Two tips for Mozilla users.
Straight_Man
Geeky, in my own wayNaples, FL Icrontian
First, beta 1.7 is out, and is it NEAT??? Yes!! Very!! Tip: It can live almost anywhere on your computer, so if you have Mozilla 1.6 you can keep it by telling the installer to use a different directory than Mozilla 1.6 uses (change mozilla to mozilla 17b in installer, it will happily keep itself to itself though you do not want to run both versions at once).
One codicil to this is that if you create a different profile name than default or your old profile name at profile import time, each Mozilla can have its own profile. Yuo do nto wnat them to both be default on Windows. On Linux, you can have two complete settigns diretcories, but you will get to hack the proper prefs.js file and change where the new or old mozzie hides its personal user profiles ALSO. I would change the old one before installign the new one. THUS, since the new Mozzie uses different prefs settings than the old one adn they might not be fully intercompatible, make this a change first thing please.
Second involves a dumb-user thing, during install (dumb-user was ME!)-- you will discover a neat thing about the installer if you read on.
I did custom install from the online installer. I use Thunderbird for email, so elected NOT to install the messenger part of Mozilla. Doofus me also managed to decide he had no idea of what the seperate Personal Security Manager did, so he unchecked that. Result: no bank sites would come up, though Mozilla DID tell me I needed to install Personal Security Manager.
Now, since there are not user docs for reinstall of PSM AND since the psm.xpi files used for older Mozillas is no longer used to rebuild PSM in an emergency and THAT info is kinda implied but never really stated, I had no idea how to proceed. Turned out to be too simple-- way too simple! in my case, I was in SuSE 9.0, but the Windows installer will do the same thing. Mozilla keeps its info for user settings, bookmarks, and etc. in another folder than the installer archives, and will grab old settings and if needed import them and make a new default for itself.
So, I finally figured this out crawling around Mozilla.org and decide to bite the bullet, and rerun the online installer. There are two things to note here. IF you choose same settings as before and ADD a module, the installer does something really neat if you use the online installer and save the old installer modules by checking the keep installer modules checkbox.
In this case, it had the modules, AND had the previous install log, so when I told it to delete the existing mozilla directory it not only did NOT do so, it grabbed just the PSM modules and proceeded to load that only into the Mozilla tree-- on broadband this whole process took about 3 minutes after I spent an hour figuring out that the only way I was going to get PSM in was to rerun same installer I had first run and that clicking the delete button when it said it needed to delete its old same version installer forced it to upgrade if it had its old install log and had same modules PLUS some checked.
In this case, being a packrat and keeping the dang install stuff intact while I completely went through and did almost everything the installer grabbed and NOT trying to clean up the junk for a while was actually a benefit.
OH, I had a non-running Mozilla 1.6 pack from the SuSE Cds, or I might have waited for a while before updating, but it loads faster, is smaller than Mozilla 1.6 and is REAL NEAT. Expect SOME fo the plugins for older Mozillas not to fully work, though, so simply keep your old one ALSO until you find out if there is anything critical to you supported by a older plugin. This version rocks, the bugs are MINOR, but make sure one that is NOT minor to YOU does not bite you by keeping your stable mozzie for now also, PLEASE.
Enough, this is a chapter, not a book, but Mozzie 1.7b rocks neatly for me. 1.7b is announced in abanner on the home page of http://www.mozilla.org/ and the banner has download links, do NOT use the download nav menu option to get this as you WILL get 1.6 instead.
John D.-- who for HONEST white-hat hacking-level techs (not crakcers or breakers, folks who fix things for themselves some and share fixes) of opensource type will also say that the installer is improved, the base for lots of mozzie in script is JAvaScript plus XUL (an XML variant). And I will add 1.7b likes many pages that 1.6 did not do well with, especially ASPX pages.
One codicil to this is that if you create a different profile name than default or your old profile name at profile import time, each Mozilla can have its own profile. Yuo do nto wnat them to both be default on Windows. On Linux, you can have two complete settigns diretcories, but you will get to hack the proper prefs.js file and change where the new or old mozzie hides its personal user profiles ALSO. I would change the old one before installign the new one. THUS, since the new Mozzie uses different prefs settings than the old one adn they might not be fully intercompatible, make this a change first thing please.
Second involves a dumb-user thing, during install (dumb-user was ME!)-- you will discover a neat thing about the installer if you read on.
I did custom install from the online installer. I use Thunderbird for email, so elected NOT to install the messenger part of Mozilla. Doofus me also managed to decide he had no idea of what the seperate Personal Security Manager did, so he unchecked that. Result: no bank sites would come up, though Mozilla DID tell me I needed to install Personal Security Manager.
Now, since there are not user docs for reinstall of PSM AND since the psm.xpi files used for older Mozillas is no longer used to rebuild PSM in an emergency and THAT info is kinda implied but never really stated, I had no idea how to proceed. Turned out to be too simple-- way too simple! in my case, I was in SuSE 9.0, but the Windows installer will do the same thing. Mozilla keeps its info for user settings, bookmarks, and etc. in another folder than the installer archives, and will grab old settings and if needed import them and make a new default for itself.
So, I finally figured this out crawling around Mozilla.org and decide to bite the bullet, and rerun the online installer. There are two things to note here. IF you choose same settings as before and ADD a module, the installer does something really neat if you use the online installer and save the old installer modules by checking the keep installer modules checkbox.
In this case, it had the modules, AND had the previous install log, so when I told it to delete the existing mozilla directory it not only did NOT do so, it grabbed just the PSM modules and proceeded to load that only into the Mozilla tree-- on broadband this whole process took about 3 minutes after I spent an hour figuring out that the only way I was going to get PSM in was to rerun same installer I had first run and that clicking the delete button when it said it needed to delete its old same version installer forced it to upgrade if it had its old install log and had same modules PLUS some checked.
In this case, being a packrat and keeping the dang install stuff intact while I completely went through and did almost everything the installer grabbed and NOT trying to clean up the junk for a while was actually a benefit.
OH, I had a non-running Mozilla 1.6 pack from the SuSE Cds, or I might have waited for a while before updating, but it loads faster, is smaller than Mozilla 1.6 and is REAL NEAT. Expect SOME fo the plugins for older Mozillas not to fully work, though, so simply keep your old one ALSO until you find out if there is anything critical to you supported by a older plugin. This version rocks, the bugs are MINOR, but make sure one that is NOT minor to YOU does not bite you by keeping your stable mozzie for now also, PLEASE.
Enough, this is a chapter, not a book, but Mozzie 1.7b rocks neatly for me. 1.7b is announced in abanner on the home page of http://www.mozilla.org/ and the banner has download links, do NOT use the download nav menu option to get this as you WILL get 1.6 instead.
John D.-- who for HONEST white-hat hacking-level techs (not crakcers or breakers, folks who fix things for themselves some and share fixes) of opensource type will also say that the installer is improved, the base for lots of mozzie in script is JAvaScript plus XUL (an XML variant). And I will add 1.7b likes many pages that 1.6 did not do well with, especially ASPX pages.
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