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Browser Wars II: CompuServe Strikes Back
securitas writes "Today CompuServe (an AOL subsidiary) launched CompuServe 7.0 with Netscape as the underlying browser. CompuServe started testing Komodo, a Gecko-based client, last year, and is now experimenting with Gecko-based AOL clients. CompuServe's 3 million-member user base is seen as a testbed before turning AOL's 34 million members into Netscape users later this year." Update: 04/16 20:54 GMT by T : Also an interesting story at CNN on the upcoming Mozilla 1.0. RC1 is very nice, as have been most recent builds.
You've got the right idea, but you're slightly backwards in terms of the execution.
I fully agree that Mozilla is probably the BEST open-source project to date, but it is by no means the MOST IMPORTANT. A browser is an add-on, a "helper" application at best. True, web services are becoming more and more vital to computing, and everyone who uses a computer really needs a browser. But a "browser war" is not the way to come out ahead in this arena.
People generally don't switch browsers. That is a fact - cold, hard, and undeniably true. Microsoft has been onto this trend for at least 5 or 6 years now...that's why they bundle their own. So a "browser war" doesn't help anything, because it doesn't get MS off the desktop. That's what I was pointing out in my original post - I'm one of the rare few who use a non-MS browser in Windows...but Microsoft isn't even SLIGHTLY hurt by this fact, because their REAL PRODUCTS - windows and office - are still the best on the desktop for me and probably 85% of the rest of the world's PC's. So how does the open source community hope to gain anything by fighting a pointless "browser war"? Why not just focus on making a better browser AND a better desktop environment, so they have something to BUNDLE it with? That's what will make MS more competitive. But the open source community is distracted by the pointless bickering over whose browser handles java plugins better.
My point, to paraphrase once more, is that the "browser war" has been blown WAY out of proportion and is becoming a distraction to what open source SHOULD be doing. I'm not trying to downplay the significance of a solid open-source browser.
<sigh>
Don't get me wrong, Mozilla is great and I love/use it, but there are still some very serious issues:
Hope those CompuServe users can hang in there until 1.2 or so.
(I'd link, but they don't take referrals from SlashDot... here's the Mozilla Bugzilla Home Page.)
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
I realized last night that I'm now completely dependent on the superior feature set of Mozilla's web browser.
I ran across a web site which had obviously been written to cater to MSIE browsers, and eschew web standards compliance. The pages didn't load (at all) in Mozilla 0.9.9, so I decided to give Konqueror a shot before giving up entirely. Konqueror rendered the pages (kudos to the K-people!) but made me realize why I like Mozilla so much. Pop-up windows, animated gif ads, and the clutter of multiple windows was enough to make me groan more than once while trying to navigate the site.
Oh, and before anyone posts "Konqueror does that, you moron!" realize that I'm not trying to rain on the K parade, just extoll the virtues of my fair web browser.
To avoid the dreaded Off-Topic, I'd just like to close by saying that I hope the experiment works, and Compuserve users get a chance to take control of their web browsing experience. Hopefully the privacy and anti-annoyance controls aren't removed when they turn it over to the consumer users.
People shape laws. Not the other way around.
How about adding a page to slashdot to show current/past statistics of browsers that are used to access SlashDot? A link from the main page would also be nice!
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the only cool part of the mozilla project is the engine, and that's only if you're a developer and interested in building your own browser.
You're entitled to your opinion, even though it's wrong.
XUL is very cool. Need a browser with no menus of buttons, as an interface to a web-based application for a control-freak client? I got Mozilla (in the M18 days) to do this with a few hours of messing around in the various xml files (and a very small bit of javascript hacks to stop that damn throbber from exiting). No C or C++ coding at all. And I am not a browser or Mozilla developer - perl coding is my speed.
Browser came up to a pre-determined URL and user had no visible way to go anywhere else. (Unfortunately, the project was cacelled before I figured how to inhibit the control-* keys, oh well....)
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody