Mozilla 1.7 Suite: a role model against browser anorexia

"I want a browser that doesn't hang all the bloody time, doesn't cost money (Opera), doesn't contain adware (Opera again), isn't IE, and works on WinXP, dammit" -seen on bugzilla.mozilla.org

THE MOZILA FOUNDATION has released version 1.7 of Mozilla, the first "stable" branch after 1.4 (and 1.0 before that). In case you're wondering we mean the "Application Suite" including a tightly integrated Browser, E-Mail client, IRC chat and HTML editor. It's strange, because you don't hear much about "Mozilla" these days. The now AOL independent Foundation seems instead focused on Firefox - the "lightweight" browser - and I'm convinced that some within the foundation wishes the Browser Suite formerly known just as "Mozilla" would just go away.

To Suite or not to Suite
For me, and I suspect many others, e-mail and web browsing are tightly integrated. I never do "just e-mail" or "just web browsing". While web browsing, I email articles -to myself as a backup, and to others for their amusement/information-. While "e-mailing", I also have to check data on the interweb. The same applies to adding e-mail addresses from web pages to my Address Book, and sometimes I even end up copying certain html tables or other nifty designs, by just loading a web page into Composer and cutting and saving the part of interest. Of course I value rendering speed and tight, efficient code. But the more tightly integrated the components are, the better for me.

That's the beauty of Mozilla (for old-timers) or the Mozilla Browser Suite, as it's now called. Ironically, at a time when Microsoft uses the "we have a tightly integrated solution in "Office System", not a bunch of different tools tied together" argument against Open Source solutions, the folks at Mozilla Foundation are going in the opposite way, promoting the "dismembering" of applications, that is, Firefox as a stand-alone browser, and Thunderbird, as a separate e-mail client. Why? Well, in my view that's due to the "inferiority complex" with Opera, the very lightweight and fast but other than that not very impressive skinny web browser.

Also note that the Vole seems to refer to IE and Outlook as part of the "Office System" solution. My personal opinion is that Mozilla should be focusing more resources into integrating the Gecko browser engine and Suite applications with OpenOffice.org and StarOffice, instead of embarking on an anorexia-war with Opera to try to become the world's smallest browser. There's a winner already in that category, and it's called Lynx.

Before a horde of Firefox and Opera lovers flood my inbox with hate mail, let me rephrase that... luckily for us, "the demise of the Mozilla Browser Suite has been greatly exaggerated", and those who like separate tiny apps can have their own, but those of us who like a robust suite can continue to enjoy Mozilla as well. One dot seven is here, and an alpha of 1.8 is already available". End of the opinion segment, back to the objective review, below...

What's up, doc?
Here's a short list of some of the new features and bug fixes that you will find in Mozilla Browser Suite v1.7:

• Under Edit->Preferences->Appearance, the "use smooth scrolling" check box. (Self-explanatory)
• A "show saved passwords" button that, guess what, will display all saved passwords. (You will need to enter your master password if you are using one).
• Under Advanced->Scripts, an option to prevent sites using Javascript to block the browser's context menu
• The e-mail client now supports the IMAP "IDLE" command (so the client can keep the connection active with the IMAP server and doesn't have to send login data all the time).
• Support for "MSN Authentication" and NTLM authentication for SMTP and POP3.
• Improvements to the Palm Sync feature.
• FTP-upload directly from the Browser's File menu. This was available in the old Netscape 4.x product and has been missed by Netscape users ever since the Mozilla 0.x days. (See Bug History)
• No more "the file could not be saved" or "no disk space" style messages when attempting to download big files to a secondary drive letter, and the system drive (usually C:) runs out of space. The downloads are now saved directly to the target location rather than to temp space on the system drive and copied back as it was done in previous versions.
• Several improvements to the pop-up blocking code
• Multiple identities on the same e-mail account.
• Better performance when downloading, viewing, and saving mail messages.
• When you right-click on a bitmap/image and select "Set as Wallpaper" there is now a confirmation dialog
• Linux GTK2 builds have improved support for OS themes (not tested)
• When compared to Mozilla 1.6, Mozilla 1.7 is 7% faster at startup, is 8% faster at window open time, has 9% faster page-loading times, and is 5% smaller in binary size (the Foundation claims, and we trust their word).
• Lots more we probably missed

The Good
I tried to make it crash for the last 48 hours but couldn't. I admit the test system (a 2.8 Ghz P4 running WinXP Home with 512MB ram) does help, but nevertheless I was impressed by its speed and stability (unlike the Mozilla-1.4 based Netscape 7.1 which still likes to crash on me every couple days for no apparent reason, always when memory constrained).

The Bad
Since most changes are "under the hood" you won't notice any bells and whistles. It's an evolutionary, not revolutionary, release. Since this is the first stable stable branch since version 1.4 (released one year ago), AOL plans to release a Netscape 7.2 browser by taking this Mozilla 1.7 code, replacing the throbber logos for the green round "N", patching in the AIM and ICQ sidebar tab clients, and bundling the Sun Java VM and other must-have plug-ins. This is where the Mozilla Foundation needs to improve things. Here is my suggestion: if there are licensing issues that prevent some code from being bundled, then a "wizard" could offer the user, after the installation is complete, to download and auto-install the most common plug-ins, you know, Acrobat Reader, the latest Flash 7, Quicktime, and the like. Another gripe: Google has a nice Mozilla sidebar tab (see the screenshots at the end of this article) but it's not included in the default sidebar. Why?. We admit that asking for the bundling of the highly experimental INQuirer sidebar tab would be going a bit too far.

Until it's more end-user oriented, there will be a place for Netscape 7.2. And I'll keep using that one. But don't get me wrong. Mozilla Browser Suite 1.7 is the definitive Outlook and IE killer. Just not being vulnerable to the dozens of active-x based holes and exploits is a good enough reason to switch.

The Ugly
There's nothing "ugly" in it. Well, perhaps the classic theme. But then I'm very biased towards Modern. Fortunately, it's such a click away by going to View->Apply Theme->Modern.

The verdict
I give Mozilla 1.7 four and a half Fernandos in my personal one to five scoring scale.

If for some strange reason you dislike the "Suite", I bet that the next version of Firefox, to be based on the same Gecko html rendering engine (but more skinny and with a dumbed-down interface) will be an equally powerful browser.

Where to find it?
Windows: here
Linux: here
MAC OS-X: here µ

L'INQs
Review screenshots at Fernando's site
Google Mozilla sidebar tab
Plenty of Mozilla Add-ons and extensions
TheInquirer.net headlines in your Mozilla sidebar