Mozilla.org Releases Mozilla 1.2.1 Mac OS, OS X Browser

by , 5:00 PM EST, December 3rd, 2002

The good folks at the Mozilla organization have released an update to the Mozilla browser for Mac OS and Mac OS X. The new version is version 1.2.1, which fixes an issue with DHTML. Below, we have included the changes in the browser component of Mozilla 1.2.

Mozilla is the Open Source browser project built on the ashes of Netscape. Mozilla works in both Mac OS and Mac OS X, and the engine for Mozilla is the same engine being used to power the Cocoa browser for Mac OS X, Chimera. Mozilla features tabbed browsing, a very good rendering engine, and numerous other features. From Mozilla.org.

Mozilla 1.2.1 was released to correct a DHTML bug in Mozilla 1.2. The only difference between the two releases is the fix for this bug (Bug 182500). If you have already installed Mozilla 1.2, you should upgrade to Mozilla 1.2.1.

Browser Changes

Type Ahead Find is a new feature that allows quick navigation when you type a succession of characters in the browser, matching the text in one or more links on the page. To give it a spin just go to a web page, start typing, watch the typed characters highlight as they find a match in a link and hit enter to load the selected link. You can also use it to search for any text on the page by typing / before your search text. Read the full Type Ahead Find documentation to learn about all of its features, prefs and future plans.

Linux users should upgrade to the latest Flash 6 Beta. This new version fixes several problems including crashing with remote displays and hangs when the audio device is in use at the time Flash starts up. Mozilla 1.3 Alpha may not support Flash 5 or earlier so update now. (Bug 58339, 58937)

Building on Mozilla's customizability, you can now show toolbars as text/icons/both (in the default Classic theme). We also have a few other usability improvements like image selection visualization (image highlights with system selection color when selected) and the removal of the confusing toolbar grippies.

Improvements to native look and feel in both the browser interface and the browser content area. We now support most native GTK themes in Mozilla which means that your Mozilla toolbars and other widgets will pick up the GTK theme look and feel. We also support native look and feel for web content like form controls under windowsXP.

Making tabbed browsing even more useful, you can launch the browser with a group of bookmarks as your start page. This loads several pages into tabs at startup.

Keyboard access is greatly improved including additional access keys for menus, other UI elements and page elements.

We have a new features that utilizes browser idle time to download or prefetch documents that the user might visit in the near future. A web page author provides a set of prefetching hints, using the w3c standard <link> tag, and after the browser is finished loading that page, it begins silently prefetching specified documents and stores them in its cache. When the user visits one of the prefetched documents, it can be served up quickly out of the browser's cache. (See the Link Prefetching FAQ).

Java compatability with Mac OS 10.2 (Jaguar) has been repaired.

XML prettyprinting, similar to IEs default-view for XML is now available in Mozilla.

Mozilla is free, and you can find more information and download links for the update at the Mozilla.org Web site.

The Mac Observer Spin:

If you haven't checked out Mozilla or Chimera, do so now. They are both outstanding applications. Mozilla is the more full-featured of the two, while Chimera is a much faster browser, having been built from the ground up as a Cocoa app.

Mozilla.org