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MozillaQuest the on-line computer magazine

July 7, 2001

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Mozilla Milestone 0.9.2 Browser-Suite Released

Mike Angelo -- 29 June 2001 (c)

(Revised 7 July 2001)

Webmaster´s Note: Mozilla Milestone 0.9.5 was released October 12, 2001. Please see our story, Mozilla Milestone 0.9.5 Browser-Suite Released, for download links and the details.

The Mozilla Organization released the Milestone Mozilla 0.9.2 edition of its Mozilla browser-suite today, as it creeps along to the elusive Mozilla 1.0. The Mozilla Milestone 0.9.2 browser-suite is cross-platform and open source. Builds are available for the BSD, Linux, Macintosh, Microsoft Windows, OS/2, Sun, and several UNIX platforms. Source code is available if you want to custom compile your own Mozilla Milestone 0.9.2 build.

The Mozilla Organization Roadmap and development plan calls for Mozilla Milestone 0.9.2 to have been released to the public on 25 June, four days ago. However, it was not released until today. For more information about the Mozilla Roadmap please see Mozilla 0.9.2 Set for 25 June Release -- More Mozilla Roadmap Plan Changes and Chaos.

Mostly, the changes in this pre-1.0 edition of the Mozilla browser-suite are behind-the-scenes improvements in performance and stability. There are also lots of bug fixes in Mozilla 0.9.2. However, there still are many unfixed bugs in Mozilla too.

Target Milestone

The seamonkey project uses target milesones to plan Mozilla's development process. A milestone plan enumerates when different features are expected to be completed. If a bug is marked M18, it means work on the bug is expected to be completed by milestone 18. This field should only be set by the person responsible for the bug. From bugs, Mozilla Organization. (Link in Resources section below.)

At publication time there are some 1,258 bugs targeted to Milestone 0.9.3 and 1,657 bugs targeted to Mozilla 1.0. That's a total of 2,915 bugs targeted to these two, work-in-progress, Mozilla releases. All these 2,915 bugs are in Mozilla 0.9.2. They just are not expected to be fixed until release of the specified targets.

Incidentally, there are some 4,692 bugs targeted to Future Mozilla releases. Please see the bugs list in the right-hand sidebar on the MozillaQuest Magazine front page (mozillaquest.com) for the updated Mozilla bug counts.

Please see our article Mozilla 0.9.2 Branches on Schedule, but with Many Bugs for more information about the Mozilla 0.9.2 branching with too many bugs.

Some new, visible, features previously added for March's Mozilla 0.8.1 edition are a hierarchical history, a routine to un-install themes, and some Gopher support. There also are lots of changes to ChatZilla, the Mozilla-based chat client in that release. For more information about the features added or improved in the Mozilla .0.8.1 browser-suite Milestone, please see Lizard On The Move: Mozilla Milestone 0.8.1 Browser-Suite Released.

There has been lots of rewriting too. For example the image library was rewritten for Mozilla 0.9. The disk cache subsystem was rewritten also. The level-1 cache rewrite was included in Mozilla 0.9, and the level-2 cache rewrite is in Mozilla 0.9.1. For more information about what's new and improved in 0.9 and 0.9.1, please see our articles, The Snail Moves: Mozilla Milestone 0.9 Browser-Suite Released and Netscape 6.1 PR 1 Browser-Suite Released.

Here is what the Milestone 0.9.2 Release Notes list as new in 0.9.2:

Continued stability improvements with 25 top crash bugs fixed since 0.9.1. These bugs were fixed thanks to data generated by users running talkback builds.
New context sensitive help in prefernce dialogs and new help viewer content donated from the Netscape 6.1 PR1 release (which still needs to be Mozillafied). (Bug 46917)
On Windows, you can now permanently delete your Imported IE Favorites folder. (Bug 22642)
The preferences dialog now allows you to turn off animated gif images or set them to only animate once. (Bug 64831)
The View Source window has a new toolbar for common tasks like File, Edit and View (Bug 63026)
There is a new turbo mode pref on Windows which allows you to "pre-load" Mozilla when you boot in order to to reduce browser startup time. (Bug 84882)
You can click the lock icon to see security information about the current page.
Security UI and help is now fully integrated with the rest of the browser interface. If you are a developer, you can find more technical information about Mozilla 0.9.2 security features on the Personal Security Manager Project Page .

In May, the Mozilla Organization changed its development-tree diagram to push a projected Mozilla 1.0 release back to October 2001 or later. That tree diagram anticipates at least four, 0.9.x Milestone releases before there is a Mozilla 1.0 release.

For more information about the Roadmap revisions, please see Mozilla Roadmap Plan Changed Again -- Mozilla 1.0 Set Back to Q4 2001.

The next Netscape 6.1 (NS 6.1) browser-suite Release is expected to be based on Mozilla Milestone 0.9.2. AOL-Time-Warner's Netscape division's Netscape 6 browser-suite is based upon the cross-platform Mozilla browser-suite. The Netscape 6.1 Preview Release 1 (NS 6.1, PR1) browser-suite upgrade for the Linux, Macintosh, and Microsoft Windows platforms is based on Mozilla Milestone 0.9.1.

The milestones are intended to be periodic check points for progress on the project, stability of builds, porting status, and are entry points for additional mozilla (sic) contributors to provide testing and engineering help on the project. (Project Sea Monkey. Link in Resources section below.)

Nevertheless, pre-Mozilla-1.0 development builds now are pretty much features-complete, stable, and usable. Mozilla development work now is focused on bug squashing, improved stability, and better performance. Browser-wise, we find current Mozilla Milestone releases good enough for regular use. We also find the latest Mozilla Milestones to be better, browser-wise, than Netscape 6.0.

MozillaQuest Magazine is giving the Mozilla 0.9.2 builds a preliminary try out now. Check back for more information soon. In the meantime, if you want to test drive the brand new Mozilla 0.9.2 builds now, we recommend that you install Mozilla 0.9.2 in it own directory, that you do not get rid of your current browser(s), and that you do not set Mozilla 0.9.2 as your default browser -- yet.

Note: usually the Mozilla Organization includes a simple, non-talkback, Milestone download build for the Microsoft Windows platform such as mozilla-win32-0.9.2.zip plus a talkback build. The Mozilla 0.9.2 release notes also call for such a mozilla-win32-0.9.2.zip build file and a talkback build file, mozilla-win32-talkback.zip.

1. Click the mozilla-win32-talkback.zip link or the mozilla-win32.zip link to download the .zip file to your machine. (Mozilla 0.9.2 Release Notes, the Mozilla Organization, 29 June 2001.)

Unfortunately, the Mozilla Organization has decided not to give you that choice for Mozilla Milestone 0.9.2. It has not included the non-talkback mozilla-win32-0.9.2.zip build – even though the release notes say it is included.

The Mozilla Organization’s rationale is that it needs the talkback info to get rid of bugs in Mozilla, particularly crash bugs. Getting rid of Mozilla bugs certainly is a noble purpose. And Mozilla has lots of bugs that need to be fixed.

However, freedom of choice is an even more noble pursuit. Moreover, choice is much of what Open Source Software is all about. Therefore we think the Mozilla Organization should have included the non-talkback mozilla-win32-0.9.2.zip too. Whether you participate in Mozilla talkback should be your choice, not the Mozilla Organization’s choice.

Of course you can turn talkback off when you install Mozilla if you use the installer version 0.9.2 Mozilla Milestone build (mozilla-win32-0.9.2-installer.exe). However, the installer version of Mozilla presents some potential privacy breaches, which we shall address shortly in another article.

In the meantime, we recommend that you disconnect your computer from the Internet when installing mozilla-win32-0.9.2-installer.exe so that you can adjust your security and privacy preferences before taking Mozilla 0.9.2 online for the first time.(Please see our article How To Download, Install, & Configure Netscape 6 -- Safely! for more about that.)

0.9.2 Download Links

Here are the FTP download links for Mozilla 0.9.2 for you readers that cannot wait to try Mozilla 0.9.2.

Linux Builds

Windows Builds

Please see the important note in the sidebar to the right here before installing.

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Macintosh Builds

Mozilla 0.9.2 Source

Other Builds & Platforms

Release Notes

Resources

Updated Note: The Netscape 6.1 Browser-Suite, which is based upon Mozilla Milestone 0.9.2 was released August 8, 2001. Please see our story, Netscape 6.1 Browser-Suite Released, Again? for the details and download links.