Ben Bucksch wrote: Thanks for taking the time to reply.
>> I guess it's just frustration getting the better of me. When you >> consider how long Mozilla has been in the works, it's pretty sad that >> common, every day features and functions still don't work correctly > Yes, we all get this feeling sometimes. > We need n.p.m.bad-attitude newsgroup > <http://rd.mailshell.com/www.jwz.org/gruntle/rbarip.html>. YIKES! That's scary! I intend to re-read it more slowly, but at first glance, my reaction is that of disbelief! > The problem is not open-source, but the fact that Mailnews *heavily* > builds upon Mozilla technology, from string classes over XPCO, RDF to > XUL. If you look at how quickly external (e.g. mozdev.org) Mozilla > applications break because of changes in Mozilla, you get an idea of the > nightmare of change and instability of underlying technologies the > Mailnews team has to face. It was even worse when Mozilla was less mature. I'm not a programmer, but I do understand the "do this, break that" situations that are common (and to some degree expected) in application development. I was a lot more forgiving of this when I first started looking at Mozilla (somewhere around .60). Though I somewhat understand how and why the "breakage" happens, I'm not sure that any of the things I mentioned *ever* worked. I believe things like "message date sorting" and "newsgroup header count updating" should have worked properly a long time ago. These are key functions in even the most basic mail/news clients. > "Those who build their houses on sand..." I hear ya. > I think they had their big rewrite from version 3 to 4. Perhaps. I don't recall, but 5.x to 6.02 brought quite a lot of features and fixes, including an updated user interface. I considered any of the earlier versions to be unusable as my primary browser, but 6.02 really delivers the goods. > You say that Mozilla Mailnews is not much better than 4.x. The changes > between Mozilla Mailnews and 4.x *are* dramatic - it is a completely > different application. I know that "behind the scenes" it is 100% different, but speaking in simple terms, from my perspective: I have about 10 POP mail accounts, and several news server subscriptions. If Netscape 4.79 was able to support those POP mail accounts, and remember my news server logins between sessions, I'd be perfectly happy. Although I recently built a new box, it wasn't that long ago that I was using an AMD K6-II 450 w/256 MB RAM. Netscape 4.79 loads fast, *feels* fast, does address auto-complete, spell checking, and is really one of the best mail clients I've ever used. Whether old technology or not, it just works, and it works well. For binaries, I use Xnews, but for the text newsgroups, Netscape 4.79 does a great job. What else do I personally need in a mail/news client? Nothing. What is Mozilla giving me in terms of features *I* use, above and beyond those features of Netscape 4.79? Nothing I can think of. In fact, it still doesn't do all that Netscape 4.79 does, and it's been years in development. > The new features usually come one release after the big rewrite. First > you try to achieve the same level you had before, and then you can take > advantage of the better foundation. I'm sure you're right. Again, most of what I'm feeling is frustration. Mozilla is "cool". If I didn't think so, I wouldn't be downloading every new nightly with expectations of a "miracle" of some kind. I heard Darrell Waltrip make a funny comment during yesterdays NASCAR Winston Cup race. He said, "God give me patience, but GIVE IT ME NOW!". :) Thanks again for your comments! Mark -- e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
