The Mozilla project released its Mozilla suite 1.4, RC-1 for testing.
Mozilla 1.4 RC-1 Available
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
The Mozilla project released its Mozilla suite 1.4, RC-1 for testing.
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Isn’t 1.4 slated to be the last complete integrated suite with Firebird taking over in 1.5? I wonder if the Firebird releases will start the 2.0 branch.
good to see the last interation oc classic mozilla.
Firebird rocks!
Thunderbird is slowly coming into its’ own. Especially with the latest release. But what about the oft-despised Composer? Will it be an optional component of Firebird?
Don’t know about everyone else but for me, 1.3 is rock solid and fast. Unless someone comes along and changes the way we surf the web, I don’t see a need to put more work into Mozilla unless it’s for updating Mail/Newsgroups and Composer parts.
I threw the towel in on mozilla
–>give mozilla firebird a try it is what mozilla is not
I don’t know about that. While I really like Firebird, and use it on every windows box I manage, I really like Mozilla as it is. I like having one app to do my mail/news/web, since I see those three services being tied together. While firebird might start a little faster on my linux box, I don’t see a big different in browsing/rendering speeds.
Just my cent-and-a-half.
The one thing that keeps me from using Mozilla Mail/Thunderbird is I don’t like the fact that you’re expected to use a new profile with every new milestone and wipe your mail clean. Sorry, but I’ve been using e-mail since 1994, with archives almost that old. I prefer keeping my e-mail, not clearing it out everytime a new version of Mozilla/Thunderbird comes out.
Just like someone mentioned above… wasn’t 1.4 suppose to be Firebird + Thunderbird?
No. 1.4 has always been planned to be based on Seamonkey (the traditional browser suite). Recently the roadmap change was announced that stated that 1.4.x would become the production branch, and that it would be the last to be based on Seamonkey. Mozilla the application is being supplanted by Mozilla Firebird after 1.4. 1.5 should be the first Mozilla release based on Mozilla Firebird.
Firebird the database or the browser, you need to specify when you say Firebird Rocks…
I’ve had no problems using Mozila to this point. However the one quirk I’ve had is that it’s too big. I wanted to have a light version of Mozilla and Firebird provides it. Firebird atleast runs on my older systems as well as my newer systems without that much trouble and it’s fast. I do like Mozilla just it’s too big.
um… firebird will have modules, so i think what can occur is that if u want a mail/news/web app u can have it via the module addition… i don’t really know how its gonna work (i’ll have to check the road map again), but my presumption was that the modules would be similar to the seamonkey stuff, just so that not every loads at the same time, and thus, not wasting as much memory… so what u can do is that the firebird app will run and then supppose u want mail, well, u simply click on this mail button and thunderbird pops up… it’ll just be very integrated but seperate apps…
i guess 🙂
Don’t know if that made any sense =)
I tend to blabber… if someone cares to explain better, please do so…. =)))
Composer will be its own program like mozilla firebird and mail. I think its called composer+. i forget where the link is though.
On WinXP:TE, Mozilla was unstable due to the TE changes through version 1.4b2. Unstable, as in, crashes on 75% of the pages with forms.
Firebird was unstable through 0.6. Crashing on 50% of pages with forms, and about 35% of other pages randomly (espn.com, cnnsi.com, /., etc).
So far, Mozilla 1.4RC1 has been rock solid on it with no crashes on anything.
I fear when Mozilla takes Firebird for 1.5. It will need a ton of work.
Of course the beta versions are unstable. They are for testing. And Firebird is pre 1.0. Why don’t you use the production quality release? Aka 1.0.x, or the stable release, 1.3.x?
firebird is an one method to expand/refine mozilla.
so they have to go long way.
Firebird is the future of browsing. It is lean and fast. Good riddance to seamonkey. Hurry up with an official Firebird release!
The Thunderbird page says that it’s not even alpha quality yet – how long should we expect before it becomes ready for widespread use?
As for Composer, I think they should just concentrate on the ‘HTML composition engine’ (as Gecko is to HTML rendering) and let other people worry about the UI.
Also, I’m glad these programs are splitting up. Although I don’t mind so much the browser/mail being integrated, I certainly don’t feel the same way about the shitty news program – I’d rather use Agent, Newsbin, or Pan.
*All* versions were unstable. I normally only use stable versions, but since the stable ones were crashing also, I turned to the betas and nightly builds. 1.4RC1 is the first one that has not crashed for either Moz or Firebird.
how long should we expect before it becomes ready for widespread use?
If it’s anything like Mozilla, about 5 years.
Both mozilla and Firebird work well for me on linux. Thesedays, I used firebird more though. Reason? Its got better themes
I see alot of people with opinions like “May Mozilla burn in <evil-place>, all Hail Firebird, Mozilla sucks, Firebird rEwLzS”.
But as far as I’ve always understood it, isn’t Firebird mozilla with less fuzz + some module architecture and such? The render engine is the same no?
I’m looking forward to their new approach so people won’t have to have mozilla compiled and ontop of that favourite frontend (few use Mozilla standalone nowadays apparently).
I have seen no skins yet that make Firebird truly look like the Seamonkey Mozilla. Their isn’t even a Mozilla Modern skin that looks like it.
My favourite skin has always been Lopburi Flat, I would like that for Firebird. There was also to versions of this skin. One was with larger buttons which worked with Mozilla 1.0 release, but not with the latest. The latest Lopburi had smaller icons and only works up to 1.3.
I really hope some of the older skins get ported to Mozilla Firebird.
re: mozilla firebird skins
all in good time, my friend… all in good time…
re: question
yea, firebird is cool that way; less fuss, more control; less useless features, less bloat
re: Re: Question about Thunderbird, and comments.
<<<how long should we expect before it becomes ready for widespread use? If it’s anything like Mozilla, about 5 years.>>>
lol… umm… no.
12378 mozilla-win32-1.3-installer.exe
11971 mozilla-win32-1.4rc1-installer.exe
1.4 RC1 is smaller than 1.3
Great looking and noticeably faster than Mozilla (not that Mozilla is slow).
You really don’t have to, I’m using the same profile since 0.96 or something -> no problem at all.
Out of curiosity, are you making sure to right-click around the area of the buttons and checking the Big Icons box? Then you’ll get bigger icons.
I agree though, I like the dark, subdued Modern theme which Firebird can’t quite emulate. They have a version that isn’t as pleasing. That’s probably the one reason for not switching.
Time to open up gimp…
Mozilla & Firebird burns IE to hell!
I must say I’m very disappointed in the mail client in many ways. Especially like someone mentioned, it’s hell every time you download a new version.
Concerning functionality I think they should have a look at Ritlabs.com –> The Bat!
These guys really know how to make mail software, so head on over there any Mozdudes and download a trial and see what that baby can do, because that is indeed a lot!
so far is pretty good. No crashes, and VERY fast in comparison to previous releases. What I would like to see in the *NIX version however is the build default to gtk2 and for the widgets inside the browser to use ones provided by the operating systems widget set, for example it is compiled against GTK2, the widgets set used in the webpage is GTK2.
Mozilla is nice, but Mozilla Firebird is much better for browsing.
“*All* versions were unstable. I normally only use stable versions, but since the stable ones were crashing also, I turned to the betas and nightly builds. 1.4RC1 is the first one that has not crashed for either Moz or Firebird.”
I have used all Mozilla versions through 1.4b on Win2k and Win XP. It was perfectly stable. So was Phoenix/Firebird. Never crashed.
The only time I have encountered stability problems with Mozilla from version 1.0 onward is on computers with marginal hardware: hard drives with bad sectors, less than stellar memory chips, and the like. Those who complain about crashing versions of Mozilla may want to check their hardware.
Mozilla is my main browser on all machines, every one of them. There range from an Athlon XP 1800+ to a truly wimpy Transmeta. The latter is a good one to test browser speeds on. Mozilla is slow on the Transmeta. Slow to load, slow to display pages. No slower than Firebird, however. Indeed, since Mozilla allows 17 meg. or so to be pre-loaded, it is faster starting up than Firebird, much faster. Page rendering is identical, and Mozilla allows better access to the program’s settings.
Opera 7.11 is almost as fast as Mozilla starting up, and a little faster rendering. That said, Opera tends to display what it has far more quickly than Mozilla. The effect is a bit confusing as the various page elements jump about the screen as Opera renders. In short, I would prefer Opera over Mozilla except for one thing. Opera crashes occasionally, Mozilla doesn’t. I can’t find a specific page to set Opera off, it just gets unstable after a while. Opera has made great strides lately. They have fixed most of the rendering issues that plagued it. They do amazing things with a small footprint. Now if they could squash a few remaining bugs.
One last thing about Mozilla, I think most complaints about bloat would vanish if Mozilla fixed their stupid stub installer. Even if you select browser only, or strip down the options on the custom install, it still downloads the whole 9.5 meg. package. I can see why dial-up users might want to choose Firebird for that reason alone.
I’ve not had any problems w/ RC1, im glad they’re changing to thunderbird, mozilla was becoming Netscape/IE in download size, expecially for BeOS, MacOS
Now I can use Mozilla on the network with the cruddy ms-proxy server at school. Aah, how refreshing. No more VMWare!