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Following our coverage of other Mozilla applications, this issue is focused in ChatZilla, an IRC client application. If it doesn't tell you much, let's say it allows a group of people to join in virtual rooms and freely talk in it or to a specific person.
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Mozilla Links - English Edition
Issue # 16 - March 30, 2004
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Welcome back to Mozilla Links!
Following our coverage of other Mozilla applications, this issue is
focused in ChatZilla, an IRC client application. If it doesn't tell
you much, let's say it allows a group of people to join in virtual
rooms and freely talk in it or to a specific person.
IRC (Internet Relay Chat), is a very old Internet service (older than
the web) and has evolved to a community of millions of people from all
over the world interested in meeting others for discussing any sort of
matter, file exchanging (in fact IRC used to be the most efficient way
of file sharing before peer to peer (P2P) networks like BitTorrent and
Gnutella) or any other reason you may think about.
Where instant messaging is better suited for one-to-one chat, or small
known groups, IRC lets you easily get into the unknown, since it
doesn't require authentication or logins. Choose your nickname, a
server and a room and you are in. This is what ChatZilla is about.
As a start, drop by irc://irc.mozilla.org to meet other members of the
Mozilla community.
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In this issue:
1. BETTER MOZILLA
- ChatZilla
- IRC Commands Tab Completion
- Customize ChatZilla With Motifs
2. THE NEWS
- Mozilla 1.7 Beta
- Nvu 0.2 Released
- Mozilla Foundation Open Letter Orders Unofficial Mozilla
Merchandise Sellers to Stop, Legal Action Hinted
- Mozilla Foundation Soliciting Proposals for Support Services
3. MOZILLA INSIDER
4. MOZILLA PROJECTS
- Project of the Week: Email Vault for Mozilla (EVM)
- Independent Status Report
5. MOZILLA LINKS POLL
6. CONTACT INFO
1. BETTER MOZILLA
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Featured Extension: ChatZilla
(developed by Robert Ginda, James Ross, Samuel Sie, et al.)
ChatZilla is a simple IRC client completely developed with Mozilla
technologies (JavaScript and XUL). It is part of the Mozilla
Application Suite but also available as an extension for Mozilla
Firefox.
Among other features, ChatZilla allows to define rooms (also called
channels) you want to automatically enter as soon as ChatZilla is
launched, set autoload scripts (a group of tasks you want ChatZilla
to do when starting up), log ongoing conversation to a specifed file,
customize the look of the different chat windows with motifs, define a
list of important words or stalks so ChatZilla will highlight/notify
when typed in a room, converts "bug" followed by a number to a
bugzilla (Mozilla issues tracking system) link.
However, don't get it wrong. ChatZilla is not intended (at least not
at this moment) to be a full featured IRC client. Instead, it focuses
in providing and easy and very light Internet chat tool. DCC (Direct
Client-to-Client), the protocol used to establish a direct connection
(not going through the IRC server and so more secure and faster)
between two persons in a room has just been added in the lastest
version.
Mozilla Links Tip: IRC Commands Tab Completion
(from ChatZilla User Guide, edited by Percy Cabello)
The input box is where you type ChatZilla commands and text to send
to users and channels. The default command character is a "/". You can
use tab completion to execute commands by entering only the first
characters.
For example, if you type "/quo" and press TAB, ChatZilla will
autocomplete the command to become "quote". You can even just enter
the abbreviated command and the parameter like "/quo nickname" and
ChatZilla will autocomplete and execute the command.
If you don't type enough characters and ChatZilla is not capable of
determining what command you are trying to type, it will display an
informative message listing possible commands starting with the
characters you just typed.
If a channel view is active, tab completion works for nicknames as
well. If the word you are typing is the first word in the input box,
and it does not start with the command character ("/" by default),
press TAB and ChatZilla will match against the list of nicknames for
the channel.
Mozilla Links PowerTip: Customize ChatZilla With Motifs
(contributed by Percy Cabello)
Motifs are nothing but CSS (Cascade Style Sheets, the standard for
defining the style of web content) files or style sheets designed
specifically to format ChatZilla chat windows.
If you want to change the look of ChatZilla, open the "View"
menu, select "Color Scheme" and click on the desired motif. Three
styles are provided by default: dark, light and default.
If you want to try different styles for dark, light and default, open
the "Edit" menu and select "Preferences". Open the "Appearance" tab.
In the Motifs section, for each default style, browse for your
personal style sheet (.CSS file).
2. THE NEWS
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(contributed by MozillaZine, your source for Mozilla news and
advocacy. http://www.mozillazine.org )
Mozilla 1.7 Beta
----------------
The Mozilla Foundation has released Mozilla 1.7 Beta, the latest test
version of the Mozilla Application Suite. 1.7b features hundreds of
improvements, including a new preference to stop sites blocking the
standard page context menu and a Password Manager option to show the
actual saved passwords. The cookie handling user interface has also
been redesigned and the 'Set As Wallpaper' feature now has a
confirmation dialogue, preventing accidental wallpaper changes.
Standards compliance continues to improve, with Mozilla now
understanding the CSS3 opacity property and a long-standing bug with
CSS backgrounds in tables resolved. In addition, using XMLHttpRequest
and the multipart/x-mixed-replace MIME type, servers can now push XML
documents to Mozilla.
Mail & Newsgroups sports several new features in 1.7b, including
support for the IMAP IDLE command, which allows the mail server to
inform Mozilla of changes such as new messages, and support for Secure
Password Authentication for POP3 and SMTP. Performance when
downloading, viewing and saving messages has also been improved and
the Address Book Palm synchronisation feature has been improved.
The installer releases of Mozilla 1.7 Beta now include Quality
Feedback Agent again, allowing users to report crashes, and the Linux
GTK2 builds have improved support for OS themes. Compared to Mozilla
1.6, 1.7b is 7% faster to start up, 8% faster to open new windows and
9% faster to load pages. And it does all this while being 5% smaller.
Nvu 0.2 Released
----------------
The second major milestone release of Nvu, the Web publishing
application based on Mozilla Composer, is now available for Linux and
Windows. The main new feature in Nvu 0.2 is support for the creation,
modification and utilisation of templates, preset pages that can
include both editable and static elements. Version 0.2 also allows
more CSS properties to be applied to pages and lets users to extract
inline styles and make them into classes.
Based on Mozilla 1.7 Beta, Nvu 0.2 was developed by Daniel Glazman's
Disruptive Innovations for Lindows.com.
Mozilla Foundation Open Letter Orders Unofficial Mozilla Merchandise
Sellers to Stop, Legal Action Hinted
--------------------------------------------------------------------
mozilla.org staff member Gervase Markham has posted an open letter to
the Mozilla newsgroups addressed to those who sell goods bearing the
Mozilla name or logos: "The following is an open letter to anyone
selling Mozilla-branded merchandise. It's being posted rather than
emailed in the spirit of openness, and to ensure everyone who needs to
read it can see a copy."
The letter urges those selling products with the Mozilla insignia to
stop and contact the Mozilla Foundation for further discussion on how
to proceed. Noting that the retailing of Mozilla-branded wares without
permission is an infringment of the Foundation's trademark rights, the
letter hints that legal action may taken against those who refuse to
heed the advice.
Mozilla Foundation Soliciting Proposals for Support Services
------------------------------------------------------------
The Mozilla Foundation is exploring offering additional end user
support options, in addition or instead of the existing telephone
support provided by DecisionOne. To this end, the Foundation is
soliciting proposals from companies or community members who wish to
be awarded contracts to provide these services. Submissions must be
well thought out and shown to be viable.
3. MOZILLA INSIDER
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(contributed by Alex Bishop)
Frank Hecker has posted a proposal for deciding which certificate
authority (CA) certificates should ship with Mozilla. The CA
certificates tell Mozilla which security certificates it should trust
by default. The previous policy was just to ship whichever CA
certificates Netscape approved.
Default artwork for Mozilla Firefox has been checked in. This artwork
is built by default, with a special flag used to pull the official
artwork if the build has Mozilla Foundation approval. Meanwhile,
autocomplete entries listed in the Mozilla Firefox Location Bar can
now be deleted using Shift + Delete (bug 171605).
On the security front, Microsoft's Negotiate Authentication protocol
is supported using GSSAPI on Linux and Mac OS X (bug 17578). A Windows
implementation using SSPI is under development (bug 237586). In
addition, GNOME 2.6 users will be able to use Mozilla to browse file
systems to which they have SSH access to using SFTP (bug 235895).
Frank Hecker's CA certificate policy proposal:
[e-mail:/groups]
4. MOZILLA PROJECTS
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(contributed by Brian King)
Project of the Week: Email Vault for Mozilla
With Email Vault for Mozilla (EVM) you can store your Mozilla emails
in a database. Instead of the known Mozilla folders of the Mozilla
MailNews client, you will find 'categories' which can be linked with
the mails. One mail can be linked to several categories or even its
subcategories. The mail itself is stored only once in the database.
EVM provides a nice user interface similar on top of the known Mozilla
MailNews client design. When you, for example, want to answer to a
mail in EVM, the normal Mozilla reply window will be opened, so it is
intuitive to use. You can also search for mails in EVM, and will find
a useful help file. The current version, 1.4. It does not yet run on a
Mac, but this is being worked on.
****
Independent Status Reports
The independent status reports include news and updates from
Mozilla application and extension projects hosted on mozdev.org
and elsewhere in the Mozilla community.
The latest report was posted on March 28, 2004 and includes:
cdn - Link Toolbar 0.7.1 brings Mozilla's Link Toolbar / Site
Navigation bar to Firefox. It adds a panel to the status bar for
navigating links provided by Web pages that use the HTML ""
element. Now incorporated is Linkit-style link finding, e.g. page
links are searched for tell-tale phrases - note that this isn't
fool-proof. Localisations include de-AT, fr-FR, it-IT, nl-NL and
sv-SE.
http://cdn.mozdev.org/linkToolbar/
Feed Parser - v0.5.1 is an RSS Parsing Engine written in JavaScript.
Feed Parser is an object-oriented RSS 0.9x/1.0/2.0 parsing engine
written in JavaScript. It is not intended for normal webpage use
because of the security requirements for utilizing and manipulating
cross-domain documents. Current Highlights include logical, easy to
use, elementsubelement syntax.
http://feedparser.mozdev.org/
CookieCuller - v1.0, is modified version of the Cookie Manager built
into Firefox browser. It allows you to easily protect cookies you want
to save and quickly delete the rest. CookieCuller has been created as
a chrome extension for easy installation and use.
http://cookieculler.mozdev.org/
One Click is a set of online tools that can be started with a single
click. Presented as a sidebar tab, it contains many different
applications in one easy to use interface. Current included features
include the MineSweeper and BattleShip games, an instant calculator
and Tips 'n Tricks.
http://oneclick.mozdev.org
Email Vault for Mozilla (EVM) - v1.4, for copying mails to a DB, into
several categories instead of folders, plus a nice user interface.
With EVM, you can store your mails in a database in one or more
categories (but storing it physically once only). You can build
categories by your own and rename them. And you may search for, and
find, mails by attributes. The current XPI working and ready for
testing so send feedback!
http://evm.mozdev.org/
Mozwho - v0.4, making the connections.
Mozwho provides a portal style view of your bookmarks, allowing you to
also cross link to other entries from the same domain in your history.
Mozwho also renders bookmark searches to HTML and offers a URL for
bookmark search accessible via a search plugin or keyword bookmark.
Notable Highlights in v0.4 are skinnability, better keyboard
navigation and a Firefix search plugin.
http://mozwho.mozdev.org/
Get the Mozilla CD featuring the latest releases of all Mozilla
products. Single CDs available at $5.95 + s&h, 5-pack at $20 and full
year subscription at US$17.95 and T-shirts at $15.95.
6. CONTACT INFO
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Copyright 2004 by the Mozilla Links Contributors.
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