David Tenser wrote:
>> Any color as long as it's black. BUT YOU CAN USE ALL KINDS OF
>> DIFFERENT SKINS!
>>
>> Oh, well, not really, something like a grand total of SIX at last
>> count [snip]
>
> Yeah, I was amazed by the fact that Mozilla have been around for several
> (?) years, and there's only like five skins available. And as you point
> out, few are viable alternatives to the two main skins.
IIRC, skinning was first "switched on" in something around about
Milestone 16/17, which was about 18-20 months ago. Since then, the
skinning API has been constantly changing (which is why skins for
Netscape 6.0 don't work on 6.1, Moz 0.8 skins don't work on 0.9.7, etc,
etc.) This means that creating a skin is only part of the battle.
You've also got to keep it up-to-date. (Respect to those who manage it:
this means YOU, Mr Kayser) As such, there have even been some people
within the project _discouraging_ the development of skins.
The plan is to freeze the API for 1.0, meaning that skins will keep
working, rather than having to be updated for every release.
>> 2. "Standards-compliant", which translates, "Standards-compliant web
>> browser, when it's convenient for AOL".
>
> I'm not sure how much involved AOL are in the Mozilla project itself.
> I'm probably wrong there, however, since Netscape is owned by AOL and
> many programmers of Mozilla are in fact Netscape developers.
Be aware that JTK seems to regard everything as an AOL plot. Oh, and
there are commies under the bed, too.
Yes, much of the development work on Mozilla is done by Netscape
employees. Netscape is owned by AOL. There are many other people
involved, from various corporations, academia and private individuals
like me.
> Anyway, I can't complain much about standard-compliance with Mozilla,
> aside from trivial issues such as favicon.ico.
Favicons have little to do with standards - they're an "extra". They
also cause some heated debate. Be glad you missed the threads a month
or two back.
> But Mozilla is going nowhere on the Windows platform as long as they
> don't also focus on the UI and associated functionality.
It's happening, but some people seem to expect it to leap, fully-formed,
into existence. Try going and downloading (say) mozilla 0.9, and giving
that a whirl. Observe the downright sluggish UI. Then tell me there's
no progress.
>>> because the only thing they seem to be doing is ignoring suggestions
>>> like this one, and fixing trillions of bugs.
>>
>> Well, and adding more bugs, according to the stratospheric bug count
>> numbers in bugzilla.
This has been said before, but it always needs saying: the raw bug
count in bugzilla is not a measure of much at all. Many of them are
duplicates[1], many are enhancement requests, of varying degrees of
sanity[2], many are less than useful ("my browser crashed").
[1] anyone who wants to help thin THEM out, please do
[2] "mozilla needs to make my bed in the morning", "mozilla needs a
kitchen sink", Mozilla needs to make coffee". At least one of those is
really in bugzilla.
> I was in fact going to say that too, but I stopped myself because in
> the end I didn't want to upset dedicated Mozilla lovers :) You are
> absolutely right. There are so many bugs, and many of them have been
> there for far too long. I have actually reported one bug myself
> (124703), and only one day after that, over 50 more bugs was reported.
In the 11 days since the release of 0.9.8, there have been approx 2200
bugs entered into bugzilla. We can't get to them all instantly.
> One week later, my bug is still unconfirmed...
Five days later, I'd confirm it if I could reproduce it. It may be
WinXP only, which narrows down the field of testers somewhat. Thanks
for a sane-and-sensible bugreport though.
>>> Is it someone in this newsgroup that agrees with me, or am I just
>>> being very negative at the moment?
>>
>> You are 100% dead-on brother.
>
> I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one. I hope that someone highly
> involved in the Mozilla project gets to read this too, although I
> doubt it will make a difference.
There are such people around. As to how much difference it will make...
--
gav
