Mozilla Firebird 0.7.1 Released For Mac OS X 62
An anonymous reader writes "MozillaZine is reporting that Mozilla Firebird 0.7.1 has been released for Mac OS X only. The release - coming just over a week since the last one - fixes a number of bugs that made 0.7 frankly unusable on Macs. There's more info in the release notes. All MacBeards should upgrade immediately."
Serious Question (Score:3, Interesting)
Choice is a good thing, of course, but what are the advantages/disadvantages?
Re:Serious Question (Score:5, Informative)
Something that Mozilla & Firebird have pretty good, java support
Re:Serious Question (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe it's not an issue in Panther anymore. I'll check once I get it.
Re:Serious Question - MOD UP PARENT (Score:2)
I used Firebird/Phoenix on Linux since about 0.2, but the lack of Java 1.4.1 support in Firebird was a big part of why I now use Safari on my iBook.
Re:Serious Question - advatages (Score:4, Interesting)
I use Firebird/Mozilla on WinXP/2K/2K3, Linux, BSD and Solaris and would love to see Camino base itself off of the Firebird fork and make it more Mac-like, but, until Safari get's an SLL clue, I'll take the fast rendering, good SSL performance and standards' compliance that seem to be there with 0.7.1.
One other thing it has over Safari is the ability to *not* wait for the whole stupid page to load before continuing. It's not a problem on all sites, but it happens more oft than not, again, especially on SSL sites.
Lastly, the best thing about it is that it doesn't use the brushed metal theme (it was nice for a while, but it really grates on ya over time).
I still don't know why Apple threw the KHTML folks the bone when they should have supported Mozilla.
Re:Serious Question - advatages (Score:4, Interesting)
-Ster
Re:Serious Question - advatages (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a dual-G4 tower (867MHz) with 1.5GB RAM and just cannot believe Apple didn't bother to get that part done better.
Re:Serious Question - advatages (Score:1)
-Ster
Re:Serious Question - advatages (Score:2)
Re:Serious Question - advatages (Score:2)
Re:Serious Question - advatages (Score:2)
Re:Serious Question - advatages (Score:4, Interesting)
One other thing it has over Safari is the ability to *not* wait for the whole stupid page to load before continuing.
I was testing out some progress-bar code and I've discovered that Safari has a 16k buffer. It will wait until the buffer is full, then draw, then fill the buffer again.
So in order to make my progress bar update on safari, I'd have to send 16k worth of spaces every time the bar moves.
In comparison, IE and Mozilla will draw the page as soon as it receives a closing body tag.
Re:Serious Question - advatages (Score:1)
Oh if ever. Gecko apps might take longer to load, but seriously: Safari cannot hold a candle to Camino.
Re:Serious Question - advatages (Score:1)
This is a diffy one, and I think Camino does it too, and it really irks me to no end and has done for some time with all browsers.
I think the key is learning how to ignore threads you already have out there. You can't kill them, so you have to ignore them. There's a performance trade-off, but it need not be so bad.
I've done something similar with a network utility and it seems to work OK.
Re:Serious Question - disadvantages (Score:2)
The tabs are also better in Safari, but it wouldn't take much for the Mozilla folks to "get it right" (grin).
There is (at present) no nice way to do font stuff in Firebird. That will catch up before 1.0.
No SnapBack support in Firebird either.
Safari "feels" like a polished, professional application; Firebird still has a bit to go, but it will get there, especially if they take the fork for Camino suggestion i
Serious Question #2: Firebird verus Camino (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Serious Question #2: Firebird verus Camino (Score:2)
Didn't Camino development freeze a while ago?
Re:Serious Question #2: Firebird verus Camino (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Serious Question #2: Firebird verus Camino (Score:1)
I sincerely hope not. Camino (formerly Chimera) has been the browser that I use the most on my G4 for a number of reasons. I'm posting in it now. Would like the live spell-checking from Safari, but that's a Cocoa feature. (hmmm.. a Cocoa rewrite? Nah, it'll never happen. Or maybe that's what they've been doing with their time lately, yeah, that's it)
Firebird is getting better, but Camino has the best tabs.
Re:Serious Question (Score:2)
Firebird is a nice and very fast browser. I'd consider using it as my primary browser if they manage to fix a few really major bugs. I'm hoping that the save has been fixed in 0.7.1!
Re:Serious Question (Score:4, Insightful)
Just a quick idea, print to PDF. Would be OK for archiving webpages...
Re:Serious Question (Score:1)
I have an older iMac with a small (1024x768) screen. Often, after navigating to a web site, I want to switch to some approximation of "full screen" mode.
In Safari, that is four steps: the three keyboard combinations to make the status line, bookmarks bar and navigation bar disappear and then click the "zoom" button to re-expand the window to full screen. (Why does the window shrink when
Re:Serious Question (Score:1)
Use Omniweb then. It also has a single click to kill toolbars, and an excellent plug-in which allows both full screen and "max screen" use (you can get the same for Safari, actually).
Oh, and Omniweb is a UI delight after ANY other browser.
Cookies (Score:2)
Excellent news... (Score:2, Informative)
Now it can be my browser of choice on all of the machines I use.
Nice but ... (Score:2)
Until it does, I'm sticking with Camino and/or Safari. There's little enough difference (especially compared to Camino) to me, that how the controls look is a big deal to me. Aqua = pretty and blends in, other = UGLY.
Yes! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yes! (Score:4, Informative)
True, but its not quite that bad (Score:3, Interesting)
"The Pinstripe theme uses an API provided by Mozilla called nsTheme to draw the widgets. This API allows Pinstripe to draw the widgets and some backgrounds using the Mac's Appearance Manager. So the operating system draws most of the theme."
So, its somewhat native in drawing, even if not precisely like Camino (fully native widgets). The page says that Windows and Linux are not supported because of this.
Re:True, but its not quite that bad (Score:4, Informative)
FWIW - many apps on MacOS use highly customized widget sets that are not part of the collection of "stock" widgets provided by the OS, including Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Dreamweaver, Internet Explorer and even Safari. These "owner draw" widgets are effectively the same concept as Firebird with its native theme renderer + XUL. The deal with Firebird is that because it's in its pre-1.0 state on MacOS X not all of the rendering glitches have been corrected.
Re:Yes! (Score:2)
Re:Yes! (Score:2)
Re:Yes! (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Files appear to be missing (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Files appear to be missing (Score:1)
Re:Firebird vs. Camino (Score:5, Informative)
In my experience, there is very little difference in any of the browsers out there for Mac OS X, aside from various UI and preferences differences. But specifically for Firebird versus Camino, I think the only thing that Camino has over Firebird is the snazzier Aqua UI. Firebird is still butt-ugly -- not that that's a bad thing in the grand scheme of things, because I'm just a vain Mac user. (I do of course pity those who don't realize that you CAN choose "pretty" -- or to put it nicely, "aesthetically pleasing" -- appearances for my apps. But since I'm on the Apple part of
Lacks the right feel (Score:1)
Re:Lacks the right feel (Score:1)
Or does Apple build that custom look into all its apps rather than adjusting the back-end API to do it for them?
Mabster
Re:Lacks the right feel (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, and just a note, a lot of Apple's apps are nonstandard brushed metal (iTunes, the Finder in 10.3). This means that you need a lot of workarounds to change them to Aqua.
Re:Lacks the right feel (Score:2)
Re:Lacks the right feel (Score:3, Informative)
Problems with .7.0 under Win XP (Score:2)
I've had problems with
Did you have a specific service pack in mind? (Score:1)
Re:Dear Father "Pudge" O'Day (Score:1)
It usually at least has SOMETHING to do with the topic.
Pros and cons... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Pros and cons... (Score:1)
Re:Pros and cons... (Score:1)
Re:Pros and cons... (Score:1)
It's doubly annoying since there's an obscure bug with squid transparent proxy/cacheing not working. With my squid server at work, it works fine. With the squid configuration that my ISP has, it's broken and I get nothing but timeouts. It works great with every other browser, though...
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=
macbeard? (Score:2, Insightful)