Version 2.7b4!




Version 2.7b3 help can be found here and version 2.6 here.




The X Mosaic Developers:

SWP - Scott Powers -- Lead Developer
BJS - Brian Swetland -- Design Lead
DXP - Dan Pape -- Student Developer
TPR - Tommy Reilly -- Student Developer
PLB - Paul Bleisch -- Student Developer

In the names above...the first name is a link to their homepage, the second is a mailto link directly to them.




Jump Points:

About this Release
New Stuff
Bug Fixes
New Resources
Known Bugs
Miscellaneous
Future Enhancements




About this Release:

While there were definitely some new features brought to light in this release, the bulk has been fixing bugs. Orignally we had not planned on a beta 5, but we feel there should be one because of the need for 2.7 to be a rock solid release. So, we will have a beta 5 and then the final 2.7. This change along with the 5 day delay with this release has only slipped the 2.8 cycle by a week and a half.

As usual, we greatly appreciate all of your support and your help in tracking problems with X Mosaic! For all of you out there who sent in OS patches based on beta 3, rest assured they will be in beta 5 (we didn't quite get as much time as originally planned for beta 4 (spring break) and that's why they missed the release). Autoconf is scheduled for beta 5, at the latest 2.7 f inal.

Please see the Future Enhancements for the new release dates.




New Features

PLB -- mosaic-newsrc support
Mosaic's newsreading facility now saves article and newsgroup state information in a .newsrc style file called .mosaic-newsrc-NNTPSERVER. Where NNTPSERVER is replaced with the value of the NNTPSERVER variable (defaulting to "news" if no variable is set). Please look here for more information!
PLB -- Newsreading control resources
Mosaic 2.7b4 has additional resources that control how Mosaic displays newsgroup, threads, and article listings. The resources set defaults that can be overridden while in Mosaic using the News menu. 
Mosaic*newsUseThreadView: True 
Mosaic*newsShowAllGroups: False 
Mosaic*newsShowReadGroups: False 
Mosaic*newsShowAllArticles: False 
Mosaic*newsNoThreadJumping: False
SWP -- Startup Documents
For a pre-release:
-- First 3 starts, goes to the help-on-version document.
-- Second 3 starts, goes the the pre-release warning page.
For a final release:
-- First 3 starts, goes to the help-on-version document. After the sequences listed above have transpired, Mosaic will use this algorithm to determine the startup document:
  1. The default NCSA Mosaic homepage.
  2. Mosaic*homeDocument: URL.
  3. The environment variable WWW_HOME.
If you specify a URL on the command line, it will always override everything.
SWP -- External viewer evironment variable
Right before we spawn an external viewer, we now set the environment variable "MOSAIC_CURRENT_URL" and unset it upon return from the spawn. This was requested so a viewer can know what the current URL is.
SWP -- Options Menu -- Body Colors and Body Images
The Options menu now sports toggles for turning off Body Colors and/or Body Images. 
Mosaic*bodyColors: True 
Mosaic*bodyImages: True
SWP -- Body "Background" Images
Background Images from the Body tag are now in place! The only problem is with any form widgets. This will be taken care of in 2.8b2. 
Mosaic*bodyImages: True
TPR -- Mosaic*FrameHack: False
This is a resource that controls the hacked in frame support that just shows the user the url's that were in the frameset tags. The NOFRAMES part of the document is still shown. This is defaulted to False because it adds about a half second to the loading of each page as it has to do some pre-parsing. 
Mosaic*FrameHack: False
TPR -- Copy Url Button
If you click on the rbm over a link a item shows up at the bottom that allows you to select the url for that link.
SWP -- PG_DN, PG_UP, HOME, END
The PG_DN and PG_UP keys are now on by default and move you to the next or previous page.
HOME and END take you to the top or bottom of the document.
SWP -- Fallback Proxy support
A patch contributed by Martin Hamilton and some additional functionality provided by SWP. Allows you to specify more than one proxy server for a specific scheme. If the first server in the list cannot be contacted you are given the choices of disabling it for the remainder of your session, disabling it for this connection only, retrying it, or skipping it. You can turn a disabled server back on from the proxy dialogs (File | Proxy List...).
SWP -- Mosaic -install
Yes, we finally allow you to install your own private colormap for X Mosaic. You can also set the resource to have it always start up in this manner. 
Mosaic*installColormap: False
BJS -- Mosaic*GuiLayout -- Configure the X Mosaic Gui
This resource allows the user incredible amounts of control over the Mosaic GUI. Look here for a full explanation. 
Mosaic*GuiLayout: MENU,GLOBE,TOOLS,URL,VIEW,STATUS
BJS -- Toolbar Icons Revisited
We've cleaned up and colorized the icons on the toolbar. For those who would still prefer text buttons (or no buttons at all), take a look at the GuiLayout resource mentioned above.

Thanks go to Jason & Mitch from Tech Support for help with icon design.

DXP -- Internal Preferences Manager
This is not anything that the end-user can see, but it is paving the way for a full-fledged Preferences dialog box in the near furure.
SWP -- So you like the text buttons, but not the abbreviated text?
The text buttons had to be abbreviated so you would not "lose" any buttons in the default toolbar configuration when you went into news or ftp. However, we foresaw that some people will want the full text. If you set the resource below you will get full text, but beware! You should also configure the toolbar to not have as many buttons available or you will simply lose some of the functionality (especially in news!)...see the second resource below for this. 
Mosaic*useLongTextNames: False 
Mosaic*ToolbarLayout: BACK,FORWARD,RELOAD,HOME,OPEN,SAVE, 
CLONE,CLOSE,FIND,PRINT,GROUPS,INDEX,PREVIOUS_THREAD, 
PREVIOUS_ARTICLE,NEXT_ARTICLE,NEXT_THREAD,POST,FOLLOW_UP, 
PUT,MKDIR
SWP -- So you want to get rid of some of those toolbar buttons?
You can't re-order things (yet), but you can take things away and add others. Using the resource is a bit clumsy, but preferences in 2.8 will change all that. The list of names is a comma-seperated list. If you don't use spaces, I know it will work. It _is_ case-sensitive.
Here are your choices:
The default toolbar layout is:
BACK,FORWARD,RELOAD,HOME,OPEN,SAVE,CLONE,CLOSE,FIND,PRINT, GROUPS,INDEX,PREVIOUS_THREAD,PREVIOUS_ARTICLE,NEXT_ARTICLE, NEXT_THREAD,POST,FOLLOW_UP,PUT,MKDIR 
Mosaic*GuiLayout 
Mosaic*UseLongTextNames
SWP -- Delay Image Load Borders
When you have delayed image loading turned on, they now have a standard border of 2 pixels. Before they paid direct attention to the border width specified in the image tag. 
Mosaic*delayImageLoads
SWP -- Spoofer!
That's right...you can now "spoof" your User Agent to be whatever you like. Just click here for an in depth explanation of this way cool new feature.



Bug Fixes

SWP -- Font Problem with Meter
The meter now works with a resource for the meter font. This is an initial resource sent when Mosaic calls XtAppInitialize...which means if it can't load the font that is set, your X system will load a different one (which may or may not look terrible!). 
Mosaic*MeterFont
SWP -- HP Screen Drawing Problem
The bug that had HPs drawing blocks of grey all over the screen has been fixed by using XmDrawString all the time instead of XmDrawImageString.
SWP -- True Transparency
Transparency is now done via a clip mask. You should not have any problems with background colors "sticking" with the images.
TPR -- Save Image off Rbm
It works now but has to pull down the image again. This will be fixed with 2.8b1
SWP -- Core Dump bug when missing a "
There was a core dump bug if you forgot a " when encapsulating an attribute/value pair. It no longer exists.
SWP -- Internal Image Display
The Options menu has a toggle for turning on and off internal image display. The Right Button Menu also has items for Internal or External display which force one or the other regardless of your Options setting. 
Mosaic*imageViewInternal: False
SWP -- Initial startup time
Initial startup time has gotten better, although because of the number of pixmaps we now need to load it does take a couple more seconds.
SWP -- Delay Image Loading
This little snafu has been debugged. You may now surf without loading images again.
SWP -- No Proxy Support
No proxy support (and proxy support for that matter) finally work! This has been tested here.
SWP -- Form Widgets stay grey
The problem of not being able to read a form widget because the background and text of the widget were black has been fixed by simply not changing the color of the form widgets.
SWP -- Splash Screen Crashes
If there are not enough colors to display the splash screen it aborts displaying the splash screen with a warning message.
BJS -- Toolbar DELETE Handling
If you kill the detached toolbar with the window manager it will re-attach to the main application.
BJS -- depth 16 patches installed
Colormap problems with XPMs in depth 16 displays appear to have been solved. Thanks go to Greg Roelofs for the patch.
SWP -- Solaris Compiler Fixes
You can now compile under Solaris with the solaris compiler. You will get about a bazillion warnings, but it is fine in the end. Please note...do _not_ make all "char"s "unsigned char"s as there are several parts of Mosaic which depend on having the ability to have a "negative" char (this was suggested as a patch for getting rid of the majority of the warnings).
BJS -- Detached Toolbar Bug (Cloned Windows)
The problem where the toolbar in cloned windows would get confused and command the wrong window has been taken care of.
PLB -- News post bug
The problem with the mouse cursor not going back to a pointer is now fixed.
SWP -- Iconic -- No Splash Screen
If you start Mosaic up iconic, it will no longer give you a splash screen.
SWP -- MeterFont...
The meter font is now defaulted to:
-adobe-courier-bold-r-normal-*-14-*-*-*-*-*-*-* 
Mosaic*MeterFont: -adobe-courier-bold-r-normal-*-14-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
SWP -- Host: header when using a proxy or gateway server
The Host: header is now properly defined when you are using a proxy or gateway server. Before it was using the hostname of the proxy or gateway server.
SWP -- Mosaic*sendmailCommand for BSDI
The sendmailCommand default is now "/usr/sbin/sendmail..." for BSDI systems.
SWP -- Delay Image Loads -- Image or Anchor?
When you have delayed image loading on you can now (again) choose to go to the link or load the image by clicking on the arrow or the "picture", respectively. 
Mosaic*delayImageLoads



New Resources

PLB -- Mosaic*newsNoThreadJumping: False
Mosaic's new News support automatically jumps into a new thread if you select (from the toolbar, the RBM, the "News" pull-down, or the hotkey) to read the next article and there are no more articles left in the current thread. Versions before 2.7b4 did not support this. If you set Mosaic*newsNoThreadJumping to False, you will have to select "Next Thread" from one of the many ways.
SWP -- Mosaic*splashScreen: True
This allows you to turn off or on the Splash Screen.
SWP -- Mosaic*backupFiles: False
This resource, if enabled, will make backup copies of your global history and hostlist before it reads them in and starts playing with them.
PLB -- Mosaic*NewsUseBackgroundFlush: True
If this resource is True (the default), mosaic will write the newsrc out periodically.
PLB -- Mosaic*NewsBackgroundFlushTime: 300
If News Background Flushing is enabled this resource specifies the number of seconds between flushed
SWP -- Mosaic*Meter: True
This lets you turn on or off (on by default) the progress meter.
SWP -- Mosaic*MeterFontForeground: #FFFFFFFFFFFF
This allows you specify the meter text color (e.g. 100%). Needs to be in RGB format.
SWP -- Mosaic*InstallColormap: False
If you want to automatically have Mosaic grab its own colormap, set this to True.



Known Bugs

SWP -- Mosaic -iconic
When starting up Mosaic iconicly, the background colors are not correct until you hit reload or go to the next page.
SWP -- Right Button Menu
When you click "quickly" with the Right Button the RBM will stay "pasted" to your screen until you select something from it or select something else. This is fine and is intended, but after the first time of bringing up the RBM, you will have to manually right click to move the selector bar.
SWP -- Losing colors in an image
On ocasion you will lose colors in an image. Usually this takes place when the image that loses colors was a previous background image or when you interrupt a connection that has loaded some images and go "back" to the previous page.
SWP -- Domain Authentication through a Proxy
I don't know if this is a realistic problem or not, but during one of my tests here I could not authenticate on domain name through the proxy server.
SWP -- <PRE> and Background Images
Sometimes when a PRE tag is used and the text line is longer than the "view window" the background image is not drawn under that text.
SWP -- News Group Listing with NO newsrc
If you do not have a newsrc and your News Group Listing page comes up with nothing there, go to the News Pulldown Menu and select "Show All Groups". This will be fixed in the next release.
SWP -- Display remotely on Solaris
We have encountered some strange problems having to do with cloning a window on Solaris 2.4 when you are displaying remotely to that machine.



Miscellaneous

SWP -- README for XResources!!!
There is now a README.resources.html which comes with the source distribution (or it can be accessed here.



Future Enhancements

Snapshots (see Future Enhancements for 2.7b3) are almost done. Just a few refinements and they will become a reality. The mail list alias will go on-line at the same time and I will post to usenet as well.

Release Info

Please see http://shire.ncsa.uiuc.edu/release/time.html




NCSA X Mosaic 2.7b4 brought to you by: 

 
Scott Powers	spowers@ncsa.uiuc.edu \        The N.C.S.A. X Mosaic 
Paul Bleisch    pbleisch@ncsa.uiuc.edu \         Development Team 
Dan Pape	dpape@ncsa.uiuc.edu     >  
Tommy Reilly	tpreilly@ncsa.uiuc.edu /  Comments? Suggestions? Problems? 
Brian Swetland	swetland@ncsa.uiuc.edu/       webmaster@ncsa.uiuc.edu

NCSA X Mosaic Technical Support by: 

 
Mitch Kutzko        mitch@ncsa.uiuc.edu   \   The N.C.S.A. X Mosaic 
Jeff Gerard         jgerard@ncsa.uiuc.edu  \    Tech Support Team 
Jason Habbley       jhabbley@ncsa.uiuc.edu  >                        
Nick Hall           nhall@ncsa.uiuc.edu    /  webmaster@ncsa.uiuc.edu 
Micheal Ringenberg  mringenb@ncsa.uiuc.edu/