Home • ThinkDifferentStore • MacBoards • Advertising • RSS Syndication • Newsletter • Contact

The fact that I haven't started up Netscape Communicator 4.7.7 in over month, or bothered to download Communicator 4.7.8, tells the tale. With the 0.9 2 build, Mozilla became a fully usable browser, and I have found it as stable as a browser I've ever used, with no crashes at all and over a month of daily use. Very impressive.

Mozilla 0.9.3, released late last week, promises to be another incremental improvement on that level of refinement. This is now a very nice browser, if you have the RAM and hard drive space to support its heavy demands in those areas, and a beefy enough processor to run it adequately. The minimum processor specified is a 266 MHz 604e, but I wouldn't suggest bothering with anything slower than my 233 MHz G3.

Speed wise, Mozilla 0.9 3 loads most pages very quickly, but lags way behind iCab and Opera in things like initial startup and opening new browser windows. There is still a little hiccup when opening the Bookmark Menu for the first time after startup, but the program no longer hangs, as Mozilla versions prior to 0.9.1 were prone to do. Popup menu support is still pretty rough, and while Mozilla has wonderful drag & drop support, there is an odd incompatibility with some functions on the Applelinks news posting CGI. Javascript implementation works well, and is one of the primary reasons I need a second browser in addition to my mainstay iCab.

I also prefer the appearance of pages in iCab to Mozilla's renderings in most cases, and Mozilla still has no option to save web page data as a plain text file, which limits its utility for a lot of the browser work that I do. It also still want scroll worth a hoot on the National Post web page. There is much refining to do in these areas.

Nevertheless, you now could use Mozilla as your only browser, something you cannot yet do with the much more refined and polished iCab or the speedy Opera. I don't have very lively hope of ever being able to use just one browser, but I much prefer Mozilla to Internet Explorer (which I wouldn't use anyway, even if it was the best browser on the planet), and I find that my iCab/Mozilla team pretty well covers all the bases for me.

I also like Mozilla better than its duded up sibling, Netscape 6.1. Not only is it unencumbered with all the AOL bells and whistles, but the current Mozilla build is usually several versions ahead of Netscape's. If you haven't tried recent version a Mozilla, I encourage you to check it out.

What's New Mozilla 0.9.3:
• Continued stability improvements with 16 top crash bugs fixed since 0.9.2. These bugs were fixed thanks to data generated by users running talkback builds.
• The Subscribe dialog now lets you search for all newsgroups containing a string when subscribing to newsgroups.
• The Modern theme has several changes to icons and sidebar tabs.
• Proxy Auto-Config has been implemented on the Macintosh.
• Chatzilla is now localizable.

System Requirements:

Mac
• Mac OS 8.6 or later
• PowerPC 604e 266 MHz or faster processor, or G3/G4
• 64 MB RAM
• 36 MB of free hard disk space

Compatibility Issues
• If you are using an ATI Rage video card, images are correctly displayed initially, but may not be properly re-drawn when you minimize and maximize or resize the window.
• If you use True Type fonts with Mozilla , some characters are displayed as squares.
• If you have version 4.5 (or earlier) of StuffIt Expander, you may see an error message stating that the archive is corrupted. You can ignore the message and continue with the installation. To get a newer version of StuffIt Expander, go to http://www.aladdinsys.com/expander/expander_mac_login.html
• If you attempt to run Mozilla on Mac OS using a language pack (such as the Japanese Language Pack) and a Language Kit, all menu bar items will be incorrectly displayed. To resolve this problem, register Mozilla using the Language Register. For instance, if you're using the Japanese Language Pack and the Japanese Language Kit, register Mozilla as a JA application.
• If you use the SmoothType control panel instead of Apple's "Smooth all fonts on screen" option in the Appearance control panel, you need SmoothType version 2.1.1 for Mozilla . Mozilla is not compatible with earlier versions of SmoothType, and some pages may be improperly drawn. To get an update, go to http://www.kaleidoscope.net/greg/smoothtype.html.
• Turning on font smoothing in Adobe Type Manager (ATM) can cause windows to come up blank. The workaround is to turn off the font smoothing option
in ATM. (Bug 58104)
• If you have a dual-processor G4 running Mac OSX, Mozilla will stall. There are no problems with dual-processor G4's running MacOS 9. (Bug 44787)
• In Mozilla Mail, the import utility only supports Eudora and text files.

Installation Notes
• Install into a new empty directory. Installing on top of previously installed builds may cause problems. ( I did not find this so, but be forewarned)
• It is strongly recommended that you exit all programs before running the setup program. Also, you should temporarily disable virus-detection software.
• Mozilla will not run when the application is installed on a UFS partition. The workaround is to move the application folder to an HFS+ partition and it will
run correctly.
• Mozilla installation requires some system extensions including QuickTime.
• You should not restart your system with all extensions off before running Mozilla installation.

Mozilla is freeware.

For more information or to download, visit:
http://www.mozilla.org

Charles W. Moore

.