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MozillaQuest the on-line computer magazine

May 23, 2002

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MozillaQuest Magazine Comprehensive Mozilla 1.0 Coverage

The Mozilla 1.0 Web browser suite is out! MozillaQuest Magazine has the best, most balanced, accurate, robust and in-depth coverage of AOL-Netscape's Mozilla 1.0 browser on the Internet. I'ts all on MozillaQuest Magazine.

Mozilla 1.1-alpha Browser-Suite Milestone Released

Mike Angelo -- 12 June 2002 (c)

Mozilla 1.0 Coverage

Mozilla 1.0 is out!

Mozilla 1.0 Not Ready for Prime Time -- Close but No Cigar and No Brass Ring!

A Quick Look at Some Mozilla 1.0 Browser-Suite Annoyances, Bugs, And Issues

AOL-Netscape's Mozilla Organization has placed the first post-Mozilla 1.0 milestone edition browser suite on its public FTP server. Mozilla 1.0 was released 5 June 2002.

On 22 May 2002 AOL-Netscape placed its Netscape 7.0-PR1 upgrade from Netscape 6.2.3 on its public FTP servers . Netscape 7.0-PR1 is based upon Mozilla 1.0-RC2 code.

The February Mozilla Roadmap had called for Mozilla 1.1a to have been released on 10 May 2002. However, that scheduled slipped substantially and Mozilla 1.1a was not released until 11 June. Moreover, Mozilla 1.1a was released directly from the main development trunk rather than from a branch

At the time Mozilla 1.0-RC1 was released there were 533 "crash" bugs listed in Mozilla's Bugzilla bug-tracking database and there were 561 "crash" bugs listed when Mozilla 1.0-RC2 was released. The "crash" bugs count was up to 618 open crash bugs by the time Mozilla 1.1a was released..

Apparently, the Mozilla Organization does not desire to attract end-users to the Mozilla browser suite. Interestingly, the official position of AOL-Netscape's Mozilla Organization is that it does not want end-users to run the Mozilla browser suite.

Interestingly, since we raised the "end users" issue in previous articles, there appears to be a movement afoot by some people in the Mozilla Community to get-real and make Mozilla 1.0 an end-user product. That's a good move!

If you are an end-user that would like to discuss Mozilla or would like some Mozilla help, try the #ChatZilla, #Mozilla, and #Netscape channels on the EFNet IRC network.

These IRC channels are not affiliated with AOL or its Netscape and Mozilla divisions. It's mostly Mozilla and Netscape users helping other Mozilla and Netscape users. You also will find #Caldera, #KDE, #Linux, #Mandrake, #RedHat, #SuSE, and #Windows channels on EFNet too.

Incidentally, ChatZilla is an IRC client that comes with Mozilla. Give it a try. To launch ChatZilla just go to the Mozilla Menu Bar and click Window > IRC Chat.

For more information about Mozilla 1.0, please see our Mozilla 1.0 comprehensive coverage articles:

What's New in Mozilla 1.1a

Here is what is new in Mozilla 1.1a according to the Mozilla 1.1 Alpha Release Notes:

* 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.

Here is what was new in Mozilla 1.0-RC2 according to the Mozilla 1.1 Alpha Release Notes:

* Saving of certain files results in an extra or incorrect file extension. (Bug 120327)

The download information and links are in the Resources section at the end of this article.

Lots of Bugs for Mozilla 1.1 Alpha

We addressed some concerns about Mozilla'a runaway bugs problems in our article, Mozilla Milestone 0.9.9 Branched Behind Schedule. In that article, we noted that on 1 March, there were some 12,137 targeted new, assigned, and reopened Mozilla bugs and 21,199 new, assigned, and reopened bugs (open/unfixed bugs) altogether.

On May 10, when Mozilla 1.0-RC2 was released, there were 12,417 targeted, new, assigned, and reopened Mozilla bugs and 23,569 new, assigned, and reopened bugs (open/unfixed bugs) altogether. Mozilla 1.0-RC2 had more bugs than did Mozilla 0.9.9.

On Mozilla 1.1a release day, there were 1158 bugs targedted to Moailla 1.1a, 12,638 targeted, new, assigned, and reopened Mozilla bugs, and 24,850 new, assigned, and reopened bugs (open/unfixed bugs) altogether. Mozilla 1.1 Alpha has more bugs than did Mozilla 0.9.9.

Please see our Mozilla 0.9.9 release article for more information about, and a breakdown of, the targeted new, assigned, and reopened Mozilla bugs complex.

Mozilla has bugs problems. The Mozilla developers have continually failed to get the bugs targeted to milestones fixed before the scheduled milestone branching dates. Moreover, the Mozilla developers do not seem to be very effective in keeping buggy code from getting into the development tree.

However, since the Mozilla 0.9.9 release, code-checkin practices have been tightened down somewhat. That seems to be providing some reduction in the Mozilla runaway bugs problem.

Note: the distinction, targeted bugs, is important. Almost anyone can submit a bug to the Bugzilla database. Many bugs so submitted are duplicates of other bugs, unconfirmed, or otherwise not bugs that should be fixed or need to be fixed. However, in order for a bug to be targeted, it must be either submitted or reviewed by a Mozilla developer or triager that has the appropriate skills and permissions level in Bugzilla to set the target parameters for bugs. This also applies to bugs listed as new, assigned, and reopened -- those parameters can be set only by a Mozilla developer or triager that has the appropriate skills and permissions level in Bugzilla. When we query Bugzilla for bugs targeted to a specific Mozilla release, we also restrict that query to new, assigned, and reopened bugs. Incidentally, the general query for all new, assigned, and reopened does include bugs related to other-than-Mozilla projects such as Bugzilla, Web tools, and so forth. That is one reason we do not report that bug in our Front Page bug-count tracking.

The preceding bugs discussion has focused on the impact of Mozilla's bugs on the development process. Just as important as that, if not even more important, is how the Mozilla bugs hit users. If the Mozilla bugs for the most part are trivial or only rarely occurring, then end-users likely are not going to be very upset by the bugs, However, if the bugs are more noticeable, annoying, disruptive, or result in data loss, system crashes, or application lock-ups, then users likely are going to be rather upset.

That said, the more bugs in a program the more likely users will notice them and the more likely they will be annoyed by them. Bugs in milestone development releases are understandable although not a good thing.

Incidentally, a Bugzilla query today for open bugs with the keyword crash turned up more than 500 hits. A similar query made today using the keyword dataloss turned up some 150 bugs. That's not a very pretty picture either.

All this bug stuff can be confusing. The most important point is that Mozilla 1.1a includes not merely the bugs targeted to Mozilla 1.1a. Rather, Mozilla 1.1a includes some 24,000 un-fixed new, assigned, and reopened Mozilla bugs. The Mozilla 1.1a-targeted bugs is merely a subset of the more than 24,000 un-fixed new, assigned, and reopened Mozilla bugs.

Please see our 0.9.4 branching article, Mozilla 0.9.4 Branched -- Behind Schedule & Buggier Than Ever, for more detail and information about the Mozilla bugs.

Mozilla post-1.0 Milestone and daily development builds normally are available for the BSD, Linux, Macintosh, Microsoft Windows, OS/2, Sun, and several UNIX platforms. Source code usually is available if you want to custom compile your own Mozilla builds.

Incidentally, please check the MozillaQuest Magazine front-page (mozillaquest.com) sidebar every now and then for bug-count updates and for upcoming Mozilla Milestone progress updates.

Please see our article, Mozilla Roadmap Update: Mozilla 1.0 Set Back to April 2002, for more information about the October 2001 Mozilla Development Roadmap and development schedule revisions. There is lots of bug information in that article too. For the revised post-Mozilla 1.0 development roadmap and plan please see our article, Moz 1.0 April Release Confirmed & Post-1.0 Development Plan Announced.

Downloading & Installation Info

Note: the Mozilla Organization used include a simple, non-talkback, Milestone download build for the Microsoft Windows platform such as mozilla-win32-1.1a.zip plus a talkback build. The Mozilla 1.1 Alpha release notes also call for such a mozilla-win32-1.1a.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 1.0 Release Candidate 3 Release Notes , the Mozilla Organization, 11 June 2002.)

Unfortunately, the Mozilla Organization has decided not to give you that choice for Mozilla Milestone 1.1 Alpha. It has not included the non-talkback mozilla-win32-1.1a.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-win32-1.1a.zip too. Whether you participate in Mozilla talkback should be your choice, not the AOL-Netscape-Mozilla Organization's choice.

Of course you can turn talkback off when you install Mozilla if you use the installer version 1.1a Mozilla Milestone build (mozilla-win32-1.1a-installer.exe). However, the installer version of Mozilla presents some potential privacy breaches, which we shall address eventually in another article.

In the meantime, we recommend that you disconnect your computer from the Internet when installing mozilla-win32-1.1a-installer.exe so that you can adjust your security and privacy preferences before taking Mozilla 0.9.8 online for the first time.(Please see our article How To Download, Install, & Configure Netscape 6 -- Safely! for more about that.)

1.1 Alpha Download Links

Here are the FTP download links for Mozilla 1.1a for you readers that cannot wait to try Mozilla 1.1a

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 1.1 Alpha Source

Other Builds, RPMs, & Platforms

Release Notes