Mozilla 1.3 is released today and includes a number of new features and bug fixes. Update: On other browser news, Opera Software released Opera 7.03 for Windows and a preview release for Linux and FreeBSD. The OmniGroup released OmniWeb 4.2b2 recently as well.
Mozilla 1.3 Released
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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So far it seems to work well. Nice job mozilla folk!
oh how i cant live without you
Even though it isn’t new, I love the inline search feature of Mozilla (“/ + text” to search for text and “‘ text” to search for a link).
I am very impressed with the Mozilla servers, even after being slashdot’d they are still able to provide reasonable speed (100KB/s in my case). I’ve been using Mozilla 1.3b for some time now, can’t wait to finish compiling the new version!
1.3 is very very very fast on my iBook, scrolling is slower, but less flickering.
Anyonw know how to enable tabbed by default (instead of new windows)?
As a graphic artist, I tend to cringe when IE resizes images (it’s math functions must be terrible as the images look like junk). I am sad to see this become part of Mozilla. Does anyone use this? Do you find it helpful? What situations does this become useful? Is it enabled by default like it is in IE (wish it wasn’t)? I’ve had to instruct the instructors here at school on how to turn this annoying feature off in IE because they are trying to teach their classes with web-based materials which are being resized to tiny, unreadable junk.
the automatic iamge resizing is default i think, but its easy to turn off in the preferences dialog.
I find Mozilla acceptably fast on Windows 2K and Linux using 1.8GHz and .5GHz machines respectively. Anybody thinks otherwise?
Image resize is great for screenshots, e.g. http://img.osnews.com/img/3003/ark1.jpg
I hate image resizing. I want as much detail as I can on my screenshot-viewing and stuff. I always have that turned off.
This was a great idea, but a flawed implementation (in IE). The resizing works fine, but it isn’t anti-aliased so detail is lost. If it were anti-aliased I’d leave it on, but I agree it’s a little worthless as is.
Sure, but clicking on the image toggles between actual size and shrink-to-fit-in-window size.
Nope, with AA or not, the image resizing is a _bad_ thing to spot things that might be of interest on detailed screenshots or images. Especially if you are a web designer or an artist or you need an original web experience…
I just downloaded the 1.3 version of Mozilla for my mac. I first noticed that my themes no longer worked. Ok, that’s window dressing, so I can live with that if necessary. Then the first web site I tried uses the Shockwave plugin, and it didn’t work. I use the program for 30 seconds and find two major bugs? Everything works fine under 1.2, so it looks like that’s what I’ll be using until 1.3 is fixed. How could this new version have ever been released with these bugs?
I prefer to use phoenix instead of Mozilla.
is more faster, don’t have email or chat.
i use as my default browser. right now i’m using the last build of march 13..
13 is my lucky number…
Phoenix rulezzzzzzzzzz
Any Phoenix upgrades planned in the near future? I use Phoenix at work, but Opera at home.
The only feature that I really miss in Opera is the Type Ahead Find thing. But, I gladly gave that up for much better mouse gestures
Still, it would be nice to have some combination of Phoenix & Opera because I like them both so much. Outside of broadband.msnbc.com, I haven’t used IE at home in ages
Nice but I see no reason to switch from IE6 on XP. IE just works, Mozilla often seems buggy. For example, a few minutes ago the disk cache crapped out again and showed the wrong images. Good to have as an alternative though.
I prefer Mozilla to IE.
I just like the way it works, and there is the TABS….
-Nex6
Well, a good number of people like image resizing, but it does have its flaws. I have a solution: As soon as the image is loaded, it is shown full size. A mouse hover in the top left corner shows a button, which, when clicked, will resize the image to fit in the screen. The result: unobtrusive image resizing.
Damn that image resizing , I bet the boys down at the Pornzilla project ( http://mywebpage.netscape.com/aufbau01/ ) are behind that one. Oh well I use phoenix anyways 🙂
It seems on this 466 Mozilla is a little speedier than usual. Anyone else notice this?
BTW: I really like phoenix, but I haven’t seena new milestone for too many months! What’s ahppened, tehy were going so fast and than it’s like they tripped and fell over their masterpiece. Are tehy rebuilidng it or something? Why sucha holdup? A new Mozilla has been released before Phoenix! What is happening? Is it dead?
Just downloaded/installed Phoenix for Win32 (Xp home edition).
Geez … this thing is fast!!
Interesting…
Check out the Phoenix nightly build:
http://komodo.mozilla.org/pub/phoenix/nightly/latest-trunk/
I’m running it now – seems faster and as stable as 0.5, but I’ve only been running it about 5 minutes
It has a much better default theme (IMHO) and the Preferences dialog has been redone. Other than that, I have no idea what version of the Mozilla/Gecko rendering engine this is currently using.
My biggest grip and the reason that I’m using Netscape 7.02 is the spell check when writing email. I mean come on. That seems like a given these days.
IT’s NEW NAME IS KOMODO!! Muahhaa! I know a secret! I know a secret… =p
I’ve *always* hated that image auto-resize manure (um, I mean “feature”) in IE6. Thanks for someone pointing out that it can be disabled, as I’ve done just that and am much happier now, because of it.
..use Opera. No contest. I’ve tried ’em all (win32 and *nix) and nothing comes close.
I didn’t like image resizing in IE. I thought I was gonna leave it turned off in Mozilla. It was off by default. After reading what some people are saying, I tried it out. I totally love it! Sometimes I’ll download a big picture from, say, NASA. I really couldn’t care less about it unless I can see the whole thing, mini-detail and all. AA would make it better, but as long as single clicking brings it back to normal, I’m totally satisfied by it. I always hate having to scroll around to get “the big picture.”
I was using Phoenix 0.5 for a long time, and I was quite please with it. However, I did have to constantly switch to IE for my school web email and my online course. This rich text upgrade seems very nice, and I look forward to the next version of Phoenix. For now, however, I suppose I’ll have to compromise with the dark side and use Crazy Browser. It’s IE w/ tabs that is more responsive and has more features than Phoenix. Honestly, I hope I can ditch it soon for Phoenix entirely.
“Image resize is great for screenshots, e.g. http://img.osnews.com/i mg/3003/ark1.jpg”
Um, no, it isn’t. The screenshots look like complete drek. Perhaps Mozilla uses some better algorithms, but IE is absolutely horrible. Unless there’s a really good reason for it, I’d have it disabled.
Am I the only one that finds this thing bloated still?
The very fact that I wait a few seconds for it to launch on an athlon 1.5ghz says something.
I’m interested in following the development of projects like Epiphany for GNOME, it’s already looking pretty good.
Konqueror(cvs) is still my browser of choice:)
Nice try moz
Can’t be any worse than Outlook Express that doesn’t have a dictionary unless you install Microsoft Office.
btw, if you look on the mozdev projects there are dictionaries freely available for download.
>>>disk cache crapped out again and showed the wrong images. Good to have as an alternative though.
my mozilla installs (all versions) have never done that…on either my xp or redhat systems.
this problem has been noted and discussed well over a year ago…very few people actually experienced this.
some have said this might even be related to the sites one visits.
anyway…mine is fine. just clear your disk cache..maybe your whole profile (backup your bookmarks).
cheers
Am I the only one that finds this thing bloated still?
Nope, you’re not the only one
Of course, it’s not really *that* slow on it’s own. I mean, compared to OpenOffice or any Java app, it flies 
However, when compared with IE and/or Opera (or even Phoenix for that matter), it’s very slow. They say that speed kills, but the opposite is true for Mozilla – speed is the number 1 reason why I don’t use it. I like my browsers fast.
I think the new kde homepage’s display is not good as 1.2.1, kde’s homepage problem? mozilla’s problem/
Mozilla mail is a very powerful and nice client, but I would like to just use it rather than install all of mozilla.
Mozilla is still bad on javascript implementation (remember khmtl-safari?). There is one very nice feature (or innovation) tabbed browsing.
As for the rest, konqueror 3.1 is still better and IE is better on WinNT.
Image resize is the perfect example of a “possible but not to implement” feature. (AA isn’t going to do any good with photo like graphics – unless it zooms in instead of zooming out
. Can’t understand why Mozilla implemented it, is it the default too on 1.3 ?
Just forgot to say that Microsoft must be thinking about copying or not the tabbed browsing feature
> Just forgot to say that Microsoft must be thinking about copying or not the tabbed browsing feature
I hear IE7 beta currently ships with tab support and better CSS support (try visiting uuu.sf.net with IE6, it simply can’t handle it).
-eks
I currently have Mozilla 1.2.1 installed and customized to my liking. Is it worth the upgrade just to get image resizing, and a primitive spam filter when I only get about 5 spams in a month? or is there some other feature I am missing that is a must have?
Yes, it is actually me. I am just running through a proxy in Japan for my own reasons.
I can’t remember now why it was decided that Mozilla development would include all those modules – email, chat, composer, etc. I never used that stuff when Netscape was king. It’s amazing how rapidly these Gecko based browsers become quality browsers, like Phoenix, K-Melon, Chimera/Camino, etc. I mean, I realize they are indebted to Mozilla for that, but it makes me wonder how much better Mozilla itself would be without all that other stuff?
I had recently asked in the forums whether the BeOS version would be still maintained and is up to date, and I believe the answer was yes. What I was subsequently thinking about was whether this build will work on the Zeta as well or whether they maintain a fitting version already in “secrecy”, because I don’t see this thing flying without a decent browser…
The spell check in Moz is better than in office imo, as it supports Greek (thus my g/f likes it
while office does not [ http://spellchecker.mozdev.org/ ]
> [IE7 has] better CSS support
Woohoo, please has supported for ‘fixed’, please!
Nope, you’re not the only one
Of course, it’s not really *that* slow on it’s own. I mean, compared to OpenOffice or any Java app, it flies 
However, when compared with IE and/or Opera (or even Phoenix for that matter), it’s very slow. They say that speed kills, but the opposite is true for Mozilla – speed is the number 1 reason why I don’t use it. I like my browsers fast.
Umm, maybe I should remind you MOZILLA ISA AVA APP and also that Java is only 20% slower than C++ at its worst performance usinmg the latest VM.
I screwed up my Mozilla a while ago, and the “feature” keeps getting upgraded to every new version. For some reason, when I download an .exe file, mozilla renames it to .exe.bmp and tries to auto-associate ms-paint with it. How in the HELL do I change this?
thanks for answering my irrelevant question. also
if there are any xp users out there, do you guys get the same crash do the desktop that I get when i use LOTS of tabbed pages? it’s totally random and totally annoying–it happens on 4 different computers, a celeron 333, dual athlon 1700xp, p4 2.53ghz, & celeron 1.1ghz while under XP.
Mozilla is not a java app. Check out the cvs repository, and see for yourself. It’s written in C/C++ (I forget which at the moment).
As for myself, I prefer Opera over Mozilla. I tried kmeleon (win) and phoenix (win/nix), both were good but kmeleon is outdated and phoenix’s UI was a little sluggish compared to Opera’s. Plus, I just found out opera has a student version for $20… very nice. I don’t mind paying for software when it is good.
Have just downloaded it and am impressed. The startup is definitely faster and so is the tab switching and I like the mail client now.
Mayuresh
Umm, maybe I should remind you MOZILLA ISA AVA APP and also that Java is only 20% slower than C++ at its worst performance usinmg the latest VM.
Are you just making that up? Obviously Mozilla is not a Java application, and I highly doubt your statistics as well. I program in Java every day (for a class) and it is definitely much slower than compiled C or C++ (and in orders of magnitude, not just 20%).
Mozilla (and phoenix) are indeed _GREAT_ browsers. The one thing I cant stand, is the lack of setting a mail-application for mailto: URL’s. Let’s face it, mozilla’s mail-application isn’t “that” great, and phoenix doesn’t have one. I would really love to invoke kmail when I press a mailto: link. Haven’t figured out how to do this. Is it possible?
Why OmniWeb still continues to develop their browser. I don’t think they make any money on it. Unless it is sort of a hobby for them, why do they develop it. If it is a hobby, why do they charge for it. I mean in any case it doesn’t make any sense to charge for their browser, but if they do this just as a hobby, not charging may make more sense.
While it does not use Java, Mozilla does use Javascript for the front end to tie XUL together.
And before people blame that for it’s performance, Phoenix is the same (JS + XUL) and is quite zippy.
As a side note, there was a project to write the mail application in Java. It never got finished though. It’s called Grendel and you can find it on mozilla.org.
It’s been said a couple of times before but many doesn’t seem to get it, large chunks of IE is already loaded on a cold start, which is why the Mozilla people made the quickstart thing that does the same for Mozilla. With quickstart on Mozilla and IE startup time is pretty much the same, I think Mozilla loads more into memory then IE so Mozilla is alittle faster.
As for Linux, running Galeon (for some reason plain Mozilla on Linux doesn’t have this feature builtin) you can just have “galeon -s” run on startup for the same effect, cutting down load time to 2-3 seconds.
You want pure speed? Dillo easily outperforms everything.
For all the other times, let’s just use whatever we feel comfortable with.
I was at the work computer in WinBlows, sorry it happens from time to time. Usually if I want to get work done, I use Linux. And no I dont use Mozilla mail, I use evolution. But anyway back to windows. I thought cool Mozilla 1.3 is out in final I should update, so I downloaded it. (but didnt install it) Then I checked out my current mozilla date: Mozilla 1.4. Huh? So I am way ahead of all of you! Heh.
Dillo does rock for fast loads and rendering no doubt!
As far as IE is concerned, its worse and slower on my computers that have windows.
I still like Opera for Windows and safari for mac. i use low end hardware and Mozilla is just too slow. but its the only good browser on BeOS.
Well, now I’ve wiped the profile and the cache (again?). I hope that does it.
I’m actually not anti-mozilla. It’s my main browser when using Linux. (But I am quite sensitive to annoying bugs)
I am currently using Mozilla 1.0.1 on Suse8.1 via X thin client. Works great. I like tabbed browsing,very nice.
1.2.1 worked too well. So as per normal, the Moz folk raised the bar to the latest and greatest level of glitchiness. This is how the development cycle works. Have fun testing and filing bug reports!
I’ve been running it since yesterday, and find it to be quick and responsive. I was running 1.2, and this is a bit quicker. I don’t use it for mail (I use evolution) so I can’t rate it on that.
As for people complaining about startup time.. I personally open a browser and leave it open for days. So, if it takes 2 seconds or 5 seconds to start, it doesn’t really matter much to me. I didn’t notice any large startup delay on 1.3 though.
Occasionally I use IE, if I’m on a machine that doesn’t have mozilla, and its such a frustrating experience. The lack of tabs and type-ahead links slows things down tremendously. I don’t see a big difference on site rendering either, in most cases.
I am using a recent W3M at the moment as Mozilla is recompiling. I just
noticed that they added tab support to this text browser. It even has a tab at
the top of the screen. The background downloading definitely works well. I
will now have to try it with image support.
Home is at http://w3m.sf.net/
Try it, if you haven’t. It’s faster and better than 1.2.1.
I used to use Phoenix 0.5, but the compiled version of Mozilla on my Gentoo box seems to run even faster than Phoenix. And it looks better.
Anyway, if you want just a FAST browser that also looks good, try “links -g”. Fast & AA support:
http://www.webpersonal.net/victor/imagenes/capturas/links2.png
links is realy fast . What they need is better cursors suport
(to change the cursors when over links). And the latency is realy small
feels like a fast browser …the should name it
FastZilla
I noticed that teh “Known Problems” section mentions major problems with ATI video drivers and Moz. 1.3
I’m using Moz. 1.2.1 with an ATI Radeon 7500 All-in-Wonder just fine. Should I hold off going to 1.3 until the ATI problems are fixed?
Anyone have any experience with ATI drivers and Moz. 1.3?
Thanks
I believe the Mozilla project itself is overall a failure.
How many years did it take these guys to produce this browser?
It just really doesn’t seem impressive condsidering the amount of work that went in to it. Gecko is slow, XUL is VERY slow, mozilla launches _really_ slow (not as bad as openoffice).
What user really cares about better css/dom support if the browser takes forever to launch?
Why do these developers think bloated software is OK?
Konqueror/Safari/Opera are good examples of what a browser should be. Mozilla can learn a lot from them
Why did they use XUL? why not QT or any other toolkits that are multiplatform and _don’t_ run amazingly slow like this XUL BS.
Sorry to come off with such a negative attitude here, but this has been bugging me for a while. I can’t understand why so many people praise mozilla. I’m just sick of seeing what I consider bloated/slow software becoming standard in the world of opensource.
Jim
THEN DONT USE IT OR LOOK AT IT!!!!!
i consider it a GREAT success! does everything a browser should and more. end users dont care about css/dom becuase its not for them to worry about. its for the developers to use those tools to make great sites which IS what end users care about.
i dont know what kind of computer you have but moz ran fine on my p2 400MHz 192MB ram. wasnt slow for me but your milage may vary.
i dont know anything about qt development but my GUESS is you cant create a program without a compiler. i can create programs in moz with just notepad. same with the gui part of the program. plus i can make lots of different looks to that gui component quickly.
moz rocks and i am glad to see the GRE being implemented too which will make dl’s of different browsers based on your installed GRE version smaller! just the gui and whatever else isnt covered in the GRE.
1.yes it took some years but good wine is the older
2. Gecko is FAST , XUL is JavaScript(some kind of+xml+html)so a little slower …admit that,
YEs it loads slow on linux (it ,must load tons of libs..libpr0n …etc
this is why it took so many years) oposed to Exploiter that
uses the already loaded libs(dll) by the ms os -es
3 . What is better for Developers is sane and good for Users
too (Remember Perl ,VMS, Unix , Relational Databases …SGML etc .. evolution you know) so CSS DOM support is actualy fast on *zilla but they have to Emulate the explorer (all broken css, html, jscript)
4.Ie is not bloated ? Try using phoenix, safari , galeon , kmeleon (they are realy FAST)
5. Why did they use XUL? because is Zool (cool )
Have you ever looked at *zilla source code .The application
can be coded more like a web page so no #$@ c++ pointers there no STL all you need is HTML, XML , JSCRIPT knowledge . Go to http://www.xulplanet.com
I use them both and they are excellent. I have used Mozilla for the past three with very few problems (on windows). Moz 1.3 looks really nice … lots of bug fixed (2000?) and a few extra features. I’m really looking forward to Phoenix 0.6.
So far on my machine, Beige G3 with Sonnet G4, Mozilla 1.3 is faster than Safari.
Doesen’t XUL use Java?
“Doesen’t XUL use Java?”
No.
hey guys what’s different between Mozilla built with Xft and Gtk2??
which one is better?
iBook OS/X reviewer….
Mozilla still falls far far short of Chimera and Safari on speed. But has more features then Safari.
It also falls short of IE on compatibility – at least in OSX I havent used OS9 in about a year. Its much much much faster than IE, though like I said its slower than others.
For now I think Chimera is still king of the hill as far as Mac OSX browsers go. The others have quite a ways to catch up.
For now I think Chimera is still king of the hill as far as Mac OSX browsers go. The others have quite a ways to catch up.
OmniWeb has more features than Chimera, and is *much* more stable. I’ve never had OmniWeb crash. I lost count of how many times Chimera has crashed months ago.
Safari is much faster than Chimera. It loads faster and renders pages faster.
If you don’t mind a slow browser why not use OmniWeb for its excellent set of features (such as banner ad blocking)
If a slow browser bothers you why even consider Chimera? You should be using Safari…
And at any rate, Chimera isn’t called Chimera anymore, it’s Camino…
Lots of comments, not enough info.
If you don’t find mozilla fast enough, check phoenix. The startup time is 50% faster and new window time is 40% faster. It’s as fast as IE6 on my dual 700 P3. Whether it’s faster than Opera is the subject of much debate, but I load all my links in background tabs and they’re loaded by the time I get to them, so I could care less.
Specifically try March 18th build: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/phoenix/nightly/2003-03-18-08-trunk/
By the word of the Phoenix Build forum on mozillazine and me trying to destroy it for four days doing extension hacking, it’s so silky smooth that it should be a production release. If you’re on 0.5, you owe it to yourself, there’s been a ~15% speed increase in gecko since November. Additionally, the theme has been updated and preferences menu redone.
The reason Phoenix hasn’t released in so long is that 1. The dev team hasn’t picked a new name (I have no idea why) and 2. development has slowed, the team working on it got busy with other things in life. The first is the reason we haven’t had a new milestone (one has been scheduled for “March” so take that for what you will).
Camino is back to the trunk this next release (they’ve been running on code from November, ahem…) which they claim will catch them up in performance with Safari. Personally I can’t stand Safari because it uses the brushed metal skin and I’m on the crusade against brushed metal.
As for IE 7 Beta, if I could have just one thing it would wish for full alpha mask support for PNGs, as they’re the ONLY browser that people use widely that doesn’t support this. It makes life so much nicer… If I could wish for two things, the second would be that IE have CSS2 selectors. If I could wish for three things, it would be for IE to behave exactly like gecko… but now I’m really dreaming.
Someone mentioned that the JS engine for mozilla was bad. Actually, that’s about as far from the truth as you can get. I’ve never read a bad thing about the JS engine (except that it’s slower than the IE engine, it’s faster than Opera’s) and have heard several stories about it being embedded in other products, most memorably the Adobe SVG plugin.
We’re getting closer to standards support with every release, I’m waiting for the day when write once isn’t just a dream.