M9 Release Notes
These release notes, last updated August 26, 1999, describe installation
instructions and known issues pertinent to the M9 release. These notes
are updated as we receive feedback, so please check back for new information.
Related links
-
For more information about known problems, you can also view an up-to-date
list of fixed
bugs.
-
For status and notes on features in each milestone, see the milestone
page.
Contents of This Document
This release expires on September 15, 1999 at 00:01 am.
READ THIS Before You Install
If you have installed a Seamonkey build prior to August 10, your
profile directory contains a "prefs50.js" file. In M9 (and all builds after
August 10), Apprunner will look for "prefs.js" instead. To use your existing
prefs, change the name of the prefs50.js file to prefs.js. If you have
no previous profiles, you don't need to make the change.
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 M9 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/;lugins directory or the NS4.x plugins directory.
This problem is being addressed. For more information about this bug, see
bug 5369.
Proxies are not working in this release. If you attempt to use
this build from behind a proxy, you will experience bugs. See bugs 8559
and 6540.
This problem is scheduled to be fix in the M10 release. (See also bug 10276.)
Installing the M9 Release Build
Installation Instructions -- Unix
-
Create a directory named "mozilla" and move the tar.gz file into the mozilla
directory.
mkdir mozilla ;
mv mozilla*.tar.gz mozilla
-
Change to the mozilla directory and untar the archive. This will create
a directory called "package".
cd mozilla ;
gzip -dc mozilla-i686-pc-linux-gnu-M8.tar.gz | tar -xvf -
-
Change to the "package" directory.
mv mozilla*.tar.gz ../ ;
cd package
-
Run mozilla with the run script:
./mozilla-apprunner.sh
Note: Bookmarks are temporarily reading the file "mozilla/package/res/rdf/bookmarks.html."
instead of "~/.netscape/bookmarks.html". You can copy your bookmarks file
as a workaround for now:
cp ~/.netscape/bookmarks.html mozilla/package/res/rdf/bookmarks.html
Mail Instructions for Unix
IMPORTANT: Please see the information in the mail/news
pref document to correctly set up your mail preferences file.
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).
-
Click once on the mozilla-win32.zip link. The file will be downloaded to
your default folder.
-
Click on the mozilla-win32.zip file to launch WinZip.
-
After clicking "I Agree" to terms of WinZip shareware, click the Extract
button in the WinZip tool bar. An x86 folder with application and associated
files will be unzipped.
-
Select Apprunner from x86 folder to launch the program.
-
Run "apprunner.exe" to use browser and mail.
-
Run "viewer.exe" to run only the gecko layout engine
Note: To use your current bookmarks with M9, you should overwrite
the default M9 bookmark file with your own, for example, copy "C:\Program
"files\Netscape\Users\<profile_name>\bookmark.htm" to "x86rel\res\rdf\bookmarks.html"
Note that the file name changes slightly and that 'profile_name>'
needs to be replaced by your user profile name.
Mail Instructions for Win32
IMPORTANT: Please see the information in the mail/news
pref document to correctly set up your mail preferences file.
Installation Instructions -- Mac OS
If you have StuffIt Expander™ installed and your browser is configured
to use it:
-
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.
-
Open the mozilla-mac folder and double-click the file "apprunner." (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:
-
Make sure you have StuffIt™ somewhere on your hard drive.
-
Click and hold the mozilla-mac.sea.bin link.
-
Choose "Save this link as...".
You will see a file dialog box where you can select where you want
to save the file (for example, your Desktop).
-
Click the Save button.
-
Double-click on the newly created icon "mozilla-mac.sea.bin".
-
StuffIt™ will start up and simultaneously create a file "mozilla-mac.sea",
and a folder called "mozilla-mac."
-
Open the mozilla-mac folder and double-click the file "apprunner." (Note:
you no longer need the .bin or .sea files.)
Note: To use your current bookmarks with M9, you should overwrite
the default M9 bookmark file with your own. Copy your bookmark file, located
in your profile directory (example: "{Hard Disk}:System Folder:Preferences:Netscape
Users:{Profile Name}") into your "{Mozilla Binary Location}/res/rdf/" folder.
Mail Instructions for Macintosh
IMPORTANT: Please see the information in the mail/news
pref document to correctly set up your mail preferences file.
Uninstalling the M9 Release Build
Linux
-
Remove the /package directory where you installed Seamonkey
-
Remove the ~/.mozilla directory, which contains profile information
Windows
-
Delete the \x86rel directory where you installed Seamonkey
-
Delete c:\windows\mozregistry.dat
-
Delete the user profile directory, \users50
Mac OS
-
Remove the the folder Mozilla in the Documents folder
-
Remove the file "Mozilla Registry" in the System Folder | Preferences folder
-
Remove the folder where you installed Seamonkey (probably mozilla-mac-M9)
Files Created or Used
Windows |
user/ |
$windir/ |
bin/ |
prefs.js (Preferences file (used))
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) |
mozregistry.dat (the Mozilla registry) |
localstore.rdf (the Mozilla registry) |
Unix |
user/ |
~/.mozilla/ |
/tmp/localstore |
prefs.js in ~/.mozilla/[profile] (preferences
file (use))
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) |
registry (the Mozilla registry) |
localstore.rdf |
Mac |
TBA |
TBA |
TBA |
*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:
user.pref ("network.cookie.rememberAboutCookies", true);
Limited Support Features
Available Navigator Functionality
Functionality |
Description |
Comments |
Back, Forward, Reload |
|
|
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 |
|
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 M9 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. |
|
Available Mail/News Functionality
Functionality |
Description |
Start Mail |
Run Apprunner 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 (note: on send, the compose message
window doesn't close) |
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. To post to
hosts other than news.mozilla.org, set the "network.hosts.nntp_server"
preference (the default NNTP server preference). Currently, the default
value of this preference is "news.mozilla.org". |
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 |
Using the prefs and the newsrc files (and if needed, the fat or NewsFAT
files), 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 delete button (or the
Edit | Delete Message menu item) cancels the article. As with 4.x, you
can only cancel one article at a time.
Due to several dialog / alert bugs, you won't see the confirmation dialog
("are you sure you want to do this?") or the alert open cancellation. ("message
cancelled."). For now, On Windows and UNIX, look for these messages in
the console window. |
Address Book |
The Personal Address Book is displayed in the left pane. LDAP and additional
address books are not working yet. |
Additional Mail Functionality
-
The multiple POP accounts feature is available for you to try out. In your
preferences file, add another account name to this line:
user_pref("mail.accountmanager.accounts", "account1,account2");
-
You will need to have identity and server information for the second account.
For example:
user_pref("mail.account.account2.identities", id2"); user_pref("mail.account.account2.server",
"server2");
where id2 and server2 preference lines exist and point to actual servers,
etc.
-
You can use the Address Book window and the Select Address dialog. The
Personal Address Book is working for adding cards, editing cards, and deleting
cards. LDAP and additional address books are not working yet. The data
is stored in a file called "abook.mab". It is not yet possible to use the
address book data from the mail compose window.
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 |
Scrolls document but doesn't reposition cursor. (bug 5709) |
Left/Right arrows |
Works correctly. |
File menu |
New, Open, Save, Save As, and Quit work correctly. PrintSetup, Print
Preview, and Print are not functional. (bugs 11767,
10664,
and 8806) |
Edit menu |
Undo, Redo, Cut, Copy, Paste, Select All, and Find work correctly.
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, and Table work correctly. Target, HTML
Tag, Line Break, and Break Below Images are not functional. (bug 11771) |
Format menu |
Font options, size, style, and color work correctly. Paragraph options
work correctly. Remove All Styles option does not function. (bug 11794) |
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 bugs. |
|
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
General Browser Issues
-
Selecting "Submit" on a form may cause a crash. (bug 11883)
-
If about:blank is the href for a linked stylesheet, a crash will occur.
(bug 10273)
-
Calling a blocking read on nsHTTPChannel will cause a crash. (bug 11112)
-
A crash may occur if you print from Apprunner and then reload the page.
(bug 12023)
-
(Linux only) In 256 colors, loading the test10.html document in Apprunner
will cause a crash. (bug 11090)
-
Loading problems (possible crash or freeze) sometimes occur on pages that
contain applets.
-
Pages that contain pop-up user authentication will cause problems (possible
browser hang or crash). (bug 12137)
-
Sites that set multiple cookies will not work correctly. (bug 11630)
-
You may not be able to log in to some sites because of problems with cookies.
(bug 11610)
-
Plugins that use streaming, such as audio or video, will not work. (bug
11376)
-
FTP is not functional in M9. (bug 10737)
-
Several problems are under investigation for the URL http://my.netscape.com.
The first time you log into My Netscape, you will have to click the button
twice to open your personal page.
-
The following toolbar and menu items are either not fully functional or
disabled:
-
The Back, Forward, and Stop buttons often appear to be inactive (grayed)
when they are actually active. Although mousing over them or clicking them
may produce no visual feedback, the appropriate action is taken. (bug 7909)
-
The Back button doesn't work with manually entered URLs or URLs accessed
through bookmarks
-
The Stop button fails intermittently
-
The Close menu item doesn't work (use the close box to close windows)
-
Print (toolbar button & menu item) and Print Preview fail intermittently
-
Keyboard shortcuts/command keys are not available for most menu items with
the exception of the following for the mail compose and editor window:
Ctrl-C (copy), Ctrl-V (paste), Ctrl-Z (undo). and Ctrl-Y(redo) and their
Mac OS equivalents. The old Unix equivalents (using Alt- instead of Ctrl-)
don't work; use Ctrl- .
-
Within Viewer, many options within the Debug & Tools menu items are
not currently working or produce unpredictable results.
-
Windows only:
-
Links on pages that use CSS do not work.
-
If you have a second video display monitor connected to your computer,
links displayed on that monitor will not work.
-
Selecting the Print option causes crashes.
-
The Wallet feature does not work correctly.
-
Mac OS only:
-
Apprunner will not launch if you change the Seamonkey folder name to include
a forward slash ("/"). (bug 8503)
-
If an included .css file is missing, the application will crash.
-
Cookies are not yet ready.
-
The throbber, mozilla animation in the upper right corner of a page, may
not work while the page is loading, though the page still loads.
-
Linux only:
-
The Back and Forward buttons do not work for manually entered URLs.
-
The throbber, mozilla animation in the upper right corner of a page, may
not work while the page is loading, though the page still loads.
-
Solaris only:
-
The Copy command in the browser's Edit menu is not working. (bug 6253)
Issues with Bookmarks and History
-
MacOS: Bookmarks do not appear when you select Manage Bookmarks from the
Bookmarks menu.
-
The Manage Bookmarks option is not working correctly. (bug 10807.)
-
Double-clicking a bookmarks folder spawns a new window. (bug 10811.)
-
(Mac OS only) Adding a bookmark does not dynamically update the UI. (bug
7142.)
Sidebar Issues
-
You cannot yet add or remove sidebar panels using the UI.
-
Changes you make in the Customization dialog will not be reflected in the
Sidebar.
-
General Sidebar UI is not finished.
Issues With Profiles
-
IMPORTANT: All the information regarding profiles is stored in the registry
file. The registry file gets created even if you have used earlier versions
of Apprunner. When you check out a new build, make sure you delete or rename
the following items before you install, build, and run the new executable:
-
Windows mozregistry.dat ( c:\winnt or c:\windows or equivalent),
-
Mac OS Mozilla Registry (System Folder:Preferences),
-
Linux registry (~/.mozilla/)
-
The ProfileManager feature has been added. You open Profile Manager with
the command line argument : -ProfileManager. The Profile Manager user interface
appears, supporting creating a new profile, and deleting and renaming existing
profiles. When you finish any of the tasks you can click Exit to quit the
Profile Manager. You can click a Start Communicator button to start Apprunner
with a selected profile. Also, users can migrate 4.5 Communicator profiles
(Windows only, for now).
-
Various command line options to create and manage profiles are:
# apprunner -P <Profilename>
Runs Apprunner with the <Profilename>.
# apprunner -CreateProfile "<Profilename> <ProfileDir>"
Creates a profile (i.e., <Profilename>) and creates a directory
at the specified location i.e., <Profiledir> and launches Apprunner.
# apprunner -CreateProfile <Profilename>
Creates a profile and creates a profile directory under default
profile location.
# apprunner -ProfileWizard
Launches the Create Profile Wizard to create a new profile.
The Create Profile Wizard lets users create a new profile at the default
location or the location of their choice. At the end of the process a profile
is created and marked as the current profile, and Apprunner is launched
with that profile. The wizard is currently just two screens. Mail and News
related preferences/information will be collected by a different application.
# apprunner -ProfileManager
Brings up Profile Manager for managing profiles. Users can
select a profile and click on the Start Communicator button to launch Apprunner
with the chosen profile. The current profile (usually the last used profile)
appears preselected.
# apprunner
Several scenarios:
number of profiles = 0 --> Brings up Create Profile Wizard
number of profiles = 1 --> Launches Apprunner directly
with that profile
number of profiles > 1 --> Brings up Profile Manager
Default profile locations for profile directories are <3 levels
up from the exe location>\Users50, on Windows :Documents:Mozilla:Users50:
on Mac OS, and ~/.mozilla on Linux.
-
Profile Migration (on Windows only): 4.5 profiles now can be migrated to
5.0. In the process of migration, 4.5 profile information is undisturbed.
In 5.0 the new location for the migrated profiles is the default location
as mentioned in the above paragraph. Migration is functional on Windows
only, but will soon be extended to the Mac OS. (A date for Linux availability
is currently unknown.)
To migrate 4.5 profiles, run Apprunner with the command line option
-installer.
The profile to be migrated is listed as <profilename> - migrate
in the Profile Manager's list box. Users can select a profile to be migrated
and click on the Migrate button. If the migration is done successfully,
the suffix ' - migrate' disappears in the display, marking that profile
as a 5.0 profile. Currently, only the prefs.js file and mail and news folders
are copied in the migration process. Users cannot rename or start Communicator
with a profile that must be migrated. With the changes that went in at
the end of M7, it is required to create a 5.0 profile before using the
migration service. This will be fixed in M8 (so that there is no dependency
on having a 5.0 profile).
-
Mac OS only: In creating your default profile, don't use spaces in the
profile name. The actual folder will be named with "%20" for each space
you include. As a result, if you use Messenger, your mail folders will
not load or display. (bug 6744)
-
To use mail, you must manually set up your prefs.js file, following the
directions in the "mozilla mail/news prefs" document. Then copy your prefs.js
file to the location where your new profile is created after using the
Profile Manager/Wizard. If you have previously used Messenger and have
all your mail preferences set, just copy the prefs.js to the profile location/directory.
-
If the Bookmarks menu has only the Add Current Page and Manage Bookmarks
menu items, and they are not followed by a list of bookmarks, then bookmarking
will not work correctly until you do one of the following:
-
Migrate an old 4.x profile over to Seamonkey, or
-
Create a new profile by following these steps:
-
Remove your current profiles and mozregistry.
-
For Windows, remove the "mozregistry.dat" file in your Windows (or winnt)
directory; also remove the entire "Users50" directory.
-
For Mac OS, remove the "Mozilla Registry" file from your Preferences folder
(System Folder|Preferences|Mozilla Registry). Then remove the "Users50"
folder from the Documents folder that was placed on your hard drive when
you installed Seamonkey (documents|mozilla|Users50).
-
For Linux, remove the .mozilla/ directory.
-
Launch Seamonkey and create your new profile. The menus should now appear
and behave normally.
(See also bug 9505)
Issues With Preferences
-
The preferences UI is not functional in the 8.5 release.
-
Information about preferences related to saving username/password or form
data:
-
To see a warning prompt before saving username/password or form data, set
the following preference (by hand) in your prefs.js file:
user_pref("wallet.useDialogs", true);
This pref is false by default, so saving will be done silently. This
is done because there currently are no dialog boxes and the warning prompt
would occur in the console window.
-
To suppress saving of form data altogether, set the following preference
(by hand) in your prefs.js file:
user_pref("wallet.captureForms", false);
This preference is true by default.
-
To supress saving of username/password, set the following preference (by
hand) in your prefs.js file:
user_pref("network.singon.rememberSignons", false);
This preference is true by default.
-
(Windows only) Preferences now load, but are not completely functional.
Editor Issues
-
In Forms, the Text Input and Select objects do not submit the values assigned
to them through HTML code. (bug 12475)
-
Using the pulldowns menus in the Editor window causes the browser window
to move to the foreground, making it problematic to continue selecting
any item from an Editor menu. (bug 12094)
-
In the Format menu, if you choose Apply Style Sheet and then choose Oldstyle
or one of the other W3C style sheets at the bottom of the submenu, a crash
will occur.
-
The editor doesn't launch on the Mac OS. (bug 9701)
-
Ctrl-I/B/U causes text to disappear (bug 8123)
-
List items don't show levels (disc, square, numbers, etc.) (bug 8435)
-
Printing is not working. (bug 8806)
-
Preview is not working. (bug 9200)
-
The Image dialog is not fully implemented. (bugs 9751,
9753,
9754,
9755,
and
9757)
-
Table editing needs to be implemented. (bug 6256)
-
Linux: Apprunner may crash on launch. (bug 8849)
-
Linux (Solaris) only: Highlighting doesn't work. (bug 10699)
-
Linux only: Pull-down menus don't work in the editor. (bug 11583)
Java Issues
-
If you have installed the latest JRE 1.2 from Sun Microsystems, you may
crash at startup if the Java plugin is present. To fix this, remove the
following dlls from the Plugins folder located in your 4.5 (or later) Communicator
directory: npjava32.dll, npjava12.dll and npjava11.dll.
-
On Linux, Java is not yet implemented.
Javascript Issues
-
document.write fails to write HTML tags and any text written before the
last tag. (bug 11141)
-
JavaScript alert dialogs are not being displayed. (bug 4279)
-
None of the JavaScript window.xxx() functions work with AppRunner windows.
Windows can be opened using the ToolkitCore, but those windows don't play
well with most of the JavaScript properties and methods.
-
"javascript:" is not working.
Issues With Small Fonts on Linux
-
If the fonts are too small in your environment, it may be possible to alleviate
this by setting a preference in Mozilla. Add a line like the following
to the preferences file (~/.mozilla/prefs.js):
user_pref("browser.screen_resolution", 120);
This sets the dpi to 120. If you set the pref to zero (0), Mozilla will
use the X server's dpi value. If the pref is not set, it uses the default
value of 96.
There is some info about setting the X server's DPI value at http://www.mozilla.org/unix/dpi.html.
If your fonts are still too small (or too large) after setting the DPI
correctly, you can adjust the font size as follows:
setenv GECKO_FONT_SIZE_FACTOR 1.5
Note that the latter only affects fonts. The screen_resolution preference
affects anything that specifies absolute size (e.g. CSS "pt" points).
Known Issues in Mail and News
M9 International Issues
For updated information on features,
fonts, and testing for Internationalization, visit this
page.
General:
I18n Engineering and Milestone Tasks document is now available
here.
I18n Beta 1 Feature Plan is now available here.
I18n Beta 1 Mail/News Functional specifications are now available
here.
-
If you have used an earlier version of Mozilla 5.0, we recommend that you
delete the file called mozregistry.dat (Win) or registry (Unix/Mac)
before
you run M9 apprunner. (Don't delete Netscape Registry file for Mac,
which is for Communicator 4.x.) Read the section in the Release Notes called
Files
Used or Created to find out where you can find these files.
-
Also read the Installation instructions for your platform carefully in
this Release Notes.
-
When you start M9 after having deleted mozregistry.dat or registry,
you
will be asked to create a new profile. If you name an existing profile,
that profile will be used. Otherwise "Default" profile will be created.
If this latter happens, you can replace the prefs.js file in the
Default folder with the one from an existing profile directory. (Note that
the
default profile name changed from prefs50.js (of M8 and earlier)
to prefs.js in M9.)
-
If you want to report international bugs, use the
Bugzilla.
If you have a question or comment, post a news article to: netscape.public.mozilla.qa.i18n.
Browser:
-
There have been a number of improvements via international bug fixes. Mozilla
should be more stable and usable than M8 in displaying pages in all the
Character sets we support.
-
The new network lib is now in Mozilla: Necko has landed. Network
protocol-related performance should improve considerably. We need your
help in testing a variety of network protocols. Our implementation should
meet the requirements of network-related RFCs. If you find a problem, please
file
a bug or let us know at:
netscape.public.mozilla.qa.i18n.
-
Display of non-ASCII form elements is now possible
with the use of the new GFX widget. Because it still has some bugs
left, the GFX widget is not turned on as the default yet but you can use
it with the following
prefs.js setting. Try non-ASCII form elements
with this feature turned on. If you find problems with form elements, please
file a bug here.
Note: Turning
this widget on has various side effects, particularly in Editor and Mail.
So, use it with caution.
user_pref("nglayout.widget.mode", 2);
-
M9 converter(s): There are no new converters in M9. See here
for a list of all the converters at M9. (Note:
Not all menu items may be displayed in the Character Set menu for Windows
and Unix clients because the menu does not scroll yet, but they can be
enabled by simple modification of appropriate .xul and .dtd
files. See below for details on how
to modify these files.)
-
Unix charset testing: As mentioned in the M7 Release Notes,
the display for the supported charsets except Armenian, Thai, and Vietnamese
should be working now. We would like users to continue to look at
various Unix charsets and file a
bug if a problem is found. The list of the supported charsets at M9
can be found
below.
Please
download the Unix binary and check out our support for these character
sets.
(Note: You need appropriate fonts to display these languages
-- pcf.gz format on Linux. Visit this
site for ISO and Cyrillic BDF fonts, and this
site for multi-byte language fonts. For converting from BDF to PCF
format fonts, use bdftopcf utility.)
-
Charset Auto-detection modules:
-
now can be selected via a prefs.js setting: Auto charset detection
is currently not turned on by default. As mentioned in the M8 notes, several
charset detection modules (CJK + Russian & Ukrainian) had been checked
into the code. In M9 we made it possible for you to designate your favorite
auto-charset detector (one at a time) via the following entry in your prefs.js
file:
user_pref("intl.charset.detector", "chardet_name");
** Valid values for chardet_name are: japsm, kopsm, cjkpsm, zhpsm,
zhtwpsm, zhcnpsm, ruprob, ukprob. See here
for details.
As reported before, unit testing can be done via a utility called "Detectch.exe"
found in the same directory as the "apprunner.exe" file. Read the usage
instruction
here.
-
Japanese auto-detection module has been revised for M9: We need
a lot of users testing Japanese auto-detection module under many different
conditions and pages. Let us know if the new module is working as intended.
Bugzilla
or netscape.public.mozilla.qa.i18n.
-
XPIDL interfaces have been checked in for:
-
nsILocale, strres, and date/time formatting. See here
for details and examples.
-
Mac: Baltic display: ISO-8859-13: You may experience a problem in
Baltic ISO-8859-13 display in that some of the uppercase characters may
be missing the diacritical marks above them showing only the base characters.
The same problem might also exist for Baltic ISO-8859-4 display.
See Bug 9165.
-
One Workaround:
-
1) Install a Central European script bundle (CE) from this
Apple file. (You need DiskCopy utility to mount this image). After
you mount this disk image, rather than using the Installer, open the System
file directory by double-clicking on it. In it, you will find among others,
CE (script), Slovak (keyboard layout), and slovensk (keyboard layout).
Drag these files to your current System Folder. Mac OS will then place
them in the right places.
-
2) Next, get the fonts for Central European from this
Apple file. Once you mount this image file with DiskCopy, you will
find a number of CE fonts. Drag and drop them onto your System Folder.
Mac OS will then place them in an appropriate folder.
-
3) After steps 1 and 2 are completed, re-start your Mac. You should now
see ISO-8859-13 (also ISO-88594) characters correctly.
-
On Mac: At M6, multi-font rendering code was re-written to improve
on display performance. We are still evaluating this code for M9 and we
would like people to continue to evaluate performance for this feature,
particularly performance/speed issues in loading. If you find performance
problems, please file a bug.
-
View | Character Set menu: You can switch to different Character
coding upon encountering a page which does not have a meta charset
tag. You will not see a checkmark next to the menu item yet, however.
-
View | Character
Set menu Display problem workaround: The list is currently too
long and unwieldy -- overall charset menu specs are under consideration.
-
There is no scrollable menu yet for Unix and Windows clients. Thus the
Character set menu items may not be all visible on these platforms even
if your monitor size is 21-inch. If you have this problem and would like
to try a workaround, please read this
file.
-
On Mac: Pages with multiple-frame and other special conditions
may not finish loading easily. Under such a condition, changing a charset
menu selection may not reload the pages under a new encoding. If you encounter
this problem, click on the Reload button or click into the location bar
and hit the "Enter" key. This should complete the loading process and then
you can switch to another encoding using the View | Character Set menu.
See Bug 9715
for details.
Editor: For IME specifications, see this
document by Tague Griffith.
-
Editor has now a Character Set menu: With this menu, you can now
save editor documents into different encodings. On a new document, change
the encoding to the one you would like to save the document in and then
use Bugs or comments to: Bugzilla
or netscape.public.mozilla.qa.i18n.
-
Currently this menu does not reload a document. It can only be used to
save a document into a different charset at the save time. This menu will
be re-worked extensively for M10/M11.
-
CJK IME candidate window for inline input is now positioned slightly
to the right and below the active input area. Bugs or comments to: Bugzilla
or netscape.public.mozilla.qa.i18n.
-
Input Method support has been improved through several other bug fixes.
-
It would be very helpful to us if users can look
at commercial CJK IMEs for Windows an Mac to let us know how they
work with the current 5.0 IME support. File
a bug if you find any problems.
-
What has been enabled up to M9: (Still awaiting the new Ender/Editor
enablement.)
-
CJK IMEs on Windows and Mac.
-
Keyboard support for many one-byte languages on Windows: Please
file a bug if you find a problem in your language or keyboard.
-
Keyboard support for many one-byte languages on Mac: Roman Australian,
Brazilian, British, Canadian-CSA, Canadian-ISO, Canadian-French, Dutch,
dv-Dvorak, dq-Dvorak-Qwerty, Finnish, Flemish, French, French-numerical,
German, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish, Spanish-ISO, Swedish, Swiss French,
Swiss German, Cyrillic Bulgarian, Cyrillic-Qwerty, Russian, Ukrainian.
Localizability:
-
Localization framework has been explicitly defined:
-
A large percentage of localizable strings have now been extracted
from .xul into .dtd (or property files) files. The .dtd
files are found under ../chrome/component_name/locale/en-US
directory. They match the names of the corresponding .xul files
which are placed under:
../chrome/component_name/content/default
directory.
(Note: property files, which can also be localized, are found under ../res
directory but currently there are only a few examples of this type of files.)
-
To extract .XUL entities into DTD files for localization, read this
document. Here are a set of steps needed to create a localized .dtd
resource files.
-
XUL/XML/RDF files assume the default charset to be in UTF-8. If you change
UI strings to your favorite language, they should show OK as long as the
localized files use UTF-8 charset. (You can change menus to Japanese, for
example, in ..chrome/navigator/locale/en-US/navigator.dtd file using
the method suggested above and then convert the DTD file to UTF-8.) The
menu items generally cannot be in languages your system does not support,
e.g. no Japanese menu for US Windows is possible at the moment.
-
DTD/XML encoding definition is not supported yet -- therefore you
cannot use charsets other than UTF-8 as the resource file charset.
We assume UTF-8 as default. Cf. Bug
4431.
-
UTF-8 conversion utility:
-
Use convenient converter utilities such as "uniconv"
(for Windows and Unix) or "native2ascii" utility included in the latest
JDK.
-
New Character Set conversion utility!: Mozilla now has its own Character
Encoding conversion utility (courtesy of Frank
Tang) in the binary distribution. It is called nsconv and is
installed in the same directory as your apprunner executable. You
can use any Character set names recognizable to Mozilla in the use of utility.
Here's the basic command line for using this utility:
nsconv -f source_charsetname -t target_charsetname
source_filename > new_filename
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String Resource/Bundle Fallback mechanism: Basic fallback for choosing
locale-specific string resource files have been checked in. A self-test
unit is available in "Stringbu.exe" program found in the same directory
where the "apprunner.exe" is located. See Bug
8188 for details on how to use the test program.
Mail/News (Testing done on Windows only):
-
Preferences file: prefs.js (Note
the change from prefs50.js used up to M8. You can make a copy of prefs50.js
and name it prefs.js.)
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Important: Though this may not be documented
elsewhere, if you want to display mail messages on Windows platforms, you
must have an existing directory called "C:\Temp". It must be this
exact name. For example, "C:\Tmp" will not do - and it must
exist on the C drive. If the directory with this name does not exist on
your C drive, create one yourself because Mozilla at present cannot display
a message unless it can create a temporary file in this directory.
-
Password: Starting with M9, Mozilla
now ignores the password provided in the prefs.js file. You will
be asked to provide a password via a dialog prompt.
-
Mail (POP & IMAP) and News viewing does not work unless you have a
correct prefs.js file in the correct location for your platform.
Read this page
and set up the correct preferences before you do any mail testing. For
the location of the prefs.js file, read the installation instructions
for your platform on this page - see above.
-
In addition to the general preferences items, international users might
want to pay attention to the following lines in the prefs.js. The
first control which auto-detection module to use for mail attachments,
the second controls HTML/Plain Text mail option, the third and the fourth
are musts for sending out properly MIME-encoded mail body and headers,
respectively. If you want to send Plain text mail, set the second option's
value to "false". Basic HTML mail send is working for Latin 1, Japanese,
UTF-8 and probably other languages supported in the Character Set menu
for Mail Composer. Here are the relevant prefs.js settings.
-
user_pref("intl.charset.detector", "chardet_name");
<-- use charset detector to detect attachment encodings.
-
Valid values for chardet_name are: japsm, kopsm, cjkpsm, zhpsm,
zhtwpsm, zhcnpsm, ruprob, ukprob. See here
for detail
-
user_pref("mail.identity.idX.compose_html",
true); <-- default is "true"
-
... where "X" in 'idX' should be replaced by a number which corresponds
to your account identities number, e.g. id0, id1, etc.
-
The above is for HTML mail send. For Plain Text mail send, change the value
to "false".
-
Prior to M8, this was controlled by: user_pref("mail.identity.idX.send_html",
false); <-- this has been obsoleted.
-
user_pref("mail.strictly_mime", true); //No need to set this line
unless you want a false value.
-
user_pref("mail.strictly_mime_headers", true);
//No need to set this line unless you want a false value.
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Downloading POP mail for the first time:
-
If the POP Mail directory designated in your prefs.js file contains
no existing folder (i.e. new), it may require patience to get your
mail downloaded for the first time. Here are some suggestions to get through
this initial stage:
-
When you first open the POP server folder, make sure to wait to until the
"progress status" bar at bottom left of your window has stopped being "active".
If you try to get new msgs while the progress bar is still active, Mozilla
is very likely to freeze. One way to stop the "progress bar" is to select
an existing message in one of your local folders. (Just copy a small mailbox
file from 4.x client into the mail directory for 5.0 and use it for this
purpose.)
-
Once the progress bar has stopped being active, press "Get Msgs" button.
This will bring up the password prompt, provide the correct password and
press OK. Now wait patiently until the mail is completely downloaded from
your POP mail server. POP mail downloading is very slow right now and depending
on how many messages the server has, it may take 5-10 minutes for the downloading
to complete. We recommend not using a mailbox if it contains more than
100-200 messages.
-
The POP option is for leaving mail behind on the server after the
messages have been downloaded. We recommend that you use a test mail account
for this purpose rather than using your regular mail account.
-
Japanese attachments auto-detection improved further for M9: The
Japanese auto-detection module has been improved. There is no need to set
Character Set menu for Japanese file attachments. (currently there is a
bug which corrupts EUC-JP page display.) You just need to set
an appropriate (japsm) auto-detection module in the pres.js file.
Display of non-ASCII attachment names is also working.
-
View | Character Set menu and thread pane reloading:
-
The menu change causes the thread pane to reload properly. This makes it
possible to display non-MIME-encoded headers which don't match the current
Character Set menu setting. Headers in the message viewing window
still have a problem of displaying non-MIME-encoded headers.
-
IMAP Latin 1 folder name: displays OK. Multi-byte folder names (e.g.
CJK) don't work yet.
-
International Sorting in Thread pane headers: now works well
in the Subject headers. For Sender headers, there is a bug
which had been fixed for M10 but not for this release-- see Bug
8455. Sorting should be done according to the sort default for the
language of your operating system. Date/Time sorting now seems to be working
as it should rather than alphabetically as in M8.
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International Date/Time format: now works for NT4 only for
all locales. (On all other platforms, it works for Latin1 locale only.)
The format will be used according to your OS's date/time format setting.
See Bug 9229.
-
Multi-lingual mail viewing: This is working
on all platforms.
-
Multilingual viewing is working on IMAP, POP3 and NNTP servers as long
as the messages contain properly MIME-encoded headers and body with correct
charset parameters.
-
View | Character Set menu is currently not working to override wrong MIME
charset label, or view msgs which have no MIME charset (except for Latin
1) specified.
-
If you have a multilingual font or several fonts which together cover the
Unicode ranges (e.g. Chinese, Japanese, Korean fonts + Pan-European fonts),
we use them in displaying mail messages and headers for all the languages
we support. We pay attention to the charset parameter in the Content-Type
header and switch to an appropriate font. The Character Set menu is not
needed to switch to different language views unless the message you're
viewing is incorrectly labeled. If you would like a basic mono-weight multi-lingual
font, you can get Bitstream Cyberbit font 2.0 here.
-
Attachments should be viewable if they are of the same charset as the main
body of the mail. You can also turn on an appropriate auto-charset detector
as discussed above.
-
View | Character Set menu for New Mail Compose window is working
for sending mail for many additional languages. Switch to the charset you
want to compose a message in and then compose the message. You
will not see a checkmark next to the menu item yet, however.
-
Sending Latin 1 & Japanese attachments: is
generally working now for attaching local files. File | Send Page
is not working currently.
-
Message Send Status summary for Latin 1 and Japanese:
No indicates that the functionality is not working well.
Message send feature
|
Latin 1 (ISO-8859-1)
|
Japanese (iso-2022-jp)
|
Header (subject, address)
|
Yes
|
No (Awaiting new Ender widget)
|
Body - HTML
|
Yes (HTML entities are used for 8-bit characters)
|
Yes
|
Body - plain
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Reply/forward header
|
Yes
|
No (Awaiting new Ender widget)
|
Reply/forward body html
|
Yes -- POP mail, No -- IMAP/NEWS (quotes accented characters
wrong) |
Yes -- POP mail, No -- IMAP/NEWS (quotes JPN characters in raw
JIS) |
Reply/forward body plain
|
No - POP (quotes accented characters wrong), Yes - IMAP,
NO
- News |
No - POP (corrupts data as in quoting), NO - IMAP/NEWS
(quotes
raw JIS characters) |
Send/View Attachment(s)
|
Yes (Send - local file only. View - can
be viewed inline if attachment has a meta charset tag or auto-detection
is on and detects the charset. Otherwise just as a link.) |
Yes (Send - local file only. View - an be viewed
inline if attachment has a meta charset tag or auto-detection is on and
detects the charset. Otherwise just as a link.) |
Copy/paste into headers and body
|
Yes (accented characters copy OK) |
No (for both headers and body) |
-
Composing Latin 1 Mail:
-
Copying/pasting accented characters into the headers and body works
-
Keyboard input into headers (e.g. subject) also works for accented characters.
Using the English keyboard for Latin 1 high-bit input, ALTGr + 0+Number
Keypad method works, e.g. Right ALT key + 0232.
-
Make sure to switch the View | Character Set to your chosen
Character set name before you send out a message.
-
Basic MIME compliance is there: Header Q encoding, and Body QP encoding
for accented characters.
-
Composing Japanese mail: works both for HTML and Plain text mail
now.
-
Basic Japanese input works for body. Japanese input/copying
into Subject header does not work yet, however. We are awaiting the arrival
of new Ender/Editor widgets for this feature.
-
Mail goes out in ISO-2022-JP. Header is B-encoded. (The Kanji-in
escape sequence is now correct -- that of JISX0208-1990/83. )
-
Make sure to switch the View | Character Set to Japanese (ISO-2022-JP)
before you send out a message.
-
Sending other charset mail -- is enabled.
Please try out these new charsets! For example, Central European, Cyrillic,
Greek, UTF-8, etc.
-
Though the mail text body can sense what keyboard you have selected and
will switch font accordingly, there may be mapping bugs with some international
keyboards. Copy/paste may work better. If you find a bug with your
charset/language, please file it here.
-
Reply/Forward: is not working all that well yet. Under POP mail,
Mozilla more or less quotes original mail correctly in header and body
and sends it out. Under IMAP/News mail, quoting is faulty with Latin 1
and Japanese mail body. If the original mail has a multi-part structure
containing web page attachments, there are some problems sending such mail.
Sometimes it simply does not go out.
-
Viewing News: is working. Multilingual news articles viewing works
if they have correct MIME charsets indicated in the articles. Be warned,
however, that newsgroups postings are not always MIME-compliant and this
could defeat our charset honoring mechanism.
Mail/News (for Mac and Linux)
-
We don't currently test these platforms for international features. Though
we cannot vouch for accuracy, many of our Windows features should be available
on these platforms also. Linux mail is somewhat behind Windows and
Mac, however.
Features that are not supported in M9:
-
No CJK IME support on Linux.
-
No posting non-ASCII forms data -- GFX widget dependent. See above.
-
No CJK printing on Linux.
-
HTTP charset won't be handled -- until the next release.
List of Charset Converters available
at M9:
Single-byte:
-
Western (ISO-8859-1, Windows-1252, MacRoman), Central European
(ISO-8859-2, Windows-1250, MacCE), South European/Esperanto/Maltese
(ISO-8859-3), Baltic/North European (ISO-8859-4, Windows-1257),
Baltic/North
European (ISO-8859-13), Cyrillic (ISO-8859-5, Windows-1251,
KOI8-R, ISO-IR-111 aka ECMA-Cyrillic, MacCyrillic, CP-866), Arabic
(ISO-8859-6, Windows-1256) - (not in spec, might be removed from commercial
build later) , Greek (ISO-8859-7, Windows-1253, MacGreek), Hebrew
(ISO-8859-8 aka Windows-1255) - (not in spec, might be removed from commercial
build later), Turkish (ISO-8859-9 aka Latin5, Windows-1254, MacTurkish),
Nordic/North
European (ISO-8859-10 aka Latin6), Celtic (ISO-8859-14),
Western
(ISO-8859-15),
Armenian (ARMISCII-8), Thai (TIS-620 aka Windows-874),
Ukrainian
(KOI8-U, MacUkrainian), Vietnamese (VISCII, Windows-1258, VIET-VPS,
VIET-TCVN5712), other Mac encodings (MacCroatian, MacIcelandic,
MacRomanian).
Multi-byte:
-
Japanese (Shift_JIS, EUC-JP), Traditional Chinese (Big5,
EUC-TW), Simplified Chinese (GB2312), Unicode (UTF-8, UCS-2,
UCS-4), Korean (EUC-KR), Western
(T.61-8bit) - support this for LDAP v2 and X.500.
Stateful:
-
Japanese (ISO-2022-JP), Unicode
(UTF-7, IMAP4-modified-UTF7- Needed for IMAP folder names)