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AOL Beta Testing Gecko-Based Browser
Bedouin X writes: "MozillaZine is reporting that AOL has released a Gecko client for Windows! Scuttlebutt says that it's based on Gecko .94.2. While I think that the common assumption that AOL including Gecko equals 34 million new OSS users is fallacious (most AOL hits on my site are 5.0), there is no denying that it would be a major - though seemingly inevitible - win and great for a more standard web. Maybe Capital One would quit being the lone holdout of my creditors that don't support Mozilla." Reader SEE also adds a link to a story on CNET.
It's easy to envisage AOL doing this until one considers that content on the Web has adapted to a large degree to IE dominance.
What AOL has to consider is its 34million users turning round and saying "the latest version of AOL is broke", if it's not rendering IE specific content correctly.
Yes I know Mozillas recent [good] record on standards compliance, but as it stands MS is holding the baton.
In short, I think this is a bluff on AOLs part, as there's too much commercial risk here, and there's no way AOL is going to take those risks (with a relatively dumb userbase), with the possibility of large user unhappiness.
Sorry; I meant roll on the activeX wrapper, then al the Delphi newbies will be knocking out their own browsers that host this activeX (the rendering engine).
I didn't mean it needed to be able to host activeX itself.
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Yes! It matters a great deal! Those "AOL Idiots" spend money! And if the customer base jumps from 90% IE 10% other to 70% IE /30% other, it might not make a difference to some homemade page, but it will if you're Sears, or Amazon, (or Capital One). Especially when you are not talking about VHS/Betamax, but rather enforcing a *standard* that will only enlarge your customer base.
BTW, if you want to bug Capital One about their poor support for Mozilla/Netscape, send an email over to media.relations@capitalone.com.
I sent them an email this morning. Cheers to the low interest rate card. Cheers to the Frequent flyer miles and great customer service. Jeers to the lousy browser support.
www.avacal.com -- the home page of pete shaw
Currently, Intel's EDI website only supports IE! not NS 4.x, NS 6, Opera, nothing but IE. I made a rule awhile ago. "Employees/users can only surf the web with Netscape." But Intel makes me look bad when the Sales Reps have to use IE to get Sales Orders from Intel. I tell everyone they can't use IE for security reasons, and they snicker, "sure, buddy Netscape don't even work!". Hopefully AOL will change all this!!!!!! And hopefully that will put me one step closer to expanding our Linux use from the servers to the desktop as well.
Need help finding the flow? http://www.myspace.com/naturalismandbalance
I'm a little worried that this could all end in a bit of a mistake. Don't get me wrong, I think that standards are a good thing. They're good for developers because they know what they send out, will be viewable in all clients. They're good for end-users because they can use any client and still get the content. However, there is a problem.
I'm just moved from IE to Opera. For the sole reason that I hate having 15 IE windows open. Thats it. Nothing else and I admit it. However whilst surfing the net doing research I find a good many sites are broken and Opera doesn't show them too well. Hell even my own site doesn't work very well.
In fact, i'm to the point of going back to IE. Why?
Because I want that content and I can't get it. Sure, its not my fault that I can't get the content, after all, they've written bad HTML but from an end-users perspective that isn't the issue. They want that information and their browser won't give it to them. Period.
To the end-user, it doesn't matter if the HTML is badly formed, if people see it not working on browser y and it does on browser x then they will automatically assume that y is broken. ("but x lets me see my page, why can't i on y?", "because the pages are badly written", "well if they're badly written, why can i see them on x?" and so on)
Now of course the standard geek response is "well its their fault they haven't followed standards". Well yes, it is. But it also sucks for the individual who wants the information on that page.
"well then, they should go elsewhere". People don't just go elsewhere. They find a few retailers they consider trustworthy and stick with them. Or what happens if that content isn't available elsewhere? Then you're stuck. It also doesn't help when they see their friends using browser x and having no such problems.
Which means that I've come to the depressing conclusion that AOL might even be forced to return to IE. Or they'll put pressure on Mozilla developers to try and cope with dodgy HTML.
This certainly doesn't help standards, but when there is a large mob of people phoning up the tech support lines complaining that their favourite websites no longer work, AOL may start changing their mind.
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The really dumb AOLers will stick with AOL and its browser because they don't know how to use anything else. The somewhat smarter ones will fire up IE, (so conveniently bundled into Windows for them by MS), as needed, but stick with AOL as their ISP -- no real loss for AOL either way.
"Obtuse Anger is that which is greater than Right Anger" - Lewis Carroll
Considering Microsoft most likely spent double the money and took twice as long to get IE6 to the level that its at. Lets see, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 years. Mozilla 1,2,3,4 years.
4 years vs 7 years, Mozilla did in 4 years what took Microsoft 7 years without the hundreds of millions of dollars Microsoft most likely put into IE.
So now that AOL is fully backing Mozilla, if Mozilla were to get hundreds of millions of dollars in funding (which at this point its the best so why bother?) It wouldnt speed up development because Mozilla is pretty much the best.
Whats left to develop? All AOL can/should do is make the code 100 percent bug free, optimize everything, perhaps improve the lame XUL or replace it with native interfaces for Windows, Linux and so on. Now that the money is availible theres no need to use slow as hell XUL.
Last the Mozilla team can make sure their browser supports ALL the standards and has the fastest rendering engine, Mozilla 2.0 can improve, but with a strong bug free very well written base, IE is going to be left in the dust no matter how much money they try to spend to fix bugs in their poorly designed and badly written IE.
IE is horribly designed, its worse than netscape, its been patched over and over and over year after year until it became good, also its been intergrated into windows itself so it doesnt seem bloated.
I think this is the end of days for IE.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Uhhhhh... Because AOL isn't abusing a monopoly position to destroy potential competition? Next question.
Oh yeah, that's right, you are required to use AOL and Gecko now... How silly of me. I thought you had any number of choices of ISPs and could still use IE or Opera if you wanted to.
This guy is apparently unaware of that AOL already relies on OSS like AOLserver.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Is anyone else out there having horrible performance with Mozilla on WinXP systems? If I use Mozilla's quick start option, when I load other programs WinXP always swaps Mozilla out to disk. Then when I try to bring Mozilla back up it takes LONGER to swap it all back in than it does to start in the first place! If I leave a mozilla window minimized, then run several other programs, then switch back to Mozilla, it freezes for something like 5-10 seconds while the hard drive crunches. Often WinXP brings up the "this program is not responding" dialog during this process.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}