Mozilla is going to final 1.0. How do you rate this good free browser?

[unplugged]

Since about a week I'm using Mozilla 0.99 as web browser and I must admit that has the pros of MS IE and the pros of Opera.

Speed is very good and page downloading is smart as happen with MS IE (first structure and text, 2nd images and heavy stuff), I haven't archieved any kind of problem at this time and this free "Navigator" (GPL?) rolls from page to page very rapidly.
Also the page loading layout is always perfect as happen with MS IE o how it must be.
I have said pros of Opera because it performs quite good on slow machines, I think also due to a not excessive RAM consumption, about 20 Mb.

Months ago I have also tried Netscape Navigator 6 (Mozilla is a project started time ago entirely from sources of Netscape Navigator; but, trust me, now is a totaly different browser ;)) and as first impression it seemed to me even more huge and heavy than MS IE 6.0 !!!
So I have fired it out of my HD in few seconds :D


I met first time Mozilla at www.warp2search.net (great stuff news site).
Does anyone know any other good browser as replacement of MS IE?

[Doom9]

I've been using it extensively since the RC1 release.. here are my comments: rendering: not always perfect.. have a look at this thread:http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=23366, 2nd page.. physche's signature get screwed up badly.

another link would be http://www.2002dvdinfo.org/.. scrolling is horrible.

Password manager is annoying because it wants to store every form.. not only .htaccess protected pages as the IE equivalent does.

other than that I liked the browser... rendered every other page I visited as it should be and speed is acceptable, too, though a bit slower than IE (been talking with quite a few people about that).

tabbed browsing is a nice feature (though incompatible with my browsing habits), mail client finally supports multiple pops (which is a big plus as compared with netscape) and it's free software.. hopefully they can iron out the bugs for the 1.00 release... netscape 6.0 was horrible and has shattered the trust of many netscape users for good.

stability seems to be good.. my pc once rebooted when I had mozilla open and switch between the browser and serious sam though it may well be that the game killed it, rather than the browser.

[unplugged]

Originally posted by Doom9
http://www.2002dvdinfo.org/.. scrolling is horrible.

Scrolling works perfect with my Mozilla build 0.99 in this site.

Originally posted by Doom9

tabbed browsing is a nice feature (though incompatible with my browsing habits)


pretty linuxian :)

[gldblade]

Mozilla loads quite slowly on my computer. I know there is a quicklaunch icon that partially loads Mozilla on startup, but I don't like programs that hog memory on startup.

>tabbed browsing is a nice feature (though incompatible with my browsing habits)

I use it all the time. NetCaptor is a great browser with tabbed browsing, though it's no longer freeware... :(

[Doom9]

unplugged: what gfx card do you have? I've discussed the scrolling problem online with a few people.. all nvidia users had problems.. but others didn't. Anyways.. I submitted all the issues I mentioned and a few others to the developers (or rather had somebody do that for me;) It's just that there are still issues that I think need to be ironed out.. but the browser is pretty good and I would already suggest it as an alternative for people who don't like MS products.

[unplugged]

I have a NVIDIA GeForce MX card
driver is Detonator XP 28.32 official
(WinXP)

[avih]

>" I know there is a quicklaunch icon that partially loads Mozilla on startup, but I don't like programs that hog memory on startup."

IE does the same, but u can't control it, and it doesn't have a tray icon that can make it go away :)

[Koepi]

I use mozilla since very early 0.9.x stages regularly and only switch back to IE in cases where it absolutely fails (i.e. windows update ;) ).

Tabbed browsing was against my habbits first as well, but hitting ctrl+t is so fast and easy and your display is always "clean"... the stoppable popups is important as well (hm, dunno if that's still a problem, but before mozilla 0.9.x it definatly was :) ).

Well, I supported mozilla a long time now and maybe I'm a little biased because of that, but for me and all users in my LAN it seems to be the perfect browser.

Btw., I've no problems with oleg's site as well, using 28.32 detonators on win2k (G2 MX [1st genartion, no 200/400 or anything]). Didn't check it with linux though, but I guess you're a windows user anyways ;)

Ah, and I'm using rc1 of course.

Regards,
Koepi

[Doom9]

well.. the thing is.. the guys who had problems with the page used the 23.12 drivers (or whatever the official 23.x revision is).. haven't tried using the latest drivers yet.

[Mikele]

I'm using Smart Explorer (http://www.smarteque.com), why don't you give it a try, maybe you'll like it. It doesn't have its own renderer, it uses IE for the job and has a multi document interface, popup killer and many other useful features.

[gldblade]

>IE does the same, but u can't control it, and it doesn't have a tray icon that can make it go away

Well, then my logic is why add to it by loading another browser on startup? But if I don't, loading Mozilla is quite slow.

[avih]

>Well, then my logic is why add to it by loading another browser on startup? But if I don't, loading Mozilla is quite slow.

because i like it more :), and i have at least one browser window open all the time...

i used IE5/5.5/6 before when it was better and more stable than ns/mozilla. i don't like opera's user interface too much, and it's not as compatible with web pages as mozilla.

i find the features, and the stability better in mozilla than in IE. it's a personal oppinion, but that's what good for me. yes, it has few 'glitches' as doom noted, but overall, for me, i enjoy using mozilla more/

avi

[Doom9]

btw.. the slow scrolling issue is mentioned in bugzilla.. in fact there's still loads of bugs ;)

also.. I'd like someone to point me out how exactly IE is being pre-loaded because I have a hard time finding any evidence.. specifically I don't see any large process being loaded into memory upon starting up the system.. there's nothing quite comparable to the mozilla loader.

[avih]

>"I'd like someone to point me out how exactly IE is being pre-loaded.."

well, i boot my xp, i don't use explorer, and in the task manager it takes 12M....

[Doom9]

explorer.exe is the window manager of winodws.. try killing the process.. it will restart the gui, especially the taskbar
explorer.exe is the rather buggy (by xp standards) task that crashes every now and then but you see the system recovering.

[avih]

that's the point. they turned the whole UI to explorer. so u can't get rid of it...

[[Toff]]

I'm using mozilla since m18, and I'm very pleased with it.
I can't browse without tabbed browsing now!
It's very usefull on forum. First you open one window for main page. Then you open new window for each forum. Finally you use tab for threads.

I also like the optimoz add-on :
http://optimoz.mozdev.org/
Allow to use gestures to browse.

Another good thing is javascript advanced feature, like enabling pop-up only when you click on link and during a small time.

DOM inspector, Javascript debugger are great also.

Hey! I forget about the direct search in url bar.

Finally it is under the MPL (Mozilla Public License) ;-)
The work done by developpers is very impressing.

[gldblade]

>I'd like someone to point me out how exactly IE is being pre-loaded

I'm not too sure about this, but Windows 98 SE (the OS I'm using) is integrated with Internet Explorer. Load Windows and you load IE.

BTW, there is a way to get rid of IE, but it gets rid of certain features in Windows that I happen to use.

[dvd2svcd]

A funny thing I noticed with Mozilla. If I have a Password Field where it should show * instead of the password it actually shows the password and no *.

[MaTTeR]

I'm actually starting to like it better each day. In fact my gf has now seen me use it and she insists on me installing it on hers:)

Doom9 is correct though, Olegs site (http://www.2002dvdinfo.org/main.html) does indeed scroll horribly on his main entrance page for some reason. I've been using the nightly builds and so far the issue hasn't been resolved. There are other issues as well, right now I'm typing this up in a 3inch by 3inch window within Mozilla. Bookmark Manager isn't very flexible in terms of drag and drop like I'm use to in IE.

I do have to admit, early on I thought the tab browsing was a gimmick. However, I found myself surfing the forums today in record time using tabs and must say it's very impressive if your pipe can handle the bandwidth:)

[Doom9]

I've just installed rc1 on solaris.. works fine but takes ages to load.. and when opening another browser and trying to open olegs browser the browser froze at 100% cpu usage and I had to kill it.. going back to olegs site after that worked and scrolling is okay. However, there seems to be some font problems.. they will not always get rendered properly.

[chemmajik]

I use Mozilla RC1 sometimes, if they would fix the autoscroll to be DirectX complient I'd use it more. You cannot use hypersnap to capture pages, it wont autoscroll(unless you know a fix). So once they fix that feature I'll start to use it more & more. I'm so fed up with the cache system of ie & its damn cookies. Thats one area I like that they built into Mozilla. Once you have it loaded up one time, I find it opens new windows actually faster. But it loads web pages the first time slower, but once you have it cached its faster. I'm also kinda tired of ie55 crashes they don't happen often, but when it crashes it take all my ie's55 down. I refuse to install ie6 do to passport crap, plus it just plain crashes on alot of people I hear, just dealing with driver issue's. I just like the idea that modzilla is open, and if i get tired of a feature I can always rip it out & recompile it if it pisses me off. I used to use netscape gold 3 then 4 just got to bloated, I missed its bookmark editor, so thats what draws me to Mozilla, bec its bookmark editor has alot of really helpful time saving organizing features(organizing 6000 bookmarks is a beach). Why so many well my ie was added to my old netscape. I have to use a external bookmark editor for ie all the time, so I am getting tired of it, its a major hassle. I haven't done a torture test yet to see how many mozilla windows I can open at once, but so far it hasnt crashed yet. The wheel mouse does finally work with RC1 for scrolling which made me also retry it again. So I am keeping my mind open, its still being tested. One other cool thing that I haven't used alot is the scroll back in history window, you can easily see it in the menu & just lick to go to it. It might replace my old opera4, do to spyware I havent upgraded to opera6.

[twistee]

I have started to use Mozilla on windows. It works fine, I like it. I havent had any troubles with it yet...

[Doom9]

some updates on the solaris situation.. I had a lot of freezes.. more than netscape4.79 crashes on solaris.. so either something went wrong during compilation (maybe there have to be some special switches set for solaris8, I dunno) or mozilla is corrently no viable alternative for solaris. I went back to IE5.5.. that is far from being perfect because it can't browse local files and often doesn't display a page so you have to press f5 to get what you want... but it's stable and has no rendering problems.

[twistee]

I have now had a few problems. There are a few sites that dont really load well, and i get pissed off when it doesnt want to download the plugins automatically (i like how ie does it automatically) so my internet banking doesnt work straight away...

[chemmajik]

Yeah I wish the mozilla auto pluging download worked myself. It looks like it attempts too, I could be a security flag that just needs toggling.

[MaTTeR]

I finally got Flash working yesterday with the latest nightly build. If you visit Macromedia's web site and download the We Flash Player installer, it should solve your problems. All the Flash animations are workig great for me finally.

On another note, the latest nightly build seems to have improved on speed and reliability; at least on my two dualie machines. A few known bugs have been fixed, one of which Doom9 reported and I verified with the nasty scrolling issue on Oleg's site. The new download manager is a very nifty feature and just might replace my GetRight:)

Edit- If your like me and have dumped Outlook for Mozilla's mail, you might like to know the spell checker is working great now also.

[avih]

@mat:
:) hehe, i'm happy to see another mozilla fan born :)

flash (from macromedia page) has been working for me since 0.98 (or 0.99, can't remember). i use rc1 now, but i'll switch to a new nightly build, mat got me exccited ;) . but i can't download 10M with 56K every night :( :)

it would be fun like to see the spellchecker working for arbitrary edit boxes (like when i'm typing a post right now).

nice
avi

[Emp3r0r]

i think internet explorer is still best... although mozilla has come a long way. From a web developers view it is leaps and bounds better than having to deal with netscape 4. i'd much rather people be using mozilla than old netscape... that's my view.

[chemmajik]

Hmm I havent test the mail portion yet.

[Doom9]

hmm.. scrolling on oleg's is still dead slow using the 5/4 build. back to ie then..

[avih]

@doom9
oleg's site ( http://www.2002dvdinfo.org ) works perfectly smooth for me now (better than the last time i checked when we talked on irc) either with mouse scroll or scroll-bar drag.

i'm using nightly a build from 3-May-2002.

cheers
avi

[MaTTeR]

Yeh, that Oleg scrolling bug seems to have been resolved 2 or 3 builds ago. It works just as good as IE6 for me.

Most likely the culprit is the $%*& Nvidia drivers. When will they ever get a stable build out?:rolleyes:

[Doom9]

well.. considering that I've used these 23.11 drivers since the day they were released and have never had any problems in any application, wouldn't it be presumptous to blame the drivers? works with other browsers after all..

[MaTTeR]

Not really. Both of us have the same video card, same OS but different drivers. So I wouldn't know where else to look.

The only other thing I could think of is that I have all Windows updates, Flash installed for Mozilla and a 16Mb memory cache allocated to Mozilla instead of the default 8Mb. I doubt either of those would be the problem but who knows, seen stranger things happen:)

@Everyone,
If you have problems with the Mozilla mail crashing, simply disbale the spell check and it should taker care of it temporarily.

[Doom9]

well.. using the latest nvidia reference drivers now and scrolling still sucks on oleg's page... back to IE again :devil:

[Doom9]

using the latest daily and the 23.12 drivers (I'm on another comp) oleg's site works.. still no fix for the linewrapping issue though.. and the password manager is annoying as ever.. but I'm using mozilla more than ie right now which should said a lot.. seems to be able to keep up with IE in most of the cases

[MaTTeR]

Doom9 is slowly progressing to Mozilla...I can feel it:D

For those of you that don't know, RC2 ws released yesterday and appears to be pretty solid.

[rmatei]

I have an ATI card and have no scrolling problems whatsoever. I agree with unplugged that it has the pros of Opera and of IE. (I've been using Opera for a couple months, now I'm toggling between the three)

Tabbed browsing is a must for me. It's a little strange at first but once you get used to it's hard to go back to the IE style, especially since I tend to have many windows open at once.

The one decisive thing about Mozilla vs Opera is that Opera has a lot more rendering problems. I'll need to get used to Mozilla a little more, but I feel it will become my browser of choice. It's also a plus that it's open source.

[Doom9]

finally, starting with builds from 05/11 I can visit oleg's page without problems on my 2 computers (using 2 sets of nvidia drivers). Unfortunately a day later they've introduced yet another (known and reported) bug concerning the password manager.. a sec or so after a password dialogue comes up you can no longer see what you're typing... still hasn't been fixed on the latest daily I'm using.

or then there's the thing with the download manager.. sometimes it activates automatically and unless you know what line to put into prefs.js there's no way to get rid of it anymore (ask matter;).

or the linewrapping thing (psyche's signature for instance).. here's where the whole open source mentality begins to shine through.. why do it when it's not in the html specs seems to be the developer's opinion. They seem to forget that any not blind IE user will prefer to have a hack instead of a table that creates a horizontal scrollbar..

and eventually they should separate all the apps... no need to have all kinds of browser controls in chatzilla, is there? talking about it they should have a look at some download manager and mirc to make those really good.

but assuming all the bugs get fixed and the linewrapping included it's a pretty good browser.. in fact.. I use it more than IE these days and I'm writing this post in mozilla (and btw you may have noted that the textarea to type a post is larger in mozilla now.. may break NS6 but it just works better for mozilla)

one more thing.. does anybody know what signature NS6 has? does it report as netscape6? mozilla reports as netscape5 and as a matter of fact the percentage of netscape5 hits has been augmenting lately..

@edit: the password dialogue problem seems to be fixed in build 051404 :)

[MaTTeR]

RC3 is out:)

This is good and bad news to me. I'm getting a little worried about the amount of these "release canidates" and yet still see the same old bugs. One has to wonder how they justify these releases with major issues still existing.

@Doom9,
I'll save you some time again, yes the line wrap issue still exists. Yes, the password manager window is still not very flexible. No scrolling issues with Oleg's site though. The browser is still somewhat unstable on both my AMD and Intel SMP systems.

I've been in the #mozilla chat room nagging them but it seems all they are worried about is getting 1.0 out the door. Timeless told me not to expect an RC4:rolleyes:

[BlackSun]

I'm still waiting for a way to install the flash plugin... Well let's download RC3.

[avih]

@blacksun:
goto http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/alternates/
and download the flash 6 for netscape. install normally, it should work ;)

cheers
avi.

ps, any progress with the playlist?

[MaTTeR]

For those of you that have Bugzilla accts please vote on the line wrapping bug here- http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=95067

By voting for the bug it should get a little more attention and hopefully addressed really soon. If you dont have a Bugzilla acct, it just takes a few moments to signup. Thx!

[Doom9]

didn't knew you could vote for bugs.. now that I know I have a couple more suggestions to vote for:

download manager enhancements: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=75364
general linewrapping issue:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=146703
feature enhancement for the mail client (make using multiple email acounts much easier): http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=146703

btw.. as you can see.. some people simply don't get the linewrapping... look at the last comments for the 2nd link I mentioned.

[DSPguru]

download here :
http://channels.netscape.com/ns/browsers/7/download.jsp

[binky the stunt cat]

or you can get other plugins here (http://wp.netscape.com/plugins/index.html?cp=brictrpr3)

[chemmajik]

I've been test IE6 for awhile its cookies & caching has improved, but it crashing has to be the worst piece of crap browser I have seen. Wish Modzilla would fix autoscroll direct X capturing. I don't know about you but I seriously hate the new macromedia flashing ad's big time, about to turn them off perminently in IE6 as soon as I find a way. Bright red blues just drive you crazy.

[MaTTeR]

Another bug I frequently have- http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=132517

Please vote if you have any left:)

[gldblade]

How do you make feature requests? Anyway...

Here's the feature I want: In Internet Explorer and Opera, if you click on the middle button on the mouse, a circle pops up wherever you click and if you move the mouse above the circle, the page scrolls upwards and if you move downwards, etc...

I want this because rolling the mouse wheel takes too much work...and my mouse wheel is broken :)

[MaTTeR]

@gldblade

As I recall IE6 has a feature like you describe. In Mozilla the middle button is pretty much used for the tab browsing, which I've found very useful.

If you'd like to make a suggestion then sign up and bugzilla. They have soem FAQ pages as well.

[diji1]

hey chemmajik ... regarding
I seriously hate the new macromedia flashing ad's big time, about to turn them off perminently in IE6 as soon as I find a way

i used to use an app named naviscope that enables u to control content including advertisement in ie6. this app has quite possibly the most annoying "logging" , er ... interface that sits on the desktop but with that closed its invisible except for a system tray icon. it was free when i was using it about 6 months ago or so. i imagine there must be a fair few other little apps that do the same thing, and probaly better ones at that. i am a very happy opera user now though ;) ( ... well, except for the occasional crash ) which gives a high degree of control over [ bandwith killing ] content. Haven't tried Mozilla yet ... it'll have to be better than net(crud)scape communicator tho for me to use it - which on the balance of things won't be hard i imagine.

[Doom9]

mozilla is indeed a lot better... been using it almost exclusively since the 0511 build.. that was the first time the scrolling problem was really solved for me. There's just a few things mentioned in my links above that I think should be fixed before they go 1.0..

[BlackSun]

Flash still doesn't work :( But damn you IE guys can't imagine how it is good to browse without popups ! Also now I don't matter if I receive some worm.klez in my mailbox.

Where I'm sad is that some website aren't WC3 compliants and the tables are generally screwed with them...

[Koepi]

Strange enough - flash and shockwave both work for me. The actual installer recognise mozilla1.0 and install flawlessly.

Maybe you need to install a newer build from:

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/nightly/latest-1.0.0/

Regards,
Koepi

P.S.: did I mention that I use mozilla since the early 0.9.x state? ;) In the meantime there is no need to use any other browser, except for windows update of course ;)

[Doom9]

koepi: what do you say to the issues in bugzilla I linked too? they are important reasons for me to still use IE from time to time.. and in fact they prevent me from openly suggesting the browser to anyone using IE.. cos they will not like how mozilla handles (or rather: doesn't handle) these kind of things..

as for popups.. I had to re-activate that feature.. it would also block the pm window to come up on messageboards like these so I would have to go to the user cp manually to read new pms.. and that's annoying, too.

blacksun: I installed mozilla on 2 boxes, and added the java runtime environment and flash plugin (keep in mind that the page that comes up tells you to install showckwave instead.. that plugin is pretty much useless..)... and it works flawlessly.. even got the adobe pdf reader integrated without re-installing it.

[diji1]

Yes - one positive thing one can say about IE is that it always works ( ... i just know someones gonna say otherwise :) ) ...

[BlackSun]

The flash installation doesn't detect mozilla, that's the problem. Well I'm gonna follow Koepi's link...

I can't use IE anymore because if two IE windows are opened, my computer freeze (don't ask me why). It's ok to open only one window but I am afraid of popups :)

[[Toff]]

Have you check what they say here :
http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/windows.html
(Mozilla Plugin Support on Microsoft Windows)


1. Download Flash 6.0 Player.
2. Install. Installer builds will be detected by the Flash installer.
3. If you're using a Zipped build, you can manually select your plugins folder.


Perhaps you are using a zip installation of Mozilla so you must manually select the plugins dir.

PS: Have you look at this cool demo page,
http://www.mozilla.org.uk/temp/start/1.0/demos/eagle-sun.html

[Doom9]

@toff: that demo page only works properly if you move the mouse at grandma speed. but it is something IE can't do. Though I much rather prefer to have my linewrapping and mozmail fixes.. the mozilla team isn't going to like my browser recommendation if the 1.0 is no different from the current dailies.

[MaTTeR]

Doom,

I moved that bird around and it was totally seamless (no lag) and not at grandma speeds. lol

That was a pretty impressive page:)

[Doom9]

well.. how fast did you move the bird? I was refering to that speed actually.. I do about everything except breathing and running twice as fast as the average human being (how else would I manage to study and run my site at the same time?;) so my mouse pointer usually moves over the screen at a speed that the average guy looking over my shoulder has a hard time spotting it..

[MaTTeR]

Now I see what you mean. I tried flying the bird as fast as possible into the right side of the screen, it didn't like that much and just stayed put:)

It doesn't allow me to fly it into the sun either. Wonder why:D

[[Toff]]

Have you tried to move the sun ?
It show the effect better.
Yes IE don't like it, but it's not a problem for me ;-)
Mozilla 1.0 release party is very close (12th of June), and of course the 1.0 release must be out before.

[smokeslikeapoet]

I downloaded and installed and early build of mozilla and thought it was the biggest piece of crap I've ever put on my system. I decided to try again with RC3 and I absolutey love it, I've migrated over and you can now find me on efnet #doom9, I sure would like intellimouse support, but i'm sure that's a microsoft issue, (i.e. intellimouse should support all win32 software, not vice versa). It's a funny thing that Mozilla only crashes if I try to set it to be the default WinXP browser, something else I think Microsoft is to blame for. The best thing about Mozilla is NO MORE POPUPS!

[avih]

i use it as windows default browser (still using rc2), and use the m$ optical mouse (defult driver, no special download or install), and everything's working great, including scrolling, middle mouse button, etc.

[smokeslikeapoet]

I'm using the intellimouse optical explorer with the extra back and forward buttons, I haven't intstalled the extra intellimouse drivers, using the windows xp default drivers, i'll upgrade the drivers and see what happens. i can always edit the folder options in explorer, to open htm, html, and other web files with mozilla, but when i try to set it to default it crashes, very weird, i'm about due for an xp reinstall, and i'm going to dual boot with win2000 server (working on certification) I'll see what happens then.

[Doom9]

@smokes: can you test something? set the program pirorities of your ripping progs to idle (gknot does it by default, dvd2svcd has an option, vdub has it, etc).. start ripping, and when the cpu is maxed out try to bring a mozilla window to the foreground.. both me and matter have a bit of a problem there.. swapping starts like crazy.. the whole thing goes really slowly (IE is fine).. but before I bother with buzilla again (ppl there don't like me because I'm a windows user and my rfes basically say make mozilla more like IE cos IE is more usefriendly) I want to have as much confirmation as I can possibly get.

[avih]

@doom9
doesn't happen here. i just ran mozilla (no quick launch) while vdub doing a copy (cut) in idle mode. working ok.

[Doom9]

avih: copy isn't enough. that just uses I/O.. max out the cpu (encode a movie)

[diji1]

doom9 : ppl there don't like me because I'm a windows user

sheesh. i've always found the idea of judging someone on the OS/browser they use to be ... well, pathetic. i have linux but i use windows the majority of the time. jeez, i must be some really dumb luser then i guess. pathetic.

[smokeslikeapoet]

Yeah I've had no problems with V-dub or any other tool and I always set the priority on my encodes to idle (life can't stand still for divx) but I have seen Windows XP go crazy like that, it was about the same time I was upgrading a bunch of hardware, so I just reinstalled.

[MaTTeR]

Well I have to say the more I've used XP the more it does look like it's XP related. It's interesting that when this so called swapping occurs, Mozilla is basically froze for 20-30secs trying to redraw itself. However, if I launch IE6 the response its much faster.

I'm not so sure this is just Mozilla related now. I had this same problem last week when I was running HeadAC3he with high priority during some tests. When I tied to lauch Mozilla it just took forever to open. Keep in mind I'm running dual XP1600+ CPUs with 512MB of very agressively tweaked RAM. So this shouldnt be happening at all. I orignally thought XP was much more effecient on SMP systems than Win2k but I'm seriously reconsidering due to a few more issues I've noticed.

[Doom9]

just installed the latest daily and guess what.. you can now decide what happens when you start a download.. finally you can get rid of the download manager via the GUI :)

keep on voting for : http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=99457 (linewrapping)
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=126341 (multiple email accounts in mozilla mail)
and http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=75364 (download manager enhancements).

[chemmajik]

Is there a latest daily that comes with a installer? I didnt want all the stuff that comes with the nightly builds, just the browser? Found another reason why I need modzilla, asian programmer & hardware pages only display properly with it, they wont even display with ie6, kinda funny.

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by chemmajik
Is there a latest daily that comes with a installer? I didnt want all the stuff that comes with the nightly builds, just the browser? Found another reason why I need modzilla, asian programmer & hardware pages only display properly with it, they wont even display with ie6, kinda funny.

They don't displayy at all. Or just not right? Personally I can get asian languages to show in IE6, MSWord, and Star/Open Office. Just a matter of having the right language packs installed.

[chemmajik]

Hmm they weren't displaying properly in IE6 I guess the multiple boots fixed it from the language pack I added with modzilla. Oh well.
:)

[MigliO]

It's out!
NOW!!!!

ready to try it??

[binky the stunt cat]

yes, if i could only find it on their webpage.....

[Doom9]

I'm running it.. way better than RC3 but it's an old build. At least it doesn't have the using a lot of resources when being shut down problem.. but it also doesn't have the option to kill the stupid download manager.. and we still have to force the developers in making thins more userfriendly..

[mrbass]

well I'm going to roll it out at my corporation on all the new installs and replace any old Netscape 4.x installs. Only thing missing is the spell checker and I guess for those I'll be force to install Netscape 6.x. Outlook Express doesn't have a spell checker either it just uses MS Office which most of our users have but I'm getting all of tech services, sales, another division on openoffice.

I've been using IE for last year or so since I stopped using linux as my primary desktop OS (still rulez for servers though). I really can't name anything that is better than IE6 compared to mozilla 1.0. No more nasty index.dat file crap to deal with.

[avih]

http://www.mozdev.org/redirect/spellchecker/

[mrbass]

yes I'm aware of the spellchecker and also the reasons why it wasn't included in 1.0. (I just installed it [w32spellchecker20020523.xpi] and it crashes Mozilla 1.0 like crazy). To me it's no big deal but a few at work are clueless beings who need help with their abc's.

[mrbass]

as far as it being sluggish while ripping a dvd it was. I set it from normal priority to HIGH priority and it was just as fast as iexplorer. Checking ieexplorer.exe it was also set to normal but I'm willing to bet Microsoft ignores (or overrides) that for their own valuable programs. I guess those line wrapping is a valid point like on http://www.cdrinfo.com/

[Doom9]

argh.. just installed mozilla 1.0 on a fresh redhat7.3 and the fonts on my site and the forum look horrible.. konqueror looks fine though.. anybody using mozilla on linux who could instruct me on selecthing the proper fonts so my page no longer looks like shit?

[mrbass]

haven't loaded 7.3 yet so I can help specifically but download that true type font rpm from
http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/redhat/7.3/i386/index.html
choose by name and letter T
then look for ttfonts-1.0-9 Some TrueType fonts
check if you already got it installed
rpm -qil ttfonts or is it -qal I forgot.

search on here
http://www.mail-archive.com/redhat-list%40redhat.com/

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/fonts/unix/enabling_truetype.html

[Doom9]

as I suspected.. the fonts have already been installed by default (would also be curious that konqueror can display the page properly and has the regular true type fonts listed in the fonts property if they were not installed).. however mozilla clearly fucks up somewhere (or the linux geek would say I do and I would say that the end user is always right and that the developer has to adjust).

[Koepi]

Originally posted by Doom9
(or the linux geek would say I do and I would say that the end user is always right and that the developer has to adjust).

Slow down! This can only be valid for commercial (successful) software, don't mix it up :)

SCNR,
Koepi

[Doom9]

SCNR? Screener? That would be SCR ;)

well.. many open source programs could be a lot more successfull if they took usability concerns into account.. 2% less geeks and 10% more regular users I'd chose the latter any day ;) if virtualdub were a cli tool nobody would use it.. I still vividly recall people continuing to use DeCSS instead of using vobsub just because the latter was a cli tool.. and it was driving me crazy when people kept bitching about green decss output (of course not mentioning that they had used decss but it was kinda obvious).. that prompted me to get involved in GUI development (as tester and advisor)... how many people would be using SBC if it weren't for GKnot? You can still have powerful tools in the background and hide them from he user and make things pretty easy for him. The next gen GKnot will be a good example of this..

in any case.. I dumped redhat.. it didn't even recognize my soundcard. Now trying Suse 8. And btw.. I'm sure you remember that CT editorial on open software... they were right to the point. A hundred CLI parameters might win over a few geeks, a well designed GUI will win over a much larger amount of regular users. The main strength of Windows and Mac OS is simplicity and consistency.. and there every Linux distro still has a long way to go to catch up. Oggmux isn't a cli tool either ;) And if it weren't for oggmux a lot less people would be doing ogm these days... graph creation, despite almost being drag&drop is still too much to ask for a lot of people.

okay.. I'm off to install Suse8 now... trying to dig thru thousands of packages and eliminate the stuff that is not needed for regular desktop usage. Hope I can make the next post on Linux Mozilla (now I'm using the first mozilla 1.1 beta for windows) and that my site will look as it's supposed to.

[c0p0n]

I installed RC2 about two weeks or so on my MDK 8.2 system... great browser, great mail and news reader, good layout (with the modern theme) and the pages viewed PERFECTLY.
the problem is... too slow. I am not using the damn slow KDE neither Gnome, but IceWM. It is not a memory lackness, cos I have 640 MB. I have an enough good processor (duron 800), reasonable fast hd (hdparm says to me 20 MB/sc of buffered reads) and no swapping at all (the swap usage always is under 2 mb).
even on RC2 I had no other issue than speed... well, there're another things like no clipboard compatibility between several window managers that can be a bit annoying, or a very low java and flash perfomance (the same plugins on opera and konqueror are much faster).
but this caused to me to use Opera 6.01 as default browser and sylpheed as email and news reader. that's a pity, since it's by far the best linux browser. I am right to download the final release now, let's see If there's some speed improvement.

[c0p0n]

Originally posted by Doom9

in any case.. I dumped redhat.. it didn't even recognize my soundcard.

what soundcard do U have? maybe soundcfg or sndconfig can be of a bit of help on that, if it's not a rare one (sb cards should like work like a charm)

[Doom9]

yippie.. I'm running suse8 personal now.. it's always a chore to go thru the package list.. but now I'm up and running.. the soundcard has been recognized (alsa rules) and works, netscape6 renders my site properly, and mozilla that I've just installed also works properly. I also found kvirc which is almost mirc compatible so I can get used to it. Installing Oo now and I'll feel almost at home. Though there is always the matter of finding something equivalent to flashfxp and dreamweaver.
my logi pilot wheel also works properly (wheel didn't work in redhat). so that round definitely goes to suse. Though I don't think I found xmms anywhere which is a negative point in my book.. I wonder if dvd playback will work in xine...

@anyone using suse: could me being behind a nat be the reason why I can't do an online update? can't get the packages :( and I'd like to updated to the latest kde and get the open gl enabled nvidia drivers and play some q3a ;)

[c0p0n]

@Doom9
I wonder if dvd playback will work in xine...

You should stick better to mplayer. It uses parts from the ffmpeg project, which enables it to reproduce mpeg2, mpeg1, mpeg4, H.263 and msmpeg4 based streams with a native linux decoder, which at least the latest version of xine I installed (0.9.9) didn't have... and of course support for win32 codecs (in the rare case U want to use codecs like Indeo or Cinepak, which is already covered by the decoders mplayer have) much greater speeds, better overlays support, enhaced gui, encoder included, postprocessing enabled... you can even use it to make use of the tv tuner (well, I think that xawtv makes a better job on that, but the capture perfomance is by far superior).

[Doom9]

do you know how to start konqueror with a view profile (window - profile).. I created a shortcut to start conqueror pointing to my root.. but it starts with the default view (big icons, no tree view) and I can't stand that.. I managed to get the default view for the link to my DVD-ROM but I somehow can't do that for the new shortcuts I create.

[c0p0n]

it's easy. just configure konqueror as you want and then go to "window>Config view profiles" (note that I have spanish k, so the translation is approximate). give a name to the profile and then save. you only have to invoke that profile on the shortcut, trhu:

kfmclient openProfile yourprofile


btw, you can give a try to XWinCommander (xwc), similar to windows explorer with some nice features (file associations, decompression and detar faster than konqueror...).

[Doom9]

thanks for the tip.. works like a charm. finally, after like 4h the update is finished.. I've never seen a slower systemupdate :/ and of course the most interesting things (3d accelerated nvidia drivers) couldn't be downloaded so I had to do this manually (and at first it didn't work but after trying every rpm param I got it working).

2 other problems now: 1) kde always resets to the default desktop.. my desktop shortcuts remain, but the whole taskbar config, the background and screensaver get reset to default every time I restart.

2) I cannot enable udma mode.. if I do the drive simply starts spinning with no end and never stops.. and the disc cannot be accessed. W/o DMA mode watching DVDs in Xine (which btw works) is impossible since it's so choppy (and I haven't found out where to enable the deinterlacing mode yet)... and copying files from the disc takes forever and completely blocks the system.

mplayer isn't in the default suse config, let's hope there's a precompiled binary because I opted not to install the gazillion of compilation tools you normally install.. I'm trying to run a desktop here, not a development box.

tomorrow I'll try some more fun stuff: USB printer and scanner.. that will be interesting. In XP that's plug & play.. I'll be expecting the same here :sly:

[c0p0n]

1) make sure that when you end a KDE session you say to it that it has to save the actual session - you can do this manually by "K" button on taskbar. also, check that .kde folder on your home directory (and all subsequents files and subdirectories) are accesable from your account (privileges). do not forget to click the "apply" or "ok" button on every change you do on the KDE control center.
2) it is somewhat strange, since DMA is active by default on removable drives. maybe there's a colision with no dma enabled on your hdisk, try the following
open a console session, with root privileges (make "su" if necessary) and perform this command on the disk that contains linux (say hda):

hdparm /dev/hda

this will show U the options for that particular drive. check wether dma is enabled or not.

if it's not enabled, try to enable it manually and perform a speed test before and after the dma enabling on your linux partition (say hda2):

For speed test: hdparm /dev/hda2
DMA enabling: hdparm -d1 /dev/hda

how did U activate DMA on DVD? that's important

3) mplayer binaries for rh7.2 (it should work on other platforms) can be found here:
http://mirrors.sctpc.com/dominik/linux/pkgs/mplayer/
but think seriously on compiling your own stuff... there are many advantages, like much more stability (since you compile to the libraries you have) and speed. the webpage to mplayer is www.mplayerhq.hu.

hum, I think that you will try to use your CDR recorder... if it does not run now you will have to recompile the kernel with scsi support only for cd drives and scsi emulation... that could either help U with any dma troubles.
usb can be a little tricky. try to use usbview with the devices connected and on power on mode, to see that your controller is working (it should). I had to sweat blood to make my SmartUSB56 modem to work on linux... until I contacted with the programmer at smartlink.

ps: I highly recommend U to recompile your kernel. your system will be much more stable and quicker, and among other things it will boot up much faster since it does not have to make elections between zillions of precompiled drivers.

[chemmajik]

Mozilla must have been busy last night, I didnt finally get my stub installer to finally work until early in the morning. Kept erroring on 2 files, must have gotten xpcom 5 times & finally gave up on getting talkback.

[Swede]

You forgot the -t for the speedtest. :)
hdparm -t /dev/hda

[c0p0n]

yea, in fact this shows much more info:

hdparm -Tt /dev/hda2

[Doom9]

except for the first logout I always selected to keep the session.. now for some strange reason it keeps my desktop settings (of course I always applied them... in fact the kde control center keeps bugging you if you don't press the apply button in the first place).

as for udma.. it's on for my HD, and I used YAST2 to activate it for the DVD-ROM. But the result is always the same.. you can no longer access the drive if UDMA is turned on. I also tried "hdparm -d1 /dev/dvd" with the same result... "hdparm /dev/dvd" shows that UDMA is on.. but I can no longer access the drive.. setting it back to PIO mode and I can again access the drive.. but accessing the drive takes a lot of I/O (and a lot more than PIO mode in Windows.. it effectively freezes the system).

as for compiling stuff... I think I already mentioned that I want to this to be a desktop setup... regular people don't compile. That doesn't mean I couldn't... I've been compiling hundreds of MBs of open source softwares last summer when I had to help port a windows app to solaris.. and enjoy all the benefits of not having root access (major pain in the ass) on a solaris box. And.. I have to be the devil's advocate and ask "why don't we all compile VDub and co on our own?". Because we know that the guy doing the compilation is doing a good job.. so why bother? Can't linux developers make a good compilation? And can't distro makers check the avaible hardware and only install the kernel modules that are needed? That is what I expect from a desktop OS ;)

Now I'm going to have some USB fun...

@edit: guess what.. YAST found the USB printer and I'm already printing. While it's not exactly plug and play it's at least up to the pre-USB on age on Windows and miles ahead of the last time I was seriously using Linux (Suse 6.0). Same goes for the scanner.. it works without problems. Now I just need a place where I can actually download 3d game binaries without getting a server full message and some installation instructions.

urgh.. found and installed ut4linux.. but it's a slideshow.. then I found out that the 3d acceleration wasn't activated but when I try tht I get a black screen and nothing goes anymore

[c0p0n]

yeah, but remember that linux cannot be a pure desktop at this moment, maybe on a couple of years...
but it is true that compiling applications for linux is much easier than for windows. you only need gcc, few libraries and "configure", "make" and "make install" in most of the cases. if you have this advantage... why not using it? it would be ideal to compile every program for your box, to ensure that it is optimized for it... but on almost every soft web you always find a binaries link.
but as you know, linux is not very centralizated, opposed to windows. on windows you have almost closed libraries, but the nature of linux make the libraries to being upgraded constantly, fixin bugs, making improvements and so. and here it is the need of compiling software on linux. if you download a binary it expects you to have certain versions of certain library, which you may have outdated. but if you compile your sources you are using the libraries you have installed, avoiding such problems. how many programs are failing on their first versions because wrong vb or vc runtimes? in linux the problem is much higher. yeah, this is a problem, but also a big advantage. yes, the guy would make a good job compiling... but for his box. another box with another libraries would not benefit of his compiling.
another thing is that you compile your soft to your proper cpu arch, you do not have to deal with almost outdated pentium routines (or even 386, for compatibility reasons) that happen often on very badly optimized windows programs. vdub is one of the few honorable exceptions. avery lee is known of his purity on his code and optimization. on the other hand we have that divx 4 versions that crashed on amd k6-2 cpus because of bad instructions set. maybe compiled properly on your box would have solved that problems (but on a closed source soft...), maybe not but the problem would have been solved by a single programmer on few hours... not having to downgrade divx to 4.
I use linux as a desktop operating system, but the truth is that it is NOT a desktop OS. it is becoming to be. but it is mainly oriented to servers and developers, and computer freakies.
an easy proof of this. KDE. it is TERRIBLY slow. and memory eater. much more than WinXP, if you want to know. on WinXP I always have my free memory on 300 MB or more (except when I am doing heavy work on it, that's the point of having 640MB of RAM). KDE alone eats 120 MB of RAM on startup, with wallpaper, icons and so. and the OS eats some megs too.. solution? other window managers, like blackbox or (my favorite) IceWM.
having linux with more stable libraries versions to be more user friendly... would convert it to the same as windows. with the exception of open source, of course. the problems would get solved, yeah, but much slower. security holes. you will have to wait forever for a partially bugfree version of any program, as happens on windows (well, bugfree... lol).
this is the nature of linux. the truth is that if you want to have a linux box, you have to know more than a bit of computers (I think that the ppl that posts on these forums are more than able to do so, or at least have the base to). now and for a long while.
for ppl don't used to linux: you would think that using linux is a messing on compiling at every moment. This is not true. I installed my distro, recompiled the kernel, downloaded the soft I need as base, compiled and installed it on an evening (3 hours). Then I have a linux that allows me to navigate the internet, making some office work (openoffice), huge compiling tasks (for my studies, I work on telecom), multimedia (seeing videos, music, even transcoding dvd). I have a huge software collection by default (xmms - winamp a la linux, openoffice, some 3D games, several mail clients, navigators, news readers, disk tools, editors, calculators, image processing like the gimp, documentation, configuration tools, text editors...). I have all I need on just 1 evening... how much time do U spend on having an optimum win system? not much less. even the winXP installation would take more than 1 hour, maybe 1h30m.

well, you need for compile mplayer few things, apart from gcc. these are libraries that you should have installed on your system anyways since a lot of proggies does need them (libungif, gtk...). and if you dont have them, they would be on your distro cds


about your UDMA problems... hmmm... can U check if you have the file "ide-scsi.o.gz" or similar on your /lib/modules/yourkernel/drivers/scsi (try also on IDE)?

[Doom9]

well.. I have to strongly disagree on the taking time issue.. I have my windows properly set up in 1h... and I've already wasted countless hours on that linux stuff. And I'm by no means a linux virgin.. I've used it on and off for 3 years now... and I'm not particularly afraid of compilation issues.. I've learned my way around makefiles, rpath and co... the thing is just that I don't have that time it takes. For each soft you have the read the README file for installation instructions, and if you're lucky you get away iwth a simple ./configure; make; make install... but in my experiences 8 out of 10 times you won't.. and when you have to go looking for additional programs, libraries etc you you easily spend several hours. Some people might have that.. I have to study and run a website.. both rater timeconsuming tasks.. so I need an OS that is up and running in no time. And if I want to play a game I don't want to bother with rpm intricacies, crashing X-servers, etc.

Admittedly, coming from an engineering background (I have one more semester to go until I start with the master thesis) I've done my share of programming for both school and semester jobs and I know that the way many things are being handled in windows are less than ideal.. and they are not always logical from a programmers point of view. That is certainly a strenght of linux but at the same time one if its major weaknesses.. just take the /dev directory for instance.. it allows you to access every device the same way.. that's nice for a programmer.. but extremely confusing to a regular user.. I couldn't care less to have hundred entries and even the directory in my root... for all I care it could be made invisible. Who else but a programmer cares about these devices? I could go on and on ranting for ages.. but the bottom line is.. it makes sense to developers.. but not the rest of the world. Now if governments want to put their employes on Linux that has to change. Just look at the install procedure.. of course you can get thru just accepting the defaults.. but then you have hundreds of megs of pretty much useless stuff. Just as an example.. I installed an additional package (was it xine, I don't recall) and I was forced to also install procmail and sendmail. Who gives a rat's ass about these programs? I know I don't have any use for them.. but all the dependencies can drive you crazy. You have to install perl, python, etc etc. There's at least a thosand different packages on a relatively small linux installation... most of the time you don't even understand what they're for. When I first installed linux (still in high school) just seeing the dependencies drove me towards madness.. now I have an idea what many of these things do but it still drives me crazy how there cannot be a base set of libraries that come with every system and that isn't even listed because it's needed everywhere. Additional programs can assume that these libraries are there.. and bring the rest that's required for an installation. Then when you have to fix one of these libraries or programs you give the user an executable patch, via an online updater, and in 3 months you have the next version of your favorite distro anyways.

you can clearly see.. I'm thinking from an end user perspective here... but even as a developer (the company I was working for last summer had some custom extension for an open source program written.. this work was outsourced and the people were working on windows and it was my job to get the extensions running on solaris) libraries and external programs that are required for a simple compilation job can drive you crazy (as non root I learned to hate ld which simply doesn't indicate some crucial errors forcing me to truss the compilation and gdb for a day until I found out that the library path I specified in the makefile simply got ignored for unknown reasons).

currently I'm taking a class in usability engineering.. now even more than ever I'm critical when I see things that aren't done in a very userfriendly way. And unfortuantely almost all open source software provides excellent negative examples for usability. but what's even more frustrating is that if you talk to the developers and try to get them to make the stuff better by giving them concrete ideas they turn you down. Best example.. I've been using mozilla for over a month now.. and one of the most annoying usability bugs I found is linewrapping.. do a search for "psyche" and have a look at his signature.. in IE it gets nicely wrapped.. in mozilla it creates a horrible horizontal scrollbar... horizontal scrollbars are completely against the nature of every western language. But.. the developers won't bother to change the code simply because the wrapping isn't in the HTML standard. So.. correctness goes over usability. Another excellent example is the ogm issue.. some people wanted to make us use the ogg extension just for the specs sake completely ignoring that on windows extensions are used for associating files to applications and that you can't use double extensions. But stuff like that makes it very hard for me to tell people to use more open source software. From the very start I've always tried to write guides in a way that they don't use too many commercial software, and tried to use open source software whenever possible.. my site was also the first major ripping sites to offer sources for download. But the mere fact that something is open source isn't a strong enough argument to use it over something close sources.. I'm way too pragmatic for that.. if a program is good and easy to use I will use it.. if it's open source that's a bonus. But how can you tell anyone to use mozilla when it looks horrible on every page that uses long strings? Once they've gone to such a page they'll come back asking me why it looks different than in IE... That doesn't mean that mozilla is a bad browser, on the contrary, I like it a lot but when such a thing comes along and I'm running in a brick wall trying to talk to the developers I feel very frustrated.

I think that diversity is only a good thing up to a certain degree. I have some firsthand experience in this. I still recall having a dozen links at the end of the dvd2avi guide.. linking to the various encoding procedures for divx, vcd, svcd and miniDVD. People got CONFUSED about this beyond reason. That's why now there's one main page per guide leading to the various subguides.. and even that is only a compromise.. ideally you wouldn't have to come back... I'm sure there's much room for improvement (one of these days I'll put the new navigation online).. but at least I think I'm listening to feedback I'm getting and try to do my best to use it. The linux community is developing for their own.. it's rather easy to convince a fellow programmer of your ideas.. it is much harder to convince a casual user that is not an LLG and speaks in regular expressions ;)

[c0p0n]

well, being sincere I can have a fresh winxp system installation in just 7 mins, thanx to norton ghost but... also for linux. a new complete winxp installation will take me up to 2h30m, maybe 3h, only the win install process takes forever.
hey! I didn't say in any way that you're a linux noob! I was speaking on a general way.
I can have my linux system up and running on such small time just because I've spent before huge hours learning the linux ways. at the beggining it can be very confusing. some of us come from DOS times, so cli is not a big problem (at first), then windows, so when we come to linux we have a bit of mess at the beggining until we get used to the new interface again.
linux requires about 10x times of the learning time of windows. not only that, your hardware may be not supported, specially if it is very new (take the audigy cards, only partially supported). the shell may be a bit confusing at first, but once you've learned some easy commands (not very distant at the beggining from DOS) it is a very powerful tool. I usually have 3 or four tty's running on background, but my case is not extreme.
you have a better example of user "friendliness" that you've pointed before. have U tried to run the audiogalaxy satellite on your linux? this is very far from user friendly. it's an horrible application. it's hard to setup and to get it running.
sometimes I do not understand why programmers do not use of tools like tk, tcl or gtk interfaces, they're very easy to implement.
some programmers (for example) keep using lbapng instead libpng, even when the first is used only on the 98% of the cases between the two libraries. it is sad that it is generalizated, and just to compile a single 3k program you've to download 3mb on libraries. but these are extreme cases. My installation has a size of 1200 mb, and the last time I had to install a library needed for compiling was last month.
there are tools that allows you to automatize this process. the mandrake software updater is a cool example of this. it has a database of the programs of the mandrake installation CD, so installing a new proggie is easy: just select it and the updater will ask U for the appropiate disk, and you can configurate every internet source U want. the problem? only for rpm. for source codes I know that there're several efforts on this way, trying to make the process like an installshield wizard, or a vise installing program. this is great for the normal user, you only have to point the program at the downloaded file and it works on decompressing and compiling it, and downloading additional stuff as necessary.
but the main disadvantage of linux is a descentralized control. the only control that exists is on linux itself (the kernel). all other tools are not standard, with the exception of some applications that has become a standard de facto.
what would be the benefit of more control on gnu/linux systems? (note for ppl dont used to linux: gnu/linux system is a complete linux system: kernel+apps. there's no linux redhat, or suse, there're redhat or suse gnu/linux. linux is only the kernel).
well, a centralized control would allow more friendliness, more standards and more ease of use. but this would stop the linux community. because this is not the linux philosophy.
if somebody wants an easy linux system, s/he should wait at least one year. the distros are becoming more easy to install, they have gorgeus and usable configuration tools. at this moment, a normal user does not have to go down to console, the software packaged with the distro is more than sufficient (on most cases).
just a curious case. the government on my region (something like a state on the us) has made a linux distro (linex), intended for the government administration, schools, social centers and so. but the local governments are still using windows, because they don't know how to use it (although there're free courses on the matter). the system is the closest approximation to windows I've seen on linux, but it's hard to ppl that only use the computer occasionaly to convince that, in the essence, it should be run exactly like windows.
I think that some programmers do not understand the end user point of view, on linux fields. they designed the program, and they of course know all that is needed to known about their creatures but... it is a real pain to dig through 30 man pages to see a little modifier of that program that makes what U want, because of a capricious syntax (do U remember the apache tips to avoid leech? I remember that it was solved more because of trial and error than because logic).
this allow you total control of the program, of course, and can make it very powerful but... at which cost? 2hours to know how activate DMA on disks? maybe 4 days to make lilo to understand that you *really* have 2 ide hdd installed?
and knowing all this, how can I still use linux?, well, I have to use linux on my university yes or yes. I had to spent a lot of hours to learn how to make the most simplest thing. and after that, I can use it as a desktop system with no troubles at all, but I understand that a lot of ppl can't do. after all, a computer is made for being used, so I do not blame anybody against using windows, because windows is easy and can do every task applicable to a computer. so I recommend to my friends windows always. it has the best media players, all the games, most of the software and it's easy to use, so... want multimedia? want games? want office work? use windows, without any doubt. but hey! I use linux because I love to learn new things, not because of it's powerful and stable. open source? well, I have not time to look to sources. free? it is not free, time is money, and you have to spent loads of time on it. but is that not good? yeah, it is.

[avih]

1.1 alpha released...
http://www.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla1.1a/#new

* Download Manager has been enabled (with many improvements) for the 1.1 Alph arelease.
* Mozilla now takes advantage of Quartz rendering for users of Mac OS X 10.1.5
* Viewing HTML mail messages as plain text is new.
* Quote original message has been implemented for 1.1a
* We have new layout performance enhancements targeted at DHTML.
* There have also been performance enhancements for the application startup speed.
* Viewsource for MathML and view source for selections have been implemented.
* Mozilla now has support for the display of XBM images.
* Autocomplete in the addressbar has an improved sort order.
* Browser tabs now close left to right (they used to close right to left).
* The cross-plaform File Picker now has a button for creating a new directory.
* Redundant backup of preferences files has been implemented in 1.1 Alpha.
* Mozilla's drag and drop support has been greatly improved.
* Image blocking for Mail & News has been implemented.


btw, i'd like to point out a feature i've started to use recently, and is really usefull:

when u visit regularily sites with ads, you can right click on the ad and select 'block images from this server'. VERY efficient. i use it for yahoo games. no more annoying ads that takes bandwidth with my 56k modem ;)

cheers
avi

[Doom9]

hmm... I've been using dailies even post the 1.0 release (because that crashed on my for the first time in my mozilla testing history 2 minutes after installing)... and the version number has recently said 1.1 so I guess I've been using 1.1 ever since it came out.
All the bugs (linewrapping, quicklaunch being closed when you close the last open browser instance - a bug that was introduced in the june buiilds which are younger than v1.0 - , the address selecting bug) are all still there.. haven't checked for the multiple mail accounts to one set of folders thing but as bugzilla contains no word I'd assume that nothing has been done there either. But at least I can now disable the download manager without having to edit .js files.
for those intersted here's the links to the bugs mentioned:

linewrapping: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=99457
quicklaunch: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=149408
address line: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=149415
mail accounts: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=126341

and even more importantly: they haven't separated the applications from each other.. when one freezes they all freeze, when one crashes they all crash.. and the preferences or other popup configuration menus show up as another window in the task bar (both windows and linux version) which sure isn't the default behavior of every other app I use.

[Teegedeck]

Originally posted by avih

when u visit regularily sites with ads, you can right click on the ad and select 'block images from this server'. VERY efficient.
:) I've been waiting for that one. It's the only thing I dig about iCab on a Mac.

[Doom9]

hmm... effectively I was using a later build than 1.1alpha.. the dl manager is a fraud.. it has been part of mozilla all along.. maybe it was disabled for the 1.0 release but it's been there for a long time and has upset many people because it could only be disabled by adding a secret line to prefs.js (later on they changed it to user.js).. I've had these switches in these files for a long time (profiles don't get deleted if you uninstall and install a new build) so v1.0 never showed the dl manager.. but even builds prior to v1.0 had that dl manager and it didn't really get any new features..
new features would mean they'd implemented the following rfe: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=75364

[mrbass]

I know what you feel like. I started a long thread about using copy and paste for file management in Eazel like a year before 1.0 was released. It was knocked down by developers since it wasn't technically correct. So then when it was released you could only drag and drop to manage your files. Eventually it was implemented but I think management told the hackers to implement it even though it's not hacker technically correct.

A few other gpl programs I've helped out with (bug testing, ui suggestions) and the developers listened extremely well. So sometimes you get lucky other times the hacker is always correct..don't forget that.

[Doom9]

ther times the hacker is always correct..don't forget that. I'm currently taking a course in usability engineering.. we had the final presentation for our project yesterday and will have the final exam next week. During the project creation phase we had to perfom several usability tests with potential users... and the other teams also got to judge all projects twice.. if a poor fool was stupid enough not to listen to the user feedback he'll sure get an E as final grade. Sometimes I get the feeling that the whole open souce community needs such a course.. bottom line is that the user is always right and it doesn't matter how much the code has to be bent to get user-friendly.. better start thinking about user friendlyness in the design phase of a project.. then you won't have to write ugly hacks to make a program usable once you've programmed the main functionality and found out that your potential users are not capable of handling your program.

[mrbass]

my sister told me tonight she might start dating this dude that used to work at Eazel. Stan Christensen (the dude standing up in the pic). She meet him last week and they exchanged phone #'s, etc.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/02/24/eazel/
Anyway if she does I'll tell him what a PITA it was trying to communicate to hackers the way the perspective the average joe has when it comes to user friendliness.

Don't you remember that usability report (http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/ut1_report/report_main.html) on GNOME by Sun a little while back. I thought it was excellent...stuff like being able to manuever around with just the keyboard (which you couldn't do). If the mouse didn't work then you were screwed.

[smokeslikeapoet]

Just thought I would post to say that I installed the Intellimouse drivers and the back an forward buttons work find in Mozilla now. The scroll lock feature doesn't work, but there is a Bugzilla report on the issue and it should be fixed soon. Mozilla still crashes when I try to set it to be the default browser, but as soon as the World Cup is over I plan on doing a OS reinstall, with the notorious "corp" files to disable product activation.

[avih]

mozilla 1.1 beta released 2 days ago (22-Jul)
http://mozilla.org

[chemmajik]

Wow I freaked out on how big the Linux version of Mozilla was, almost 90megs sheesh... Its a bummer Galeon requires Gnome correct? Its a much smaller download, I chose KDE for this setup, no room for both, because I need the room for a more robust development setup.

ps:AVSForum is taking a poll on whether to start a Linux htpc dedicated forum, if you are interested please make your vote count!

Surprised Doom9 never made one, but I'm sure it might have added alot more to the bandwidth costs.

[Doom9]

avih: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=23366&perpage=20&pagenumber=2 and the way this long url is being handled in the textarea in mozilla settles the question if I am to use it or not... for weeks I've been trying almost every new mozilla release in the hope that some day they would finally fix that problem.. but eventually I've given up hope and since I reinstalled windows I have been using IE6 again.. there I don't have to bang my head against a wall whenever there's a long url or a screwed up table, or want to manage my 4 mail accounts as one entity (send and receive for all 4 and have one set of folders for all 4 accounts). Sadly, since the day they've put the dl manager control in the settings there have been ZERO changes in mozilla for me. I've given up lobbying for the usability improvements I deem important since nobody would listen to a windows user.

and as a closing remarks the quicklaunch tool problem still hasn't been fixed.

[MaTTeR]

Yeh the quicklaunch issue is still exisiting in the last million daily builds I've tried. For me this issue causes Mozilla to crash 50% of the time when I exit on either of my SMP boxes:angry: Stability is still an issue for me, Mozilla will sometimes do an infinite loop while I'm downloading files.

I've got to say also, I'm seriously thinking of going back to IE6. Anyone noticed how much slower Mozilla loads a page compared to IE6? Anyone noticed how sluggish Mozilla will be if you minimize the window for about 10mins and then try and restore it? I could go on for awhile unfortunately but like Doom9 my support is dwindling very fast. I just dont see any of the major problems being addressed by the devs. The hope is that these issues will be addressed soon but then again I've been saying that for the last 5 months or so. What will I do if I have to give up my tabbed browsing:mad:

[Doom9]

What will I do if I have to give up my tabbed browsing I know what you're talking about.. but I still live but the first few days without tabbed browsing were rather hard.. I always wanted to open new tabs but they just wouldn't open. I guess I could try Opera but I was much more comfortable with the mozilla interface and IE is much closer to that. I'll still believe that eventually mozilla will get there but not as confident as when I first tried out RC1.