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Mozilla RC3 Released
pjdepasq was one of many reader to submit the news that "Those fine folks at Mozilla.org rolled out RC3 on Thursday I noted. They say it's the last planned release before 1.0, which I'm guessing is right around the corner. As a fan of the project (I'm using it on 3 platforms!), kudos to all of you!" Here are the release notes.
With the upcoming release of Mozilla 1.0, Netscape 7 will be based on that. I really hope reviewers, developers and users will take a new view on Netscape so Netscape can gain some of the lost market share. I'm tired of seeing websites which simply don't care about Netscape/Mozilla support...
And don't start saying "hey, I don't need Netscape, I want plain Mozilla!". You're right, but Netscape is for (l)users. If Netscape 7 has success, you'll also have more luck surfing the internet with your Mozilla browser.
By the way, MozillaZine is also a great source of information for Mozilla-fans.
You are only partially correct. Mozilla does not and probably never will (in the near future) use native widgets for any OS because of (I think) XUL. Mozilla has its own rendering engine, controlled by JavaScript and style sheets. This allows for mucho customization, by web developers and users alike. It does not, however, earn any brownie points in usability.
You are, however, correct in that Mozilla on XP inherits the visual style of XP's interface (anything Luna or Classic). But that's all. Mozilla does not inherit the accessibility features in XP. Should XP suddenly support a new input device for navigating sheets (or similar), Mozilla wouldn't have any part of it. The Mozilla team has had many a debate on how to mimic the keyboard shortcuts in Windows since none of the interface is native. For the majority of Windows users, however technical ye are, this is a moot point, because it just looks the same and does its job. This argument is most apparent in Mac OS X, an environment associated with pretty colors and UI guidelines provided by Apple. Many, many OS X users have not used Mozilla because it looks and functions like nothing on OS X. And of course, Linux users either don't care or don't have enough time/energy to choose a standard interface and then care. =)
Mozilla, in all of its open source and standards-compliant glory, will always be a second-rate browser if not native to each platform of operation. Don't get me wrong, I love Mozilla to no end... I'd just like a native version. (See Internet Explorer, OmniWeb, Lynx, etc.)
PS - I don't recall any version of Office using Windows's UI controls... Office always shipped with some new, bleeding edge control of its own, often to be reincarnated into the controls of the next version of Windows. Even Office XP, of all things, has no correlation to native Windows XP controls.
People who started using the Internet before IE don't mind Netscape and would go back for a previous version. Most of the world see IE bundled with Windows, compared Netscape 4.77 with IE5 and say "IE is better", and don't recognize that Netscape could possibly change.
Add one part Mozilla and shake.
The sort of people who would use IE over Netscape because they had a bad experience with Netscape around 4.77 will be impressed with Mozilla, and they don't even need to know that it is based on Netscape! I installed Netscape 7 preview yesterday, which for most people may as well have been a Mozilla skin. Additions: IM, which closes when the browser closes and isn't important in a business environment, and no menu option to remove all those AOL popups.
We don't need to wait for Mozilla 1.0 so Netscape 7 can come out and compete with IE; when Moz hits 1.0, we should be pitting Mozilla against IE. It doesn't feel signifigantly different, but there are improvements that grow on you quickly - tabbed browsing, being able to selectively disable Javascript - which make people stand up and watch. Netscape will have as many ads and links to AOL in it as IE has to Micrsoft. Mozilla is infinitely more pure! And when the last few bugs are ironed out, I'll look forward to seeing what new innovations the crew have in store. (Remember, as far as most people are concerned, all that changed between IE4 and IE6 was the loading logo and the widgets if you're using XP.)
That, and maybe Mozilla could end up being the application that make people think "Wow, that open source community aren't so bad after all."
My main complaint is that all of your points could have been accomplished much sooner, and with less bloat (Mozilla uses 17MB on my machine at fresh startup...I know memory is cheap, but *dayamn*, that will never fly on older machines...), if they had not decided to reinvent the world, and come up with some new weirdo GUI component and layout system. Mozilla is a major accomplishment, but I fear it could have done so much more if they followed the KISS rule and gotten some form of final usable product out the door long ago.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
- You can't apply CSS to native widgets. (border colors and sizes, onHover and onFocus styles, etc)
- You can't control the z-order; native widgets will always be on top of all rendered content.
That's why mozilla and IE render their own controls, and I'm sure Opera will some day, too. (I've never used OmniWeb, so I can't say anything about that)ENDUT! HOCH HECH!