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The entire Mozilla community is waiting with breathless anticipation as we wait for news of when Firefox 0.9 will be released. Many wonder how much more the project will go behind schedule.
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Mozilla Links - English Edition
Issue # 19 - June 4, 2004
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The entire Mozilla community is waiting with breathless anticipation
as we wait for news of when Firefox 0.9 will be released. Many wonder
how much more the project will go behind schedule.
The upside? With longer periods for testing and innovation Firefox
should contain fewer bugs then we would usually expect from a beta. A
new extension manager and theme manager have been drawn up by Ben
Goodger with such goodies as automatic updating and many bells and
whistles for developers. Look for more about this under News.
We'll try to take our minds off of the late release of Firefox by
testing the latest candidates of the Mozilla Suite (available at
the Mozilla releases page at http://mozilla.org/releases/ ).
Also appearing this month is the much awaited DevLinks newsletter. You
can find the latest information about this developer-oriented
newsletter at it's website at http://newsletter.mozdev.org/dev .
As Mozilla Thunderbird approaches the 1.0 milestone, we want you
to stay tuned to what's going on with this powerful e-mail client.
This Mozilla Links issue is focused on Mozilla Thunderbird. You will
find an interesting extension developed by Mozilla Foundation's Myk
Melez that adds syndication capabilities to Thunderbird, as well as
tips and a poll to better know about your interest in Thunderbird.
Thanks for reading and please send any comments to
[e-mail:newsletter-feedback@mozilla.org] .
Percy Cabello & Robin Monks
Mozilla Links
----------------------------------------------------------------------
In this issue:
1. BETTER MOZILLA
- Forumzilla
- Classify Your Email with Message Filters
- Disable Sending Progress Window
- Change the Advance to Next Unread Message Behavior
2. MOZILLA COMMUNITY
3. NEWS
- Roaming Profiles Coming to Mozilla 1.8
- Details of Forthcoming Mozilla Firefox 0.9
- Last Month Mozilla Releases
4. PROJECTS
- Independent Status Reports
5. POLL
6. CONTACT INFO
1. BETTER MOZILLA
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Featured Extension: Forumzilla
(developed by Myk Melez)
Forumzilla is an extension to Mozilla Mail and Thunderbird for reading
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and Atom feeds. It lets you read feeds
using the standard three-pane mail interface you may already be
familiar with.
By the time you read this, new Forumzilla 0.5.1 should be available.
featuring, on Myk's own words:
- A clunky dialog for editing your subscriptions, so there's no need
to hack text files in your profile directory anymore
- A harder-to-read RDF-based subscriptions file format, to give you
more of a challenge if you decide to hack text files anyway
- A link you can click to read any story in your web browser, in case
you want to read stories the old-fashioned way
- A raft of fixes for various feeds and better support for
international feeds in non-ASCII charsets.
Plans for the future include:
- Easier methods for subscribing to RSS feeds and manage subscriptions
- Better integration with Thunderbird, like new mail notification when
Forumzilla receives a new story
- Threaded discussion for discussion-oriented feeds
- A way to comment on stories for feeds that allow it
Download it from:
http://forumzilla.mozdev.org
Report bugs or check before requesting a feature here:
http://mozdev.org/bugs/enter_bug.cgi?product=Forumzilla
Track Forumzilla development through these mailing lists:
- For general discussion:
http://www.mozdev.org/mailman/listinfo/forumzilla
- For announcements:
http://www.mozdev.org/mailman/listinfo/forumzilla-announce
----
Tip: Classify Your Email with Message Filters
(contributed by Percy Cabello)
If you are subscribed to several newsletter like this, or use Mozilla
Thunderbird multi-account capabilities, you may want to automatically
classify messages to specific folders.
For example, if you want to have all editions of Links delivered to a
specific folder, folow these instructions:
- Select menu item "Tools" and then "Message filters"
- Press the "New" button
- For "Filter name", enter "Mozilla Links"
- Check "Match any of the following"
- Select "Sender", "contains" and type "newsletter@mozilla.org"
(the email address issues are sent from.
- In "Perform these actions", check "Move to folder" and choose a
mailbox folder or press "New folder" to create a new one, i.e
"Mozilla Links"
- Press "OK"
- If you want to sort your Inbox now, select the just created filter
("Mozilla Links") and press "Run now" to move all newsletter e-mail
you may have received to the "Mozilla Links" folder.
----
PowerTip: Disable Sending Progress Window
(adapted from Mozilla Thunderbird Help site @
http://texturizer.net/thunderbird)
When you send an e-mail in Mozilla Thunderbird, an informative
progress window appears. If you find this window annoying or
ditracting, follow these steps to disable it:
- Open user.js file in your profile folder. (For details on finding
your profile folder, visit http://www.gemal.dk/mozilla/profile.html)
- Add the following code:
// Turn off extra sending window
user_pref("mailnews.show_send_progress", false);
----
PowerTip: Change the Advance to Next Unread Message Behavior
(adapted from Mozilla Thunderbird Help site @
http://texturizer.net/thunderbird)
When you click on the "Next" button (or simply press "N") you normally
advance to the next unread message in the current folder. If there are
no unread messages left in a folder, Thunderbird will ask if you want
to advance to the next folder containing unread messages. You can
change this behavior by adding the following code to your user.js
file in your profile folder (for details on finding your profile
folder, please visit http://www.gemal.dk/mozilla/profile.html):
// This pref controls the "Advance to next unread message"
behavior
// 0 - Always go to the next folder without prompting
// 1 - Ask before going (the default behaviour)
// 2 - Never go to the next folder with unread messages
user_pref("mailnews.nav_crosses_folders", 1);
----
Need more tips? Try the TipBar Extension to get the Tip of the Day in
Mozilla Firefox. Grab it at http://tipbar.mozdev.org
You can also visit http://www.mozillatips.com for more fun tips for
your favorite browser.
Have a Tip or a PowerTip? Let other users know about it by sending it
to [e-mail:newsletter-feedback@mozilla.org] .
2. MOZILLA COMMUNITY
----------------------------------------------------------------------
There's no doubt that mozdev.org is one of the main forces behind the
Mozilla projects, providing not only hosting but a whole environment
for developers enthusiastic about Mozilla technologies to provide us
our favorite extensions, themes and manuals.
To know a little bit more about them and the mozdev.org project, we
asked the team: David Boswell, Pete Collins, Brian King and Chris
Neale. Here's an excerpt of the interview:
David Boswell: The site was created near the end of 2000 and was set
up to host some Mozilla projects we were working on at the time,
including the Script Editor, Total Recall and the Theme Builder.
These were projects that Pete was leading when we were both working at
a place called Alphanumerica.
When the site went live we opened up project creation to everyone in
the community since we wanted to help promote the idea of using
Mozilla as a platform. There are some links to old versions of the
site.
[Chris Neale let us know that an old version of mozdev.org can be
found at:
http://web.archive.org/web/20001018075443/http://www.mozdev.org/]
ML(Mozilla Links): What is the relation with Mozdev Group, Inc.?
Brian King: Mozdev Group Inc. (MDG) is a Mozilla Software Development
Company founded by Pete Collins on January 24th 2003. It is now
completely independent from mozdev.org, and exists as a business to
deliver high-quality Mozilla software solutions for clients.
http://www.mozdevgroup.com/solutions/
- What other projects are you involved in? What's the status of
Creating Applications with Mozilla? Plans.
DB: I would be interested to update the content for Creating
Application with Mozilla and make it into a second version, but I
don't think this is the time to do it. Mozilla is still evolving
quickly and I think it will be easier to work on an update to the book
when things become more stable.
BK: A second edition would be nice, but we'd need to pitch it to the
publisher (O'Reilly) first!
For the complete interview, visit:
http://newsletter.mozdev.org/interview-mozdev.html
3. NEWS
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Roaming Profiles Coming to Mozilla 1.8
--------------------------------------
(originally reported by MozillaNews)
Ben Bucksch, developer of Beonex Communicator (a Mozilla-based
Internet suite), has finished programming Roaming Profiles capability
for Mozilla. This features allows users who use several computers
within a network to have all their preferences (stored in the profile)
available wherever they log in and launch Mozilla.
It will be a welcomed addition for home and enterprise network users.
Details of Forthcoming Mozilla Firefox 0.9
------------------------------------------
(originally reported by Neowin.net)
In a recent interview with Neowin.net, Ben Goodger, Lead Developer of
Mozilla Firefox, precised some of the enhancements and new features we
may expect in the next release:
- New Extension and Theme systems, including a much expected
Extensions and Themes manager that allow easily finding extensions
and upgrading them as new releases go out. This should also mean
much less broken themes and extensions when a new Firefox version is
released.
- A much smaller download size (only 4.6MB).
- The following browsers (with more to come in 1.0) will be supported
by the migration tool currently in development:
- On Windows: Internet Explorer, Opera, Netscape 7.x, Mozilla 1.x
and Netscape 4.x
- On Mac and Linux: Netscape 7.x and Opera
Internet Explorer users will find all of their user data (Favorites,
Passwords, Cookies, form data, browsing history, and search
keywords) moved to Mozilla Firefox.
- Improvements to Searching and Bookmarks.
- The ability to launch your default email/news readers from the
browser.
- Lots of bug fixes.
Last Month Mozilla Releases
---------------------------
(originally reported by mozillaZine.org)
May was a very active month for the Mozilla products:
- Mozilla 1.4.2, becoming temporarily the stable version until Mozilla
1.7 is released in the next few weeks.
- Mozilla 1.7 RC2, a new release candidate for the forthcoming new
stable version of Mozilla Application Suite.
- Mozilla 1.8 Alpha.
- America Online announced that it will release a new version of good
old Netscape (7.2) to be based in Mozilla 1.7. According to previous
announcements of AOL, Netscape 7.1 should have been the very last
release.
- Camino 0.8 Beta, a Mozilla-based browser with native MacOSX Cocoa
user interface, features a Google search field in the toolbar (like
Firefox's), a more-compact download manager, an entirely rewritten
bookmark system, capability to import Safari, IE, and Mozilla
bookmarks, with Rendezvous and Address Book integration and
multi-level undo support, greatly improved cookie management, and
many more changes.
- Mozilla Thunderbird 0.6 released, featuring a new installer for
Windows version, a new Pinstripe theme for MacOSX, improved junk
mail controls, the new Thunderbird logo and several other
improvements.
4. PROJECTS
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Independent Status Reports
(contributed by Brian King)
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 May 30, 2004 and includes:
Checky - v2.1, a Resource Validation and Analysis Extension for Mozilla
and Firefox.
For: Firefox and Mozilla
Platform: All
Checky features an easy to use Interface to many different free and
commercial Online Validation and Analysis Services. Among the many
features are:
- Validate and analyse HTML, XHTML, CSS, RDF, RSS, XML, WAI, Section 508,
P3P, Hyperlinks, Metadata and many more
- Validate resources from your local hard drive
- Validate resources from intranet locations
- Validate dynamic PHP, Perl, CGI, Java, ASP, ColdFusion, C# resources
(e.g. *.jsp, *.php, *.cgi, *.do, *.pl) during development
- Easy configuration
- View results in new Window or Tab
http://checky.sourceforge.net/
MozillaBook - v 0.2.1, a Users Guide for Mozilla
For: Mozilla and Mozilla-derived projects
Platform: n/a
Changes from the previous version are:
- Couple small bug and formatting fixes
- Added version number to title page
- Reworked the profile migration section
http://userguide.mozdev.org/
Mozilla Archive Format - v0.2.18, enabling Save complete web pages in a
single archive.
For: Firefox
Platform: Windows, Linux
In this release several features have been added. Future plans include
optimizing the MHT decoding, the ability to refresh archive contents,
saving non-html content to an archive, URL rewriting for links to
pages in archives and saving additional meta-data such as page
history, text zoom and scroll position.
Notable Highlights:
- MHT Read support (95% compatible I estimate)
- Installer now also installs scripts and external apps
- Multiple complete pages can be stored in a single archive with original
url stored in meta-data
http://maf.mozdev.org/
Enigmail - v0.84.0. OpenPGP encryption for emails.
For: Mozilla and Thunderbird
Platforms: Windows, Linux, Mac OSX, Solaris, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD
Enigmail 0.84.0 for Thunderbird 0.6 and Mozilla 1.7 was released on May 7.
Highlights:
- Enhanced rules for setting encryption and signing defaults per
individual recipient
- New editor for per-recipient rules
http://enigmail.mozdev.org/
MozManual - Final 1.0, Web Version 0.7, Dutch Version 0.5,
an Introduction to Mozilla - A Manual for First Time Users; a brief
overview and feature guide.
For: Mozilla
Platform: Windows, Linux, Mac OSX
Notable Highlights
- Web (HTML) version of the manual now available; this can be used as an
online tutorial/introduction to Mozilla
- Content is complete - now checking for errors and omissions
- Dutch version (http://mozmanual.mozdev.org/nl/index.html - Nederlands),
Version 0.5: Updated draft preview of the Mozilla Manual is now available
http://mozmanual.mozdev.org/
Read more about each of these projects in the full report at
http://www.mozdev.org/status/2004-05-30-status.html
5. POLL
----------------------------------------------------------------------
On our last issue, we asked which plug-in do you find the most
important. Here are the results:
- Macromedia Flash 35% |]]]]]]]
- Adobe Reader 28% |]]]]]]
- Apple QuickTime 5% |]
- Real Player 1% |]
- Java 28% |]]]]]]
- Other plug-in 3% |]
Note: Results may not sum up to 100% due to rounding.
New poll: Do you plan to switch to Mozilla Thunderbird?
- I already have
- As soon as it reaches 1.0
- As soon as it includes a feature in the roadmap
- I am fine with Mozilla Mail and don't plan to switch
- I am fine with my non-Mozilla e-mail client
- I am stucked with my current email client and can't switch
Let your voice be counted at http://newsletter.mozdev.org
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6. CONTACT INFO
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mozilla Links(TM) is a monthly electronic newsletter published by
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SUBSCRIPTION MANAGEMENT : Visit http://newsletter.mozdev.org
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COMMENTS : Welcome at [e-mail:newsletter-feedback@mozilla.org]
Mozilla Links is currently translated into Traditional Chinese, Czech,
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Copyright 2004 by the Mozilla Links Contributors.
The Mozilla Links Newsletter is released under the Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 1.0 license, available at
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/1.0/legalcode
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