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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.)"
MozillaZine.org has a pointer to a news.com piece too plus additional comments.
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).
"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?
/. looks the same to me.
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 -
This sig made only from recycled ASCII
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)...
/. or google.
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
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.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
I'm not sure which issue you're talking about here, so I'll address both :)
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..)
There's definitely a preference for this. Uncheck something along the lines of "Search from the address bar" in the advanced settings.
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
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.
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 :)
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.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
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.)
.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.
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
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
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.
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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?
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