Metropol

This week has been a very busy week for the people at the Mozilla Foundation. There's been not one,
not two, but three, brand new Mozilla software releases, unleashed from Mountain View this week.

First up, we have what appears to be the hot favourite. Mozilla Firefox has reached it's 0.9 milestone.
The Mozilla devs say that Firefox is now "feature complete", and all that's left do before it reaches it's
golden 1.0 final milestone, is to squash any bad bugs that may still be lurking about, and some
general last minute "spit 'n' polish". But as it stands now, it's pretty much good to go!

Mozilla Firefox now sports a new default theme, a reworked extension manager, a brand new theme
manager, and a generous helping of other enhancements. What makes this even more attractive
(on Windows at least) is the download filesize. The Windows version of Mozilla Firefox 0.9 weighs
in at just 4.7MB to download, thanks to an improved form of file compression that's been
implemented. So, even if you're on dial-up, it won't take too long to download!

More info about Mozilla Firefox 0.9 at MozInfo701, MozillaZine, and MozillaNews. Oh, and
before you excitedly hurry to download it, be sure to read the Firefox 0.9 release notes first!


Next, we have the other standalone Mozilla app, the e-mail and newsgroup client Thunderbird,
which this week has reached it's 0.7 milestone. Just like Firefox, Thunderbird 0.7 also has
improved themes and extension management features. The download filesize is smaller
than the previous milestone, but as Thunderbird has not been in development for quite
as long as Firefox, it has a slightly larger download filesize of 5.9MB on Windows.

More at - MozInfo701, MozillaZine and MozillaNews. The release notes are here . . .


Stepping away briefly from the latest acheivements from the Mozilla Foundation, this week has
also seen the release of the latest preview release of Nvu, the standalone version of Mozilla's
web editor application, Composer. This app is developed by Daniel Glazman an ex-Netscape
employee, who has started his own software firm called Disruptive Innovations, not long
after AOL gave him, and numerous other Netscape staffers the heave-ho last year.

Nvu is officially supported by the controversial Linux distributor, Lindows, so primarily, Nvu
is made for Linspire (formerly LindowsOS) and other Linux distros. But, don't fret, there is
also a version available for Windows as well. The latest beta milestone is v0.30
More info and download links at Nvu.com. Glazblog is also worth a look.


Heading back from France, towards Mountain View, and the Mozilla Foundation HQ, as our
attention now turns to version 1.7 of the Mozilla Application Suite, which was only just
unleashed a few hours ago. Just like all previous versions of the App-Suite, it has all
the same essential components as always built in to one convenient package.

Like Mozilla Firefox, the App-Suite has also had a generous helping of enhancements and
improvements, all of which are explained in the official release notes. Perhaps, the most
important aspecct of this release is that it replaces Mozilla 1.4 as the "stable branch"
upon which 3rd party Mozilla distributions will be produced, such as the upcoming
"no-one expected AOL to do a U-turn this big" release of Netscape 7.2!

More about Mozilla 1.7 at MozInfo701, MozillaZine, and MozillaNews.
The release notes are here, and you can download it from here . . .





So, what are you waiting for? Off you go. You've got some downloading to do!


What? You are kidding me aren't you?




After all that , don't tell me yer gonna stick with that poxy old Internet Explorer thing ?!?



Well, if that's the case . . . you're welcome to it . . . yer stick in the mud . . . luddite!

DJGM wrote:So, what are you waiting for? Off you go. You've got some downloading to do!

What? You are kidding me aren't you?

After all that , don't tell me yer gonna stick with that poxy old Internet Explorer thing ?!?

I had no end of trouble with FireFox 0.8 when it was on a magazine cover CD. It was very slow and I didn't like it either.

Well, if that's the case . . . you're welcome to it . . . yer stick in the mud . . . luddite!

You're so immature.

I have to say I *really* hate that new theme that Firefox now has. I have no idea why on earth they decided to change it when Winstripe (as it's called) is so unfinished. It just looks messy and careless.

Otherwise I find 0.9 a much much faster than 0.8 was and I like the new mail button too.

Don't use Thunderbird as I prefer Outlook.

Hymagumba wrote: I have to say I *really* hate that new theme that Firefox now has.
I have no idea why on earth they decided to change it when Winstripe
(as it's called) is so unfinished. It just looks messy and careless.

Otherwise I find 0.9 a much much faster than 0.8 was
and I like the new mail button too.

Don't use Thunderbird as I prefer Outlook.

Apparently the Mozilla people changed the default Firefox theme from "Qute" to "Winstripe" due to a
dispute with the author of the "Qute" theme. But, don't fret . . . "Qute" can still be added to Firefox
as an extra theme, if you preferred the old Firebird style default look of the browser.

Just go to the Tools menu, select Themes, and this will open up the new Themes manager. From
there, click the "Get New Themes" link in the lower right corner. This will open up a new Firefox
window, that goes straight to the "Themes" section of the brand new Mozilla Update website.

There you can just add "Qute", and switch to it, as though the default theme had never changed!

One thing to bear in mind about the new Firefox default theme . . . just like the actual Firefox
browser itself, as yet it's still not quite finished. IMO, It's most likely that, by the time Firefox
eventually reaches it's v1.0 milestone, the new theme will be a bit cleaner, more refined, and
will look and feel more like a finished theme. Eitherway, while the Windows/Linux versions of
the new theme (Winstripe and Gnomestripe respectively) may well be getting a bit of a bad
response, but the Mac version of the theme (Pinstripe) looks very nice by comparison . . .

Oh yes, I replaced it with Qute right away (I had been reading the thread on MozillaZine prior to it).

Still with all the publicity in geek circles that Firefox releases get it seems a strange decision to not wait until 1.0 to replace the theme as the Winstripe is so unfinished.