MozillaQuest Magazine - Lizard On The Move: Mozilla Milestone 0.8.1 Browser-Suite Released

The Mozilla Organization released the Milestone Mozilla 0.8.1 edition of its Mozilla browser-suite today as it moves ever closer to Mozilla 1.0. The Mozilla Milestone 0.8.1 browser-suite is cross-platform and open source.

Builds are available for the Linux, Macintosh, Microsoft Windows, and several UNIX platforms. Source code is available if you want to custom compile your own Mozilla Milestone 0.8.1 build.

Among the new in this Mozilla Milestone release are a hierarchical history, a routine to un-install themes, and some Gopher support. There also are lots of changes to ChatZilla, the Mozilla-based chat client in this release.

New & Improved

Hierarchical History

One nifty new Mozilla feature in 0.8.1 is the hierarchical history. It does a nice job of organizing the URL history by days. You can add the hierarchical history to the sidebar by using the sidebar customize procedure. Or, you simply can click on Tasks > Tools > History. (Please see Figure 1.)

Theme Uninstall

You now can remove unwanted themes from your hard drive with the new 0.8.1 theme uninstall feature. This feature is available in the themes preferences. Simply click on View > Apply Themes > Theme Preferences > (select theme) > Uninstall (theme name). (Note: this feature did not work for us in the release candidate we checked. We are checking the final release now.)

Gopher Support

Figure 2. Mozilla does Gopher

Some support for Gopher has been added to Mozilla in this Milestone. However, not all gopher features are supported. The best way to access Gopher still is with a Gopher client.

To use the Gopher feature enter the gopher URL in the location input box, for example gopher://umn.edu . That brings up an FTP-like, directory-tree display of the UMN (University of Minnesota) Gopher server. However, at this time you will not be able to use Gopher search tools such as Veronica with Mozilla. (Please see Figure 2.)

ChatZilla (IRC - Chat)

Figure 3. The new Chatzilla, chat-client face.

There are lots of under-the-hood changes to ChatZilla, the Mozilla-based IRC (Internet Relay Chat) client. The channel-view and server-view tabs have been moved from above the channel window to below the channel window. Some IRC commands have been added or improved. ChatZilla is the IRC Chat client listed in the Mozilla Tasks menu. (Please see Figure 3.)

Bugs & Bookmarks

There are a few nasty bugs and problems in the release candidate builds such as the sidebar bookmarks not loading and other bookmark problems that still might be in the Mozilla 0.8.1 release.

Figure 4. Opening the Customize My Sidebar box

If you encounter this bookmark-loading problem, try opening the Customize My Sidebar box by clicking on the Tab button in the top My Sidebar tab. (Please see Figure 4.)

Next, remove bookmarks from the installed tabs list (Tabs in My Sidebar) on the right side of the Customize box. Then re-add bookmarks to the installed Tabs list. (Please see Figure 5.)

Figure 5 (above). The Customize My Sidebar box made smaller so that the installed Sidebar tabs are visible.

Figure 6 (right). The Customize My Sidebar box before shrinking. Here the installed Sidebar tabs are not visible.

If you encounter the names of the installed sidebar tabs not appearing in that installed tabs panel in the customize box try resizing the Customize My Sidebar box to a smaller size. Figure 6 shows the problem in a larger Customize My Sidebar box. Figure 5 shows the Customize My Sidebar box made smaller in or order to correct the problem. Just keep making the Customize My Sidebar box smaller until the installed tab names appear in the Tabs in My Sidebar panel.