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Plus, matching your web browser skin to your winamp skin to your wall paper is sweet. kacp

About the MSHTML replacing thing, I believe these guys once did it with their browser. Basically their was a skinnable UI with the MS HTML renderer in it. But they had a "technology preview" version once with which you could switch between the MS renderer and the Gecko renderer. Don't know if those guys still do that, but AFAICR, they gave the source to replace the MSHTML renderer with the Gecko one back to the Mozilla project.

Neoplanet was Bigfoot's "Next Big Thing" to Windows versions of Netscape and IE. It was basically some silly add-on that had some search functions and keyword crap in it similar to AOL. Bigfoot no longer promotes it, but it's still available. They now state their vision as being leader in "Marketing Relationship Management". Sounds like a spammer wet dream to me. I was wondering if anyone has used it and saw anything fishy going on. A couple of my friends swear by it, but it looks like just another useless gizmo to me.

An interesting side note about Bigfoot: A few years ago I knew someone that worked there, and she set me up with a Bigfoot For Life address. It was free, it worked pretty good, and since I was constantly switching ISP's at the time due to crappy service and whatnot, their forwarding was great. Unfortunately, a couple years ago they started charging, and on top of that, I started seeing spam coming through my Bigfoot addy AND my regular address at the same time. Yay. I dropped them, changed my Verizon alias, and it all stopped. I guess the saying is true, "All good things must come to an end." Either that, or sell out to spammers.

My favorite is Pixelon. Among other things, they skinned Windows Media Player and passed it off as their superior video compression technology.

What's next, skinning an existing browser and passing it off as a product?

I first came across flyswat installed on my mom's computer. She uses the NeoPlanet shell for IE, something I set up for her in 1998. As it works, and because I can't figure out how to convert all of her email to Outlook, she is still using it. Anyway, I came to visit a year ago and found a bunch of brownish-green links on all her web pages. Links that were really commercial. After some investigation I found them coming from a program called flyswat running in the background. She didn't know how they got there, and didn't use them, so I uninstalled flyswat.

Let me say right away, the idea isn't bad. I would really use it if it didn't change the look of the document with ugly brown lines... if I could right-click on any word and get a contextual menu on it. Even information on where to buy, or similar things commercial.

And as long as it isn't turned on by default in MSIE 6, and it doesn't *replace* any functionality or links in a page I write, I'm not going to worry about it, and will likely be glad to have it as a browsing option.

On a side note, I've always wanted to set up some post-processor for adding contextual links to documents I serve. I'd especially like for all names in my Intranet web documents to be linked to people objects, and projects to project objects, etc.

Admittedly, I haven't tried the latest Netscape 6 Release, howevr from when I tried their beta, the interface seemed a lot like NeoPlanet. It could be one big coincidence, or that they wanted to try to re-design their interface without spending the effort to be creative. Anyways, until Netscape comes out with some outstanding feature which makes it worth the time to download and install, I'll stay away from it.

...Neoplanet! Now that's advertising placement.

Whatever the government ends up doing in this case, they should not force the removal of Internet Explorer from Windows. This would be a bad thing for a couple of reasons:

• It is not the government's place to tell companies exactly what they can or cannot put in their software. Forcing MS to remove IE would set a rather dangerous precedent. Consider this analogy: Say ford makes cars that don't have radios. Pioneer is making radios for ford (and other) cars and lots of people are using them and like them. Ford sees this, and decides to include a radio as a standard feature on all its new cars. Gov't would not tell ford they were not allowed to do this, so why are they telling MS they can't? It's essentially the same situation. A third party company was making a useful addition to a product which the product's maker decided to include as standard.
• Furthermore, there is currently nothing in windows which prevents you from using a browser other than IE. Yes, IE is on every windows system and is nearly impossible to get off, but that doesn't mean you have to use it. I personally have IE, Netscape, and this other thing called Neoplanet on my computer and they all work great. So don't whine that everyone HAS to use IE just because MS integrated it into their OS.

I am all for reigning in MS, but the government needs to be very careful about how they do it. If they mess it up it could be totally ineffective, or worse, set a bad precendent for the whole technology industry.

Take a look at Slashdot, and the Slash code. This is a very powerful tool with a large collection of options that's very simple to use. I can customize the way Slashdot appears with very little effort at all. My Slashboxes (on the right hand side) are the ones I choose in the order I want them. I've killed some of the graphics and the book reviews. I sort the replies at level 3 and drop my threshold or read responses when desired.

Open Source does not mean bad interfaces. For the most part Open Source is new enough that the core engines are still being built.

Do we need another good example? How about the Linux Doom Admin interface. Point and kill those tasks.

Linux fails the "mom" test not because of geek superiority, but because there have been other needs that are of a higher priority. Many closed source systems have decided to make user friendly systems that don't function. Linux has decided to make sure the dang thing works and then they'll make it look nice, and that's an order of priority I can live with.

Open Source does care about the end user. What the end user of Linux wanted was a stable product that worked and didn't need to be rebooted daily.

If you want ease of use over stability, you already have a company that makes that product. Meanwhile, it's not like Linux isn't still being improved and no one is preventing a good looking interface from being created.

Besides, even the big companies have an interface problem. Neoplanet almost brought me back to I.E. and it's getting combined with Mozilla on my home machine this weekend for a serious Version 13 test drive. Closing the source does not a good GUI make.

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Want to reply? Don't know HTML? No problem.

Can netscape write a "Navigator" that looks and feels just like their current product, but uses MS' API?

Yes. Neoplanet already makes a browser with its own look-and-feel that uses Microsoft's .dlls for HTML rendering.

Neoplanet is basically a browser shell that uses the IE rendering engine (a newer version can be made to use a Gecko renderer beta too I believe), and on top of it adds its own UI with support for skins and other neat features.

Neoplanet is actually doing something very interesting:

They are planning on embedding both browsers into their product, and letting users switch between them at will. They are also dedicating programming resources to helping the Mozilla project.

Check out these links:
Neoplanet Press Release
Download the Neoplanet 5.0 Gecko technology preview
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Neoplanet is actually doing something very interesting:

They are planning on embedding both browsers into their product, and letting users switch between them at will. They are also dedicating programming resources to helping the Mozilla project.

Check out these links:
Neoplanet Press Release
Download the Neoplanet 5.0 Gecko technology preview
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This is merely a Lycos-branded version of NeoPlanet's
'browser'. Ironically, it requires IE, as it isn't really a browser at all.

Yeap.. http://neoplanet works better
Stan "Myconid" Brinkerhoff

NeoPlant

"Bugs are harder to cope with than features, because they are less well defined and less well designed."