BetaNews has more about AOL's Gecko based suite called AOL Communicator: New 'Communicator' Threatens Netscape's Future. The article touches on the standard "gloom and doom" in store for Netscape, mentioning that Communicator was developed independent of Netscape and that "shifting focus away from the Web browser has been a long expected transition for Netscape". And it looks like AOL Communicator might not be a web browser at all:
Instead of Web browsing, the focus of Communicator is to provide AOL users a unified e-mail and instant messaging experience, the company says. AOL Communicator Mail supports AOL, POP and IMAP e-mail accounts integrated into a single client. Automatic spam filtering has been added to weed out junk mail, an essential feature offered by rival service MSN.
If AOL is developing Communicator independant of Netscape (and therefore Mozilla) then it won't feature any of the recent enhancements to Mail such as Bayesian spam classification and message views.
The article also mentions that "AOL has made no decisions on how to market the product". I don't see why AOL's standard marketing plan of blanketing suburban neighborhoods with "free discs" won't work.
Update: ExtremeTech has screenshots, and maybe they are using Mozilla Mail code since it does look very much like it.
From the Minotaur website:
"Feeling brave? You could pull and build the ISHMAIL_1_0_BRANCH branch to try out Minotaur mail, based off of Mozilla 1.0. (win32 only)"
So, I'm putting out a challange to someone who has some time on their hands, "Can you build Minotaur !".
For those who've tried it, building Mozilla is not that daunting, I've built many versions of mozilla/browser, the precursor to Phoenix, but it is a VERY time consuming process.
So, let's get those compilers compiling and lets see what Mintotaur looks like!
backprop.net has setup a cool script that displays a readable list of daily check-ins for both Mozilla and Phoenix.
[via WorldTimZone]
If Flash ads annoy you, but you don't want to go so far as to uninstall flash, try jTFlashManager. It allows you to enable and disable the Macromedia Flash plugin without having to uninstall. The browser can't find the plugin if it has been renamed, so the the program works by simply renaming the Flash plugin back and forth when you turn Flash on or off.
I have it pointing to the npswf32.dll file in the Mozilla\Plugins folder.
Until Mozilla adds the ability to block Flash on a per site basis, this utility works well as a compliment to Mozilla's existing ad blocking capabilities.
I use Phoenix, but I still want to use Mozilla mail (I despise outlook and don't want to use some other third-party client), so what's a person to do? Currently the only solution for me is to leave Mozilla running for mail while using Phoenix for browsing.
This combo taskes a little getting used to and it's not bad. It's annoying though, since clicking on links in mail automatically opens Mozilla the Browser, not Phoenix and there's a lot more memory being used up than I'd like to see.
However, there is a solution to all this, Minotaur (stand-alone mail) or Thunderbird (stand-alone mail with the Phoenix toolkit) are still being worked on behind the scenes.
Seth Spizter, one of the mail developers on the mail-news branch of Mozilla recently posted a (sort-of) update to this, explaining that work is still being done, but it's not a real high proirity.
Jedbro writes in to let us know that a patch has been submitted to Bug 56301 - connect a spellchecker engine for Mozilla. It works with the latest builds (1.2+ and 1.3a) and you can Install it or download it here. Note: works with Windows builds only!
Gleemed from the Phoenix forum again, comes this tip from mfk:
Adding the line:
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);
to your user.js file makes Phoenix render pages very fast.
Try it out. It's kinda eerie seeing Mozilla go this fast.
laszlo provides the explanation of why in this post:
Gecko normally delays the first paint of a page for a certain time while it is still loading to bring down the number of reflows needed to correctly show the complete page. The more reflows, the higher the total page load time.
The default is 1200ms. If the rendering calculations are done before this period has elapsed, it will show it anyway. If not, it's displayed in a not yet complete state and then reflowed until it can be showed correctly. 1200ms seems to be the best compromise to give the best overall performance.
If you set it to 0, painting will start almost instantly, which gives a very fast appearance, but total page load time will rise in most cases because more reflows are needed until the page reaches its final rendering state.
On the MozillaZine Phoenix forum, Blake Ross posts about a possible name change:
We need to rename Phoenix. The kind folks over at phoenix.com have complained about trademark infringement. Anyone have thoughts on a cool, meaningful new name?
Great, more frivolous trademark infringement claims. I hope they leave the name as Phoenix.
I remember seeing these DOM demos on mozilla.org about a year ago. Some are clunky, but some look very much like Flash.
Also check out Milo's latest i.am/bald 111 for more dhtml/css happy terrific fun.
[via Neil's Place]
SecurityFocus Online has posted a list of some recent Mozilla vulnerabilities. The list includes:
The vulnerabilities affect older versions of Mozilla and will most certainly be addressed in Mozilla 1.2, which should be released soon.
[via inquirer.net]
101 things that the Mozilla browser can do that IE cannot.