David Tenser wrote: > > JTK wrote: > > David Tenser wrote: > >> Even simple crappy Wordpad has this functionality (at least moving > >> toolbars), > > > > Simple, crappy Wordpad is also able to edit plain text relatively > > easily, unlike Mozilla's "composer". Do you know that until about a > > month ago, Mozilla's email/news editor didn't even have a *context > > menu*?! I shittest thou not. > > Since I'm the author of a text editor myself (www.texturizer.net) I'm > actually glad that Mozilla does this poorly :) >
Text editor, eh? Downloading it now ;-). > >> With an open source project involving hundreds of developers over a > >> several-year time span, you would expect a very customizable program > >> with lots of design/appearance preferences, but Mozilla is in fact > >> very hard to customize... Ok, you can change skin, but that's about it. > > > > Expect this reply to that from the AOL staff and the Mozillapologists: > > > > "Oh no, Mozilla is extremely customizable, and it's easy! Just write a > > few hundred lines of Javascript...." > > Exactly my point. You can customize Mozilla to be a totally different > browser if you really want and have the time. On the other hand, you > could also make your own web browser from scratch if you had the time > and knowledge, so that doesn't help the average user. X-actly. Try telling AOL that though! > It seems for me > that Mozilla doesn't aim for the big market. It aims for developers. > What is that, 5% of the market? Maybe 10? > 0.73% the last time I check with www.thecounter.com. Yep, ZERO point seven-three percent. After like, what, five years? > > I'm not sure how the rest of it goes, since my eyes glaze over at that > > point and I go use something else that has a checkbox to do the exact > > same thing ten times better. > > And ten times faster. > You do not know what a breath of fresh air it is to hear somebody in here talking SENSE for once! (Well besides me of course ;-)) > > Any color as long as it's black. BUT YOU CAN USE ALL KINDS OF DIFFERENT > > SKINS! > > > > Oh, well, not really, something like a grand total of SIX at last count, > > if you search really hard and don't mind a lot of stuff not working. But > > that XUL was sure worth it! Pfhht. > > Yeah, I was amazed by the fact that Mozilla have been around for several > (?) years, Like FIVE! I don't know if anybody's keeping track anymore, but I'm sure enough digging around on mozilla.org* will get you "T minus zero". * I wonder if anybody has fixed the non-standards-compliant ***index.html*** yet. Yep, it's been noncompliant (missing a single line in the header) for OVER A YEAR. > and there's only like five skins available. And as you point > out, few are viable alternatives to the tvo main skins. > > > In fact, the only things that can > > be said about Mozilla's goals are this: > > > > 1. "Cross-platform", which translates into "If we need to make it ten > > times worse on Windows (99%+ of the target users) so that it will run on > > some oddball OS that nobody ever heard of (BeOS, 0.0000001% of target > > users), we'll do it". > > This is true. It's a huge tradeoff. Well, with most projects it would be a pretty minor one, they'd just use WxWindows or something and be done with it. With Mozilla, the mentality seems to be "Windows last, oddballs next, never-heard-of-its front of the line". > On the other hand, this is probably > the most important aspect of Mozilla. Netscape lost the browser war on > the Windows platform, and the aim is probably to be the #1 browser on > all other platforms instead. Yeah, but if that's the case, they had that with the 4.x codebase. All they had to do was beat Lynx and they've won! > For an *average* linux/unix/bsd user (i.e. > a highly experienced programmer!) the UI of Mozilla is like a dream. > They're used to console based configuring, java scripting and so on. I'm actually curious about that; I suspect Mozilla on *nix is the worst of both worlds - to GUI for Unix types, too Unix for GUI types. > An > average windows user (and even the experienced ones) are used to a much > more visual experience. Mozilla simply doesn't deliver what Windows > users expect of it. > No, it most certainly doesn't when *Notepad* edits text better than it can! > > 2. "Standards-compliant", which translates, "Standards-compliant web > > browser, when it's convenient for AOL". > > I'm not sure how much involved AOL are in the Mozilla project itself. > I'm probably wrong there, however, since Netscape is owned by AOL and > many programmers of Mozilla are in fact Netscape developers. > I find this interesting: http://www.mozillaquest.com/Mozilla-02/Mozilla_is_Netscape-02-01_Story-01.html > Anyway, I can't complain much about standard-compliance with Mozilla, > aside from trivial issues such as favicon.ico. Allow me to clarify, I didn't quite word #2 right: 2. "Standards-compliant", which translates, "Standards-compliant web browser, when it's convenient for AOL, and at the expense of 'defacto-standards compliant'". I completely support 100%, 1000% standards compliance, but not when it means that I can't view web pages that already exist and can be viewed on IE and NC4.7x browsers. Now you and I know that standards-compliance doesn't in any way make that impossible, but AOL doesn't seem to understand that. Or rather, they use that as an excuse to not do things right. > But Mozilla is going > nowhere on the Windows platform as long as they don't also focus on the > UI and associated functionality. The average Windows user does not care > if the Gecko engine renders the page with higher precision and (maybe) > speed compared to IE. > A-men. But all that'll get you is a blank stare at Mozilla HQ. > >> because the only thing they seem to be doing is ignoring suggestions > >> like this one, and fixing trillions of bugs. > > > > Well, and adding more bugs, according to the stratospheric bug count > > numbers in bugzilla. > > I was in fact going to say that too, but I stopped myself because in the > end I didn't want to upset dedicated Mozilla lovers :) You are > absolutely right. There are so many bugs, and many of them have been > there for far too long. I have actually reported one bug myself > (124703), and only one day after that, over 50 more bugs was reported. > One week later, my bug is still unconfirmed... > Well, check back next week, it'll probably be WONTFIXed by then ;-). > >> Is it someone in this newsgroup that agrees with me, or am I just > >> being very negative at the moment? > > > > You are 100% dead-on brother. > > I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one. I hope that someone highly > involved in the Mozilla project gets to read this too, although I doubt > it will make a difference. Thanks for your thoughts JTK. > No, thank you! > >> I was editing my homepage the other day and I followed the book in CSS > >> formatting, and it actually worked without a problem in Mozilla, but > >> IE6 couldn't display it properly! :) On that point, Mozilla is > >> superior, and something tells me that this (Gecko) is their main > >> focus. Not the UI. > > > > I think you're missing a key piece of the puzzle in your understanding > > of the Tacoma Narrows Browser Project here: The UI is written in > > something called "XUL". Basically Mozilla's UI is a glorified webpage > > *itself*, and is rendered by that same engine. Slowly. Poorly. > > Resulting in the vast majority of the problems people have with Mozilla. > > Yes, I realize that what I just wrote sounded strange, since the UI _is_ > the Gecko engine, as you so cleverly pointed out. This is why Mozilla is > so slow! Ok, the page may be rendered faster according to some advanced > benchmarking tests, But it doesn't do that either! Not by any numbers I've seen anyway. > but the average user (I keep getting back to that > user!) won't even notice it. She will only notice that the program loads > slowly and is slow overall. > > A 100% portable application simply can't be fast. At least not > applications in this size. It's either speed (OS optimizations) or > portability. > Well, I don't agree there. Things just simply don't have to be as bad as Mozilla, and running on more than one OS doesn't excuse it. Every wheel didn't have to be reinvented because somebody thought it would be "kewl" to be able to skin Mozilla. Someday. In a partially-working fashion. That nobody cares about. > >> I can just imagine the Gecko engine inside a Microsoft designed UI. > > > > You don't have to imagine, it's called "K-Meleon". It proves that > > Mozilla's "XUL" notion is completely out-of-whack. > > Wow! K-Meleon, is it any good? > I haven't looked at it in a while. It was significantly faster and less crash-prone maybe a year ago when I last tried it. > / David
