There is a new version of Mozilla available!  

What's New in Mozilla 1.4.1

This document outlines some of the new features implemented in Mozilla 1.4.1, important bugfixes and any new problems. It is by no means a comprehensive list of new features, fixes or bugs.

New Features and Fixes

* Mozilla on Windows now has support for NTLM authentication. This enables Mozilla to talk to MS web and proxy servers that are configured to use "windows integrated security".
   
* Mozilla's bookmarks have been overhauled. Bookmarks now include a root level folder, the ability to have two differently named bookmarks pointing at the same location, site icons in the Bookmark Manager and Bookmarks Sidebar, and separators now have support for labels.
   
* Composer now supports click and drag dynamic image and table resizing. If an image is selected or if the caret is placed inside a table, eight resizing handles appear and allow to resize the image/table with a simple click/drag/release. In the case of an image, the resizing is done real-time and a semi-opaque shadow of the image at its target size is shown during resizing. A tooltip shows in real-time the target size in pixels, and the relative change in pixels too.
   
* Mail now has junk-mail context menu items, a "delete junk mail" menu item and many other usability improvements for junk-mail controls.
   
* Pop-up blocking has been streamlined to improve usability.
   
* Users can now specify "blank page," "home page," or "Last page visited" for each of first window, new window and new tab.
   
* Users can now specify default font, size and color for HTML mail compose.
   
* Image blocking/disabling is now more flexible and users can "view image" to see blocked or not loaded images.
   
* "Launch file" after downloading has been enabled for .exe files
   
* It is possible to build Mozilla for Win32 using GCC. See the win32 build instructions for details.
   
* Proxy auto-config (PAC) failover has been implemented
   
* Mozilla 1.4.1 contains thousands of additional bugfixes, including changes to improve performance, stability, web site compatability, standards support, and usability.


You can download the new version from here >>>

Haven't tried 1.5 yet - they usually have a few bugs in them, but if you say it's OK, I might go for it, Sean.  One thing with 1.4.1 is you have to reinstall the Flash plug in.  Apart from that, and the inclusion on the spellchecker in the installation file, I haven't noticed much difference yet.  Has 1.5 got any new toys?

 

1.4.1 is just an update of 1.4, WD.  Nothing much is different about it.

OK, I've downloaded 1.5.  Quite honestly I haven't noticed any difference at all.  I think it must all be in the code, but as far as I can see, there's nothing in 1.5 that wasn't it 1.4.

The beauty of Mozilla is that if you keep the installation files, you can go back and forth between versions quite easily.  Unless you absolutely must have the latest version, there doesn't really seem any reason to update from 1.4, or 1.4.1.

That doesn't mean to say either version isn't a great improvement on IE!  

Here's the blurb on 1.5:

New Features and Fixes

    * Mozilla now includes a spellchecker for Mail/News and Composer.
    * Additional Mail/News improvements include:
          o Users can add header lines to every messsage sent out via a certain identity.
          o A common application hang with SSL-encrypted SMTP connections was fixed.
          o Printing of the attachments list is now supported.
          o Users can now mark message as read by date.
    * Many great improvements to Mozilla Composer including:
          o Better resizing for images, tables, and absolutely positioned objects.
          o Support for absolutely positioned objects, movable on the canvas using the mouse.
          o Support for z-index management.
          o "Snap to grid" when moving an absolutely positioned object.
          o Source View now uses an editor instead of a simple textarea (allows find and replace).
          o Numerous fixes in caret management, inline styles handling and CSS styles handling.
    * Improvements to tabbed browsing including:
          o Tabs are now replaced when a bookmark group is loaded. This can be changed to the old "append" behavior in the tabbed browsing preferences.
          o Back and Forward navigation for tabbed browsing and bookmark groups has been improved. Users can now use the back button after loading a bookmark group to restore the previous set of tabs.
          o Closing a window with multiple tabs now prompts the user with a confirmation dialog (which can be disabled for future close operations).
    * ChatZilla, Mozilla's internet relay chat client, has had a major overhaul bringing logging and many additional improvements.
    * Dom Inspector can now display the #document node (the document root).
    * It is now possible to jump from the JavaScript console to the relevant line in the View Source window
    * Mozilla's view source now displays line and column numbers in the status bar.
    * A quicksearch filter has been implemented for about:config.
    * Gecko now supports setting color for <HR>.
    * The '::' notation for CSS pseudo-elements is now supported. The old ':' notation is still supported for the various -moz-* pseudo-elements, but will not be supported in Mozilla 1.5. Themes should be updated to use the '::' notation for pseudo-elements.
    * Unstyled XML display has been improved.
    * Mozilla should no longer cause GDI problems on Windows.
    * A common problem collapsing the address field pop-up menu on Windows has been fixed.
    * Mozilla has improved performance, stability, standards support, and Web compatibility.

New Issues

These are items that have been added to the known issues page since the last milestone although, the bugs themselves may have existed previously:

    * Mozilla 1.5 is not compatible with older versions of Macromedia Flash for Macintosh (anything before version 6.0 r67). Macintosh users should upgrade to the latest version of Flash to avoid the possibility of crashes at some Flash sites. A free upgrade is available at Macromedia Flash Player Download Center for OS X.
    * The Linux binaries distributed by mozilla.org are now compiled with GCC 3.2. If you're using these binaries, popular plug-ins such as RealPlayer, compiled with previous versions of GCC, will not work. For more information, see bug 213234 and bug 158385.

You mean it's not worth upgrading from 1.4, Sean?  I suppose not, although the newer versions sometimes have bug fixes, which may not be visible to the end user, but could make Mozilla more stable.  I would recommend upgrading if users have the odd hiccup with 1.4.  I'm thinking of Michelle, perhaps?

This is one of the reasons I don't usually upgrade to the RC (beta) versions, until they are released as finished and fully tested versions.

Incidentally, the 'official' 1.5 has just been launched.  If you like to have the latest versions of your programs, you may like to update from 1.4, but as Sean said, the noticable changes are limited.  I would just say, however, that Moz is non profitable, so they wouldn't logically put out an updated version for no reason.

You'll lose now't Lass, well apart from any icon packs you downloaded, and mouse gestures   your skin will stay as it now, soft and silky