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Mozilla The Internet

First Reviews of Mozilla 1.0 Roll In 860

Posted by timothy from the jaundiced-eye-of-the-beholder dept.
Since the announcement of Mozilla 1.0's release, at least a few journalists have been quick to turn the beast over and poke its belly. Tina Gasperson's review over at NewsForge makes an interesting contrast to CNET's review; strange how they give a rating that would barely merit a "C-" after describing Mozilla's robustness, standards compliance, speed and convenience features.
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First Reviews of Mozilla 1.0 Roll In More

First Reviews of Mozilla 1.0 Roll In

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  • hahaha (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 06, 2002 @04:02PM (#3654426)
    CNET on popups:

    this function doesn't discriminate, so it may disable pop-ups you actually want to see, such as the video pop-ups on the News.com front door.

    Yeah fucking right CNET. Suck it!

    • Re:hahaha (Score:5, Interesting)

      by CynicTheHedgehog ( 261139 ) on Thursday June 06, 2002 @04:55PM (#3654945) Homepage
      It does too discriminate (or can). You can disable all popups or only "unrequested" (for instance, onLoad) popups. You can also diable moving or resizing windows (take that hollywood.com!). It's granular and configurable, as the C|Net reviewer would have discovered had he done his job.

  • Newspeak (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mr Guy ( 547690 ) on Thursday June 06, 2002 @04:03PM (#3654439) Journal
    From The CNET article [cnet.com] Even stranger, both Mozilla and Netscape outran IE 6 in three of four tests.


    From now on, "strange" will be defined as "something you would predict off the top of your head"

  • Reviewer Wrong? (Score:3, Informative)

    by _Quinn ( 44979 ) on Thursday June 06, 2002 @04:03PM (#3654445)
    Reviewer: "However, the release notes say you should not use your Netscape profiles, because you could lose your search settings or become the victim of an ever-growing bookmark file that might freeze your system. I've been using Mozilla 1.0 since the release announcement, with my Netscape profile, and haven't experienced these problems. Yet."

    Release notes: "Do not share a profile between Netscape and Mozilla builds."

    e.g., not in the same directly, not import, yes?

    -_Quinn

  • I think it's great. (Score:2, Redundant)

    by gambit3 ( 463693 )
    First open source stuff I've used. I'm running it at home on XP and at work on NT4. Absolutely LOVE the tabs.

    I think I finally found what will replace my beloved Netscape 4.7 as my browser of choice.

    • Re:I think it's great. (Score:4, Funny)

      by mshiltonj ( 220311 ) <mshiltonjNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday June 06, 2002 @04:08PM (#3654482) Homepage Journal
      First open source stuff I've used.I'm running it at home on XP and at work on NT4.

      Welcome aboard, friend! Now, about that XP...
      ;-P
      • LOL.

        Well, I just bought a new HD, and I think I see a Linux boot in my future.... running Mozilla, of course.

        • Don't submit (Score:2, Offtopic)

          by ceswiedler ( 165311 )
          Use what you want. Don't submit to any Slashdot propaganda which tells you that you need to run a free operating system to be cool.

          • Re:Don't submit (Score:5, Interesting)

            by gambit3 ( 463693 ) on Thursday June 06, 2002 @04:53PM (#3654924) Homepage Journal
            Thanks for the thought. I appreciate your advice and your honesty.

            However, I'm not going to do it because of propaganda. I'm going to do it because my first experience with an Open Source product (Mozilla), has been excellent. Especially the power to customize it to what I want it to do. This is the one thing that absolutely caught me off guard. I don't have to Beat It Into Submission like I've had to do with commercial to mold it to my liking.

            From what I've read about Linux users, that it also a strength of Linux, and THAT'S why I'll probably give it a try.
    • Absolutely LOVE the tabs.

      Er, uh, have you tried Opera [opera.com] yet?
      They practically invented tabbed browsing.
      Not that I don't like Moz, I've had rc3 since its release and I'll download next week when the pipes have cooled.
      I've just always thought Opera was a little better than Netscape 4.7. (And hell, at least you had the good sense to stay away from 6.)

      • Re:I think it's great. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Asprin ( 545477 )
        Er, uh, have you tried Opera [opera.com] yet? They practically invented tabbed browsing.

        I love Opera, too, but the first browser *I* ever saw with tabs was the bundled browser from (IIRC***) the now-defunct GNN internet service.... in 1996!

        I'm just shocked it took that long to catch on, it was a pretty cool feature even in a time when IE didn't fully support TABLE!



        *** NOTE: It might have been SPRYnet, not GNN - it *was* six years ago, after all...

      • Opera is not nearly as good. Apparently, you can start only one instance of Opera. You can start several instances of Mozilla. Each instance can have several tabs. You can save all the tabs in an instance in one bookmark (group bookmarking). That is an extremely useful feature.

        For example, suppose you are doing research on backup systems. You may load 10 or 20 tabs that show backup software reviews and manufacturer web pages. You can save them all and shut down your system. Ten days and many other research projects later, you can bring the backup research pages back by loading that bookmark.

        You can save multiple Opera windows to a file, but the interface is quirky, and the system is not nearly as useful.

        Here's how one person uses group bookmarks:

        When you have several tabs open, go to Bookmarks|File Bookmark... and check the box that says "file as group". Name your bookmark, and each time you open that bookmark all the tabs you had open will reopen. You can even later add bookmarks to the group as if it were a folder. I love that to read my daily comics I don't have to select endless bookmarks or cycle through a list, I just click on the item labeled "Comix" and a dozen tabs open up.

  • Built for IE! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hkhanna ( 559514 ) on Thursday June 06, 2002 @04:05PM (#3654462) Journal
    For one thing, Mozilla doesn't always render Web pages the same way IE does. Why does that matter? Many Web designers have built sites primarily for IE, and those pages look odd in Mozilla.

    This is what irks me. The web is supposed to be platform-neutral, not built for IE. Mozilla, IMHO is doing the right thing by not making its browser conform to the skewed standards IE has set. I say let those pages that are "built for IE" look like crap. Sooner or later, Mozilla will gain market share (we hope,) and people will have to begin building web pages that are standards-compliant not IE-compliant. Good job, Mozilla!

    Hargun
    • I say let those pages that are "built for IE" look like crap. Sooner or later, Mozilla will gain market share (we hope,) and people will have to begin building web pages that are standards-compliant not IE-compliant.

      If AOL uses NS7 for its AOL 8.0 client. I'd say that's a safe bet.

    • I entirely agree. If you want something to look the same on all sites, use a PDF or PNG. Next we'll have people complaining that they don't get 1024x768 resolution with 16 bit color (among other things, of course) on their cell phone and hence their yahoo.com displays a bit different.

    • This is not realistic (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ColGraff ( 454761 ) <maron1@LAPLACEmi ... m minus math_god> on Thursday June 06, 2002 @04:28PM (#3654702) Homepage Journal
      "Sooner or later, Mozilla will gain market share (we hope,) and people will have to begin building web pages that are standards-compliant not IE-compliant."

      Sir, on the one hand, I think it is commendable that you believe so strongly in the platform-independant Internet. That is the way it is supposed to be, and IE's standard skewing is regrettable. That skewing is now the reality, however, and there is no way Joe User will keep Mozilla installed for more than 5 min once he sees that his pages look different - and standards compliance be damned. The average user wants their pages to look pretty. If mozilla doesn't do that, even in the name of standards compliance, most people will not use it. The only way to gain market share is to support the IE standards.

      For now. :-)

      But if Mozilla does grow more popular, then there's no reason it couldn't take a page from IE's book, and slowly stop supporting IE "Standards" in new releases. Once the user base for Mozilla is large enough - and remember, a period of IE compliance IS needed for this to happen - then if Mozilla starts adopting strict standards compliance, IE might be forced to follow suit. Might.

      It worked for microsoft - could it work here?

      • Re:This is not realistic (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Tack ( 4642 ) on Thursday June 06, 2002 @05:37PM (#3655353) Homepage
        I can't quite understand all these posts saying "if pages don't render 'properly' [i.e. same as IE] users will not use Mozilla." I use Mozilla, and often I use IE. I rarely encounter a page that doesn't render usably in Mozilla. Sometimes it doesn't render the same as IE, but it never looks out of place.

        It's possible, yes, that some users won't use Mozilla because it doesn't render their favorite site. These people are a lost cause until those sites become compatible with the standards that exist for web sites. But for the majority of the people, I suspect they will either not notice any problems with Mozilla, or they'll not care much that the odd site does not render perfectly (because it uses IE extensions) when they consider all the added benefits that Mozilla does provide them over IE.

        Jason.

      • Re:This is not realistic (Score:3, Interesting)

        by JamieF ( 16832 )
        Seriously, have you never heard of the Web Standards Project?
        http://www.webstandards.org/

        Web developers are sick of coding HTML, JavaScript, and CSS for one browser, and then debugging it for every other browser they have to support. Netscape 4.x and 6.0 are definitely high on the list of sucky browsers to have to support, but IE 5, 5.5, and 6 aren't perfect. Also, IE 5, 5.5, and 6 differ greatly, not to mention the Mac versions of IE which also differ. You can't just target one IE version and get 100% compatibility with the others.

        So, rather than looking at the ridiculous statistics that say stuff like "97% of browser users use MSIE" (which I just don't believe), start looking at stats about which browser AND VERSION your users are using. Surprise, chances are there are a hell of a lot of IE 5 and 5.5 users. Chances are there is no one browser+version that covers the majority of your site's users. Doh! So much for just targeting "one" browser.

        So, forget about this silly notion of "IE won, all web sites will be IE sites from now on." That's not financially viable, since IE is actually serveral products which must be QA'd for separately. The solution that web designers are rallying around is "code to the standard, and debug for supported browsers from there." Screw IE 5, make people upgrade to IE 6. Screw Netscape 4.x, make them upgrade to 6.2, 7.x, or Mozilla 1.0.

        Otherwise, why even bother with HTML at all? If you're going to target Windows only, you're wasting your time trying to get a good GUI user experience and robust application functionality implemented with tools as crappy as HTML, JavaScript and CSS. The only reason to use them is to get thin-client, cross-platform, cross-browser functionality with zero download time. Use Delphi or Visual C++ or Java or something if you want total control over the user experience and you don't care about porting.
    • Problem is HTML intentionally leaves some presentation issues up to the browser, and Netscape/Mozilla and IE have made different choices. It isn't always that one browser is "right" and the other is "wrong".

      - Steve

    • Sometimes this is not IE's fault (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Thursday June 06, 2002 @05:16PM (#3655158)
      Now I haven't used Mozilla 1.0 extensively yet, what with it just having come out, but I can tell you that Netscape 6 and espically 4 have problems of just rendering HTML WRONG. Some examples:

      I was designing a site and, as I'm won't to do, doing the whole thing in a text editor and using IE to look at it. Now because my intention was compatibility, I strictly adhered to the HTML spec (using the W3's validator to check myself) and used only tags I knew that both IE and Netscape implemented. The result was broken in Netscape. It was a 3 column, expanding design somewhat similar to Slashdot's. The code was 100% compliant and rendered properly in IE 4, IE 5 and Opera (don't remember what the current version was then). In Netscape 4.7, half the right hand column failed ot display. It to a real hack ofa workaround to make it display properly on Netscape and still maintain standards compliance.

      Or another time, I was messing around with CSS and managed to create a neat little script that did text dropshadows. It took the length of the text based on font type and size (it only worked with one font) and calculated the correct offset for the top text. It worked really nice. Now I figured a neat trick like this was bound to be broken on anything but IE 6 since that was what I designed it for. To my plesant supprise it wasn't, it rendered great on IE 5 and 6 for both Mac and PC. Not on Netscape 4.7 or 6, however. The alignment was all off. Worse, it was off by different amounts on different platforms. I ended up just canning the idea.

      The problem I've had with Netscape up to this point is that many of the standard they impliment, they impliment WRONG. Now since I haven't used Mozilla much for design checking (I quit doing web design) I can't speak for it's release, but NEtscape 6 which was based form it's code still had some massive problems.
      • Or another time, I was messing around with CSS and managed to create a neat little script that did text dropshadows. It took the length of the text based on font type and size (it only worked with one font) and calculated the correct offset for the top text. It worked really nice.

        It is possible to abuse a standard and still have a valid CSS. If your effect relies on a certain font, how is it going to look on a text-only browser like lynx, or a system for the visually impaired? What if the user is using IE, but doesn't have that font installed?

        The purpose of CSS is to separate the formatting of the document from the appearance. The style sheets cascade, meaning that a user could attach his own style sheet to your document to adjust for a disability, or lack of technology.

        You may have written valid CSS, but you abused the standard and tried to do womething it was not intended to do. So, from a certain point of view, you were not "standards compliant" at all.

      • > Now I haven't used Mozilla 1.0 extensively yet, what with it just having come out,
        > but I can tell you that Netscape 6 and espically 4 have problems of just rendering
        > HTML WRONG.

        Netscape 6 came out a *year and a half* ago. The excuse of "Mozilla 1.0 just came out" is totally bogus - Netscape 6.1 and 6.2 have been released since then, and are much better than 6.0. If you really wanted to keep an eye on Mozilla's progress, you could have downloaded nightly builds or stable milestone builds every few weeks, or months. The downloadable installers have been out there, 1 click away from www.mozilla.org, all along. Mozilla 1.0 RC1 has been out for over a month.

        Why not do this:
        1) download Mozilla 1.0 and see how your stuff works
        2) post a comment describing how good or bad Mozilla 1.0 is

        Nobody really cares how Mozilla 0.6 stacks up against IE 6 anymore.

  • Funniest line in the Cnet Review (Score:5, Funny)

    by vjmurphy ( 190266 ) on Thursday June 06, 2002 @04:07PM (#3654470) Homepage
    "The bad: Incompatible with some sites built for Internet Explorer"

    Uh. Well. Duh.
    • "The bad: Incompatible with some sites built for Internet Explorer"

      The good: CNET realises that those sites were built using nonstandard markup language for IE and it is not some standards-deviation or bug in Mozilla that is causing the problem.

  • You would think that CNET had competent authors (Score:4, Informative)

    by akiaki007 ( 148804 ) <{aa316} {at} {nyu.edu}> on Thursday June 06, 2002 @04:09PM (#3654491)
    But...once you are done with the full review and read "The Good, The Bad..." section...take a look at this.
    The bad: Incompatible with some sites built for Internet Explorer; chat client doesn't work with the big commercial IM systems, including ICQ, Yahoo IM, AOL IM, and Windows Messenger.

    Last time I checked. ChatZilla was a IRC client, not a friggin chat program to be used with AIM, ICQ, etc. While that would be something nice to add, it's already been done and I don't see why the author would mention this. IRC is much cooler than IM anyhow!

  • CNET are M$ whores. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by crovira ( 10242 ) on Thursday June 06, 2002 @04:09PM (#3654494) Homepage
    Unless you want to read ass-kissing, don't go there.

    They can even write pap about desktop Video and FireWire without even mentionning Apple existence.

    They're strange that way.

    • Re:CNET are M$ whores. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by I Want GNU! ( 556631 ) on Thursday June 06, 2002 @04:14PM (#3654558) Homepage
      Actually, Mozilla had a 7/10 on their rankings, the same thing they gave to IE. And they noted how it was faster than IE. I'd like to see some other evidence of them being "M$ whores." I don't like MS, but I like actual evidence instead of baseless accusations and name callings (The $ in MS is just getting old).

      I think that if they considered security as well, Mozilla would beat out IE, but ignoring security and standards (both of which Mozilla beats out IE at) the browsers would be similar.

      Maybe it's just me though not wanting to give internet servers capabilities to read my entire hard drive (see jscript.dk).

      • Re:CNET are M$ whores. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by ywwg ( 20925 ) on Thursday June 06, 2002 @04:27PM (#3654688) Homepage
        the evidence is their total lack of objectivity. when mozilla and netscape are faster than IE they call it "strange." When mozilla doesn't conform to ie's broken renderring and self-invented standards, they call it "incompatible." They assume that IE is the standard, rather than the w3c.

  • Truly amazing! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ciryon ( 218518 ) on Thursday June 06, 2002 @04:11PM (#3654511) Journal
    I am thrilled beyond words. This is absolutely the best browser I have ever used. I had a tough time deciding which browser to use, but this is it. I especially recommend the Mouse Gesture Add-on [mozdev.org].

    Ciryon

  • Think about it. CNET has never strived to achieve a benchmark for impartial reporting, they collect advertising revenue. So one of there biggest caveats is to not piss off 'the industry' as they see it. So they give all these least common denominator reports that don't have any useful information. They just gave a Netscape a review, and gave it the lowest possible score they could justify given that it was faster, more stable, and more W3C compliant than the big IE.


    Think I'm wrong? By contrast, PCWeek, eWeek, and lots of other industry rags tend to be more impartial, and will generally call a turd a turd and a gem a gem, not vice versa.


    But then there's audience too to calculate in too. I dare say that if Microsoft were to behave nicely and come out with a superier product that was priced fairly, some one here would find something to bitch about.

    • I dare say that if Microsoft were to behave nicely and come out with a superier product that was priced fairly, some one here would find something to bitch about.

      Assuming by 'superier' you mean technically, of course many of us here would find something to bitch about, particularly the fact that it wouldn't be Open Source or Free Software. I don't bother wasting my breath putting down MS products on technical merits, when the social issues (e.g., Free Software) about such software are much more important to me.

    • CNET's review of IE6 [cnet.com] gave it a score of 7, same as Mozilla 1.0 on XP.
    • But then there's audience too to calculate in too. I dare say that if Microsoft were to behave nicely and come out with a superier product that was priced fairly, some one here would find something to bitch about.

      Well, I'd be pretty pissed that someone transported me to an alternate universe without giving me any warning.

    • But then there's audience too to calculate in too. I dare say that if Microsoft were to behave nicely and come out with a superier product that was priced fairly, some one here would find something to bitch about.
      Certainly. The platform, for one. Were you suggesting that M$ would come out with a 'superior product that was priced fairly' that ran on multiple platforms (PC, Mac, Un*x, Linux for start), operated in a relatively self-contained mode that didn't require extensive library rework on the non-MS machines, played fairly and constructively with other applications, talked on open procols and file formats, and was generally friendly to being controlled by scripts or broken into components?

      I'll believe it when I see it.

      The problem with M$, besides being convicted monopoly abusers and yadayada, is their refusal to interoperate with as much as they can get away with. They demand complete adherence across your network, and give interoperability only grudgingly, and frequently with lawsuits. To persons with or in control of large, heterogeneous networks, this behavior is rather irksome, as we grow rather risk-averse, where 'risk' is defined as: reinstalling everything in the building and tossing a decade of experience. Not fun, or worthwhile.

      Yes, we're a curmudgeonly audience who are almost totally opposed to Microsoft. But quite a few of us have valid, and very expensive, reasons.

  • Not knowing a whole lot about it, it seems that my opera has (speedwise) outperformed both netscape and ie by quite a good margin

    • I think the most interesting speed boost in Opera comes from the MDI interface. Opening a new window in Opera is virtually instantaneous. However, opening a new window in IE is akin to opening a new instance of an app.

      Also, Opera doesn't require near as much memory as IE does. So if you're on a machine limited on RAM, like my laptop is, then this'll provide a nice speed boost heh.

  • OK, but not all I wanted (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AvitarX ( 172628 ) <me@brandywinehund r e d .org> on Thursday June 06, 2002 @04:12PM (#3654534) Journal
    A while ago (M17?) I decided I was going to wait for 1.0 before I switched over to Mozilla.

    Since then I fell in love with Opera's gestures and tabbed browsing. I think that Mozilla handles Tabs Awsomly, but that its gestures are kinda lame.

    ex: in Opera I can right click hold and mouse wheel to change windows.

    and can go foward and back with just the buttons (no motion). In Mozilla I am stuck with holding a button that has another function and moving the mouse, and with my spazzy hand I fail half the time succeed.

    Amyway, I like Mozilla but it won't become my browser of choice anytime soon (I predict).

  • It has problems with ads. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by peterdaly ( 123554 ) <{petedaly} {at} {ix.netcom.com}> on Thursday June 06, 2002 @04:13PM (#3654536)
    For example, we struggled with sites that use a technology called positioning to put ads on their pages. In IE, those ads temporarily hide part of the page, then go away. But in our Mozilla tests, the ads sometimes permanently blocked part of the page, and we had to reload the page until we got a different, regular, nonpositioning ad.

    ------
    The problem is not the browser...but the ad. When will these people wake up? Did you catch that TWO of their few complains centered around use of ads, or features to stop ads? When you turn pop-ups off, it may disable some aspects of cnet.com (news.com?) that you really want to use. Hehe...yeah.

    The ads causing a page to be non-function is a good reason to a) stop using the site and b) send the webmaster a poltite message telling them why you will never visit their site again.

    -Pete

  • The (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Big Stick ( 318410 ) on Thursday June 06, 2002 @04:13PM (#3654545) Homepage
    In the CNET review,

    For one thing, Mozilla doesn't always render Web pages the same way IE does. Why does that matter? Many Web designers have built sites primarily for IE, and those pages look odd in Mozilla.

    This "criticism" seems to me to be rather absentminded. Specifically building sites for IE is a shortcoming on the developer side. And imagine a browser being criticised for rendering ads, of all things, incorrectly! Go figure. Personally I can't wait to update my RCx.

  • I suppose these were a couple good first-day reviews. I downloaded 1.0 yesterday and played around with it. My impressions were that for casual use, Mozilla's pretty indistinguishable from IE. But there was one thing that caught my attention that I think is of great importance, but wasn't mentioned in either review.


    Not to troll, but the front end of Mozilla is ugly as sin. If this browser's going to catch on, what will matter to most mainstream users isn't pipelining, tabbed browsing, or HTML compliance, but the initial first impression of how good it looks. Say what you want about Microsoft, but they hired some standout designers to make IE look gorgeous.


    Now I know that the whole point of Mozilla is the underlying technology. But for it to catch on as a browser, it needs to be every bit as pretty as IE. It'll be interesting to see if the Netscape version of 1.0 incorporates a glossy front end. For now, I know which browser I politically favor, but I also know which one I want to look at several times a day. They aren't the same.

  • I like the idea of Mozilla. But a day after installing it, I'm still using IE. Why? IE is more responsive...and that's what's important to me.

    I do use it at home sometimes...but only because the wife hates it, and therefore she never checks my pr0n history (heh).

  • Reviewer need's a lesson in HTML standards (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Neil Watson ( 60859 ) on Thursday June 06, 2002 @04:14PM (#3654559) Homepage
    From the CNET article:
    " Beyond its skins and pop-up-killing abilities, however, Mozilla 1.0 doesn't do much more for the average Web surfer than Internet Explorer does. For one thing, Mozilla doesn't always render Web pages the same way IE does. Why does that matter? Many Web designers have built sites primarily for IE, and those pages look odd in Mozilla. For example, we struggled with sites that use a technology called positioning to put ads on their pages. In IE, those ads temporarily hide part of the page, then go away. But in our Mozilla tests, the ads sometimes permanently blocked part of the page, and we had to reload the page until we got a different, regular, nonpositioning ad."

    I seriously doubt this has anything to do with Mozilla. More likely, the web designer used the broken standards of IE and never bothered to test it with other browsers.

  • ...the open source advocacy site likes an open source web browser. Color me surprised.

  • my faith restored (Score:4, Insightful)

    by negativethirsty ( 555244 ) on Thursday June 06, 2002 @04:17PM (#3654582) Homepage
    After becoming an employee of a "microsoft shop" in jan, I've used nothing but m$ and its products for 99% of my development tools(officexp/winxp pro/messenger/vis studio etc) and day to day work.

    So I took a chance on the posting yesterday and decided to give Mozilla a whirl. First impression wasn't that great due to the cheese splash screen on launch(which I replaced, and it actually listened to me!). However it didn't take long for me to be converted after that.

    Right off the bat, I turned off 90% of pop up adds, imported my IE fav's and even gave it a new look using the themes. i was and still am truely impressed by Mozilla. I can search my bookmarks, a huge deal for me. I can tell Mozilla how to behave...and it seems to actually listen!
    After realising how much I liked this new browser I suddenly became very aware of how far the 'net in general has gone down hill since IE's dominace. I realized how my work got further and further away from stds, focused on M$ and how they wanted things done. Most of all I was dissapointed how I had forgotten just how good the net as a whole used to be.
    Either way, if the Moz. dev team is listening, thank you. I can once again surf in peace.

  • C-Nut review is narrow minded (Score:4, Insightful)

    by d3xt3r ( 527989 ) on Thursday June 06, 2002 @04:17PM (#3654590)
    This is the type of review that really annoys me. The review spends 10 paragraphs praising Mozilla for it's standards compliance, speed, reliability, etc and then has to go and ruin it all by saying "Good but no IE Killer."

    "Mozilla doesn't always render Web pages the same way IE does. Why does that matter? Many Web designers have built sites primarily for IE, and those pages look odd in Mozilla"

    What?!? So because a bunch of lazy web "developers" have written IE specific html, we should not just assume this means IE is the better browser? I think this is a really narrow-minded observation. Granted he may be right about the rendering, but it does not mean that Mozilla is not as good as IE.

    Seriously, IE simply renders pages more "correctly" because it dominates the market and lazy "developers" have written IE specific code.

    I guess this journalist also believes that Windows is superior to Mac OS X because there is more software available for it. Or maybe he just enjoys BSODs. Get real, this is not a fair way to compare browsers.

    One last thing... can someone please show me a page link to all these pages that don't render correctly in Mozilla? I use Mozilla exclusively and have not come upon any pages in the last few months that do not work correctly with Mozilla.

    • Re:C-Nut review is narrow minded (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nuggz ( 69912 ) on Thursday June 06, 2002 @04:23PM (#3654646) Homepage
      Most people want to use their web browser and see the site as it was written to be seen.

      If the browser shows the site nicely, it is a good browser.
      If the browser shows a garbled mess it is a bad browser.

      You can argue technical correctness all you want, but all most people care about is if it works as intended. The fact that the site isn't written properly doesn't matter to them, just that IE works and Mozilla doesn't.

      yes this could be flamebait, but really that is how people think.
    • Good but no IE Killer

      It's not surprising that this is what the press is interested in. For one thing, it's been four years, they're expecting some pizazz. For another, it is this aspect that is required to get Joe Consumer to switch. I mean really, if they get IE for free and you tell them, you can spend X amount of time downloading and installing Mozilla and they say "what for?", you're going to need a better answer than "it's just as good as IE."
  • Got to admit, Moz 1.0 is pretty sweet. It got a little bit faster with each release, and a lot more stable.

    Now if only the Mozilla email bits would work properly. All sorts of issues there. My favorite is Mozilla crashing whenever you try to sign/encrypt any S/MIME message when you are not logged into the certificate manager. Nice.

  • Who is this clown? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Curtman ( 556920 )
    "If you really want to chat on IRC, use an IM such as Trillian instead."

    Honestly, why would anyone want to use IRC in and instant messanger? Chatzilla is an IRC client as it should be.

  • IE 6 gets a C too (Score:4, Informative)

    by zmokhtar ( 539671 ) on Thursday June 06, 2002 @04:22PM (#3654642) Homepage
    Don't worry to much about the 7 out of 10. They gave IE 6 the same score [cnet.com].

  • Make Mozilla Cooler in MacOS X 10.1.5 (Score:5, Informative)

    by toupsie ( 88295 ) on Thursday June 06, 2002 @04:24PM (#3654659) Homepage
    Mozilla is nice on MacOS X but it does not take advantage of the Quartz type smoothing like OmniWeb or Chimera. However, if you install Unsanity's haxie program called Silk [unsanity.com], it will allow Mozilla (or IE) to use the Quartz text smoothing along with your other Carbon apps. Well worth the download and it doesn't appear to slow down the system -- which I expected. With Quartz text smoothing, MacOS X becomes the most visually appealing, web browsing platform -- which it should be.

  • Enigmail / MozDev (Score:2, Informative)

    by E Zimmer ( 221646 )
    I personally like the Enigmail plugin for OpenPGP support in the browser. Easy encryption for the masses.

  • Mozilla did as well as IE in the ratings (Score:5, Informative)

    by dlevitan ( 132062 ) on Thursday June 06, 2002 @04:29PM (#3654707)
    strange how they give a rating that would barely merit a "C-"

    Actually, they gave it the same rating as they gave IE 6, Netscape 7 PR 1, Netscape 6.1, and one more than Opera 6. So in reality, Mozilla ranked as well as the "best" browsers from MS.

  • Neglected to mention security (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Trolocsis ( 319617 ) on Thursday June 06, 2002 @04:30PM (#3654724) Homepage

    "Beyond its skins and pop-up-killing abilities, however, Mozilla 1.0 doesn't do much more for the average Web surfer than Internet Explorer does."

    Not true... Mozilla allows for faster turn-around times for security patches and updates. Cookies and images can be disabled in actual Emails, something outlook or outlook express fails to do.

    In a security consience world, Mozilla is probably better in security than IE, since Mozilla isn't apart of the OS itself! Granted, Mozilla will have a few security holes, but who would you rather fix them? Microsoft with a 4 week turnaround time, or Mozilla with usually a 1-2 day turnaround.
  • I love this quote right at the start of the review:

    First, the basics. Mozilla and Netscape mirror each other in ease of installation with an idiot-proof GUI installer. I just downloaded the installer in a tar.gz format. Unpacked into my home directory, the files went into /home/tina/mozilla-installer. I entered the directory, changed to superuser because I want the rest of my family to be able to use Mozilla, too, and typed sh mozilla-installer. The GUI interface came up, and I accepted the default installation directory: /usr/local/mozilla. If you're the only one who uses your computer, you could just install it in /home/your_home/mozilla.


    Heh, that's a whole heck of a lot of steps just to get to the GUI installer. Isn't there anything available for Linux that would provide the functionality of something like a self-extracting ZIP file on Windows?

  • >If you're like us, you're not a big fan of pop-up and pop-under ads. Hence, you'll adore the handy Mozilla feature that disables many, though not all, of them.

    Uh oh! So Mozilla allows the users to see content without seeing the pop-up and pop-under adds. If we are to believe the Replay TV lawsuit then Mozilla is a tool which allows users to "steal" content. Sounds like a DMCA violation as well.

    Let's sit back and watch as the lawsuits start rolling in.


  • Mozilla 1.0 is out, and the release notes say:
    "Supported XML W3C Recommendations
    SVG    "
    "The standards Mozilla 1.0 supports include:
    SVG    "
    but there is no SVG support in 1.0. Ze-ro.
    Check this post [yahoo.com] for some more info.

  • best thing never mentioned: keywords for bookmarks (Score:5, Informative)

    by tswinzig ( 210999 ) on Thursday June 06, 2002 @04:40PM (#3654807) Journal
    The coolest thing in mozilla is that I can associate a bookmark with a keyword (even just a letter or two), and go to that bookmark through the URL bar with that keyword, even with search terms.

    E.g. I have this bookmark for dictionary.com:

    http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=% s

    For keyword, I have it set to 'd'. I can lookup a word by typing "d " on the url bar, and hitting enter.

    I do similar things for Google (http://www.google.com/search?q=%s), for IMDB (http://www.imdb.com/Find?select=All&for=%s), and especially for various customer searches with our database search engine at work.

    This feature saves me TONS of time every day. This alone is enough to keep me using Mozilla as long as it remains stable.

    Then you add in the oft-mentioned tabbed browsing, popup blocking, standards compliancy, skinnability, programmability, etc., and it just gets better.

    And don't forget, the perfect complement to tabbed browsing -- saving a group of bookmarks as one item ! Perfect.

    And what about how much more consistently Mozilla handles links for new windows? MSIE has two shitty behaviors to choose from, which drive me crazy. Either you open up a page in a new window each time , or it tries to re-use windows that are already open, usually picking the one I don't want. Even when clicking on bookmarks, it uses this bizarre behavior. I don't know when they added this 'feature', but it drove me bonkerz.

    Jeez, I haven't even gotten to the email client! All the things that drive me nuts in Outlook/Outlook Express are fixed in Mozilla's mail client. It only lacks a couple things I like (Eudora's "redirect" ability, for one).

    Finally a mail client that lets me use IMAP without constantly reminding me that I'm looking at a remote message. (What's this outlook crap with drawing a line through a deleted message? I like for the message to disappear, and the focus to move to the next message... thanks mozilla.)

    Not perfect, but mozilla is getting there.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday June 06, 2002 @04:42PM (#3654827)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • BBC story (Score:4, Informative)

    by Brown ( 36659 ) on Thursday June 06, 2002 @05:02PM (#3655010) Homepage
    The BBC has a story on the 1.0 release of mozilla [bbc.co.uk], including the background of Mozilla and the principles of OpenSource.

    It seems to be a generally favourable overview: "Mozilla is quick, stable, and virtually free of the default links to manufacturers' products that feature so prominently in commercial browsers". Also mentioned is the recent release of OpenOffice. Includes some quotes from Mitchell Baker of mozilla.org.

    Chris

  • I would have liked to see... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dixie_Flatline ( 5077 ) <vincent.jan.gohNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday June 06, 2002 @05:02PM (#3655016) Homepage
    ...the help documentation filled out before release. A 1.0 release shouldn't have vast gaping holes in the docs that say "Information to be filled in". There are actual things I'd like to know. For instance, is there a way to switch between tabs, using the keyboard? If I can't, it's arguably faster to have multiple windows open and cycle through them that way.

    It's all well and good that the browser has lots of features. They're pretty useless if I can't figure out how to use them.

  • CNET reviewer is not that professional (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Frag-A-Muffin ( 5490 ) on Thursday June 06, 2002 @05:10PM (#3655098)
    First off, I don't use Chatzilla, but from what I read, it gave me no info. on Chatzilla itself.

    The editor reviews Chatzilla as a IM client? You can't really compare. That's like saying, "Computers suck, they don't cut my lawn well". It would have been wiser to perhaps compare Chatzilla to say, BitchX (my IRC client of choice), or XChat or *another IRC client* ??? :)

  • Mozilla: useless for the intranet (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gblues ( 90260 ) on Thursday June 06, 2002 @05:15PM (#3655148)
    At work, web access is controlled by a Microsoft proxy server. The MS proxy server requires NTLM authentication support. Guess how many browsers support NTLM? (See also: how many Internet browsers has Microsoft released?)

    Given that there is and has been PLENTY of information on the NTLM-over-HTTP authentication process, it is inexcusable for a 1.0 browser to not have support for this protocol.

    Nathan

    • Re:Mozilla: useless for the intranet (Score:5, Insightful)

      by John Fulmer ( 5840 ) on Thursday June 06, 2002 @05:34PM (#3655328)
      Hmmm. It is inexcusable for Mozilla 1.0, which tries to be a very standards based browser, to support Microsoft's proprietary, non-(w3c)-standard authentication scheme?

      And it is unexcusable for Opera, Konquor, lynx, wget, and every other http-based tool?

      MS Proxy server supports other authentication methods. The manager for the proxy server has chosen to only support NTLM authentication. I would consider *THAT* to be unexcusable, myself...

      If you REALLY must use NTLM authentication, there are installable local proxy servers that can fake out the NTLM authentication for you, like this [geocities.com] one.

      jf

      (who manages proxy servers for a living...among other things.)

    • Re:Mozilla: useless for the intranet (Score:4, Funny)

      by Fastball ( 91927 ) on Thursday June 06, 2002 @05:45PM (#3655417) Journal
      At work, web access is controlled by a Microsoft proxy server. The MS proxy server requires NTLM authentication support. Guess how many browsers support NTLM? (See also: how many Internet browsers has Microsoft released?)

      Sucks for you.

  • The thing I really like about Mozilla... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Trogre ( 513942 ) on Thursday June 06, 2002 @05:25PM (#3655246) Homepage
    ... is it's standards compliance.
    Try the cool demos [mozilla.org], using nothing but fully w3c-compliant HTML/CSS code.

    Try that with IE. Honestly, IE still [entropymine.com] won't even support transpartent PNG's, effectively rendering (no pun intended) it useless as a serious web browser. No matter how popular it is.

  • not as biased as you think? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dumbArtMajor ( 549607 ) on Thursday June 06, 2002 @06:05PM (#3655571)
    As a web designer who uses OS X, I have no allegiance to M$ at all, especially IE. But I didn't really think the article was that biased, to be honest. I don't know very much about Mozilla, and it broke down the feature set pretty nicely.

    Granted, the comment about rendering differently than IE was just dumb, as anyone who knows anything about standards would tell you. And anyone with intelligence will see through his pandering News.com comment anyway.

    But I'm not sure I'm seeing the "C-" grade. Could it be you're all just a little too close to it, like an artist having his painting criticized? I think it seemed like he liked it for a 1.0 release and he'd like to see some usability improvements so the general public could get down and dirty with it. Maybe it's not fair to compare it to IE6, but that's life. Anyone who's looking for a different browser or just open-minded will get the feeling that this is a viable alternative, and at least you don't have to pay for it like Opera, while getting similar features.

    Bottom line: I downloaded it and I'll check it out.

  • quick question on possible bug (Score:3)

    by jbert ( 5149 ) on Friday June 07, 2002 @05:29AM (#3658443)
    Am I doing something stupid, or does Mozilla 1.0 stop rendering a page at the first control-L (page-break) character?

    This causes me no end of grief since most/all/many RFCs contain embedded RFC characters - meaning I can't read them (e.g. rfc2060).

    Before I create a bugzilla account and report back there, can anyone reading here tell me if I'm missing a config setting/doing something stupid/etc.

    ta.

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