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

Re:90%+ for IE still

[loply]

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

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

[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: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: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

[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.

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: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.

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.

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!

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

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

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?

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.

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: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.

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. ;)

"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.

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. . .

[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.

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:90%+ for IE still

[rseuhs]

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

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.