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Web Standards Project Blasts Netscape
Spasemunki writes "Mozillazine is running a link to (and commentary on)this letter written by the Web Standards Project, blasting Netscape for failing to deliver on Netscape 5/6 in a timely fashion. They argue that the inability of NS to produce a ready-for-prime-time, standards compliant browser has made it harded to coax other developers into adopting standards, and that the zombie-like continued existance of Netscape 4 in its various .x's represents an ongoing offense to standards compliance. These criticisms have been around for a while, but the WSP sums them up well, and gives Mozilla advocates (myself included) some things to answer to."
Not beautiful, but usable, under (IIRC) a BSD-style license, and
currently the best way to render MathML (though Mozilla is working on
it).
There is a homepage for it at
www.w3c.org.
Or:
I have to admit, it took me a while to be able to find the MS plan on purpose. . .
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
I use it for everything now. Most of the major bugs are worked out and only in occasional nightlies does something weird happen.
GO GET ONE YOURSELF - NIGHTLY BUILDS
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Eric is chisled like a Greek Godess
marotti.com
Sure, blame the MS monopoly on Netscape's market share MozillaZine.... blame it all you want.
I'm a former Netscape supporter. I didn't leave because of the Monopoly. I left because Netscape hadn't released anything that didn't suck in well over a year, and Mozilla was ages away from being usable.
Its been a year since then, and whats changed? Netscape hasn't released anything that doesn't suck in well over two years now, and Mozilla still isn't usable compaired to IE.
Thats where the biggest loss of market share has come. People like me aren't computer gods, but we're vocal enough that we do make a difference. People come and ask me for browser help, and I use to tell them that they could solve many of their IE problems by installing Netscape. Do I tell them that anymore?
Of course not. Now I tell them that they can solve their Netscape problems by installing IE.
Its sad, I'd rather support Netscape. But when they ask me for advice on whats best for them, 99% of the time the answer is IE. Occasionally I recommend Opera (which I'm using right now) to people I figure will like it, but its definately not suited to the average user.
So please, don't try to pin the blame on the monopoly. In my experience, far more people have switched then have never heard of Netscape. Many of those have switched because people like me were forced into advising them to switch, because Netscape gave us nothing to work with, while Microsoft does.
(its probably also important to mention that yes, many people haven't herad of Netscape these days. But why would you hear of it? Don't blame the monopoly. Blame lack of word of mouth. Napster spread like wildfire because people were talking about it. Nobody is talking about Netscape because it sucks right now. If Mozilla.org can come out with something better then IE, people will start talking and it'll catch on. Trying to hide behind the claim of the evil Redmond giant when its really Netscape's own fault is pretty silly there MozillaZine.)
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Hey, I do agree with many of the WaSP's statements, and I really would like Mozilla to be in an usable state for the common user, but please, let's get our facts straight before whining...
I cannot believe the people who claim they use Mozilla daily.
I do. I grab the nightlies every day, and they're my main web browser / e-mail client / news reader. I usually keep 3 installs: Netscape PR1, the last working nightly ("working" means "renders all my pages ok"), and the freshest nightly, from the day before.
Of course there are many bugs I would like to get rid of, like the transitional DTD bug that makes pages look like crap, and sometimes the slowness of the mail/news reader gets on my nerves... but it's very usable, and more stable than IE5 in my machine (yeah, you read that right).
Any site with a little bit of Javascript looks like crap. window.open() is not implemented, for example.
Simply not true. First, because JavaScript in Mozilla works like a charm. Second, because window.open() has been working for ages.
I use lots of JavaScript in the pages around here, and they all work well with Mozilla.
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Marcelo Vanzin
Marcelo Vanzin
When AOL includes Netscape in their client, the tide will turn. Suddenly there's another 22 million users you have to take into account. That comfortable, "lazy" approach of desinging for the IE extensions just won't cut it anymore.
I find this amusing because these are Microsoft's tactics. So many people are tied into one software solution and so they really are forced into using certain applications. AOL really is trying to use the Microsoft strategy by distributing applications such as Winamp, Netscape (Mozilla), AOL Instant Messenger, and ICQ with their popular Internet connection software. I guess I just find it funny that someone from a community advocating open standards and free software (as in speech,) is suggesting that the tactics that AOL will use will benefit the community.
Can it really be that hard to write a browser?! Why do they have to put in all that extra cruft, the mail/news reader, editor? Why is the footprint so bloody huge and why does it take so long to start up?
On my Mac (I also have a Sparc and a K6 so I'm not some idiot Mac zealot) I started running iCab. It is great. The binary is less than 2MB, it can run happily in 5MB ram, its fast, doesn't crash as often as Netscape and NEVER takes down the whole computer. It supports java and its java script support is improving. It is quite usable and standards compliant.
Why can the company making iCab release a stable, fast, *usable* web browser and Netscape, with all its power can't?
Andrew
The following is what I posted to the WaSP mailing list:
/massive/ internal pressure on the developers face to get the thing going fast. And they are doing a fantastic job. I drag down a nightly build every couple days. The bugs are ticking away steadily.
/all/ of CSS? Not only do the people building it need to be expert web designers (which is enough for most people here to handle on it's own), but they have to be expert programmers as well. I am still grappling with understanding CSS2 and looking at the code, and thinking about how one would do some of the things the specs ask for...it scares me. I really respect what they have done. It's no coincidence that Mozilla rocks most the competition on their standards support, they really do have a Next Generation layout...and it's still in it's first iteration.
/their/ timeline? I mean, for me, sure...I think it's all fine and dandy to say to the browser manufacturers "if you make a _web_ browser, please make it support _web_ standards, this is a community whose value is in interoperability, and we would like you to support that interoperability". But I draw the line before making demands on /their/ timeline. It's /their/ bloody product...they can take damn well as long as they want and WaSP can just bloody well wait. Being that it's /their/ product, they can also innovate however they want, and prioritize however they want - Netscape has been kind enough to publicly state that they have prioritized on standards. Be thankful Netscape is building a /free/ (as in speech) browser for you at all. And the free software community is very simple...if you want it done faster... help! (put your money where your mouth is), or at least show some bloody gratitude already.
/giving/ to the software community. Thank you for helping build and support an /open/ community around your offering so that I can see things progress, and help is whatever way I can. I appreciate it.
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Even being a rabid (frothing at times) web standards supporter, I don't like this.
Being heavily involved with the web, I have been following Mozilla extremely closely since the day Netscape released the code. I have downloaded and tinkered with the code, to help understand how things work, and to hopefully/eventually help them fix bugs.
As a software engineer I can say that a modern web browser is probably one of the most complex pieces of software. Period. This letter, and many of the postings on this list, make me feel that the WaSP is a group with many people who don't have enough understanding or appreciation for the complexity required to do what they ask.
A layout manager at the level of HTML 2 is a moderately hard programming task, but doable. HTML 4 is where it gets interesting, tables on their own would be difficult enough. The CSS box model adds a _/significant/_ amount of complexity. CSS2 makes this even harder. CSS2 scriptable via DOM (DHTML)? ECMAScript alone is a monumental undertaking. Dynamic reflow? Then start throwing PNG w. Alpha transparency in, Z-ordering, etc...creating solutions for all these things and rolling them together into one working piece of software...it IS monumental. And implementing it is the classic 10%/90% scenario...the devil is in the details, especially with things like CSS. It's hard enough for a someone to understand the bloody specs, let alone implement them.
The thing that gets me the most is....what do you think they are doing? do you think they are not trying? do you think they don't know that their market share is trickling away by the minute? do you think they aren't already aware that it's been years since 4? or that there browsers very existence very possibly may be on the line? Trust me....they know. If you follow closely you will realize that there is already
The other factor is people. It's easy to say "well, you're this big company with all this money, throw more developers at it" Even forgetting the fact that "more doesn't always equal better, or faster", I don't care if you are AOL, Microsoft, IBM, or whoever...finding developers skilled enough to work with a task
that complex is next to impossible in this industry. This list probably has one of the highest levels of, say, CSS know how...how many people here could claim to have an understanding of
And who is the WaSP to make demands on
I would like to take this opportunity to say to the people at Netscape and Mozilla. Thank you for seeing the error of your ways, and doing your best to deliver a standards compliant product. Thank you for what I see as a tremendous amount of effort over the last year to Do The Right Thing. Thank you for spending an enormous amount of resources building something you are
One, using Gecko to render a UI makes it platform-independent, the exact opposite of making it "X Window-centric" as you say.
Ah, the great divide between us programmers and normal people turns up once again... It makes the code platform-independent. Unfortunately, a side effect of their method is to make the user experience one which only someone familiar with the X Window System could enjoy--hence the phrase used by the original poster that the experience is `X Windows-centric.'
Do not belittle the importance of widget consistency. A huge portion of taste is consistentcy and style. Few people would buy a black car with a purple interior--instead, they choose an interior which complements the exterior. Few people buy stereo components some of which are tech in brushed steel and matte black, some of which are finely polished mahogany and others of which neon orange plastic.
In re. Unix consistency, how can you say with a straight face the gtk looks like Qt looks like Motif looks like Xaw? They share many of the basic concepts, but they are about as consistent with each other as the components of my fanciful stereo system.
We've trained ourselves to deal with our inconsistent interface. We're the sort of people who are willing to put up with that sort of aesthetic suffering in order to use a more elegant OS. The hoi polloi are willing to use an ugly OS in return for an elegant UI (MacOS) or an ugly OS in return for a semi-decent UI (Windows).
We need to provide a first-class, elegant and aesthetically pleasing user experience on top of our first-class, elegant and aesthetically pleasing OS.
God, the nerve. All that they're doing is burying any respect Netscape had for standards to begin with. If I was on the Netscape team right now I'd just be like "Why do they think they have any right to slap my wrists?" and ignore them from now on. The WSP are self-righteous publicity whores who have accomplished absolutely nothing. Ever.
sig:
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
"A better strategy for the Mozilla team would have been to write an IE-compatible browser"
I have to suck it up and agree with you here.
Remember when the marketshares were reversed, Microsoft had to write a 98% compatible Netscape v3 clone before they pushed ahead with their own feature set.
Netscape should not have to emulate every bad behavior of IE, but their refusal to support minor Microsoftisms like 'document.all' really makes me wonder if they want to be seen as a friend or a foe of the average web developer.
Anyway, the situation is not bleak right now. On the public web, IE has no where near the clout that Netscape held in 1995. (Back then, if you weren't using the latest Netscape, you couldn't even see half the sites.) But, IE-only sites are all over Intranets, and many fancier public sites support Netscape 4 only in fallback-mode, leaving the fancy dynamic stuff to IE users only. (This is actually a good thing considering the br0kenness of NS4's DOM.)
The huge risk is that when Netscape 6 finally ships, it will be put in that same fallback-mode bin, and all of it's standards-compliant DOM will go to waste because developers will refuse to rewrite their IE-specific code.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
One of the biggest problems I have with Netscape 6 is that you must re-write all the plugins for GTK standards instead of Motif. It's going to take plugin developers a while to convert their plugins to stay Netscape 6 / Mozilla complient.
It's really depressing.. I was an avid Netscape 4.7 user for a long time and kept holding out, but the crashes have become too much for me. And as a designer, getting pages to look right in both IE and NS while trying to remain W3C 100% valid is a nightmare. I don't blame NS solely for that, IE has plenty of it's own issues not supporting standard tags and attributes, especially in regards to CSS.. and with 75% or so of the market already.. what's their motivation to do it?
BilldaCat
Calling me a liar? It's been my main browser for months. I like it much better than netscape 4.7. Except for the constant crashing, but builds from the last few days are dramatically more stable.
Any site with a little bit of Javascript looks like crap.
Bullshit. I begrudgingly visit plenty of javascript-based sites, and 70-90% look as good or better than they do in netscape 4.7.
I suspect you've only taken intermittant looks at mozilla, which could easily give you the impression that it's worse than it really is. I sympathize completely with your frustration, and it is unbelievable to me that the mozilla folks haven't narrowed their focus to perfecting the core app, rather than adding the kitchen sink in - "mail, IRC, whatever - sure!" - but believe me, there is a diamond waiting to poke its way out of the lump of coal.
Netscape used to be a joy to develop for...now I feel that it is more of an obligation.
Why don't we just break the web up into little peices?.. A MicroSoft Web, A Netscape web, A Disney Web, An AOL web.. Then you could be sure you're getting a 'family safe' web, and each company could control how much it cost's to access 'their' web..
(Damn that sticky sarcasm key)
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Vices - what I lack in originality, I make up for in volume.
subject says it all.
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If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
I really like Netscape Mail/News. This does not however mean that I think that it needs to be integrated into Mozilla. In my opinion the display engine should be a removable plug-in (And thereby be replacable) which can be used by Navigator, whatever the mail/news client is called, and Composer.
So in my opinion, the things we need are a standards-compliant display engine, and a browser which uses it. The email client, while important to me, should be secondary to Mozilla. And Composer has always been crap, and unless they can make it write worthwhile code free of empty tags and so on, I'll keep using Dreamweaver. Now that I think about it, even if they do solve that problem, I'll still use Dreamweaver since it has all that other keen functionality.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
> That's funny; I'm using a stable Mozilla right now. It crashes far less on me that 4.7x ever has...
That's funny too. I downloaded M16 hoping it would be ready for prime time, or at least close enough for my austere tastes, but it wasn't. I used it for about a week and then went back to Netscape 4.7. In my experience M16 crashed multiple times per day vs about once a month for NS 4.7, and was extremely prone to forgetting settings I had selected and saved.
I eagerly await M17, because NS's monthly crashes make it by far the crappiest piece of software that I use. As soon as Mozilla is a hair's breadth better than NS, I'll cut over in a heartbeat.
Is the difference in stability platform dependent?
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You must not work in web design. The "killer, IE only features" are such things as CSS and the DOM. This means that you can't do DHTML tricks or post 1995 layout in Netscape without debugging a huge number of Netscape bugs. The lowest common denominator you are proposing everyone develop for is indeed very low. In short, you are proposing that I tell my clients that they can't have the DHTML effects, they can't have leading on paragraphs, they can't have the non-black text, they can't have thier text overlaying images, etc. Clients aren't interested in the politics of standards compliance. They want their site to look good and work well, and have some sizzle like all the other sites you see on the web. If a single browser monopoly concerns you, work on a better browser. Downgrading websites to use only the standards that Netscape supports isn't the answer.
Netscape did that for years, creating their own standards as they went along.
They stopped doing it because Microsoft not only implemented the standards and Netscapes variants, but created their own as well.
Thats the difference, Microsoft made it so their browser could do the standard stuff, most of the Netscape stuff, *and* the Microsoft stuff. Netscape hasn't been able to compete with that.
They were beaten at their own game.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
I hate to keep bringing this up, but iCab doesn't support a lot of the standards that the WSP and a lot of other people demand. In particular, it doesn't support the particularly hard ones (DOM, CSS2).
I guess I'd respectfully disagree. In the past year Netscape has quickly been sliding towards irrelevancy in the browser market, and anything that counters that perception is a plus. At this rate, though, I worry that it won't matter how good the end product is unless AOL really pushes it hard (and eats its own dog food by making Netscape 6 the AOL browser).
No one wants to see a standards-compliant browser win more than me, but as the WSP article suggests, you can't build your site on promises.
I'm actually using Netscape right now, and I can expect it to crash any second if I open up any more windows. That's why I continually save posts like these. I've lost too many to keep track of, but it was enough for me to eventually dump Netscape.
It took about six months for the inertia of using Netscape over IE to slow down and for me to finally realize that the change was imminent. Outlook's Import utility clinched it, as I could now use Outlook to import all my email. I have Netscape 6 Preview 1 installed, but it looks more like a nearly completed building with the scaffolding still up than any kind of useable browser.
As Stroustrup said, "C makes it easy to shoot yourelf in the foot, whereas C++ makes it harder, but when you do it blows your whole leg off." Yes, IE crashes every now and then, and it usually takes the whole system with it, but I don't have to deal with the maddening experience of several crashes per day. Which is worse: the boulder in my path?--or the grain of sand in my shoe. I'm not quite sure, but I've chosen the boulder.
About the only thing I miss is Netscape's status bar. They did a great job with keep the user informed about how the page was loading, while IE happifly reassures me that the page is "opening..." And IE's dumbed-down error messages aren't exactly helpful, but I've been using Guidescope as a local ad-blocking proxy and it seems to help some with DNS errors and the like.
So I'm sorry that I don't use Netscape anymore. I'm sorry that I use a browser that doesn't adhere very well to Net standards, and in some cases even flaunts them. But I'm not sorry that Microsoft built a better browser. And Netscape didn't.
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Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
How bout this letter I sent off to Netscape.
Dear sirs.
PLEASE STOP ADDING USELESS SHIT TO YOUR PROJECT AND RELEASE A FUCKING BROWSER THAT WORKS.
Thank you.
Òfp
You see, either way, that's what they will need to do before they are rendered *completely* irrelevent by MS (to which I have to say, nice work on that last version, it kicks). It's amazing how many here can see this in all it's transparency but the people involved in the project are too busy coding pac-man in xul to notice the axe falling.
I believe NS6pre1 is a couple of months old at this point. The Mozilla browser has improved significantly since the release that was repackaged by Netscape. Try one of the nightly builds.
After all the hub-bub over Netscape's weak version jump to 6 (bypassing 5.x versions altogether in a grand marketing move), how humiliating would it be if this thing took so long to finally be released that it still ends up having a smaller version number anyway? :)
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Please refer me to a URL that is standards compliant that doesn't work in Mozilla.
Mind you, I expect a few problems since it is still alpha/beta/unreleased quality code. But you make it sound like you haven't used a modern (ie, M16 or later) build of the thing.
Old Netscape 4.x, yes it had lots of those problems. But the new, modern Mozilla builds just work so well. Every page I had developed that didn't work in NN4 but did in IE, worked fine in Mozilla. EVERY ONE.
As for JavaScript, of course some of the Microsoft hacks like innerHTML aren't going to work in Mozilla (though I did see a mention of a relatively simple JavaScript snippet that simulated innerHTML well enough that most scripts could be compatible with minimal effort, and a rumor that this might be included by default.)
But write some 100% standards compliant code, use it with a modern Mozilla build, and you'll find that it works.
As for rendering a page like IE does, why should it? There are standards, and there are some elements of the standard that are open to vendor interpretation. But why should a browser emulate something that doesn't follow the standard, especially when the stated goal is to be 100% standards compliant?
I have heard many a great thing about IE, how it is faster and more stable etc... and I am sure that it is, but I have several major problems with it.
The first is that I find that it, and its mail program, are major security hazzards. I know that I can turn the stuff off, not use outlook, but I cannot trust MS to make a secure program anymore. I don't want to have to worry about some vengeful ActiveX programer screwing with my computer, or having to download a patch to fix some gapping security hole all the time.
The second is that "blowing your whole leg off" problem. I would much rather have an application die a peaceful death, not take out NT or my window manager, frequently then to crash rarely but have it be a major screw up and take down my system. I have had too many problems with corrupted data on my disk from programs taking down the OS.
Although I am sure that IE is more stable and more powerful than Netscape I have had very little to no problems with it sense I upgraded to Communicator 4.72 (and yes I do run with Java Script and Java ON). I regularly run it with more than 6 windows open, all symultaniously downloading and rendering pages, and I haven't had it crash on me sense I upgraded. On the Ultra 1 that I use at work, I have only had it crash on me once in two months, which I immediately reopened and went on with my business.
As for it being old technology, so what, it does what I need it to do. I want programs that are set up properly, ie run in the correct level that they should. I don't want some extremely fast and powerful browser, or office suite for that matter, that runs in rung zero and takes down my computer if it has a problem. That is why I use Netscape and Corel, if they but my computer doesn't go with them.
I'm not saying that everyone should be using Netscape, just that there are some of us who use it for good reason.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
This is an important point. I'll bet that a lot of the problem with Mozilla is brain drain. JWZ is one major example. Mozilla is turning in to a "death march" project, and in this employment environment, nobody has to work on this kind of project.
The biggest chance that standards have, is with new developers. New developers are going to be attracted to the word standard, and if the standard has great documentation, and effective tutorials, then such a standard will win over new developers. It can be done. Besides, I dont really care. Most of the sites developing microsofty crap are ones that I dont wana visit - mostly ecommerce and intranet stuff. Somehow I doubt that my interest areas (free software, geeky artistic development) are going to be taken over by microsoft only development. :)
The old rule about open source: if you don't like how things are progressing, stop whining and start coding.
I'm sure lots of the WSP members don't have the necessary technical skills to contribute to Mozilla. Fine, to that end they should recognize that they have no idea how much work is involved and are in no position to judge. Those members that DO have the necessary technical skills are in a great position to judge the project's performance (and as such should know better), but rather than whining about it they should contribute to the work.
sigs are a waste of space
I have several times looked at the Mozilla site to try to find out
when the last milestones are scheduled to occur, but with no success.
Where does one find it?
I find this amusing because these are Microsoft's tactics.
So why should Micro$oft have a monopoly on them?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
As long as everyone keeps using non-compliant browsers like MSIE and NS, as long as Mozilla remains a pipe-dream, and as long as people refuse to pay a few bucks for compliant browsing software, web authors are going to continue creating browser-specific pages or using non-compliant tagging.
In my experience, Opera Software has been extraordinarily responsive to user feedback and very dogged in implementing full compliancy in their browser, while at the same time dealing with the crappy tagging that goes as web authoring these days.
Yes, they want a whopping forty bucks for their browser. For a lot of you, that's an hour or less of payola. And it reflects that these people are working at this as full-time professionals -- *QUITE* unlike a lot of the open source/free beer applications out there, that are being developed in people's hobby time.
It's a fair price for a great product that is available *now* and is *very* compliant. Demand better products by putting some money where your mouth is!
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Well, I hate to say it but I agree.
I think mozilla's biggest strategic error was trying to do too much. My personal hindsight suggest that they should have used existing graphic libraries instead of writing their own widgets from scratch. Yes, this makes some platforms lag behind but it would make at least one major one come out faster. I have a feeling that it would encourage more developers to get involved as well. Having to learn yet another graphic library is a hassle that no doubt keeps some developers away.
I think it was also a huge mistake to try and make a communications platform with email etc instead of just a bare browser. You can always add on stuff later. Right now it's two years later and there's nothing usuable.
I tried M16 for a couple weeks and I was extremely disappointed with the number of blatant, serious bugs. It will a significant amount of time to fix them. *sigh*
The most promising thing I see coming out of mozilla is that Galleon project mentioned last week. I wish them luck.
A Web browser that supports modern Web standards (DOM) is just as complex as an OS kernel. Probably a lot more so, because of the need to be backward compatible with hundreds of different kinds of incorrect Web page coding.
That's the sort of lunacy that's going to kill them sadly.
Whilst to you and I it might mean something that a browser is w3c compliant but it's a bit like telling jo public he'll get better milage if he drives at 56mph... everyone kinda knows it deep down but most people just dont give a damn and want the easiest and quickest solution.
The biggest problem with Opera is that its a niche product. It'll never catch on in the mainstream, even if it was free. The simple problem is that it just functions too differently from IE/NN, which are more or less the same in basic UI design.
Its amazing how fast I can throw somebody off simply by putting them in front of Opera.
Now if 4.1 has SDI (which it might), that could go a long way in solving that problem.
I really wish it would catch on, Opera is a great little browser, useful for those of us who don't want everything but the kitchen sink with our browsers (*ahem* Mozilla).
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
But since it was moderated up, I must fight the powers that be.
Things that are true in this post:
(Kind of true, anyway - Mozilla networking code seems to be better than IE's, as is partial page loading which used to not be the case.)
This is true in a sense. Firing up a copy of IE consumes less resources than netscape because most of IE is running all the time when you're running explorer, unless you've 98lite'd your box into obscurity.
This is hard to argue with. I don't know how much of that is talkback, though. When I run mozilla.exe -mail on my system, about a quarter to half the time it gives an exception right when I run it. I get lots of other random crashes, too. Also, if I leave mozilla mail open too long sometimes it gets into some bad loop where it just allocates more and more memory and sucks up something like 128mb of ram before I kill it. No idea if it'll eat up all the ram/swap on the box.
However, the troll "at this stage, how much better can mozilla get? i doubt it will be much." is just totally bogus. That would be like using Windows 3.1 and saying "How much better can this get? I doubt it will be much." That sort of statement is only useful for things that already kick more ass than anyone else's product. There's lots of room for improvement in Mozilla and lots of people are working on it.
It used to be that I only ran IE (4.0) when netscape was having problems loading a URL. Then IE 5 came out and I pretty much ditched netscape entirely. Now I use IE5.5 for browsing and Mozilla M16 for mail and news. (Mind you, the bug where you can't post news to multiple groups if you're not subcribed to them all and if there's multiple news servers added is pretty goddamn annoying.) when IE5.5 has problems loading a page, I fire up M16's navigator component and paste in the URL, and it comes up properly nearly every time, so it looks like Mozilla has a leg up on IE in that department now.
Allow me to suggest a new modification to /., BTW. If someone puts too much bold in their message, just remove all the <B> tags. <EM> isn't nearly as annoying, though, so it's okay with me if you leave that alone.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Mozilla looks like it'll be a great browser... someday, but in this market a timeline of years just isn't good enough. I personally think the AOL-Sun-Netscape alliance is to blame for not putting enough professional manpower behind the project from the beginning. I believe the open source aspect of Mozilla will prevail eventually, however it should had some serious corporate dollars to pull it out of it's long standing slump.
Blender And Linux Fan
Do you want it standards-compliant, or do you want it now?
For "web standards" people, they sure sound pushy. Don't tell me they think IE 5.5 is compliant just because it's out today!
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
As someone who was introduced to surfing on a copy of netscape 1.2 it is a real shame to have to leave them now.
But lets face it. Their browser is crap, it's slow, it's buggy, feature-lacking and crashes a LOT. Even on solaris at work it's not stable.
Whereas IE5 is fast, not-quite-as-unstable, loaded with features, and does everything i want very nicely. Admittedly I couldn't get that to install on solaris at work because the OS was missing some patches but OE works fine.
Lets face it. M$ might not do much well, and i know it's not exactly standard complying but IE5 is a danm nice browser and it's sadly creating it's own standards leaving netscape/mozilla to play catch up with both legs tied together.
You're forgetting something - the half-life of web applications is frighteningly small.
Websites tend to get rewritten and redesigned every year or so in order to stay 'fresh'.
Take Netscape 4.x off the market? What exactly do they want? Pull it off their site so those that want it can no longer download it? Try to migrate everyone to a buggy, unfinished browser that only mostly works?
I do agree with most of the WaSP's complaints, however, and AOL is entirely at fault. Why haven't they been devoting more resources to the Mozilla project? Open source development is great, but if AOL wants this to happen, you'd think they'd contribute something, especially if they're planning to base their flagship service on this product!
Does anyone know just exactly what AOL does contribute to the Mozilla project?
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Sure, it's frustrating waiting for Netscape 6, but I don't see how flaming Netscape for not coding fast enough will further the cause of Web Standards. I used to support WSP because I thought it was voicing valid concerns, but I'm beginning to think WSP just another publicity engine for Zeldman, whose Daily Report is written with the same royal "we" as the WSP press releases.
As some know, this week is MacWorld Expo in NYC, and there is an article at MacNN regarding Netscape's presence at the show, as well as some answers from Chris Nalls, Macintosh Product Manager for Netscape. Check it out for some hard facts.
It's only when we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything...
I'm fairly certain that the complaint was more requested on behalf of Linux/MS users, but my real question is, what about for the Macintosh?
I don't know if any of you tried out Netscape 6 preview for the Mac, but it was slllooowww. I'd like to once again not have to use IE on both Macs and PCs. I mean, you'd think that since they can't beat an integrated browser for Windows, they'd at least focus on a different platform or something.
IE continues to work great on a Macintosh, something that Netscape should have never let happen.
metoo. I used to design for Netscape, and ignored IE. Now I design for IE, and Netscape can bite me. The thing that really clinched it for me was having to write nonstandard HTML to just get there to not be seams between images in a table in Netscape when IE rendered it correctly.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Let's face it, from Netscape's point of view, it was a terrible idea. The market share is gone, and the release of Mozilla is not going to make a dent on the installed base of IE browsers on Windows machines. It might have been great for us, but as a company, Netscape should not have opened Communicator.
Multiplayer Strategy
http://www.mozilla.org/projec ts/seamonkey/milestones/
Jay (=
Linux users are used to a cacophony of user interfaces where every application uses a different toolkit, looks different, feels different. Using a look and feel specific to only Mozilla doesn't seem ludicrous for people used to X-windows. Mac/Windows users won't put up with it. Mozilla hasn't a prayer of making it in the consumer market without a native interface.
Look, cross-platform development is hard, but a single cross-platform user interface is a dangerous cop-out. Sun apparently thought the problem with AWT was the attempt to use native cross-platform widgets, (in reality, AWT just sucked hard), so they took the easy way out with Swing and just set all the screen bits to be identical on every platform. Problem "solved".
It's criminal that Mozilla took the same path, for the same reason. The various front-ends sucked. Well, no shit. They still suck, and they should be abandoned.
But using Gecko to render the UI was an incredibly X Window-centric decision. Users on other platforms will not put up with it. Mozilla is dead on non-Unix platforms unless some insane person wraps a new app shell around it.
First, WSP says "Support all standards! Drop any development on the old codebase and work on the new codebase! We'll whine unless you don't."
Mozilla says "Look, that's going to take a long time. Are you sure you want to harangue us into doing it?"
WSP says yes.
Now, they're complaining that it's taking too long? They knew this coming in. It's like they want software to fall from the sky or something.
When I got sick of Netscape 4.7x crashing and bogging down, I downloaded Opera 4.01. In the second day of evaluation, I went ahead and paid for it. I'm pretty much switched completely over now.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
We are consumers.
sig this
Most of the sites developing microsofty crap are ones that I dont wana visit - mostly ecommerce and intranet stuff. Somehow I doubt that my interest areas (free software, geeky artistic development) are going to be taken over by microsoft only development.
You just have to laugh at this! Sure they won't touch your precious geeky sites, but for most of the world, "e-commerce and intranet stuff" are the only web sites that matter. Your argument is a perfect example of winning a meaningless battle and losing the war. Unfortunately, I expect this one's already lost. Microsoft is quite likely to have a usable standards-based browser before Netscape/Mozilla, since their enterprise customers *are* asking them to comply with standards.
I hate IE with a passion, and I resent like hell the way MS rammed it down our throats (I had to manage introducing the pile of crap when I was at Dell), but even I am starting to question whether each progressively more unstable release of Netscape is able to meet my browsing needs. If IE had support for a reasonable bookmark managment system and could use roaming profiles like Netscape (without a local AD server), I'd have a hard time finding any reason not to switch.
We've lost this one, folks. Microsoft controls the only UI that matters and is likely to continue doing so for the next several years. This does not bode well for the embedded Linux devices crowd, most of whom will need a small, fast, reliable browser compatible with it's larger desktop cousin. I'm afraid the browser issue may ultimately be the wedge that allows CE to triumph in this critical space as well. If that happens, it's "game over, man!"
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Open-source parasites really tick me off. If you want it fixed, do it. If you don't know how, learn. And if you can't or won't do either of the above, then how exactly are you qualified to say what is good development practice?
"Chrome/skins" are merely a side effect from deciding to use the rendering engine to render the UI.
The choices the Mozilla project faced were:
1) Write three front ends
2) Make Mozilla dependent on a non-free toolkit, creating a financial barrier to contributing
3) Base Mozilla on the 1.x-4.x codebase
4) Write a new XP toolkit with three local implementations.
5) Render the UI with Gecko.
What choice would you have made?
Steven E. Ehrbar
I agree that you use the best tool for the best job. And I feel that mozilla is the best web browser available. For me this isn't about standards support, its about features. With Moz I can get:
MapQuest maps from the sidebar, or any of several other apps just from two clicks. The extensible nature of mozilla allows many powerful things to be done with the sidebar. Its like having a mini-app inside your browser.
More control over my browsing experience through cookie managment and image managment (no banners).
Full NS4.x plugin compatability. Yes it works even now. Today and installed and used the flash plugin. It works well.
I feel that the disadvantages of the minor instabilities that occur from time to time (up till today's builds everything was very smooth) are very minor compared to the configurability I get from mozilla. I started on mozilla due to its standards support. I've stayed with mozilla because it is a fast, powerful web browser, among other things.
--
Eric is chisled like a Greek Godess
marotti.com
CSS level 1 became an approved standard in 1996.
HTML 4.0 was approved April 1998.
It's July 2000.
- My password is slashdot
Thanks, I'll do that....
*sets course for moz.org*
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
I've been following the Mozilla milestones and I seriously doubt that a stable Mozilla will be produced by the end of the year. The Gecko rendering engine has been rendering pretty-good HTML for at least *one year*. From what I can see, the problem is not the underlying HTML rendering technology, it is the application environment built around the technology.
For instance, chrome/skins are a nice idea in theory. But they're butt-slow in practice. I cannot believe the people who claim they use Mozilla daily. Any site with a little bit of Javascript looks like crap. window.open() is not implemented, for example.
I write software for a living. I'm sorry that the Mozilla developers are way behind schedule. I've been on projects like that too, and they're no fun. Also, open sourcing Mozilla was a great thing, no doubt. But I can't let my empathy for the Mozilla team, and my respect for Netscape's bold move, cloud the fact that the end product is terrible.
I swear to god with 3 programmers and 3 months of time I could come up with a standards compliant browser that kicked the crap out of IE (standard's-wise that is) and was comparable on UI. (IE is pretty nice).
... and I could do it myself in a month... except for the fact that 80% of the web pages out there just use plain old incorrect HTML, so you have to work around those. People aren't going to use your browser if it won't display 80% of the pages on the web, even if it is the page's fault and not your browser's. And dealing with those pages is just a fucking pain in the ass. The Mozilla team has done a great job, all things considered. And since it's available as a GTK+ widget, you can create a small wrapper around it so you get the good HTML rendering engine without the bloat.
--
So Netscape didn't live up to THEIR expectations. So what! Mozilla is now an open-source project, and basically chose to start from scratch instead of trying to push the mess that was the netscape code forward. Engineering takes time!
Further, this project is done completely in the open (in more ways that one..) and everyone can see it at any given time during it's development warts and all. This is just one more article taking pot-shots at the project. As I recall, it was the Press that claimed it as the darling child of the open-source world... not the open-source community itself. All the while, the Mozilla project marches on. It IS getting more stable, and I'd expect it to be ready for prime-time shortly.
I REALLY don't care what these guys said.. seems just a bunch of whining to me.
Have you compiled your kernel today??
You don't need to wait for the final version. Some of the intermediate M17 builds are already pretty good. I expect that when M17 becomes final I'll switch to making Mozilla my permanent browser.
OTOH, I'll certainly agree the M16 was missing a few pieces that I think necessary. Esp. in the area of mail/newsgroup filter handling. M17 has been improving that lots (though it was thoroughly broken the last time I checked, so YMWV)...it depends on which release you get. Try tonights (I expect to).
If you just say "it's not a finished product" then you don't understand the process. You need to either try it and say what bugs you found, or be precise as to what makes the current version unuseable. Or wait a week and try again. Or have a bit of patience. And if none of those are suitable, then I guess you really should be using Internet Explorer. It's actually pretty good. Just a bit heavy for my taste, and a bit skimpy on security, but it's your dollar(s).
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Winamp. What data format does it use? MP3. An open standard (more or less).
Netscape/Mozilla. Data formats and protocols used? Based on open standards.
AIM and ICQ. Protocols used? Proprietary. Oops. But the protocols are either documented, commonly reverse engineered, or a backdoor to the service has been provided. And AOL has been shamed in to agreeing to an "open standard" messaging protocol. We'll see if this improves.
So sure... AOL is pushing its brand out there. But, unlike much of Microsoft's offerings, AOL is ultimately backing open standards. And creating a default customer base who wants open standards helps the community.
Now does Joe User really know what these open standards are? Most likely not. Too technical. Joe User just wants things to work. Of course, unknown to Joe User, open standards helps make sure things work. Everywhere.
And things will continue to work whether they stay with AOL's offerings or not.
And there's where AOL's new strategy suddenly stands apart from Microsoft's.
WOW!
Just when i was getting bummed about Mozilla, you show me this. This is quite simply the slickest integration of web and command line functionality I've ever seen. Moderate up Babar's post, and check out xmlterm.com. I'm not easily impressed, but the potential for this sort of integration is staggering. Maybe Mozilla isn't dead - but I sure wish they'd get it finished.
The Mozilla team just bought themselves another couple of months with me - maybe this thing is embeddable enough to make a difference...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Okay, before I get pissed because you are a flaming dolt just like everyone else consider these facts:
1. Loads of websites turn of underlined links now
2. You can turn off style sheets.
3. Ever think some of us wish the whole web had no underlined text save that of for citing works? Links are a different color, ya can pick em out without underlines, and quite frankly, I have such awful vision, that even with glasses, underlined text is a bear on my eyes.
What it really boils down to is personal choice, you like em, I can barely read them, and I refuse to crank up my font when I can see the rest of the page just fine.
get over it, your not perfect.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
The WSP is right. As a Web developer, I am sick & tired of the unfulfilled promises of Mozilla. It is very obvious that Microsoft felt that they could ignore a lot of standards for IE 5.5 becuase there is no credible alternative to IE on Windows.
The situation is different on the Mac, where Netscape still has a large user population. As a result, Microsoft chose a different strategy, making IE more standards compliant than Netscape.
As an aside, the WSP is being too myopic in focusing entirely on PC-based Web browsers. There is a whole raft of non-PC based Web browsers that are also throwing standards to the wind.
The worst part of the delays in a final release of Mozilla/NS6 is that NS4 is so horribly outdated, so horribly unstable, that users are forced to choose an alternative.
Opera won't ever succeed in taking more than a small niche of the market, simply because they want money for their browser.
The only other realistic choice is IE. IE might not be standards compliant, but users don't care.
Mozilla/Netscape is going to have a hell of a time trying to rebuild their market share at this point in the game. Netscape fell from glory while the web was still relatively young. There wasn't much legacy code out there, so switching to a Microsoft-centric web was easy. Now, many web applications are written to Microsoft's browser, many webpages are written to render in Microsoft's browser, and many companies have switched to IE as their standard platform.
Will AOL use Netscape 6 as the browser in the next version of the AOL software? Maybe. Maybe not. It depends how much of the web is incompatible with NS6 by the time it finally reaches release.
A better strategy for the Mozilla team would have been to write an IE-compatible browser, instead of a standards-compatible browser. There's just as much documentation, and there's a reference platform to compare against. The standards are quickly become irrelevant, and by the time Mozilla/NS6 makes it out the door, they may have been completely forgotten by the webmasters-at-large. At least if Mozilla was IE-compliant, they'd still be able to compete.
I know I'm sacrificing my karma to make that statement, as the prevaling attitude around here seems to be "if you make it standards-compliant, they will come", but in reality, that's not the case. "If you make it do what the users want, they will come."
NO CARRIER
The IETF is generally considered the definitive standards body for all the various internet-related protocols. They have a strictly enforced rule over in the IETF, which I think the W3C would do well to pick up. The rule is: no protocol described in any RFC can be anointed an internet standard unless at least two independent interoperable implementations exist.
The result is that the IETF has surprisingly few internet standards (even HTTP for example is only a "Proposed standard"), but the few that they do have (SMTP, FTP, TCP, IP, among others) work very well.
Publishing a standard that has no existing implementations is an invitation for embrace-and-extend abuse. Yet the W3C has done exactly that repeatedly with their various versions of HTML 3.x, 4.x, and CSS. Even to this day, no browsers on the market have 100% HTML4+CSS2 support. Those who don't know any better wonder why HTML standards support is such a mess. I wonder why the HTML standards effort hasn't yet collapsed completely in the face of such inane stewardship.
The IETF through their public decisions processes and their wise management of the existing body of RFCs has earned my trust as an internet user. I have no such trust in the W3C. Who gave the W3C the right to publish HTML standards on behalf of the community anyway?
aol bought netscape. aol ships ie. so obviously aol has dealings with microsoft. regarding browsers.
so microsoft supplies the browser for the company that owns netscape, and that company fails to compete with microsoft.
except over instant messaging.
on another topic: you can warn yourself with AIM, thus eventually blocking yourself from using it. brilliant.
Correct my ignorance, but please don't do so flamingly.
Is Netscape open source, or is that Mozilla I'm thinking of? I've never been clear on the relationship between the two.
Also, if Netscape is open-source, how can this be happening? Is it because all the code was built onto the Mosaic engine? If so, can similar complaints be leveled at MSIEx.y for the same reason?
Remember, points for decorum and tact.
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
Granted, there have been several projects... but virtually nobody uses them (and thus you have a lack of coders/testers) because they can cop out and use Netscape instead.
In the IE/NS religious war, I have always sided with Netscape (hey, I was an original Mosaic user), but if they (Netscape/Mozilla.org) aren't going to do the job right, then the community needs to step up in its own defense and spawn a new project.
11*43+456^2
Every single flaw in the Mozilla project can be blamed on Jamie Zawinski (JWZ). In fact, JWZ is actually a shill, secretly paid by Microsoft to sabotage the Mozilla effort.
--
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
It IS a free software licence. Don't get me wrong, it is not the best licence by any means, but it is free.
http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/licen se-list.html
"The Mozilla Public License (MPL).
This is a free software license which is not a strong copyleft; unlike the X11 license, it has some complex restrictions that make it incompatible with the GNU GPL. That is, a module covered by the GPL and a module covered by the MPL cannot legally be linked together. We urge you not to use the MPL for this reason."
Mozilla provides a good FAQ on why things have to be the way they do (they are contracturally obligated).
http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/FAQ.html
Not to mention their hijacking of the status bar. If that's what the standards body supports, then I'm prepared to abandon standards. Every browser for himself, I say, and let lynx sort them out!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Folks, the browser wars are not over. Microsoft may be the leader now, but once Mozilla is complete (only a few more months to go!) then things are going to change. Sure lots of avid Windows Netscape fans will rejoice with the newe browser, and sure a lot of Mac fans will use it, and you can be certain that a lot of the Unix crowd will be afire. But what's the real reason Mozilla is going to save the web from being dominated by Microsoft?
2 things actually: embedded apps, and AOL.
The embedded space is only going to get bigger, and it needs a small, stable, fast, and standards-compliant browser. Mozilla can deliver on those promises. I really think we are going to see that the embedded browser makers will flock to using Mozilla, because it's so well done. I know if I were designing a console or a web pad, Mozilla would be my first choice.
But the real story here is AOL - they are the largest ISP in the world. They bought Netscape for a reason; they wanted to have the best browser available for their customers, without having to be tied to another vendor (who is a competitor, even!). When AOL includes Netscape in their client, the tide will turn. Suddenly there's another 22 million users you have to take into account. That comfortable, "lazy" approach of desinging for the IE extensions just won't cut it anymore.
And Mozilla will have saved us all.
What possible contribution can I make to Mozilla?
Loads - check out The QA Help Page or The BugAThon.
Gerv
1) The Mozilla project will not stop working on Composer, Mail/News, XUL, the application framework etc. because releasing a product with less functionality than NS 4.x would be a disaster, and they aren't going to rearchitect the whole thing now. If you don't like it, don't whinge - use Galeon.
2) Everyone involved with Mozilla is busting their butt to get Netscape Beta 2 out of the door. They are not sitting around saying "AOL told me to stop working this month."
3) The fact that outside contributors have contributed IRC clients and games written on Mozilla is a demonstration of its power, and people having fun, not an indication of a lack of focus.
4) Don't moan about standards compliance without quoting Bugzilla bug numbers.
5) Mozilla is currently big and slow because it's full of debugging code and no performance or footprint optimisations have been done yet. They will happen, almost full-time, after Netscape Beta 2.
6) There is a 4.x-lookalike UI in the nightly builds. Don't moan about the default skin - it's for testing purposes.
7) Make no comments about NS 6 Pre 1. By Mozilla standards, it's ancient.
8) We all know Netscape 4 sucks. IE 5 is better than it. You can stop making this point. The code is currently in "security bug fix only" mode because all the developers are working on Mozilla.
9) If you want to do something constructive but aren't a ninja coder, check out The QA Help page.
Gerv
Discarding the development pace of Netscape 6, it's obvious from the lack of effort on AOL's part to aggressively promote or endorse this beast in any fashion that this is not a key strategic piece in their gameplan. If it WAS important, they'd have poured some of those billions they bought Time-Warner with into the project.
They found that it was bloated, poorly written, and poorly engineered. So they threw it all away and started over almost completely. Architecturally, the new Mozilla is much much better, and should be able to be more flexible over time than the old code tree. But it's taken a long time to get there. And it's not done yet. But it has many, many nice features.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
3) The web developers who posted this (and the subsequent additional posters) are idiots.
Only because you apparently haven't grasped the WaSP's point.
Only an idiot would scream for standards -in fact, base their whole mission statement on the needs for open standards- and then bash the developers working on this very request.
But Mozilla developers aren't just working on a 100% complaint web browser. There's all the extra functionality being added (IRC, mail, news, etc.) that is 100% IRRELEVANT to the Web Standards Project's desires.
In their minds Mozilla development is proceeding too slowly, and as a result making it harder on web developers who want to use standards that are 2-4 years old. It's entirely likely that WaSP will review Netscape 6 and, assuming it meets the goal of 100% standards compliance, say "You know what? We're sorry, Netscape, this browser was worth the wait." Then the onus will be back on Microsoft to improve their commitment to open standards.
Maybe AOL will be able to force their subscribers to switch to a Netscape 6/Mozilla-based browser, and trigger the final showdown as to who will control the web (AOL/Netscape, Microsoft, or a standards-compliant compromise between the two). But right now, that's all vapor. I'll believe AOL's commitment to using Mozilla when I see it.
So yes, there is a reason to bitch. Every day people settle on using IE because the one viable competitor has not had a significant functionality upgrade to their product in YEARS. (And fsck you very much, Netscape, for your insipid "Shop" button.) They're switching because IE 5.x does for them, NOW, what Netscape 4.x can't. And unless Netscape 6 is orders of magnitude better than MSIE, they won't necessarily switch back.
And then top it off by endorsing the competition - a compeditor who has absolutely NO regard for open standards in the first place.
They may have no regard for open standards, but their products currently on the market (the 5.x series) support those standards better than Netscape's current offering (the 4.x series).
Maybe people who don't have paychecks depending on what solutions they use RIGHT NOW are content to wait for Mozilla, but not everyone has that luxury.
And for the record, I have every intention of using Mozilla once it's finished. But then again, my business isn't dependant on having that solution right now.
Jay (=
IE is is faster because it loads at boot time. JAva engine included.
while (rant) {
I am so sick of people complaining about something taking a little longer. Do you realize that even in internet time, it is better to build a good base and do it right and standardized? I write java servlets and it takes a bit longer than ASP but in the long run, it's much more competative because it is enterprise capable and extendable. So IE has neat little javascript rollovers, and startsup quicker...so what. What does that do for doing business over the web? The technologies coming in Mozilla and netscape look to be excellent for such things(ie, the java plugin etc.etc.) }
I need a TiVo for my car. Pause live traffic now.
Simson Garfinkel wrote an eye-opening backgrounder that explores this question. A quote:
TimBL, remember, is the guy who invented 'http://' and who dictated that two 'P's in a row should dispay the same as one (absurdly forcing everyone to add non-breaking spaces).It's just basic design common-sense that you don't create top-down 'standards' groups who dictate the rules of human factors without ever testing the standards, and without having the slightest understanding of what human-factors is all about.
I have an old rant about this.
How I wish MS would understand this... on both sides of the fence. Sure, I'm bending this particular subthread into scrap metal, but I may be more receptive to IE if most of its idiocy was shoved in my face by default. Also, MS prolly isn't the only entity guilty of forcing you to accept their stuff or nothing. Web developers sometimes do this with their flash-only sites that check to see if you're running MSIE ON WINDOWS, and kvetch or provide a blank page if you're not "hip."
(actually, I do have a choice, what with 98lite to completely and cleanly uninstall IE from win98...)
--
--
Me spell chucker work grate. Need grandma chicken.
The continued existence of 4.x is due to the fact that there is nothing to replace it. People who don't want to use IE or use a platform where IE is unavailable have no choice but to use a 4.x release. Mozilla/Netscape 6 is still an early beta development project. 4.x is still the Netscape in-production browser, solely because of the absence of a new release. If you look at a fine level break down of browser usage, most people have already switched to IE 5.0 at least if they're using Internet explorer. If there was a Netscape 5/6, than you would assume that a comperable portion of NS 4.x users would jump to the new release.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
For a while I was working one the mozilla project, but I just endedup leaving just because it didn't seem like anything was going on. They have an exelent bug tracking program, but you put a bug in there and nothing happens to it. I fixed one minor bug, had code and diffs ready to go, and I am still waiting for it to be put into the cvs. Horribly project, too much code. I don't care if it's the most standards complient or open source or whatever, it doesn't work, and Im staying with IE.
I just grabbed netscape 6 pre 1 while upgrading to Comm 4.74, and to my amazement, it still doesn't handle style sheets correctly! Now it does em like ie, unfollowed links still have underlines even if I use a style sheet to get rid of them, only after I click em once do the ugly underlines disapear.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
Want to compeate with Netscape and IE?
Be there first...
Want to win marketshare?
Be there first...
"We conform to the FULL CURRENT STANDARD"
This is what you get for not develuping the standards browser yourself....
Originally the same people who ran the web wrote the stupid browser.
Then they handed the job off to lynx and Mosaic... Now it's the job of Microsoft and AoL... For standards I'd say those are the the WORST companys to trust.
So if they want to get standards write a free browser. Basic in functionility. Dosn't need bookmarks or plugins just make it a basic browser. And say "Now keep up or DIE"...
It'll give web develupers a REAL target to work with... and browser develupers something REAL to work with.
I don't actually exist.
And, of course, if you convert Bill Gates to numbers using the standard alphabet you get:
BILL GATES
2+9+12+12+7+1+20+5+19=87.
87, of course, is the average number of "secret" messages one can find in any paragraph of text, given enough time, desire, and computing power. This paragraph happens to contain 54 secret messages. Can you find them all?
Oh, and just to try and keep this somewhat on topic: I also used to be a hard-core Netscape user, but I ended up switching to IE somewhere around 4.3. Since then I've used IE as my standard. Lately, however, I'm been checking out the Opera browser. They have versions for Windows, Linux, BeOS and Mac. It's not perfect, but so far it seems more stable and slightly faster than IE.
Red Hat had the Red Baron browser in RHL 4.1. While it wasn't what I'd call great, it was a start. They've got an idea as to how to do a browser. They've got the vitality of a young and strong company, and potentially they've got the resources.
I'm sure there was wisdom in AOL buying Netscape Communications Corporation. Somewhere. The wisdom however escapes me. The proof, imho, is that AOL's browser engine was, is, and will continue to be Microsoft Internet Explorer. Netscape is at present a pawn.
It's beautiful. Look at Bill Gates and what Microsoft needs to do: sit and watch. Don't port MSIE to Linux. Let Netscape die on its own and watch all viable browsers for Linux die with it. Imagine what happens next to Linux. Laugh and joke, spout the virtues of [minor player browser name], or ignore reality if you want, but who is going to support Linux if it has no usable browser?
Hey folks, the marathon is almost over and the leader is pulling away. Time's almost up.
Graham
Graham
Linux - Fast Pane Relief
The WSP is right. In the mindshare department, AOL (of which I have a few thousand shares) is a laggard in cranking out new versions, or even using their worldwide dominance to leverage the browser.
But, it's still way easier to hack IE.
I should mention a couple people at work pointed out the real threat to Netscape is that the HTML in sites pushed out with MSFT products has caused NS to break so often that they just gave up and now use IE at home. This is where the danger lies - MSFT makes sure the code it cranks out to pub will break NS and consumers take the path of least resistance. Yes, I own MSFT shares, but I also have RHAT as well.
At the end of the day, when all is said and done, AOL will survive. Netscape, on the other hand, may be offered up as a sacrificial lamb.
Will in Seattle
But the Mozilla team, for reasons that the remainder of the developer community has yet to fathom, is insistant on supporting every feature of NS4.x before releasing a product -- and more! "It's not a browser" is the party line: "It's an application framework". But a browser --specifically a HTML-rendering, Java(ECMA)script-interpreting, Java-plugin-friendly engine -- is what is desperately needed right now, especially for users of alternative operating systems.
What the WaSP is expressing is the frustration of being stuck waiting for the one component that matters most, simply because the Mozilla team feels that it's crucial to have everything for the initial release. Mozilla has certainly disobeyed ESR's cardinal rule of open source development: "Release early, release often."
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Team Mozilla is going to hear a lot more of these complaints.
- Richie
One beautiful example of a heavy-headed hypocricy is this:
This comes AFTER the WaSP (because no single author would take credit for this piece) suggests that Netscape withdraws its browser, had never started working on Mozilla, and should have never tried in the first place. They attribute the lack of support for Netscape products to its lack of standards compliance, NOT the fact that Microsoft used unlawful monopoly tactics to bully it out of the market.
Here is a nicely written counter-attack by Chris Nelson, which gives some very interesting counter points. Don't let the WaSP get you down Mozilla, just keep on rolling.
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"Okay, who taught the cat how to type ctrl alt delete?"
I cannot believe the people who claim they use Mozilla daily.
I hope you will believe me. I use Mozilla daily, although I don't use it all day. There are a lot of sites that Netscape just plain won't render and Mozilla will. Yes, there are still a lot of annoyances with Moz but it does function, and it's the reigning champ in rendering speed. I just posted with Mozilla.
--
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Can't really blame Microsoft this time....
Microsoft is just folowing Netscape...
Admittedly IE is not a very good job of doing that but it's still Microsoft folowing Netscape...
Basicly when something dosn't work right on Windows Microsoft adds features, Ignores standards, and just makes it fit with a sledge hammer.
They don't automaticly go out of the way to break stuff they just worry more about making the product work under Windows and if that means it won't work under anything else.. so what... they should be using Microsofts product anyway.
Example... Java dosn't work well at all. So it works poorly on Windows. So Microsoft changes it.
If Netscape dosn't bother to conform to current standards then Microsoft won't eather.
If Microsoft thinks something is needed. It's in the standard but Netscape hasn't bothered. Then why bother with the standard. Just write something that works REALLY WELL with Microsoft Windows.
Microsoft STARTS with standards but they don't allways FINISH with standards.
If it works decently but could be done better if it were a Window centric solution Microsoft won't bother. It's just to often than it dosn't work decently and Microsoft is left with breaking standards left and right to make Windows do what they want.
But IE works quite well and the standards (byond Java) are pritty good. Microsoft centric solutions won't make much diffrence.
But if it's not in Netscape then as far as Microsoft is conserned it dosn't exist.
I don't actually exist.
I think a big part of the reason why a number of people here have switched to IE over Netscape is that they develop web apps for a living, and IE is right now much better to use for web development.
But, for browsing I still prefer Netscape. About the only time I have it crash (regularily running over ten to twenty windows) is due to a plugin failing, like RealAudio or Flash.
But I have to disagree with you about the boulder/pebble analogy. I run NT4 at work, and from time to time I've had IE LOCK up the whole machine. I usually have a good thirty windows open with a lot of different things going on, and that means a LOT of work to get back to the state I was in before the machine died. At best IE might take out the explorer process, which still means I lose a number of open directory windows and have to re-open them...
That's not a boulder in my path. That's a tornado that drops me right back to where I started, and even one occurance per lifetime pisses my off more than ten thousand browser standalone deaths could ever do.
I also find the little details (like the status bar thing you mention) really annoying, so on top of everything else I find using IE to give me that grain of sand in the shoe effect. So basically, I only use it for some web development and for everything else stick to Netscape.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What works in one context will not necessarily work in another. When TCP/IP was being developped, there was little outside commercial pressure on getting the network in place quickly. Vinton Cerf and associates had enough time on their hands to do the development and the standardization together. A more recent development is the standardization of IPv6: but here also there was little pressure because it was evident that nobody would start sending datagrams in their own proprietary format across the Internet (simply because such datagrams would not have gone beyond the first router they encountered).
But the Web is not as easily contained as the Internet. If you don't get your standards out fast enough, someone will come up with his own. So it's better, IMHO, to offer standards that perhaps will never be implemented in full, but will at least serve as guidelines for those implementations of a particular feature. Besides, to be fair to the W3C, you should at least recognize that they try to implement their stuff: see the Amaya web browser for example.
Also note that the "standards" in question are merely named "recommendations" and nothing else. Why, the RFC's also contain many "recommendations" ("informational" status RFC's) which will never formally be made into "Internet standards" (because they are not in the "Standards Track" for RFC's) but which nevertheless are regarded as de facto standards.
The W3C has no particular authority over the Web, but it has done a (IMHO) good job of coming up with precise specifications documenting reasonable standards. That is why people choose to recognize, to some extent at least, that it has authority. The same holds for the IETF or any other standards' organization (some extremists state that only the ISO has any authority for issuing standards and that all the Internet is based merely on de facto standards rather than the true (i.e. OSI/X.25) standard for networking; needless to say, I totally disagree with this position, and I see no reason why the ISO's authority should be higher than the IETF's or the W3C's). It is true, I would prefer the W3C to work under the aegis of the Internet Society; but if it won't, so be it.
Now, if you (or some "W4 Consortium" you might create) can come up with some reasonable (and freely redistributable) standards for the web (or for anything else) and, even better, if you can implement them at least partially, then I will consider that you have as much authority as the W3C and that your standards are equally valid. But if you can't, you must "put up or shut up".
But isn't it slightly their fault? They are making their own standards and running with it. I might say that it is more Mozilla's fault for not competing w/ MS than anything. Whether or not MS utilized a monopoly to kill NS is another story...
It's only when we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything...
WSP has a very serious flaw in their logic. If Netscape pulled their 4.x browser off the market, web developers would write to one browser and one browser only...what does that mean?, it means that developers would use all of Microsoft's proprietary tags/technologies and become ingrained in them. Then there would be no hope of web standards. NN4 forces developers to write to the lowest common denominator, keeping standards hopes alive, even though it may drive developers nuts (personal experience confirms this :-0). IE5 may be a better browser, but once Mozilla comes out, developers can distribute it as a platform and target anyone. (Mozilla will never overtake IE in marketshare, it will be utilized primarily in developing true cross-platform solutions since it runs on many different platforms). Notice how web standards affect none of this.
There are a number of sites that I only view in Mozilla, because the experience is much smoother there (aint-it-cool-news is a good example, as their talkback is so badly put together that if your browser doesn't incrementally render tables, you're doomed to wait minutes). Obviously I'll have to view this particular page in Mozilla... ;-)