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I downloaded Mozilla 0.9.7 on Christmas Eve, and checked it out over Christmas. This is a somewhat more extensive upgrade than the last couple of Mozilla releases have been, and it will be well worth the download for Mozilla fans.

With the last couple of builds of Mozilla, the compressed full installer file has been slimmed down to 11.8 MB and 11.9 MB respectively, from 13.something MB on earlier versions. Installation went smoothly as usual, except for the fact that unlike the last Mozilla 0.9.x upgrades, selecting the delete earlier version button trashed my Bookmarks file that resides in the Documents folder on my hard drive. These were backed up, but there should be a warning. Preferences were also reset to default values.

Addendum: Curiouser and curiouser. After about half an hour of surfing, I discovered that my erstwhile Mozilla 0.9.6 Bookmarks had miraculously returned, although they definitely hadn't been there after startup, and I still had to reset the Preferences for the "Modern" theme skin.

I don't know whether it was just light traffic on the infobahn yesterday, but there seems to have been a modest speed increase in page loading. Another new feature that will be welcomed by many is a Close button for the sidebar. Mozilla 0.9.7 also restores support for OS 8.5. Interface responsiveness still leaves plenty of room for improvement, however. Scrolling on the National Post Website is still slow and stuttery, although as with Mozilla 0.9.6, it is now tolerable, unlike with earlier versions. More room for improvement here as well. I'm delighted to report that Applelinks loads lightning fast, but on the downside, scrolling there has taken a speed and smoothness hit compared with 0.9.6. (all these observations pertain to performance on my 233 MHz WallStreet PowerBook over a slow dialup connection).

Mozilla is now three development versions ahead of the current Netscape 6.2 release If you have the disk space, RAM capacity, and processor speed to support it, Mozilla can now take over from Internet Explorer or Netscape Communicator 4.x with few compromimises. If Netscape 6.2 for OS X is any indication, the OS X version of Mozilla ("Fizzilla") is a very decent browser now as well, which is encouraging,

Like Netscape Communicator, Mozilla offers an call-in-one package with browser (Navigator), e-mail (Messenger), and HTML authoring (Composer) modules in an integrated, single-application package. I have mixed feelings about this, and personally, I use other applications for the Mail and HTML editing functions, although I install them to keep an eye on how they are developing. It is possible, however, to do a custom install of just the Mozilla navigator browser module if you prefer.

The Save Page As command now also saves images, stylesheets, objects and applets included in the page, however, saving as plain html without these items is no longer available, and still no sign of a save as plain text option. I'm not sure I consider this change an improvement.

New in this version:
€ The Labels feature in Mail&News is now fully implemented. Organize your mail messages with the following new features:
- Add labels to messages via context menus or the Message menu.
- Clear labels from messages.
- Change description and color of the labels via preferences (Edit | Preferences | Mail & Newsgroups | Labels). Five different labels are supported.
- Add filter rules to set labels to spec.
€ Mozilla Mail&News now supports basic S/MIME functionality although the UI is still incomplete.
€ The Document Inspector is now enabled in complete installations. The DOM Inspector is a tool that can be used to inspect and edit the live DOM of any web document or XUL application. The DOM hierarchy can be navigated using a two-paned window that allows for a variety of different views on the document and all nodes within. If you're using the Mozilla installer, be sure to switch from typical, to complete or custom install to install the DOM inspector and JS Debugger.
€ The Mac OSX toolbar collapse button is now implemented. Press this button in the title bar to toggle display of toolbars.
€ The latest and greatest ChatZilla 0.8.5 is now shipping in Mozilla.
€ Springloaded folders -- Dragging and hovering over a bookmark or message folder will expand the folder.
€ Mozilla works again on Mac OS 8.5.
€ Mozilla now supports shortcut icons (a.k.a favicons) and custom page icons in bookmarks and in the personal toolbar.
€ If you type into the URL bar while a page is loading, your text is no longer overwritten when the page load completes.
€ The sidebar now has a Close button.
€ Print preview is now available on Macintosh.
€ Mozilla now has support for digest access authentication.
€ The Save Page operation now also saves images, stylesheets, objects and applets included in the page.
€ Mozilla now supports the longdesc attribute of the img tag. The longdesc attribute contains a link to a file describing the image in detail, for those times where the image cannot be downloaded. To view the longdesc, right click on an image, click 'properties' in the context menu, then click on the description url in the properties dialog.
€ Mozilla has a new advanced preference panel for fine-grained JavaScript control. For instance, you can disallow pop up and pop-under windows without turning off JavaScript altogether.
€ When a page using a strict document type declaration (e.g. HTML 4.01 Strict) links to an external style sheet (using , @import, etc) Mozilla will load the style sheet only if it is served with a MIME type of "text/css". Style sheets served with other MIME types, like text/plain, application/x-pointplus, etc. will not be loaded. To add the proper css mime type to an Apache web servers, add "text/css css" to the system mime.types file. Or if you can't do that, add "AddType text/css .css" to your .htaccess file.

System Requirements
€ Mac OS 8.5 or later
€ PowerPC 604e 266 MHz or faster processor, or G3/G4
€ 64 MB RAM
€ 36 MB of free hard disk space
€ Quicktime (Bugs 59059,
€ You must have Mac OS Runtime for Java (MRJ) version 2.2 to run Java applets with Mozilla . If you have Mac OS version 8.5 through 8.6, you may need to upgrade your version of MRJ. For an upgrade, go to the Apple MRJ update download page.

Mozilla is freeware.

For more information or downloads, visit:
http://www.mozilla.org/releases/

Charles W. Moore

Cool Mac Gear