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A First Look at Netscape 7
David_Bloom writes: "PC-WORLD has released an article giving a rundown of the just-released Preview Release 1 of Netscape 7. An especially interesting feature in this new version is tabbed browsing, which allows you to have multiple web pages open at once in one window, which you can view using a tab-based MDI."
Am I dunk, or haven't I been using tabbed browsing in Mozilla now since version .5? ..
.. What added functionality does it provide over Mozilla 1.0/pr2 (build 2002051206) --
Could somone enlighten me on why someone would ever want to use Netscape again?
OH CRAP! Tomorrow I'm going to get the infamous "Your copy of Mozilla is so-and-so days old. Time to update!".. Can't wait!
This is based on Mozilla 1.0 Release Candidate 2, so it's pretty current.
While I agree that tabbed browsing is one of my favorite features in a browser, it's already old news to us Mozilla/Chimera users;-)
42
Opera's had MDI browsing for quite some time. I still don't know why IE doesn't. It keeps all those popups under control.
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
Pop-up blocking. It's not in Netscape 7.0PR1. The other script blocking options are, though, so it was a very concious decision. However, for Joe Homeuser, Netscape is nice in that they bundle Java and Flash and some other junk that may starting off with Netscape easier. Mozilla is still for the technically advanced (Slashdot?) crowd. Netscape is for the home user who doesn't care, as long as it works. Now, how long until IE7? We all know a higher version means better!
>hasn't there been an IE variant to do this for quite a while?
;)
No, but I believe Opera will do this; keeps your taskbar from getting so cluttered. Oh, and only Outbreak Express has variants, I think they still measure IE in revisions
Shaun
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
7.0PR1 is based on Mozilla 1.0RC2. Netscape 7.0 final will be based on Mozilla 1.0 final.
Although the main netscape site doesn't yet show this, Netscape 7 PR1 can be downloaded from netscape.com already.
And although the option for disabling popups has disappeared from Netscape's preferences, so as not to harm AOL's revenues too much, adding this line to your user.js (create the file if necessary) will get you the same functionality:
user_pref("dom.disable_open_during_load", true);
Not aware of it being in IE, though I am not running the newest IE.
As Gecko is the html page rendering engine for Mozilla, and Galeon, it on it's own does not have a tabbed interface.
However as just about every aspect of the latest Mozilla and Netscape browsers, from the navigation buttons on down, and possibly up through the frame rendering for the browser itself (the beveled edges on in?) are rendered by Gecko, you could say that it is a feature of Gecko I suppose.
I suppose it depends upon how you interpret things.
-Rusty
You never know...
erm, Mozilla and Opera have both done this for ages, and Konqueror will with KDE 3.1 (seems pretty stable in CVS already).
This is to IE as StarOffice is to OpenOffice: The CrystalPort Browser.
Actually, there are a number of third party programs that allow tabbed browsing using IE, some are programs that are encapselated in the IE window, others just embed the IE renderer inside themselves, this is the beauty of object oriented code.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Person writing has obviously been using Netscape (and/or IE) a bit too long. Opera is born with it.
Look a monkey!
Ok, I see that there is some sense in that. Tell me the sense in a full 1.0 increase in Netscape versioning from the last Netscape version. (Netscape 6.0 being based on Mozilla 0.9.8 or so)
> hasn't there been an IE variant to do this for quite a while?
No, I don't believe so. There *might* be an unofficial "hack" for it, but if so I haven't seen it. You may be thinking of the "tabbed" taskbar buttons in WinXP, which group taskbar buttons of the same app--say, IE--together, to save taskbar real estate. I don't like it myself, and have it disabled.
Tabbed browsing is indeed a great and helpful idea, though, which I've been using in Mozilla builds. I just have always hated needing multiple windows for browsing, especially when they "cascade" and open up in a different position on the desktop, as they do in IE versions above 4. I'm anal and have all my windows for every app set to open up in one particular place in the middle of my desktop, so that multiple instances sometimes cascade themselves and ruin that. Using Mozilla with tabbed browsing solved that problem, at least regarding websurfing, which usually opens multiple windows.
Just my opinion though...
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
Mozilla's (and thus Netscape's) tabs are entirely optional.
Besides, they work much better than the usual "MDI" interfaces - it's just an usual browser window with an added tab row, easily resizable! Much better usability-wise than the disaster that was Opera 5... =)
I've used the rudimentary predecessor to tabbed browsing (Open Link in New Window...) for a while, and I loved that it helps me preserve my stream-of-consciousness while scanning the news.
I'd hoped tabbed browsing would spare me the memory overhead of having all those windows open, but it doesn't have a crucial feature; hotkey cycling through tabs.
After I open a bunch of interesting stories in new windows on Slashdot, for example, I can Ctrl-Tab between windows according to the whims of my rampant ADD.
Alt-Tab between programs, Ctrl-Tab between documents seems to be a pretty accepted convention in the Win32 environment.
Am I missing an undocumented keyboard shortcut here?
Snickersnee3: Build your own 3-watt Luxeon Star headlamp from scratch
Is the macintosh version a native MacOS X application?
Crazy Browser This is basically a frontend to the IE engine that gives you a tabbed interface and some other nice things.
the folks at Netscape are also bundling AOL Instant Messenger and a radio station (Radio@Netscape)
This is not a troll, but I hope they give the option of not installing the AOL IM to end users. M$ has shown us the folly of bundling software in a web browser that must be installed.
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
...help you pare back spam...you need only click on the offender's e-mail address
Nice mail feature, but since when did spam come from the same random generated email address?
But what I really want to know, is if AOL will ever wake the heck up and integrate AIM and ICQ. This may not seem relevant, but from the CNet article: Now I understand why AOL might not want to integrate with MSN, Yahoo, and the like. But they control both the software development and infrastructure for both AIM and ICQ. Is it simply due to lack of effort that they won't integrate the two? (A little off-topic yes, but since NS7 is/will be just Mozilla 1.0, the parent not really all that interesting news-wise.)
forma3
My favorite browser has always been Netscape 5 and I will never, ever, ever stop using it.
I don't want to be here.
Plus, it fits in with the New! Easier! AOL! 7.0!
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Yeah, that certain point was about two years ago, before Netscape 6. Where've you been?
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Does it add anything to IE that The proxomitron doesn't also add? Besided skinning of course, but I run windowblinds so I don't really want them anyway.
Netscape 7.0 is Mozilla 1.0.0 after going through another round of testing. So it should be more stable and offers AIM/ICQ support and integration into Netscape.com. It probably offers a few extra enterprise level facilities such as customisation via the CCK but I don't know what else.
1. It's not cocoa
1.1. It does not access any of the build-in Mac OS X technology such as spellchecker, and other services (open text in TextEdit, mail selection, etc.)
2. It just looks awful
3. There's no privacy setting that would allow me to block in-page adds.
4. There are other browsers that are better (OmniWeb).
Less a result of object oriented programming, I would hazard, and more component oriented API. MS COM objects, though hellish beasts of complexity themselves, mitigate and abstract user application complexity. The COM model is in mild competition with the markup model of XUL and XPCOM seen in Mozilla/Netscape, which makes for an interseting debacle, philosophically if not just technically.
From the article:
With AOL's powerful market presence--numbering 34 million registered users--Netscape could be poised for a comeback if it replaces IE's role for AOL users.
Well, we all know that AOL is no slouch at slipping it hard and rough to their users but even AOL isn't going to be stupid enough to try foisting a noticeably slower browser on their users. MSN's marketing would go into overdrive.
People are used to IE, most sites were designed with it in mind; AOL might be big but they aren't big enough to pull off a coup like that.
Many of you may refuse to use IE for idealogical reasons, and that's valid, but nothing can change the fact that, when it comes to the simple activity of browsing, the MS product gives a smoother user experience.
We can only hope to succeed if we recognise the competition's strengths and, in this case, MS have done a great job; that's why they get away with slippin in the proprietry stuff.
Though of course the biggest reason for the version jump would be from marketing reasons. Not so much as opposed to IE, but to wash away the bad taste the original Netscape 6.0 has given a lot of people. I personally know many people who went right back to Netscape 4.x and never tried a Netscape 6.x again. The 7.0 might just convince them to give Netscape another try, and that's (IMO) a good thing.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Well, the cynic in me says that's the reason. IE isn't a browser made for users. It is a browser made for web designers and businesses. If IE would do a lot to control popups, it would annoy content providers that rely on that kind of advertising. Wouldn't be good... :-)
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Sorry, no more Netscape for me. No IE. Mozilla is ok, but frankly I'll just stick with Opera. All the functionality I need and quite small compared to the others out there.
This is no surprise to me -- in fact I was just wondering as I was downloading Mozilla RC2 how long it would be before we got Netscape 7.0...
Netscape is, as has been pointed out here many times, a stripped down (perhaps dumbed-down) Mozilla... That isn't necessarily going to upset AOL for people to call it that though...
Mozilla RC2 had advanced far enough that it was making Netscape 6.22 look downright OLD... and for good reason, Netscape 6.22 was based on an older branch from Mozilla.
AOL couldn't have its thunder stolen, so they *had* to release a new Netscape. Smart business decision.
As for being dumbed-down... Well, yes, it is. Remember folks, Netscape 6.x series (and obviously 7.x now) is working toward inclusion in the AOL browser.
Can you imagine what the 13 year old kids using AOL would do to Mozilla if they found the "File A Bug" option on the QA menu??? Or how confused the 60 year old grandmas would be when they saw too many options on the preferences menu?
AOL takes a very advanced product - Mozilla - and makes it for the mass market - Netscape.
Netscape is updated less frequently so that end-users can feel comfortable without having to upgrade regularly, and Mozilla remains development oriented for those of us who must have the latest features. Nothing wrong with that at all.
That, actually, is the ideal world for browsers, if you ask me.
-- If it ain't broke - overclock it more.
Netcaptor is an IE based browser that's had tabbed browsing, popup blocking, keyboard shortcuts and a load of other features for a while. I actually switched to it from Opera, and have had no problems whatsoever.
It includes some of the components that I download separately for Mozilla anyway, such as Java. Much easier to do it all in one go.
Netscape's had an integrated AIM client since 6.0, so it's not a "new" feature unless you've been using Mozilla or have been waiting for ICQ integration as well.
However, it is a bit interesting to put this side-by-side with Apple's iChat announcement for the next major OS X release. This, too, integrates an AIM-compatible client with a major piece of software -- in this case, the Aqua-fied OS itself.
So I'm wondering, where are we going to see it next? AOL's already pretty universal, but for those of us who prefer direct connections, we'll have two new ways to be exposed to it.
I'm starting to wonder if someone in AOL's camp is working on adding AIM to Eudora's or someone else's e-mail client, or even a Linux distro with the AOL/AIM clients integrated right into the dialup. Why play games with Microsoft's bat and balls, when you can help your customers overwrite it entirely? (Joking, mostly.)
I mean, come on, guys, themes have been in mozilla for a really long time now, and there's still how many included? two. (and one of them is just the old Netscape 4 look.) Oh, and if you're feeling really adventurous, you can wander out to the web, and find a whopping ten more. If you can find them; it seems as though the websites are packing up and moving once a month.
Sorry about the flame, I really like the browser. But the whole themes thing has started to look kind of silly.
314-15-9265
Care to give some actual examples? My copy of Mozilla has been great at rendering CSS for a looooong time.
As for "NN compatibility", how about STANDARDS compatibility? People need to learn to design for standards, not for browsers. Everyone will be better off in the long run. If you design soley for IE, don't call yourself a web designer. Call yourself and IE designer.
AOL didn't buy netscape purely because Mozilla is a great product, they bought it because the Netscape name has a huge amount of recognition.
So yeah, Mozilla's better... but who's heard of it? Not joe-sheep user.
Try Opera... I was very skeptical, but it's *amazingly* low-weight, and I've barely had any compatibility issues with it.
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
Internet Explorer has had Ctrl-Enter add a "http://www." before whatever's in the address bar and a ".com" after it.
Now, I know that's not always what you want to do, but it is often enough that it's an extremely useful shortcut key (and one that (along with the google bar) is keeping me from changing over to Mozilla on a permanent basis).
Is there a reason Mozilla can't do it?
I see about 20 new bugs are filed every day...is there a chance they'll fix most of them without introducing new ones in time for 1.0? I guess they could always go to RC3...
I'm sorry...I tried to like Mozilla, I really did. But here's my tale of woe...
I installed Mozilla on my fiance's brand new Windows install (sorry, but she's not a Linux geek). She is, however, a hardcore Netscape user and really refuses to use IE. So I figured a good bet would be to install Mozilla.
I installed Mozilla RC1 and everything was good to go. However, then she ran into some Flash content. For whatever reason, Mozilla seems to not be able to handle *some* Flash, and a plugin is unavailable...
Ok, no big deal, who needs it anyway. However, then she wanted to do something for work that required Java. Ok, no problem, grab the JRE & the Java plugin from Mozilla's links. Did so, installed, and it even prompted to install the plugin to Mozilla. I let it do so...however, the next time we get to a Java site, poof it says "you need a plugin".
I asked a guy at work, who told me I had to search around and update a few config files to get the Java plugin to work. I have not done this and likely won't...Mozilla has become in my mind another example of how the OpenSource community can build solid products w/o any thought to usability.
I'm assuming NS doesn't have these issues and will give it a shot. But come on, it's not 1994, you guys can get Mozilla to install plugins correctly.
CTRL-ENTER will open up a new tab showing whatever site you just entered in the address bar. However, you need to enable it under Preferences before it will work. Very handy.
IE is terrible with CSS. You are FORCED to use DIV tags everywhere. You cannot apply width to the document body, for example. Mozilla does it all, and does it RIGHT.
Right now, I have 11 programs active on my taskbar. Without tabbed browsing, I would have 14. There have been times when I have had 5 tabs open in each of 3 sessions. I love tabbed browsing.
-=Best Viewed Using [INLINE]=-
You can find a XUL-Plugin for mozilla here.
I haven't tried it with NS7 jet, but it works nice with mozilla.
Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect. -- Linus Torvalds
It's far more current than the 6.x series. At least they're keeping the nomenclature consistent. 6.0 based off of M16 (or whatever it was named) was a far worse naming strategy than Netscape 7.0 RC1 based off of Mozilla 1.0RC1.
MDI is that absolutely horrid UI that first became popular in windoze 3.1 where you have a single application window with several child windows inside it, each with its own size and position containing a single document.
Tabbed-browsing is 'mdi' done right. You have a single main window, easily controlled, but can have several documents open within it at once, using a slim tab bar at the top.
Eh? Having developed a site that makes not insignificant use of CSS and DOM, I can tell you that at one point in development of the site, if you used Mozilla you could notice the difference, and that wasn't a bad thing. In the end, I used a number of hacks to make sure the site looked correct in IE, but it was a pain. And don't get me started on that awful Opera.
NS6 may have been poor in many areas, but its rendering engine got a lot more right than IE6 does now. NS7/Mozilla1.0RC2 corrects many of NS6's shortcomings and still managed to pull even further ahead of IE in its support for CSS and DOM. After all, why doesn't IE6 support fixed positioning? Konqueror 2.2.2 does for crying out loud.
IE doing something wrong is not an excuse to copy them. I applaud the Mozilla team for not following down the slippery slope.
And BeOS had that feature long before KDE2. Waa. It's a fairly straightforward, obvious step for any WIMP-based GUI. I don't recall how KDE2 implemented this, but from what I remember of Be, all apps would always be grouped. XP can be smart about it. You can configure it (if you know the regkey, or use tweakui or another tweaker) to always group, or group when X amount of the same window exist, or to be "smart" and start grouping when you run out of taskbar space. Not a huge innovation, but it's an evolution of an already-existing design.
I forgot to add..you can still launch several 'full sized' browser windows as well, allowing you to combine tabbed browsing with separate application windows. This is a wonderful way to browse. For example, I'll often read slashdot with stories and replies in separate tabs within a single browser, but have the link to the story itself pop up in a different window entirely. Major flexibility in tailoring the windows to whatever you happen to be looking at at the time. (this reply, for example, is in a tab launched from the reply link)
IE has done this by itself for years...at least as far back as IE 4. Try clicking on a link to a (for instance) Word document...the menu bar will change to add Word's menu items, Word will add its toolbars, and the document will load in the browser window. It'll be fully editable, too...you basically have Word running in an IE window.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
All of this is completely aside from the fact that Mozilla is Open Source, which of course would motivate people to use it even if it was actually inferior to IE and Netscape.
I don't see much of a benefit for MDI. (And I hope if it's "only an option", there's a way to hide it, so every time I right click a link I don't get an extra "open in new tab in this window" link along with the usual "open in new window" etc)
With XP and its pretty darn clever taskbar management (group like windows on the taskbar, and then collapsing multiple windows into a single task bar entry and making a little minimenu off of that), this is really not a help for a modern Windows desktop user. (and while I'm biased by my long term exposure to it, I like the new and improved taskbar a lot more then, say, the OS X Dock, with its mix of program launchers and runing programs and way too much motion w/ the default settings)
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
Mozilla releases are useful for anyone that wants the latest bug fixes. I've found the last 5-8 releases to be perfectly useable and my parents both like Mozilla better because they don't have to wait 4-7 months for another updated version.
An idea I think the OSS community needs to explore in greater detail is the possibility of defeating Microsoft in its own home turf without making Linux a desktop. In public schools you'd have Mozilla, Abiword, a Win32 version of Gnumeric, etc competing with their Microsoft counterparts.
Let's face it, most people like Windows or MacOS and they aren't going to switch over to Linux. I personally happen to like Windows XP and OS X much better than KDE 3 and GNOME 1.4 as desktops (yes, I know XP/OS X are full OSs and KDE/GNOME are not). I'm using a MSDN copy of XP, but I use Mozilla for web browsing for example. Eventually when I can do things like embed tables in documents with Abiword, I'll switch to that from MS Word.
It doesn't have to be all one way or another. If it did, there wouldn't be an undeclared war between GNOME and KDE. There would be only one desktop interface for Linux users. Windows users don't have to be forced to go all Microsoft or no Microsoft. Most Windows users should have the option of running OSS alternatives to as many Microsoft products as possible... but for Windows, not just Linux/BSD.
That is the best way to help out public schools. Pay for all of their licenses for Windows so they're legal there and then help them get into OpenOffice if they feel that can replace Office without compromising any classes. Some schools may want to use Powerpoint to help students do presentations. OSS alternatives like OO have to be able to seemlessly replace Office in order for them to make the change. Home users will probably continue to use MS Office until someone gets the balls to pre-install OO, Abiword or something like that.
If people are forced to choose between all-Microsoft or no-Microsoft, if they have had success with the former, they'll most likely wholesale reject the latter right off the bat. Better the devil they know, than the one they don't. We have to change that by letting them pick and choose what to use. If Windows and OpenOffice work well for them, don't push them to go with Linux. Enough of this "the cup is half empty" attitude if people don't go completely pure OSS.
"Sorry about the flame, I really like the browser. But the whole themes thing has started to look kind of silly."
no, you've *really* missed the point here; the whole theme thing is just beginning. the language for writing themes has been under development, so if you wrote a theme for one release of Mozilla / Netscape, it would break in the next release. 90% of the point of having Mozilla 1.0 is to *freeze* this language (the APIs), and once these things are frozen people can get to work devloping *with* them
I don't understand. Are these features you want? Or features included that will get users back?
1. Mozilla does this, and I guess Netscape can if you hand edit the prefs file.
2. Most of the time you wouldn't be able to do anything with the edited source, not like you can change other people's pages. Most of the time I just want to see how some effect on a page was done. Copy and Paste work from View, Source. But for when you want to edit, File, Edit Page works fine.
3. I don't want enter to submit a comment when I'm typing in a text box, I want it to add a new line. On input field it is differt, there aren't multiple lines so enter does what you want. Actually I wish tab didn't leave a text box sometimes.
Are MDI's good or bad?
On the one hand we have the wonderful tabbed browsing thats been in mozilla and opera for ages.
On the other hand we have star office 5's intergrated desktop which caused a stink with people saying "I'll suply the window manager".
Whats the difference?
Internet Surfer was the best for me. It's not free, but most of the free ones freaked out IE on me(one was so bad I almost had to reinstall windows).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
MDI stands for "Multiple Document Interface" - a single program presenting two or more documents at the same time. You can do it with tabs, split-screen, multiple windows, ...
The idea has been around for ages (emacs, for instance). The MDI initialism appeared in the late 80's courtesy of the late IBM/Microsoft GUI alliance.
Can you switch between tabs with the keyboard? I just tried reenabling tabs...while you can switch between apps with Alt-Tab (which I use all the time) and you can switch between subwindows in MDI apps with Ctrl-Tab, there doesn't appear to be any way to use the keyboard to switch from one tab to another with the keyboard. (You could use the mouse, but mouse-only control of a feature is ghey...almost as ghey as web browsers that use MDI.)
Until there's a keyboard shortcut for it, I'll stick to no tabs and use Alt-Tab to switch between windows. "Taskbar clutter" means nothing to me as I almost never use the taskbar as anything more than an indicator of how many windows I have open.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Undoubtably MathML support is there because it is in Mozilla. Between Mozilla, Netscape, and IE (with MathPlayer), all of the major browsers will support MathML. That together with support from math programs such as Mathematica, it really looks like MathML will finally become real this year.
There's a conference on MathML at the end of June this year. Leslie Lamport (LaTeX fame) and Roger Sidje (who did the MathML support in Mozilla) are among the invited speakers.
Well, Mozilla has been doing it for some time now. Not that this is a big surprise. Guess where most of NS7 code comes from ?
Galeon (which I use) also has tab browsing.
morcego
I use a Mac with OSX and a PC with win 98 and win2000. I use IE5 and Moz1rc2 on the Mac and IE5.5 and Moz1rc2 on the PC. The result is similar - IE simply crashes more often on both platforms. I don't know why or if I installed something wrong but they do. IE is also noticably slower on Mac OSX and it is about equal on Win. The amount of security bugy in IE worries me, and while Moz has also had some, it's a long shot from some of the bad security bugs in IE.
Therefore by default I use Moz.
So, Netscape is beccomming more bloated, and the emphisis seems to be on putting all sorts of bundled software in it that I don't want or need, as well as making it more 'user freindly', instead of producing a clean efficent code. And it's doing all this while compeating with another browser that is availble for download for free.
Does Microsoft have a clone ray?
The Internet is generally stupid
Another one I've tried is Crazy Browser , which is very similar to Netcaptor but is free. I've also found that it's buggier than Netcaptor. Crazy Browser also offers ad and pop-up filtering.
In Mozilla, Ctrl-Page Up Ctrl-Page Down switch between tabs. Ctrl-Left and Ctrl-Right are reserved for something else on cross-platform applications, IIRC.
TANSTAAFL
CTRL PgUp and CTRL PgDn
Dissolve... Resolve... Evolve...
I don't understand Netscape. Every so often they come out with a browser that is Mozilla, except that it has the name "Netscape" on it instead. However, somehow it seems to be not quite as good as Mozilla. And [not so] strangely, the releases come at the same time as Mozilla releases do (more or less).
So what is the point? Anyone can download and use Mozilla on almost any platform and it's the same or better than Netscape? Even the code is the same!!! Why are these netscape people fooling themselves pretending that their work is worthwhile? This is the most unneccessarily redundant job I have ever heard of...
just can the project and move on already!
Actually, 4.2 since IE skipped a version to match up with Netscape's version 3...
Just configure your internet search to use google, type stuff in your URL bar, and tab to the 'search google for ...' in the drop down list.
Uh...ever heard of dynamic memory allocation? You try writing a program that doesn't require more space in memory ro run than requires disk space to store. Even a Hellow World! is going to need more memory allocated to it than diskspace required to store it. Add in several orders of complexity including a graphical interface usinga private rendering engine and see how light you can get a program.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
One example I stumbled across today is Politech. It looks like there should be two columns of links (a navbar down the left side and a list of links to the right), but the list of links gets rendered on top of the navbar. I've put a dump of what it looks like here. (I'm using Mozilla 1.0RC2.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
I've made two changes to my Windows UI that makes the flaws apparent. First, I moved my taskbar up to the top of the screen. Second, I doubled its width. (And I got rid of that silly Quick Launch toolbar, too.) The net effect is that I can more easily see which applications are open and fit twice as many items in the taskbar before they become unreadable.
Now I'm not trying to start a Win vs. Mac war and say that the top or bottom is correct, but from a bottom-taskbar-user switching to a top-taskbar-user I find it more intuitive to keep the taskbar on top.
On to the problems with the MDI interface:
Most programs handle the MDI interface poorly. MS Word is one of them. Having to cycle through open documents with Ctrl + F6 or using the Window...[# of document] menu isn't an easy way to do it. Illustrator is another example of terrible document switching--AFAIK there's not even a keyboard shortcut.
Other programs, like MS Excel, UltraEdit and Opera do this well, listing a strip at the top or bottom of the screen with open documents. However, they still fail in two important aspects:
- There isn't a way to quickly switch from one document to another that aren't next to each other in the document list. With applications, Windows allows quick switching with Alt + Tab. There is no MDI equivalent. (Ctrl + Tab, Ctrl + PgUp/Dn, Ctrl + F6 are all vain attempts.)
- Most document list strips are very small, disobeying Fitt's Law, and are thus painful to try to use quickly.
So even though Documents are listed in a strip a la the taskbar, there are still problems moving between documents. Listing a document as an instance of an application, on the other hand, places an icon on the taskbar that can be more easily manipulated.There are examples of this idea that are poorly implemented, like MS Project. It correctly places a button on the taskbar for each open document, but incorrectly (and frustratingly) adds an unnecessary icon to the Alt + Tab list. And there are other problems with this approach, like too many icons cluttering the taskbar.
But I believe that this is the better way to work with documents and applications. If the Windows taskbar can't handle N icons it's not the fault of the model, but the fault of the taskbar. Perhaps a scaling taskbar a la OS X is a better solution. But in my opinion either solution is a better solution than MDI.
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
Here is a link to the css2 standard:
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/
When doing cross platform development, the standard is a nice starting point for development (invariably you will have to work around some difficulties in IE). You will find that mozilla/netscape (incl. ns6) is much more compliant, tho perhaps a bit unforgiving to some types of violations (don't make assumptions about which ones, when you start using mozilla hardcore, you will learn what types of mistakes it penalizes first hand). Browsers like konqi and ie are nowhere near as compliant, but they tend to ignore errors rather than refuse to process a statement (technically that is incorrect behaviour, but no point being pedantice, IE is not going to change that behaviour no matter what the standard is). In general IE is a decent to good browser, but mozilla has been better for at least 6 months (no harm in not knowing that yet, but now you've been informed, and you should alter your statements accordingly).
Btw, css3 is being developed, its not important to me yet, but you may want to look at it and at least make some notes about what it will offer and its proposed release date.
What xml support does it have? I want at minimum a browser that, when pointed at an xml document, will find its stylesheet (in the instruction) and correctly apply the stylesheet. XSLT should definitely be supported, and XSL-FO if/when that is available (I'm not sure if it is yet). XPointer and XPath support should also be there (and XLink if/when that is finalized).
I'm working on a web application making use of the above and since I don't care about backward-compatibility where xml is concerned, I want it up as soon as a browser with acceptable support is out. IE is well on its way. If the Mozilla project gives us something that can do the above, I will be thrilled.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
This sig under construction. Please check back later.
Well, you could save yourself a byte if you spelled "Hello" right.
Sorry ... had to. :-)
Will you people get off of the version number crap please? Remember Dreamweaver Ultradev 2.0 or 3.0? No? That's because it went from 1.0 to 4.0 to achieve parity with Dreamweaver standard. MS Visual J++ and Visual Interdev went from 1.0 to 6.0 in less than a year just for the sake of Microsoft marketing Visual Studio "6.0".
I thought that the 7.0 thing was strange at first too. But I've gotten over it... you all can too...
Dissolve... Resolve... Evolve...
...but I honestly don't know whether it's supposed to, or whether it just happens to do so.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
The page you are viewing right now exists to show off what can be accomplished with pure CSS1 and a little teeny piece of CSS2 (specifically, the hover effects on hyperlinks). Remember: as you look this demo over, there is no Javascript here, nor are any PNGs being used, nor do I employ any proprietary extensions to CSS or any other language. It's all done using straight W3C-recommended markup and styling, all validated, plus a total of four (4) images. Unfortunately, not every browser supports all of CSS1, and only those browsers which fully and completely support CSS1 will get this right. According to my tests, that's Netscape 6.x (which also means Mozilla 0.8 and later) and Internet Explorer 5.x for the Macintosh.
That quote (from your link) says it all people. Don't listen to the guy trying to say that Moz/NN6+ aren't good at rendering CSS.
It's not surprising that you didn't answer his question because what you're saying is simply not true. Between IE5.5 and 6 (Windows), Opera 6, and Netscape 6, the IE browsers have the most incomplete CSS implementations. They don't even render fixed CSS backgrounds (CSS1 stuff here) properly.
Dissolve... Resolve... Evolve...
I think this is even better. Come to think of it, Galeon has supported tabbed browsing since before Mozilla too, and still does it better.
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
I think I'll skip out on Netscape 7.0.
30 megabyte download?! That's way too big for my own good taste even if you have broadband. I'd rather AOL provide the standard Mozilla 1.0.0 browser (when that's released) and let end users pick and choose their own plugins.
Mozilla 1.0 Release Candidate 2 is very nice, but when you add in all that AOL bloatware, no thanks.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Mozilla lets you turn off stuff in JS. I turned off pretty much everything they let you turn off. What remains is enough for "legit" Javascript use (things like client-side entry validation and "auto" goto popdowns which have no "go" button, such as on penny-arcade.com), and you don't ever have to deal with the abuses of auto-popups, Javascripts which document.write everything, or pretty much any other waste of time on the web.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I don't know about IDEs, but early version of Microsoft Word and many other applications used to require the user to switch MDI windows by clicking on the "Window" menu. After you did that, you could see all Windows.. usually they would be numbered with some kind of description like this:
1. document1
2. document x
3. some other document
...
With that kind of interface, in order to see what documents you had open, you had to click on the Window menu. If you wanted to switch to another document, you would have to click on the Window menu, and then click on your selection.
With tabbed interfaces, the user can see what is open at a glance, without clicking on anything. If the user wants to switch to another open document or page or whatever, there is a one-click type interface to do so. Applications can also take advantage of visual 'status' indicators depending on the application's function. Mozilla, for example, uses some rotating arrows on the tab to indicate that a page is loading. It also uses a thumbnail icon to identify the page if that webpage supports it. The only downside is that tabs require a little more screen space, which isn't big enough IMHO to justify switching back to the old MDI style.
Doesn't really count. Sure, it groups the application buttons together better, but it doesn't offer a convenient method to access any given one in a single click. Also, it is too general of a solution. For exmaple, if I have more than 1 document open, I want them to be grouped (preferably in a spearate, but easy to access area like mozilla, opera, and galeon do). So I can bump the number of applicatyions down to two, but then it groups *other* application windows which I don't want to group. Having to access the windows through menus so frequently is annoying (only thing I dislike about the MAC interface is the application menu versus a bar).
I find mozilla's tab support adequate, operas better, and galeon's ideal. The problem I have had with mozilla's tab browsing is that it always opens new tabs on the far right and doesn't allow the user to manipulate. While web content is at least confined to a single window, now related pages opened are not grouped. IIRC, Opera had this same issue, but at least gave a workspace for web pages rather than one-size fits all approach. Galeon allows me to set the default to open the tab right next to the current tab, and allows me to rearrange tabs on the fly as I see fit.
Mouse gestures are also a cool feature from Opera and now mozilla and galeon, but not nearly the leap tabbed browsing is.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
If you have a lot of programs trying to display data, MDI makes a lot of sense. It allows you to have logical groups of windows, rather than just a collapsed "every instance of that hwnd" in the taskbar. I have one Mozilla window for work research, one for gaming, one for reading news, etc. Each has its own entry in my Gnome tasklist applet, and each has its family of tabs inside. This also makes it easy to move my "webwork" windows(s) to another desktop, allowing me to make the next logical extension to MDI: multiple virtual desktops, each one focused on a specific goal.
:)
However, I think it'll be a few years before you see that on the MacOS/Win32 side. MS frobbed with MDI, which is a good idea that their guidelines and API were poorly written for (thus leading to bad app design). The "collapsing taskbar" entry thing is a band-aid (TM) over not having virtual desktops and smart MDI.
However, until we see people who have computers that are on and have work open in many different areas for months at a time, I don't think MS will know much about the "UI scalabitily" issue to actually do something useful about it.
Of course, that doesn't bother me because I use these features *now* in Gnome with IceWM and Mozilla
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Yes, you can blame yourself for not being super-cautious, but thosee keybindings really aren't helping. (I should probably have filed a separate bug for that; please don't hesitate to do so, I'll vote for it.)
And while at it, I found the whole tabbing behavior much better in 4.x. When on a web page it would put focus back into the location bar, not on the unpredictably positioned next link in the document. When reading mail I prefer it to cycle through window panes, not through the half dozen links that someone may have in their sig. Keep control-tab for that.
Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
Cocoa applications are more than just a "feel and look" think. It an application (Netscape) cannot take advantage of such parts of the Mac OS X as "Services" it is missing out a lot, in my opinion. I have several services that I use every day. It's a hassle to do it "manually."
Type in your search term, and up comes Google with the results.
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
In Mozilla, you can close a tab by middle-clicking on it.
The shareholder is always right.
Oh that's lovely, so a bit of bad data like a corrupt .doc file will hang Word, hang IE, and hang Explorer too.
Funny thing is, as far back as Netscape 3, I've been able to open Acrobat documents inside my browser. But at least when that crashes, it doesn't take the whole OS with it.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Opera will try several prefixes and suffixes automatically. You can configure them manually. For example, I use "www" for prefixes and "com,org,net,pt" for suffixes.
RMN
~~~
Mozilla is still for the technically advanced (Slashdot?) crowd.
Ask anyone whose been slashdotted what user agent people have set. Yes, a portion of Mozilla / Konq / whatevr users set their user agent to be IE, but I have trouble believing that over 50% of Slashdot readers are doing this.
is that the BSA may audit them anyway as a form of punishment for switching over to Linux. If they find one copy of a shareware program that is expired on a Linux computer (let's say some kid got the root password, not too hard to imagine knowing how dumb some teachers can be) the BSA can take the school down for that. It reduces the threat, but doesn't eliminate it. The BSA is the primary problem. It isn't directly affiliated with software firms so it can safely be their rent-a-nazis. Put Microsoft in a position where the corporation directly has to go up against the school system and that will change a lot of it. Microsoft can say now "well we didn't authorize the raid, had we known we would have stopped them." Without the BSA, they have no excuse whatsoeverin the public's eyes.
I like Idiot Explorer's F11 trick of hiding all the interface paraphernalia...
Actually, Mozilla does this too, at least in Windows. Try it.
So much worse than 4.78?
The only thing I liked about IE over Mozilla is the ability to hit the Esc button and disabled the animation for animated GIF. I so wish Mozilla has that feature, maybe it does, can somebody point me to the right direction?
:)
I still use Mozilla for the tabbed browsing though, not to mention IE doesn't run on my daily OS.
geek page at KY speaks
With NN6/Moz there is finaly *one* cross platform browser that supports *all* the standards (or at least 99,9% of them). IE on the Mac is a very different kind of animal compared to IE on the PC.
I've had Mozilla running non-stop for over a week now with no crashes (Linux + Solaris). I've seen Netscape last maybe about a day (Linux). IE tends to crash 2 or 3 times a day (Windows 2000).
Follow me
I do not trust geckos.
I mean I do love them, they are kawaiiiiii and all, but they have this annoying habit of capturing and consuming snacks.
I have found that the geckos cannot actually open biscuit packets, but as soon as a packet of, for example, custard creams is opened, the geckos will "liberate" the packet and take it to their nest for consumption.
It would be bad enough with lesser creatures, but geckos scale. I don't just mean in the computer sense, which is still true (1000 Geckos can much more effectively steal your snacks than 1), but they scale the damn wall, taking your biscuits or other snacks out of reach.
It has got so bad that I have to eat Rich Tea biscuits, which, being very boring are passed over by the gecko community. However I fear the day will soon come when the geckos break down as I did and accept these lesser biscuits and no snack is safe from their thieving mitts.
Particular snacks to avoid, as they are the geckos' favourites:
1) Custard creams, bourbon creams etc. (Geckos are part of the annoying set of creatures that open up the two halves of the biscuit and lick the cream from the middle before discarding the soggy biscuit parts that are now no use to anyone except the most desperate seeker of snacks...)
2) Pretzels, ready salted crisps, anything that constitutes a salty snack.
3) M&Ms, Smarties, Revels, Minstrals, anything round and glazed.
Snacks that have so far not interested geckos:
1) Plain biscuits (Rich Tea etc.)
2) Potatoe salad, coleslaw etc. Geckos are extremely confused by potatoe salad, tending to get their snouts into it, then finding their whole face is covered with sticky white stuff. They will then tend to scream "Vision impared- I cannot see!" a lot before spinning off down a corridor and exploding.
3) Apples, bananas, other fruit. Geckos eschew "healthy" snacks, so maybe a gecko infestation will cause you to adopt a healthier diet- who knows ?
graspee