Mozilla 1.5a Improves Composer & Tabs, Firebird-Based Release Delayed

Mozilla.org has released version 1.5a of its popular browser software. Mozilla 1.5a is based on the traditional browser suite instead of Mozilla Firebird, contrary to previous plans. Some of the most notable changes in this version are an updated Composer and improvements to tabbed browsing. From the release notes:

  • Many great improvements to Mozilla Composer including:
    • better resizing for images, tables and absolutely positioned objects
    • support for absolutely positioned objects, movable on the canvas using the mouse
    • support for z-index management
    • "snap to grid" when moving an absolutely positioned object
    • Source View now uses an editor instead of a simple textarea (allows find and replace)
    • numerous fixes in caret management, inline styles handling and CSS styles handling
  • Chatzilla now has support for logging and lots of bugfixes.
  • Dom Inspector can now display the #document node (the document root.)
  • A quicksearch filter has been implemented for about:config.
  • Improvements to tabbed browsing including:
    • 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 tabs.
    • Closing a window with multiple tabs now prompts the user with a confirmation dialog (which can be disabled for future close operations.)
  • It is now possible to jump from the JavaScript console to the relevant line in the View Source Window
  • The i::i notation for CSS pseudo-elements is now supported. The old i:i notation is still supported for the various -moz-* pseudo-elements, but will NOT be supported in 1.5b. Themes should be updated to use the i::i notation for pseudo-elements.

Mozilla 1.5a used the application suite because Mozilla Firebird was not ready to take its place as soon as originally expected. Mozilla can be downloaded at http://mozilla.org/releases/