MozillaZine Editorial On Netscape Criticism

RAD Kade 1 writes "An editorial on mozillazine.org is criticizing recent criticism against Netscape. Netscape stories will also no longer be posted on mozillazine.org, only Mozilla-related items."

Comments

He's got some great points.

[Hrunting]

The same people who are saying that Netscape 6 shouldn't be released because it isn't standards compliant are the same people who just recently said that Netscape should've released an interim browser between 4.7x and 6.x that at least implemented some standards.

What's increasingly becoming important, though, is that the people doing this criticism are not programmers. They are web developers. mozillaZine's stance is largely taken because the people doing the majority of the flaming are not people actively involved in bettering the project. They're like Monday morning quarterbacks.

FWIW, I've been using the Mozilla nightly builds for at least 6 months and they've been, for the most part, rock-solid. Yes, every once in a while something crops up stylesheets or the DOM (there's a particularly annoying bug right now where DOM form objects contain element entries from other DOM form objects), but for the most part, the code is solid, and some of the improvements (like incrememtal table display) are beautiful to use.

Re:He's got some great points.

[AugstWest]

Well, you're ignoring the issue that Netscape is not just a browser, it is, as was stated at O'Reilly, a development platform.

If my company could get back all of the countless hours wasted trying to find the workarounds necessary to get standardized functions to work in Netscape, we'd be way ahead of the game.

As a developer working on a project, you *have* to be mindful of the end user. If we release a web-based software package, like millions of other companies around the world, we'd like to know that building our interfaces to standards isn't wasted time.

We'd like to know that if we're doing something that sticks to the spec, Netscape isn't going to screw us over by deciding that they need to get the browser out the door before it is compliant.

Stylesheet issues, JavaScript issues, session issues... These should be no-brainers, but instead we end up wasting valuable resources trying to figure out if we can work around some Netscape bug or if we'll have to completely throw out some bit of functionality.

Stylesheet support is *essential*. You talk about it like it's not a big deal to you, but when more and more software packages are going to web-based paradigms, things like this become make-or-break issues. Not having full stylesheet support is just... ludicrous.

They have a point

[robinjo]

I think they do have a point. Like several people pointed out on Mozillazine, Mr. Flanagan is complaining that the the most standard-compliant browser is not compliant enough. Someone even called this Bugzilla abuse as nobody gets to see Microsoft's uncensored bug database.

Mozilla is a big project and it's pretty useless for outsiders to decide what should be fixed next. There's a lot of bugs to fix and features to create and only those programmers know what to do next.

I also think that Mozillazine is right in distancing themselves from Netscape 6. Mozilla is another project and the decision makers are not same. Netscape 6 will be released sooner while Mozilla will continue to evolve until it's rock solid.

While I'm writing this I'd like to bring up an alarming thing about Mozilla. After testing a lot of nighly builds, I have to say that the Linux builds are not nearly as far as Win32 builds. I'd love to see more contribution to the Linux development. If you don't have the skills and time to hack code, download nighly builds, report bugs and confirm old ones. It does help creating Mozilla the best browser there is. Complaining and jokes about Mozilla being dead won't.

Re:They have a point

[g_mcbay]

There's a lot of bugs to fix and features to create and only those programmers know what to do next.

I think a big part of the problem many people have with Mozilla is not simply that it is buggy or non-standards-compliant.... Most people's problem is that it is buggy and non-standards-compliant seemingly at the expense of all sorts of questionable features, like the skinning interface, the built in chat features, etc.

I understand the arguments about how you can't really heard Open Source developers into doing what you want them to, and most would rather work on glam features rather than dull bugs...But that's an issue that needs to be addressed in some way if Mozilla ever wants to compete again with IE. And it deserves to be criticized until that issue is addressed.

Netscape deserves what they're getting

[Tridus]

Some of these bugs aren't minor, they're fairly serious "you can't use the DOM properly on a table" types of problems, and things which used to work in 4.x and don't anymore. In its current state, all Netscape 6 will do is create another browser to code for, with another set of quirks and bugs.

There is some help if you don't use the DOM, since things like HTML 4 and CSS seem to be working pretty well.

But I guess the problem is that the Netscape people want to release no matter what, and you almost have to beat on them with a book to get them to include fixes. Anybody remember a few weeks ago when we had the bug that was causing large grey lines in everything? They had to be browbeaten to include a fix for that.

That reminds me of Microsoft, who suffers severe criticism for doing it. So why should Netscape get special treatment?