[pliny]

The beta is really very good. It's very stable, surprisingly fast, and very responsive. Fasterer and more responsive than Safari 1.1.1 here. I WONDER HOW IT WOULD FARE AGAINST THE MYTHICAL OMNIWEB 5.

A couple a things I notice different are saving html, Safari automatically generates a nice name for you and doesn't use the .html extension; and autofill, Safari's remembers like, everything without oinpoutting it into a field in the proefs. Also you may have noticed hte lack of a spelchek in mozilla.

Anyway I'm using Mozilla as my default because safari 1.1.1 seems sluggish.

[Cadaver]

Which, if any, of the nice themes work on 1.6?

I really like Pinstripe, but it doesn't seem to run on anything higher than 1.4.

[absmiths]

Originally posted by pliny:
The beta is really very good. It's very stable, surprisingly fast, and very responsive. Fasterer and more responsive than Safari 1.1.1 here. I WONDER HOW IT WOULD FARE AGAINST THE MYTHICAL OMNIWEB 5.

If you are referring to rendering speed, it would probably be the same for OW 5 and Safari since OW 5 will use the WebCore engine just like Safari.

[ryaxnb]

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firebird/
Get the latest nightly in the nightly folder. For a quick way, try this link: ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.or.../latest-trunk/
You know you're a computer geek when you know the mozilla.org FTP addresses by heart.

[ryaxnb]

Originally posted by absmiths:
If you are referring to rendering speed, it would probably be the same for OW 5 and Safari since OW 5 will use the WebCore engine just like Safari.

No, probably not. http://arstechnica.com/reviews/003/s...rowsers-2.html and go down to "the tests begin."

Here's some data:
ESPN: Safari 4.21, OmniWeb 8.70, Firebird 3.70.
PGA: Safari 5.61, OmniWeb 6.84, Firebird 5.03.

[pliny]

Originally posted by ryaxnb:
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firebird/
Get the latest nightly in the nightly folder. For a quick way, try this link: ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.or.../latest-trunk/
You know you're a computer geek when you know the mozilla.org FTP addresses by heart.

Gah! Not firebird, MOZILLA.

[voodoo]

I simply LOVE Mozilla. It is relatively compact considering its capabilities and it has now 100% replaced the need for Internet Explorer on the Macintosh. At least for me since I updated Moz to 1.6b I've had NO problems with the troublemaking sites of old. Mozilla is the king of browsers - Firebird is no better than Camino IMO - neither cutting edge. Moz has ALWAYS been the cutting edge browser, using the latest version of Gecko. It is the perfect browser to fall back on if you want to use Safari for 99% of the Web or a shining primary browser capable of rendering 99.99999999999% of the Web along with a fine IRC client, newsreader and email app. Writing html pages is fun for beginners in Mozilla. It makes everything so simple and easy. I use Safari primarily and fall back on Moz - nothing beats the Safari interface and bookmarks system but one needs to be able to fall back on something. Before it was the ugly and outdated IE, but now it is Moz 1.6. I've used Mozill since it was in the 0.8 or 0.9 stage.. I've enjoyed surfing on it since the beginning but the 1.6b is simply smashing! It is sad to hear that the Moz team is going to stop developing Moz and concentrate on Firebird. Moz has a clear puropse and is beginning to make a name for itself. They should rename Firebird Mozilla when the axe Moz and make sure the Firebird development doesn't fall behind on Moz's ambition and quality. Kepp up the good work Moz developers! You made it - you made the best browser the world has yet seen!

[bmedina]

Originally posted by voodoo:
Firebird is no better than Camino IMO - neither cutting edge. Moz has ALWAYS been the cutting edge browser, using the latest version of Gecko.

Both Firebird and Camino are built from the trunk of the Gecko code, so every day they get the latest version of Gecko.

[voodoo]

Originally posted by bmedina:
Both Firebird and Camino are built from the trunk of the Gecko code, so every day they get the latest version of Gecko.

Then it has changed since I downloaded Chimera nightlies back in the day. They always used the latest stable version of Gecko while Moz nightlies used the latest build of Gecko that they had. Chimera had an updated Gecko every couple of months while Moz's Gecko was updated every other week or so. Besides Mozilla is no beta anymore. It has become mature, while Camino and Firebird are both betas.. I just don't have patience for beta browsers any more. I was with Moz from 0.8 and with Camino from 0.4..

[pliny]

Originally posted by voodoo:
I just don't have patience for beta browsers any more.

You said it, there's no reason to put up with beta nonsense, they have been in development too long, either they are stable releases with nightlies or updates as needed, or just forget it.

Can't stand firebird interface it blows.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by bmedina:
Both Firebird and Camino are built from the trunk of the Gecko code, so every day they get the latest version of Gecko.

Not quite. Firebird builds from the trunk; Camino does not.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by pliny:
Can't stand firebird interface it blows.

Honest question: what don't you like about it?

[voodoo]

Originally posted by Millennium:
Honest question: what don't you like about it?

Well if I may answer that for my parts:

The interface of the official release is so 'doz XP that it makes me sick. This has been fixed in a way in the nightlies but it still looks rough and unfinished. FB also lacks in features compared to Mozilla and until they've made FB as feature comprehensive as Moz I don't care much for it. IMO Firebird is an unnecessary repition of the Mozilla project. When Phoenix was started it was very much inspired by the Chimera project which in turn was grounded on the fact that Mac OS X users didn't have a good lightweight browser to use. At the time Moz was just to heavy and slow to load - even if it rendered fast. Ironically the Phoenix project almost killed Chimera and while doing so and catching up with Chimera Mozilla reached 1.6 and had become very refined with fast loading speeds, incredible features, immensely refined rendering engine and solid peripheral apps (mail, news, html creator.. et al)

so now in the end of 2003 there seems to be little to like about Camino or Firebird because the slow old Mozilla has rushed ahead of the fledgeling upstarts and managed to achieve its original goal. I wouldn't have believed it possible only a year ago. But now it is a fact. The upstarts have a long way to go before they can touch Mozilla again and IMO that makes the upstarts rather unnecessary as I said before. We have the best Gecko browser out there already and C and FB have a long way to go. Why all the hype on Firebird? It is OK but not nearly as fine as Moz. Color me puzzled.

[Arty50]

Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding this, but how is moving development to Firebird a bad thing. From what I understand the Mozilla team is merely going to split the existing app into its two parts: email/newgroup client and web browser. And Firebird is being built as the web browser portion. This is a very good thing in my estimation. I mean, how many of you use Mozilla mail? Probably no one. But it loads everytime you fire up Mozilla. Frankly I could do without the bloat. But everything else from a web perspective is supposed to stay the same. I think that's why we're seeing parallel Mozilla and Firebird development right now. Once Firebird and Thunderbird are up to speed, then development of the huge uber bloat app will cease. Frankly, I can't wait.

[bmedina]

Originally posted by Millennium:
Not quite. Firebird builds from the trunk; Camino does not.

No, as I said, both are built from the trunk. Firebird always has been; Camino has since just after the 0.7 release.

Voodoo, the whole point of Firebird is to get rid of the extreme feature bloat of Mozilla. Try showing Mozilla's preferences to a newbie; it's not exactly friendly. For people wanting more exotic features, Firebird has an extensions system that allows quite a bit of diversity: http://www.texturizer.net/firebird/extensions/

The Mozilla Foundation will be moving away from the Mozilla suite and towards Firebir/Thunderbird sometime early next year.

Edit: Camino 0.8 and Firebird 1.0 will both be using the branch of the Gecko for Mozilla 1.7. From when Moz 1.7 releases until Camino and Firebird release, they will no longer be using the trunk code. http://homepage.mac.com/mikepinkerton/camino/

[voodoo]

I'm sure you guys know better about the Gecko trunk than I do, but IMO there is no need for a 'lightweight' browser. Mozilla is lightweight enough for modern computers.

Firebird does not seem like Mozilla's browser portion. It looks and feels rather like a PC version of Camino - which it is looking at its history. It wasn't until later that the Moz team decided to make Firebird "the lightweight Mozilla". That doesn't mean it is a lightweight Mozilla, rather it is a new lighter browser made by the Moz team and using some of the Moz code. This is so unnecessary.

I have a 600 MHz iBook and Moz 1.6 runs faster than Safari on my computer. That tells me there is no problem with Mozilla. It isn't bloatware anyway. I never use the Mail feature of Moz but I use the composer feature and the IRC feature.

So if a 600 MHz iBook runs Mozilla fast, Mozilla has become 99.99...% compatible with the M$ dominated web and it has long since left beta to mature and make a name for itself why replace it?

No reason except that the Moz team didn't realize that there was nothing wrong with Moz when they decided to axe it for the alternatice Firebird project. Mozilla hadn't won awards for exccellence, it hadn't begun to take over for the defunkt Netscape at online banks, it wasn't particularly fast and seemed bloated. Now things have changed a lot and Firebird isn't that neat anymore. As long as Safari is available there is no reason to use Firebird IMO. Mozilla's strength is feature completeness. The Firebird/Camino projects will never get there without becoming as big as Mozilla and then what was the point of Firebird?

Safari is the best lightweight browser for the Macintosh. Apple will see to it. If you needed features for your browser there was always Mozilla. Now that is going to change. They are taking away one of out browser options because a few linux users want a Camino too!

Unfortunately OmniWeb is not a good replacement for Mozilla since OW uses Webcore like Safari. I need one Gecko browser that is worth it's salt and on Webcore.

/rant

[pliny]

Originally posted by Millennium:
Honest question: what don't you like about it?

I pretty much like voodoo's take on the Firebird interface. While it may be fine for a Windows XP computer because the widgets and menus are very compliant with the XP interface, it isn't for a Mac OS X computer for the same reason.

And while I can see the purist argument for reducing bloat, like voodoo says, computers running the latest Mozilla's shouldn't be too concerned about it. Strangely enough or hats-off-to-moz.org enough, Moz runs faster on my iMac dv than Safari does.

Another thing is the PC builds have an installer that lets you pick your components and the Mac should as well, it used to in the old System 9 days, but the suite is not nearly as slow as the suite tag would suggest.

Moz is very speedy to load and run and it's more stable than Firebird.

So while it may be simpler in the end to split the apps and dev teams as mozilla.org has already decided, I would suggest reworking the Firebird interface for the Mac or at least having a platrom neutral interface/theme like Moz has now.

[bmedina]

Have you guys even tried a nightly in the past month? You complain about Firebird's interface being too PC-ish, but you're fine with Mozilla's? You are aware that they use the same widget set, yeah? It just makes no sense.

[voodoo]

Originally posted by bmedina:
Have you guys even tried a nightly in the past month? You complain about Firebird's interface being too PC-ish, but you're fine with Mozilla's? You are aware that they use the same widget set, yeah? It just makes no sense.

Yup I've tried the nightlies. They are a lot nicer looking and kudos to the FB team for making things nicer. The look was not my main gripe - rather the inane decision to throw us (Mozilla users) back to beta testing YET another browser even if we already have Mozilla! Working!

I have nothing AGAINST Firebird I just happen to think it is a waste of time and space since we HAVE both Mozilla AND Camino.

PS. skinning works on Moz too so if you want an Aqua interface on Moz it is available.

[voodoo]

This thread was about Mozilla 1.6 but I've noticed (perceptive as I am ) that many people are defending the decision of the Moz team to abandon Mozilla for FB and/or defending Firebird...

I'm sorta fine with that but tell me people: what does Firebird have that Mozilla doesn't have?

i.e. WHY on God's green Earth should you choose FB over Moz as things are now? In the future - sure I can imagine that it would be a no brainer when FB has finally caught up with Moz and nobody is developing Moz - but now as of this moment, why should anyone choose Firebird?

[Developer]

Originally posted by voodoo:
What does Firebird have that Mozilla doesn't have?

Firebird does have a more Mac like user interface. This induces the hope that Firebird will be what Camino was supposed to be on the Mac and what Mozilla will never be. Mozilla is a full cross platform project and it therefore will not readily support platform specific features like Aqua UI, Services, spell checking, sheets, etc. pp. Camino on the other hand was supposed to be a native Mac OS X application using the Gecko browser. And the hope is that Firebird will become a Gecko browser that is still using the strengths of the respective operating system.