Three New Releases (And Other News) From Mozilla

An anonymous reader writes "A couple of interesting releases by mozilla.org. First of all Mozilla 1.5 was released. This is supposed to be the last version of the old Mozilla suite. Mozilla Firebird 0.7, the stand-alone browser by mozilla.org was also released today. It includes many new features, e.g. Web Panels. For more information see the newly designed product page for Firebird. A third release is the stand-alone version of the Mozilla mail-program Thunderbird , which has now reached version 0.3. The Mozilla Foundation also launched new end user services, like CD Sales and Telephone Support. As an effort to target more end-users, a redesigned website was also created. As always MozillaZine has all of the stories, too. Give these new releases a try, but please use a mirror if possible."

MozillaFirebird is the best

[Daath]

Even on my windows machines I use nightlies of MozillaFirebird as the default browser! It's simply just the best - The ONLY thing I have come across is that it sometimes crashes when you use back several times in quick succession (possibly when there are flash or java or the like on some of the intermediate pages).
Other than that, it's Firebirdlife is blissful ;) (not sure if I'm just ignorant, but that's a definite possibility!) :) Thunderbird is very cool also! (Also my default mail app!)

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[localghost]

They've been actively working toward it. There's been a lot of work on getting Firebird and THunderbird stable. Once they get to the point where they're as good as Seamonkey, they will replace it as the new browser and mail components. From what I've seen of Firebird, it shouldn't be long now. (Though I still use Mozilla for the time being)

Guess it's not the last release

[martinde]

Check out the Mozilla roadmap [mozilla.org]. It shows a version 1.6 coming out in December 2003. Of course, it looks like 1.5 is several months "late" (an observation, not criticism) so I guess the schedule could be a bit loose.

BTW, for us who are too lazy to go find out ourselves, what makes firebird better than mozilla itself? I find mozilla to be quite satisfactory, why would I switch?

The new Mozilla does not have MNG support!

[Anonymous Coward]

There is one major regression from Mozilla 1.4 to Mozilla 1.5: the support for the MNG image format has been removed. This means that all those who thought that they could replace the animated GIFs on their pages with the patent-free MNG format will have to go back to GIF or Flash. This also means that JNG, a subset of MNG allowing JPEG-style photgraphic images with full transparency, is broken as well since the release of Mozilla 1.5.

The worst part is how this was handled: support for MNG was dropped because the code was too large and there was no maintainer, but then it was never restored despite impressive reduction of the size of the code and the presence of several active developers.

For details, take a look at Bug 18574 [mozilla.org]. The release of 1.5 without MNG support is a sad day for those who love open image formats.

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[Mantrid]

The worst is when I have to switch to IE for the (very) odd site that doesn't like Mozilla - all of a sudden all these pop-ups appear and I remember just how annoying those things were!

Reasons for the slowness

[GarfBond]

For those of you wondering why the mozilla servers are swamped all of a sudden, it's because they just recently moved all the servers off of the AOL backbone onto a different host (one of the effects of AOL nixing Netscape), so we're no longer able to get oodles of bandwidth like we used to. Please be understanding while the servers undergo a slashdotting :)

Re:Mirrors arent't up to date..

[Lerxst Pratt]

Yes... well, sort of. I checked the page source for the filename of Firebird 0.7 and stuck it into Google. I got one hit and it downloaded very fast. I hesitate to post the link because it's probably someone's home machine. However, anyone with sufficient skill will be able to duplicate my feat.

alt. link for windows firebird 0.7

[klocwerk]

http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail.php3?fid=1032 985422

linky [betanews.com]

Re:The new Mozilla does not have MNG support!

[Raphael]

This means that all those who thought that they could replace the animated GIFs on their pages with the patent-free MNG format will have to go back to GIF or Flash.

Note that MS Internet Explorer does not support MNG either, and Mozilla has a small market share in comparison to MSIE. But on the other hand, it is true that the removal of MNG is bad news for those who intended to use it inside their company, if their company uses Mozilla or other browsers derived from it.

I think that is is possible to restore a part of the MNG support by installing an XPI file for Mozilla. This is not a perfect solution because it requires every user to download a separate package for MNG support, but this could be a partial workaround for companies wanting to use MNG in their intranet.

For details, take a look at Bug 18574 [mozilla.org].

Heh! The links to Mozilla from Slashdot are disabled. So if you want to take a look at this bug, you have to copy this URL and paste it into a separate browser window (or tell your browser or proxy to drop the Referer header, if you can do that):
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18574

Please do not add a new comment to that bug report. Voting for it is probably equally useless, because this bug report has far more bugs than any other bug report in Bugzilla, but still nobody wants to apply the required patches that would revert the removal of MNG support. Instead, spend your votes on related bugs, such as bug #196670 or bug #204520.

Re:alt. link for windows firebird 0.7

[Lerxst Pratt]

This "mirror" points back to the already /.ed ftp.mozilla.org.

Re:How about some RedHat RPMS of recent releases?

[The One KEA]

Like I said elsewhere, I use the Dag-Apt Firebird RPMS, which are available for RH7.3, RH8 and RH9. Linkage: http://dag.wieers.com/packages/mozilla-firebird/

Unfortunately they only have 0.6.1 packages at the moment, but I'm sure they'll update to 0.7. I checked the apt repository at FreshRPMS as well and they haven't updated yet either.

Re:Can't get mouse gesture working with Firebird 0

[Lerxst Pratt]

Apparently, you are talking about a completely different browser. Firebird does not have mouse gestures installed by default. Mouse Gestures is an extension that you have to install yourself. You can't disable what you don't have. ;-) Also, mouse gestures are AWESOME! It saves you loads of time if you're a frequent net browser.

BitTorrent link for win32 here

[Lev_Arris]

I'm probably going to regret this but I've put a BT tracker, seed and .torrent file online anyway:

http://tcnnet.dyndns.org/do
wnloads/MozillaFire bird-0.7-win32.zip.torrent
MozillaFirebird-0.7-win32.zip.torrent [dyndns.org]

I only have the win32 version right now, I'll try to put the linux one online once it completes downloading (and post the link as a child to this posting).

Note: My link is very slow (thus the first seeding clients low speed) so it would be nice if you could help seeding if you can.

Re:How about some RedHat RPMS of recent releases?

[damian]

I am trying to build rpms at the moment, but I think there is a problem with the source tar file.

Others are having problems too: bug 222241 [mozilla.org]

They'll still be developed

[Anthracks]

Composer I know for a fact will still be developed, as outlined in this MozillaZine article [mozillazine.org]. One of the primary authors, Daniel Glazman, has been hired by the Lindows company (seriously) to maintain it and he plans to check the code into the Mozilla CVS. It will be a standalone application like Firebird and Thunderbird, eventually using the shared Gecko backend that's in the works.

As for ChatZilla, it's available as an extension [mozillazine.org] for Firebird, and I've heard talk of making a standalone app version too, although I can't find a link to back it up. But the point is, the developers of these projects haven't randomly abandoned them, they'll still be here in the post-SeaMonkey world. Or as another poster said, you can always just run SeaMonkey, although I happen to prefer the birds.

Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last??

[KillerLoop]

http://blackdiamond.mozdev.org [mozdev.org]

The Black Diamond project is a project to create a distrubution of Firebird with many of the popular extentions added.

Re:It has to be asked... (ESC key)

[lukket]

"Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; HP-UX 9000/785; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030707"

You need to analyze it properly:
X11 means you're using the X11 window manager (X Window)
U stands for Unix
HP-UX 9000/785 means that you probably have a HP 9000 with OS build 785. Build 785 happens to be v 10.20
en-US means your language is English and that you are located in the US
rv is the revision of Mozilla (1.4 in your case)

It's actually the same on Windows. Windows XP is written as Windows NT 5.1 for example.

Torrent for the Linux i686 version

[McDutchie]

I just managed to get the Linux version as well, here is the torrent. [filesoup.com] Enjoy! (get BitTorrent [bitconjurer.org] first if needed)

Re:I take it there's some incredible features in t

[JediTrainer]

I was able to get it from ftp.mozilla.org. The trouble is the link on the releases page sends you to their web server with an http:// link. Hit them on ftp://ftp.mozilla.org and you should be able to download the new release just fine.

Torrent for the Win32 version (full installer)

[McDutchie]

Third and last: just got through to the Win32 version, here is the torrent. [filesoup.com] Have fun. (get BitTorrent [bitconjurer.org] first if needed)

Thunderbird 0.3 Win32 torrent!

[zsazsa]

Thunderbird 0.3 Win32 torrent available HERE [metashops.co.uk].

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[pebs]

That's too bad. Although there are times where Mozilla works and Firebird doesn't, and vica versa, I've never had to use IE for anything since Mozilla 1.0. Everyone I know who has switched to Mozilla/Netscape prefers to use it over IE.

Bank of America's page works great. Fidelity's page works fine. BBandT are stupid pricks for limiting who can use their site.

Sites that only work in IE are exactly the reason other browsers are sticking to standards, and should stick to the standards.

still one big complaint

[BigBir3d]

Firebird is still horribly slow to scroll up and down when compared to IE. Very annoying when using up/down arrows (or left clicking the slider area) to navigate long web pages (such as /. discussions) where you want to go up or down many (10+) pages. You think this would have been worked on. Load time is faster, why isn't scrolling?

Re:The new Mozilla does not have MNG support!

[Glenn R-P]

The LZW compression patent expired in the US in June 2003. In Europe,
Japan, and Canada it runs until next summer. GIF will always be technically inferior though.

Re:MozillaFirebird is the best

[edwdig]

Mozilla is meant as a reference implementation of a standards-compliant browser. At least they are trying to help the situation.

That was true back when AOL was funding Mozilla development. Mozilla would be the reference implementation, and Netscape and others would be the end user versions. But there is no more Netscape. Mozilla is now directly aimed at end users.