Mozilla's Year In Review For 2003 192
An anonymous reader writes "Like last year, MozillaZine has published a review of Mozilla's world in 2003. Obviously, the year was dominated by AOL's decision to murder Netscape (though various acts of 'brand necrophilia' will ensure that the Netscape name lives on in one form or another). This, combined with Mozilla Firebird's and Mozilla Thunderbird's steady progress towards replacing the Mozilla suite, made 2003 very much a transitional year for the open source project. Other memories to tell your grandchildren include mozilla.org's fifth birthday, the new roadmap, the Firebird name debate and a new chapter being added to The Book of Mozilla."
Having just tried Firebird... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Having just tried Firebird... (Score:4, Funny)
It must be hard for all Cow orkers of the world to not have a choice of cow orking tool... ;)
Happy New Year!
P.S. Firebird Rocks...!
Re:Having just tried Firebird... (Score:2, Informative)
I'm not saying that Mozilla is a bad browser, I suppose it's a matter of taste.
Re:Having just tried Firebird... (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Opera 7.2x
2. Firebird 0.6/7
3. MSIE 6.0
4. Mozilla 1.5/6a
Firebird is very promising, and it'll make a good drop-in replacement for IE. I use Thunderbird as my mail client (hint to Opera: innovation's good, but not when it's a synonym for shitting - eliminate M2) - it's got great spam filtering (it gets the occasional false positive, but it's learning - bayesian filters will take over the world).
Re:Having just tried Firebird... (Score:2)
cu,
Lispy
Although... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Although... (Score:5, Informative)
Then you lose cross-platform consistency and the ability to use themes with custom widgets. I like being able to use the same standards-compliant browser that looks and behaves the same on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.
Check out themes.mozdev.org, or -- if you know HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, then you can learn XUL and build your own.
I like the browser/email combo, use Moz 1.5, and hope they'll continue to develop it. I'm not terribly interested in replacing one app with 4 (browser, email, HTML editor, IRC).
I don't think you will have to (Score:3, Insightful)
Really, it will be much better.
Re:Although... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a tradeoff, and it all depends on whether or not your network is homogenous. For example, if all of your computers run windows, firebird using GTK probably sticks out like a sore thumb because it doesn't look consistent with the native widgets. Whereas if you have to switch between linu
Re:Although... (Score:4, Insightful)
Keep in mind that `Gnome has standardized on' is not equivalent to `users will use.' I've used epiphany recently, and well, basically it sucks compared to firebird.
I'm sure Gnome wants to have a `native' browser, just so there's something in the standard install, but really, epiphany has an incredibly long way to go before it's anywhere near as usable as firebird (and given the current religion at the Gnome project, they may never let it get there).
Re:Although... (Score:3, Insightful)
The unfortunate thing is that there is now a lack of developers but hopefully with the new political structure, more developers can be encouraged to help out with the same vigor and determination ones sees in other projects, for example, FreeBSD or the Linux kernel.
The problem with the historical lack of non-Netscape/AOL development in Mozilla is partly political, but I think the real reason was most definitely technical.
There is an interesting phenomenon/problem that often arises with large object-ori
Re:Although... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Although... (Score:2)
Re:Although... (Score:2)
There is no option to set the http proxy from epiphany directly. If you are using GNOME, however, there is a system wide setting under Applications->Desktop Preferences->Network Proxy. Its kind of like having a HTTP_PROXY environment variable.
Mozilla and /. (slightly OT) (Score:4, Interesting)
As much as I like Mozilla, Mozilla does a miserable job rendering ./'s site. It worked great for a very long time, doing a better job than MSIE, but now what I get is digital peanut butter when I come to ./ with Mozilla. Sometimes, it just skips the articles and leaves a bunch of little buttons all over everywhere. Other times, everything gets rendered to the same line. Anyone else have the same problem?
I have not tried the new Firebird on /. yet, maybe that'll fix whatever's broke?
Re:Mozilla and /. (slightly OT) (Score:5, Informative)
Just for the record, Firebird is the browser I use 99% of the time and there is not many sites that it cannot handle.
Generally, if a site 'requires' IE, switching the agent in Firebird (via the Agent Switcher plug-in) does the job (tricking the site into believing you are using IE and serving the content). Firebird then renders the page correctly.
When this does not work, then I use IE (which is the remaining 1% percent of the time that I don't use Firebird), very rare though...
Re:Mozilla and /. (slightly OT) (Score:3, Insightful)
When they decide to bite the bullet and switch away from a table based layout to a CSS based one, rendering problems will disappear for everyone who's bothered updating their browser in the last 2 years.
Re:Mozilla and /. (slightly OT) (Score:1, Interesting)
It's been some while since I stumbled across that, and it would be very nice were the Slashdot coders to adopt it.
Re:Mozilla and /. (slightly OT) (Score:2, Informative)
'nuff said.
(you may need to try a few times if the validator keeps reporting a 403)
Microsoft broke IE in November (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, I could replace the offending file myself, or use the PgUp/Dn keys, but really, a security patch for IE that breaks IE is too much.
I've been using Mozilla Firebird about half the time, and IE the other half since it's just easier to keep using it after I've opened it to get to sites reqiring IE.
But to hell with those sites. To hell with Microsoft. I'll be spending the rest of my holidays purging the last remnants of MS from my desktops and my laptop. I'd been straddling the fence for years... thanks Bill, you've made up my mind for me.
The root of your problem. (Score:2)
I'm using Mozilla 1.0 on Debian
Re:Mozilla and /. (slightly OT) (Score:2)
Try Slashdot Light (Score:2)
You might like to try enabling Light mode in your user preferences [slashdot.org]. It removes a lot of the unnecessary graphics and doesn't seem to use nested tables for layout, but retains all the real content.
Light mode looks just fine in the latest Mozilla [mozilla.org] browsers (both Seamonkey and Firebird). It also loads faster.
Re:Mozilla and /. (slightly OT) (Score:2)
Re:Mozilla and /. (slightly OT) (Score:3, Interesting)
I have this problem with Mozilla (V 1.5) as well.
I have 1.4 (have not bothered to update yet), and you have described the exact problem I am seeing. Weird part is, it was fine up until recently, and now it just doesn't quite fly. Maybe ./ changed something...
I also have found that when I download various media files, such as mpg's, the file achieved from the download is not readable/usable by my media player. Have you seen this problem?
No, I haven't had this problem. Downloads aren't a problem. I
Re:Mozilla and /. (slightly OT) (Score:2)
Re:Mozilla and /. (slightly OT) (Score:4, Funny)
Not my experience as creator of standards compliant websites.
You nasty little troll.
Re:Mozilla and /. (slightly OT) (Score:2)
That's not a good style. But I think I started it by calling you a nasty troll. I read our posting out of context and found it very annoying. I still think it is, but I agree that you aren't a troll.
Also, I dont accept the fact that your experience creating websites is negative for IE.
My experience is one of the few things you cannot take away from me.
My friend is a professional web designer for a major bank, and has been for at least five years. He has done pages f
Re:Mozilla and /. (slightly OT) (Score:2)
I work in the real world, too.
he needs to make pages which will display properly on the browser the majority of people will be using
I OTOH make pages that everyone can use, including IE. Maybe I don't made this point clear.
If I cant access my banking information over the internet, I dont give a damn if the page is standards compliant or not,
If I can't use my bank account with my standards compliant browser, I give a damn if the page renders perfectly in some browser
Re:Mozilla and /. (slightly OT) (Score:2)
My thoughts on Firebird (Score:5, Interesting)
After reading a lot of Stallman's writings I decided to let go of even Opera and totally switch to Free software. I was very apprehensive because Opera was the second coming of Jesus as far as I was concerned.
Went to Mozilla.org, Decided against getting the full fledged mozilla because I remembered it being bloated as all hell, got Firebird instead. Downloaded a ton of plugins, fixed everything to where it felt right.
I'm a total convert. Firebird will kick oh so much ass by the time it hits 1.0. It's design is as simple as IE, which is the #1 reason people cite IE as their favorite browser. It's small, almost as fast as Opera, all the features that I loved in Opera are available through plugins, and all the features I didn't use aren't in Firebird because I didn't install them. I have since fallen in love with tabbed browsing. Used to think that browsing three or four sites at once was kinda stupid, but once I got used to tabs in Firebird I began to see myself doing the exact same thing.
The Mozilla project has come a VERY long ways since it first came to be. If you've tried Mozilla out earlier and were disappointed, get it now. Get Firebird. Get Thunderbird. Install plugins to your hearts content. You will be very well surprised.
And hey, you'll be using Free software so that's a huge plus, in my eyes.
Re:My thoughts on Firebird (Score:5, Interesting)
They're quite prepared to install junk like bonzai buddy and various dancing things on their desktop but categorically refuse to try another browser. "I use Internet Explorer", they say and look at me like I just suggested they make love to the electric pencil sharpener.
I've long since given up trying.
Re:My thoughts on Firebird (Score:2)
Oooh, I feel your pain. Although I think I've just about persuaded my mom to switch to Mozilla Mail -- she likes what I've told her about Baynesian filtering of spam and the fact that little greebies can't install themselves on her sys
Re:My thoughts on Firebird (Score:3)
Re:My thoughts on Firebird (Score:2)
Re:My thoughts on Firebird (Score:2)
Understood. However, Firebird is not done. There are many deserving bugs--see http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firebird/roadmap.h tml [mozilla.org] (remember, bugzilla blocks referrals from slashdot).
So think of what it will be like when it
Re:My thoughts on Firebird (Score:2)
First he tried to read his favorite site, WinDrivers.com [windrivers.com], which renders horribly, then he headed over to winamp.com [winamp.com] to
Re:My thoughts on Firebird (Score:2)
Re:My thoughts on Firebird (Score:2)
Two birds, one stone!
Excellent !!
Re:My thoughts on Firebird (Score:2, Informative)
Tabbed browsing *rocks*. I have about 10 tabs open in Mozilla all the time. The sites I'm reading regularily, plus some articles, man pages etc. I'm currently reading.
I couldn't imagine having distinct windows open for all of these. I cannot understand why people stick to MSIE. It's almost impossible to persuade my co-workers to switch to another browser.
Mozilla usally runs for *weeks* on my home workstation (Linux) without restarts. It's not slow at all. At work (Win XP) Mozilla gets really slow after
Re:My thoughts on Firebird (Score:3, Insightful)
It came with the OS install, does what they want and they don't see any added benefit of another install. Sure Gaim is cooler than MSN but if all you do is chat on the MSN protocol why bother?
Similarly, sure tabs are cool but if you never use them who cares? Personally I do a fair bit of research and I find no use for tabs. I can only read one screen at a time so I don't c
Re:My thoughts on Firebird (Score:4, Interesting)
What, don't you have ADHD like the rest of us? *grin*
Seriously, I find it to be too much of a PITA to browse without tabs anymore, but to each his own.
How about security, though? You know, there are still huge gaping holes in IE that will allow "untrusted" software to install itself without user interaction. Heh, I witnessed it the other day, as I didn't believe it and had to see for myself.
Watch your step... err... mouse. p /.
Re:My thoughts on Firebird (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, that's your choice and (IMO) your loss; at least you know the alternatives exist, and you obviously considered what would be best for you before deciding to stick with IE.
I can only read one page at a time, too, but with tabs I can have the next X pages I want to read loading in the background while I read the current one. I think I've probably saved more time that way t
Re:My thoughts on Firebird (Score:2)
Certainly you did your research among IE users - it's hard to use tabs when you don't have them.
I noticed that 99% of those Windows and MacOS users who tried Mozilla at least once - they decided to stick to it because of tabs.
Of course people read one screen at time. But based your logic OS must not let more
Re:My thoughts on Firebird (Score:2, Insightful)
> only read one screen at a time so I don't care for tabs.
You must have broadband. For dialup, tabs are vitally essential, because it is
critically necessary to be able to queue a number of pages, do something else
(e.g., read an already-loaded page) while they load, and then get to them when
they have finished downloading. You can *theoretically* do this with new
windows, but who wants 30+ browser windows open, when you only eve
Re:My thoughts on Firebird (Score:2)
Tabbed browsing is nice, but the real reasons I use FB are Find as You Type [mozilla.org], Custom Keywords [mozilla.org], and the Web Developer Toolbar [myacen.com].
Re:My thoughts on Firebird (Score:2)
This is why I use tabs -- I can only read one page at a time, but I want to check hyperlinks. So I open them in tabs, and when I'm ready to take my attention off of what I'm reading, they're ready for me.
Of course, tabs are also handy for bookmarks -- my daily news reading is a bookmark that opens up a set of tabs.
-Billy
You don't care for tabs? (Score:2)
This way, they get all the inf
Re:My thoughts on Firebird (Score:2)
When you switch to the new page, it is available instantly
Re:My thoughts on Firebird (Score:2)
So why doesn't Firebird support it intelligently out of the box. Out of Opera, Firebird, and two tabbed IE-based browsers, Firebird is still the only one that opens all new windows from popups (some popups are okay, people) in, well, a new *window* and not a tab. Ctrl-N opens a new *window*, not a tab. How about a little sensible out of the box behavior there? Not all of us are running XP with stacked taskbar buttons (and even then XP doesn't do much there).
And how about n
Re:My thoughts on Firebird (Score:3, Informative)
I also highly recommend the PrefBar [xulplanet.com] add-on.
Re:My thoughts on Firebird (Score:2, Informative)
Ctrl-T opens a new tab by the way. Ctrl-click opens a link in a new background tab, Ctrl-Shift-click opens it in a foreground tab.
Re:My thoughts on Firebird (Score:2)
I dunno, maybe because every other tabbed browser behaves that way? Mozilla didn't invent the concept. Play along. Or give me a preference to map the key that doesn't involve hacking obscure files.
Oh, I forgot, purity of essence is more important than consistency.
Re:My thoughts on Firebird (Score:2)
open up Konqueror
Press ctrl-N
see what happens
I imagine Safari behaves the same way. I do agree that Mozilla/Firebird could use a keyboard shortcut configuration panel though.
Re:My thoughts on Firebird (Score:2)
And as for editing a text file, boo-hoo-hoo. That's what the text config files are for: doing the Wrong Thing when that's what one wishes to do. I don't write that rudely--I do the same sometimes myself, for my own reasons (like mapping Caps Lock to Ctrl).
Re:My thoughts on Firebird (Score:2)
As noted, there's an extension that handles this. I'm used to the idea of need
Re:My thoughts on Firebird (Score:2)
Re:My thoughts on Firebird (Score:2)
Re:My thoughts on Firebird (Score:2)
Plugins are indeed very nice... There's lots of good ones available, and the ability to install them to your profile or system-wide is very useful. The one problem is that its virtually impossible to uninstall an extension - not just disable it, remove it from the system. So I can't download something, try, it, then remove it if I don't like it to keep it from cluttering up my plugins list.
Hopefully, this will change in the next couple of versions.
Re:My thoughts on Firebird (Score:2)
If you delete the corresponding entry in the first couple lines of chrome.rdf (the section starting with RDF:Seq about="urn:mozilla:package:root"), it seems to get rid of the item in the extensions dialog--I think you have to delete the extension file as well. It still leaves junk in the rdf file, but I don't think it causes problems.
Go to ~/.phoenix/default/*/chrome (for Firebird--start with ~/.mozilla for Mozilla) and edit the chrome.rdf file (make a backup of it first!!!). The extension's file shou
I disagree. Firebird is great, but it's not Opera (Score:4, Interesting)
Firebird is awesome, but there are still a lot of things that Opera did better.
Most of them are minor, but they're things I used regularly and I miss greatly.
For instance.
1. When you browse forward and back the keyboard doesn't have the focus on a page, so if you use the page up/down keys you get nothing. If you hit control F to search the page, it pops up but doesn't search the page.
2. I liked Opera's save session ability. Mozilla has this and it works pretty well, but not quite as well as Opera. For instance, I like having the ability to force my groups of pages load up in a new tabbed browser. Mozilla throws them into the current browser.
3. I really really miss the ability to save the pages I was on when I close the browser and also to load those same pages up in the event the browser crashes. Mozilla *almost* has this setting. It has visit the last page on startup, but I want to visit the last tabbed group on startup.
4. This one really bugs me. Maybe it's just a bug because it doesn't happen everytime, but when you jump forward and back through pages, sometimes the page doesn't go back to where you were scrolled, it goes back to the top of the page. Ugh! Makes it a pain to search ebay because you go to an item and then go back and you're at the top of the page, you hit page down or control F but the page doesn't have focus! argh!
I think those are my top 4 pet peeves. As a developer there are a couple of css issues (margins and borders) that I don't like, but those are minor and generally workable.
Ah, here's number 5 that bugs me. (Score:2)
Re:Ah, here's number 5 that bugs me. (Score:2, Informative)
Opera had a super useful function that is missing in Mozilla. You could right click a link and "open link in background page." I would always browse my news site and start popping interesting links up in background tabs while I finished reading the article I was on.
This feature is available in Mozilla Firebird 0.7 (and probably earlier versions too): Tools > Options > Advanced > Browsing > Open links in the background. Mozilla 1.5 has it as well (and again, earlier versions had this too): E
Re:Ah, here's number 5 that bugs me. (Score:2)
I'd like to be able to still click and go to pages like normal but if I right click I'd like to have a third option of "open link in background tab"
Re:Ah, here's number 5 that bugs me. (Score:2)
If you control-click or middle-click on them, they open as background tabs.
If you shift-control-click on them, they open in a new tab and focus into it.
And open in new window is still available from the context menu... is there still something missing?
Must be my setup (Score:2)
That sounds like exactly what I need. While I'd prefer to have those options available when I right click a link, I could learn (and maybe even like) the new setup no problem.
For some reason though none of those keyboard click combos are working for me in Moz 1.6.
I'll have to try it on my laptop and see how it does. I'm wondering if my mouse software is jumping in and messing things up. Shame since I use the same mouse on my laptop. heh.
Re:Ah, here's number 5 that bugs me. (Score:2)
Re:I disagree. Firebird is great, but it's not Ope (Score:2)
1) The keyboard focus bug in Moz REALLY annoys me. I hate having to click on the tab window to get focus back all the time.
2 & 3) Automatically restoring the last tabgroup session on startup is a must-have.
4) Opera (as of 7.23) sort of has this go-to-top bug too, but it only happens when you're scrolled to the very bottom of the page when you go back/forward.
One more pet peeve I'd add is that Moz mouse gestures [mozdev.org]
Re:I disagree. Firebird is great, but it's not Ope (Score:2)
Re:I disagree. Firebird is great, but it's not Ope (Score:2)
Re:My thoughts on Firebird (Score:2)
Out of Curiosity (Score:3, Informative)
---
It was a bad year for Mozilla. (Score:1, Interesting)
But they failed completely to incoperate the rising new mark-up technologies like XML-Signature [ietf.org] or WebCGM [w3.org].
If this development continues this year, Mozilla might lose it's technical lead to IE or Opera. And open source software might be again only the second winner.
Re:It was a bad year for Mozilla. (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you just pulling this stuff out of your arse, or what? Neither of these are new (WebCGM has been around since '99), both are fairly irrelevant, and WebCGM is a binary format in any case.
Given the *cough* rapid pace of MSIE development *cough* these days, if Mozilla stood stockstill for the next two years, it wouldn't lose any ground to IE (which still doesn't support all of DOM Level 2), and Opera is also still playing catch-up, although it's farther along than MSIE.
It would be nice if they'd start including SVG support in the standard releases, though. Especially since the Adobe SVG plugin for Moz/NS is broken and appears likely to stay that way for some time.
Re:It was a bad year for Mozilla. (Score:2)
Avant Browser [avantbrowser.com] is what IE should be like (granted, it's built on IE).
asshat (Score:2)
Those "technologies" you listed are mostly irrelevent, and Mozilla has improved by leaps and bounds in many areas. CSS support has improved, speed has improved a great deal, Firebird has become a main focus, Thunderbird is taking off, etc.
WTF? HIBT?
Re:It was a bad year for Mozilla. (Score:3, Insightful)
I will bite the Trolls bait:
What the !@#$ are you talking about. One of the reasons the original Netscape code was dropped in favor of starting over was that the original code was
Even worse (Score:4, Insightful)
SVG development is still going nowhere, while Calendar development has just stopped. No need to mention that nobody in Mozilla development team understands the importance of MNG and XForms. In Bugzilla you can even find their comments saying that "HTML forms work, what the reason for Xforms?"!
So, Mozilla becomes the best web browser accoridng to requirements of mid-90s. However, development teams of other browsers (read: IE and Opera, not sure about Apple) are more informed about web-browser requirements of mid-00s. No need to predict who will be a winner.
I love Mozilla (both Suite and Firebird) and I love XUL, and that's why it's so sad to see that my favorite browser is a big loser.
Re:Even worse (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree (Score:2)
The existing form semantics in HTML was developed before anyone had any serious experience with implementing forms. XForms, althogh it's surely useful for general use outside HTML, is hugely overcomplicated for the majority of web browsing.
Personally all that I want is to be able to say things like:
Re:I agree (Score:2)
web browsing - that's the major problem of understanding of modern web-based application requirements by many web developers. They still think about browsing instead of applications. In mid-90s browsing was almost all that users needed from the web. But not anymore.
Today we deploy web-based applications not for public masses, but for intranet users and for extranet customers. We
Re:Even worse (Score:2)
Re:Even worse (Score:2)
Re:Even worse (Score:2)
Sorry But ... (Score:2, Interesting)
More quotes from the book of Mozilla (Score:2, Funny)
II. MOZILLA
- http://web.archive.org/web/19981206020253/http:// w ww.gate.net/~shipbrk/graphics/mozilla.jpg
CAPUT III
And the beast shall be made *legion*. Its numbers shall be increased
a *thousand thousand* fold. The din of a million keyboards like unto
a great *storm* shall cover the earth, and the followers of Mammon
shall *tremble*.
- from The Book of Mozilla, 3:31 (Red Letter Edition)
background: maroon; color: white; about:mozilla
the Firebird name debate (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the name's daft too but found myself defending it to my Dad. It's probably a silly corporate thing...
Re:the Firebird name debate (Score:2)
Chatzilla improved this year, too. (Score:2, Informative)
For the last few years, I've used Chatzil
latency problems (Score:2)
Anyone else experience this?
Danny.
Re:I wonder (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I wonder (Score:4, Informative)
Startup's instantaneous with quickstart. Even moreso than IE, which appears on-screen quickly but actually takes a moment to finish displaying and let you use your bookmarks/URL bar.
If you want REALLY fast, use Firebird and put this in the URI bar:
about:config
Look/filter for "turbo" and set it to true. The developers didn't include this feature in the options UI, but I find it doesn't take much memory at all and makes Firebird very snappy.
Re:DUMB FOREIGNER QUESTION (Score:1)
Re:Thumbs Up, But... (Score:5, Insightful)
NoooOOOOoooOOooOoooOOO!!!!
Then Microsoft wins and standards don't mean anything. The task which must be accomplished is to get site developers to code to standards, in which case 90% of the compatibility issues disappear (and the Web becomes about 75% safer due to the disappearance of ActiveWreX crap).
Not to mention... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to mention tools that code to standards. For all those of us that don't want to write HTML tags (even if we know how), that is the main issue. Because most sites I see that render incorrectly, I kinda doubt there's any real "web developer" behind that wrote the code. Think more code monkey with a WYSIWYG (on IE) HTML editor...
Kjella
Re:Thumbs Up, But... (Score:2)
tststs...
Re:Thumbs Up, But... (Score:2)
Re:happy new years (Score:2)
Re:happy new years (Score:2)
Re:Blocking All The Ads, All The Time (Score:2)