Word From The WaSP

NGlayout: Help Netscape become standards compliant

Netscape has yet to decide upon whether or not to include NGlayout in their 5.0 release of Navigator. NGlayout is their next generation rendering engine that will (supposedly) be 100% compliant with CSS1 and DOM level 1. The time frame between the projected launch of NS5 and the level of completion of NGlayout is the issue.

You can help. Download a version of their NGlayout viewer from members.tripod.com/~mozillabuilds/nglayout.html (Win32 only at the moment).

And then help out directly by following the instructions attached below. There is much more chance that Netscape will include NGlayout, and support of the standards, if the code is done. And for that to occur, they need our help.

Instructions

We need help from people who do not code:

Report Crashes
Download an NGLayout build and run the viewer, browsing popular web sites. If (When) you crash the viewer, send a list of URLs that crash the viewer to this newsgroup, or to rickgnetscape.com. Be sure to include the URL of the site, the operating system you're on (Win95 or WinNT, etc.), and the date of your build.

Report Layout Problems
Download an NGLayout build and run the viewer, browsing popular web sites. If you run into problems with layout on a particular site, send mail to the newsgroup with a description of what looks wrong, the URL of the site, the OS you are running, and the date of your build. Expect to see quite a bit of this sort of thing right now.

Test Cases and Suites Try to simplify problems you experience down to the most simple level. Having a URL for a site with 50k of content is one thing, knowing that the little snippet of HTML "foo" doesn't work right is quite another. If you can give us a simpler example of your problem, do so. Also, please run the viewer against test suites such as the CSS test suite at www.w3.org/Style/CSS/Test/ and any other test suites for HTML and DOM. Again, report problems to this group and someone will file in bugzilla as necessary.

Create Cool Content Download the viewer and create some whizzy, standards-based dynamic content using our best-of-breed CSS support and the 100% standards-based DOM. Surely there will be some good stuff we can work on in this category along the lines of "how-to's" and whatnot that would be of interest to the webmonkey audience. In turn, perhaps that audience would like to create some of this whizzy content.

We also need help from people who do code:

Mac Geeks:
Help us get shared objects working on the mac. Help us port gfx and the widget library to the Mac. Contact kostellonetscape.com if you want to help. This will get NGLayout working on the Mac!

Font Geeks:
Help us get Small Caps working in our font library (libfont). Also help with support for "oblique" and other minor fixes in the font library. Contact peterlnetscape.com and dpnetscape.com to help.

Postscript Geeks:
Michael Plitkins could use a version of the graphics classes for doing PostScript output. Contact michaelpnetscape.com to help.

Frame History:
We have no frame history yet in NGLayout. Contact scullinnetscape.com and karnazenetscape.com to help.

ActiveX Geeks:
Want to make NGLayout into an ActiveX control? This is the subject of frequent postings in these newsgroups. Contact rpottsnetscape.com.

Unix Geeks:
NGLayout runs on Linux and Irix. Help get it running on other Unix platforms. Email kostellonetscape.com to help with this and other unix issues.

HTML 4.0 Geeks:
Create a really nice test suite for HTML 4.0-specific features, and post the URL in this newsgroup. Then run the viewer against the test suite and let us know what doesn't work. For HTML 4.0 forms issues, contact karnazenetscape.com for info on how to help.

Style Geeks:
Fill us in on what CSS2 features are most important to you by posting suggestions here. Create a test suite for CSS2. Post the URL for the suite here, and run the viewer against your tests. Run the viewer against the existing Mozilla CSS1 test suite. Ask peterlnetscape.com for info on how you can help.

Other Geeks:
If you're interested in the following issues: XML, parsing, general layout, contact rickgnetscape.com.
        There's a lot of other work that needs addressing. If you think you can help, let us know, and we'll try to point you in the right direction. Also, please download our latest source code (best bet is via CVS, as we're updating the source constantly).