Mozilla 1.1 Hits the Scene

Mozilla.org late Monday issued an incremental update to the major-version public release of the Mozilla 1.0 browser source code it released in June.

Mozilla 1.1 features a number of improvements, many of them aesthetic, but others to provide increased support for Linux and Mac platforms.

Overall, Mozilla.org said it has increased application and layout performance, as well as stability and Web site compatibility. The group has also provided improved CSS , DOM and HTML standards support.

One of the larger changes is the JavaScript Debugger, which has gone through a major development cycle and now sports a palette of nine views which can be rearranged within the main window or docked in separate floating windows. Mozilla.org said it is also possible to create user-defined views and commands directly with JavaScript.

Specifically to support the Linux platform, the group has added fullscreen mode on Linux, improved filtering and a new directory button for the Linux File Picker, and better Bi-Di Arabic and Hebrew support including improved layout of Arabic pages on Linux (and other platforms without their own Arabic shaping support).

For the Mac platform, the group has enabled MathML for Mozilla on Macintosh (it was already available on Windows and Linux), and enabled Mozilla to take advantage of Quartz rendering from Mac OS X 10.1.5.

Windows was not left out of the loop. Mozilla can now trigger Microsoft Dial-up Networking (DUN) when started without a connection, and features a new button in preferences for making Mozilla the default browser on Windows.

Other features that cross platforms include:

• Distinct window icons for the different Mozilla applications (with artwork contributed by Grayrest)
• A new button on the tab bar for creating new tabs
• All Search entry points now utilize the user's default search engine
• Download Manager has been enabled as the default download view
• More intelligent completion has been added to Autocomplete in the location bar
• Improvements make downloads handle file extensions more accurately, and the correct files are now saved when saving complete Web pages
• Drag and drop support has been improved
• Context clicking on a selection now offers the ability to view the HTML source of the selected area
• Page info displays more page information
• New layout performance enhancements targeted at DHTML
• Support for displaying XBM images
• Image and plug-in blocking for Mail & News
• The ability to view HTML mail messages as plain text
• The ability to quote the current message in a Mail compose window
• Improved tab completion and the ability to join channels with Japanese names in Chatzilla.

Mozilla.org was created by the former Netscape Communications Corp. (now an AOL Time Warner subsidiary) in 1998 to coordinate the Mozilla community's open source development of the Netscape source code.

Mozilla 1.1 consists of a full-fledged browser suite based on the latest Internet standards, and a cross-platform toolkit for developing Internet-based applications. The cross-platform suite was built on the Gecko layout engine and integrates a core set of applications, including a Web browser, e-mail reader and chat client.