A couple of days ago, Salon.com ran a positive review, Mozilla’s revenge, of the new open code replacement browser for the unloved Netscape 6.x. I have an older PC (133 mhz, 40 mb of RAM). A couple of months ago I upgraded from Opera 5.0 to 6.0, but I’ve haven’t been completely happy with this version of Opera, since it now runs slowly, and locks up a lot.
So I download Mozilla (it’s free) and overall I’ve been very impressed with it (now up to version .0.9.9). It actually runs a little faster than Opera, and includes nice features like options for controlling pop-ups and animated gifs. It also does a very good job of rendering pages correctly, and seems more reliable than Opera.
Anyway, I was curious if other people had tried the program and what their experiences were.
I’ve been using .0.9.3 (I think) for a while, off and on with my trusty IE6. I mostly switch to Mozilla when I conks out on me.
I like it. I like having multiple pages open simultaneously in a tabbed view. But, I don’t like that the auto-scroll feature on my touchpad doesn’t work with Mozilla.
I’m posting this from Mozilla now - I’ve been using it for about 1 year now, on both Windows and Linux. In fact, following a bad crash on my Windows machine (the motherboard caught fire ), IE has not worked at all, in spite of reapplying service packs, etc. The Windows box is now a Mozilla-only machine.
Mozilla has these cool features:
[ul]
[li]It’s free as in beer[/li][li]It’s free as in speech[/li][li]It’s fast[/li][li]It has tabbed browsing - click on a link with your middle mouse button[/li][li]Or hit CTRL T to open a new tab[/li][li]The mail reader is great[/li][li]The news reader is great[/li][li]It supports Java[/li][li]It supports Netscape plugins[/li][li]It contains no spyware, unlike Netscape and (probably) IE[/li][li]You can block images from a server (right mouse button, Block images from this server)[/li][li]You can block popups[/li][li]You can search Google from the address bar[/li][li]It will import IE and Netscape bookmarks (maybe Opera too, I don’t know)[/li][li]It displays no ads, unlike Opera’s free version[/li][li]It renders pages beautifully, and can be used as a replacement for IE when developing for the Web (which I do)[/li][li]Bugs get fixed very quickly - sometimes within hours![/li][/ul]
Mozilla works well and consistently across the three platforms I’ve used it on - Linux, Windows and Apple OS X. Everyone I’ve shown it to (including my mum - hi mum!) has stuck with it, and not returned to (usually) IE. When I run IE or Netscape now, I’m struck by how primitive they feel, especially without tabbed browsing. If this is 0.9.9, I can’t wait for 1.0. Try it for yourself at Firefox - Protect your life online with privacy-first products — Mozilla.
I thought that Flash was included with the Mozilla download. In my case, I don’t remember ever downloading Flash, and when I go to sites like www.invent.org with Opera, it tells me I need to install the Flash player. However, with Mozilla, all of the Flash pages now work. So, unless I downloaded Flash earlier, forgot about it, and then Mozilla found it on my drive during the install, Flash was included with the Mozilla download. (I downloaded the basic 8 mb Navigator browser option, without Java support).
Sorry I can’t be more specific, all I know is I downloaded the browser and Flash was there without my doing anything special.
On the Mozilla ** Help** menu there is an About Plug-ins option, and according to that my shockwave plug-in is in fact located in an Opera directory, so the install must have seen it there and automatically linked to it. (It’s ironic that Opera no longer sees its own Shockwace plug-in). The Help entry also has a link to the Nescape plug-on page for more information, so hopefully you can use that to install Flash.
I like it (version 0.99) so far but it’s screwing up bookmark titles that have spaces in them. Like if I go to ABCNews.com and bookmark it, my bookmark shows up as “ABC%20News.” Anybody else run into this problem? I don’t see it on their release notes.
Althoug’h I’m currently in IE (had to be in Windows in order to do a homework assignment) I usually use Mozilla 0.9.8 in Linux and I really like it. It doesnt seem as "clunky"as IE, especially since I have that moderns skin on it. And I LOVE tabbed browsing. I discovered it only recently, but I’ve been using it so much! Better than opening a bazillion browser windows and losing what you’re looking for! It’s my browser of choice,and I’d be using it now, but I’m really just too lazy to download it into my Windows partition since I almost never use it.
I downloaded 0.9.9 yesterday and I have to say that Mozilla is shaping up to be a really good browser. I really like the full screen option and the tabbed browsing. Only major problem is that it sometimes won’t load all the images on the page.
Spoonbender, I have the same problem, but only with the bookmarks from IE. I don’t know of any way to fix them other than to go through and rename each one by hand. :eek:
I love mozilla. Ive been using it for about a month now and its great. Fast, sexy, steamlined, and light. And its way more stable then IE or Nutscrape ever were. The only time its ever crashed (and the only time anything has crashed in linux) was caused by a plugin toolbar im using.
After more experimenting, it still can’t print frames worth a damn (first page comes out ok, second page never comes. Or, if you try to print just page 2, it’ll crash.), but hey, can’t have anything.
Um… what do you do with the binaries? I went to school and downloaded what I thought was the ver. 6 browser from the ftp site (mozilla-win32-0.9.9-talkback) but once unzipped, there’s no install program I can find, and no readme-type file on the site or included that explains anything… does I just put it in place of the current one?..
I downloaded the self-extracting “talkback enabled Full Installer .exe” (mozilla-win32-0.9.9-installer.exe) listed on the http://www.mozilla.org/releases/ page.
If I remember correctly, after the self-extracting finished, it went directly into the install, and I didn’t have to do anything complicated or unusual to do the installation.
You probably downloaded the zipped, talkback enabled version. All you need to do is to put the “bin” directory somewhere, and create a shortcut to the “mozilla.exe” on your desktop. If you are using Windows, that is
), IE has not worked at all, in spite of reapplying service packs, etc. The Windows box is now a Mozilla-only machine.