Three New Releases (And Other News) From Mozilla 602
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."
Thanks to all that mozilla.org folks (Score:2, Insightful)
ghastly new firebird website (Score:4, Insightful)
anyway, i love the product. in fact, i'm posting this with 0.7. actually i'm just glad they fixed the form completion bug back with 0.6.1.
Looks don't make a brand (Score:5, Insightful)
Making the site UI more streamlined does make sense though.
Thurderbird needs a good spell checker (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:MozillaFirebird is the best (Score:4, Insightful)
NO, it should load them, otherwise the site is able to detect you're blocking the ads, and may take precautions. (That's probably why
Re:Guess it's not the last release (Score:3, Insightful)
For example:
- Why do I have to set browser.fixup.alternate.enabled just to turn off Firebird's damn "helpful" URL-rewriting "feature" (yes, I *didn't* mean to put a ".com" at the end!)
- Why do I have to set browser.tabs.autoHide to false just to have it keep the tab bar visible all the time like it should be doing by default (don't they understand it's *annoying* to have your whole window shift down whenever you open a new tab?)
There were other little minor annoyances, too, but I've forgotten those. Anyway, it's still Moz for me, all the way.Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last?? (Score:2, Insightful)
If it is, I'll be using it for a while. I've tried Firebird 0.6, and it shows
promise, but I got tired of installing extension after extension after extension
just to get features I've been taking for granted for months. Every time I
think I've got all the extensions I need I discover another missing feature.
Also, last I checked, some things I use aren't even available yet, though it
does seem to get better every time I check back. The long and short of it is,
even with *all* the extensions, Firebird isn't ready to replace Navigator yet,
and when it is, a way is needed to install multiple extensions all at once;
this nonsense about installing each one individually is crap.
Then there's Thunderbird... fortunately I don't have to be so eager for that
to shape up, since I use Gnus. But I get the feeling that if I was waiting for
Thunderbird to be a viable mailreader, I'd be waiting a while yet. (Then again,
I don't consider Messenger a viable mailreader either, so maybe I'm just being
picky in that regard.)
Are Firebird/Thunderbird/&c the future? Yes, absolutely -- and separating the
components out is something that has needed to be done for a long time. But
for the moment, the reality is that SeaMonkey is still the present. We look
forward to a day when it will be the past, but that day has not come yet.
Re:Why Mozilla sucks ass, part IV (Score:2, Insightful)
If you don't read slashdot, why are you replying this news?
Firebird is too.. modular (Score:2, Insightful)
If you want it to do half the stuff Mozilla does, you have to install a ton of plugins, and none of these seem properly "coordinated" project-wise. So you end up much like with Miranda - tons of functionality, lots of duplicate settings and no grand master-plan as to how things should look or where they should be in the UI.
I mean, the whole concept of tabbed browsing is void if the top right-click menu item isn't "Close Tab".
I just hope they "fix" these useability issues before dropping the good old memory-hog
Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last?? (Score:2, Insightful)
I swear that if mozilla.org stops distributing XPFE binaries off the trunk, I'll compile it myself until it breaks. I actually appreciate the "swiss army knife approach" that we have seen since Netcape.
Yes, Firebird is great, but the functionality of the XPFE app suite leaves FB in the dust in my opinion.
Re:Looks don't make a brand (Score:3, Insightful)
In attempting to be blunt, you've oversimplified the situation to the point that what you've said is frankly wide of the mark.
Point 1: A website is an advertisement. (As are all points that lie on the road to regularly using a product.)
Point 2: People, in general, are fickle. Advertising with the old web page would have been a battle.
Granted, a website redesign won't affect awareness. It's not an attempt to affect awareness. Awareness and impressions/usage are two very different things.
Advertising only works well when it holds newfound attention. The successful advertisement will take people straight to the next stop on the advertising chain: Mozilla's homepage. Here applies the age-old saying: First impressions last. The first impression you get is from the website - the point of entry for newcomers.
The old site was hackish. The main selling points from a user perspective were missed and there was no implied incentive to continue on to the download page.
The "midway design" (midway between the old and the new) was better but there was too much information on the one page. Developer information didn't need to be on the front page - developers know where they are going. And you can't describe every Mozilla product succinctly in one page like the "midway design" did.
The new design is an excellent front page. All the important points are immediately made to the reader. It sells Mozilla excellently and will get the attention of the user to a degree that even if their initial trials with Mozilla are unsuccessful they will return to what they perceive as a professionally presented project. With the old page, if it didn't work, it was probably forgotten.
A case in point would be the GNU project. They certainly aren't the most well known of organisations outside of tech circles but it isn't as if they haven't advertised themselves; GNU/Linux. Have you seen their website [gnu.org] recently?
Re:AA With X11 (Score:3, Insightful)
Granted, that's got SVG in it too
Really great SVG support, IMHO, is one of the necessary ingredients for making the web more exciting. This is the kind of innovation that is not just useful, but something the whole community can participate in.
- Vector graphics,
- independent of screen resolution,
- able to convey layout information, and in
- a standard format [w3.org] accessible to anyone who can download and read a specification,
would really help the web become a better place.Mozilla's market share is so low that it is not regarded as a serious competitor to IE.
The only way Mozilla can gain broader acceptance is if it not only does the standard HTML rendering acceptably good, but if it offers exciting new technology that is not available in IE.
IIRC, an SVG implementation is already in IE, but there's little incentive for it to be further developed. Arguably there's incentive for SVG in IE not to be further developed by Microsoft because a robust successful implementation may displace competing product lines of their own and other partners (Shockwave, Adobe). There's a potential wonderful application area to be served, but it will require someone besides established big-names to develop.
Re:mozilla 1.5 to be the last?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed, for us, the Slashdot crowd, this is not difficult at all. But If I tell this to 90% of my friends, then they'll say that I shoud talk normal and don't use all this difficult computer science speak.
They don't know what unzipping is, they don't know how to find C:\Program Files. They don't know what an executable is, and how to find/recognize it. They don't know how to create a link to it, they even don't know what a link is. Nevetheless they aren't stupid.
Re:MozillaFirebird is the best (Score:3, Insightful)
IMHO, advocacy bugs are one of the leading causes of "screw it, I'm switching back to IE".
Re:Looks don't make a brand (Score:2, Insightful)
Err, don't you mean the one they could uninstall?
Re:MozillaFirebird is the best (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:MozillaFirebird is the best (Score:3, Insightful)
You can try. Why give up on your goals just because some shitty banking site doesn't work? If someone really wanted to, they could fork Mozilla and make it work with IE's non-standards. Mozilla is meant as a reference implementation of a standards-compliant browser. At least they are trying to help the situation.