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.

Comments

Now if....

[crumbz]

..Apple would switch from IE, there would be some progress away from MS.

Re:Now if....

[DrSkwid]

I don't Microsoft would let their other OS family drop IE

Re:Now if....

[daviddennis]

Apple probably understands that the browser monoculture may be unpopular with Slashdotters, but the general public just wants to see pages. So until everything's perfect over on the Mozilla/Omniweb/etc end, they're not going to switch.

This is totally separate from any payoffs from Microsoft which might show up and influence Jobs, of course.

I've all but switched from IE to Mozilla 0.99 for sites that won't work in OmniWeb. So far, I haven't found a single site that doesn't work in Mozilla 0.99. (OW has the world's best type rendering and saves me from eyestrain, thus winning my best browser crown even though it won't work with all sites).

So it might be time for Apple to recheck this issue. Maybe when a Netscape version of Mozilla 1.0 is released?

D

Re:Now if....

[turbine216]

Why does anyone think that the key to escaping the so-called "microsoft deathgrip" lies in an alternate web browser? It makes A LOT more sense to say "maybe if Apple would port their OS to X86 architecture, there would be some progress away from MS," or even something like "maybe if the Open Source community could come up with a decent office suite that is actually WORTH the $0 price tag, there would be some progress away from MS." But how in the hell does a browser have anything to do with it? I (and many others that I know) use various Mozilla builds on various Windows versions, and we're still hooked on MS because we like the REAL products, Windows and Office.

I think this whole "browser war" gets way too much emphasis these days. It made sense 7 years ago when Netscape wasn't free and was trying to compete. Today, who gives a shit what browser comes out on top?? Shouldn't you be more concerned about competing with Microsoft's OTHER software?

Re:Now if....

[Dephex Twin]

Well, now that their 5-year contract with Microsoft, part of which agreed that IE would be the default browser on Mac OS, is over, we may very well see a change. But for the past 5 years they were obligated to go IE.

mark

Re:Now if....

[Anonymous Coward]

> Today, who gives a shit what browser comes out on top?? Shouldn't you be more concerned about competing with Microsoft's OTHER software?

No.

Today browsing is absolutely vital for anyone with a computer. If we drop the ball, then the internet will be a proprietary windows-only thing in a matter of years (like dropping html in favor of word format, or that kind of thing).

No OS will ever be able to take off, as _everything_ that people will use will be totally proprietary.

Mozilla is the _most_ important application today.

Re:Now if....

[Bedouin X]

My dual 1 gig G4 system runs both IE and Mozilla on OS X without a hitch. I prefer Mozilla simply because I can rely on it being the same on PC and Mac, a distinction that IE is far from being able to claim. It is awesome on OS X though (it actually supports fixed backgrounds in divs! Still not as well as Mozilla though). The tabs keep me going back to the lizard though...

Re:Now if....

[civilizedINTENSITY]

It does make sense if you think in terms of client-server relationships. If there can be only one client, that client will set arbitrary and selfserving defacto standards. With multiple clients, then open standards can proliferate.

Re:Now if....

[Kintanon]

What's wrong with Star Office? It seems to work spectacularly for me....

Kintanon

Re:Now if....

[jafac]

Now if only I could share the same history and bookmarks between my PC-based-Mozilla at work, and my Mac-based-Mozilla at home. . .

Re:Now if....

[TheTomcat]

Today, who gives a shit what browser comes out on top??

I do.

If one company controls 99% of web browsing, they could eventually move to controlling 99% of webservers by implementing "features" that only work with their server/browser implementation. I believe that's why MS came up with IE in the first place.

Sounds conspiracy theorist, right?
Read this, then.

They're known for this sort of thing. I used to be a huge MS hater, and I've grown to tolerate them over the past 2-or-so years (since Win2000, really), but it's crap like this that puts me back on the skeptic team.

S

Re:Now if....

[turbine216]

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.

Re:Now if....

[lynx_user_abroad]

Some history may be helpful here...

Years ago, our company did all software development on large IBM mainframes. All code storage, design tools, code editors, compilers, test tools, etc. Everything. Every designer had to have an account, storage space, access to a terminal, and processing time on the mainframe. That was reasonable enough.

But to tie everything together, that meant that everyone else also had to have a mainframe account, many of whom did not otherwise need access to the design environment or need mainframe training. We're talking about sales folk (to check on the projected release date) business managers (availability), technical writers, secretaries (t oaccess email) etc. That was a lot of training, account space, and processing power which could have been better spent elsewhere.

It was a great boon when we started deploying personal computers (less contention for the 3270 mainframe terminals) and things really took off when we moved to web-based distribution of information. That meant that you could access most of the derivative portion of the environment (project planning, documentation, etc) from whatever computer (PC, Macintosh, UNIX workstationi, VT100) you happened to already have and be trained for.

You no longer had to have a specific computer running a specific operating system to access the information you needed. Sounds familiar?

Nowadays, the company has moved back to creating IE-specific web pages. That means everyone in the company has to have a PC running Windows to get any information out of our development environment.

The funny part is, just after we moved the content to the web, we moved the design tools to UNIX. So now all the designers need UNIX workstations...where IE support is just a bad joke. Care to guess what we do when management says "please review the important corporate information off the (IE-only) web page..."?

So getting back to the world where you don't have to have a specific application running under a specific operating system to access the corporate information is a good thing. Anything which promotes diversity in that realm is good.

Re:Now if....

[turbine216]

Oh, you mean like the phenomenally successful .NET strategy?

You should know by now that any attempts that MS makes in that direction have not and will not be tolerated by their customers. That's why they haven't ever done it.

Re:Now if....

[Kintanon]

Umm, no, I mean seriously, the guy said that the office suite wasn't worth the 0$ pricetag. I would like to know why, because if I'm about to run up against some glaring lack of functionality in Star Office I would like to know beforehand.

Kintanon
Now, go be a fuckhead somewhere else. We're all full up here.

Re:Now if....

[jedidiah]

I have yet to encounter any msoffice zealot that could actually support their assertion that msoffice competition is somehow lacking. This goes equally well for PerfectOffice, SmartSuite or StarOffic.

Re:Now if....

[Publicus]

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.

This is true today, but I think tomorrow, with the possible emergence of .NET and more pervasive web services, that people will be using their browser as a gateway to using office like applications. This is, in fact, the direction Microsoft would like to go. They'd rather get people into a subscription-like system that can be delivered from a central server, instead of having the application installed on the desktop.

Whether it will ever happen remains to be seen, but I think the reason browsers are so hotly contended is because they determine the protocols that will be bringing these services to consumers in the future.

If IE dominates, Microsoft gets to choose the standards. If IE does not dominate, perhaps the W3C will, or another more democratic organization. I think that would be better.

Re:Now if....

[jlower]

Apple would switch from IE,

Check out a recent Apple Ad

Note that there's no IE icon in the dock. I think this is very significant.

Re:Now if....

[Planesdragon]

Last time I tried it (I'm not in the habit of installing random pieces of software) it marked all my punctuated works--words with dashes touching them, like this--as misspellings.

It also didn't provide enough for me to stop using Word and start using it.

If StarOffice still had a free version of 6, I'd test it and write up a review. *sigh* There's an older review of Staroffice 5.2 on my website, but it won't tell you anything new--everone allready knows that one didn't work.

Re:Now if....

[pmz]

who gives a shit what browser comes out on top??

I care a great deal that IE not come out on top. There is much too much at stake, here, for Microsoft to be given any chance at making the Internet proprietary. In fact, Microsoft taking over the Internet is one of the biggest threats to the future of global society. Microsoft taking over the Internet is equivalent, in principle, to Nazi Germany winning World War 2. Imagine the hordes of software projects that will simply be crushed. How many businesses will simply go out of business? How will anyone succeed in truly exercising their right to free speech? Will computer scientists and engineers be given academic freedom? Would we ever be able to trust anything we see on the WWW again? Microsoft will not be a benevolent dictator. In fact, they could end up being the most horrendous dictator the world has ever known (just think about what is at stake, here).

Re:Now if....

[briansmith]

They are trying to convince Unix users that Mac OS X is Unix. Since Netscape runs on Unix and IE (for the most part) doesn't, it makes sense to have Netscape in the dock.

If they were doing a "Mac OS X is Windows" compaign it might very well be IE in the dock.

Re:Now if....

[Lumpy]

Ok I'll feed this troll...
"maybe if the Open Source community could come up with a decent office suite that is actually WORTH the $0 price tag, there would be some progress away from MS."

I canvassed 100 people here at work... of 100 people 2 heard of open office and those 2 were linux users.

Yeah open office sucks... it sucks so bad that NOBODY KNOWS ABOUT IT.

I will bet that if I go and burn 100 CD's with the latest release for windows that I can get at least 50% to like it without doing anything.

you cant say something sucks when noone knows about it. Open office is every bit as good as MS office XP. the ONLY place it is laking is in import/export filters... just like MS office sucks in it's filters.

So prove me wrong. give out 100 copies of the latest Open office build for windows.. and tell me how many of those people say "god this sucks, it's horrible for even being free!"

I'm betting that you wont get one person to hate it.

Re:Now if....

[Darren Winsper]

I know exactly why it doesn't work, crappy browser detection, and maybe a reliance on document.all. Here:

Konqueror3 would work because it implements document.all, so it would be identified as IE4. However, Mozilla supports neither document.all or document.layers, and thus their site disables events.

Re:Now if....

[roca]

If you think that key Gecko hackers who don't work for AOL, like David Baron, Ian Hickson, Boris Bzarsky, Fabian Guisset, and others, are going to let AOL "coerce the web to their liking" (by which I assume you mean ignore or violate W3C standards) then you are sadly mistaken.

Re:Now if....

[pjrc]

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?

I see this sort of talk all the time, about strategic maneuvers. I just want to throw my two cents in by stating the obvious (or what should be obvious)....

The large collective mass of unpaid (often part time) free-software/open-source coders don't "focus" on a particular project or goal. Perhaps some small groups might, but talk about the "open source community" somehow "should focus on" something or another for strategic reasons is just silly.

Re:Now if....

[Darren Winsper]

Wrong, Mozilla has better standards support than IE5:Mac. Using the very site you linked:
http://www.westciv.com.au/style_master/ac ademy/bro wser_support/page_layout.html
http://www.westciv. com.au/style_master/academy/bro wser_support/selectors.html
http://www.westciv.co m.au/style_master/academy/bro wser_support/text.html
http://www.westciv.com.au/ style_master/academy/bro wser_support/page_layout.html

In fact, damn near all of the pages show Netscape 6.0 beating IE5:Mac. Since Mozilla, in the time since NS6.0, has gone from 0.6 to 1.0, it has improved a lot, and thereforce is likely to beat IE5:Mac even more.

And we haven't even looked at DOM support yet...

Re:Now if....

[Darren Winsper]

Argh, the Javascript was knocked out of that post:
IE4 = (document.all);
NN4 = (document.layers);
ver4 = (IE4 || NN4);
isMac = (navigator.appVersion.indexOf("Mac") != -1);
isMenu = (IE4 || (NN4 && !isMac));
NavName = "";

var checkForms = 1;

function Show(){return};
function Hide(){return};
function LoadMenus(){return};

if (!ver4) event = null;

Re:Now if....

[leviramsey]

The next more vital application is an MS-exchange clone. This is (IMHO) more important than having an office suite. It is also much more difficult, but maybe a big player (ibm?) may move into that.

Is it just me or should IBM do a kick-ass port of Notes/Domino to Linux?

Re:Now if....

[Lumpy]

The CEO just rolled his eyes, because he thinks I'm a bit extreme and a little deranged

This is a GOOD thing! if you keep the CEO thinking this you will go very far and basically get what you want.

start worrying when they atart to understand you.

Excellent By the way... I think I'll do the same thing next week and see how it goes.

Re:Now if....

[kubrick]

Okay, I've checked Fowler's, and you're right. Usage of spaces in double dashes as punctuation is arbitrary. :)

I will say that it does seem somewhat archaic, for the very reason that it confuses more word processors than just StarOffice :), so I'm not used to seeing it done like that much recently. Besides, it's easier to parse when reading if it's not all run together -- depending on the font it can look like hyphenation.

Aplogies for the blanket statement, though. Can I change a 'must' to a 'should'? :)

Compuserve goes way back

[qurob]

I'm 23675.3598@compuserve.com!

Re:Compuserve goes way back

[mikeage]

73267,2746 for me. A real compuserve user had it _way_ before they had internet connectivity: when the numbers were comma delimited, not periods.

Re:Compuserve goes way back

[NMerriam]

72202,142

I sadly gave it up a few years ago, when I realized that good, active, moderated, insightful forums were dead...

Re:Compuserve goes way back

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Damn! I had a 7xxxx,xxxx number, but I can't remember it... I dont think I've used it in about 10 years!

Re:Compuserve goes way back

[wesmills]

103223,3212 ... I came in late in the game.

Anyone remember when you could get those "Introduction to CompuServe" books off of GO BOOKS for free? They even came with a coupon for a $10 service credit in the back. I think I racked up about $250 in credits, because they didn't place a limit on how many books you could order (just one at a time, but unlimited numbers of orders).

WinCIM rocked, but nothing beats the ! prompt.

Re:Compuserve goes way back

[buckeyeguy]

Yep, same here... 1987, 71331.3nnn...hehe... well anyway, I can't believe Compuserve exists anymore, even as some sort of branding entity. I live a mile from their original headquarters, and even before AOL bought them they had ceased to be an employer of note around here... at most, if the place disappeared now, a few restaurants on Henderson Rd. would go out of business, that'd be about it.

Goodbye, ActiveX! Don't let the door hit you in...

[1010011010]

I hope this spells the end of ActiveX website "enhancements." Having a large segments of people using a standards-based, non-Windows-specific browser will definitely improve the usability of the Web

In related news.

[aengblom]

In related news. Prodigy chooses Lynx to form the foundation of it's internet browser. Using Lynx as a client is now in the works

Re:In related news.

[blonde rser]

when will people stop using lynx and start using the superior links, the pretty ascii web browser

I'm not sure...

[EvilAlien]

... that compuserve is relevant anymore.

AOL (I feel dirty typing that) choosing !IE is, aside from logical business-wise, a significant event in the so-called browser war.

I don't think time is well spent on discussing the "browser war", but our concerns should be focused on standard vs. proprietary tag/feature/etc support, HTML interpretation "correctness" and other metamatters.

Re:I'm not sure...

[RocketJeff]

... that compuserve is relevant anymore.

3 million customers is always relevant.

Re:I'm not sure...

[EvilAlien]

They are a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL, provide what is essentially a business portal service, as I understand it. That sounds all very uselessly redundant. It caters to people who are business oriented, etc etc etc (COMPUSERVE INTERACTIVE SERVICES OVERVIEW), and too "busy" to figure out how to bookmark CNN/Money, MSN Money, and News.com on their own.

What I'm trying to say is that the inertia of roughly "2 million busy adults" does not make CompuServe relevant, IMO.

Re:I'm not sure...

[Corporate Drone]

they're not. They're a test balloon.

what's that? you hated Netscape? Oh, that's ok... just come on board to AOL, where you can keep on using that familiar IE interface.

hm? you loved it? great! keep an eye out for those "New and Improved AOL, now with Netscape!" CD's in the mail...

Re:I'm not sure...

[foonf]

The AOL and CompuServe clients are now basically the same software. Its a great way to test the water. Since they basically aren't promoting CompuServe anymore, and relatively few people actually use it, if users have major problems with integrated Gecko AOL can find out about it without alienting 50 million AOL users first. And if they still are trying to get a better deal from Microsoft to use IE, its a great way to show them that they can switch to Mozilla/Gecko any time they want to, without completely shutting the door on continuing the present arrangement. And when (if) the time comes to switch AOL proper to Gecko, they can do it very quickly and painlessly, having ironed out all of the problems with Compuserve first.

Re:Goodbye, ActiveX! Don't let the door hit you in

[1010011010]

You said: "ActiveX can be used in Mozilla."

Actually, that's an " ActiveX Control for Hosting Netscape plug-ins in IE ."

In other words, you have it backwards. MSFT dropped support for Netscape-style plugins, and this is a way to regain use of Netscape-style plugins in Internet Explorer.

Re:Goodbye, ActiveX! Don't let the door hit you in

[DohDamit]

Who the hell uses ActiveX? I've gone to all kinds of sites(sans porn...ask me why :P) and some quite the microsoft-oriented POS(iframes, their DOM, etc.) and have yet to install an ActiveX control in at least six months. Seriously, who is really using ActivX controls?

From the office of the president

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me, Steve Case, thank you on behalf of all the shareholders of AOL/Time Warner for giving us all your work for free so that we can make a hell of a lot of money and stop paying Microsoft.

As a token of my appreciation, I have purchased a new yacht where I have hung a fine wooden plaque commemorating the occasion. Rest assured that I have it hanging in a very prominent place.

No, no; no need to thank me. The 10s of millions of dollars of free labor that I received are thanks enough.

Re:From the office of the president

[elphkotm]

As much as a troll as this is, you exemplify the wrong attitude that has become dominant in the open source world. Beyond the hype, the purpose of open source is to improve software, period. Open source isn't about defeating the evils in the world or getting things for free, it's about moving technology forward. You don't spend a Saturday in a soup kitchen because you get something tangible from it. If Microsoft decides to take the high-quality TCP/IP stack code written by FreeBSD and integrating it into Windows 2000, then let them. By hundreds of people contributing their effort into that TCP/IP stack, they have made Windows 2000 more stable. That, my friend, is the goal in the end, better software. Not because someone paid for it, but because someone decided it needed to be done the right way.

Re:From the office of the president

[bartok]

Erm, troll alert?

Who do you think pays the salaries of about 95% of the developers that made Mozilla? Answer: AOL

Without AOL's sponsorship of the project, Moz would still be at Milestone 0.5

Re:From the office of the president

[jedidiah]

If a large faceless amoral corporation with money to burn wants it "done the right way" they should cough up the bucks. Helping your fellow man one day in a soup kitchen is NOTHING like working for free just so that Microsoft could turn in into CORPORATE WELFARE.

The BSD license is more like volunteering your free time to a white slavery ring.

Re:From the office of the president

[pyrrho]

AOL paid 4 billion dollars for Netscape and then GAVE millions of dollars of development time to Mozilla...

Re:From the office of the president

[geekoid]

troll or no, he makes a point.
Shouldn't the money saved go back into the community?

We're talking about AOL here, a company that uses propritary protocals to maintain an advertising strangle-hold on its users.

Re:From the office of the president

[kinkie]

the purpose of open source is to improve software, period

I think that what is the purpose of "open source" depends on whom you ask it to. Everybody has her motivations to do open source stuff. Somebody might do it, as you say, to improve technology, somebody else "to scratch an itch", somebody else for the ego trip or because it's dandy or because he wants to impress a geeky girlfriend (er...right). Somebody else because it gets stuff done, or because it's just fun.

We can try to explain what it is, but we should not try to constrain it into a particular vision of it. This is actually in my very humble opinion one of its strongest points against closed stuff: there's no "big plan", no corporate masterminds, nothing to fight against. Just plain doing stuff, as frustrating as it might be sometimes.

Re:From the office of the president

[roca]

What you're missing is that because it's open source, Mozilla is inherently unhelpful to a would-be monopolist. All the non-AOL hackers working on Mozilla aren't working on AOL-proprietary features, nor are they interested in doing anything to help AOL build a monopoly. Furthermore, anything AOL themselves puts in will be scrutinized, adopted (if it's good) or rejected (if it's merely self-serving). Yes, Mozilla has non-AOL people who have the power to do that. Plus, any code that AOL does put in Mozilla can immediately be taken and used by others for whatever they want. It's pretty hard to use Mozilla to build a monopoly under these conditions.

Re:From the office of the president

[flacco]

Open source isn't about defeating the evils in the world... If Microsoft decides to take the high-quality TCP/IP stack code written by FreeBSD and integrating it into Windows 2000, then let them.

Speak for yourself, asswipe.

Re:From the office of the president

[HydroCarbon10]

If you take the limit as price goes to zero of the usefulness of the software over the price of the software you'll find that free software is infinitely better than any software that costs money.

Math, when appropriately misapplied, can be used to prove anything :-).

Re:From the office of the president

[Hadlock]

AOL also pays for very high-quality, ad-free hosting and I commend them for that.

i was just wondering where the free opensource community was comming up with the $$ to host probably a terrabyte of past nightly builds of umpteen different builds on different OS'es of 3 or 4 different products, not to mention the bandwidth needs of tens of thousands of copies of nightlies or stable builds being downloaded each day @ a good 20-100KB (or more)/sec. AOL truly roxorz in this respect. free AIM servers roxor too, even if the oscar protocol SUXORZ. enough 1337 for /\/\3. time3 4 5133p.

Re:From the office of the president

[jedidiah]

The entire reason the GPL came into being is because Richards contributors objected to be locked out of changes made by profiteers. Richard did not magically make this stuff up. Nor did he decide to pull this rabbit out of his ass one day.

"Free" in the manner in which lip service is given to the term implies EQUALITY of freedom.

That is what the GPL seeks to provide, a little equality.

Re:From the office of the president

[jedidiah]

If you don't like honest terminology, then perhaps you should revise your position. My characterization is correct.

I reserve my charity for real people and not some limited liability entity with no morals and a charter to screw everyone over.

Helping the former is NOTHING like helping the latter.

You're welcome to your folly. Just don't make it into something it is not.

Re:Goodbye, ActiveX! Don't let the door hit you in

[tomgilder]

microsoft-oriented POS(iframes, their DOM, etc.)

Iframes are in HTML4. Mozilla supports iframes. IE supports DOM1.

Why now?

[ShawnDoc]

I suppose this is just a test, but why force 3 million users to use a piece of software that is really not yet ready for prime time. I can't help but think AOL/TW is jumping the gun, the version 1RC isn't even out yet. Couldn't they have just waited a couple more months until the 1.0 final release is out and incorporated that into Compuserve?

I just worry that by forcing conversion a few weeks/months early they will put off a lot of people then they would have had they released something based on final code.

Re:Why now?

[ADRA]

Hello, we are talking about 3 Million people! Can't anyone else see that this is just a shoot load of beta testers? Compuserve will probably get zounds of customer feedback saying this or that is broken, and by knowing what real users need, the dev teams can fix the bugs really need to be.

Re:Why now?

[DrXym]

Where does it say force? A Compuserve user is only going to get the new 7.0 client if they install it. In other words it's voluntary.

Re:Why now?

[uebernewby]

C'mon, how beta is Mozilla exactly (except in name)? Lots of people, including myself, use it for day to day browsing, both on Windows (where there's a superb alternative available called IE) and on Linux. Not all of them are doing it because they hate Microsoft, but because the damn thing actually works (and comes with a bunch of nifty features IE doesn't have). It doesn't crash (no more than IE, probably less), it renders most pages flawlessly (except the ones that use IE specific code) and it's pretty fast (once it's started up).

Face it, Mozilla is no longer the promising piece of perennial betaware it was even six months ago - it's a damn fine displayer of webpages (browser) with some extra icing that promises to make it a hell of a lot more.

Re:Why now?

[DrXym]

Why do you assume it's "unfinished"? NS 6.2 is a very good browser even though it's based off of 0.9.4. Part of the reason is that it has been continuously pounded on for the last year which means its extremely stable.

If CS took the engine from the 0.9.4 it would be a more than adequate substitute for IE. In six months from now, perhaps they'll run an update that switches to the 1.0 engine assuming that proves itself to be as stable.

Re:Why now?

[uebernewby]

I don't know what version of Mozilla you're running, but none of those bugs sound familiar to me (running 0.9.9). Sure, for some things, you'll need to have IE handy, but most of the time I can surf happily and carefree in Mozilla (the browser where hitting the back button doesn't compromise your system ;-) ).

New feature!

[Pituritus Ani]

You'll be able to go to web pages hosted by Compuserve using convenient, mnemonic names. For example, you'd type "GO CIS-175" in the address bar to change your password. For the LDOS Forum, you'd type "GO LDOS". For Weather, you'd type "GO WEATHER".

As an enhancement, there'll be a Java applet with a "!" prompt. For an additional fee, you can type "GO PRO" in the address bar. Doing so will launch a PDP-10 emulator with a full suite of development tools, along with that user-friendly editor, TECO.

Mozilla: the coolest project

[Cally]

I submit that Mozilla is the coolest Free software project running today! I've been using it since the first naked Gecko builds were available - almost nothing in the way of chrome, just a raw HTML rendering widget (and not a great one, to start with!) and watched it grow and mature in the last three or four (can it really be FOUR years Well I guess it surely can) years... the satisfaction I feel now that it's about to take over the world and crush the IE like a bug is amplified by remembered all those sad Slashdot flamers... "it's sooo bloaaatttteddd!!" they winged, "oooh, it's not as good as Internet Explorer", "I just want a browwwwwwser" they whined... HA! Well SCREW YOU, chaps, I was right and you were wrong. BAAAAhahahahaaha!

(Cally wanders away to find his medication...)

Re:Mozilla: the coolest project

[johnjones]

yep I agree

I hope they base the compuserve tests on a stable branch hopefully 1.0 and not some random date

regards

john jones
p.s. is it just me or is this graph scary window open check out 04/11

Forced Download?

[Bonker]

Not likely. A staggering number of AOL'ers are still using versions 3.0 and 4.0 of the AOL client, so I can only assume that similar percentages of compuserve users are doing the same thing. I don't think we can count on all of Compuserve, let alone 34 million AOL accounts, to suddenly be running on Gecko code any time in the near future.

Forcing an update download on customers is possible, however. Certain online games are now in the practice of forcing a patch on users on a weekly basis. This same model could work for the big ISP's to keep their customers updated with the latest technology.

It could also play into the hands of pushers of spyware and adware. What better way for LEO's to spy on someone suspected of a crime than to 'push' an update to his AOL or Compuserve account?

Re:Forced Download?

[DrXym]

I haven't used AOL for a while but my understanding is they only force minor updates, i.e. a patch that fixes bugs in 6.0, but not forcing you to switch a whole version, e.g. from 6.0 to 7.0.

browser marketshare parity is a good thing

[Infonaut]

While Netscape/Mozilla hasn't been thrilling me of late, I think the only really important thing about the resurgence of the Browser Wars is that with a multitude of truly viable browser options available to users, perhaps we'll start to finally see some adaptation of standards that *work*.

No, I'm not talking about W3 standards. While those are a good thing in theory, they're only good in practice when BOTH of the major players in the market embrace them in the same fashion.

For example, while CSS is great for type control (in the main), it sucks for element placement because by the time you go through all of the necessary browser workarounds and browser detects and different versions of the same content, you may as well have just built the damned thing using tables.

All this talk about how Mozilla rocks and IE blows, or vice-versa, is completely beside the point. We can't have a better Web until the two dominant forces in the Browser Universe start applying standards in the same fashion.

Of course, O'Reilly would be bummed, because they'd no longer have to publish books like the CSS Pocket Guide (which delineates in great detail the myriad ways in which different tags are supported by different browsers).

I'm still pessimistic, but overall if Netscape finds a way to regain enough marketshare to become viable again, it may encourage Netscape and IE to compete solely on the basis of features not tied to the rendering engine.

Hey, a guy can dream, right?

Re:browser marketshare parity is a good thing

[brogdon]

A pleasant thought, but the two browsers began on their divergent compatability paths back when the browsers *were* competing with each other. Netscape lobbied like Hell to get layers included in the W3C standard and then, after they weren't approved by the consortium, left them in the browser anyway, making all of us DHTML coders write two sets of scripts to handle them and IE's DIV tags.

MS had been playing catch up to all of Netscape's quirks up until that point, but when IE 4 came out they knew they were going to take the lead, so they didn't bother worrying about layers. They were too busy planning all the IE-only extensions *they* would make once they held the lead in the race (stuff like those crappy XML behaviors). Now that the browser war has been won (by the bad guys, of course), Microsoft actually does a pretty decent job of sticking with the W3C and maintaining the standards, since they don't have to worry about the competition getting an even playing field so much any more.

One could make the case that neither company had the time to wait for the W3C to release new, "official" standards when they busy innovating like Hell in order to get a leg up on the competition. In either case the disparity, I feel, is a direct result of having two browsers in direct, heated competition. I'm afraid this would come back if the browser wars were to start back up again. I really don't want to start writing two sets of code again.

Re:browser marketshare parity is a good thing

[Baki]

But since Mozilla is run by volunteers without commercial motives, they won't get carried away as Netscape once was. They will stick to w3c standards, no matter how heated the competition gets.

Re:browser marketshare parity is a good thing

[Darren Winsper]

Ye olde days of Netscape and IE version 4 are thankfully behind us, to a large extent. Mozilla and IE6 are quite good with standards compliance, Konqueror isn't bad, but Opera sucks for DOM, so I just ignore it :)

Anyway, if you can get away with not supporting Netscape 4, you'll find developing sites that look good in all browsers a lot easier. I have to support Netscape 4 in my latest project because the main user-base (The people using campus computers to access the site) are mostly using Netscape 4 (Due to that being the only installed browser). However, for my other projects, I just say "Sod Netscape 4" and my life becomes much more pleasant.

Re:Goodbye, ActiveX! Don't let the door hit you in

[ADRA]

DOM1++

All of Microsoft's programming documentation contains proprietary enhancements to the spec that are VERY IE specific. They make no distinction as to which objects, events, methods are standard, and which are cooked.

Frankly, I don't care if they are using proprietary extensions, as long as they are VERY clear to people that they are when people read their docs to learn DHTML, etc..

Re:Why the fuck...

[DrXym]

Because the CS & AOL dev teams have their own schedules to keep. If they waited for 1.0 to appear the CS client development cycle would have been set back by 6 months or more.

Wow, I should use CompuServe...

[chuckgrosvenor]

imagine getting to be a guine pig for the corporation I pay to provide me with hosting. And I get to pay for the benefit of finding their bugs for them.

Don't get me wrong, Netscape 6.X has come light years in the past year or so, but I'm still not convinced it's ready for prime time yet... no idea how much better the Mozilla releases have been though, but they sound only incrementally better than the official Netscape releases.

Re:Wow, I should use CompuServe...

[sab39]

I don't know which version they're using for the CompuServe release - AIUI the AOL beta test used a very old version, not much if any more recent than NS6.2. So the following may not apply to the CompuServe release.

But...

they sound only incrementally better than the official Netscape releases

I wouldn't quite say that's true. I'd say, rather, that each Mozilla milestone release is incrementally better than the last. NS6.2 remains based on 0.9.4 (technically 0.9.4.1 or some such but we won't go into that). 0.9.5 was incrementally better. 0.9.6 was incrementally better again. Ditto 0.9.7, 0.9.8 and 0.9.9. At some point, that loose change starts adding up into real money.

I used each version in sequence, so I can't judge the total magnitude of the improvement I've seen since 0.9.4. And each milestone does, to be fair, introduce its own share of minor annoyances. The likelihood of finding one or two unfinished or regressed features is higher in current mozilla milestones (hopefully 1.0 will be the exception to that... or maybe the difference will come in the 1.0.1 deliberately-bugfix-only release).

But it can't hurt to try it, can it?

Re:Goodbye, ActiveX! Don't let the door hit you in

[ADRA]

The only problem with this is that if people want highly interactive content between pages and active code on the client, there is nothing there. Java is fine and dandy in a 100% isolated environment, so it can't be used as a scripting language.

ure JavaScript and all extension thereof have the syntax and functionality, but they are missing tons of browser hooks that Microsoft has added to their browser. They are more targeting easy access applications than interactive web sites. Iweb sites were old news with MS long after they ever got traction with web developers. That is why developers use flash for interaction now. It is a lot simpler than java, and a lot more flexable than IE-DHTML..

On the other hand, the last ActiveX component I DL'ed was Terminal Server Client, which allows anyone to Terminal Server login from a web page. It is very sexy for simple remote network logins.

Re:Goodbye, ActiveX! Don't let the door hit you in

[tomgilder]

All of Microsoft's programming documentation contains proprietary enhancements to the spec that are VERY IE specific. They make no distinction as to which objects, events, methods are standard, and which are cooked.

Utter rubbish.

The IE DHTML references on MSDN very clearly mark which objects, events, methods and properties are standard and which ones are not.

Their CSS Property Index clearly lists non-standard entries.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Who uses CompuServe?

[fumble]

This is not meant to be flamebait, this is a legit question. *Who actually uses CompuServe nowadays?* Seriously. What does CompuServe's customer base look like? Is it early internet adopters that were too lazy to "upgrade" to AOL (I say upgrade with a grain of salt)? Is it customers that were jaded by poor AOL service and thought that CS might actually be better? hmm ...

Re:Who uses CompuServe?

[Jay L]

When AOL first bought CompuServe, it was supposed to be the business brand, with AOL the home brand. Made sense, given where CompuServe Classic was. However, that didn't last long, as few businesses (in the CompuServe sense) use dialups anymore.

These days, CompuServe is the "discount" brand. It's still $9.95 for 20 hours, $19.95/mo for unlimited use, $199 for a year of unlimited service (about $17/mo). If you're just looking for the forums and other content, it's still $9.95/mo for bring-your-own-access.

Re:Who uses CompuServe?

[Spy Hunter]

CompuServe was doing some of those $400 rebates on new computers some time ago. That's how we got it. Once you've done that, you're locked in for quite some time.

Re:Who uses CompuServe?

[buckeyeguy]

Sure beats the heck out of their old dial-up plan, when at one point (1987/1988?) they were charging $12.95 PER HOUR for 2400 baud dial-up access. And yes, being the geek I was/am, I paid it.

Why not wait for mozilla 1.0 ?

[InodoroPereyra]

If the idea is to do an initial test with a fraction of the AOL users, why didn't they wait until Mozilla reaches 1.0 and Netscape releases a version based on this codebase ?. What if the test fails simply because Netscape is still not stable/polished enough ?. Mozilla 1.0 is supposed to be close at this point in time ... what am I missing ?

True dat!

[ebonic plague]

If they still usin Compuserve, they probably ain't interested in upgrades.

Comical.

[Zico]

Yeah, I'm sure that all those paying subscribers can't wait to have their services disrupted so that they can be guinea pigs for AOL. I'm sure they have nothing better to do than send Compuserve "zounds of customer feedback" saying that the things they want to do are now broken.

Re:Comical.

[HydroCarbon10]

If the users are too stupid to use an alternative browser to whatever CompuServe ships with their grandma-friendly gui then they probably deserve to get disturbed a bit...maybe they'll actually be forced to learn how to use their computer for a change. Paying for something does not imply zero learning curve, despite what Microsoft would have so many people believe.

Just a tad too early.

[digitect]

<sigh>

Don't get me wrong, Mozilla is great and I love/use it, but there are still some very serious issues:

• Bug 89350 -- Home button should appear on main Toolbar
• Bug 35268 -- Edit Source using External Editor
• Bug 96877 -- Address book: Lists lose addresses

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.)

Re:Just a tad too early.

[Xiphoid Process]

* Bug 89350 -- Home button should appear on main Toolbar
* Bug 35268 -- Edit Source using External Editor

these are serious 1.0 stopping features??? man, you need a reality check

Re:Just a tad too early.

[PlaysWithMatches]

* Bug 89350 -- Home button should appear on main Toolbar
* Bug 35268 -- Edit Source using External Editor
* Bug 96877 -- Address book: Lists lose addresses

Ok, 96877 is rather serious, but c'mon... the home button not appearing in the main toolbar? Whoopdidoo. In my mind, it belongs on the link bar with the other links. Back is not a link. Front is not a link. Stop is not a link. Home is a link, and so are the items in my Bookmark menu and my favorites toolbar. An option to toggle where it appears would be handy for those who want to change it, but I don't see this as a show-stopper.

As for the external editor bit, yeah that's a good point, but for 90% of users, will it matter much? No. The average user does not know that you can view the source of HTML, much less edit it as such. And a lot of them don't really care. They just want to browse the web in a pleasant fashion, which is something Mozilla does an admirable job of providing, IMHO.

</my2>

Re:Just a tad too early.

[digitect]

I don't care if Mozilla can cook breakfast for me, if it doesn't do what I need, it's not useful. Here's some explanation as to why I think these three are serious issues:

Home Button: My home page is my personal collection of links, dictionary form and Google search form. I start every new browse there. You may argue that this is only personal taste, but Intranets everywhere use this setup. (And oh, BTW, every other browser feels this is an important UI issue.)

View Source in External Editor: I also write a lot of HTML, and prefer to use the browser to navigate the code. A quick view source is the best way to polish a page, IMO. (This is enough for me to stick with IE while I'm using Windows.)

Broken Address Book Lists: I don't even use the address book, but I finally convinced my boss to try Mozilla as an upgrade to Netscape 4. (Which had trashed his address book.) Figuring an upgrade may possibly restore his data (it did), he went along with my suggestion. But he still thinks I'm a crackpot for suggesting a browser that won't maintain his address book lists. (He wishes he would have just re-installed NS 4.)

UI issues are serious issues. Coders may pooh, pooh them, but one of the great successes of Apple is that last 1%. Can't we just fix these?

Re:Just a tad too early.

[Jay L]

None of those would apply, because none of those are in Gecko. The CompuServe client is still a client unto its own right; it sounds like it will just open browser windows with Gecko instead of IE.

Re:Just a tad too early.

[ArsonSmith]

No it is much easier, double click the link text, then middle click. takes you right there.

Re:Goodbye, ActiveX! Don't let the door hit you in

[DrXym]

There are ActiveX related projects concerning Mozilla that:

• Embed Mozilla in an ActiveX container (e.g. VB).
• Host ActiveX controls in Mozilla using a plugin
• Add accessibility to Mozilla via automation.
• Add simple MAPI support so mail/news is integrated with other software.

Plus Mozilla has pretty good support for drag and drop, clipboatd and shortcuts which are also OLE/ActiveX related activities.

Naming Issues

[user32.ExitWindowsEx]

I suppose that it should technically be Browser Wars VI: Netscape Strikes Back, but for all you Mozilla lovers out there, it could arguably be Broswer Wars II: Attack of the (Mozilla) Clones.

I know I'm stretching the bounds of humor.

Grr, It looks like only for Compuserve 2000

[weave]

A few years ago, AOL bought Compuserve, the place where techies hung out, and turned it into their "value" (read: cheap throwaway) brand.

They quickly came out with Compuserve 2000 and encouraged all "classic" subscribers to upgrade. CIS 2000 was basically just a repackaged AOL using AOL dialups.

Compuserve Classic has been left out there to whither and die. I've had a compuserve account since the mid 80s (76347,1163).

They have no updated their "classic" software since coming out with this bastardized AOL clone.

I was hoping this was going to be a classic update, guess not. :(

Re:Grr, It looks like only for Compuserve 2000

[Jay L]

Compuserve Classic has been left out there to whither and die.

You don't think that's because it's running on hardware that isn't even made anymore, do you?

Re:Goodbye, ActiveX! Don't let the door hit you in

[Pfhreakaz0id]

ah, you're actually submitting facts about Microsoft in a Slashdot thread!

Heretic! though shalt burn in a pool of m$ Shiete for all eternity!

I was just about to post this when I saw yours. Many of these posters wouldn't recognize MSDN if it hit 'em in the ass.

Re:Goodbye, ActiveX! Don't let the door hit you in

[DrXym]

Mozilla is actually more powerful than IE in this regard. Using XPCOM, JS, XUL, XPI packages and more besides, it's possible to extend or modify the behaviour of the browser in any number of ways.

Unlike ActiveX you're not even confined to Win32. It is quite possible to develop cross-platform components or even whole applications using just JS & XUL.

Mozilla, Konqueror, IE, et al.

[vex24]

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.

Re:Mozilla, Konqueror, IE, et al.

[sheldon]

Which website were you trying to view? Just kind of curious what web standard they were apparently violating.

Microsoft and Netscape will never release browsers that block ads... especially Microsoft. Not because they don't listen to consumers, but rather they're afraid of being sued for anti-trust violations by the p0rn industry.

Re:Netscape is dead

[HiThere]

I don't know about Netscape. Mozilla is doing quite well, however.

Slashdot Browser statistics

[HitchHik]

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!

Re:Slashdot Browser statistics

[BruceRD]

The stats from users visiting slashdot might be interesting for us, but are hardly going to be representative of the general population.

The best ones I can find for general UK usage are by a consultancy called Proteus. They look reasonable, though I'd have more faith if they showed Mozilla at somewhere past 0.8!

Interestingly these show a much higher percentage of Macs than I'd have expected - maybe MacOS X is really increasing their market penetration. (Thinks wishfully)

Re:Slashdot Browser statistics

[sheldon]

That's interesting... The numbers pretty much match other figures I've seen.

Perhaps proteus hosts some Mac dedicated sites, but I would have expected the Mac at 5%, so it's really not that unsurprising. It's too bad they don't break that out by Mac OS version, as I'd be curious to see how OS X is doing... reports I read say not very well.

The Linux number is still at around a .25%, which has been consistent since I first saw Linux mentioned in browser stats about 3 years ago so there hasn't been any growth there.

What I think is most interesting is Netscape 6 stats. Despite Netscape 4 still having a small loyal following, they have been completely unable to convince their fanbase to upgrade to 6. I've had some arguments with Netscape fans in the past, pleading with them to upgrade to 6 so they'd finally have CSS support. They all claim 6 is buggy and slow. I'm hoping the AOL commitment to using it will drive development faster.

Re:Slashdot Browser statistics

[Sloppy]

There isn't an automated way for Slashdot (or any other website) to get that information. For compatability reasons, almost everyone has to include both the words "Mozilla" and "MSIE" in every request, regardless of what browser it really is; it's practically a defacto part of the http standard.

Tip: One fast and easy way to preempt a lot of compatability problems, in mass for an entire site, is to just have the squid proxy replace the user-agent in every request. Then people can use whatever browser they want to, without bothering the site geek all the time with "how come the internet doesn't work?" requests. So it's not just geeks that spoof, but also the secretaries and PHBs and salesmen who rely on a geek to keep things working.

Microsoft to start developing new IE things?

[Thunderbear]

Microsoft Internet Explorer has - seen from the users point of view - been virtually unchanged in terms of enhancements and new developments since version 4.0, where Netscape 4.x was fully cloned.

I am writing this in IE 5.1 for Mac OS X, where the only facility I have found to be different than 4.0 for Windows, is the ability to track online auctions, which is useless to me.

Mozilla is a refreshing new product, where the new stuff like the tabs, sidebars and navigation bar mean that I can get rid of some of the things that has nagged me the most in both IE and Netscape 4.x.

Since Mozilla is going to be basically everywhere, it seems that this is going to prompt the user interface stuff in the browsers again. With the new facilities now available in both the major browsers like XSLT we should see a surge in new XML-based services, and that the rest of the browsers keep up.

Re:Goodbye, ActiveX! Don't let the door hit you in

[Amazing Quantum Man]

I've been using NPWrap for years. It's a NS4 plugin that lets you use ActiveX. My guess is that it would work in Mozilla.

Re:Goodbye, ActiveX! Don't let the door hit you in

[foonf]

Who the hell uses ActiveX? I've gone to all kinds of sites(sans porn...ask me why :P) and some quite the microsoft-oriented POS(iframes, their DOM, etc.) and have yet to install an ActiveX control in at least six months. Seriously, who is really using ActivX controls?

I think Windows Update uses ActiveX. Who woulda thunk it?

Although I can't say for sure as I haven't booted into Windows for more than 15 minutes once in the last year or so.

Re:Why the fuck...

[larien]

Hell, it's not like Netscape bothered for Netscape 6.x, why should Compuserve?

Re:Let us all try to realize...

[roca]

> Both companies will continue their practices as
> they always have in order to appear to have the
> 'better product'.

You seem to have forgotten that the Gecko engine is open source. There are plenty of non-Netscape people working on Gecko and we will not deviate from Mozilla.org's stated policy of standards support, nor would we stand by and allow Netscape employees to violate that policy (which, by the way, they have shown absolutely NO sign of wanting to do).

Re:What browser war?

[Amazing Quantum Man]

I am suing Windows

Who's your lawyer?

Galeon Re:Why didn't they wait until Mozilla 1.0?

[foonf]

We now have one version of Gecko in Netscape, a different one in Galeon

Galeon is built against the Mozilla milestone releases, 1.2.0 uses exactly the same engine as Moz 0.9.9.

Re:I did, until just a few weeks ago

[mech9t8]

they still haven't deleted my old CS webpage.

I quite CompuServe EIGHT YEARS ago, and they still haven't deleted my old CS webpage. Hell of a tight ship they run there. ;)

Re:Goodbye, ActiveX! Don't let the door hit you in

[1010011010]

The problem isn't so much that MSFT says somewhere that a particular extension is proprietary. It's that the extensions get widely used.

Tangible

[mgkimsal2]

You don't spend a Saturday in a soup kitchen because you get something tangible from it.

MANY things in life are done without regard for *tangible* gain, but people still are motivated out of selfish greed anyway.

WHY do people spend time helping in a soup kitchen? *BECAUSE IT MAKES THEM FEEL GOOD*. Maybe not *physically* good, but spiritually good. Or morally superior. Or whatever. But we're all always motivated by selfishness.

Re:Tangible

[MisterBlister]

I guess no one has ever done anything because it simply needed to be done. All of the time and money I donate to making sure homeless people have blankets and food doesn't make me happy. I don't enjoy it, I don't feel morally superior, and I have no spiritual feelings. What I do realize is that if living conditions in this country are allowed to become lethal, people are going to be more inclined to cause trouble. They could steal, mug, or what have you. It could be you, it could be me.

You've invalidated your own post by revealing your ulterior motives for donating time & money -- you want to make things safer for yourself. That is a selfish motivation.

Re:Tangible

[aozilla]

WHY do people spend time helping in a soup kitchen? *BECAUSE IT MAKES THEM FEEL GOOD*. Maybe not *physically* good, but spiritually good. Or morally superior. Or whatever. But we're all always motivated by selfishness.

Maybe they just don't know any better. Maybe they were just walking down the street, saw "Soup Kitchen Help Needed", and went in to help on a whim. Maybe it didn't make them feel good. Not physically, not morally, not at all. But it made them feel as good as anything else, so they did it again, and again. And then it became a habit. Without thinking, on the way home from work, they would stop at a soup kitchen and help people. They didn't even realize it was a nice thing to do. They were merely conditioned to do it.

MOST things in life are like that. They're not rational, they're not about physical needs, they're not about tangible gain, they're not about spiritual gain, they're just plain old conditioning.

Re:Mozilla: the coolest project - engine, maybe

[fanatic]

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....)

IE Only websites ?

[Zapdos]

I hope they start going away now.

Re:Goodbye, ActiveX! Don't let the door hit you in

[ADRA]

lol my bad.. I WAS upset with Microsoft for not listing which extensions were proprietary. Thanks for the correction. I used it before they did that..

Re:What browser war?

[LinuxGeek]

When I use windows, there is no question in my mind that I don't want to use IE. I am using mozilla 0.9.9 right now and only use IE when there is no other choice. Lately, that has meant about every two weeks.

Major security holes just aren't my cup of fur.

"RC1 is very nice"?

[guanxi]

Where did you get RC1? AFAIK, it doesn't yet exist. The "recent builds" the post mentions are builds of RC1, but it's not out yet.

Looking at Mozilla.org and Mozillazine.org, I don't see a mention of RC1 being released.

Mozilla has NOT hit RC1 yet

[Aqua OS X]

A minor correction for story on the home page. Mozilla RC1 is NOT out yet. The branch has been cut and there are builds inching toward the release within the next few days. However the latest "milestone" is still 0.9.9.

Re:Goodbye, ActiveX! Don't let the door hit you in

[DrXym]

Excel is an ActiveX document server. It would be reasonably straightforward though rather pointless to host it within Mozilla, by modifying the existing ActiveX control hosting plugin to also support OLE in-place active objects and ActiveX documents.

The reason it doesn't do this is because there is little benefit to supporting it running in-place, so it launches it as a standalone application.

Most important bug of all.

[nuintari]

Mozilla is slow on my celeron 700.

I wanna take a rolled up newspaper, find every person on the Mozilla team who thinks its even remotely fast, and HIT EM! Then shout, No!

Re:Most important bug of all.

[danny]

I have a Duron 700 and Mozilla is plenty fast enough - how much memory do you have?

My main beef is that it's unstable and crashes regularly - I thought I'd fixed that by upgrading to a nightly release (instead of 0.9.9) but now it's started crashing again.

Danny.

Re:Most important bug of all.

[Nurf]

Hmm. Yeah, I know it can be slow.

The weird thing is that it is always fast on my machine. I'm not sure what I do to my linux boxes to speed it up. I just enable DMA on the drives and a few other things. I'm a chronic fiddler.

I can start Mozilla cold, render the Slashdot root page and exit in under 4 seconds. That is on my 1.2GHz Athlon. My 900MHz Duron was the same speed tho, making me think that the CPU isnt the deciding factor here. The Duron had 128MB RAM,and the Athlon has 384MB, with some IDE drives. I use reiserfs.

*shrug* I wonder what it is?

Re:Most important bug of all.

[danny]

That's the strange thing - 0.9.7 was really stable, but 0.9.9 and 0.9.9+ (20020411 nightly) haven't been. It could be my X setup - I had to revert to XFree86 4.0.3 when 4.1 wouldn't work for me.

Danny.

Re:Most important bug of all.

[nuintari]

I have 256, trust me, that's NOT the bottleneck. My solution is to just use Galeon anyways, faster, less crap. I do NOT need a WYSIWYG editor.

Re:Most important bug of all.

[nuintari]

As I said, I have 256 megs, if Mozilla needs that..... it has serious issues. A big thing for Linux is that it runs on anything..... except when it comes to web browsers. They all need a 600+ mhz machine to be bearable, thank god for Galeon. Its useable on my 400 mhz machines. But god help you if you have a 233 mhz laptop....

Re:Most important bug of all.

[nuintari]

I swear I have barely any idea what you just said, my point, implied as it may be, is that Mozilla isn't ready for the prime time because well.... its still too slow. and I was replying to an earlier comment, which in my world, sort of spawns off smaller discussions that may be tangent of the original topic. jesus christ, do I have spell it out for everyone? has the world no grasp of the concept of the flow of conversation?

And yes, Gecko is pretty speedy. Galeon is a life saver for Linux, cause well, Mozilla is still a "piece of slow crap." No offense intended. But I wasn't talking about Gecko, I was replying to comment made about the sluggishness of mozilla. I guess I'm off topic, heaven forbid someone let the conversation evolve.

Get over it, you just didn't have anything better to say. Quite frankly, neither did I.

Re:Most important bug of all.

[nuintari]

I could do that on a windows box, running at 400 mhz. It has that one feature.... its been awhile. It basically holds it in mem, weather a window is open or not.... I canb't remember the name now, but it makes it quite speedy. I have yet to find an equiv for my *nix boxes however.

I just use Galeon now, Gecko good, Mozilla needs to be kicked in thr ass still.

Re:Most important bug of all.

[danny]

Mozilla runs ok on my mother's machine - 200Mhz with 64MB of RAM, a default Redhat 7.2 setup.

It just crashes too often.

Danny.

Re:Most important bug of all.

[nuintari]

Yeah, okay, not fast enough, when IE will open in the blink of an eye. and I hate IE with a passion, ugly, ugly interface.

Re:Most important bug of all.

[nuintari]

You really didn't read anything of what I just typed did you? Don't put words in my mouth, your about as dense as lead.

Yeah, the original article was about Compuserve using gecko. I understand that, fine and dandy. But did it ever occur to you that maybe, some of us would take the oppurtunity that while, gecko is really fast, and html compliant, and just damned cool in its modular design..... that it is a tad unfortunate that Mozilla itself is such a slow ass piece of shit?

Again, I was just trying to point that out. You seem to just wanna make yourself look smarter than you are by trying to educate the masses, when in reality, your just missing the point of this thread. However offtopic this thread may be from the original article.

Realize importance

[Have Blue]

Everyone is saying how this is an old version or it's so few people and so on... That's irrelevant. AOL believes that Mozilla is ready for primetime, and they are putting their money where their mouth is (slowly) by deploying it in a commercial environment. That's as much a milestone as anything else so far.

Quick Poll:

[Dave_bsr]

Because its too embarrassing that over 90% of the users visit slashdot with IE.

i'm 1 that uses Moz on linux. anyone else? a do-it yourself poll?

Re:Quick Poll:

[JordanH]

• i'm 1 that uses Moz on linux. anyone else? a do-it yourself poll?

Oh! I love Slashdot polls.

I use CowboyNeal.

Re:Quick Poll:

[Phroggy]

0.9.9 on Mac OS X, but yes, I'd say the 90% figure is probably close. 90% of Google queries come from Windows. Mozilla and Netscape 6 are classified among "Other", and outnumbered by Netscape 4; MSIE makes up the rest. http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html

Version 4 browsers are NOT behind us

[Infonaut]

"Ye olde days of Netscape and IE version 4 are thankfully behind us"

Unfortunately, Netscape and IE 4 are still very much with us. Aside from intranet projects, I've still not yet been involved in a project where I could "ignore" version 4 browsers. Like it or not, browser adaptation rates are slowing year by year.

This slowing of browser migration is part of what makes the whole browser mess so intolerable. I guess it depends on your outlook, but I simply can't abide leaving 10-20% or more of site visitors out in the cold by targeting post-4.0 browsers.

Pixel perfect

[driehuis]

I really don't want to start writing two sets of code again.

No one wants that. Frankly, I don't care if a web page is "optimized" for either browser. Unfortunately, on many commercial sites that optimization happens at the expense of usability.

Now, I rarely care if a page renders okay or not. If I care badly enough, I'll fire up my Win95 box and view the page there. If I don't I'll just move on, to the mutual satisfaction of me and the web designer. Fair enough.

What ticks me off is that sites that want to save money by getting users to use the web for simple things screw up those simple things.

I recently had the option of either phoning in my electricity and gas meter readings, or reporting them on the web. The utility company's web site renders perfectly in Mozilla. After filling out the form, I found that there was no "Send" button. "View Source" was disabled, but I got hold of the contents and found that the complex JavaScript code did nothing more than hit "submit". I crafted a URL that passed the relevant data as "GET" style parameters and fed it to wget. Inspection of the output file showed me that the utility thanked me for reporting my meter readings.

Now, let me summarize my findings:
- there is no server side intelligence to detect using GET instead of the POST the JavaScript implements
- there is no (zero, nil) parameter checking in the JavaScript
- it was faster for me to reverse-engineer the web page than it would have been to boot Win95

This leaves me to wonder: if you don't want to support older browsers but you still want to to save money by having your users use the web instead of phoning in, what's wrong with using a simple <FORM>? Why bother getting the page for the Other browsers pixel perfect?

Few companies have the resources to support all browsers, but they're hurting themselves by not having a simple page for simple problems. Things like reporting meter readings, posting a consumer question or booking a rental car can all be done trivially using plain ole HTML. It's beyond me why webmasters insist on getting it to look pretty on browsers they hate.

You don't care if a page renders properly?

[Infonaut]

Now, I rarely care if a page renders okay or not. If I care badly enough, I'll fire up my Win95 box and view the page there. If I don't I'll just move on, to the mutual satisfaction of me and the web designer. Fair enough.

So what you're saying here is that you don't care if it renders the same on various browsers, right? Or are you saying that you don't care if it renders *at all* in an older browser?

I agree with your point about getting the basics right, but I'm not sure I understand where you're coming from regarding optimization. If I'm reading you correctly, you're saying that you'd prefer to have pages that perform basic functions properly, but you don't really care what they look like.

If that's what you're saying, it begs the question of who your clients are. It is possible to build web apps that look good across an acceptable range (4.0+) of browsers, but in the current reality, it just takes a lot of work to make the app look good on most browsers while also providing the necessary functionality.

I've only had one client ever say, "oh yeah, don't sweat it if 20% of our viewers see a goofed up version of the site." They went against my advice, and we built a site that immediately started getting complaints from the minority that saw the little weird mis-alignments and so on on their browsers.

While it seems like a small number (oh, that's only 10 or 20% of our users), isn't it the users we're supposed to be designing it for? They ought to get an experience that is visually coherent AND functions properly.

Re: You don't care if a page renders properly?

[driehuis]

Indeed, I don't care if it renders properly, as long as it serves its purpose (i.e., renders enough text to allow the user to use the web site). For all I care, the HTML that NS3 and IE3 both accepted (with the addition of basic table support) is good enough for me.

I know it is possible to make a page render properly in 99% of the browser market share. But that's not my point. Even if enough talented people are around to do it, a significant percentage of that talent base will not want to. Sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad ones.

The argument that you invariably hear when you complain to the person answering webmaster@company.com is that it is too hard to support all browsers. It's their statement, not mine. I've got to operate on the presumption that if they say it's too hard, it's too hard for them. Fair enough.

What I'm asking of them is that they not worry about what it looks like if they think they cannot support the browser. In most cases, a simple page with one gif and a form will take care of the functionality.

But nooooo, what you see as an end user is a metric shitload of JavaScript trying to the the right thing but failing horribly. It's the botched attempts to make it work that add insult to injury.

Heck, I've sent constructive mails to webmasters informing them that their web site didn't work, and that even IE5.5 misrendered it to the point of being useless, and I got "upgrade to IE" back for an answer.

Webmasters often tell me they don't care if it renders properly on anything other then their system. If they feel that way, what's wrong with presenting everyone who is not using an Pentium IV at 2.2GHz on a 1024Kbps ADSL line with IE 6.0 with a page that renders on Lynx?

It has often been noted that many web designers don't care about the blind. And why should they? The blind only make up an insignificant fraction of the market. I believe the world would be a better place if the blind were catered for on web sites that offer basic functionality. I'm not asking for braille versions of Flash Pacman animations, I'm asking for all of the market being served at least basic functionality.

And indeed, I don't care if I have to live without flashy animations as a result of choosing Mozilla on FreeBSD. I just want to report my meter readings, book an airline seat, or be able to look up a telephone number without being forced to walk over to a different PC to boot Win95. And I'm not even blind, and wouldn't want to think about how blind people have to perform those simple tasks. Support for the blind would be thrown in for free if sites that refuse to deal with other browsers at least provide something simple that works.

It's not as if it's rocket surgery.

Oh no!

[Sloppy]

Does that mean I won't be able to use TAPCIS any more?

Re:Goodbye, ActiveX! Don't let the door hit you in

[flacco]

The only problem with this is that if people want highly interactive content between pages and active code on the client, there is nothing there.

Just give those people a ball of string to play with.

Get'um from Google

[mplemmons]

For the last couple of months, Google has posted web browser usage stats, as well as OS usage. That's about as unbiased as you can get. Google Zeitgest.

Re:Goodbye, ActiveX! Don't let the door hit you in

[56ker]

Memo: must make flash anim of a ball of string. - j/k

The Web Designers View

[The Envisionary One]

I personally have had many problems with designing sites for past netscape browsers. Netscape just has not been the same for the past 7 years. Why don't they just work with microsoft on setting standards for rendering the HTML and have the differences in the browsers be external.

Things don't change, people do.

Re:Goodbye, ActiveX! Don't let the door hit you in

[BZ]

Sorry, the CSS property index lists proprietary _properties_ but not properietary _values_ of properties. For example, reading that doesn't tell me that "cursor: hand" is a complete and utter IE-ism.

Re:What browser war?

[LinuxGeek]

Why? Are you afraid someone is going to find out you look at porn? You are not hiding any plans to destroy the USA are you? Then why the fuck do you care?

Security Freaking Flaws! out the wazoo.

Why the fuck don't you care? I use windows when necessary for work and to stay familiar with 'technology'. I also have a strong computing security background and don't like taking more risks than necessary.

The problem with browser statistics

[epsalon]

Browser statistics are false. There cannot be true browser detection. Many users spoof thier browser as IE on Windows for compatibility problems. Opera does so by default. This makes sites wrongly detect the browser. Also, sites designed to work on with IE will make users of other browsers leave and thus generate much more IE hits. Also, if you are browsing without images, frames or popups you will generate less hits.
Moreover, if the tracking is based on loading of images or IFRAMEs, then it would not work if those features are off.
Given this information, there can be no accurate gathering of browser statistics, other than relying on specific browser quirks for checking. (such as IE bugs)

Windows Update

[Arker]

I haven't used it in a couple of months myself, but it was always very heavy on ActiveX. And you've got a few businesses that have been suckered into building a lot with it, a lot of stuff that didn't even need it really. Microsoft pushed it real hard for awhile.

I'm happy to say they've actually gotten better in that regard. I have successfully removed IE entirely from my machine, and when I go there with Opera, their detection series takes me to this page (hopefully that will work, but you may get redirected) which is actually very friendly and helpful, providing direct links to the same updates, instead of demanding that you install MSIE like they used to do. I get that page with Opera and the user string set to anything except MSIE. Pretending to be exploder gets a couple of empty frames - a fitting response, I think.

It's definately possible to really dislike Microsoft, the way only someone that's been using their products for nearly 20 years can dislike them, and still not feel like you can't admit they ever do anything right. They do things right sometimes - that's what makes them dangerous.

It's the botched attempts to make it work

[Tony-A]

that add insult to injury. The effect is similar to someone misspelling or misusing obscure words. It impresses all right, but not the way intended. Maybe it's just me, but I find all the gizmos extremely irritating even when the do work right, too much like an accident looking for a place to happen.
With vaious window sizes, font sizes, screen depth and resolution, you will have problems "supporting" even one browser.
For web-apps, once PDAs become ubiquitous and internet enabled, targeting any one browser becomes suicidal.

How can I configure Apache to annoy IE users?

[emil]

I want a JavaScript window on every page served to an IE browser saying something like "You are running a browser that is not standards-compliant with dangerous and insecure extensions. Please upgrade your browser to Mozilla, Netscape, Konqueror, Opera, or any other more secure solution."

I want this setting in httpd.conf.

7 digit

[TheAncientHacker]

Nah, a real Compuserver user has a SEVEN digit account. (Mine is 76525,11)

Re:3 million my ass

[EvilAlien]

What's a "dial-up"?

Re:Goodbye, ActiveX! Don't let the door hit you in

[ncc74656]

I hope this spells the end of ActiveX website "enhancements."

When's the last time you saw a website that used VBScript or some other ActiveX-related stuff? The major offenders today WRT usability and (to a slightly lesser extent) interoperability are Flash and JavaScript.

(The main problem with them is that they tend to be abused...a site I was at a few minutes ago used Flash for its godforsaken site-navigation frame (two evils for the price of one—Flash abuse and frames). Considering that I hadn't yet figured out how to get Flash working in Mozilla (got that done now, but Macromedia doesn't make it easy), this basically allowed you to do little more than view their homepage.)