Mozilla 1.2, er... 1.2.1 now, lives!

FRESH UPDATE Version 1.2.1 is out now, as apparently the Mozilla team has untangled their underware. Of course they would have pull this just when I thought it would be safe to suggest you all have a look at Mozilla -- the second point-release after 1.0 typically being a lot more stable. But no... precisely then, the Mozilla crew dropped the ball. Oh well, at least they fixed it quickly, in a few days. Other vendors might still be telling us to wait until the next release, not naming names.

If you installed Mozilla 1.2 and updated your plugins, as I'd suggested, well, your going to have to save those somewhere while you reinstall the Mozilla 1.2.1 release, then recopy them back into your Mozilla plugins. The reinstall happily asks you to trash the prior version. After you've copied the plugin links somewhere else safe for the interim, say yes.

The hint to install the Flashplayer 6.0 Beta has mysteriously vanished from Mozilla's Release Notes. That's unfortunate because you will need that to appreciate the INQUIRER's spiffy adverts.

Flash 6.0 Beta can still be found for Linux, Macs, and that crufty eye-candy game-players toy legacy OS here.

MOZILLA is the Open Source web-browser spun off by Netscape-AOL a while ago. After a too long development cycle and teething it's done.

The latest release, Mozilla 1.2, is out and it's good for prime time.

It has versions for Windows, Macs, Unix, and uh... Linux systems too.

Mozilla is a superior web-browser, much nicer to use... and more secure than Internet Explorer. The list of unique features is mind-boggling.

But don't just take my word for it. Check all this out for yourself here.

If you happen to use Linux, here are some helpful installation hints:

(1) Install into a fresh directory. Older versions can mess this up, so install Mozilla 1.2 into something like /usr/local/mozilla. The earlier versions dropped the executables into /usr/bin and /usr/lib/mozilla-1.1 or such. Now everything goes into the directory you direct it to use.

(2) Read the Release Notes. If you don't you'll likely miss the help.

(3) The easiest install is using the installer. Download that and unpack it somewhere like ~./mozilla1.2 . "tar -xvzf (filename)" unpacks it.

Follow the instructions. Install to a place like /usr/local/mozilla .

(4) Go ahead and run Mozilla a first time, update your user profile.

(5) Install the Flash 6 Beta software. It's another download install.

(6) Copy your previous plugins symbolic links:

"cp -ud /usr/lib/mozilla-1.1/plugins/* /usr/local/mozilla/plugins"

Your Java, RealAudio, Plugger and other links will be copied by this.

(7) Now you can delete /usr/bin/mozilla and /usr/lib/mozilla-1.1:

"rm /usr/bin/mozilla" ; "rm -rf /usr/lib/mozilla-1.1"

and your download directory:

"rm -rf ~./mozilla1.2"

You're all done. Change your menu items to run Mozilla 1.2 to use it.

Enjoy. µ