Gecko May Replace IE In AOL/CompuServe

ShaunC writes: "According to this C|Net article, pieces of Gecko have been spotted in a beta version of the next CompuServe client, and AOL has confirmed that Gecko is being tested as CompuServe's default browser. AOL 7.0 is shipping with IE, but perhaps future versions will widen the gap between AOL and Microsoft. (I'm glad we won't be seeing AOL-TW-MS-NBC.)"

Comments

IE compatibility

[chrysalis]

Gecko renders very well but it still has javascript and IE compatibility issues.
Users will yell if something that worked with IE don't work any more.
However, there will be a lot of bug reports, and those will make Mozilla better.

Re:IE compatibility

[nealbutler]

I'm not 100% sure on this, but isn't Mozilla the old Netscape engine, and Gecko the new one?
Or what's the connection between the two? Does Mozilla (the browser, that is) use Gecko?

nb

Re:IE compatibility

[digital-hell-native]

Yes, Gecko is the new render engine developed by the Mozilla Team. If you have seen it in action you don't want to go back (at least not me).

Re:IE compatibility

[TangoCharlie]

How can a browser have "IE compatibility" issues? Surely it is IE that has compatibility issues?! Gecko isn't perfect, but it aims for standards compilance. Don't fall into the trap of slamming products for not being "compatible".... with certian other products which are designed and developed specifically to break such compatibilities. If a web site renders well for IE, but not for Gecko (or Opera or OmniWeb or ...) then it is the WEB sites fault, not Geckos!

Re:IE compatibility

[TheMidget]

If a web site renders well for IE, but not for Gecko (or Opera or OmniWeb or ...) then it is the WEB sites fault, not Geckos!

Yes, and in that case, the user should indeed loudly complaint. To the webmaster of that s(h)ite!

Re:IE compatibility

[Edgewize]

It's a matter of user perception. A huge percentage of web sites out there are designed around IE's rendering bugs and faulty CSS model. If Joe User views one of those sites with a Gecko-based browser, and it looks broken, who will he blame? Not the web designer, because it looked fine in IE.

To deal with this, Gecko has a wonderful feature - 'quirks' mode. When handling a web page that doesn't have a strict DTD declaration, Gecko emulates the rendering bugs of IE (especially those with spacing and the CSS box model). So a page that is not standards compliant but works with IE will probably look OK in Gecko too.

Re:IE compatibility

[Phroggy]

Users will yell if something that worked with IE don't work any more.

When AOL moves 20 million clueless idiots from MSIE to Gecko, Web designers will fix the problems very quickly, making the Web a better place for all of us.

Re:IE compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

No IE is used by the majority of users on the net
therefore it has become the standard whether or not the standard bodies like it or not. If Geckos
can't display web pages where IE display correctly then it's Geckos problem, not the web site

Re:IE compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

most of the non-compliant sites are written by people who've never heard of css.

The issue (IMHO) lies with the vast amount of web "designers" that use vast amounts of nested tables for layout.

Re:IE compatibility

[julesh]

To deal with this, Gecko has a wonderful feature - 'quirks' mode. When handling a web page that doesn't have a strict DTD declaration, Gecko emulates the rendering bugs of IE (especially those with spacing and the CSS box model). So a page that is not standards compliant but works with IE will probably look OK in Gecko too

That's all well and good, but many designers write standards compliant web sites that are still designed around IE's bugs, because you have to - in order to get certain effects you have to use the buggy features of IE.

And the fact that Mozilla doesn't support a lot of Javascript that has become accepted standard, if not actual standard, causes a lot of problems, when it would be quite possible for it to support both methods (that is, both the W3C DOM and a hybrid DOM that superficially looks like IE4/5 or even NN4) without needing to have a smart switch between them.

Re:IE compatibility

[Nau.dk]

However, there will be a lot of bug reports, and those will make Mozilla better.

I don't think that the common user would report a Mozilla-bug. But, a lot of webdesigners will hopefully be told that their pages doesn't look well in Mozilla, (which is somewhat equal to not being standards-compliant.)

Nau

Re:IE compatibility

[supabeast!]

If AOL stops using IE, web designers will stop caring about IE compatibility. if AOL dumps IE, that will be over 35,000,000 people using Mozilla browsers.

Right on AOL!

Re:IE compatibility

[Erik Hollensbe]

If you look at the user-agent string for mozilla it *explicitly* states that it's IE 5.0 compliant.

Of course, the bigger problem now is that IE, as of 5.5 and 6.0, has removed support for netscape-style plugins, which is probably something that's going to make a lot of Internet-in-a-box companies like Compu$erve and AOL think twice before integrating it with their software.

That, and the fact that all of these systems only run on windows, which lets the user use IE if they want to anyways.

Re:IE compatibility

[tshak]

I've been developing in ASP.NET for the last few months and I've found that although it does a TON of IE specific neat little things (actually, some are incredibly powerful and practical), I've found that my sites work very well with Mozilla and Opera. ASP.NET generates most all of the HTML/ECMAScript for you. I'm quite surprised that it's touted "multilevel browser support" (mobile (WML),HTML 3.0,HTML 4.0,IE) really works quite well. And, AFAIK, the final version will allow you to output strict XHTML.

Re:IE compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Gecko should detect the non-standards compliant web site, switch to IE "quirks mode" automatically and then NOTIFY the user that the site he/she is currently visiting does not comply with standard internet protocols.

With 20 million + potential users out there, most web designers would hopefully heed the resulting emails.

Re:IE compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

>It's a matter of user perception. A huge percentage of web sites out there are designed around IE's rendering bugs and faulty CSS model.

Wouldn't that make it an internet explorer document directory rather than a website? ;)

Re:IE compatibility

[__aaklbk2114]

like joe user gives a damn that his browser dosen't "comply with standard internet protocols."

not only does he not care, he doesn't even know what the hell they are.

all he cares about is that the page looks like it did in IE.

With 20 million + potential users out there,...

"potential" is the key word there. seen the browser market share stats latley? mozilla's got a long row to hoe before it gets anywhere close to 20 million users from the 1000 zealots that use it now.

Re:IE compatibility

[baptiste]

Yes, and in that case, the user should indeed loudly complaint. To the webmaster of that s(h)ite!

Actually - in addition, Mozilla needs to complain loudly - I'm tired of going to a new site and having Mozilla just lock up because of some whacked out IE only crap. Mozilla needs to be able to handle stuff like this, recover AND should pop up some type of window informing the user that this site uses non compliant Javascript, etc and to complain to the webmaster or whatever. But freezing isn't the answer!

I think Mozilla will help move some websites towards standards comliancy, though at the expense of some users who will refuse to use it 'cause it works on IE!' Its a tough battle and there are arguments for both sides (maybe Mozilla should handle whatever screwy stuff it is but also pop up a window or use a taskbar icon to indicate a BAD site - non compliant whatever - wnough users bug the webmaster about it - maybe they'll fix it instead of telling users 'Use IE and don't bug me"

I can dream can't I? :)

Re:IE compatibility

[Chester K]

To deal with this, Gecko has a wonderful feature - 'quirks' mode. When handling a web page that doesn't have a strict DTD declaration, Gecko emulates the rendering bugs of IE

Quirks mode emulates the bugs of previous versions of Netscape, not IE.

Re:IE compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, and as a web developer I still can't dynamically (with ECMAJavaScript) set and unset the 'visiblity' and 'hidden' properties. Netscape 4 allowed you to set it once in the HTML (but not change it). This is the same as Mozilla. So you're saying Mozilla has the same standard compatibility as Netscape 4 (which was pretty poor)? Yes, I certainly would not want to go back...

Re:IE compatibility

[theancient2]

Um, no.

You're not a web designer, are you? You need to have a copy of every browser that has more than about a 0.2% market share.

Instead it's more likely that web designers will abandon the "cool features" of IE in order to cater to the lowest common denominator. More time spent resolving compatibility issues is less time spent doing actual productive work.

Or everyone could switch to something proprietary that works the same everywhere, like Flash. heh.

Re:IE compatibility

[TandyMasterControl]

29 million clueless idiots.

Re:IE compatibility

[Phroggy]

29 million clueless idiots.

They won't all upgrade. There are still people running AOL 3.

Re:IE compatibility

[Edgewize]

Both, actually. Many features of quirks mode have no effect on Netscape 4.x rendering but help IE compatibility.

Re:IE compatibility

[noweb4u]

So what does B8 00 4C CD 21 mean anyway?
It's i386 assembly in hex -

mov ax,4c00
int 21h

It's a dos function call to exit the current application with an error code of 0.

ah is the function call, 4c

al contains the desired exit code - 0 in this case.

Frightening part is I knew this off the top of my head...

Re:IE compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla has near 100% standards compliance, and the goal is actual 100% compliance for 1.0

Re:IE compatibility

[Karma Sink]

Congratulations, sir. You're part of the 1-5% of web designers who actually does his job correctly.

Most web designers out there don't care what the site looks like on any computer, save for his supervisors.

Re:IE compatibility

[m.batsis]

IE compatibility. Sheeeeeeeeeesh, everything IE has that Mozilla hasn't, is a bigger script object library that just resides on the windows OS.

What about IE compatibility to standards?

Script? We're still in JavaScript1.2 (I think).

CSS? The damn thing doesn't even recognise the elementary selector syntax.

XML? II'm tired of seen extensions to the DOM, but not the actual DOM spec (I even heard they halted the errata at W3C because it would mark most DOM implementations useless).

XSLT? The output element has been stripped of it's functionality (that dan incoding issues are a constant pain). Lot's of other bugs. MSXML extensions should work fine though...

(X)HTML? What IE thinks of HTML, can be seen by the innerHTML property. All elements in upercase, quotes stripped off by values (I had to use an applet to fix this one for my web apps).

I am really happy about Mozilla not being compliant with IE...

Just my thoughts.

Manos

Re:IE compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that AOL should use Mozilla to force websites to comply with real standards. However, the 29 million AOL users are NOT "idiots", they are just people who aren't as interested in computers as we are. Calling them idiots is says more about you than them.

Re:IE compatibility

[ninewands]

Actually, the prospect of not being able to sell to 20 + million AOL users is what will move websites back to standards compliance if AOL 7 is Gecko-based instead of IE-based.

This is not to say that 20 + million people can't be wrong. They do use AOL, after all. The message this comment is meant to convey is that 20 + million AOL members is a market force that must be considered in the decision-making process.

IE 6 vs others

[sheriff_p]

This is all well and good - no one wants to see M$ monopolising *everything*. Still, IE 6 is leaps ahead of any other browser that's available at the moment, and I for one feel that not using IE 6 if you're using Windows is somewhat akin to cutting off one's nose to spite one's face...

Re:IE 6 vs others

[griffits]

>>Leaps ahead of any other browser that's available at the moment

In what respect? I use Mozilla exclusively on Windows and Galeon on Linux and I see no advantage that IE6 has over Mozilla.

Re:IE 6 vs others

[cameleon]

How do you figure that? I'm using Opera exclusively, and I harldy ever find sites that look messed up (once a month or so).

On top of that, it's lighter, has mouse gestures and a much better interface (once you get used to it). I'd say, try it.

Re:IE 6 vs others

[Malcontent]

I use mozilla. It rocks. It has tabs, it has mouse gestures, it's fast and it's really stable. I can theme it any way I want. I of course have IE installed but I never fire it up unless I visit one or two percent of the sites that insist on it.
Besides Mozilla does not leak my personal information, it does not have cryptic option names designed to fool me, it does not keep sending me to MSN, it does not accept activeX controls, it does not execute viruses automatically, and best of all it allows me to turn off popups on page load.

Mozilla is the best browser on the market and it's not even version one yet. This is because it focuses on me. It wants to help me have a better web browsing experience. IE wants to deliver me to advertisers. That's a significant difference.

The number one reason AOL should go with mozilla (or gecko) is because MS is planning to implement smart tags and has already implemented 404 redirects. The last thing AOL wants is for their customers to be redirected to MS sites anytime they click on anything and besides why give aid and comfort to your enemy.
By switching to mozilla AOL will also discourage people from building IE only sites and that will be a good thing for all of us.

Re:IE 6 vs others

[sveinhal]

Still, IE 6 is leaps ahead of any other browser that's available at the moment, and I for one feel that not using IE 6 if you're using Windows is somewhat akin to cutting off one's nose to spite one's face...

What do you mean? Have you actually tried any other browser for Windows. On my windows-box I only use opera, and I fail to see how IE6 is better than Opera in any way.

• It's small: only a 1.9meg download (7 meg if you want java support) and that's the entire download (not just some installer that downloads the rest)
  
• It runs on a 486
  
• Opens fast
  
• It renders HTML faster than both IE and mozilla
  
• It was the first of the above mentioned to support mouse gestures for faster navigation
  
• It has a superior window interface
  
• It's available on Linux, BeOS, Mac, OS/2, QNX, and EPOC as well as Windows (though developement has not reached as long as the windows edition)
  

Some DHTML is not yet supported, but that's the only drawback. IE falls short on any of the above mantioned features.

-s-

Re:IE 6 vs others

[Pengo]

Hmm... IE6 doesn't seem to be as stable as IE 5.5. I have had things like font rendering problems and 'hangs' in the system. They have imbedded things like a media player directly into the browser and whenever that or MSN Messenger have problems, it's effecting the browser for some reason.

I am sure that they will work it out.. but IE6 is definately not their highest quality browser released IMHO (5.0 had problems until they fixed it up shortly after release)

Re:IE 6 vs others

[b0r1s]

I really hate to say this, and it's not a flame, but I think most of the problems *nix users have with IE is they expect it to work by default. Perfectly. And if they dont, they try hacking at it like they do in *nix, and cause problems (kill off the stability)...


I use mozilla. It rocks. It has tabs, it has mouse gestures, it's fast and it's really stable. I can theme it any way I want. I of course have IE installed but I never fire it up unless I visit one or two percent of the sites that insist on it.

Comparing speed between mozilla and ie6 isnt even close. IE6 will win most rendering contests almost every time. IE6 is also substantially more stable than ie5.x (I think I recall only one crash in the 4 months I've been running it : Netscape 4.76 used to crash four to five times a day in debian...)

Besides Mozilla does not leak my personal information, it does not have cryptic option names designed to fool me, it does not keep sending me to MSN, it does not accept activeX controls, it does not execute viruses automatically, and best of all it allows me to turn off popups on page load.

Going back to my previous statement, all of these things can be fixed, except the pop-ups. From the top menu, choose tools, and then internet options. Under the security and privacy tabs, set who YOU want to be able to get your information. Dont take the default, it's as simple as that. Tell IE6 NOT to run activex, or to ask you first. Tell it not to execute ANY binary files, period. Tell it not to send you to msn, set your homepage to /. or google.

The only problem that i see with msn, that i dont like, is the 404 redirect. I'm looking into a way to change this. Other than that, I couldnt be happier with ie6.

Re:IE 6 vs others

[deepstephen]

Comparing speed between mozilla and ie6 isnt even close. IE6 will win most rendering contests almost every time. IE6 is also substantially more stable than ie5.x (I think I recall only one crash in the 4 months I've been running it : Netscape 4.76 used to crash four to five times a day in debian...)

Comparing speed between Mozilla and Netscape 4.76 isn't even close either. Mozilla will win most rendering contests almost every time. Mozilla is also substantially more stable than Netscape 4.76.

Etc, etc...

Re:IE 6 vs others

[lpontiac]

The only problem that i see with msn, that i dont like, is the 404 redirect. I'm looking into a way to change this. Other than that, I couldnt be happier with ie6.

I'm not sure which issue you're talking about here, so I'll address both :)

• Error pages aren't the ones sent by the server, but instead the long IE custom doohickey is displayed.
  
  If IE gets a page with an error code that's below a certain size, it substitutes it's own page. Instructions on how to disable it with a registry setting here (or it may be a preference these days..)
  
• You type something wrong, and it actually goes to an MSN search page
  
  There's definitely a preference for this. Uncheck something along the lines of "Search from the address bar" in the advanced settings.

Re:IE 6 vs others

[Stephen Chadfield]

Opera on Windows does not support multiple users properly.

Re:IE 6 vs others

[BrookHarty]

Like Speed? IE6 is damn fast and stable, Mozilla is getting pretty close, the nightly builds over the last couple of months have been fixing alot of bugs. m$ mice bugs seem to be gone from the nightly builds too.

Side note - I hate mozilla's security method of its random directory names. Anyone know how to turn that crap off? I want to use 1 profile in 1 directory, like netscape, ie, opera, links....

Re:IE 6 vs others

[hysterion]

most of the problems *nix users have with IE is they expect it to work by default. Perfectly. And if they dont, they try hacking at it like they do in *nix, and cause problems (kill off the stability)...

...IE6 will win most rendering contests almost every time... (I think I recall only one crash in the 4 months I've been running it : Netscape 4.76 used to crash four to five times a day in debian...)

Hmmm... might it be that "most of the problems you have with Netscape/Mozilla" is you insist on comparing a Linux browser (of which there was no good one until recently), to a Windows browser running on the OS it was made for (or conversely :-)?

On the Mac (a more level ground for comparison) I've always found Netscape just as stable as IE. On Linux, just as unstable as any other browser.

Going back to my previous statement, all of these things can be fixed, except the pop-ups. ... The only problem that i see with msn, that i dont like, is the 404 redirect. I'm looking into a way to change this.

Hmmm... I thought your "previous statement" was that we shouldn't try to fix it at all?

(Which anyway is a lost cause, from what I hear. IE = "All your prefs are belong to us!")

Re:IE 6 vs others

[Anonymous Coward]

Even Windows doesn't support multiple users properly, so you can hardly blame Opera for that. ;-)

Re:IE 6 vs others

[Anonymous Coward]

i tried mozilla - it was fairly nice but i'd rather use IE. mozilla fucks up too many websites i visit and basically looks like someone trying NOT to make a program look like ass.

Re:IE 6 vs others

[sheriff_p]

Quickly:

• Poor CSS support
• You either pay for it or get adverts
• On my system it loads no faster than IE

Maybe those aren't big gripes for you, but for me they are.

Re:IE 6 vs others

[cameleon]

Poor CSS support

This is simply not true. It supports all of CSS1 according to the specifications, and a lot of CSS2.

Check out this chart to compare the CSS implementation of different browsers and browser versions.

Re:IE 6 vs others

[jawtheshark]

Yup, that's true (speed and such).....but Netscape 4.76 runs on my P120 laptop (which I use for surfing) and Mozilla doens't. The machine runs Linux, in case you wonder.

On the other hand I use Opera with it now, and it seems to be the "Right Tool for the Job". Just too bad I cannot import my certificates from Netscape, so I have to fall back to Netscape when doing some online banking.

Re:IE 6 vs others

[shogun]

There's definitely a preference for this. Uncheck something along the lines of "Search from the address bar" in the advanced settings.

I had a good look for this but I can't find it anywhere (msie 6.0). Could you tell us exactly where to find that option?

Re:IE 6 vs others

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows doesn't even support multiple users.

Re:IE 6 vs others

[Anonymous Coward]

IE may be relatively fast and easy, and useful for the odd site, but it is nothing more than a simple, bare-bones browser, similar to Konquerer. For any serious browsing, you need something with the features of Opera.

As far as I'm aware, IE makes you launch each new window as a completely seperate window, instead of letting you have it as a sub-window within the main window. Neither does it have a seperate downloads window where you can manage all of the concurrent downloads.

And if you're thinking of enabling/disabling javascript etc with IE, be prepared to mangle about navigating multitudes of menus and dialogue boxes, with all the associated slowness.

Opera may not be free, but in this case you get what you pay for: the best browser going.

Re:IE 6 vs others

[throwaway18]

>You type somthing wrong and it actually goes to an MSN search page
I'v been cold called several times by telemarketers offering to see me links to my website when someone types somthing into the IE6 address bar that isn't a valid domain name. They want the equivalent of aprox USD150 setup fee and USD150 per phrase. I consider this to be another example of abuse of thier monopoly. They are attempting to use their control of most peoples browser to gain an unfair advantage over existing search engines and to some extent bypass the domain name system itself.

Re:IE 6 vs others

[PyroMosh]

I find this strange. I build web sites for a living, so I have to use IE a lot even though I'm not too fond of it. And until this week, NS 4.76 was my browser of choice (I downloaded Mozilla .95 Monday and haven't looked back. I downloaded every milestone build since .2 and this is the first one I thought was more usable than what I was using.)

That said, I think it's clear that I use these browsers more than just once a week or so. All of them get heavy use from me so I can g et a lot of comparison time. My machine is a K6/2 450 running Win ME (I do lots of multimedia editing, hence ME is better for me than 98se)

Here's what I've found from my observations:

IE: SLOW AS MOLASAS (SP?). NS4 kicks it's ass hands down.IE is slow to render windows, slow to render HTML when a window has been rendered, and (most anoyingly) is slow to respond to UI. I have a habit when I am searching for something with google to do the following: Search google, open page in new window, hit ctrl+f and start typing what it was I was looking for so I can find WHERE the relavant thing is on the page. I consistantly type faster than IE can keep up. Ler's say I'm looking for "widget". I hit ctrl+f and then type w-i-d-g-e-t [ENTER]. I look up... only to see the "et" in the word "let" highlighted. The search window appears so slow that if I don't remember to wait for it (only about a second, but still...) then the leading characters get truncated. Consistantly.

NS4: Not bad... until I got a broadband connection. NS4 consistantly blew away, IE, NS6 and Mozilla. (Except in HTML rendering speed for Mozilla). It's biggest advantage was the fact that it's windows would render instantly on even the slowest system. The only problem was that once I got broadband and it started downloading larg web pages FAST, it would freeze... pause really before rendering the HTML. Some pages rendered faster when I was on 56K. I think NS4 just has a problem with parsing large HTML files rapidly. If it gets them spoon fed, it renders them as fast as it can, but if it gets a page of HTML dumped on it, it gags and chokes and generaly has a hard time. That's when I started using IE a little more than I had to...

Mozilla: The first thing I noticed when I first downloaded Mozilla (ditto for NS6) was WOW, these Windows render slow as hell! I could draw the windows with an etch-a-sketch faster than this! Then the next thing I noticed, blew me away. HTML rendering was blisteringly fast. I had read about how one of the goals of the Mozilla project was to create a wonderfuly standards compliant browser, so I ran some informal tests against old and new pages I had saved localy on my machine. Some were standards compliant and others were "real world" compliant. Amazing... the standards complient pages rendered just as they should! They were pages which I hade taken down from my sites (and replaced with non standards complient ones) because either NS4 or IE didn't render them correctly. Mozilla rendered both NS4 and IE's buggy pages right. It even rendered the nonstandard pages the way I wanted them to look! IT took me a bit of digging to figure out why... Mozilla includes a "buggy" mode that treats pages without a DTD declaration as non standards complient. That way IE's known bugs that were designed around, show up fine! Wonderful! Since then, I've downloaded every Mozilla milestone and now, at .95 (even though I think HTML rendering is a hair slower) the window rendering speed is now acceptable. I'd say faster than IE 5.x / 6.x but still a bit slower than NS 4.x. But that's okay. It's worlds ahead of NS4 in terms of stability and it's just a wonderful browser to use... especially for a developer.

Re:IE 6 vs others

[Anonymous Coward]

IE6 fast? I'm using a 1.2 GHz computer with a half GB of RAM, and when I updated IE5.5 to IE6.0, the right-click context menus (used extremely often by me for back & open in new window) began to take a good ten seconds to appear.

Now, I use Mozilla exclusively and like it.

Re:IE 6 vs others

[Heph_Smith]

I liked opera with tabs and mouse gestures very much untill I tried the latest mozilla with multizilla for tabs and a 3rd party program called sensiva for mouse gestures. I got tired of the lack of development and closed source nature of opera. I also missed the ability for it to store my logins and passwords for when I want to be lazy. And I don't think opera had autocompleation for the urls.

Re:IE 6 vs others

[roca]

Opera doesn't even support the DOM as well as Konqueror --- let alone Mozilla or IE.

(Hint: Support for the DOM read-only methods is EASY. Support for the read-write methods is HARD.)

Re:IE 6 vs others

[13Echo]

IE6 is still butt-slow compared to Opera. Besides that, you can get it on any platform now. Sure it has it's problems, but it is fast and works well if configured properly.

Re:IE 6 vs others

[nuhonda]

but don't you think the AOLTW folks are foaming at the mouth to implement thier own AOL-scoped versions of 404 Redirects, smart tags, and even worse things?

remember, this is AOL-TimeWarner that we're talking about here, NOT mozilla.

thier idea of Doing The Right Thing is just as slanted as microsoft's, if not worse.

Re:IE 6 vs others

[drinkypoo]

Invalid form key: SaGetMPzga !
(Then I got two more invalid form keys, so I've since refreshed this page and I'm trying again.)
Thanks again, slashdot. I might actually report these bugs if I didn't have to register, but I'm tired of being forced to register for things.

Still, IE 6 is leaps ahead of any other browser that's available at the moment, and I for one feel that not using IE 6 if you're using Windows is somewhat akin to cutting off one's nose to spite one's face...

I couldn't agree more. Maybe IE6 only scales up, and doesn't scale down. While my system is not top of the line by any means, an athlon 700 with 512MB of PC133 SDRAM and an Ultra160 disk is certainly fast enough to make most slower applications cruise pretty well, no matter how bloated, if they're designed to take advantage of a faster machine.

Mozilla has caused me problems like blowing up when loading java (or even javascript) and then refusing to load again until I reboot; While I suspect that that is primarily an OS issue, IE doesn't do it, so I use IE.

Re:IE 6 vs others

[Heywood Yabuzof]

In IE6, go to the "Tools" menu and select "Internet Options"

In the window that pops up, click on the "Advanced" tab

There are a ton of options here, scroll down to near the bottom - you should see a section of search options that are designated with magnifying glass icons

You should see something called "Search from the Address Bar" - under that you have a few options for this, I have "Do Not search from the Address Bar" selected - it seems to work pretty well

If you look here you might find a way to get IE to use a much better search engine for this kind of stuff (I haven't tried any of these tricks with IE6 so YMMV)

Easy enough, no? :-)

Re:IE 6 vs others

[frleong]

I will not use Opera until it supports Unicode. I need to read Chinese and Japanese web sites and without Unicode support, my English based OS is not able to process these web sites properly. Netscape support in this area is half baked and IE is the best so far. Opera seems promising, but still not there (localization of the UI doesn't count)

Re:IE 6 vs others

[spood]

I installed IE 6 about two weeks ago on my Athlon system at home. After 4 days of clicking "send bug report to Microsoft" crashes, I booted it and went back to 5.5. Without fail, it would crash any time I tried to use it for FTP or HTTP downloads. Hardly ready for prime time, in my opinion.

Re:IE 6 vs others

[arkanes]

Opera has both of those features now :)

Re:IE 6 vs others

[vsync64]

I really hate to say this, and it's not a flame, but I think most of the problems *nix users have with IE is they expect it to work by default. Perfectly. And if they dont, they try hacking at it like they do in *nix, and cause problems (kill off the stability)...

Yeah, the nerve. Imagine sitting down to use a piece of software and actually expecting it to work. Perfectly, no less! And if it doesn't, I have the unmitigated gall, the chutzpah, the social insensitivity to attempt to make it work. I am truly ashamed of myself.

Re:IE 6 vs others

[503]

IE6 fast? ... the right-click context menus ... take a good ten seconds to appear.

Do you happen to be using McAfee anti-virus? There's a bug in version 5 that causes an incredible lag in context-menu pop-up time. Try updating the engine - it seems to be fixed.

Re:IE 6 vs others

[Anonymous Coward]

Something's wrong with your computer then. I have a 950 Duron 266 FSB with .5G ram and with a slight pause it takes half a second to bring up a menu.

I like Opera and Mozilla as much as the next guy, but your computer just sounds fucked.

(invalid form key MY arse)

Re:IE 6 vs others

[SpeelingChekka]

I generally use Mozilla, IE is pretty buggy (stable, but buggy, e.g. sometimes the drop-down menus just don't work unless you alt+tab and alt+tab back again, or clicking 'back' results in form data being lost, or when you click "refresh" and it totally ignores your request to refresh etc), but there is one reason I often go back to IE: the "save as" feature that will save the page along with all inlined images etc, converting the addresses to local addresses. If Mozilla had that, I would probably ditch IE totally. It would probably be fairly easy to add too, I've even considered getting the source code and having a go at adding it myself.

Mozilla is the best browser on the market and it's not even version one yet

Personally, I think they should just call it "Mozilla 5" or "Mozilla 6" when they hit "version 1" status. Purely for "marketing" reasons -> Mozilla 1.0 will be approximately equivalent to at least IE 5. But naming it "version 1" when IE is at "version 6" will look bad in the eyes of the sheeple.

Browser wars?

[Adam Wiggins]

If CompuServe 7 comes packaged with Gecko, it could be one step toward rekindling the Web browser wars from the late '90s. Once the hands-down leader of browser technology, Netscape Communications, now a division of AOL, has let its browser slip into the middle of the pack.

Yes, but this time, the browser wars will be a fight to provide customers with the highest level of web standards compliance, rendering speed, cross-platform capability, and truly useful features. I, for one, think that this sounds like a good thing. (Even though I will probably not be using anything but Konqueror ever again.)

Re:Browser wars?

[Quarters]

Yes, but this time, the browser wars will be a fight to provide customers with the highest level of web standards compliance, rendering speed, cross-platform capability, and truly useful features. I, for one, think that this sounds like a good thing. (Even though I will probably not be using anything but Konqueror ever again.)

Excuse me? When was it that 99% of the population geeked-out? I must've missed it.

I dare you to go ask an average AOL user to even define the term "web standards compliance". You won't get a good answer.

The majority of people on the internet don't give a second thought to web standards or cross platform compatibility. They might care about rendering speed but they sure as heck don't view that as a function of their browser. They've been reared to think that their machine is too slow and they need the next uberPentium. The majority of users care about the content, not the delivery mechanism. If MSN were to provide 100% of the content that people want--in an exciting and snappy way--then they could use whatever browser technology and/or delivery mechanism that they wanted. The same is true for AOL or any other large content provider (notice I didn't say ISP).

Under the hood technologies don't mean a whit to the people that pay the subscription fees. It's the message, not the messenger that they care about.

Re:Browser wars?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or browser makers could start adding proprietary exntentions again as their way of "competing"...

formkeys suck
lameness filters suck

On MozillaZine too...

[cymen]

MozillaZine.org has a pointer to a news.com piece too plus additional comments.

Gecko, making AOL more fustrating than ever.

[MarauderJr]

It seems like a lot of AOL users and/or ex-users have complained that AOL is harder to use and more complicated with each new version. If AOL decides to switch over to Gecko, it will be following its unwritten rule. "With all of AOL's new features, AOL is now more complicated and confusing than ever."

--MarauderJr@aol.com
AOL user since version 1.0

Re:Gecko, making AOL more fustrating than ever.

[at_18]

It could be the first step in "educating" AOL users...

...hmmmmm...

then, after a few years, we geeks we'll thank AOL for taking all the hassle...

The world is a strange place, isn't it?

Re:Gecko, making AOL more fustrating than ever.

[Edgewize]

I'm responding to flamebait here, but your comment is practically a non-sequiteur. How does switching the RENDERING ENGINE for their internal browser make anything more difficult or complicated for the user? Oh yeah, it *doesn't*.

Re:Gecko, making AOL more fustrating than ever.

[archen]

besides which, because Mozilla is completely customizable, it can be made into whatever AOL wants it to be. Which is pretty scary...

I'll bet anyone $10,000 that AOL uses IE6

[AlanSmitheeX]

any takers?

Maybe this will finally convince my banks...

[Stealth Dave]

Maybe this will finally convince my banks that Mozilla is a real web browser. It's annoying having to switch back to Netscape 4.x to use online banking just because they haven't bothered to test and adjust for Mozilla. And yes, I know what it takes to make a major web site Mozilla compliant. (I was formerly employed by a large rodent. ;-) ).

- Stealth Dave

Re:Maybe this will finally convince my banks...

[b0r1s]

flames and trolls aside, why should everyone have to modify their pre-existing sites to conform to a new browser? Why cant all browsers conform to the existing sites? If every website has to make modifications to support mozilla, NOBODY is going to like it....

Re:Maybe this will finally convince my banks...

[Dehumanizer]

It's not like that. The site is simply checking. If it isn't IE and isn't Netscape 4.x, then print "your browser is not compatible, upgrade to IE, blah blah blah".

In other words, the site WOULD work if not for that stupid check. Yes, we can make the browser pretend it's another browser (Konqueror and Opera do that quite easily), but we shouldn't have to...

Re:Maybe this will finally convince my banks...

[Nicolas MONNET]

Web design at its worst ...

One interesting feature of Konqueror is that it allows you to change the User-Agent string on the fly ... it's the frog icon on the alternate toolbar.

Re:Maybe this will finally convince my banks...

[cameleon]

The thing is, everyone should be designing their sites to be standards-comliant. That way, it would work with all standards-compliant browsers. IE6 is coming a long way with this, as is Mozilla, and Opera. That way, noone would have to modify their sites if a new browser came along.

Re:Maybe this will finally convince my banks...

[mrfiddlehead]

No no no. You don't get it. It's not because mozilla can't render the site, it's because the site doesn't recognise the browser's identity. The changes shouldn't be difficult, most modern sites should do this in one included function.

Besides this whole mess started because Microsoft went ahead and changed the goddamn standards and since they controlled the market, bla bla bla

Re:Maybe this will finally convince my banks...

[jesser]

One interesting feature of Konqueror is that it allows you to change the User-Agent string on the fly ... it's the frog icon on the alternate toolbar.

That's the wrong way to solve the problem, because when a site has a good reason to check your UA, such as a known crash in your version of Konq, they won't be able to redirect you away from the crash.

Re:Maybe this will finally convince my banks...

[ShavenYak]

I don't have a problem using Mozilla with First USA. I did a while back, but it seems like around 0.93 it started working. I never got a message to "upgrade my browser", it just bumped me back to the main page when I tried to log in. Works fine now, though.

Re:Maybe this will finally convince my banks...

[jallen02]

Opera lets you do this as well, but it still won't completely fool some browser detection systems.

I changed the opera User-Agent string so it would say it is IE 5. I then sent it up against a quick Java server I wrote.. the User-Agent string would identify it as Internet Explorer, however it still has Opera in the string and our browser detection routines detect that and stop it. Opera only has a predefined list of options you can pick to. (To bad, so sad)

Jeremy

Re:Maybe this will finally convince my banks...

[Nicolas MONNET]

It's not the wrong way, because it defaults to identifying as Konqueror. But when a website barfs on you because of it, and only in that case, you can fake using IE.

You might be able to abuse this function, but hey, it's up to you.

Re:Maybe this will finally convince my banks...

[ppanon]

Have you tried talking to your bank about it? Not too long after PSM had been made part of the build, I tried it with my bank's (CIBC) internet banking site. It didn't work, so I took their front page that had the JavaScript check, modified and worked around the check and then was able to use the site. I wrote feedback to the appropriate web address indicated on the site and, within a few weeks, they had modified the check to accept Mozilla.

If your bank is just being stupid, then maybe it's time to switch banks to one that's more accomodating to their customers.

Re:Maybe this will finally convince my banks...

[Micah]

Huh? I just logged into MBNA Net Access with Mozilla 0.9.5. Works and looks fine.

Re:Maybe this will finally convince my banks...

[PD]

Wellsfargo.com will only let you log in if you're using Netscape 4.* or MSIE on a Windows machine. Linux is detected and fails.

Interesting...

[TheMMaster]

If you take this artcle about microsoft wanting to deliver "AOL like services", this seems to be a logical step for AOL.
This could get very interesting, I don't think this is a browser war, I think it's an ISP war...

Would YOU distribute software of your newly aquired #1 competitor?? ;-)

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Next it'll be an operating system war.. Hmm..AOLOS

The Luddite view ...

[King Of Chat]

"leaps ahead of any other browser". What does that actually mean? That people have keep buggering about with HTML (yes, I know there's more to it than HTML) so new versions of browsers are constantly needed in order to keep up. What effect does that have? Well, with an MS browser, upgrading generally means replacing half your OS with files (OLE*.DLL amongst others) that cause old apps to not work - even if they had any disk space left. And why is it changing? Generally to please a load of graphic designers (make the bastards work with a 14.4 modem) plus the people who market stuff like Dreamweaver and C*ntpage. Do you think it's rewarding work for web developers to have to code and test for all these different browsers?

What do you actually need in a browser aside from fast HTML rendering (with CSS), a consistent Javascript model (so you can do stuff without having to go back to the server) and an architecture which supports common plugins (Flash, SVG). OK, you can make an argument for Java Applets if something more complicated needs to be done on the machine, but downloading and running some other muppets native executable code (ActiveX) and running it with my priveledges - no way. I can do enough damage with my own code. If it's complicated, why isn't it running on the server? What ever happened to thin clients?

Stop the madness.

PS I appreciate the irony that I'm posting using IE 6, but I'm at work and I'm testing whether it offers anything over our standard IE 5.01. It doesn't - /. looks the same to me.

Re:The Luddite view ...

[TheMidget]

PS I appreciate the irony that I'm posting using IE 6, but I'm at work and I'm testing whether it offers anything over our standard IE 5.01. It doesn't - /. looks the same to me.

Hey, why so paranoid? Do a "View Source" (or whatever the equivalent is on IE6) on the comment page. Do you see any mention of User-Agent's there? No, it's mentioned nowhere... No tricky <!--Postedwith:blabla--> comments.

So nobody's going to call you on your usage of IE. And those people who do have access to the log files (Cowboy Neal et al.) have better things to do with their time than to make fun of people who disparage the browser they are using....

Re:The Luddite view ...

[macpeep]

"and an architecture which supports common plugins (Flash, SVG). OK, you can make an argument for Java Applets if something more complicated needs to be done on the machine, but downloading and running some other muppets native executable code (ActiveX) and running it with my priveledges - no way. I can do enough damage with my own code. If it's complicated, why isn't it running on the server? What ever happened to thin clients?"

Interesting. ActiveX *IS* that common architecture which supports common plugins. If you didn't know, ActiveX is how Flash, Shockwave and soon Sun's Java VM for IE (not the current plugin - the new one that they are working on that will directly work with applet tags) and all other plugins work on IE.

Why isn't it running on the server? Because stuff like Flash would be kinda slow if it ran on the server.. :)

Re:The Luddite view ...

[King Of Chat]

Did I say anything about running flash type stuff on the server? When I say complicated, I'm not referring to graphics and buttons and stuff. Yes, a mechanism is needed which can do some things without having to go back and forward to the server all the time (like to say "you must enter an email address").

Oh, and yes, I do appreciate that, for IE, COM is used for plugins. Looking at IE, how else would you do it? "Standard plugins" though are a world away from any bit of executable code which someone might feel like running on your machine - and don't give me crap about "certificates" making it all OK.

Done arguing now.

Re:The Luddite view ...

[Anonymous Coward]

PS I appreciate the irony that I'm posting using IE 6, but I'm at work and I'm testing whether it offers anything over our standard IE 5.01. It doesn't - /. looks the same to me.

That's kinda the point, it should.

Re:The Luddite view ...

[LinuxHam]

PS I appreciate the irony that I'm posting using IE 6, but I'm at work and I'm testing whether it offers anything over our standard IE 5.01. It doesn't - /. looks the same to me.

Slashdot is probably the single worst place to browse looking for IE compatibility issues. Second only to Netscape.com I'm sure. I seriously doubt they utilize any of the IE quirks, thereby breaking all of the other browsers that aren't broken in the same way.

Re:The Luddite view ...

[mmcshane]

HTML 2.0 and CSS1 haven't been "buggered" with for years (1995 and 1996 respectively), is it too much to ask for IE to support those standards (let alone XHTML or CSS2)?

Re:The Luddite view ...

[maxpublic]

This is especially annoying when, putting aside the 'cute' graphical toys like mousover dropdowns, you can do anything (and more) running Perl CGI's that you can do with Java. And with Perl CGI's every bit of code is executed on the server, meaning that they have none of the bugs associated with Java across different platforms.

Putting the load onto the client instead of the server was a concern 5 years when the fastest PC was a P90, but right now I can buy an AMD 1.4 ghz processor for $149 and a half-gig of DDR RAM for $150, and that's retail. The question of transferring load to improve server speed is no longer an issue even for tiny ISPs.

So why use Java, which can and will break depending on the browser used and how the code is written, when you can use Perl, which is 100% browser-independent? Simply because you can do 'stupid graphical computer tricks'?

I sometimes wonder if Java wasn't invented for people who couldn't figure out Perl....

Max

Replace AOL

[sh0rtie]

If Gecko is replacing IE all we need now is something to replace AOL & Compuserve

Re:Replace AOL

[Black Parrot]

> If Gecko is replacing IE all we need now is something to replace AOL & Compuserve

Yeah, if we could whip up a GNU AOL, then we could threaten Microsoft execs with gaol.

I fear this is just corperate posturing.

[PyroMosh]

If you've kept track of the history of Netscape, especially the history of AOL since buying NS, you'll quickley figure out that AOL has been using NS to have it's way with Microsoft. Whenever there is a dispute over AOL icon desktop placment with Windows, or whatnot, AOL quietly leaks that it is considering NS6 / Mozilla for it's next release.

I do support Mozilla, in fact I am writing this on Mozilla .95, which I am happy to report is the first version of Mozilla that I feel is 100% usable and I'm actually *happy* to use. (I run an old AMD K6/2 and previous versions ran too slow for my tastes, as did IE I just switched to Mozlla from NS4 early this week.) That said, I *hope* that AOL does decide to use Gecko for AOL and / or Compuserve, but I'm not holding my breath. After all, it may be more strategicly advantageous for them to continue using IE's engine.

Re:I fear this is just corperate posturing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now more than ever it's important as Americans that we show our unity. Fly your flags. Let them see us stand united.

And why do you think this is important? As a European, I can assure you that such displays of nationalism actually harm the reputation and sympathy for the US. Restraint in the display of national symbols and a less belligerent attitude would seem to be more prudent.

Re:I fear this is just corperate posturing.

[Anonymous Coward]

The other Amerricans, the ones from countries other than the U.S... should we wave something too?

Re:I fear this is just corperate posturing.

[Milican]

Thanks for posting the view from afar. I will try to explain further the attitude on this side of the pond.

"United We Stand Divided We Fall" is built into our heritage. Just because we stand united against an enemy (regarldess of circumstances) does not mean we are becoming a bunch of mindless drones. Thats why we have freedom of speech here (not that you don't) and thats what makes democracy so great. We can criticize our government, even in times like these. Of course, now you do have to take into account the circumstances and show a little couth. Thats true in everyday life as well. If you're girlfriend had gained 20 lbs you wouldn't say "man you're a fat@ss".... you might say something like "hey baby, how about we both go on a diet... my pants are a little tight and I want someone to help me out"

The point is we just have to take into account 9/11, but we can still say whatever we want. So please don't confuse nationalism with patriotism. Nationalism has the bad stigma patriotism does not. Please do not confuse the two. America is still a rational people and we will still use common sense.

JOhn

MOD PARENT UP

[Christopher Whitt]

Sorry for the lame post - I can't say it any better, except to repeat:

Mozilla is the best browser on the market and it's not even version one yet

Christopher

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[psykocrime]

Mozilla is the best browser on the market and it's not even version one yet

Agreed. With 0.9.5, Mozilla has become more than good enough for regular use. I haven't had to open IE even once, in the week since I downloaded Moz 0.9.5.

In fact, I've had the same Mozilla window open for right at a week now, and haven't had the first problem. Try keeping the same IE window open ( and used regularly ) for a week.

Mozilla 0.9.5 is just as fast as IE 5.5, on my K6/2-266 machine, and the tabbed interface just kicks a$$.

In short, with the 0.9.5 release, Mozilla IS now the best browser available, IMO.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[tshak]

Yes, anyone can sit on code for 5 years and never release a DOT OH and keep using that, "not even a version one yet" crap.

I was *wondering*

[Elwood P Dowd]

I knew that Mozilla was a fantastic project, and I always understood how it might have huge value for whomever wanted to adopt it. The one thing that I didn't see was how AOL was going to make money off of it. Seeing as how they're the ones bankrolling the developement right now.This seems to make it all clear. They wanted Mozilla available as an alternative to IE if they ever needed to part ways with MS.

Interesting.

Why not KHTML?

[redcliffe]

KHTML is better IMHO.

David

Re:Why not KHTML?

[Nicolas MONNET]

KHTML rocks.

The 2.2.1 version doesn't seem have any noticeable memory leak. It's fast. It hardly ever crashes (though, admittedly, it happens). It displays most pages very well. It's compatible with Netscape plugins.

Most display problems are actually due to faulty HTML that IE is more tolerant with; for example, unclosed <table>.

Re:Why not KHTML?

[GauteL]

1. KHTML is not cross-platform, and thus less useful for AOL.
2. KHTML is based on Qt, which requires commercial licensing on Windows
3. Gecko is a better and faster renderer.
4. AOL/Netscape is more familiar with Gecko, since it is their product.

Re:Why not KHTML?

[Twisted Mind]

It's not part of it, but javascript in Konqueror is quite buggy. On some sites relatively standard javascript doesn't work and (even worse) sometimes the browser crashes because of it.

Also, it renders quite html quite obscure, often first the paste is loaded and then CSS applied to the page, but this maybe just a setting.

Re:Why not KHTML?

[GauteL]

It is not at all a Gecko fan-club, but the whole message was laughable.
The notion was so incredibly rediculuous, that it could only be described as a troll.
I have nothing against KHTML, in fact I think it is a fine product.
But why on EARTH would you ditch something that is more mature, more sophisticated, already cross-platform (not only wrappers, or ports to small OSes), and something you are totally familiar with.

The KDE-trolling has to stop, the KDE-developers don't do this, they just program and create a splendid product, but some of the users are doing KDE a disfavor by trolling.

Re:Why not KHTML?

[Dehumanizer]

Konqueror 2.x can't access HTTPS sites through a proxy, which makes it useless for a lot of companies. This is sad, because I love it as a browser...

Re:Why not KHTML?

[VadPlessky]

On some sites relatively standard javascript doesn't work and (even worse) sometimes the browser crashes because of it.
It seems to me you are mixing JavaScript and DHTML/property DOM implementations. Konqueror has reference JavaScript/ECMAscript implementation. It works very well. DOM1 support is implemented. DOM2 support is there as well, but it is not 100% complete

If you have sites where Konqueror crashes - send bug report to KDE team. I monitor all Konq bugs, and many of them can be closed with current CVS.

Re:Why not KHTML?

[VadPlessky]

I have nothing against KHTML, in fact I think it is a fine product. But why on EARTH would you ditch something that is more mature, more sophisticated, already cross-platform..

Com'on, nobody was ditching Mozilla. But, in fact, it would be funny to see AOL and CompuServe going to KHTML instead of Mozilla/Gecko.
Anyway, I can't agree with you that Mozilla is "more mature, more sophisticated" than KHTML. Mozilla is 3.5 years old, KHTML in fact about 1 year old. I am very much impressed that KDE developers could do in 1 year, and Mozilla - in 3.5 years. But note that development speed for KHTML is 3 times faster than Mozilla's one

(not only wrappers, or ports to small OSes), and something you are totally familiar with.

Have you ever heard of Konqueror/Embedded?
It's already in many embedded devices, including PDAs and Internet Kiosks. So, Konq is pretty much portable. Do I need to remind you about Konq/Embedded ports to BeOS and AtheOS?

AOL uses Mozilla outside US

[pubjames]

Here in Spain AOL has just launched a service called AOL avant.

It is a iMac type box which you can have for about 20 dollars a month with internet connection. It uses Linux with Mozilla as the web browser. It's made so your grandma can use it.

They are looking for an inital roll-out of 500,000 units, moving up to about a million. They are doing this in conjunction with a national bank.

So, AOL is already using Gecko/Mozilla, maybe just not in the USA.

Personally I believe that this is a trial of a service that they wish to rollout in many other countries. I think they choose Spain to try not to generate too attention on it. It wouldn't suprise me if they had plans to roll this out in many other European countries, and perhaps Latin America.

More here

Re:AOL uses Mozilla outside US

[Anonymous Coward]

In the US a box was shipped called AOLTV -- Linux plus what was supposedly Mozilla. Turned out the browser was version of Nutscrape 3 that was upgraded to run more javascript and flash etc. Nobody bought the product, but I imagine it will turn into something that AOL/TW cable customers will learn to love.

I'd be curious if anyone can verify if this Spain box is actually mozilla.

Re:AOL uses Mozilla outside US

[Phroggy]

Is the box made by Gateway? I know AOL announced something about that awhile ago...

Re:AOL uses Mozilla outside US

[webcrafter]

I can verify it. My company is involved in some content development for AOL Avant, and we received and early propotype last year and the final version just last week. When you type about: in the URL box, it appears the usual about page found on mozilla (the prototype's version was M18, I think)

Re:AOL uses Mozilla outside US

[pubjames]

Interesting...

So do you think my theory (that this is a trial for rollout in other countries) is correct?

Where are you based? In Madrid? I can't get anything out of your web site (carotena.net)

Re:AOL uses Mozilla outside US

[rbeattie]

I worked on a contract in AOL-Avant in Madrid and the main problem was that these computers were Yet Another Platform that needed to be developed for.

Mozilla was for the most part fine, but there were little problems with both the browser and the platform. For example, at the time (I'm not sure about now) the mailto: links didn't work because the custom email program on the box wasn't integrated with Mozilla.

There were also problems the html rendering of tables, etc. You had to develop java scripts that detected IE, Netscape, AND Mozilla on the "Paquitos" (it's what they called the machines... it was a play on words on iMac/iPaq)

Now... the COOL thing was when one of the system guys from Intel walked over and put a USB-based key into the side of the machine and this "dumb" terminal with only basic functionality became a full-fledged Linux box with a command-line, etc.

-Russ

Re:AOL uses Mozilla outside US

[webcrafter]

Yes, my site is undergoing a serious tomcat 4 reconfiguration :/ If you check the un-maintained carotena.net/victor you can glimpse more info

FYI, we are based in Barcelona. Some of the other partners are based in Madrid and Mallorca, though

Re:AOL uses Mozilla outside US

[GothChip]

Here in Spain AOL has just launched a service called AOL avant.
It's made so your grandma can use it.

My grandma couldn't use it as she doesn't speak Spanish.

Re:AOL uses Mozilla outside US

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should check your geography??

"Sudaca" is a slang (and highly derogative, BTW; just in case you didn't know what you were saying) term applied to those who come from South America.

But, last time I checked, Spain is in Europe. So "Puto Hispano" or "Puto Latino" *might* be correct (not acceptable, though). Of course, knowing that would mean you had, at some time, looked out of your cave. You cleary don't see beyond your nose, so it's a futile effort. Of course, I've always had a soft spot from trying to tame beasts. Not too long ago I had a monkey that could tie his shoe-laces. Of course, he spoke better than you did (and had more interesting things to say).

I'll be now; after all, you have probably got lost on the second sentence :)

PS: Wonder where you are writing from??

Re:AOL uses Mozilla outside US

[Anonymous Coward]

If I'm not mistaken (could be, the box I saw is not from *this* particular promotion), there is an option to switch the interface languages :) Nos strange, in a country with one official language nationwide, and 3 co-official languages in different regions...

So I'd say it's pretty likely you can switcht the box to english :)

Re:AOL uses Mozilla outside US

[dickDragon]

Wasn't there a story a while back about an AOL-Tivo alliance as well?

What browser wars?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see, there's Konqueror, Mozilla, Galeon, and Opera. All work well. Why do we need a war? Are there any other browsers out there? Oh I forgot, there's lynx of course.

Re:What browser wars?

[ichimunki]

Why would you use lynx when you can use links and actually see the tables?

Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess a beowulf cluster of these wouldn't be very useful

Never thought I'd see the day

[inio]

of phrases such as "AOL has confirmed that Gecko is being tested as CompuServe's default browser."

Woah, merja-vu.

Re:Never thought I'd see the day

[Cardhore]

lol

smaller, faster, good. code bloat bad.

[motherhead]

every so often i have to launch AOL to see how (if) my work is functioning correctly under AOL's hackward-ass implementation of IE. (and to check out the britney chat rooms for hot hot chicks, just kidding, put the gasoline away) Whenever i do i love the way it lumbers into consciousness, shakes off the dust of sleep and ponderously begins to connect to the server...

yeah i would love to see AOL move to a smaller, lithe, tightly coded browser that would spring up and start 'a parsing... then again i would prefer if AOL would just throw it in and hook into whatever the user's default browser was, or allow the user (assuming he/she was a complete AOL ISP slave) to d/l one of their own.... then again i really wish AOL would go the way of delphi and berma-shave....also: me being taller and more handsome...

Re:smaller, faster, good. code bloat bad.

[Phroggy]

then again i would prefer if AOL would just throw it in and hook into whatever the user's default browser was, or allow the user (assuming he/she was a complete AOL ISP slave) to d/l one of their own....

Oh come on, if the users knew what a default browser was, or how to download a different one, or why they should, they probably wouldn't be using AOL in the first place.

Re:smaller, faster, good. code bloat bad.

[motherhead]

dude... you are so forgeting about all the britney chat rooms...

Re:smaller, faster, good. code bloat bad.

[tmark]

yeah i would love to see AOL move to a smaller, lithe, tightly coded browser that would spring up and start 'a parsing

Surely you are not talking about Mozilla here, are you ? On every machine I have tried running Mozilla on, it runs like a pig that has had two of its legs broken.

Re:smaller, faster, good. code bloat bad.

[motherhead]

there is only so much you can get done with an atari 800...

Re:smaller, faster, good. code bloat bad.

[TandyMasterControl]

On every machine I have tried running Mozilla on, it runs like a pig that has had two of its legs broken.

You should try running it on a computer then. It's pretty nice.

posted with Mozilla M-0.95 and lots of love.

Number of AOL Users vs IE Users

[christophercook]

As I understood it, AOL used to have about 40% of the consumer market, and as a result a large number of the browsers otu their were I.E, albeit wrapped inside AOL. with mozilla embedded within AOL, the number of eventual mozilla users goes up by several million. Ace! I've been following mozilla since they released the source code all those years ago, this is one of the few rays of light with regards to any kind of widespread adoption of mozilla.

anyone know of an open source VB-Script engine? part o the problem with using mozill ain corporate intranet stuff is that lots of developers tend to end up using VB-Script because it's easy - with an opensource VB-Script we could implement XPCom bindings as well as page level DOM stuff in VB-Script.

ps.slashdot: what the hell is this invalid formkeys error? I get it when it try to post in mozilla - a slashdot/M$ conspiracy if ever I saw one..

things are just going fine...

[XRayX]

I think that's another major step towards making Mozilla the most used and powerfulst browser.
And Mozilla finally reaches its aim to be a browser farmework that can be used everywhere: Webpads, other bwrowsers and stuff like the compuserve/AOL Software. Hope the German ISP T-online does something in that way too 8they're using IE in their current Windows-all-in-one solution).
X

Negative Aspects Making OSS A Product, Not Process

[Lethyos]

I think that cases like this are actually a detrement in some ways to open source and its philosophies. Typically, when we smile upon businesses for using open source software, it's because they've made the fruits of OSS developers' labor part of their process. In cases such as this, corporations are making open source software the product. I find it somewhat disturbing as in this case, AOL are profiting directly from the product, meanwhile, they contribute nothing back to the open source community (except bug reports, but what AOL users submit those).

You may ask, "what about other companies 'selling' open software, such as IBM?" My response to this would be simple. I don't have a problem with anybody capitalizing on open source so long as they contribute something in return. IBM is doing this - they are partly an open source development shop. Furthermore, with their case, even if IBM weren't contributing, they are selling a product that doesn't equate to software. Hardware running open source software. That's different... they make their money on the hardware, and try to benefit the customers for it. AOL, bear in mind, sells a service and I doubt many benefits (aside from the quality of Gekco), such as reduced costs, will be passed onto the end users.

I'm also kind of annoyed that this will favor AOL's position. They're strengthening themselves, and inherent to their relationships with other large corps. like Microsoft, it may be bad for OSS in the long run, but only in some facets.

I hope I do not sound pig headed. I am not trying to bash needlessly, or say that open software shouldn't be used in as many places as possible. It's just a thought. ;) (Hell, it's only karma.)

Re:Negative Aspects Making OSS A Product, Not Proc

[vidarh]

Uhm. AOL owns Netscape. Netscape employs a large part of the core development team working on Mozilla.

Saying they contribute nothing is a bit unfair.

Also, AOL has actually released a few other Open Source applications. Take a look at AOLserver for instance.

AOL isn't my favorite company, but they aren't all bad all the time :)

Is Anyone Surprised?

[Tribe]

Back when AOL merged with Netscape there was a big deal made about how AOL was contractually obligated to use IE as it's browser. Is anyone really surprised now that AOL is using the browser technology spawned from a company that it owns?

verified

[pubjames]

There is discussion about the box on Barriopunto (Spain's version of Slashdot) here.

Comments on it vary. Some people say it's OK for Joe Public. Others say it sucks and hangs up. One says that the Mozilla and Linux distribution is very heavily modified and it is difficult to tell which versions they are using.

Someone points out that the box is basically the Intel Dot.Station Web Appliance. The spec. for the box is here.

The spec. says:

* Custom Intel browser based on Mozilla-- the world's most standards-compliant browser technology.

And later:

* Custom Linux operating system for increased flexibility and innovation.

More information about AOL avant from Intel's web site here.

Re:verified

[SubtleNuance]

The box AOL is using is the "Intel Dot.Station"

Re:Negative Aspects Making OSS A Product, Not Proc

[Phroggy]

I find it somewhat disturbing as in this case, AOL are profiting directly from the product, meanwhile, they contribute nothing back to the open source community (except bug reports, but what AOL users submit those).

Uhh, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't AOL funding a significant chunk of Mozilla development? Don't they have programmers on staff working on this stuff?

Re:Negative Aspects Making OSS A Product, Not Proc

[psykocrime]

I find it somewhat disturbing as in this case, AOL are profiting directly from the product, meanwhile, they contribute nothing back to the open source community (except bug reports, but what AOL users submit those).

Ummm, AOL employs the majority of the Mozilla developers. Whatever you want to say about AOL, one cannot justly say they don't contribute to the OSS community.

If you don't believe me, go to www.mozilla.org and browse until you find lists of module owners and contributors. Or search bugzilla. Note that something like three quarters of the e-mail addresses end in @netscape.com.

NBC?

[JohnPM]

(I'm glad we won't be seeing AOL-TW-MS-NBC.)


Isn't that CNN, not NBC?

Re:NBC?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's definitely MSNBC [msnbc.com].

Re:Number of AOL Users vs IE Users

[night_flyer]

I depends on the developer and the intranet, I work in an IIS enviroment, but we try to use JavaScript instead of vbscript (unless its server side, then it dont matter)

but a vbscript engine would be nice for a few things that JS cant do

Yes... very nice...

[sluggie]

I'm sorry to speak a bit against the spirit of this discussion, but I'm a webdesigner and this is going to cause havoc in my Industry.
I thought that we were ready to drop netscape/gecko/mozilla in favor of IE just to make things easier nad cheaper for the designer/customer.
I know you'll hate me for this, but IE IS the best browser. It'S a very fast and spiffy piece of software (Yes, ok, it's insecure).
If we just had it under Linux it would definitely dominate everything.
Coding for this browser (CSS, Javascript) is very simple and efficient.

So, what happens now? AOL jumps in, basically stabs us in the back and merely evens out the browser market. That my friends is just not right.
It's going to make things more exensive for our customers, it's going to take more time from our tight schedule, it will bring down our efficiency since we have to code it all twice.

See, I'm huge Linux fan, but I say that the browser war is over. It died when AOL bougt NS. This brought it down completely, the war is over, IE won.
Now AOL wants it again. Nice. Thank you.

Re:Yes... very nice...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, yes. Personally from another Web Designers point of view I can't stand _any_ web browsers because none of them follow the standards.
In my current role I'm looking for a browser that fully supports XHTML1.0 Strict & CSS 2. Can I find one, no.

IE6, although appears to have the best support for these standards so far, doesn't cut it with me.

I eagerly await Mozilla's first release. Besides, I bet it'll support the standards quicker that IE ever will!

Re:Yes... very nice...

[MwtrV]

"I say the browser war is over. It died with AOL bought NS."

Besides the majority of your post being an obvious troll, is there any way you could substantiate this statement? The reason AOL didn't include Mozilla with their software is pretty simple -- IE is a more complete version of software that is more widely supported amongst Windows users. Mozilla development continues to this day.

IE runs on Windows, Mac, Sparc Solaris and HPUX. That's not a lot of platforms when you take into account all the different ones there are out there. Mozilla, while far from perfect, is atleast out there for the mass of people who have been "forgotten" by Microsoft.

Treating your post as though it was half-serious, one more point. You say you are a web-designer. Part of your job is making pages standards compliant -- that alone should stop some of your troubles. But the most obvious shortcoming in the argument you are trying to pursue is a point made in regards to your acting as though you don't owe support to those browsing with a browser apart from a company currently under legal battle because of monopolistic practices. I think you have forgotten what made the Internet, and thus made your job position, present to such a stupendous extent -- the countless "other" operating systems out there that don't run Internet Explorer and yet drive so much of the Internet.

And, while some would point out I may have been trolled, I still think this is a noteworthy point to those who share your thinking.

Re:Yes... very nice...

[ethereal]

I know you'll hate me for this, but IE IS the best browser. It'S a very fast and spiffy piece of software (Yes, ok, it's insecure). If we just had it under Linux it would definitely dominate everything.

Not among those of us who consider security to be the primary need, and all the eye candy to be secondary. Nice to hear you're willing to settle for second-best for the rest of us just to make your job a little easier; hope your boss is reading :)

It's just too damn bad that the real trolls never get moderated as such...

Re:Yes... very nice...

[eWulf]

Ah, but no-one in the real world gives a monkeys about the security of a "WEB BROWSER" for gods sake. People are more worried about email etc and sites looking nice. The HTML is rendered nicer and faster in IE. Have you ever been attacked by an exploit using internet explorer? Do you know anyone who has? I know there are exploits out there but I for one know no-one who has ever suffered as a result.

Re:Yes... very nice...

[SCHecklerX]

I know you'll hate me for this, but IE IS the best browser. It'S a very fast and spiffy piece of software (Yes, ok, it's insecure). If we just had it under Linux it would definitely dominate everything. Coding for this browser (CSS, Javascript) is very simple and efficient.

IE can't render CSS for shit. What are you smoking? And unless they've fixed it recently, their javascript implementation is not compliant either (for example, they used to ditch the case-sensitivity of variables)

Re:Yes... very nice...

[SpeelingChekka]

You have to code "it all TWICE"?? Holy shit, dude, you ever heard of "standards"? Geez .. I got my web site looking virtually the same on both IE and Mozilla *just by following standards*, almost no extra effort (except to work around some IE CSS bugs).

And forcing everyone to "go Microsoft" is NOT making things cheaper, in case you hadn't noticed, Windows is fscking expensive, and its *getting more expensive* lately.

Fsck /. "invalid form key" errors, this is pissing me off now.

Re:Number of AOL Users vs IE Users

[pubjames]

this is one of the few rays of light with regards to any kind of widespread adoption of mozilla.

Bullsh*t.

Mozilla is being used in the Intel Dot.station, Nokia Media Terminal, Instant AOL Touchpad, Printer assistant from HP, IBM web browser for OS2, Redhat, Debian and a bunch of other Linux distributions, and a lot of other places besides. Not bad for an application that hasn't even got to 1.0 yet. And we can expect to see adoption of it really pick up speed since it has become really stable over the last couple of months.

No shit, sherlock? (n/t)

[Anonymous Coward]

nt

You must be a crappy designer then

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a webdesigner and this is going to cause havoc in my Industry. I thought that we were ready to drop netscape/gecko/mozilla in favor of IE just to make things easier nad cheaper for the designer/customer. I know you'll hate me for this, but IE IS the best browser. It'S a very fast and spiffy piece of software (Yes, ok, it's insecure).

Then you must be a crappy web designer who knows nothing about the industry. This is NOT about browser wars. It is about standards support so that you will not have to code for many browsers. You will only have to code for the standard and let the browser render it.

Coding for the standards is also easier and quicker if you have any clue about them at all (which obviously trolls like you don't).

Re:You must be a crappy designer then

[MagPulse]

Then you must be a crappy web designer who knows nothing about the industry. This is NOT about browser wars. It is about standards support so that you will not have to code for many browsers. You will only have to code for the standard and let the browser render it.

Coding for standards has never been easy, because the browsers all render them differently. Sometimes they're a pixel off, sometimes things don't show up at all. But writing to a standard will never be as easy as writing to a browser's interpretation.

Think about it the other way around. If you're writing C++ code to work with gcc, do you want to go through it and make sure it will compile in VC++? GCC 3.0 barely even compiled the Linux kernel. Standards compliance is rarely black and white.

At least with C++ the problem is that the standard is pretty big and complicated. With HTML the problem is that it wasn't meant to handle everything we use it for. The solution will be to move to a mark-up language that is designed to define layout to the pixel.

Re:You must be a crappy designer then

[lambsonic]

The solution will be to move to a mark-up language that is designed to define layout to the pixel.

Ever heard of style sheets?

Aol-warner-ms-nbc?

[powerlinekid]

You never seriously worried about that did you? Jeez... some people are really paranoid. Ok, aol-warner and ms-nbc are bad enough. But they will never merge... ever. Microsoft has already won the browser war (netscape is dead). Now they target the other things oem's put on the desktop which basically is Real, Aol and Java. With xp java is kicked out. 1 down (although I strongly believe that java is very important to the future of linux and sun), 2 to go. Real will be crushed if it doesn't appear on windows at all, and it seems that more and more people are realising that yeah sure real is well compressed, but its quality sucks. As for aol, now that microsoft has won the browser war, now they move to the content war. Aol is too big to be smothered by microsoft, but once xp is in wide scale use, i bet the rate of new msn subscribers shoots up over aol's new suscriber rate. So no you don't have to worry about that. However, I am very very very please that Aol/Compuserve/Netscape/Warner/Nullsoft is moving to gecko. Maybe now with all of them spending money on the development of the engine, mozilla will finally get to where it truly contends with IE. (IMHO of course)

I recently did this

[barzok]

Well, at least to a small degree. We're entirely rewriting the underlying code of a portion of my company's website, and I got to do the base work for the HTML output. Stripped out all the formatting tags, went to CSS exclusively for formatting, etc., using tables only for layout, no FONT tags.

The pages are functional in NS4, but not terribly pretty due to NS4's terrible CSS. We made the decision to not put forth the effort to make things perfect in NS4 because it would hold us back in the future, negating the flexibility CSS and my other work had given us. That's one thing that people don't seem to realize - sticking with the standards makes the pages easier to maintain.

The pages look good, are standards-compliant (look better in Mozilla than IE), easier to maintain, and are lighter to download than the previous version. Like I said, they don't look perfect in NS4, but they do work properly.

Favor of IE

[dmaxwell]

If we just had it under Linux it would definitely dominate everything.

That's just it. If you want to surf the web then you must use Windows. Let's face it folks, Al Gore didn't invent the Internet. Microsoft INNOVATED it. Bleh.

Don't bitch about everyone not being good little boys and failing to use IE. Insist on DOCUMENTED standards compliance. Documented does not mean: use the following COM system call to..........

Show me a fully crossplatform and open IE and I'll allow that you have a point. There is isn't one? Oh.

CompuServe

[Hard_Code]

CompuServe? That still *exists*?? No need to respond, it obviously must...but I assumed it had died its well earned death long ago.

IE will be incompatible with Gecko if this happens

[saridder]

If Gecko goes non-MS, I can bet you Microsoft will start making new HTML in IE 7 and IE 8 (at what point do they start calling it IE 2003, IE XP or .Net passport client or something?) for IE that only MS browsers will be ale to read.

AOL 7.0 needs to bundle Netscape 6.x browser!

[PRR]

I just said this yesterday in the "Microsoft Gatekeeper" thread! Especially now that MS is so agressively going after AOL's lunch with all their Passport stuff, I hope AOL would get the clue that having their signup logo as an icon on the Windows desktop is of little help if they are reliant upon IE (which MS will always use to their advantage)

AOL needs to bundle the Netscape browser (which they own) with AOL 7.0.

Re:Number of AOL Users vs IE Users

[Nailer]

>>this is one of the few rays of light with regards to any kind of widespread adoption of mozilla.

>Bullsh*t

Strong words. That depends on your definition of widespread, and I agree with the post you're replying to - none of the platforms you've mentioned are anything near widespread or common on desktop machines. Certainly none of them approach the circa 1998 Mozilla hype coming out of the Mozilla / Netscape camp.

Don't be so agressive and realize for a second that there's a reason so many people think Mozilla has failed. Their being uninformed isn't one of them.

Some lovely posts here, just lovely. Do it, AOL.

[dinotrac]

My favorite post so far is the web designer who feels "stabbed in the back" because the industry has "standardized" on IE and now they'll have to worry about another browser.

Well, pack me off to Bugtussle, Beulah, seems this swamp ain't as nice as it looked.

Big hint, here, guys: standardizing on defacto standards owned by a company that demonstrates allegience to no one but itself (check out the recent enterprise licensing schemes if you think MS cares about its customers one whit) is a reliable way to get screwed.

That's especially true when you consider that, in this case, "standardizing" means making a conscious decision to exclude a portion of the browsing public. Can't be the fairest thing to do when you work for paying customers who need the biggest bang for their buck.

Big cheers to AOL if they go ahead with this. I'm damned sure that most big sites will not tolerate web developers who lock out that much of their audience. I neither like nor use the AOL service, but I promise to say nice things about it if this happens.

Re:Number of AOL Users vs IE Users

[jesser]

what the hell is this invalid formkeys error?

I get that with IE about 5% of the time. It's especially annoying in IE because IE won't remember what I typed in this textarea when I hit the back button.

Mr. Gecko

[Marvin_OScribbley]

pieces of Gecko have been spotted in a beta version of the next CompuServe client

Actually they've spotted pieces of Geico, which can save CompuServe customers 15% or more on car insurance.

Re:Mr. Gecko

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn it, and me with no moderator points. A virtual (+1, Funny) to you!

~~~

Re:Negative Aspects Making OSS A Product, Not Proc

[archen]

"In cases such as this, corporations are making open source software the product"

An initial take of this, is that it does seem bad, but you can think of it another way too. Mozilla is cross platform. See AOL making money off of Linux or *BSD? I certainly don't, but Mozilla still works fine on them. Netscape (AOL) has given Linux the browser it has needed for a long time (okay, there's konquer now too...) Unlike other browsers though, it looks like AOL will back Mozilla - and backing of this kind is the only hope of keeping the internet out of the grip of MS. Keep in mind that although Linux is also an OSS product, there are more than a few businesses that capitalize on it. I think in essence AOL is footing the bill, and giving open source a chance as well as giving a cross platform browser - it's only reasonable to expect that they would use the end result of this work. And it's not like they're going to take Mozilla away from us, or start charging money for it.

Gecko is swell.

[jabbo]

I'm using Galeon to write this. I don't recall ever using Mozilla for anything important, but Galeon rocks -- even my nontechnical girlfriend likes it. It's fast, simple, and aside from the Galeon team's apparent decision to make Backspace not go back one page in 0.94/0.12.whatever, it's very similar to IE. Which, of course, is pretty much the benchmark these days.

Bottom line, I don't hate my Linux web browser anymore, and Gecko/Galeon is the reason why. If AOL can use Gecko to, say, spit out shitloads of cheap Linux X terminals for clients, so much the better.

And if they're only using it to strongarm MS, that's okay too.

The day has come...

[daemonc]

And the beast shall be made legion. Its numbers shall be increased a thousand thousand fold. The din of a million keyboards like unto a great storm shall cover the earth, and the followers of Mammon shall tremble.

from The Book of Mozilla, 3:31
(Red Letter Edition)

AOL Linux distro

[LinuxHam]

I've said it before during other AOL browser discussions..

I'd like to see AOL make their own Linux-based kiosk-like distro. Now that Ximian Red Carpet is maturing, adding an AOL channel would be pretty darn easy.

I would absolutely rebuild my Mom's old PC as an AOL kiosk for her. I know a real estate agent who uses Compuserve does all his MLS work on the web, and calls me whenever he gets the virus du jour. Definitely needs an AOL kiosk.

No shit - Sherlock.

[King Of Chat]

If you don't get the joke, maybe in future, I'll tag them all up for you to make it easier.

<serious>Actually, <slightly_humorous>despite the hugh proportion of my working day which I spend browsing</slightly_humorous> I've yet to find a benefit to using IE6.0 over 5.01. This raises the question in my mind - what is the point of IE6.0? OK, so people aren't using the new features, but what are these features which are so damn crucial? What end-user benefit is there in what is, mostly, eye-candy?</serious>

Re:No shit - Sherlock.

[LinuxHam]

If you don't get the joke, maybe in future, I'll tag them all up for you to make it easier.

Oh, I'm sorry. I thought your reference to "Luddite" had you being humble, particularly with one of the highest UIDs on the system. Guess I was wrong, new guy.

There are server people, and there are content people. I'm a server person. I could give a shit about what new things MS has decided to break in any of its garbageware. I have much bigger fish to fry during my days.

Besides, the "flash" of the web has become pointless now that B2C has fizzled and B2B is still exploding. The point being, MS is missing the movement.. again. Its about moving data from point to point as quickly and reliably as possible. Anyone still trying to make it look nicer to end users is living in 1998. Sherlock.

Re:Negative Aspects Making OSS A Product, Not Proc

[cHALiTO]

I really don't care if they do or do not contribute something back. Well, ok, it'd be nice, but I don't mind if they don't. As long as the code stays open, it's ok.

I don't mind the guy next to me having more than me. I just care about me having enough.

So what?

[Penguinoflight]

IE definatly had netscape compatibility problems when it was released, and it still does. Mozilla is very compatible with netscape pages, more than IE. Also, when AOL switches to Mozilla, the total of Mozilla+Netscape will be around 70%, so there is no way IE compatibility is even an issue. Way to go AOL!

Whoa there ...

[LoudMusic]

(I'm glad we won't be seeing AOL-TW-MS-NBC.)

Don't go jumping the gun there big fella, we're not out of the fire yet. I don't see any finalized results, and there's no telling what they're doing that no one is talking about. Big buisness can have just as 'covert operations' as a millitary. They sure have the funds for it!

~LoudMusic

Stability, advancement

[Penguinoflight]

KHTML is way less stable than Mozilla, even though Mozilla isn't to 1.0 yet, it's the most stable browser ever made. I've had repeated problems in Konqueror when using kde 2.2.1, plus Mozilla already has windows supported quite well... If people are going to switch to Linux, why are they using AOL?

Plus Mozilla is truly a bigger browser than Konqueror. You have email, an address book, a WYSIWYG editor, and email handling just works better if it's in the same application as your browser. All that and I didn't even get into the speed advantage...

Re:Stability, advancement

[VadPlessky]

KHTML is way less stable than Mozilla, even though Mozilla isn't to 1.0 yet
Bullsh**t. KHTML is very stable. If you are not happy with some third-party JavaScript-based web sites, turn off JavaScript support. As I wrote in another posting, do not mix JS with DHTML. These are different things. Konqueror has the best CSS2 support on the market, so far. Click on link above or here to see how W3C CSS page renders in Konq. Compare than it to MS IE6 or other browsers.

All that and I didn't even get into the speed advantage...

Are you kidding? Konqueror starts in 3 sec. on my computer, while Mozilla needs 20-25 seconds to start!
Besides, Konq opens new window in less than 1 sec., while Mozilla needs 3 sec.(!) to open new window. Minimize/Maximize actions are also pretty slow for Mozilla.

Re:Stability, advancement

[Penguinoflight]

KHTML crashed consistently on me when I closed the file manager panel. CSS2 support the best? check your figures. Who said anything bout IE6? IE6 isn't even in the race dude.

You can flame me... but upgrade to a recent release of mozilla, _NOT_ M18. Mozilla 0.9.5 loads in 5 seconds on my machine, Konqueror loads in 8. Again, check your figures.

Mozilla is the best browser for Windows, maybe.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla works fine for me too. On Windows. But on Linux it was a slow-rendering resource hog. I got totally fed up. I tried going back to the old Netscape. I tried Galeon. I tried Konqueror. Finally I discovered Opera.

I'm still searching for the perfect browser, but until I find it, Opera will do just fine. It's slick, it's fast, it looks nice, and it doesn't try to be more than just a web browser - which is all I want. I still use Mozilla at work, where I'm forced to run Windows. But I'm considering shifting to Opera there too, since my Linux experience has been so good.

I'm not an open source zealot. I'm a "good software that meets my needs zealot". As it turns out, most software in that category is open source. But not web browsers. Would I like to see Opera open source? Yes. Do I care that it's not? Not really - the company is doing a great job, and I have no complaints.

-A

Big winners: Konqueror and Opera

[roca]

No doubt it would be quite risky for AOL to replace IE with Gecko. They might lose customers.

But if they go through with it, they'd certainly force lots of Web sites to become more standards-compliant. So other makers of standards-compliant browsers would benefit hugely, with no risk to themselves. This would be a very good thing.
Personally I suspect AOL is just testing the waters, and won't go with Gecko until it is very much better than IE.

AOL's OWN Operating System?

[javacowboy]

With the increasing rivalry and competition between AOL and Microsoft, along with the speculation about AOL replacing IE with Gekko, I'm wondering if it's only a matter of time before AOL comes up with its OWN operating system to compete with Windows.

They certain have the distribution clout and the customers. They have the financial resources. The only thing that would stand in their way is the engineering of the OS. They could try to pull an Apple and put their front end on top of FreeBSD, but even that would take time, unless they've already secretly begun.

BTW, this is just pure speculation. I really have no idea what AOL is thinking.

Re:AOL's OWN Operating System?

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW, this is just pure speculation. I really have no idea what AOL is thinking.

Yeah, no shit.

My Banks

[Anonymous Coward]

My banks here in canada (Scotiabank and Royal Bank) have supported open standards (SSL) for a while. One used to have this win32 program but now they're all web-based. Perhaps you should point your bank to them as an example. :-)

I like IE6 just fine, but still...

[RottenDeadite]

I personally hope everybody and anybody switches to Mozilla.

As a web developer, it's in my best interests to have cross-browser compatability issues to worry about. The worse two different browsers render the same code, the harder it is to build a GUI application to write HTML, which would phase me out of a job.

So, all the bugs and incompatabilities in the world only make my job more important. Bring it on!

Re:Number of AOL Users vs IE Users

[DrXym]

Sorry, but apart from a few extra semicolons and brackets I think you'd find that writing Javascript is no harder than writing VBScript. Both offer the same roughly the same set of features.

And it's subjective which is easier since a lot of people would be more comfortable with the C/C++/Java like syntax in JS.

Either way it all boils down to this - Javascript (or I should say ECMAScript) is a industry standard, universally recognized as the scripting language for client-side web work, whereas VBScript is a proprietary language that only runs in a single browser. Unless you're developing for that one browser, I see no reason for using VBScript.

Discontinued.

[psleonar]

Intel discontinued the Dot.Station, along with all other consumer electronics, yesterday:

...the Dot.Station, a countertop Internet appliance, will fade out. The company shipped 250,000 of the devices to AOL Avant, an America Online joint venture in Spain, but there are no plans to manufacture more.

BIG DEAL

[dood]

What is the market share of Compuserve? One tenth of one percent?

Seriously this is a drop in a drop in the bucket compared to the suscriber base of AOL/MSN.

I think the only reason this might be interesting is because AOL is testing the water with this one incase they need to quicly drop IE in AOL.

--d00d

That isn't a frog.....

[CaptPungent]

Its a "sherlock" hat.

Real Web Designers Design Cross-Browser

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about any other web designers that frequent /. but this guy sure as hell doesn't speak for me, and for many other designers who already code cross-browser sites. "It's going to make things more ex(p)ensive for our customers, it's going to take more time from our tight schedule, it will bring down our efficiency since we have to code it all twice." Ok, here's something to think about - if you have to code it twice to begin with, put half of that time into learning cross-browser development using standards, rather than workarounds. I just don't see the point of people complaining of efficiency when, in this day, if you have to code twice as much, you are the one being inefficient. If only most 'designers' would place more time into actually keeping up with the new standards and design methods, we wouldn't have this problem of people insisting they have to code two sites, blahblahblah... I *highly* suggest visiting some good places to start like www.zeldman.com, www.youngpup.net, and brushing up on your understanding of DOM before you place the blame of inefficiency on the browser anymore. It's just an excuse I hear people use all too often nowadays..

Mozilla could really kick MS butt!

[Anonymous Coward]

Think about it, AOL is BIG and with gecko as its browsing engine it could give IE REAL competiton!

quirk mode emulates NS4, not IE

[misuba]

At least that was the impression I was under many, many Moz-versions ago. Maybe something's changed.

If a web page doesn't work with Lynx...

[Weasel Boy]

... then it doesn't work.

Re:Some lovely posts here, just lovely. Do it, AOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Big hint, here, guys: standardizing on defacto standards owned by a company that demonstrates allegience to no one but itself (check out the recent enterprise licensing schemes if you think MS cares about its customers one whit) is a reliable way to get screwed.

I for one, wouldn't mind getting screwed. Just not by Microsoft. In fact... maybe one of the reasons I haven't been is because I'm an Anonymous Coward!

AOL can't compete, even with Gecko

[Anonymous Coward]

It's clear that this switch to Gecko is a vain attempt to reduce licensing costs with Microsoft in order to allow AOL Time Warner to compete with giants such as Yahoo! and Terra Networks (Terra Lycos).

Yahoo and Terra have been constantly eroding AOL's marketshare, and both consist of much larger holdings than AOL Time Warner. The full might of Wired news, and a handful of Ebay and Paypal clones, and various dating services and such innovations as free e-mail and web space simply can not be met by AOL Time Warner without the needed cost-savings of the Gecko engine.

One need look no further than a comparison of Terra and Yahoo!'s yearly earnings and stock history to see why AOL is so worried about these two rising stars. Clearly the people have spoken, and they want their quality of Terra and Yahoo's free services, and the flexibility of paying low-monthly fees for additional quantities of storage and transaction overheads.

Upon investigation of Terra's networking infrastructure alone in the U.S., you can see that AOL Time Warner simply doesn't currently have the capacity to out-gun them in the short-term, and one easily understands why they're moving their attentions to such profitable markets as South and Central America.

Perhaps if only AOL Time Warner had equitable holdings, or as clear a strategic vision they wouldn't need to use the Gecko engine, but I'm just not sure they have any services people would rather exchange money for, over either Yahoo! or Terra.

Re:AOL can't compete, even with Gecko

[Ozx]

As an expert in this field, I can assure you that Lycos and Yahoo! both have equally valuable and diverse services as AOL, though AOL has a slightly more integerated chat system...

I'm sure that their adoption of Gecko is a direct result of Lycos's forthcoming adoption of Yahoo!'s key strategic pay-services...

B8 00 4C CD 21

[mbyte]

If i recall correctly:

b8 = load AX
00 4c with 004c
cd 21 = int 21

4c on 21 was exit program, right ? (its been a long time ago :P)

All your prefs are...

[FrankHaynes]

This fear of MS world domination is not as big a concern among my very knowledgable non-Slashdot friends who have been beta testing XP right along now. You still have some control over the browser, plus if you are that concerned then just put bogus identification into the concerned fields.

Reading the comments here indicate, as expected, that each user has different needs and each browser meets those needs differently. The important point is that if AOL does include Mozilla inside an upcoming release of its bloatware and assuming people know that it's Mozilla and not just that AOL browser window-thingy, it might give (l)users the idea that I.E. is *not* the only game in town. Hell, they might even recommend Mozilla to a friend, and so on, and so on...

I hadn't paid much attention to it before 1.5 years ago so I thought that Navigator identifying itself as Mozilla was simply a quaint holdover from the Good Ol' Days. It never occurred to me that it was still under development as its own project. Seriously. Now that I know better, I can do something about it. This AOL initiative might give others the same kick in the butt.

By the way, I know I'll sound extremely lame by asking this, but I throw myself at the mercy of /.
What is the origin of this phrase "All your base are belong to us!" I've just got to know. Obviously, I don't play games on my computer, the likely source of this. Thank you. Good night!

---

Re:All your prefs are...

[Anonymous Coward]

By the way, I know I'll sound extremely lame by asking this, but I throw myself at the mercy of /. What is the origin of this phrase "All your base are belong to us!" I've just got to know.

See e.g... http://www.sirlinksalot.net/ayb.html

Re:Number of AOL Users vs IE Users

[savrinor]

Try this:
GNOME Basic

AOL 7.0

[jimbolaya]

I apologize for the "off-topicness" of this post, but...

What's up with AOL x.0? Why don't they ever have a x.1 release? It's not like they are really releasing anything so ground breaking it deserves a major (x+1.0) release.

I guess it is better than AOL 2000 or AOL XP. (:

Re:AOL 7.0

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, AOL DID make .x's along time ago, but they dropped them so that users would upgrade more
1.0
1.x
2.0
2.x
and then you have 3.0, 4.0, 5.0(4.1), 6.0(4.2), and now 7.0 (4.3)

Funny, isn't it ...

[King Of Chat]

How the lack of "tone of voice" in these sort of discussions can cause two people who agree with each other to argue like that. Do a "view source" on my HTML formatted comments and you'll see I'm not a content person either. BTW

Anyone still trying to make it look nicer to end users is living in 1998

Can I use that next time I have a set-to with our graphics designers?

PS I may only have had a /. login for a few weeks (karma going to be even lower after this OT post), but I bet I've been in the business longer than most on here.

Re:Number of AOL Users vs IE Users

[Nailer]

That's a troll? I haven't said anything more than my opinion (clearly labeled as such) and the view expressed isn't exactly unique.