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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.