AP reports on renewed "Browser War"

An anonymous reader writes "CNN and others are reporting an Associated Press story on "the revived browser war" with Mozilla paired against Microsoft. It seems the 1.0 release is creating some waves out there. " Considering most people consider the war long since over, I can't imagine this mattering much.

Comments

90%+ for IE still

[dpete4552]

Until my logs show something close to 50/50 for IE/Mozilla I don't believe it. Still showing 90% for IE, and I promote Mozilla on my site.

Re:90%+ for IE still

[loply]

My logs go something like: 50% IE 20% Moz 10% Konq 20% CodeRed

Re:90%+ for IE still

[ryants]

Keep in mind that you can change the User-Agent string for Mozilla for various reasons, from security to working with broken sites. Pretending to be IE with Mozilla (or Konq or Galeon...) is not too uncommon.

Re:90%+ for IE still

[killmenow]

And I use Opera, but identify as IE5.

And when I use curl, I use an IE5 user-agent string. Some sites just won't let you in otherwise.

We've all heard it before: when (yes, I said when) AOL switches to Mozilla, there will instantly be millions of Mozilla users.

Re:90%+ for IE still

[zulux]

And I use Opera, but identify as IE5.

You want a site to fix this in under 24 hours? Just tell them that you're blind and that their site won't let your blide-enabeled web-browser in.

Dreams of ADA lawsuits start dancing in their heads. It works really well for government sites, and moderatly well for medium sized corporations.

Re:90%+ for IE still

[treat]

happy in thier little walled garden seeing only what the content nazi's at AOL want them to see/pay for.

AOL provides an Internet-connected IP address, and software that handles the most commonly used Internet protocols. What more could they do to not be a "walled garden"?

Re:90%+ for IE still

[GSloop]

Lets see...

35+
40+
20+
25+
30
---
150%

Methinks you need remedial math or reading skills, but probably BOTH!

Cheers!

Re:90%+ for IE still

[killmenow]

There are 34 million people using AOL.

I just read where some people estimate at least a million of them are using their "1000 free hours for 45 days" and will never pay AOL.

When their time runs out and AOL ships them a new CD the month after switching to Gecko, there will *quickly* be a million users on it.

Additionally, while I'm sure a lot of AOL users don't upgrade regularly, if only 5% do, there's 1.7 Million new Mozilla users, *quickly*.

But, you're right, not instantly...my bad.

Re:90%+ for IE still

[cheezedawg]

Pretending to be IE with Mozilla (or Konq or Galeon...) is not too uncommon.

Not too uncommon for the nerd minority, but still extremely uncommon in general. Thats not going to influence the numbers.

Re:90%+ for IE still

[fault0]

> We've all heard it before: when (yes, I said when) AOL switches to Mozilla, there will instantly be millions of Mozilla users.

Probably never going to happen unless things change fast.

1.Microsoft really does not want to give up it's control over the browser market (and pragmatic Internet standards at that).

2. AOL does not want to lose the AOL icon on the Windows desktop/Start Menu.

3. There are existing contracts between MS and AOL about using IE as AOL's default browser.

4. There would be a service/support nightmare in AOL as customers ring in and ask why obscuresitexyz.com or obscurestoreasd.net do not work suddenly.

Re:90%+ for IE still

[Jonny Ringo]

Just tell them that you're blind and that their site won't let your blide- enabeled web-browser in.
Yeah, that's a great idea. Here are some others.
park in a hanicap area and pretend your retarded.
pretend you can't walk and use a wheel chair and try and get into buildings that do not have wheel chair ramps (you can also pretend your stuck on a curb).
What the hell??? Do we need to start pretending we are blind because we don't want people to use IE. Shit, man thats pretty lame.

Re:90%+ for IE still

[rseuhs]

Well, that's still 70% Microsoft... ;-)

Re:90%+ for IE still

[Eil]

Believe it or not, this doesn't seem to work with the newer builds of Mozilla.

By this I mean you can set the user agent pref (See prefs.js and edit/create user.js to set your own) and the about:mozilla page reports the correct faked agent. But go to any web page that reports your user-agent string back to you (such as here near the bottom) and it still gives the old built-in user agent string. Since I have no real reason to fake my string, (and this therefore doesn't affect me) I haven't filed a bug report.

Curiouser, an outdated mozilla.org page reports the correct values. (Scroll down to "Profile of Your Browser".

Another thing is that navigator.appVersion string cannot be changed other than modifying the source... it won't get changed with a faked user agent string. There's an entry in bugzilla for this.

So what gives? I dunno, other than there seem to still be a few quirks of Mozilla that won't likely be worked out for a few more versions.

Re:90%+ for IE still

[zulux]

What the hell??? Do we need to start pretending we are blind because we don't want people to use IE. Shit, man thats pretty lame.


Blind enabeled browsers are very delicate, and are very hard to get working right. Any webmaster that throws artificial blockades up need to fix them ASAP - if it happens to help other standards complient browsers, than this is a small benificial side-effect.

I feel that it's appropriate to take any reasonable measures to see that webmasters fix this particular problem - and if a little creative lying gets the job done than so be it.

Re:90%+ for IE still

[ceejayoz]

If you'd heard "but isn't AOL the Internet" as many times as I have, you'd understand the problem...

Re:90%+ for IE still

[ealar dlanvuli]

It's silly for mozilla to lie to a site. It's the sites problem not yours, send an email.

To be honest the only site I've seen so far is the passport website, but then again about every page on it is non-standard HTML and br0ks the w3c validator.

Re:90%+ for IE still

[Eil]

We've all heard it before: when (yes, I said when) AOL switches to Mozilla, there will instantly be millions of Mozilla users.

I wholeheartedly disagree. I realize that you may be lumping Netscape and other "value-added derivatives" in there when you say Mozilla. But what makes Mozilla the best browser for me is the complete lack of commercialism and additional bloatware. Netscape 6.0> and Mozilla are two opposite ends of the spectrum in my opinion, even if they do share most of the same code.

But I'll continue, assuming you mean "Mozilla" as in the binary distribution available from mozilla.org, mostly for the sake of argument.

AOL will do one of two things:

1. They will simply ship Netscape with their software, and probably modify the AOL software itself to use gecko for rendering HTML. (It might be interesting if they did the entire AOL suite in XPCOM, but I wouldn't hold my breath.)
   
2. They will repackage Mozilla, much like Netscape has, and brand it The AOL Browser or something like that. This is far less likely though, as since they own Netscape, they've already got a browser to use without hiring programmers to redo it all.

But the point remains that most of the mediocre Joe Sixpacks in the world will probably never know Mozilla exists. Therefore, there can never and will never be a Mozilla vs. Explorer war.

The best we can hope for is that the multitude of Mozilla-based web browsers stick to adherance of standards as adamantly as the Mozilla team has. If that can happen, then web developers will hopefully take a stronger stance towards standards and begin to reject the horribly standards-broken Internet Explorer[1]. From there, Microsoft has the chance to fix their browser and make it a worthwhile competitor or release a new version of the same tripe and wonder why their market share is going down the tube.

1) IE is particularly crappy with respect to CSS compliance and PNG support. I know, because these are two things that I've been playing with recently on my own. Mozilla isn't 100% CSS compliant either, but it does a lot more stuff the correct way. This is where I think Mozilla will make a great impact on the web. By testing out Mozilla developers will see the advantage of standards and more and more will have standards in mind when designing web sites. My dream is to see John Q. Random Webpublisher using w3.org as a techincal reference instead of "Designing Websites for Internet Explorer" by Joe Clueless.

Re:90%+ for IE still

[Mansing]

After reviewing 12 months and 10 million requests on one of our sites, IE 80%, Netscape + Mozilla 20%.

Re:90%+ for IE still

[blazerw11]

There are existing contracts between MS and AOL about using IE as AOL's default browser.

Nope, the contract expired.

Re:90%+ for IE still

[Anonymous Coward]

Try doing that for a PORNO website.

Re:90%+ for IE still

[Eil]

I'm definitely not calling you a liar, but for most site statistics I see (including my own), browsers in the "Other" category (Opera, Galeon, Dreamcast, lynx, WebTV, etc) usually pull anywhere between 10%-15% (+/- 5% based on your audience) of the hits.

Since your numbers add up to 100%, I'm taking a guess that the "Other" browsers are lumped into Mozilla/Netscape because other sources claim IE to have upwards of 80% or 90% of browser market share.

Re:90%+ for IE still

[WowTIP]

But, do we really want 34 million AOL users propagating *for* Mozilla? :)

Re:90%+ for IE still

[00_NOP]

The really depressing thing about all these browser statistics is that they punch through the geek bubble and remind you just how few people are using 'nix based systems.

Granted, some of the IE users will be on OS X, but not many.

And the majority of Netscape and Opera users will be on Windows and quite possibly the majority of Mozilla users too.

I love Linux, I would never dream of giving it up now. But clearly, I am eccentric in that regard.

Hell, even now I am posting this off IE5 and NT4 (not my system).

Re:90%+ for IE still

[killmenow]

Well, I realize there are other things one can do to try to nail it down, but...two things:

1. You can't get that to show up in your web server log, which is what I was talking about
2. What if I turn off javascript? Can you then tell I'm not IE?

Re:90%+ for IE still

[Eil]

Note my wording carefully. I said that I don't have a need to fake my browser string, only that the Mozilla setting seems to be borked.

Re:90%+ for IE still

[WowTIP]

Why do you assume I am American?

No, I am afraid 34 million AOL users will get very confused when the Mozilla driven AOL doesn't behave exactly the same way as it used to, and blame it all on Moz.

Don't take it personal, I guess there are a few computer litterate users in the AOL horde, just like you.

Perception is reality

[Anonymous Coward]

If they say there's a browser war, there's a browser war. When they said it was over, it was over.

So, now it's back. More media exposure for Mozilla (especially when it's quite positive) is a good thing. If Mozilla were bad, no one would care. Mozilla is good, very good, and people notice that.

Go Go Mozilla!

Re:Perception is reality

[LinuxCumShot]

Maybe now its just a browser police action.

Re:Perception is reality

[laserjet]

Maybe it's not an official browser war, but definately a browser police action like Viet Nam?

Either way, I am using Mozilla because it's better for me. I think it rules the earth and the seven seas.

War is over unless AOL changes default

[acomj]

It AOL changes it Default browser to Netscape, than web designers will again have to consider netscape/mozilla when doing pages..

Why AOL hasn't switched after buying netscape must say something about microsofts control...

Competition is good though, so hopefully this will help all browsers get better..

Re:War is over unless AOL changes default

[Hollins]

Think about it. You're AOL and half of America's internet subscribers go through you. Because 95% of surfers are using IE, sites are built to display on IE. Many sites are designed to display properly in IE, standards be damned, meaning they don't work on a properly performing browser. Many don't allow anything but IE to use their services.

Now, to convert your entire userbase to Netscape will mean a significant portion of sites will no longer look correct or will cease to work entirely. Your customers don't understand browser compliance, they merely know that they could visit sites with AOL 7, but not AOL 8. Is the deluge of customer support phone calls and email really worth the hassle?

Re:War is over unless AOL changes default

[pi_rules]

It AOL changes it Default browser to Netscape, than web designers will again have to consider netscape/mozilla when doing pages..

No... it will mean designers will have to think about W3C compliance. The days of dual-coding for NS4 and IE4 are long gone. Anybody who can't right a page that works on both browsers without even detecting which one you're on has done of one two things:

a) Designed it poorly.

b) Written it without ever looking at the standards.

Re:War is over unless AOL changes default

[Coplan]

Get the Major Websites by the ear!

If I were in charge of AOL, and I wanted to once again make one of my products (Netscape) a staple on the internet, I would employ one simple strategy. I would pick a version of the Mozilla engine (aka, Netscape). Mozilla 1.0 final seems like a good choice, as it's a stable release, and it has reached approval from many critics. Now, I would make a development timeline for AOL version 8 (or whatever version might be next). Then, I would make an all media announcement: "AOL version 8 is scheduled to release on December 1st. At this time, we will fully implement the Mozilla engine into our browser, using Mozilla 1.0 as our framework."

The important step is the follow through, however. I can say that, but I have to do two things to make sure I maintain my market share. First, I have to make sure that I do in fact implement the Mozilla engine completely. Second, I have to make some sort of incentive for AOL users to upgrade. Nevermind a minor release. This would have to be a major release with lots of new features. Maybe take advantage of Chatzilla and get that fully integrated into AOL. Whatever it takes...but just changing the rendering engine or the browser will not be enough for most AOL users to upgrade.

The old addage is "If it isn't broken, don't fix it." Many people know that. But many people also know the caveat: "If its got new features, it might be worth a try."

Re:War is over unless AOL changes default

[Col. Klink (retired)]

Do the math... using your number, 1/2 of the population is using AOL (and IE). Web sites are built with IE in mind because 95% of the surfers are using IE.

Most sites, whether designed for IE or not, still look fine with other browsers. It's really a small minority that absolutely don't work at all with anything but IE (and some of them only because they just plain block non-IE referers).

Now if (when) AOL changes to Mozilla, suddenly only half the population is using IE. That small minority of sites will now be blocking 50% of their potential customers instead of 5%.

Why they chose to block any customers remains a mystery, but blocking the entire AOL population is just not economically viable.

Re:War is over unless AOL changes default

[msaavedra]

This is mostly true, but it is still possible to come up with theoretically (if not practically) excellent designs that adhere precisely to the standards, but don't render correctly. For instance, it is widely considered a good practice to use HTML only to mark up the logical structure of a page (avoiding using tables for layout, tags, etc) and use CSS to handle layout and style. This ensures a good separation between content and presentation. However, both IE and Mozilla have some quirks with their interpretation of the CSS2 box model and positioning properties. At this stage, it is impossible to design a page that:

1. Uses a complex CSS-based layout (though simple ones work pretty well)
2. Renders correctly in IE5, IE6, and Mozilla
3. Adheres strictly to the standards (XHTML 1.1, CSS2)
4. Doesn't use any browser detection tricks

Things are getting very close, but the browsers are not quite ready for well-designed, browser-agnostic pages using the latest standards.

Re:War is over unless AOL changes default

[sofar]

ermmm,

I did that once d00d, and it turned out to be one happy, simple, elegant portal site. It also loaded in a jiffy in any browser without bugs, all je javascript worked flwalessly, it had selectable css style sheets through javascript that allowed you to change pretty much any element in the page, and was even w3c compliant.

IT CAN BE DONE!!!

Re:War is over unless AOL changes default

[SN74S181]

Sounds like an interesting tactic for AOL to take.

The question is: what would be the business reason for spending all the money to do so?

It's painful enough at AOL to try to get the userbase to move up to the latest release. I know people (family members on the in-law side) who say things like '5.0 is the best!'

It seems like a big expensive proposition, and what for? To spite Microsoft?

Re:War is over unless AOL changes default

[RedWizzard]

IE for my daily site roundup and Mozilla for browsing (pop-up protection is great).

I did this too until I tried Mozilla's tabbed browsing and group bookmarks. Now a click on a single bookmark and all my daily sites load into tabs at once. The other thing I like is middle-button click to open link in new window (or tab). About the only thing I use IE for now is local html files.

Re:War is over unless AOL changes default

[msaavedra]

Yes. As I said, if you keep things simple, it works well, so a "happy, simple, elegant" site should be fine. Sometimes complex content requires a complex layout, though. This can result in some bizarre browser behavior (from IE5 particularly), even if your CSS is perfect.

Re:War is over unless AOL changes default

[MtViewGuy]

You have a very valid point.

The thing is that most of the world's major commercial web sites are written for Internet Explorer 4.0 to 6.0 compliance, and to make the sites compliant with Mozilla 1.0 (neé Netscape 7.0) will require substantial investments to completely recoding the HTML, DHTML, XML, etc. source of the web site so it can be read by both browsers.

Alas, that isn't going to be cheap because because of the man-hours involved.

Re:War is over unless AOL changes default

[AntiTuX]

Netscape's source was *NEVER* trashed. Trust me, i still have a CD of the sources and binaries of EVERY version of netscape ever in my cube. They've got a little dried mountain dew on them (loan, if you ever read this, please don't kill me, i tried to get as much off as I could :( ) from a spill I had a few months back.

I can't comment on AOL 8.0, since I enjoy working on the client product release engineering team at netscape. I can probably state (which is common knowledge by now) that AOL was impressed with how gecko handled alongside IE.

BTW, The Gecko engine is made to be embedded, in case you haven't noticed that already.

Anyhow, lots of really cool stuff is gonna happen within the next 6-8 months, with Mozilla, Netscape, Compuserve, and AOL.

Re:War is over unless AOL changes default

[nathanm]

Now a click on a single bookmark and all my daily sites load into tabs at once.

How do you do that with one click, may I ask? Some JavaScript?

Re:War is over unless AOL changes default

[Bedouin X]

Yeah IE5's box model has some serious issues. IE6 will emulate that brokeness too unless you include a transtitional+ DTD. I found that out the hard way. Dreamweaver MX's XHTML templates put the DTD below the XML declaration and causes IE to ignore it. Making IE 6 render like IE5. Moving the DTD up to the top of the page fixes that though.

FWIW...

Re:War is over unless AOL changes default

[sean23007]

You're absolutely right, but that's exactly the reason why it is so important that people get weaned off of IE. Perhaps someone should write something that translates MS-HTML into real HTML on-the-fly so that it can be read and displayed accurately in Mozilla. I know that isn't what the Mozilla people want, because it doesn't promote standards, but I think we need to fight MS on their own terms. Once this is done, AOL might consider switching to Mozilla. Now that Mozilla has 50% of the internet users (thanks to AOL), they can start enforcing true HTML. AOL can put it in their commercials that some sites don't appear correctly in AOL because of Microsoft's monopoly (which is essentially true, but the point can be made more subtly), and that if more sites don't start cleaning up their code, they could not only lose their customers and fail to garner new ones, but their reputation could be tarnished as they are linked with MS by the consumers. It is in this way, and only in this way, that Mozilla can hope to make a dent in IE and restore freedom to the galaxy- er... internet.

Re:War is over unless AOL changes default

[RedWizzard]

Nope, it's in the UI. Open a bunch of tabs and then go to Bookmarks->File Bookmark... Check the "File as Group" option and a group bookmark containing all the open tabs is created. In "Manage Bookmarks" it behaves as a folder so you can add and remove individual pages.

Re:War is over unless AOL changes default

[nathanm]

Thanks! I think I'm going to switch to Mozilla, that's a feature I've wished for.

Re:War is over unless AOL changes default

[RedWizzard]

But Opera's adware. These features are enough to get me to switch from IE to Mozilla but they're not enough to get me to pay any significant amount of money.

Re:War is over unless AOL changes default

[Dwonis]

Yes, mozilla 1.0 is perhaps the single most significant event in the history of open source. It's starting to sink in to me.

• GNU Project is started
• BSD becomes completely free of AT&T code
• XFree86 is released
• Linux is released
• IBM adopts Linux
• DMCA passes

s/the single most/one of the most/

Re:War is over unless AOL changes default

[Znork]

Actually, I find fewer and fewer sites that dont quite work with Mozilla based browsers, in fact, by now it's down to about ordinary breakage around the web. I doubt there'd be a deluge; considering most sites will work without a hitch, it's more likely the complaints will go to the site in question.

The advantages of Mozilla are also things that the ordinary user benefits from. Popup blocking, especially, makes the web a more pleasant experience.

Re:War is over unless AOL changes default

[mr3038]

At this stage, it is impossible to design a page that:

1. Uses a complex CSS-based layout (though simple ones work pretty well)
2. Renders correctly in IE5, IE6, and Mozilla
3. Adheres strictly to the standards (XHTML 1.1, CSS2)
4. Doesn't use any browser detection tricks

It's not possible to comply with all of 1, 2 and 3 because IE5 doesn't follow CSS box model. For example in IE5 width=padding+contentwidth+border but in real CSS width=contentwidth. In addition, not a single version of IE correctly support CSS2 box model. As for 4, if I write html>body h1 {color: red;} does that count as browser detection trick? It's proper CSS2 but no version of IE supports it so it can be used to hide CSS properties that are known to be broken in IE like position: fixed.

Issues like Mozilla's poor/non-existant support for Q-element or lang() selectors look pretty minor compared to IE's bugs.

I make pages according to spec, test with mozilla and hide the CSS that breaks IE or Opera with selector tricks. It seems that Opera is the thoughest one to work around because it implements so much that simple selector trick is hard to come up with but some of it's bugs are so bad that they cannot be left as is. (position: absolute compibined with bottom property comes to mind first.)

Re:War is over unless AOL changes default

[sean23007]

:) I'd help you out on the project, but alas I know dick about HTML, MS- or otherwise. But I bet there are a lot of people who could help with such a thing. The problem is that you'd probably need a massive supercomputer to handle all the translation for all of AOL's users. It would probably work better if it started out with small ISPs, because AOL would have to invest a shitpot full of money at the outset, with no guarantees whatsoever. The proxy idea is better than putting it into every browser, however, because it is more noticeable to the industry and less noticeable to the user. Putting it into every browser would completely negate any advantages of the gecko renderer.

Re:War is over unless AOL changes default

[Coplan]

It seems like a big expensive proposition, and what for? To spite Microsoft?

Initial cost would be high, I agree. But as with any business, it comes down to opportunity costs. The reason is simple: AOL owns Netscape. That alone means nothing, so I can see your point. But don't forget two major points:

1) Using a third party's product (in this case, MS's IE for their engine), they have to essentially follow that party's release time line. The reality is that AOL has an obligation to keep their users up to date, and the most logical way to do that is to keep the IE engine fully integrated and up-to-date with each release of AOL. The less that a company has to depend on, the more likely it is for them to make thier own deadlines. Please don't think what the layman might think of marketing -- just because AOL sets the deadlines for the AOL coders, that doesn't mean they don't lose money if they miss their own deadline. Marketing sets deadlines, because they plan to launch promotion campaigns at that deadline. Simply put, the easiest way to get new subscribers is to release a new version and talk about its new features. People gain interest, people subscribe.

2) The costs of maintaining a project like AOL is astronomical. Throw on top of that the licensing that they might have to do to get the support so that they can continue to integrate IE into their engine. Then throw in the cost it takes for their coders to implement each new version of IE into their own engine. Sadly, the reality is that even if MS releases the source code for IE to AOL, it's still not AOL's code, and they have to take time to research the code each time a new stable release of IE is made. This takes time, and costs money. That's not to say this wouldn't happen if they were to use the Mozilla/Netscape engine...but it would be minimized as it would be an internal project.

On a final note, the simple rule of economics applies here: Using a product of another company to conduct your business is only advantageous if your own company does not have the resources to research said product. If one already has the technology, and the resources to build it, it is often cheaper to do it oneself. AOL owns Netscape, and has the resources to maintain it cheaply (and they do, regardless of the fact that AOL doesn't use it in their engine). The cost is being made...might as well save money by escaping IE.

It's an AP story on CNN's site..

[Anonymous Coward]

NEW YORK (AP) That's the associated press' byline. CNN didn't write the story, they simply published it. Lots of other news outlets will publish it, too.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Not objective

[tswinzig]

Keep in mind that it's an AP article, not written by CNN.

A bit of history

[b.foster]

Microsoft won the browser war because IE4 beat the hell out of any other browser that was available at the time. In fact, IE4 beats the hell out of the latest Netscape 4.7x release on any platform.

Unfortunately for Bill Gates, his company has rested on its laurels. IE6 offers little that wasn't present in IE5, and the many useful features in Mozilla 1.0 (tabbed browsing, anti-popup features, speed, stability, and security) mean that IE will be losing a significant amount of market share very soon.

And how can we complain about that? May the best product win - again. It's nice to see open source come out on top.

Re:A bit of history

[rmohr02]

You should be using Hotmail.

Re:A bit of history

[rmohr02]

Sorry, IE isn't going to do this. I had MSN Internet for awhile, and msn.com and all of the ____.msn.com sites used a popup on nearly every page.

Re:A bit of history

[mangu]

speed: Face it: IE is fast

Well, you may be surprised to learn about my experience. I set up a set of dual boot linux+win98 for a bunch of guys that had to use DECnet at my company. Although they complained about sites that weren't compatible with any of the Linux browsers, they prefer to use them over IE because all three (Mozilla, Netscape, and Konqueror) are significantly faster than IE. They have vmware, so, for them, it's very quick and easy to switch between IE and Linux browsers.

Re:A bit of history

[crimoid]

IE will be losing a significant amount of market share very soon

I doubt IE will loose much market share anytime soon. What incentive does the average Windows user have to spend the time to download any browser, especially Mozilla/Netscape? Very little. With IE built/bundled with Windows the vast majority of Windows users will simply fire up IE and start browsing.

It will take a major event to begin to unseat IE. AOL changing its engine would be one such event, as would legislation forcing Microsoft to bundle (or unbundle) various browser options. The least likely would be the "comeback" of a browser on features alone.

Re:A bit of history

[skt]

I think that you missed the biggest reason why people use IE vs. mozilla or opera. They use IE because it comes with their computer or they use it because the IT guys put a shortcut to Internet Explorer on their desktop. Internet explorer isn't a bad product, so there is no good reason to switch.

Netscape4 and mozilla aren't bad products either. Around work, I would say that 90% of the users use Netscape4. The reason is that it is advocated and that I put shortcuts on the desktop. IE is still there (not desktop, the Programs menu), but only a few people actually use it on a regular basis. It all goes back to the M$ monopoly. If mozilla were available and displayed on computers, more people would use it. I don't really know what the answer to the problem is though.. one one hand I understand that users don't want to choose between three different browers. They just want to "browse" and are confused by choices. On the other though, I think that it is unfair for microsoft to include only Internet Explorer with Windows, because it allows them to control such a huge portion of the market.

Re:A bit of history

[FyRE666]

In fact, IE4 beats the hell out of the latest Netscape 4.7x release on any platform.

Sounds good! Where can I get the rpm of IE for linux?

IE6 offers little that wasn't present in IE5, and the many useful features in Mozilla 1.0 (tabbed browsing, anti-popup features, speed, stability, and security) mean that IE will be losing a significant amount of market share very soon.

Sorry, you were making sense up until the "Speed" part there. I'll admit it's getting much better with 1.1a, but it's not nearly as quick as IE4/5/6 yet (at least with DOM manipulation via javascript).

I'm using Moz more these days, mostly to test pages, but it's not quite good enough to become my default browser under Windows as yet. Maybe on the next release...

Re:A bit of history

[lgraba]

Microsoft won the browser war because IE4 beat the hell out of any other browser that was available at the time.

And I guess the fact that MS:

1) "Integrated" IE into the OS so that you got it whether you wanted it or not, and
2) Threatened the computer OEM's with withheld Windows licenses if they installed Netscape on computers going out the door, thus forcing them to pull Netscape

had nothing to do with it.

Face it, with actions such as these, in which MS used their power to skew the market by shutting off marketing channels, you do not have a fair fight. If MS had played fair AND achieved the market share they have, THEN they would have something to brag about.

Re:A bit of history

[Anomie-ous Cow-ard]

Microsoft won the browser war because IE4 beat the hell out of any other browser that was available at the time.

Actually, no. IE4 was more or less equivalent to Netscape 4 (although Communicator really was crap). IE4 was also bundled with Windos, so all the newbies started using it.

In fact, IE4 beats the hell out of the latest Netscape 4.7x release on any platform.

Hmmm... Let's see here:

# apt-cache search netscape
[... mozilla and other random packages ...]
navigator-base-477 - Navigator base support for version 4.77
navigator-nethelp-477 - Navigator online help for version 4.77
navigator-smotif-477 - Netscape Navigator 4.77 (static Motif)
netscape-base-477 - 4.77 base support for netscape
netscape-ja-resource-477 - Netscape 4.77 Japanese resources.
netscape-java-477 - Netscape Java support for version 4.77
netscape-ko-resource-477 - Netscape 4.77 Korean resources.
netscape-smotif-477 - This installs a standard set of netscape prog
# apt-cache search internet explorer
camserv - stream video out onto the web
wwwoffle - World Wide Web OFFline Explorer
#

Yep! By not existing, IE4 beats Netscape 4 on my Linux box! </SARCASM> (yes, i realize there could be a version available but not packaged for Debian. However, there isn't)

Even on Windows, i still find IE and Netscape 4 about equivalent for most purposes. It's amazing how little DHTML is actually used, as long as you avoid sites whose only purpose in life is to flash and blink at you (or to show off DHTML).

Mozilla easily beats any IE release.

Re:A bit of history

[Dwonis]

IE4 sucked! You must not remember what it did to Win95 machines. Ever try re-installing Win95 after installing IE4?

Re:A bit of history

[lgraba]

If it wasn't for Microsoft and their unfair power to skew the market, we'll all still be paying for Netscape. Or do you forget that Netscape was actually selling the browser before Microsoft got into the game?

You're making Netscape sound like a victim, but at the time, it was Microsoft who was the underdog.

If they were truly the underdog, they would not have been able to skew the market the way they did.

I'm saying that we cannot say that IE won the browser wars because of its quality and usefulness, since it and Netscape were not on a level playing field in which the consumer makes the decisions. MS avoided a good deal of competition by taking the decision out of the hands of those unsophisticated users that were buying PC's in increasing numbers. If there had been a level playing field, perhaps (or not, who's to say) Netscape would have been able to react to IE with improvements, rather than basically rolling over because they were no longer getting paid by computer OEM's to install their browser.

Re:A bit of history

[lgraba]

Still doesn't change the fact that IE kicked the crap out of every other browser.

You're missing my point here. Virtually overnight, the market share went from Netscape to IE, not because the consumer decided IE was better; a majority of people made no such decision. MS used its monopoly power to force only IE to be delivered on new PC's. Unsophisticated new users, who would not be likely to download Netscape or even to know of its existence, would stick with what came on their PC's. Many of them probably think MS invented the internet! My point here is that MS unfairly (and illegally, by forcing OEM's to not install Netscape on outgoing PC's) manipulated the market in their favor. Netscape couldn't have competed by coming out with a better browser, since their primary marketing channel had been closed.

Re:A bit of history

[lgraba]

I know I'm gonna get flamed to hell for this, but having tried Mozilla, IE, Konqueror and Opera, IE is tops for me in terms of ease of use and stability.

Good, at least you have come to this decision through a comparison of the features of each product. My point, though, is that MS used its monopoly power to close off a distribution channel for Netscape (installation on new PC's by OEM's), and forced the situation so that only their browser could be installed (through "integration"). This way, the only browser that most people (especially new, unsophisticated users) would ever see is IE. They did not have a head-to-head competition on a level playing field in which the browser that is the most useful to the most people wins. MS didn't win a competition, they changed the rules of the game so that they were substantially in their favor, essentially avoiding competition. If their browser was so good (especially in 1996, when this all started), why did they need to integrate the browser and force the OEM's to not install Netscape?

Re:A bit of history

[lgraba]

Why is it that everybody objected when IE got pre-installed on Windows, yet nobody objected when Netscape was pre-installed?

OEM's were pre-installing Netscape because that was what their customers wanted. When MS forced IE onto the machine, and Netscape off, it was done against the wishes of the OEM's and their customers, thwarting the wishes of the free market.

Only after version 3.0 did the browsers really got into a fight. So yes, Microsoft was an underdog in its browser market until their IE4 and IE5 effectively buried the competition.

IE4 and IE5 were fair browsers, but IE3 was not. Yet, everyone got IE3 because of MS' strongarm tactics. Without those tactics, IE3 would not have had any market share, since Netscape was synonomous with web browser at that time. Without the inroads made (illegally) by IE3, and the sudden drop in revenue for Netscape (OEM's were paying to install the browser), the landscape may very well have been very different in subsequent years.

You can't just ignore what went on in the browser wars from 1996-1999. It has significan impact to the situation now.

Re:A bit of history

[lgraba]

IMHO, Netscape realized that they can't compete in a market where their chief competitor is a free download, and so they folded (complaining even to this day that it was all Microsoft's fault). Microsoft did what it does best: kill a competitor, gain a lot of users for their software, and make a ton of money (isn't this what every company strives to do?).

How many times do I need to repeat this? MS told at least one and probably other OEM's that they would not be able to buy Win95 licenses if they continued to install Netscape on their PC's. This immediately "cut off Netscape's air supply". You may have heard about this anti-trust trial, in which these tactics were judged illegal. A monopoly cannot use its monopoly power to limit its competition. I don't know how I can put it any clearer than this.

In Linux, no one forces you to install any browser, or prevents you from installing a browser. Linus Torvalds does not tell Red Hat to not install Opera, that only Mozilla can be installed. This is simply not possible.

IE7 and CSS

[Dr. Eric Peters]

Based on secondhand reports, it sounds to me as if IE7 is going to bring *major* advances in CSS support for Windows Internet Explorer. They're going to fix the box model, with bugwards compatibility handled via a DOCTYPE sniffing strategy similar to IE6/Mac's.

This is a hugely significant event for advocates of CSS. I'm eagerly looking forward to this, even though I don't plan on ever using Windows on a regular basis. Given Microsoft's ability to bulldoze Windows users into upgrading, we may soon have a world in which, for the first time ever, *the dominant Web browser* has good CSS support.

This could improve things for CSS in general even if we don't end up with the dreaded Microsoft-only world. Developers of *other* browsers will no longer be able to hide behind claims of industry-leader compatibility when releasing buggy CSS implementations.

Of course DOCTYPE sniffing is going to complicate the situation somewhat, since IE7 will still have a bugwards compatibility mode. I'm hoping that the existence of IE7 will cause enough people start intentionally invoking standards mode that other browser developers notice. While from a theoretical point of view DOCTYPE sniffing makes no sense--it's a pure hack--in practice it's a lot better than no standards mode at all, which is the only likely alternative.

Furthermore, my secondhand source also tells me that IE7 will finally bring full PNG support to IE. This is a major step ahead in InterNet graphics.

Re:IE7 and CSS

[msaavedra]

Actually, IE6 already has doctype sniffing. Unfortunately, it has a glitch so that if you put <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> or something similar as your first line, which is standard for XHTML, IE becomes confused, even if you specify the proper doctype on the second line. The result is that this puts the browser into "quirks" mode, which is probably exactly what you don't want if you're writing XHTML.

Of course, even in its "strict" mode, IE6's CSS layout is far from perfect, so the changes in IE7 will be great. And finally being able to use PNG's properly will ROCK!

Re:IE7 and CSS

[Saxerman]

Based on secondhand reports, it sounds to me as if IE7 is going to bring *major* advances in CSS support for Windows Internet Explorer.

Sounds a lot like the standard MS "the next one will be much better" FUD. Now don't get me wrong, I've sung that party line for Open Source software for a few years now. It's a nice change to be on the side of the fence where the grass is actually greener.

To sum up, for everyone who hasn't bothered to switch from IE to Mozilla yet, "Nanny-nanny Boo-boo!"

Re:IE7 and CSS

[aztektum]

Given Microsoft's ability to bulldoze Windows users into upgrading...

Of course we know sys admins are exempt from that statement.

Re:IE7 and CSS

[Fjord]

Given Microsoft's ability to bulldoze Windows users into upgrading, we may soon have a world in which, for the first time ever, *the dominant Web browser* has good CSS support

Actually, according to the server logs for my wife's animal shelter site, only 38% of the windows users (which are the vast majority, 96%, the rest being Mac and .1% linux) are on IE6. 23% are on 5.0 and 29% on 5.5. When you consider that 16% of the windows users are on XP, you'll get that only 22% have bothered to upgrade. Less will probably go to IE7 in the same amount of time.

Luckily, the applications I work on are deployed in an evironment where we can set what browsers should be used. Also luckily, I feel the IE5.5 feature set is good enough for everything I've wanted to do, DOM and CSS wise.

So you and the other 5 people using curl...

[Steveftoth]

say that you're IE? Wow, that must account for like a huge market right? All those curl people who also use Opera and say they are IE.

The key to the Browser Wars...

[tm2b]

Mozilla will have a chance on the broad desktop (beyond AOL, that is) if and only if a killer app can be conceived for it.

For IE, the future "killer app" will be integration with (blech) .NET. Will there be something else for Mozilla that makes people say "gotta have it" and that Microsoft can't or won't duplicate?

We'll see. My money would, alas, be on Microsoft right now. Monopolies are just too damned effective in this space.

Re:The key to the Browser Wars...

[Danse]

As long as enough users adopt Mozilla, sites will be forced to write standards-compliant pages. That is all that really matters. AOL alone could bring in enough Mozilla users to cause such a change.

Re:The key to the Browser Wars...

[meta-monkey]

I'm not sure about this. I use Mozilla about 90% of the time, but sometimes I'll load up a site...and there's nothing there. I'll turn on all the javascript stuff, load it up...and still nothing. I can't use Mozilla to visit my credit union's online banking site, because Moz (1.0 and 1.1a) refuse to render the toolbar that gives you access to these features. So, instead, I turn my chair around and use my Windows computer instead, and IE renders it fine.

I think if AOL switches to Moz, and all of a sudden millions of clueless aolers can't visit their favorite porn sites, they're going to start flooding AOL with complaints, not the site designers. That is, AOL users will not force websites to write standards-compliant pages, but will force AOL to use a webpage-compliant browser (IE).

Re:The key to the Browser Wars...

[Danse]

If even a few people start complaining to the banks and the banks realize that AOL users can't view their site, then I think it will cause them to fix it. I don't know why the banks would do something stupid like creating an IE-only site in the first place, but they should realize its a mistake as soon as the first AOL users start to complain. They should realize it a lot sooner than that, but it sounds like some banks don't have very intelligent web developers.

Re:The key to the Browser Wars...

[meta-monkey]

My point is that the AOLers would most likely complain to AOL, not to the bank. They probably wouldn't even realize the browser was a completely different program. Most likey, they would call up AOL and say "AOL 7.0 worked great, but this new AOL 8.0 makes all my pages look funny!" and then AOL would have to placate the masses with a return to IE.

IE4 and netscape 4.7

[BrookHarty]

Im stuck with old technology that only works with older browsers. Document warehouse sites that only work with netscape 4.7x, E-Room sites that only support older IE4/5 sites. IE6 isnt even supported on the corporate sites yet! Admin sites for netscape proxies that only work with netscape, solaris app guis in java that only work with IE... java applets break on everything, but somehow is a standard, pop ups that dont pop up, pull down menus that wont display... argh.

Who can only use 1 browser? I have to have 4 on my pc, just to get my damn work done. War, hell ya its a cluster fuck.

-
Mozilla, sweet sweet mozilla...

Why Mozilla?

[jukal]

This clip says it all:
<clip> Mozilla's Baker insists the project's success is critical to the Web's future: "If there's only one browser and that browser is tied to the business plan of a particular entity, it's quite likely that what we see on the Web will be limited." </clip>

In otherwords, eventough the trouble of installing Mozilla instead of IE is a pain for most average people, and the gain might be minimal, people should do it just because: otherwise we are doomed. If this is the motivation, it will never happen. Getting it pre-installed on Windows (AOL,IBM, HP/Compaq to the rescue?) is really the only chance IMHO.

Re:Why Mozilla?

[jukal]

Yeah, it's a shame Bill never invented /usr/bin/yes on Windows. Everything is just /usr/bin/maybe :)

Re:Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbo

[Shimmer]

It's a joke. A quote from Animal House.

If the Army of Lemmings (AOL)

[smittyoneeach]

put out a branded AOL on those Lindows boxen down at Wally World, you could be in a browser war zone...

Re:If the Army of Lemmings (AOL)

[Reziac]

That's actually a damn good idea. High exposure, zero risk, zero cost. AOL promoted by AOL-Netscape (or Mozilla, who cares so long as it's an *alternative* to IE) and WalMart, a natural partnership.

I don't want to be locked into an IE-only web, and if that's what it takes to prevent it, hey, go for it.

Re:If the Army of Lemmings (AOL)

[Reziac]

Nah, the storefronts here went away because the whole area was economically depressed, and stayed that way for too many years for anyone without corporate backing to survive it. The local economy is finally coming back up from the dumps, and the fact that we have FOUR WalMarts (including the one with the highest gross in California) for 270,000 people doesn't seem to be hurting all the mom-and-pops that are sprouting in every strip mall, either.

Anyway, not that WalMart is out for anyone but WalMart, but the original point was that anything that preserves browser choice has SOME merit, and if adding AOL to these Lindows desktops helps with that, why not do it??

The War War

[tswinzig]

I'm starting a new war. It's called the War on War. If you're sick of all these Wars, please join my war.

Seriously, who really wants to read about browser wars any more? The market will dictate which browser "wins." The rest of the browsers will have to be happy with less than a majority of users.

Big friggin whoopty-do!

I use mozilla because I like it. If MSIE comes out with something better, I might use it instead.

Re:The War War

[chris_mahan]

In today's report on the Browser War, Pentagon spokesperson Colonel John L. Bruegghammer announced that following sustained bombing of Mozzillite position during the night, the Softies thought they would simply need to perform a mop-up operation. However, the fighting intensified during the morning, and the Open Reporters quoted a source in the opposition: "We are in high spirit, and even though we lost a lot of ground, we are poised to carry the day".

Re:The War War

[Frank of Earth]

In related news, France surrenders to the Lynx browser.

If the war is over, who's the loser?

[donutz]

Clearly, the consumer.

If I added up all the time spent closing those annoying pop up/under windows with IE, I'm sure it'd more than make up for the time spent waiting for Mozilla to get swapped back into memory (I often run a lotta apps, and Mozilla uses a lot of RAM (who doesn't these days?)...

And then there's the seizure-inducing rapid-flash animated gifs that loop to infinity in IE...in Mozilla I can set them to run just once. Or not view them at all (or only ones from the same server). The savings from not paying those medical expenses...I could put a down payment on a house with that money instead!

The Tabs are a nice feature...when I'm running a lotta apps, there's no room for text on the Taskbar...but my tabs can tell me what page they're holding for me.

If everyone else sticks with IE, at least I know I'm happier browsing now than I was before. Thanks Mozilla!

It's not a real war....

[Steveftoth]

because IE renders most Mozilla pages fine, but mozilla doesn't render all IE pages fine.

Since Mozilla is the 'better browser' but doesn't accept sloppy coding, IE has an advantage.

There is not a huge difference inbetween the commands that Mozilla accepts but IE doesn't.

Re:It's not a real war....

[Dixie_Flatline]

> because IE renders most Mozilla pages fine, but mozilla doesn't render all IE pages fine.

What you just said there basically translates to:

IE renders most Mozilla pages fine, and Mozilla renders most IE pages fine.

For the most part, there is overlap in the two sets of pages that the browsers render. However, there're a few pages that won't render in one or the other. No big deal, really. It's a question of which 'most' is more important to you.

Re:It's not a real war....

[Peyna]

While not quite the same thing, I wouldn't want to use a compiler than would accept sloppy code, or try to do its best with crapped up code. It should report an error to inform the coder what they did wrong, and what would happen if it was used. That's what Mozilla does, it says "This is messed up, it shouldn't be like this at all, I don't know what to do with this", IE says, "Well, I think this is what they MEANT to do, so I'll just do it for them." The latter can be pretty dangerous.

Re:It's not a real war....

[cheezedawg]

Like it or not, but IE's acceptance of sloppy code did wonders for the growth of the internet. Suddenly it wasn't only the nerds who cared about matching brackets or tags that were publishing web sites. Ma and pa could throw some pages up there, and it still looked ok even though they didn't study the HTML syntax.

Re:It's not a real war....

[Steveftoth]

While not quite the same thing, I wouldn't want to use a compiler than would accept sloppy code, or try to do its best with crapped up code. It should report an error to inform the coder what they did wrong, and what would happen if it was used. That's what Mozilla does, it says "This is messed up, it shouldn't be like this at all, I don't know what to do with this", IE says, "Well, I think this is what they MEANT to do, so I'll just do it for them." The latter can be pretty dangerous.

I would'nt want to use a compiler like that either, but I bet that many people would. People who probably shouldn't be programming, but still there are those that would.

Self-Hype

[TWR]

Quote from article:

Mozilla may thrill some tech-savvy users, "but it's not going to make a dent with the mainstream," said WebSideStory's Geoff Johnston, unless, that is, AOL Time Warner puts major marketing muscle behind it.

Like, oh, I don't know, having the news division of AOL Time Warner run stories on the browser?

-jon

Re:Self-Hype

[Mansing]

Why is it that "WebSideStory" is the web browser authority? Because web site owners allow their sites to be counted? Does anyone have any idea if "real," high volume sites like Yahoo, CNN, and, perhaps, the New York Times contribute to their statistics?

Web sites with HitBox counters (used by WebSideStory to generate their stats) are small, niche, and nothing like the mainstream. I tired of these self-appointed experts dictating who uses what browser.

WebSideStory: the definition of "Self-Hype"

Browser war over for me since 0.9.2

[aralin]

The browser war is indeed long time over. For me its since Mozilla 0.9.2, which was the last time I had to reboot in Windows to view some web page.
There is no question of which browser is far superior. And since these products do not generate direct revenue, I'd say that the better one is clear winner.

It's Over

[Lysander Luddite]

This is the media simply trying to stir up a story. The fact that it is being pushed by AOL properties like CNN, Fortune etc makes it even more apparent.

It really doesn't matter to me which browser people use as long as it supports 95% of the latest specs (in this case HTML 4 and CSS-1). If it supports DOM, XML, and CSS-2 even better.

Mozilla's path to victory: Annoyance free browsing

[sterno]

The big problem I've found when I am pressed into using IE for whatever reason is the ridiculous amount of ad-related annoyances I have to deal with. Pop-over ads, pop-under ads, animated things flying all over my screen, etc. And this isn't even at the pr0n sites!

I think Mozilla's chance to grab some market share is by pushing for the fact that it gives you control over these annoyances. Turn off all of those unrequested popups with a couple of mouse clicks, or you can go back to using IE and have to close a bazillion windows every time you are done surfing.

So, I think the browser war isn't quite over, it's just going to be fought on a different front.

Washington Post has a story too

[peterdaly]

The Washington Post has a favorable review of Mozilla 1.0 as well, with I though was interesting because a) it's read by politicians among others, and b) it is a review of Mozilla and not Nutscrape.

Anyway, here is the link. One of his favorite features was the ability to block ads. He even tells people how to turn that feature on.

-Pete

Re:Washington Post has a story too

[blibbleblobble]

W.T.F. ???

The Washington Post says:

"Its mail-and-newsgroups module offers limited support for multiple mail accounts and weak filtering options compared with Eudora or Outlook Express."

Excuse me? I've got 3 email accounts and 2 newsgroups setup on my Mozilla mail, and its "weak filtering" is correctly deleting some 30 spam per day, something which Outlook Express never managed to do.

"The ChatZilla instant-messaging program connects only to Internet Relay Chat networks, not the more popular systems of AOL, MSN and Yahoo."

Right. So it only supports the 600,000 people on DALnet, to name just one of the tens of thousands of IRC servers available, each of which is the equivalent of Yahoo!Chat...

Some surprise they didn't support these other advertising-supported networks then, given their history of changing protocols to try and make 3rd party clients break. (lookup the GAIM history as one example, or see the prominent, flashing advertising banners on Yahoo's own chat client)

"Future versions of Mozilla may fix these problems"

I sincerely hope not. I hope they work on the IRC client, rather than wasting their time on Yahoo. I hope they keep the filtering pretty much as it is, and continue their support for multiple email clients.

The only feature I really miss is having "popunder" tabs like in Galeon, so you can open a whole array of links without having to switch back to your original window. Being able to filter flash animations would be good too, although kudos for filtering the signal-to-noise ratio of most sites by removing animations, doubleclick banners, and popup windows.

And at only 15Mb, no excuses for not taking ten minutes to install it!

Re:Washington Post has a story too

[David Gerard]

The only feature I really miss is having "popunder" tabs like in Galeon, so you can open a whole array of links without having to switch back to your original window.

Check the tab preferences :-) Mozilla does this just fine.

Being able to filter flash animations would be good too, although kudos for filtering the signal-to-noise ratio of most sites by removing animations, doubleclick banners, and popup windows.

It's a much-demanded feature, and there's an RFE bug open on it. Does Galeon do this already?

losing a significant amount of market share

[glrotate]

IE will be losing a significant amount of market share very soon

Bookmarked.

Care to bet on this?

Re:losing a significant amount of market share

[zulux]

Bookmarked.

Care to bet on this?

Don't you mean "My Favorites" ?

Here's a hint: Right click on "My Computer" then rename it to "My Komputer." Then all your fiends will think youre a cool KDE Linux user.

Gotta go.. The paperclip is helping me write a letter.

Re:losing a significant amount of market share

[zulux]

I've seen you post a couple times, and I just gotta say, damn, I love your sig. It just really sums up everything very nicely.

Thanks. It took a while to fit it under the Slashdot sig cap.

There's a gentleman who setup a website calld newslavery.org that focuses more on the coporite side of things but is worth the read. I'm probably a little bit more pissed at the scheming welfare class than I should be, but their GIMMIE GIMMIE, opps I HAD ANOTHER BABY attitude is really grating on my nerves.

The easiest solution that I can figgure out would be that people who take out of the government more than they put in should not be allowed to vote. And anybody that spawns a child that the government has to pay for should be spayed/neutered. (yes I know those are terms for animals, but REAL humans woulden't bring a life into the world that they know they coulden't take care of)

Oh well, sorry for the rant and thanks.

Re:losing a significant amount of market share

[zulux]

Including people who are too physically disabled to work?

If disabled through no fault of their own AND are otherwise trying to be productive, then they should, of course, be allowd to vote.

But if they caused their own diability, say by driving drunk, and they are spongin off our tax money, then they obviously don't have enough inteligence to determine the course of our union.

I don't know where the line should be drawn, but it needs to be considered.

I want to see Slashdot Log Files

[puto]

Flame me, kill my dog, curse my unborn children but...

I use Linux, I use Windows, and I develop site every now and again. Noting to fancy shcmancy but just for pocket change. So I keep all browsers on my system so I can see that whatever I am developing remains uniform. And usually it does. I do not develop for any one but so all can see it in pretty much the same way.

Netscape sucks the big one, while I can make anything run like a charm on IE and Opera. And stability issues(Java applets working and not crashing browser, win again with the IE and Opera).

So what do we do? For one lets stop turning this into a MS bitch and moan session. Tired of it, it is worn out. We are talking about browsers and ya'll are whining about all Microsoft products. Show me the slashdot logs and see how much traffic is IE. And do not come back the the fricken answer"I gotta use IE cause it is a work box" BULLSHIT. If we are all the hotshot admins we claim to be we can run a nix on a box at work, or at least another browser of choice on Windows to show we are fighting the good fight.

I imagine that the /. logs show heavy IE saturation.

Hell, I use IE, no skin off my nose. I have one box just for browsing and I use opera on it and it works fine. Ilove opera. But IE ain't bad in many ways. Show me the logs TACO

And MS might be the monster that ate the world but some of there products are not too bad. Office works and people like it. Star Office eats it, open office eats it less but still bites. I would rather use wordstar.

You know what the next killer app would be? Us coming off the high horse that linux is the be all end all salve for anything that ails a computer. It is good stuff, but UNIX is UNIX, and a new Nix is just an old nix.

Christ, I love /. but sometimes I wonder.

Puto

Re:I want to see Slashdot Log Files

[gol64738]

this is moderated as interesting? you must be kidding me...

what a troll..

Market broken

[Anonymous Coward]

It has nothing to do with the market. IE comes bundled with Windows, which comes bundled with your computer when you buy it. There is little incentive to switch browsers when your computer already comes with one.

Re:Market broken

[joto]

And especially when almost any site work well with IE, and a few have problems with Mozilla. IE has won the browser war, it's a sad fact, but even I am not going to switch just to be politically correct. I use IE under windows as long as it works best, and is still a free download.

Re:Market broken

[rseuhs]

Mozilla is a lot better than IE (tabbed browsing, http-pipelining, etc.)

And millions of AOL-users - while not reaching majority - will make sure that Mozilla reaches enough marketshare so it can't be ignored by webmasters.

Hell, I use it all the time and I don't have any real problems, maybe once per week I see a misaligned graphic, but nothing really important.

Wasn't she fired?

[Otter]

from the god-I-read-too-much-Slashdot dept

Mozilla's general manager Mitchell Baker says the browser is "a critical component of keeping the Web open and allowing innovation.

Wasn't she fired last year?

Please don't point out what I could otherwise be doing with the brain cells I used to store and retrieve that bit of information. I'm pretty concerned about it myself...

Frosted glass

[jlusk4]

http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/complexspira l/glassy.html

Those of you using IE will need to switch to Mozilla. Those of you using Mozilla won't even notice the part that doesn't work under IE, it feels so natural.

Cool effect that works only under Mozilla and just feels right. Now who's at the disadvantage?

Re:Frosted glass

[dillon_rinker]

I'm using IE6, and I guess a picture is worth a thousand words, becaus I don't understand from your explanation what it is that I'm supposed to see that I'm not. Would you care to post a screenshot for comparison purposes?

Re:Frosted glass

[Per Wigren]

Works perfectly in Konqueror (KDE3)! :)

Re:Frosted glass

[Sloppy]

Now who's at the disadvantage?

Whoever made that web page, that's who.

I looked at that page (with a browser that has CSS), and it was pretty cool! So then I looked at it with a completely CSS-ignorant browser, and the page still worked fine. It just looked bad. When I see a web page that looks bad, I don't think, "Oh no, my browser sucks." I think, "Wow, whoever made this page, was clueless."

MSIE users will surely draw the same conclusion. And it's the right conclusion too. If someone makes a web page that requires CSS (or requires that some specific style be used) to look good, then they're messing up.

Re:Frosted glass

[weave]

If someone makes a web page that requires CSS (or requires that some specific style be used) to look good, then they're messing up.

Oh, so you admit that people who make pages that require IE to look good are messing up too?

I hope you also realize how some really neat stuff is not being done because of lack of standards support in IE. IE is to Mozilla now what NS 4.x was to IE before now.

IE = Old and Busted
Mozilla = New Hotness

:-)

Re:Frosted glass

[rseuhs]

Oh my god, before I will *gasp* download Mozilla I would rather troll on slashdot and request screenshots about a feature that can't be shown on a screenshot.

Hey, what's up with you? Is Bill Gates standing behind you and holding a Magnum on your head? Did you sign a live-long contract with Microsoft? What exactly is holding you back from downloading Mozilla?

This "I use Microsoft and will always use Microsoft even if it involves great pain." - kind of attitude is not going through my head, care to explain it to me?

Re:Frosted glass

[dillon_rinker]

...I would rather troll on slashdot...

If you insist...YHBT.YHL. HAND. =)

Is Bill Gates standing behind you and holding a Magnum on your head?

Metaphorically, yes. I'm at work where we use nothing but Windows, and I can't download and install unauthorized software. My home Linux system does not have an internet connection.

Think of it more of "I use Microsoft and am delighted to see its flaws but need a bit of help sometimes" kind of attitude. Making Mozilla the default browser would be a coup of sorts, but I'd need evidence for it...

AOL 8.0 Beta still uses IE

[cpeterso]

I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for AOL to use Netscape, considering AOL 8.0 Beta 1 was just released and it still uses IE.

Re:Wait till there's a security hole

[joshki]

How long did it take MS to fix the last IE hole? And the one before that? And......

The fact that the source is available doesn't make a program more vulnerable. You need to do some research on insecurity through obscurity before you start spouting -- it's a well-known fact that crypto algorithms are made available for peer review for exactly this purpose. A thoroughly reviewed code-base is much more secure than a closed-source one, and can be fixed much more quickly if a vulnerability is found.

There shouldn't even be a browser war

[nrosier]

Mozilla is not a weapon to fight a browser war, it's a weapon to fight a standards war. Fight MS in following the W3C standards.

All the discussions about IE looking, feeling, being better then any other browser don't matter to me. IE is MS's tool to internet domination through bad standards support and proprietary tags. This is what we should be fighting against. Educate web-developers not to take the easy road but follow the standards, drop IE-only tags, use validator.w3.org. If I can do it for my personal pages, they should be able to do it too.
---
"Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network."
-- Tim Berners-Lee in Technology Review, July 1996

Favorite Quote

[Selanit]

Microsoft declined comment on how much of a threat it considers Mozilla, saying it cannot speak on rival products.

Eh? What's that? Is this the same company that called the GPL "pac-man like" and Linux "unamerican?" How is it that all of a sudden that can't speak on rival products?

<snort>

Re:I'm unimpressed with Mozilla. Opera, though...

[Christianfreak]

Mozilla 1.0 looks and feels (to me, anyway) just like the most recent versions of Netscape, which are inferior to IE.

Not really sure what your complaint is. If its just that the default theme looks like Netscape 4x then change the theme. Its not hard and it ships with the Mozilla Modern theme which I find very pretty. Heck I read somewhere that there's a theme that makes it look like IE!

The 'feel' is the same in someways but again the themes can change the button locations and there are tons of ways to customize. Just take a peek at the prefs menu before you dismiss it so easily.

That is a cool effect....

[Steveftoth]

damn that is a sweet effect!

It does use a lot of CPU, but oh well. That's what the CPU is for right?

The War is Over

[asv108]

Lynx won!

I don't care the market

[hokanomono]

I don't care who uses IE. It's just that i don't want to be forced to use IE.

To avoid the web using proprietary formats, all we need to do is, to keep public awareness of the browser war. We don't need to win the war for Mozilla. We just have to remind content providers, that they may not decide the war.

For this aim, I see a good future. The amount of word documents offered to me as single choice is decreasing and the local online newspaper is fully mozilla compatible.

Microsoft lost the browser war.

[IGnatius T Foobar]

Yes, you read that correctly: Microsoft lost the browser war. Standards won. And that means everyone won, except Microsoft.

Think about it: why did Microsoft have such a low opinion about the Internet? They recognized the same thing that Marc Andreesen did: that it was a new platform for delivering applications. Microsoft didn't want that to happen; the incumbent platform was Windows. They were eventually forced to get into the browser business because the monopolist doesn't allow third-party applications with an installed base of more than a few thousand seats, of course, but it's all still standards-compliant.

Applications and information services are now delivered on the Web, not as little standalone Windows apps that you have to download and install. And that means the paradigm has shifted. The war is most definitely over, and Microsoft has lost.

The Real War -- Battleground Web Developers

[Mansing]

When AOL moves away from IE, then the battle will begin. The release Mozilla 1.0 is only the opening salvo. Mozilla (and all the Gecko based browsers) will need to achieve a critical mass before real changes will occur.

The battleground will be the Web Developers. When they realize that Moz and Moz based browsers command the largest collection of suckers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H consumers on the Internet, then they will change their sites to make the pages look "good". When they change their sites, others will move to the browser that displays the pages best.

And the browsers that are W3 compliant, and render pages correctly, will move back into a position of competition.

If IE really did suck

[Steveftoth]

then people would get netscape. Look at IE version 2.0. However, IE is a decent browser, not the best but it does most of what people expect it to do. And since people code to it, the web works on it.

It's our job to change that. To make sure that people move to bigger and better browsers. ;)

Re:If IE really did suck

[NanoGator]

Agreed.

I'm an Opera user, but I'm relatively happy with the web basically working like it should now. I don't wanna muck it up with having to use one browser for some sites and another for others. That is so 1995.

Re:If IE really did suck

[Random Feature]

When "people" (i.e. everyday users) encounter a "broken" site, they assume it's the SITE that's broken. Not IE.

That misperception is the crux of the problem. People won't move off IE because they don't perceive that the reason a site isn't showing correctly is IE's crappy CSS support, they assume it's the site's crappy coders.

Fix that perception and you can change the world.

Re:Wait till there's a security hole

[litewoheat]

This has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. What if, for example (not real), when the rendering engine gets something like Hi it crashes or worse makes Mozilla think that its running in local mode (file://) with access to stuff that should not be accessable from a remote URL?.

Now I'm not saying that the hole will be that easy but the one that IS there will be easier to find and exploit with the source.

"Browser War Already Over"

[pyrrho]

This sets off a few of my "old timer" bells (that's right, I'm old, aka "over thirty")...

One, did you ever read about "The War to End All Wars"? That was WWI! They were much more realistic about naming WWII.

Also, please realize what you thought about history perpetually progressing forward was a lie. Things are never determined. It's all still up for grabs. Winning is what happens in board games, in the real world it's a perpetual struggle. Yes, even among browsers.

Re:1 battle.

[Christianfreak]

This is a troll but I'll bite.

Mozilla is slow,

Moz 1 beats IE on page loads. The slow part is start up and the only reason that IE can do it faster is that you load everything but the window when you start your computer!

large

well apps usually take all the memory they can get (at least on Linux) and me not running much right now top reports that its taking only 35 megs right now. That's not bad and moz will run on a machine with 16 megs.

buggy at best

I can count on one hand how many times moz has crashed on me since 0.96, oh maybe you're talking about IE only webpages. You should stay away from those anyway.

The war of the browsers is over and IE won. Not because it's the better browser, but because everything is now written to be IE compatible rather that standards compliant.

No not everything. I'm in charge of a web development team and we write standards complient code. We've designed dozens of sites, they all work and work right.

And I'm not the only one either. I have visited maybe one site in the last few months that didn't show right in mozilla. So try it before just assuming things. Sweeping generalizations are bad.

CNN article does Moz a serious disservice

[Sanity]

The Mozilla team officially makes versions for Macintosh and the open-source Linux...

...and at that point tens of thousands of Windows users stop reading, unaware that Mozilla is available for their platform too :-(

the point of the article...

[deviator]

I think the point of the article isn't so much whether Mozilla will beat IE for general use... it focuses on the REAL advantage of Mozilla; that is, the use of the Gecko engine in lots of other devices and scenarios. It will be interesting to see Gecko slowly supplant IE as the engine of choice for all non-MS companies who need to render HTML.

It All Depends on AOL

[RAMMS EIN]

AOL really has the chance to initiate some good developments here. If they switch to Mozilla, so many people will be using Mozilla that webmasters will actually care about their pages in other browsers than MSIE again. That would, in turn, make the web more accesible to people using alternative browsers, so that webmasters have to care about standards more, ...

See also the recent discussion about browser wars

You can browse annoyance-free with IE, too. . .

[PhxBlue]

Turn off all of those unrequested popups with a couple of mouse clicks, or you can go back to using IE and have to close a bazillion windows every time you are done surfing.

Actually, that's all it takes for IE, too--just use the highest possible security settings, including "Disable Active Scripting," for your "Internet" zone. Probably 90% of the websites I surf render just fine without it. And if I think I'm ever going to come back to one of the 10% that don't, I can add it to my "trusted" sites list, which uses "Internet"-level security settings.

Re:You can browse annoyance-free with IE, too. . .

[Tokerat]

I can add it to my "trusted" sites list, which uses "Internet"-level security settings.

Which is burried under Edit->Preferences... then "Security Zones", then Zone: Trusted Zones then "Add Site..." THEN "Add..." THEN type the friggin URL (or well yea, paste). AHHHH Why isn't there a "Trust" button I can add to my Toolbar that just does this?

Microsoft: As feature-rich as a Mac with all the ease of use of a Univac.

Re:You can browse annoyance-free with IE, too. . .

[cybermage]

Probably 90% of the websites I surf render just fine without it.

That means 1 in 10 don't render fine. Would you buy a car if it didn't start 1 in 10 times?

Having "toggle JavaScript On and Off" as your only option isn't an option. Deciding what Javascript can/cannot do is better. In Mozilla, you can tell it, specifically, no unsolicited pop-up windows. Yes, it even differentiates between click-generated pop-ups and automatic pop-ups.

Re:You can browse annoyance-free with IE, too. . .

[evilviper]

Well, the highest security level doesn't even allow you to DOWNLOAD from a site.

Secondly, you have to be an idiot to like the new mozilla features. Firstly, anyone with an ounce of intelligence shuts off java and javascript completely, getting rid of all popups. So, this is just for the group that isn't smart enough to know to disable javascript, but knows where to looks, and knows that you CAN disable popups. It's a select group.

Finally, if you wanted those features, along with many others, they've been available in many filtering proxies for quite some time. Hell, that's how I get rid of IFrames, and disable image sizes so that blocked images don't display an exmpty frame or take up any space.

Mozilla would win the browser war

[cr@ckwhore]

Here's my theory. If the word was spread that mozilla can block pop-up ads by simply checking a checkbox in the preferences, then I bet people would come to mozilla by the millions.

Unfortunately, most people are completely unaware of that simple, yet extremely powerful feature.

Re:Mozilla would win the browser war

[jesser]

I'd like to go one step further and disable pop-up ads by default (bug 111542). However, I think we should make Mozilla's pop-up blocking more robust first. There are currently several ways around our pop-up blocking, such as auto-submitting a form that is set to submit into a new window (bug 144726). Luckily, advertisers are finding those holes for us quickly.

Re:If you can't get into the site,

[Reziac]

Type the obvious: webmaster@whateversite.com Anyone can do that, whether a mailto link is visible or not. And often one can see the first page, or a sitemap, but nothing else.

I have two clients who are legally blind, but when I write webmasters and complain about poor site accessability on my clients' behalf, I have yet to get a response.

Mozilla has a greater advantage over IE

[AnimeFreak]

How so?

First of all, any issues involving bugs are fixed from a meare few hours to a few days. If I do recall correctly, Microsoft takes a few days to a few weeks, even longer and in fact, they don't even fix the bugs, they just remove the part that doesn't work (IE: the gopher hole).

Second of all, you OWN the browser. Once you download it you are free to do what you want with it within the policies of the GPL. If you have the skills to write an addon that will stop popup banners and banners in general, you are free to do so. If you want to make it so it runs on your PalmPilot or even your refridgerator, you're welcome to. Microsoft basically states they own the browser and they are free to rape your computer at will. To make matters worse, you are only able to get it for Windows, Macintosh, Solaris, and HP-UX, nothing else. Mozilla? It can run on almost any OS these days.

Mozilla, or Gecko rather, will be availble in the newer versions of AOL. What does this mean? This means that there is potential to have at least 1,000,000 new Mozilla users as there are something like that number using the free 1,000 hours. Over time it might mean that the 35,000,000 AOL users will be using Mozilla over IE and that can cause a huge dent in the amount of hits our webservers get with IE.

Mozilla may not just a web browser either. It has been said that you could write spreadsheet or word processing software from it's rendering engine. If this is true, then Mozilla is way better than IE.

Re:Mozilla has a greater advantage over IE

[David Gerard]

Once you download it you are free to do what you want with it within the policies of the GPL.

MPL/NPL, not GPL - most of the code has been relicensed under the MPL/GPL/LGPL triple license, but not all (they're trying to track down those last few contributors to get permission to relicense their bits).

But the MPL offers a lot of freedom too :-)

And notice how http://mozilla.org/start/1.0/ has Open Source/Free Software at the top.

Most Mozilla users don't use Windows either

[micromoog]

Let's face it: most people who use Mozilla are using it on a non-Windows operating system. I tried Mozilla 1.0 on Windows, and quickly went back to IE when I realized that IE is still both faster (inital load and page rendering) and more stable.

Mozilla may be the best thing available on Linux or other systems, but nothing can yet touch IE on Windows.

Also, don't expect IE to come to a Linux box near you anytime soon without a court order. Not supporting Linux is a key part of their rule-the-desktop strategy. When Joe Avg. finds out Linux can't run his two favorite programs, IE and Word, he'll think twice about installing it.

Microsoft has won the Windows browser war. Any browser war now is inextricably tied to the OS "war".

Re:Most Mozilla users don't use Windows either

[skt]

mozilla on Windows actually works very well. I use it on NT4 and 98 and rendering performance and initial load time is very good. If you want quick load times, you have to use mozilla's turbo feature to load the libraries into memory. IE does the same, so it isn't fair to compare initial load times between mozilla and IE w/o using turbo mode.

I don't think that you can prove that rendering performance is any better in IE vs. mozilla, I think the consensus is that both are basically about the same, and you can't tell the different from a user POV. If your system has a decent amount of memory, mozilla performs very well on any platform.

Re:Most Mozilla users don't use Windows either

[SuperKendall]

I use Mozilla on Windows at work (even as I type this). The only time I load IE is when I'm forced to by internal web apps...

But that's another issue. Basically, I don't see how anyone can browse at all anymore without popup blocking and tabs. I use those features so heavily and they are so useful, it would be worth some slowdown to me - even if there were any, which I haven't really seen. Especially when rendering complex pages Mozilla is really fast, and just more pleasant to use - I also like it's password storage behaviour much MUCH better that IE.

Word to the wise...

[SPYvSPY]

...if you want to make sense, learn grammar. Don't tell me that English isn't your first language, either -- I don't really give a flying freak.

Re:If you can't get into the site,

[zulux]

I have two clients who are legally blind, but when I write webmasters and complain about poor site accessability on my clients' behalf,

I've never gotten a response myself from the webmaster - I've always gone directly over their head. Pick someone at the business who looks like they would be afraid of lawsuits. It's suprisingly effecftive to combine your complaint with official sounding ADA referances.

Some of the ADA requirements are over the top, but it's unexcusable that whole sections of the web are offlimits to blind people due to bad coding by idiot webmasters. The web could be so enableing for blind people if given half the chance. Good luck!

I dunno...

[Sivar]

I wouldn't say it won't matter much. I made some posts on Storagereview.com which linked to images on my server and almost all of the hits to the server (about 80 of 86) were Mozilla, according to Apache's weblog.

They don't know, but they do care

[mangu]

Why they chose to block any customers remains a mystery

I like to browse with konqueror and I try to do something about it when I can't. I send a polite email to the webmaster telling my problems. They usually are surprised that their site, created with whatever "point-and-click" website creation tools their artists are able to use, doesn't work for standard browsers. They are even ignorant of the fact that the web standard is published by the W3C, not microsoft. The happy ending to the story usually is that one more website becomes compliant with the *true* standard and one less website requires IE.

Re:They don't know, but they do care

[isorox]

I have complained nicely before about the crapness of the odeon's website here in the uk not working with konq 2.2.1. Didnt work

Last night I sent a very rude email saying that as I cant find any information about the film, I couldnt go and I'm off to their competitior. No luck there either.

Re:They don't know, but they do care

[Bongo]

I have complained nicely before about the crapness of the odeon's website here in the uk not working with konq 2.2.1. Didnt work

I believe that they are the worst web site I've ever tried to use. Never mind the standards compliance issue; the usability is terrible. They used to have these menus that mouse roll-overs would cause info to be showed on the page, but to get to the links in the info you'd have to move the mouse across other menus that caused the info to dissapear....

Right now they've got a splash page for Spiderman saying "BOOK NOW". Unfortunately that's all it says on the splash page. I wanted a list of films... I didn't want to book Spiderman... but there was no mention of anything other than "BOOK NOW". So I click "BOOK NOW" to get to the main page... which is blank because they've used some wizzy flying menu animation that totally doens't work in Opera(mac) or Mozilla.

Why is it that some of the most commercial sites are utterly useless???

Do people just sit around saying, "we can only afford to support IE, as it's got 95%", while deliberately spending money writing ie only wizzy stuff?

What war?

[Ogerman]

Considering most people consider the war long since over, I can't imagine this mattering much.

Browser war? For crying out loud, they all use the same standards now. Nobody's developing pages that absolutely require MSIE or Netscape. (with respect to rendering that is.. you may have to tell your browser to report a different ID for a handful of lame sites). The "browser war" ended when all parties gave up on including proprietary HTML extensions / quirks / etc. All that remains is the polishing of user interfaces--which, IMO, Konqueror 3.x is leading.

They could always do like M$

[Erris]

Your customers don't understand browser compliance, they merely know that they could visit sites with AOL 7, but not AOL 8. Is the deluge of customer support phone calls and email really worth the hassle?

Ha! They could just get the browser to pop up a little message, "This site uses non standard methods and may not display properly," for every site that does so much as ask what browser you are using. This would let the user know who is at fault and prevent many irritated phone calls. Most of the pages would display OK, those few that don't would just get shafted as they deserve to be.

Re:They could always do like M$

[Tony-A]

Sites don't "ask" what browser you're using
Agreed. "ask" is not the right term.

from microsoft.com
<script language="JavaScript">
<!--
var userAgent = navigator.userAgent;
var MSIEIndex = userAgent.indexOf("MSIE");

"demanding" maybe more like it.

Re:It's on MSNBC.com

[ceejayoz]

They also had a glowing review of OpenOffice about a month back... the reviewer was VERY pleased with it.

Don't forget the PS3

[rseuhs]

Playstation3 will use Linux for everything online-related. If it is as successful as PS1 (100 Million sold) or PS2 (30 million sold, another million sold EACH MONTH), there will be millions of Mozilla-users who won't accept a "use IE instead" because they *can't* use IE.

Add to those:

• 30 million of AOL users who will sooner or later upgrade to a Mozilla-based browser. Few computers last longer than 4 years, also Widows tends to be reinstalled sometimes even without upgrading hardware, so I guess that in 3 or 4 years we will see at least 20 million Mozilla-users coming from AOL.
• Windows-users who like Mozilla's features (tabbed browsing, http-pipelining, stop animations)
• Windows-users not liking Microsoft (actually I know more Windows-users hating Microsoft than liking them. Yes, you can flame me for this.)
• Linux users. Yes it's starting to happen. South Korea switching 1/4 of their desktops to Linux, allmost all Hollywood studios switching to Linux, Walmart starting to sell Linux-preinstalled computers to the masses - this is just the beginning, Linux will make inroads in the desktop in the next years.
• People who want a multiplatform browser. No, IE/Mac is not the same as IE/Win and see above for PS3 and Linux/desktop in the future. Those people who use any non-Windows OS either at work or at home will probably also use Mozilla on their Windows-machines because Mozilla makes it easier to share bookmarks etc. between platforms.
• As the article suggests, people using embedded devices, etc.

Mozilla will almost certainly break IE-domination in this year (by reaching more than 10% marketshare, which is too much to ignore for webdesigners) and will become the standard browser within 10 years.

Re:Don't forget the PS3

[rseuhs]

It is entirely reasonable for them to use a computer to surf the web rather than a wannabe-computer like the PS3.

No, it's not reasonable to expect from your customer/visitor to write down your url on paper, leave their comfy couch, walk into another room, boot up their computer, type in the URL they have written down and watch your site.

And BTW, not all Playstation owners have a computer in the first place.

Re:Don't forget the PS3

[jesser]

Instead of "locking out Mozilla users" you can say that you are "adding value for IE users".

Go ahead and "add value for IE users", but do it in a way that users of other browsers can still use your site. For example, if your site accepts HTML comments, you could give IE users the option of editing the comment with IE's somewhat-built-in WYSIWYG HTML editor and simply hide the WYSIWYG option from users of other browsers. This does not require you to lock out Mozilla users.

Re:Don't forget the PS3

[rseuhs]

Microsoft already tried to take on Playstation with the XBox (and failed badly).

They can't lower Windows and Office prices (that would destroy Bill Gates valuable stock.), so they will slowly lose to Linux and OpenOffice.

Nothing lasts forever, neither does Microsoft's desktop domination.

Re:Don't forget the PS3

[jesser]

Mozilla currently doesn't give web pages a way to create a form control (or something that looks like a form control) into which the user can enter HTML using Composer commands.

IE has a built-in HTML editor that afaik can be accessed only by setting the "contenteditable" attribute of a node such as a div. IE provides keyboard shortcuts but does not provide a formatting toolbar; instead, it lets scripts create buttons that do the same thing as Ctrl+B=bold, etc. Unfortunately, this includes clipboard functions. Allowing scripts to paste is bad (password leak), but allowing scripts to copy is worse (root hole with a little social engineering).

Re:Don't forget the PS3

[rseuhs]

You forget that Microsoft's revenue consists of 80% Office and Windows.

So if they half these prices, they nearly half their revenue (because the market is saturated) and actually start to make losses instead of high profits.

That's why they simply can't drop these prices and constantly raise prices instead.

Microsoft is a lot more vulnerable than most people believe. They trapped themselves in the stock-option house of cards they built around themselves.

Re:Don't forget the PS3

[rseuhs]

That's probably the most funny post I've seen for a while.

Microsoft not standing still?

I quote Bill Gates:

"The Internet will never be popular"

Microsoft ALWAYS stand still, they NEVER pick up really NEW ideas. They look where everybody is headed, then use their huge ressources to pick up.

Just look at PS, if we are at it. PS2/3 threatens Microsoft stronghold on home-computers, so what did Microsoft do? Copy Sony by putting out a console. The XBox is not offering anything new (no, a harddrive isn't anything new, you could save your games before, too.) they just bought the latest-greatest hardware and put it together, thought that if they through enough money at it, it will become a great success.

Now, half a year after launch, they have sold 2 millions less than expected, have to take 100$ more losses per box than expected and see already developers leaving and XBox failing miserably.

They would have to sell more than 10 games per box to break even and that's only hardware costs, if you count in the bloated marketing costs you would probably need 15 or even more games per customer to reach a cool zero. That simply ain't gonna happen.

So Microsoft is the only one taking huge losses and is still miles behind Gamecube everywhere (which overtook XBox in the USA recently and was always in front everywhere else) and lightyears behind PS2 which wipes the floor with XBox all over the world even though it's 2 years old.

What will Microsoft do against PS3?

Re:Mozilla Stories

[EvlG]

Some of us are very excited that the browser is out.

Having the same browser which is stable, fast, and rock-solid standards compliant on all of the platforms we use is a dream come true.

Re:IE7 and CSS QWZX

[weave]

PNG offers really nice alpha channel support. For an example, check this out...

http://www.mozilla.org/start/1.0/demos/eagle-sun.h tml

btw, it looks like shiat on IE 6...

It's an arms race

[mangu]

what it does is try to open a temporary popup window, then check whether the popup exists. If it finds the popup it closes it and proceeds to what you were trying to get to.

So, what Mozilla needs now is to report as "existing" any window it was told to pop up.

Yahoo has already gone one step further. It shows a random word as a pixmap. You have to read that word and type it in a box. That's supposed to avoid bots from creating new Yahoo users. Next step: OCR-enabled bots...

Same ole same ole...

[weave]

Every few days a mozilla story is posted, and then the same old tired replies are repeated.

Editors of slashdot could improve the productivity of the entire geek world by simply posting mozilla stories and point the comments to an older mozilla story comment section. Then we wouldn't have to repost our same old arguments...

Oh, but it does. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

However, IE is a decent browser, not the best but it does most of what people expect it to do.

And more!

Having my desktop re-organized in terrible ways by IE 6, allowing Windows to make unauthorized connections to the web even when I don't have my browser fired up. . , well that just pisses me off.

I don't like to be a shill in some corporate control ploy.

Mozilla 1.0 is like a breath of fresh air! It does what I ask, it gives me power over simple things IE does not, such as turning off pop-ups, "unrequested windows" in the preferences, among many basic, sensible features. --Features which would only ever be written by non-corporate, private individuals who want a good browser.

IE is for the uninitiated, the unaware, the manipulated consumer sheep of the world.

And damn it, I AM NOT A NUMBER. . !

*ahem*

-Fantastic Lad

Make mozilla.org your signature.

[alfredo]

Put a link to mozilla in your e-mail, at BBS's, anywhere you think your writing will be read.

Get the word out as best you can.

Re:1 battle.

[rseuhs]

Mozilla is slow

It loads faster than IE (with Quickstart enabled) and HTTP 1.1 pipelining will make webpages load about 10% to 20% faster for modem-users or DSL-users with high-latency connections.

Oh, no I fed a troll again...

Bad bug with IE6 (which does kind of suck)

[FyRE666]

I use IE6 as my default on my Windows machine. Recently been working on adding file uploads to my forum and found an interesting way to crash it. The last time I used a file upload I was sending a file from a samba server on my local network. That server no longer exists, so what happened when I hit the "FILE" button on the form? Yep, total lock up :-) Actually I decided to leave it locked to see if it would give up and show the files on the desktop, and sure enough it did, after 5 minutes! While it was locked, I was using Moz to test the uploader script :-)

Re: Your sig

[zulux]

So, uhm, while possibly not all prisoners are criminal, surely, all are equally a burden to tax payers.

I'm not entirly sure that our criminal justice system incarserates only those that are truly guilty of harming our union. One can argue that there are a a few of people who don't belong in prision, either due to stupid laws or malicous prosecution. These people are fortunalty rare.

My general thought is that people in prision should work at least 60 hours of hard labor per week - just like the rest of us. If they don't want to work, then they should starve. Just like the rest of us. They should not keep the fruits of their labor - just like the rest of us overtaxed suckers who keep collectivly voting idiots into office.

Re:OT, how can I get mozilla to stop this?

[moncyb]

You can try running a web server bound to the loopback interface. Then set up virtual hosting for ad.doubleclick.net. ...and there must be a way to return a 1x1 pixel jpeg for every request...

Bzzt, wrong.

[Inoshiro]

If your page looks like crap, but people can still read the content, it's ok. My changelog uses CSS for everything. If you look at it on NS4, it will look "like crap" as you puh it -- but people can still scroll down and read everything just as it was intended.

Mozilla/Netscape as an OS?

[moncyb]

Not to knock your post or the Netscape people, but what is up with them always saying their browser is going to become an operating system? One could probably create a spreadsheet or word processor with Crystal Space, but I wouldn't recommend it...

I'm sure it's just as easy (or easier) to use GTK/ wxWindows or write the program in Python / Java than it would be to use Mozilla. It would be as portable, and you wouldn't have as much bloat either.

NO ONE ever "Chooses" IE!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

IE is the biggest not because people go out of their way to download it, it's because it's already on all the neophyte PC owner's shiny new windows machine. They don't go, "hmmm, I think I need to get a browser, I better FTP to my nearest microsoft mirror and get the latest IE. Boy I sure love IE. IT beats the pants off those other browsers." I challenge you to ask an "IE user" to name two other browsers.

Nope. No one chooses IE. Bill already chose for them. That fine for people that don't understand. For those of us that do understand, we see IE for the WebDialer installing, non standards compliant, stupid question asking, piece of M$-ware it really is.

Being a Netscape 4.6 user, I was suffering on slow page downloads (news.com was one), but I didn't switch to IE (hehe switched to a different tech news site). I downloaded Mozilla after reading about the golden on /., and went to news.com.

Needless to say I have a new favorite browser. And the source code to it too.

Great Job Mozilla Team!!

CmdrTaco hates Mozilla.

[sohp]

"I can't imagine this mattering much".
How hypocritical to be so in favor of open source but irredeemably dissing Mozilla. Oh wait, compare the kind of work that went into slashcode and the quality of the resulting codebase to the Mozilla project. Maybe Taco's definition of open source doesn't include quality code developed by a professional team using good software engineering practices.

The harsh truth

[inkswamp]

I'm seeing comments here about how it must be one or two features of Mozilla that make it attractive to people, but the harsh truth is that until the 1.0 release, Netscape/Mozilla sucked ass and now it's an uphill battle in pulling people away from IE.

I'm not trying to troll here, but it's the truth. And don't give me the typical "but IE breaks web standards, etc." I'm not talking from a developer's perspective, but from a user's perspective which we have seen time and time again is the real deciding factor in most technology "wars," fair or not.

I try my best to keep my machine MS-free, but when it comes to browsers, there was little choice in the matter. Netscape 4.x was a joke and Netscape 6.0 was freaking slooooowwwwwww. A lot of people (even those who despise MS) fled to MSIE for relief, and let's be honest. MS did a decent job with it, at least from a user's perspective.

I'm using Mozilla 1.0 now, trying to give it time to grow on me and replace IE. Mozilla has a few quirks, but its benefits outweigh the negatives and I see significantly little difference between it and IE in terms of user experience. I've been actively encouraging others to try it out, but it will take time. Netscape botched the browser war very badly and IE has rooted itself in the public mind as THE ONE AND ONLY BROWSER. Although I like Mozilla, I have real doubts that it will get far, but best of luck to them. I'm on their side.

--Rick

I hope it's not true

[javacowboy]

Mozilla's my favourite browser, and I think it's the best thing since sliced breead. What I like even more about it is that it's my own little secret. 90% of the masses will keep using IE, blissfully unaware of Mozilla's ability to block annoying pop-up ads.

The more popular Mozilla becomes, the more people will start blocking pop-up ads. The more people start blocking pop-ups, the more site with advertising get annoyed. This means they'll find another ways of innondating me with advertising that get around Mozilla's features.

What's even worse is that if Mozilla starts denting M$'s share of the browser market, M$ WILL start programming Windows to become incompatible with the browser. Since I use Windows 90% of the time (mostly because of work), that would really mess me up.

Dude, Galeon, j0

[rwa2]

You've got to try galeon! It's like a browser done right! Here's my personal list of favourite features not offered by IE or even the Mozilla UI that it derives its rendering engine from:

• popups can come up in new tabs, and each tab can have its own close button. You can kill popups without even looking at them! It also makes it easier to kill tabs without leaving the tab you're looking at (unlike the middle-click in mozilla)
• The searches text inputs are very unobtrusive. It doesn't pop up that big ugly sidebar that insists on popping up even when you're doing normal searches in the main window.
• It saves the state of your browsing session, so you can open everything just like it was when you left off after quitting / rebooting / crashing / etc. Big time saver!
• The Preferences are in the Settings menu item, and not "Edit" or something silly like that
• Nice autobookmarks feature of your most-browsed sites, when you don't feel like mucking around in your history
• A bunch of other inane but useful features that really click in a way no other browser has clicked for me :P

Of course, it's a challenge building it to keep up with the pace of Mozilla development, but once it works, it's really nice... (of course with debian, it's just a simple apt-get source -b galeon )

Re:Dude, Galeon, j0

[kigrwik]

Don't forget to add that bookmarks have support for 3 different clicks:

left-click opens in the current tab,
middle-click opens in a new window or tab
right-click pops up the 'Properties' menu.

You can also manage your own toolbars, easily add bookmarks in folders (not like File Bookmark, scroll, scroll, etc)
Just open the folder and do 'Add Bookmark'. Need a new sub-folder ? Open the folder and 'Add Folder'. Just like Konqueror actually. Now if antialiased text in gecko looked as good as kHTML's it would be paradise.

You can also open a whole folder of bookmarks in tabs or windows , in one click !

It is a wonderful browser.

The only complaint I have is that when it creates or renders a tab it's not very snappy, but I've got not-too-recent hardware :)

Re:Mozilla's path to victory: Annoyance free brows

[Surak]

Yeah, but you can do this with Opera too. You can elect for popups to be opened only in the background, or refused all together.

You can't, unlike Mozilla, tell Opera to display only popups that are requested. However, you can turn this feature on and off very quickly via the F10 'quick preferences' menu.

Of course, on the other hand, Opera is faster. :)

Re:If you can't get into the site,

[Reziac]

I've occasionally gotten responses from webmasters and even seen stuff get fixed (M$'s first insane foray into nested frames, back in late 1996, may well have gone away because of a screenshot I sent 'em.. the frames were gone less than 2 weeks later) but not wrt issues affecting the blind.

I've also sometimes complained to sales@, info@, corporate@, etc. particularly when site problems affect my ability to evaluate or even *gasp* purchase their product. Oddly enough, those are the ones LEAST likely to respond, even tho the access problems represent lost sales.

Even if only 5% of potential clients can't access the site, that's still a lot of money to turn away. Personally, I can't afford to lose 5% of my business; it croggles me that online outfits will cheerfully accept even 10-20% "can't even get in the store", when that would be enough to break a brickstore's profit margin.

Re:More than that...

[sean23007]

There is such a thing as "bad visibility" or even "too much visibility." You mention the Gator thing that tags along and presses the user to use it. Well, people hate that. It's all over the place, and everybody knows about it, but everyone who knows about it absolutely hates it. You don't really want people to hate Mozilla in the same manner, do you? Because I don't.

Cash bonus opportunity!

[El Camino SS]

Here's how you play! If you can be the first one to slide this story again under the nose of the slashdot editors, I will personally send you five whole whopping bucks!

No purchase necessary! Eneter as often as you like... void where prohibited.

Where are these websites?

[browser_war_pow]

With the exception of my online banking service, every website I visit with Mozilla renders and functions quite well.

Re:Where are these websites?

[Hollins]

Exactly my point. If 10% of AOL users have just one site that they're used to using, especially one so important as a bank, this is over a million new customer complaints. And 10% is probably very conservative.

Re:Where are these websites?

[zenyu]

With the exception of my online banking service, every website I visit with Mozilla renders and functions quite well.

My banking and credit card sites work fine. I once had a problem with my bank and sent an e-mail and a reply the next day saying they didn't officially support it but the site was now fixed. Unless their fees are fantastic you should consider another bank. Internet banking is a good thing (Well now it is, they lost some of my money when they beta tested years back, but they credited it back a couple hours after I told em.)

Re:If you can't get into the site,

[mgrochmal]

You want a site to fix this in under 24 hours? Just tell them that you're blind and that their site won't let your blide-enabeled web-browser in. Dreams of ADA lawsuits start dancing in their heads. It works really well for government sites, and moderatly well for medium sized corporations.

Actually, Job Access For Windows (JAWS) is made for blind people to access common computer applications, such as Internet Explorer, Netscape, Outlook Express, Eudora, and so on. The problem doesn't come with the browser itself, but rather the coding habits of the page designer. Screen Reading programs cannot interpret Shockwave or Flash with much success (requires specific code in the document), many proprietary HTML tags that are specific to IE cause problems if the page is viewed with other browsers.

As for suing for compatibility, there is already a class-action lawsuit against AOL in the works (no link, heard it from someone who specializes in teaching blind people how to use computers). We specifically tell visually impaired users to not use America Online. JAWS has problems reading multiple windows, and the few times it changes emphasis, the user often has no audible indicator of what's going on. America ONline is well aware of the problem, and while the adaptive software developers try to keep up with the changes, accessibility online is something that is difficult to enforce, especially for companies who host outside the country.

Finally, there is an attitude amongst several developers that I have talked to that there are not enough bind people to justify making accomodations. "If they want to read it, they'll get someone to read it to them." Sadly, that's a quote from a website designer from a few months ago. Slapping lawsuits on people who don't comply won't solve the problem. If you want the Internet to be fully accessible, make some changes to how Internet content is created. Even if you just find a way to tell them, it is a start.

Not to Mention Fully Supported PNG in Mozilla

[Uggy]

IE 6 doesn't have full alpha layer for PNG yet... no word on if it ever will. 24 bit png with alpha layer (transparent/translucent) works just great in Mozilla, blending into background, without all the tricks and hacks that you have to do with IE. I can use a style sheet to change colors on the fly and don't have to to re-save all the damn graphics and screw with them to get the shadows, edges to come out right. For me that's IE's biggest drawback.

What do most people who design for IE do to avoid this silliness? Is there any 24 bit graphic format that supports an alpha layer in IE? No, really, I'd like to know.

Re:Not to Mention Fully Supported PNG in Mozilla

[Chester K]

What do most people who design for IE do to avoid this silliness? Is there any 24 bit graphic format that supports an alpha layer in IE? No, really, I'd like to know.

Yes. There is. PNG.

You just can't use it straight in an IMG tag, you need to instance a DirectX blending filter. It's not complicated at all, but granted, it is platform-specific.

Re:Promoting Mozilla

[Bedouin X]

Uhhh... first of all its a 10 MB download. Once you download it you just type:

regsvr32 mozctlx.dll

And voila. I'm sure that there is a place where you can download the DLL by itself (it's an 8k file). It is designed as a drop in replacement for the mshtml.dll. So you can give the the same name as your IE control in your app and it will work perfectly. The only caveat has to do with scripting the browser output I think.

I have bookmarked this story

[q-soe]

The sight of people defending AOL Time Warner against Microsoft is in my mind worthy of a bookmark for future reference... AOL Time Warner are a monopoly in a way Microsoft would love to be - they have absorbed media companies left right and center yet as long as they release or support free software they are considered acceptable? Hmm why is it im suspicious of their motives ?

These people control what you see and what you read - they make no bones about their desire to dominate the media world and for them to turn around and start lawsuits against a former ally and best buddy (MS) shows the level of loyalty and trust worthiness they should be afforded.

I use Mozilla on Linux - i like it - its not as stable nor as useable as IE5.5 but it is a damn good browser. Netscape is a bloated, buggy unuseable piece of crap on windows and from my experiments on linux as well. To defend AOL and beg for them to do something like this is a joke, they WILL not do anything unless they can gain a competitive advantage from it - this is the way they have built a business (and previous slashdot stories can attest to it)

Im bookmarking this so when they become 'evil' in the eyes of /. i can post links to this story - Just WHO do you guys think would have the cash to buy parts of a split up MS anyway ? Painting the worlds largest media monopoly as a small guy against microsoft's might makes me laugh and feel ill at the same time.

It might sound bad to some people but superior products win marketshare - IE was better than Netscape - IE won whilst netscape frittered away a lead and became a second rate product (yet mozilla is a first rate ? go figure)

And yes the majority of the real world (non open source) consider IE a very good product.

The # is the whole point!

[Steveftoth]

When I mean most I mean by number of pages on the WEB.

Of course you can generate pages that will workon one but not the other, that # is almost infinite. However, browsing around to web, and sending both browsers to the same pages will probably generate more rendering errors in Mozilla and less in IE.

Especially when you start to goto sites that are dynamic since many of these sites block Mozilla (and any non-netscape 4.7/IE client) (like capitalone.com, try paying your bill there with mozilla!)

The only way to kill the MS monopoly is to make sure that the gecko engine gets onto many many devices, even embedded. That's the one area that they don't own yet.

Re:If you can't get into the site,

[zulux]

Personally, I can't afford to lose 5% of my business; it croggles me that online outfits will cheerfully accept even 10-20% "can't even get in the store"

Hopefully that mentality is going away with the fall of easy VC money. My own company is standards complient due lazyness - we don't want to waste time dealing with any gripes. We've found that doing it right the first time is actaully the lazy way - a we like being lazy. Give us more time to post to Slashdot!

Both Microsoft and Netscape lost the browser war

[g4dget]

Both Microsoft and Netscape were trying to ensnare users and server vendors into some proprietary trap. Microsoft wanted to force all Internet content to depend on Windows, and Netscape wanted to turn their browser into an OS-independent, but otherwise proprietary, platform. Both failed, and in the end, we all won. IE may have most of the market share and some proprietary hooks, but the vast majority of web sites use open, documented, standardized HTML and JavaScript that works on many browsers.

Both Microsoft's and Netscape's strategies failed. The winner ultimately was the end user, who now has a choice among several good browsers that are either bundled or entirely free.

I think you're confusing the browsers

[theolein]

Netscape7 is from AOL. Mozilla is from the Mozilla organisation.

Re:I think you're confusing the browsers

[q-soe]

No
im well aware of the difference - however Netscape 7 and Mozilla share code and thus are very similar - netscape is free and is held up as an open source champion at the same time it belongs to a monopoly which makes MS look like a kindergarten... I simply found that ironic.

Interview with Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen

[the_real_tigga]

MacCentral has a related Interview with Marc Andreessen here.

Catch Phrases for me were:
You know what WAP stands for; it's the sound a WAP cell phone makes when you throw it in the wastebasket.
and
My attitude is, everybody should try competing with Microsoft once in their life. Once.

Enjoy the read.

Yeah, just explain that...

[leonbrooks]

...you can't read text, and pr0n sites are how you got that way...

Mozilla lacks bloat?

[leonbrooks]

/ME picks up his jaw from the floor. Mozilla? Light? Is this some kind of antonym game?

Try Galeon or SkipStone - still Gecko, but much lighter - and be amazed.

As to W3C, she ain't what she used to be...

Re:Mozilla lacks bloat?

[Eil]

Take care to note that I never said Mozilla lacks bloat, just that Netscape only adds to the bloat. :P

Seriously, I'm pretty happy with Mozilla even given its size. With the bloat, Mozilla is much more than a web browser (XPCOM, etc al) and that's something I think I'm going to take advantage of some day.

They probably noticed MS rorting benefits...

[leonbrooks]

...and took that as `writing on the wall' - to wit, `your kingdom has been judged, and found wanting.' Since MS have fiddled their retirement plans, their lackeys have little to lose by being honest.

-I- chose IE

[mccalli]

Interesting that you were a Netscape 4 user. That's why I finally switched to IE - because of Netscape 4. I dabbled around IE 3, and switched over totally at IE 4.

Now, I'm also a Mozilla 1.0 user and that is my primary browser at work for personal usage. Standard reasons - no popups, controlled GIF animation, tabbed browsing etc. I also use it to test any pages I write (along with the W3D Validator).

Despite this, I would like to point out that not everyone is using IE because they were forced to. I'm using it because I like it, and vastly prefer it to the Netscape alternatives.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:It IS the site's problem.

[Random Feature]

Not necessarily. If it doesn't work on IE6 then the browser may be standards deficient.

On a personal site, to make a statement, I see no problem with coding TO THE STANDARDS that exist for interoperability. If a browser ignores those standards, it is the fault of the browser.

My site is valid and standards compliant. It does not display correctly on IE6. I, like many other people, explain on the front page that "if this site doesn't render correctly, your browser is not standards compliant." I am hardly a "deficient web site author". I simply chose to make a stand on complying with known, accepted standards rather than code sniffers and write 5 different versions of my site. There may be, no, there are, many crappy authors out there who have site problems because of ignorance. Some of us, however, are just principled and refuse to bow into pressure.

The explosion of "blogs", which often use CSS to achieve layout, etc... may force this issue into the forefront. Everyday Joe's try to read them and can't, and are presented with a "your browser is broken" message.

Standards exist for a reason - to be followed. If a browser isnt' going to follow that, the producer should be called out publicly and they should fix it.

For a commerce site then I agree 100%. It should be accesssible by everyone regardless of compliance or standards. If your commerce site doesn't work with Mozilla, you are stupid. If it doesn't work with IE6, you are stupid. You are losing money, tainting your reputation and you should fix it.

Re: Your sig

[Manitcor]

I don't know about the US but this is what they seem to do in Brittan (quoted from here)

In May, Great Britain's Home Office, deciding on the proper compensation for a man who served 11 years in prison for a murder he did not commit, ruled that he was entitled to about $1.1 million, but said he would have to reimburse the prison about $63,000 for 11 years' room and board. Said the outraged Michael O'Brien, 34, who had been freed by a Court of Appeal in 1999: "They don't charge guilty people for bed and board. They only charge innocent people." [BBC News, 5-23-02]

Personally I think they should come up with some way to make those imprisoned charged for thier stay (as long as they are really guilty), if not in whole at lease some part.

Re:AP

[Lysander Luddite]

The AP is a wired service. I know AOL doesn't own them, but they certainly have picked up the story in AOL's publications whereas it seems absent in my local papers.

Since AP is a wire service many, many people contribute to it. You can find some odd stories on there. In 1986 a friend of mine posted a story on it stating that the local rock scene was great and had the potential for breakout talent. The next week rep's from several labels were in town scouting out talent.

I'm not saying your statement is false. I'm saying that AP can be used or ignored by publications.

Re:If you can't get into the site,

[Reziac]

Yeah, methinks all that too-easy VC money was indeed a major culprit... as you say, maybe now that *gasp* profit is a concern again, they'll stop blowing off ANY percentage of their potential clients.

Likewise, as you say it is indeed easier to just do it right the first time and not have to deal with any gripes!! Let's hear it for being lazy! :)

What about Mac?

[Tokerat]

I use a Mac (I really didn't make that clear with the Edit->Preferneces reference). I dont' get an option like that unless the Mac team decided to get it together. And even if they make one, will it work in IE for OS 9? doubt it, but that's now Apple's fault, and a whole 'nother story...

There is no war, there's just compatibility.

[Havokmon]

Now, to convert your entire userbase to Netscape will mean a significant portion of sites will no longer look correct or will cease to work entirely. Your customers don't understand browser compliance, they merely know that they could visit sites with AOL 7, but not AOL 8. Is the deluge of customer support phone calls and email really worth the hassle?

That (and the fact that IE just sucks) is the reason I replaced IE with Opera on the President's PC. She came to me the other day and said "You know, I never really realized how bad some of these sites are designed, that they only worked with IE."

So I showed her our site that I'm currently building, and the one LITTLE thing that doesn't match up between the browsers (IE/Opera/Mozilla).

I explained why that happens, what's happening with AOL, and how people with short attention spans will just go somewhere else.

Everything here is hunky-dory. As soon as companies realize web browsing is EXACTLY like window shopping in a Ferrari, we'll see some compliant websites. It's not that hard to do (of course, our site is PHP, written in VI - no 'tools' to muck things up.)

wimps!

[hawk]

>I've timed mozilla and it's definitely faster to
>start (3 seconds click-to-render of my.yahoo.com
>homepage vs IE's ~10 seconds) and it feels faster
>than IE in rendering.

blah, blah, blah. Try a *real* browser, like lynx. WHa'ts "rendering time"?

>It's possible that the javascript doesn't run as
>fast,

Javascript??? Does that mean your coffee is doing the typing or something like that?

"

hawk, desparately wanting to know why "EXTERNAL:http:xterm -e lynx %s &:TRUE" no longer successfully launches an external instance under FreeBSDb

Re: Your sig

[commodoresloat]

One can argue that there are a a few of people who don't belong in prision, either due to stupid laws or malicous prosecution. These people are fortunalty rare.

Actually these people are far from rare - they constitute more than half the (U.S.) prison population, incarcerated for nonviolent offenses (most often for violating "stupid" laws against possessing and ingesting certain substances). Read this or other documents like it before making ridiculous claims about the efficacy of the U.S. prison system.

Re:Bad products?

[DarkProphet]

I haven't noticed this at all. I'm using the Win32 Mozilla 1.0 binary release. As far as I can tell, Mozilla renders a bit faster than my copy of IE6. I've also not noticed any config files getting thrashed. Are you sure its the coding itself, and perhaps maybe not just that the binary you're running was built with incorrect compiler options or something?

Re: Your sig

[zulux]

Read this [sentencingproject.org] or other documents like it before making ridiculous claims about the efficacy of the U.S. prison system.


Who was making claims?

I'm fully away that a bunch of low level pot heads and crack whores are stuck in jail. While I think we are ill served by our "War on Drugs," - I'm not too happy with the kind of people who can't keep the bong out of their mouths when the cops show up.

If half the pot heads took their heads out of the purple haze and voted they might make a diferance. Instead, the they mimble obscure Noam quotes and take delight in pissing off the working classes. Hell, they so pissy, that we can't even use the weed for it's medicle uses because it has gotten such a bad reputation by being associated with the Microbus crowd.

Anyways,
I think both of us would agree that the pot heads should get treatment and a job medicating claucoma and cancer patients.

Re: Your sig

[zulux]

I'm glad I'm European.


I'm glad your European; Somebody has to keep reminding us that metric is cool, guns are evil, and football is played with a round ball.

Re: Your sig

[commodoresloat]

I'm not too happy with the kind of people who can't keep the bong out of their mouths when the cops show up.

I'm not too happy with a lot of idiots in the world, but I don't think they should be incarcerated for that.

If half the pot heads took their heads out of the purple haze and voted they might make a diferance. Instead, the they mimble obscure Noam quotes and take delight in pissing off the working classes. Hell, they so pissy, that we can't even use the weed for it's medicle uses because it has gotten such a bad reputation by being associated with the Microbus crowd.

"mimble obscure Noam quotes"? And you're blaming the "Microbus" crowd for the federal assault on state laws permitting medical use of marijuana, even though it is that very crowd that put those measures on state ballots and funded those campaigns? I'm not going to disagree that there are a lot of apathetic potheads out there, but you can't blame the legalization crowd for the failure of legalization when without them there would be no push for it in the first place.

Re: Your sig

[zulux]

Actually there a *bunch* of us nasty capialist pig types that think that legalization of soft drugs makes perfect sense, but what throws some us off is that the pot-heads want legalization are the same types that don't want personal responsibility, want to take our 2nd ammendment righs away, want to tax us into poverty.

We don't like them on a personal level, and were nasy enough to let them rot in jail. We know it wont happen to us, so it not considered a pressing issue.

If there was some sort of deal where we could legalize pot and get rid of welfare for anybody that decided to use the now-legal pot, then it'd be done in an instant.

It's alsoan image problem - it's hard to take people seriously when their argument is "dude, like, make the good weed legal" or "Sop 'opressin me, lay off my pipe". Right or wrong, that's the image amung the working classes.

I don't know the answer, and quite frankly, what motivates me more about druge legalisation is the tax savings. Perhaps thats a good argument to put forward.

Maybe Mandrake mucked up Mozilla a bit?

[leonbrooks]

Galeon is noticeably faster to load and run than Mozilla (8s to blank window, another 3 to load wife's plain web page over modem vs 16 and 3, loading Google takes 4 vs 5 secs) under Mandrake 8.2 on a P2-233 with 196MB RAM.