In one of a string of changes, mozilla.org today announced a new plan that would have future Mozilla development work will be focussed around the soon-to-be-renamed stand-alone Phoenix browser and the Thunderbird mail and newsgroups client (also known as Minotaur). Mozilla 1.4 (an alpha released yesterday) would be the last milestone release of the traditional Mozilla browser suite and the 1.4 milestone would replace 1.0 as the stable development path.
Major Roadmap Update Centers Around Phoenix, Thunderbird
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Eugenia Loli
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Um, what is going on here? It was always my understanding that Mozilla was kind of a ‘test bed’ for developers to play with, while Netscape was supposed to be the stand-alone browser for users.
So now, Mozilla is going away and (from what I understand) will now become Phoenix? So then, what was the whole point of Mozilla, and what happens to Netscape? What about Composer ?
As for Minataur (sp), I was never a big fan of Mozilla Mail, so I hope they can make something better out of it.
I think it is important for projects that have become mature to “reinvent” themselves every now and then in order to keep on thier toes. If they don’t, they stop being innovative and they becom stagnant with one release not really looking or working all that different from the previous and they become so crufty that they become unmantainable. I think we all can point out examples of projects that have gone down that path.
no no, Mozilla is taking Phoenix, and using that and its mail client as the future routs for mozilla development as it makes it easier to maintian and divided the work into sub projects….in origional Mozilla there was so much overlap that it was some times impossable for one group to do something with out affecting the work of another group, by using the phoenix code bas and minitaur both based off of Mozilla, you get totaly seperate code bases so development can be run more efficiently.
and me personaly, I liked the features of Mozy mail but I hated the interface becasue it was so integrated into Mozilla as a whole so the menues and stuff sucked…..
what I hope they do though it add an integrated mail checker into the browser and it would be nice if they could hack it so you can access hotmail as well.
for linux distro’s that have standardised on Mozilla as we currently know it.
Will redhat in their future releases label the future (to be renamed) Phoenix, as “Web Browser”.
Or possibly standardise with galeon or epiphany. I think this will be better since Gecko will become more modular in the future.
Phoenix is an excellent browser and more developers working on it should improve the speed of updates. It was really going fast for awhile, but lately they’ve slowed down. Now it will get an injection.
I also think it is better to have the mail client separate from the browser. I want my web browser to browse the web. I’ll pick the mail client that best suits me.
I think this will definitely be an improvement for the mozilla community.
Whether this change is as a result of the success of Phoenix? Or was Phoenix a proof of concept thing for this change?
So the article says that Phoenix has the features that most people want. So, besides the mail client and Composer, what does Phoenix lack that Mozilla has, and will Mozilla lose these features when it incorporates the Phoenix code base? And if it doesn’t, will Phoenix then become bloated like Mozilla ?
Always thought that the entire suite was nicely packaged. bloated? Its about the same size as ie when you select packages. If you dowload ie or the download version to keep for later re-install its easily 20-35mbs. That usually includes outlook express and windows media player (don’t remember what version). Mozilla even now at 1.4a is only at 12.X mb’s and that includes the mail client.
Personally going to find it disatisfying having to open two diferent apps again especially if in the new development cycle that they become way too different in look and feel. So far I think mail is better than even pegasus a strong favorite of mine, outlook express, popcorn, even eudora (god found it ugly). Tried the phoenix browser up to .5 very fast but having to go and open mozilla mail was a bother.
Did look at the source and the complexity of building, etc. so I understand why they are changing. Just hope that they work closely… Hope that the intergration also pans out. Fast browser and a nice email client. Can live with that.
from what i understand pheonix was a proof of concept and the plan was to reintegrate it with mozilla from the beginning. with the more cutting edge user stuff going on in pheonix and being tested that way. it will be interesting how they use the GRE with all the various gecko based apps. and if their solutions to potential problems were complete or needs improvement.
I have to agree with this move. This keeps the Mozilla team on it’s toes and basiclly AOL/Netscape have more then enough code to work with right now. Hell Netscape is still using the 1.0 branch with the newest version. By the time they incorparte the 1.4 branch Mozilla will be at 2.0+ in their development. Even if the mail/newsreader client are kept seperate from the browser it will still more then likely work togetheir except now if you want to use another email/newsgroup application the browser itself will not be as dependent on it. You can probably use any email/nesgroup package and more then likely they will make it so this new Mozilla browser will work with any other email/newgroup application of your choice.
I use mozilla mail for my email, but I use opera for my browsing. I am totally psyched about a seperate mail client b/c now OpenOffice.org can pick up the mail client for their office suite, and improve upon it.
But, where do they get the names for these projects? Chimera, Camino, Phoenix, Minotaur/Thunderbird… Mozilla? Sounds like a set of bad movies rather than a suite of sweet programs…
Finally we’re seeing major features like smooth scrolling (integrated in latest nightly, needs to be explicitly enabled) and mouse gestures (an add-on) appear, and finally the devels have noticed Mozilla’s abysmal performance in everything besides rendering.
I just hope Phoenix doesn’t bloat up like Mozilla.. anybody tried loading ‘Zilla on a P2 recently? Probably still waiting, if so, for the damned thing to show up. That’s one seriously large app, and there’s no excuse for it.
I hope they keep the same people in charge of Phoenix.
Expect the 1.0 release of Phoenix/Mozilla to replace the Opera browser as weapon of choice on performance-oriented Linux systems.
The developers have finally listened to the users? Wow, this can’t be true.
What’s next? Sun is listening the the users and do the same thing with OpenOffice? Nah.
… a few weeks ago, because Phoenix is way faster to launch, has very few bugs though in 0.5 revision only – Nothing common with the stability of Moz 0.5
, has great features that mozilla misses like the customizable toolbar and the add-on extensions.
So it’s really a good move overall.
As I understand it XUL apps will make use of a common runtime shared between all applications (the GRE). This breakup is just a reflection of that change in filosophy.
I for one am all for this, besides Mozilla was never meant to be a “real” browser just a reference implementation.
How will this effect other Distros? (read OEone, ByzantineOS, etc.)
Who cares it’s friggin’ browser and it gets so much publicity. Even Netscape 4.7 is still fully functional. It’s justa a friggin browser…
I think distros can take great advantage of this split, since they will be able to pick which browser and email clients they want to use. Perhaps the developer’s really like Minotaur for email, but want something else for web browsing. The split just makes that choice easier, and will probably make what Mozilla becomes play better with other options. Might also quicken development, since people will spend more time developing, rather than making sure they are not stepping on some other developer’s code.
My 0.5673 cents
SMF
Who knows, maybe GRE will evolve into what JRE always tried to be. I can just picture 2 years from now people using “Gecko Script” embeded into web pages rather than Java Script…
Java and JavaScript are NOT AT ALL related technologies.
The only things Java and JavaScript have in common are the letters “Java”. As far as languages go, they have a similar c-style syntax … but so do a some other languages. They way the operate, is radically different.
—
Re: displacing JavaScript with “GeckoScript” … wouldn’t be a good idea. JavaScript is finally getting to the point you can reasonably use it across platforms. Replacing it with a scripting language tied to a specific browser would be dumb.
XUL was intended to make web-based desktop applications easier to develop … but you wouldn’t use it “scripted into” a page as much as you’d use the XUL technologies to create your own application.
>Phoenix is an excellent browser and more developers working on it should improve the speed of updates.
I agree.
I use phoenix when I don’t need mozilla because it is faster, lighterweight, and generally cooler. With Mozilla focusing on phoenix as its pure browser, will phoenix get bogged down and slow like Mozilla is because it will be required to do to much?
Just a worry. I am sure there is a resolution.
But what if I want it to be integrated? I used Netscape from its 3.0 version and now I am happy with Mozilla. It goes one level down of interest for me, if the mail client and browser get splitted away …
So – I just wonder, – what features will I miss with Phoenix? Hmm, I should read something about Phx first, but I just hope it still supports skinning, XUL, tabs etc.
-pekr-
Lack of AA fonts. ‘Nuff said.
You can download a build or compile XFT into phoenix if you want:
http://phoenix.ragweed.net/build
i agree with mozilla’s choice. i can’t wait for the new version