try them out, but when checking the browser statistics for my website they don't have any entry at all. Right now the breakdown for my site is about 97% Internet Explorer 5+ and 3% Netscape 4, which is a real shame. Does anyone out there have any more promising browser usuage stats?

    It is also interesting guaging people response to Mozilla/Netscape on sites other than Slashdot. It seems like there is real anti-Netscape sentiment out there, an example being the response to Netscape 7 at deviantart [deviantart.com] where there is loads of "Netscape sucks" one liners. I could be wrong on this, but it seems ever since Netscape 4 a lot of people seem unprepared to give Netscape a second chance. Perhaps it is "cool" to hate Netscape because they are owned by AOL, I don't know

    Anyway that aside, Mozilla is great is most definitely stable enough for public consumption as the last few releases haven't crashed on me at all. As soon as I get home I'll download RC3.
    • In some markets, there still is some hope [slashdot.org], as I posted not so long ago. The good news is that our percentage Mozilla/NS6 using visitors is rising (albeit slowly). The "bad" news is that we definitely are atypical: yesterday we got about 16% non-Windows visitors.
    • With all the IE holes, I've been sensing more and more of an anti-IE sentiment. In fact the only browser that I've never heard a truly disparaging remark about (although I have heard honest testaments to its shortcomings) is Opera.

      And when I show people Mozilla with disabling pop-ups and tabbed browsing, anti-IE sentiment grows where it never existed before.
    • I've been using Charles Upsdell's Browser News [upsdell.com] for reliable browser stats. According to that site, Mozilla/Netscape/K-Meleon/etc. browsers currently have a 1.1% share of page hits, IE has about 92%, and Netscape 4 about 4%.

    • This is not intended as flamebait by any means, but does anyone know what sort of browser share Mozilla/Netscape have?

      While not hard numbers, check out the Google Zeitgeist [google.com], which has graphs of both the types of browsers visiting Google and the OS used.

      Netscape 4 has been on a steady decline for the last year: it's well below all of MSIE 5, 5.5 and 6- totalling those 3 would indicate that Netscape 4's share is pretty minimal. Mozilla isn't even broken out: it's lumped with "Other".

      No idea of the exact algorithm used to determine this, so it's always possible folks have altered their browser ID string to mimic IE to fool sites that won't work otherwise.

      (One other neat observation: note that the % of searches in English has been steadily dropping for the past year. The web is becoming more global by the day.)

  • Speed (Score:2, Insightful)

    by JollyTX ( 103289 )
    When discussing a new version of a browser, someone always complains about the speed of $NEWBROWSER. I've never had any problems with browser speed, not on any machine (well, except IBrowse on ye olde Amiga, that was _slow_ ;) ).

    Come on, are you guys constantly loading multi-megabytes of HTML into your browsers? I think the biggest problem by far is compatibility and not speed (thanks to lame IE-only sites).

  • Their planning to release with a big bug still in! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 24, 2002 @04:41AM (#3577831)
    Yesturday, as rc3 was released, bug ID 82534 (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=82534 copy and paste - they dont allow links from slashdot) was changed from Mozilla 1.0 to Mozilla 1.0.1

    To summarise, this bug freezes any keyboard input to mozilla under some circumstances - so its kinda major

    It only happens on windows, but is very easily reproducable (there are many examples of how to produce it in the bug thread)

    Two friends of mine tried using mozilla on windows, and both encountered this bug and were stumpped

    I cant believe they are planning to release 1.0 with this bug still in since it will for sure put a lot of people off mozilla for a long time - what with it being a point zero...
    • I've been wondering about this bug since RC1...it has happened on both my Windows and Linux machines. In my opinion it's a fairly major bug, since it you have to restart the browser to correct it (and if you have quicklaunch open you have to close that as well). It's bitten me in the ass numerous times (down to the wire eBay bidding being the most annoying and costly) and I would love to see it fixed.

  • Mozilla and acceptance (Score:5, Informative)

    by theolein ( 316044 ) on Friday May 24, 2002 @06:07AM (#3577994) Journal
    I have just read one page of trolls and flamebait and the usual anti Mozilla responses such as it is bloated, slow, non CSS compliant, buggy, no one uses it, etc.

    Consider this:
    1. It is the *one* browser that is nearly 100% standards compliant. IE's non-standard standards may be de facto standards in many cases, but those pages on the web that do in fact use those are very small in number and are usually on websites which are not heavily frequented, Microsoft's own pages being the exception to prove the rule.
    2.If you use Quick Launch with Mozilla, it loads part of itself into memory and then starts up about as fast as IE does.
    3.It is the *one* browser that renders pages in the same manner across all supported platforms. IE does not do this for example between the mac and Windows. Opera is one version behind on the Mac and it remains to be seen when they get to 6 there.
    4.It is, in my experince, more stable than IE on Win and Mac. I experience fewer crashes with the latest RC's than I do with IE on Win and mac.
    5.It is definitely more secure than IE. It has it's security bugs, but in no way as many as IE does.
    6.You can have an influence in the way this browser is developed. Do you have the same influence with IE or even Opera for that matter?
    If Netscape dies, Mozilla will carry on.
    7.For those who say that the browser share market belongs to IE, I say let's look again in a year. Netscape used to own the market and lost it because of Microsoft's tactics and a poor product that was less standards compliant than IE. This could change again.
    8.For those who troll that Mozilla is only at 1.0RC3 and in one year has only gotten here from a 0.9 version, perhaps you should realise that the Mozilla developers are not in a competition for version numbers with IE. Netscape plays this game and has released version 7.

    All that said, you're free to use whichever browser you like best on your platform.

    • Re:Mozilla and acceptance (Score:4, Informative)

      by killmenow ( 184444 ) on Friday May 24, 2002 @08:18AM (#3578402)

      1. It is the *one* browser that is nearly 100% standards compliant.
      For everything you say but this, I agree. However, this [opera.com] would indicate Opera is very nearly 100% standards compliant as well.

      I don't know if we should concern ourselves with a debate over which is closer to 100% compliant. It suffices to say there are at least *two* browsers that are nearly 100% standards compliant...and IE isn't one of them.

      • Re:Mozilla and acceptance (Score:4, Interesting)

        by frankie ( 91710 ) on Friday May 24, 2002 @10:42AM (#3579438) Journal
        [opera.com] would indicate Opera is very nearly 100% standards compliant

        You should read that page more closely. For example:

        We are currently working on DOM [...] Modifying the document structure is not yet possible (ie. you cannot add or remove HTML elements). [...] Opera does not support W3C DOM Core [other than a dozen specific methods]
    • My main complaint is that all of your points could have been accomplished much sooner, and with less bloat (Mozilla uses 17MB on my machine at fresh startup...I know memory is cheap, but *dayamn*, that will never fly on older machines...), if they had not decided to reinvent the world, and come up with some new weirdo GUI component and layout system. Mozilla is a major accomplishment, but I fear it could have done so much more if they followed the KISS rule and gotten some form of final usable product out the door long ago.

  • Could Mozilla beat IE if Netscape can't? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Plug ( 14127 ) on Friday May 24, 2002 @06:11AM (#3578005) Homepage
    People who started using the Internet before IE don't mind Netscape and would go back for a previous version. Most of the world see IE bundled with Windows, compared Netscape 4.77 with IE5 and say "IE is better", and don't recognize that Netscape could possibly change.

    Add one part Mozilla and shake.

    The sort of people who would use IE over Netscape because they had a bad experience with Netscape around 4.77 will be impressed with Mozilla, and they don't even need to know that it is based on Netscape! I installed Netscape 7 preview yesterday, which for most people may as well have been a Mozilla skin. Additions: IM, which closes when the browser closes and isn't important in a business environment, and no menu option to remove all those AOL popups.

    We don't need to wait for Mozilla 1.0 so Netscape 7 can come out and compete with IE; when Moz hits 1.0, we should be pitting Mozilla against IE. It doesn't feel signifigantly different, but there are improvements that grow on you quickly - tabbed browsing, being able to selectively disable Javascript - which make people stand up and watch. Netscape will have as many ads and links to AOL in it as IE has to Micrsoft. Mozilla is infinitely more pure! And when the last few bugs are ironed out, I'll look forward to seeing what new innovations the crew have in store. (Remember, as far as most people are concerned, all that changed between IE4 and IE6 was the loading logo and the widgets if you're using XP.)

    That, and maybe Mozilla could end up being the application that make people think "Wow, that open source community aren't so bad after all."

  • Bah (Score:2)

    by kraf ( 450958 )
    Mozilla RC3 ?

    1.0 is already on Kazaa !

  • better than explorer (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hopey ( 172229 ) on Friday May 24, 2002 @06:31AM (#3578048)
    With pinball theme it looks much nicer than with too big classic theme. Also finally I can switch javascript support and pop-ups on and off by one mouse click with this preference toolbar [xulplanet.com] tool. Tabbed browsing is also great feature. New rc3 starts up and loads pages as fast as explorer. With all these additional features and equal performance with windows native browser I can finally honestly recommend using mozilla.

    hopey
  • Right now, Mozilla 1.0 Release Candidate 3 looks really good! :-)

    Well, except for one little problem: some web-based messaging systems using Jelsoft's vBulletin doesn't display correctly. :-( I'm a fan of old Disney animated movies and a regular visitor to Disneysites.com, a major discussion board for Disney fans. Unfortunately, the way Mozilla 1.0 RC2 and RC3 formats bBulletin pages causes NO display of bulletin board messages (it just displays top and bottom banner ads on the page only). I checked this against IE 6.0 and IE 6 displays all pages on Disneysites.com's vBulletin BBS correctly.

    Looks like I'll report the bug to Bugzilla and also contact the Disneysites.com webmaster about the problem. They'll have to know, especially when Netscape 7.0 and the next version of the AOL software is released.
  • What's the status of this vulnerability [greymagic.com]?

    Basically, it allows reading any given local file and browsing through the local folder tree in Mozilla -- the site mentions 1.0RC1 was tested and affected, it hasn't been updated since then.

    It was discovered on the 30th of March, Netscape was informed on the 24th of April, and hadn't acknowledged the security researchers' notification within six days, so it was made public. (Cue flame war about MS's security woes...)

    Pretty nasty... anyone with the new build care to test it?

  • The coders are getting a bit punch though. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by frankie ( 91710 ) on Friday May 24, 2002 @08:32AM (#3578455) Journal
    At least a few Mozilla programmers apparently are losing a whole lot of sleep trying to get 1.0final out the door. Take a look at bug 110112 comment 62 (paste the link to avoid the slashdot ban):

    http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1101 12 #c62

    Synopsis: there are various crashes and freezes when using the "ask me before loading an image" option. In a bad imitation of Solomon's judgement, they decided to stop the crashes by eliminating the option.

  • In other news today.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by filmcritic ( 190324 ) on Friday May 24, 2002 @11:25AM (#3579730)
    The Mozilla Project today announced Release Candidate 28, in otherwords version 0.9999999999999999999999999999. The open source community has embraced this project fully and are doing everything in their power to get it released on time.

    When asked about the timetable for 1.0 release, they stated "We are definately making progress. Look for it soon! Internet Explorer XXXV will go down in flames!!!".

    Mozilla is the open source "clone" of Netscape. Netscape, if you remember, was a pioneer in the early days of WWW browsing. After being bought by AOL-Time Warner, some hoped that the huge cash flow would help the floundering former giant. AOL declared bankruptcy in 2010, bringing down all companies underneath it, including Netscape.

    All in all, Mozilla really does look like a promising piece of software if the Mozilla team could actually release version 1.0. Just wishful thinking on my part...

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