M14 Release Notes


READ THIS Before You Install

Using AOL 4.0 or earlier and running a Mozilla build simultaneously may cause problems. No problems have been reported running AOL 5.0 and Mozilla.

If you experience a crash upon launch, delete your Mozilla registry. The format of the Mozilla registry has changed on all platforms since M9.

For more information, please click here. If you are installing on Win32 also read the installation instructions for additional information on problems with crashing upon launch.

Install into a clean directory, or delete previous builds before installing. Installing on top of previous milestone builds or released product builds may cause problems. Incompatibilities may be introduced from milestone to milestone while the software is under development.

On Linux systems that use glibc 2.0 (such as RedHat 5.2), there are problems with dl functions (dlopen(), dlsym()) not being thread safe. This might cause your M14 build to randomly crash at startup. If this happens to you, try running the application a few more times. The bits posted on ftp.mozilla.org are built on RedHat 6.0, which uses glibc 2.1 and does not have this problem. For more details, see bug 8849.

Do not use Java Plugin 1.3. It doesn't work with the most recent Mozilla builds, and crashes will result. Make sure there are no files named *npjava*.* in either the bin/plugins directory or the NS4.x plugins directory. This problem is being addressed. For more information about this bug, see bug 5369.

Proxies are working. See bug 8559 for details on setting up.



Installing the M14 Release Build

Installation Instructions -- Unix

  1. Create a directory named "mozilla" and move the tar.gz file into the mozilla directory.
  2. mkdir mozilla ;
    mv mozilla*.tar.gz mozilla

  3. Change to the mozilla directory and untar the archive. This will create a directory called "package".
  4. cd mozilla ;
    gzip -dc mozilla-i686-pc-linux-gnu-M14.tar.gz | tar -xvf -

  5. Change to the "package" directory.
  6. mv mozilla*.tar.gz ../ ;
    cd package

  7. Run mozilla with the run script:
  8. ./mozilla

Important: If you are running Seamonkey on Solaris see also the Mozilla on Solaris FAQ, which documents Solaris 2.6 patches needed to build and run.

Mail Instructions for Unix

You can migrate an existing 4.x profile, or create a new profile and use Account Setup to set up your servers.

Installation Instructions -- Win32

You will need a copy of WinZip. This is shareware available at http://www.winzip.com (also at http://www.download.com).

  1. Click once on the mozilla-win32.zip link. The file will be downloaded to your default folder.

  2.  
  3. Click on the mozilla-win32.zip file to launch WinZip.

  4.  
  5. After clicking "I Agree" to terms of WinZip shareware, click the Extract button in the WinZip tool bar. An "bin" folder with application and associated files will be unzipped.

  6.  
  7. Select Mozilla from the bin folder to launch the program.

  8.  

Notes:

Mail Instructions for Win32

You can migrate an existing 4.x profile, or create a new profile and use Account Setup to set up your servers.

Installation Instructions -- Mac OS

If you have StuffIt Expander™ installed and your browser is configured to use it:

  1. Click once on the mozilla-mac.sea.bin link. The file will be downloaded to your default folder (usually the desktop) and StuffIt™ will start up and convert it to mozilla-mac.sea for you. Then StuffIt will open up mozilla-mac.sea and convert it to a folder called mozilla-mac for you.

  2.  
  3. Open the mozilla-mac folder and double-click the file "mozilla." (Note: you no longer need the .bin or .sea files.)

Note: If you try step one and your browser asks you what you want to do it's because you don't have StuffIt™ configured. In that case, just click Save and continue from Step #3 below.

If you do not have StuffIt Expander™ installed or your browser is not properly configured:

  1. Make sure you have StuffIt™ somewhere on your hard drive.

  2.  
  3. Click and hold the mozilla-mac.sea.bin link.

  4.  
  5. Choose "Save this link as...".
  6. You will see a file dialog box where you can select where you want to save the file (for example, your Desktop).

    Note: Do not use a slash (/) anywhere in the access path for the Mac installer. Spaces are okay, but avoid other special characters.

  7. Click the Save button.

  8.  
  9. Double-click on the newly created icon "mozilla-mac.sea.bin".

  10.  
  11. StuffIt™ will start up and simultaneously create a file "mozilla-mac.sea", and a folder called "mozilla-mac."

  12.  
  13. Open the mozilla-mac folder and double-click the file "mozilla." (Note: you no longer need the .bin or .sea files.)

Mail Instructions for Macintosh

You can migrate an existing 4.x profile, or create a new profile and use Account Setup to set up your servers.


Uninstalling the M14 Release Build

Linux

Windows

Mac OS


Files Created or Used

Windows
user/
prefs.js (Preferences file)
cache/ (cache directory)
cookies.txt (cookies file)
*cookperm.txt (used to selectively accept/reject cookies)
FieldSchema.tbl (files for auto form filling)
SchemaConcat.tbl (files for auto form filling)
SchemaValue.tbl (files for auto form filling)
URLFieldSchema.tbl (files for auto form filling)
signons.tbl and signonsx.tbl (logins and passwords file store)

$windir/
mozregistry.dat (Mozilla registry)
Unix
user/
prefs.js in ~/.mozilla/[profile] (preferences file)
Cache in ~/.mozilla/[profile](cache directory)
cookies (cookies file)
*cookperm (used to selectively accept/reject cookies)
FieldSchema.tbl (files for auto form filling)
SchemaConcat.tbl (files for auto form filling)
SchemaValue.tbl (files for auto form filling)
URLFieldSchema.tbl (files for auto form filling)
signons and signonsx (logins and passwords file store)

~/.mozilla/
registry (Mozilla Registry)
Mac
Documents:Mozilla:Users50:mozProfile:
prefs.js (preferences file (use))
Cache (cache directory)
cookies.txt (cookies file)
*cookperm (used to selectively accept/reject cookies)

res:
FieldSchema.tbl (files for auto form filling)
SchemaConcat.tbl (files for auto form filling)
SchemaValue.tbl (files for auto form filling)
URLFieldSchema.tbl (files for auto form filling)

System:Preferences:
Mozilla Registry

*Note:"cookperm.txt" ("cookperm" on Unix) is a file used to selectively accept cookies from certain sites and not from others. It is used only if you set your preferences so you see a warning before accepting cookies. To do that, hand edit the prefs.js file to include:


Limited Support Features

Caching

You can turn on caching in Preferences:

  1. Open Preferences.
  2. Click Debug:Enable Memory Cache.

Turning on caching should boost performance over dialup connections (LAN users, however, won't see huge speed improvements).

Support is enabled for memory caching only, not for the disk cache, so cached data won't be remembered across sessions. Please DO NOT report this as a bug.

Several cache bugs are being addressed:

Available Navigator Functionality

Functionality Description Comments
Back, Forward, Reload, Stop Occasionaly, Back and Forward may "forget" certain visited URLs.
Location Field You can browse by entering URLs
Various Menu Commands Menus do work, but many commands are not hooked up. These menus and options are working: File menu: New Browser Window, New > Blank Page / Page using Template ... / Page using Draft ..., Quit; Go menu; Bookmarks menu Menu command that aren't hooked up are preceded by a period.
Toolbars Toolbars display above and below content window, most buttons working though a couple are not hooked up to execute a command.
Downloadable chrome You can dynamically change the chrome (apply new skins and new content) in M14 with the following caveats:
(1) Only Navigator is using the new chrome URLs. Messenger hasn't made the switchover yet.
(2) Changes aren't persistent yet, so if you change the skin, the change won't be remembered.
(3) The window doesn't dynamically refresh (once the window manager is further along, it will). In order to see your changes, you need to open up a new window after running the script to set the new skin.
See the sample code in section 9 of the downloadable chrome spec
Link Buttons Buttons that simply link to a web address, including the N brand button, Home, My Netscape.
Access Personal Toolbar Links in Personal Toolbar are displayed and can be used Can't add or edit
Access Bookmarks Access Bookmarks through Bookmarks menu Can load your current bookmarks
file. See instructions under platform installations.
Access via Manage
Bookmarks Window
Can open, close, and sort folders.
Status Display Toolbar beneath content area, status during loading of URLs.
Plugins Shockwave Flash™, RealAudio™, and MIDI files can be played with M14. Some file types (.mov, .au) are not understood by mozilla. You cannot add a new mime type to launch a helper application.

Available Mail/News Functionality

Functionality Description
Start Mail Run Mozilla and bring up the three-pane mail window
Get New Mail Download and display contents of local mail folders; POP.
Handle SMTP SMTP protocol works; send a message.
Display Message -- Mail Go to the "demos" menu and select several messages from your Inbox. The message content is displayed in the message (lower right) pane.
Display Folder List Local mail folders are displayed in the folder (left-hand) pane.
Delete Message Delete a message using the Delete toolbar button.
Edit/Send Text Message Bring up the compose window by clicking the New Msg button, type some text, and send.
Sorting -- Thread Pane Sorting works for Subject, Sender, Status, and Date.
Move/Copy Messages You can move one message at a time.
Read Attachments in Messages Attachments can be displayed in the message pane.
Post message to newsgroup Using the compose window, post a message to a newsgroup.
Post to multiple newsgroups simultaneously In the "Newsgroup:" field of the compose window, you can post to multiple newsgroups at once. Use commas to separate the newsgroups.
Display news hosts and subscribed newsgroups Use File menu|Subscribe to populate the folder pane with news hosts and subscribed newsgroups.
Display News articles in thread pane When you click on a newsgroup, show the message subject, date, etc. in the thread pane.
Display Message -- News Click on a message in the thread pane and the message content is displayed in the message pane.
Get News Select a newsgroup in the folder pane and click on "Get Msg" to download any new news articles.
Marking news message as read Use the menu "Message | Mark | As Read" to mark a news message as read.
Currently, the read status is being saved, but not in the newsrc file. This is a bug. (#8075)
Viewing news message automatically marks it read Viewing a news message marks it read
Currently, the read status is being saved, but not in the newsrc file. This is a bug. (#8075)
Cancel news message If you are the author of an article, then the Edit | Delete Message menu item cancels the article. As with 4.x, you can only cancel one article at a time.
Address Book The Personal Address Book is displayed in the left pane. LDAP and additional address books are not working yet.

Additional Mail Functionality

Available Editor Functionality

Functionality Description
Maximize/Minimize Box
Collapase/Expand/Zoom box (Mac)
All function.
Apply/Remove bold, italic, underline Applies style, doesn't remove.
Apply/Remove Listing Functions.
Indent/Outdent Functions.
Apply font, font size, font color All function.
Insert Link Opens the Insert Link dialog
Insert Image Opens the Insert Image dialog.
Insert Anchor Functions.
Insert horizontal line Functions.
Spell Check Opens the Spell Check dialog on Windows; does not function on Mac OS and Linux. (bug 6864)
Up/Down arrows Function.
Left/Right arrows Works correctly.
File menu New, Open, Save, Save As, and Quit work correctly. PrintSetup and Print Preview are not functional. (bugs 11767 and 21432) Printing Mac OS is currently blocked by bug 21759.
Edit menu Undo, Redo, Cut, Copy, Paste, Select All, and Find work do not work within the browser. You can, however, cut, copy, and paste within text fields by using keyboard shortcuts. Clear and Find Again are not functional.
View menu Hide Composition Toolbar and Hide Format Toolbar are not functional. (bug 11770)
Insert menu Link, Image, Horizontal Line, Table, HTML Tag, Line Break, and Break Below Images work correctly. Target is not functional. (bug 11771)
Format menu Font options, size, style, and color work correctly. Paragraph options work correctly.
Tools menu Spell Check option opens the Spell Check dialog on Windows; does not function on Mac OS and Linux. (bug 6864)

Available Gecko Functionality

Functionality Description Comments
HTML 4.0 Done except for the following:
UI for metadata (bug 1995)
Compact DL, UL, OL (bug 2055)
Character alignment in tables (bug 2212)
UI for HTML Link element (bug 2800)
UI for user stylesheets and alternate stylesheets(bug 6782)
Cascading Style Sheets, level 1 (CSS1) Features 98% done; bug-fixing remains.
Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 (CSS2) Positioning, tables, selectors done. No support is committed for final release, but some features are already working and will likely be enabled.
Document Object Model (DOM) Level 0 Done.
Document Object Model (DOM) Level 1 HTML 90% done.
Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 JavaScript event model 80% done.
Extensible Markup Language (XML) James Clark expat parser in; documents parse.
Simple XLink and HTML Namespaces done.
XML + CSS1 Working.

Known Issues

Browser and General Issues

Printing

Plugins

Bookmarks and History

Profiles

Editor

Mail and News

Cryptographic Functionality

This release does not yet contain the crypto glue, but the plan to release an M14 build with crypto support is still on. The build with crypto will be available soon.

Please see the Mozilla Crypto FAQ for more information.

Java

In the M14 build, Java does not work. Due to API changes in mozilla, the Java plugin currently available from Sun Microsystems does not work with anything more recent than M12. For more information see the open jvm integration document by Ed Burns. See also bug 18567.

Other Java bugs still pending:

DOM Level 1

Small Fonts on Linux


M13 International Issues

For updated information on features, fonts, and testing for Internationalization, visit this page.

General:

I18n Engineering and Milestone Tasks document is available here.
I18n Beta 1 Feature Plan is available here.
I18n Beta 1 Mail/News Functional specifications are available here.
Localizing Mozilla document.
A list of Non-English Mozilla Mail lists and Discussion groups is here.
Bitstream Cyberbit Unicode font for Windows  (version 2.0) is available here. Read READMEFirst file for details before downloading the fonts.
Report international bugs: Use Bugzilla.
Questions and comments:
    Note: The name of the executable is mozilla. (At one point during the development, it was apprunner.exe.)
 

Preferences/Installer:

Browser: Editor: For IME specifications, see this document by Tague Griffith. (Current editor i18n engineers are Frank Tang & Erik van der Poel.) Localizability: Mail/News (Testing done on Windows and Linux only): Notes on Composing Latin 1 and Japanese Mail messages: Mail/News (for Mac) List of Charset Converters available at M13:

Single-byte:

Multi-byte: Stateful: