Mozilla 1.0 is finally done! It’s available for download now on a few different platforms… it’s all set to go. For those of you that may not know, Mozilla is an open-source initiative that was orchestrated to offer the world a “free” browser to surf the web with. No need to buy into Windows or buy AOL‘s Netscape Navigator – this is open-source! You could even add your own features, by getting the source code from Mozilla and going to town on adding your own things. It even includes a built in IRC client so you could stiff the no-longer free mIRC.

What do I think about all of this? I’m no hippie – I’m a business person. I use applications that work and get the job done. So what do I care if it’s open-source or not? If anything I’m a bit irked that some one can look at the source that my computer is running. Any flaws in the code (and there always are – penguin lover or not, it’s the truth) would be known to all, because the source is right there. This warm and funny feeling that you’re supposed to get from open-source eludes me entirely.

Not only that, but mIRC has always done the job for me, chatting-wise. Scriptable and capable of integration, it’s done all that I could ask of a chat client and more. The fact that the author wants some *jing* to keep the project alive… well stop yer bitchin and pay the $20, or ignore the shareware based reminders… who cares? Besides, the Mozilla version is very, very basic so if you plan to use it, know your IRC commands.

So, what about the browser itself? It ran some pages without a problem. It’s also got an install option that will allow it to leave pieces of itself in memory for faster loading… does this sound good to you? Make my feet itch, which is no good thing. That’s strike one, right there. On top of that, I had to click through four “are you sure?” dialogs when I was trying to log into a site – I don’t know if that’s a one time thing, to set up preferences, or if they are trying to protect me from myself… it sucked either way. Swing and a miss, that. In fact, I was reminded of the MSN-IM windows that have the nice little “Don’t give your credit card out to anyone!” message at the start of every IM session – I’m sorry, but people that are smart enough to use IM should know enough to not give our your credit card number to anyone you don’t know (and worse to some people that you do know!). And if they do anyway, then hurrah for idiotic people and the scammers than profit from them. Anyway, on top of these two gripes, it looks just like Netscape 4 did. At least I think so. I haven’t used NN for at least 4 years, for obvious reasons (IE runs better, faster, and sucks less) and well, the UI gave me a big ol’yawn.

This was way longer than I intended it to be – I can sum this whole thing up in the following: Mozilla 1.0 is out – it took 2+ years to code and there’s not one real new feature, aside from it not being from Microsoft.