Mozilla 1.6b is a beta development version for the popular OSS browser. Mozilla Thunderbird 0.4 was released recently as well.
Mozilla 1.6b Released
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Eugenia Loli
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Is when Moz Firebird 0.8 will get released. Reading from the Burning Edge site, very few things which are hazzling there at the moment so it should be close. Usually it comes with the next release of Seamonkey so I guess it’ll be the same this time.
The big question remains though… when will Firebird take over Seamonkeys position?
How long until Mozilla/Firebird clone Opera’s fast forward and rewind features? I am a big fan of Mozilla/Firebird and don’t really like using a proprietary browser like Opera, but fast forward and rewind have me hooked! Browsing the web without these features is so tedious and cumbersome.
1.6b CSS support is quite buggy from what I can tell at the moment. I would stick with 1.4
I asked the developers about making firebird more responsive like opera that is make the forward and back button not need to reload web pages which is the BIG flaw firebird. The reply they gave me was negative in that no one was interested in taking that project up. They said the DOM code needed to be rewritten and everyone was coding their own projects.
So there is a fundemental weakness of opensource projects. Everyone doing their own thing instead attacking the main weaknesses. I find it funny how the installer was added before this. Who needs a damn installer ?
Mozilla the suite is not going anywhere. The browser will be replaced with Firebird, however, once it’s ready to be replaces. Originally this change was scheduled for 1.6, but that was a while ago and I have no idea what they plan on doing ATM. Probably going to end up being pushed back another release or two. :/
One other thing Firebird needs is Opera’s font scaling capabilities (where the imagines scale with the fonts).
As for Thunderbird, it’s at release 0.4 … how stable is it? Is it ready for prime time?
Wow, sounds like the Mozilla team is having major trouble making headway. What’s going on? I remember hearing too that Mozilla 1.5 was supposed to be the last release based on Seamonkey but is this not true? How long until Seamonkey is scrapped for Firebird/Thunderbird?
I guess all these feature requests are on the backburner until the whole Seamonkey/Firebird/Thunderbird business can be taken care of.
Speaking of which why does it take Firebird so obnoxiously long to start? On my 2.4GHz P4 it takes a whopping 10 seconds to cold start Firebird, compared to like 2 for Opera. Both start pretty much instantly once cached though.
I really hate using proprietary software when there are good GNU/free alternatives, but Mozilla/Firebird just can’t do what I want.
Speaking of which why does it take Firebird so obnoxiously long to start? On my 2.4GHz P4 it takes a whopping 10 seconds to cold start Firebird, compared to like 2 for Opera. Both start pretty much instantly once cached though.
Wow mine only takes 5 seconds and I have a k6-2 450Mhz.
There is an extension available for Mozilla that adds this feature. Using the latest versions of both Opera and Mozilla on a daily basis, Opera’s FF and rewind are still more responsive than the Mozilla extension.
They have decided to make the switch to Fire/thunderbird when they reach 1.0, hence the suite is still being worked on. It is also worth noting that nearly all of the work done on the suite also shows up in the birds.
Where do I get it?! Fasf forward and rewind are the only thing keeping me on Opera. Does it work with Firebird too? I really want to switch to Firebird and get rid of the crappy Opera ad banner! Also is there a good gestures add on? The last one I tried was kind of crappy (don’t remember the specifics) I kind of want to stop using gestures too, they don’t always work and it really sucks when you accidently close a tab in Opera
I kind of want to stop using gestures too, they don’t always work and it really sucks when you accidently close a tab in Opera
Opera’s gestures are fully configurable. Go to File > Preferences > Mouse and Keyboard > Edit mouse setup. You might want to use the right->left->right gesture and delete the down->right gesture. Also, if you right click the MDI background and choose “Closed” from the context menu you can access any pages you may have closed.
@eric smith:
Um, most people don’t consider the speed of the back button a ‘main weakness’. Why not concentrate on the important things like they are, such as the lack of an installer for the windows version, better mail client settings, better rendering, faster rendering, etc.
Granted those things are important as well, but realistically, the Mozilla browser needs to be just as competitive as any closed-source browser. Right now Firebird doesn’t quite match Opera (IMO).
I’d like to switch to Firebird completely, I already use Thunderbird as my mail client. Hopefully 1.0 will have Firebird closer to par.
firebird takes a longer time to start because of all the libraries, windows purges them and the viruschecker kicks in on loading..
(but this is just a guess haven’t looked at the code…)
2nd read the mozilla roadmap again before drive your rant against moz project
Mozilla 1.6 will be the last, or not, the decission was made to support issues. Many third party vendors use Mozilla(gecko or the seamonkey itself) as the core for their business. And the stable branch was replaced from 1.0 to 1.4 what gives the project more space to implement new code on 1.6 and so on
As somoone pointed out MozillaFirebird .8 will came out about the same time 1.6 gets out, end of the year, probably January 2004. With a windows installer, new download feature, and many bug fixes.
About thunderbird 0.4 itsnt yep for prime time hence the .4 and not 1.x but this version cames with better support for launching your fav linux browser (needs some sort of workout http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/linuxurls.html)
About the fast forward/back feature, i really dont find it kinda important, but i understand it can be for some, since mozillafirebird refreshes everytime he goes back/forward dellaying the loading of the page. But here goes a free tip for the ones that say “i use another browser just because of that …” well the free tip is, if you happen to gona need the current page you are visiting, remenber that fact next time you punch a new link with the left mouse button and click your middle mouse button instead!
On my machine, Opera takes longer to load than Firebird, even when cached (P4 2.8ghz)
firebird is the fastest loading web browser on Windows outside of IE.
Firebird .7 takes a good amount of time to load on my machine, even when it has been cached, however previous releases never really had any problems.
I recently switched back from firebird/thunderbird to stock Mozilla, and I couldn’t be happier.
Mozilla is a lot more solid, and I don’t experience any crashes with it, while I would get lots of bugs with the *birds. This is important. When I have 20 tabs open, I don’t want a sudden segfault.
I use every part of the suite except for the composer, and every part is well done. Its nice being able to click a link in IRC, and have it open up in a new browser tab. Linux seems to be missing this type of integration a lot.
Plus, its nice being able to get one skin to theme everything.
I really want to switch to Firebird and get rid of the crappy Opera ad banner!
You know that Opera has an option to do this, right? It’s called “paying”. If you use it, pay for it
The original road map said that from around 1.4 onwards would include more radical changes such as the re-write of the networking code and over haul parts of gecko to remove any nasty hacks or work arounds so that problems are corrected properly rather than using a nasty hack which results in more complex issues cropping up later done the road.
Hopefully by around Mozilla 1.8 we’ll start seeing a stable 1.0 release of Firebird and Thunderbird emerge.
Hah yeah right! I don’t want to pay for open source software! I would happily use Firebird if Opera weren’t around, but since it’s slightly better I’ll use free Opera until Firebird does what I want, but I would never support proprietary software. Opera should release a GPL branch like Qt did. That would solve everything. If Opera did that I would totally send them money. Hey, it worked for Blender!
Or is 1.6a loading and running nearly as fast as firebird? So far I’ve run the windows and linux versions. In windows you get that popup window that it’s loading up, and a couple seconds later there’s mozilla. In linux it takes a whole two seconds. And I don’t see it pre-loaded anywhere.
@keefer
“but I would never support proprietary software”
Nice, zealots…
You obviously use some OSS OS, most likely Linux – so I’ll say it shortly, cut the crap – someone has to pay the software developer, and I won’t be taking goodwill!
How much did you pay for your BIOS? – How about the firmware in most of your components?
“So there is a fundemental weakness of opensource projects. Everyone doing their own thing instead attacking the main weaknesses.”
God I hate it when people write stupid crap like this. Got any other words of wisdom for us?
btw you misspelled Fundamental.
Yes, i want that feature too, i thought it was already there but just wasnt working properly. Its completly crappy how a page reloads when you press the back or forward buttons, but i sware that sometimes it just brings up the page because its very fast. I guess its just getting most of it from cache.
I’d love this feature. Also, i dont like the responce you got from them, i thought these where well managed projects? It doesnt sound like it, well it could be well managed but i thought the team would have some core features or things they’d want the browser to do. Well, it is open source i guess so i cant just start ordering people to work on specific things cause they’ll just leave…
Ohh well!
Nope! it’s not just you… I’ve found the speed differences between Mozilla and Firebird to be non-existant on my box. I too run the Mozilla suit here over Firebird.
There’s definitely no differnce in startup time for me, and as for browsing speed, whatever the difference is, it’s negligible.
I personally hope deveopement continues on the seamonkey…
Free software is not communist. Your comparisons between BIOS and free software is not valid because many people do actually like developing software without monetary benefits. They can also reproduce this software easily.
Do you breath. Did you pay for air?
There are companies which make money out of free software. We do by supporting Linux. It is his choice to not use proprietary apps. If you use it and like it go ahead. Stop the abuse
“Your comparisons between BIOS and free software is not valid”
Keether didn’t want to pay for proprietary software, yet he gladly payed for a motherborad, including it’s proprietary BIOS. He also payed for proprietary firmware installed in his devices. He even payed money for the proprietary microcode in his CPU!
His statement was bollocks – thats all I am saying.
“Do you breath. Did you pay for air?”
You drink water – you pay for it?
Stop throwing lame statements that hasn’t been thought through!
“There are companies which make money out of free software. We do by supporting Linux.”
Good for you! It just so happens that I CANNOT make money by giving the games I write away for free. I’d like to see a buisness proposal that gives away games for free, in return for service and support…
I am glad that you are in a buisness that allows you to charge money on something else but the code – but don’t make the false assumption that we all are!
LOKI died, and they even charged money for their games while doing OSS too (OpenAL comes to mind)
“It is his choice to not use proprietary apps.”
Sure it is, but when he isn’t paying he shouldn’t bitch and whine – if he is unhappy with OSS, he can return the software for a full recharge…
“If you use it and like it go ahead.”
I like it, but I’d prefer to use more free software, because it helps me keep my bills down. That said – I’d rather use Windows or Mac OS X than Linux, since they have a MUCH more polished Desktop Environment.
“Stop the abuse”
abuse???
All I can say is that the (newer) Mozilla 1.5 runs much faster than Firebird 0.7. Startup is less than half the time, page redraws over twices as fast. This was not the case, comparing Mozilla 1.4 vs. Firebird 0.7-there the case was the opposite.
By the way has anyone successfully figure out how to transfer emials from one user account to another under Linux ? I am using Thunderbird 4.0, which works great, but after my upgrade to gnome2.5 my old user account now longer allows me to start gnome- so I created a new one.Now I have to su as my old user to startup Thunderbird which means saved attachments have my old users permissions….argh….. Believe me I tried to solve this problem, and it irks me beyond belief-but this is the price I pay for *bleeding*edge.
However importing mail in Mozilla-Mail(Thunderbird) in Linux does not really seem to be supported. The FAQ at Mozilla.org is utterly useless- when I use the import mail function, it imports an empty (ie. non-existant) Netscape Messenger 4.0 profile-great!!!!!!!-nowehere does it allow me to specify where the mail is, which is to be imported, it’s not as if Mozilla has problems understanding its own file format!.
Well, the reality of open source is that the majority of it isn’t written by ‘many people [who] do actually like developing software without monetary benefits’.
Linux – funded by IBM, Redhat and numerous other ‘for profit’ entities.
Apache – Its liberal license makes it embedded, or the basis of within many ‘for profit’ suites, e.g. tomcat with jboss
Eclipse – IBM gives away the core IDE and charges for its enhanced studio.
NetBeans – see eclipse but with Sun
Mozilla – Netscape still do brand products don’t they?
Darwin – Free core, pay for the eye candy.
In short, open source may have a different ‘business model’ from ‘closed’ development. However let’s not kid ourselves that successful open source projects are on the whole the realm of benevolent volunteers.
(Individual contributors yes, but the brightest open source projects are “donated” by companies with a vested interest)
this is one my favorite features in opera.
>> As for Thunderbird, it’s at release 0.4 … how stable is it? Is it ready for prime time?
It hasn’t crashed for me yet (and I’m using it quite a lot).
And I really love those new iconsin Thunderbird 0.4, much better than those old and ugly Netscape icons.
@pete
Mozilla is developped by payed developpers from the mozilla Foundation, IBM, Redhat and Sun. There are also many volunteers who do it for non-profit reasons (studies, personal interest, implementing a feature they want…). Netscape no longer exists.
“Um, most people don’t consider the speed of the back button a ‘main weakness'”
Well, as it’s the second most important navigation feature of web, after hyperlinking, I’d say it was pretty important that it performs speedily. I use it far more often than an installer or built in mail client. Don’t you?
Your mail is stored in a standard unix mbox file, located in ~/.thunderbird/
Just copy that file out. Any good mail client can read it, and if you really have to, you can just grep through it.
Thanks for the reply, but the problem is Thunderbird and Mozilla-Mail refuse to read the file (ie. if I copy it over to the new users directory inside of Mozilla profile) It seems like the problem is with hard-coded paths(ie. my old home users file-path is hard-coded in some of the files inlcuded in the Mail directory. I have grep’ed and sed’ed these file to trya to change the paths to point to the new(correct) path-but the profile manager just barfs-ie. it prompts me to creat a new one or acts as if there is no profile to begin with. I am not using a different email client-I am using the same one-same version-just a different username. I have checked all the permissions-the problems is not there. In fact the hard-coded path is even to found in two binary files-which is just crazy. The biggest grip I have with everything Mozilla is how it handles paths and profiles. I always have to write my own startup scripts to get Mozilla/Firebird/Thunderbird/Epiphany/Galeon to coexist peacefully. I cannot for the life of me figure out why it is so hard for the Mozilla folks to find a *simple* solution to the ungodly complex “environment” system which they have developed. And if I am not ever propmpted as to where to get the profile which I wish to import- how is the import ever supposed to function ?- It is really silly, they give you the option to import a profile but they don’t allow you to choose from where the profile should be imported-no file selector- instead it autoselects and imports a non-existant empty profile for Netscape 4.0/Navigator Messenger…..
I’m glad to see that Thunderbird/Firebird are coming along nicely. I’ve been using both for quite a while.
As to the mail problem, I’m assuming that Moz reads the same mailbox format as Thunderbird. I’ve never had any luck porting the profile, but the mail itself was a no brainier. Well first I tried import/export/etc/etc and then it hit me.
Don’t try to port the profile. Hasn’t worked for me no matter what I’ve tried. Create a new profile then exit the application. Copy the mailboxes under the new profile, or simply redirect your mailbox to the old location. Presto, all of your old mail instantly ported over. I’ve even heard of cases where people access the same mailbox from both Moz and Thunderbird, or Win Thunderbird/Linux Thunderbird (you need to put your mailbox on a FAT partition). To summarize, create a NEW profile, copy or redirect mailboxes.
I hope that helps.
someone247356
Just my $0.02 (Canadian, before taxes)
> I kind of want to stop using gestures too, they don’t always work and it really sucks when you accidently close a tab in Opera
Ctrl+Z in opera reopens the last closed tab (it actually reopens the tab, not just reopens a new tab with the last viewed page; the tab-page-history is still there).
YEEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!
I finally figured out how to get this to work…phew!!!!
cp -ax /home/olduser/.thunderbird/old-user-profile/old-funky-string.slt/* /home/newuser/.thunderbird/default/new-funky-string.slt/
chown mtdman:users -R /home/newuser/.thunderbird/
for i in `find . -name ‘*.*’ -exec grep -l ‘/home/olduser/.thunderbird/old-user-profile/old-funky-string.s lt’ {} ; `; do sed -i ‘s//home/olduser/.thunderbird/old-user-profile/old-funky-string .slt//home/newuser/.thunderbird/default/new-funky-string.slt/g’ $i ; done
…dont forget to substitute the names
finally, after much sweat,blood and tears…..
The problem boiled down to the ‘appreg’ file, in ~/.thunderbird/ , created when one first launches Thunderbird. This if the “profile”. It is binary and hard-codes the path. Thunderbird doesn’t let you simply create a new profile- you must go thru the entire process of setting up a new email account-which is what I don’t want-because my email is already located on my harddrive….
Thanks for the tips
Mozilla was the first OSS app that I used that I was tremendously impressed with.
This version is pretty fast.. its certainly faster than the last one. I am also trying their built in mail client.. its not bad, but its no Outlook xp.
Three cheers for alternate web browsers!
“firebird is the fastest loading web browser on Windows outside of IE.”
Windows loads IE components when it boots up. KDE does so too regarding Konqueror, but at least this can be turned off in Konqueror. Mozilla can do so too IIRC but at least that can be turned of.
@ Brian Matzon: Free as in speech, not beer.
“Opera’s Continue from last time….
By SugarCoatedRoaches (IP: 202.138.189.—) – Posted on 2003-12-10 09:48:12
this is one my favorite features in opera.”
It’s my favorite feature in Firebird too! “Tabbrowser extensions”++
Mozilla 1.5 freezes way too often for me (Win 98, Cel266, 128M) during data transfer (especially when it goes down temporarily). When it happens, the Mail component also does not respond. These freezes can last minutes or forever. (By the way, I had this in earlier versions, too). Has anybody experienced this? Maybe I should adjust some options?
hey dpi where can i get that??
Just add the extension called “Tab extensions” from the Options menu in Mozilla Firebird.
With tabbed browsing I barely need the “back” button
MNG is still not back. This is so annoying, since there’s no real reason other than their stupid politics to leave it out.