Future versions of Firefox on Windows 98

[oscardog]

I think some of the Cairo functions are going to be very difficult to implement.

I have just installed Opera 9 which still supports Win95 and is freeware (according to tucows anyway), and at the moment I am very impressed by its speed. I do hope it takes some of the market share from firefox and remind them how many users still run Win9x. Goodbye firefox

[BenoitRen]

There's more out there than Firefox using Gecko, dammit! I use SeaMonkey, and am a fan of K-Meleon.

I think some of the Cairo functions are going to be very difficult to implement.

So what? Difficult works too. No one said this was going to be easy.

[LLXX]

I don't know why every major open-source software seems to gradually get more bloated and less compatible.

I'll keep my IE 6.

[ivanbuto]

I think some of the Cairo functions are going to be very difficult to implement.

I have just installed Opera 9 which still supports Win95 and is freeware (according to tucows anyway), and at the moment I am very impressed by its speed. I do hope it takes some of the market share from firefox and remind them how many users still run Win9x. Goodbye firefox

Well, although it is likely Opera will keep support for Win9x for some time to come, you never know when they will cut it off. The power of open source is that anyone can contribute, i.e. there is an opportunity here with Firefox and continuing support for Win9x.

[ivanbuto]

I don't know why every major open-source software seems to gradually get more bloated and less compatible.

I'll keep my IE 6.

IE 6? Ugh... You know, I thought I would start arguing, but there is no point. I see, LLXX, that thus far you have been rather skeptical and critical about this whole thing... which is OK, to each his/her own... however, I think it would be best to remain constructive and try to move things forward. That's why I don't even want to argue about IE/Opera/Firefox, and matters of that sort...

As you have shown, you have some very good knowledge of programming, and should you choose to contribute, I am sure you would be very helpful...

Edited January 3, 2007 by ivanbuto

[oscardog]

I think some of the Cairo functions are going to be very difficult to implement.

I have just installed Opera 9 which still supports Win95 and is freeware (according to tucows anyway), and at the moment I am very impressed by its speed. I do hope it takes some of the market share from firefox and remind them how many users still run Win9x. Goodbye firefox

Well, although it is likely Opera will keep support for Win9x for some time to come, you never know when they will cut it off. The power of open source is that anyone can contribute, i.e. there is an opportunity here with Firefox and continuing support for Win9x.

GetGlyphIndices could be worked via a binary buffer search

UpdateLayeredWindow i am not sure what you might do with this and others, but good luck I hope you succeed, as mentioned why they add more bloat is very puzzling. They perhaps got the idea when co-operating with ms when trying to get it to work with vista perhaps

[BenoitRen]

I'll keep my IE 6.

You must like s***.

as mentioned why they add more bloat is very puzzling

Which bloat? Cairo is not bloat.

Currently, they have to maintain three different librairies to get Gecko to render on the major platforms. GDI for Windows, and whatever they use for Linux and Mac OS X.

With Cairo, they'll have to maintain just one library to get Gecko to render on all platforms. Easier, less time-consuming, and makes for less code, so it's actually less bloat. As an added bonus, it allows for better rendering. Gecko passes the Acid 2 test since early December on trunk!

I'm sure we wouldn't be complaining about how Cairo seems to bloat Gecko if it didn't make Mozilla drop Win9x support.

[oscardog]

I'll keep my IE 6.

You must like s***.

as mentioned why they add more bloat is very puzzling

Which bloat? Cairo is not bloat.

Currently, they have to maintain three different librairies to get Gecko to render on the major platforms. GDI for Windows, and whatever they use for Linux and Mac OS X.

With Cairo, they'll have to maintain just one library to get Gecko to render on all platforms. Easier, less time-consuming, and makes for less code, so it's actually less bloat. As an added bonus, it allows for better rendering. Gecko passes the Acid 2 test since early December on trunk!

I'm sure we wouldn't be complaining about how Cairo seems to bloat Gecko if it didn't make Mozilla drop Win9x support.

"Reducing codesize is great! But completely killing Win9x support by not even

allowing a customized build for Win9x? Yuk! (Cairo does not completely break

Win98 support, as it can be disabled.)"

"That it can be disabled is temporary. We'll remove that once we're on and good

on all win,mac,linux"

Moving to cairo for more rounded corners etc to pass acid 2 tests, disable the Cairo bloat and it might work, but only temporary because they will disable this, seems a very smart move, when opera works on 9x and passes the test.

[LLXX]

The reason for the bloat is because they decided to make it cross-platform.

Generality decreases efficiency.

I haven't had any problems with a secured IE6... if you do you must be doing something wrong.

[BenoitRen]

It's not only a security nightmare, it also has a f***ed-up behaviour when it comes to rendering web pages. Additionally, it's quite ancient in its support of web standards.

Edited January 5, 2007 by BenoitRen

[LLXX]

Don't forget that security vulnerabilities depend on many factors including the current configuration at the time.

If you allow scripting, activex, downloads, etc. for all sites of course you will soon be infected, since that is how most of the exploits work.

If you 'opened up' FireFox, you'd see pretty much the same result.

[BenoitRen]

And why do you have to disable scripting and downloads? Because its implementation is insecure!

Other browsers do not come with ActiveX, and you don't get infected if you allow scripting and downloading for all sites.

Edited January 5, 2007 by BenoitRen

[erpdude8]

And why do you have to disable scripting and downloads? Because its implementation is insecure!

Other browsers do not come with ActiveX, and you don't get infected if you allow scripting and downloading for all sites.

I agree with BenoitRen on this one. disabling scripting for ALL sites is a bad idea as that will break most sites that depend on scripts and the sites will not work as expected.

ONLY thing I hate about Firefox browsers is poor cookie management. Dang those Firefox makers need to make it easier for users to control what cookies to accept and what cookies to reject (and easier access to the Cookie controls feature). The Mozilla, Seamonkey, IE, Opera browsers have far BETTER controls for cookie management and Firefox browsers lack the ability to reject "third party" cookies.

Read bitman's statement in the Spybot "Firefox 2 immunization" forum thread:

http://forums.spybot.info/showthread.php?p=65158

It's a very interesting point he made about Firefox.

Edited January 20, 2007 by erpdude8

[oscardog]

And why do you have to disable scripting and downloads? Because its implementation is insecure!

Other browsers do not come with ActiveX, and you don't get infected if you allow scripting and downloading for all sites.

I agree with BenoitRen on this one. disabling scripting for ALL sites is a bad idea as that will break most sites that depend on scripts and the sites will not work as expected.

ONLY thing I hate about Firefox browsers is poor cookie management. Dang those Firefox makers need to make it easier for users to control what cookies to accept and what cookies to reject (and easier access to the Cookie controls feature). The Mozilla, Seamonkey, IE, Opera browsers have far BETTER controls for cookie management and Firefox browsers lack the ability to reject "third party" cookies.

Read bitman's statement in the Spybot "Firefox 2 immunization" forum thread:

http://forums.spybot.info/showthread.php?p=65158

It's a very interesting point he made about Firefox.

Myself I agree with LLXX, it is far more preferable to only allow trusted sites to have access to activex etc than to try to rectify circumvention, just my 2 pennies worth

[BenoitRen]

Firefox browsers lack the ability to reject "third party" cookies

That option was removed from the GUI in Firefox 2 because it never worked right in the first place. It's still there in SeaMonkey 1.1, but the implementation (in Gecko) is the same. It's a false sense of security.

it is far more preferable to only allow trusted sites to have access to activex etc than to try to rectify circumvention

No site should have access to ActiveX. It's far too dangerous. JavaScript should be secure, they were never designed to be able to do higher level stuff, so trust shouldn't be an issue. As for the download thing, that's just a vulnerability that got turned into an option, just like you can allow IE to read and change your clipboard, which shouldn't be possible in the first place.