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AOL Releases Client for Mac OS X with Gecko Browser
DietFluffy writes "America Online released an update to their Mac OS X client. The built-in browser is powered by Gecko! However, America Online plans to stick with Internet Explorer for their Windows client.
Will this make web designers think twice about tailoring their web pages to
Internet Explorer? Or will they ignore this, given that the Windows client will
still have Internet Explorer as the default browser?" And if this goes well, will the Windows version eventually use a Gecko-based browser, too?
Based on what information? Do you have a URL? As I've heard it on NPR several times that they won't be switching.
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The reason being that its easy. Most clients of web companies use PCs with the latest version of XP and IE installed - why?
.NET you can actually SMELL the IE bias as soon as you start building a page. This keep development costs down and delivery schedules easy to estimate.
Because its easy. IE has its flaws, but its pretty much universal and good enough. With
By building for IE and offering to 'do a mac version if you get complaints / lose customers' most web houses cover their arse while keeping it simple. And the carrot? 'Its cheap as chips to do in IE, but a bitch to do cross browser - so it'll costs lots more - it'll be cheaper in the long run to do two versions, and you probably wont need the second version anyway!'
IE is here to stay.
Well, do we hate Apple?
I have good reason for predicting that, within a year, Apple will buy AOL from AOLTW.
Right now, "convergence" is out. Convergence-based companies, like Vivendi, Time Warner, Disney, Viacom, and more are looking extremely bad. Many of them are on the verge of breaking up.
So let's say Time Warner breaks up. They put publishing and print-based materials in one company (Time), and multimedia/interactive materials in another company (Warner). That leaves America Online; the service that Apple went to special lengths to enable on Mac; the service that powers Apple's new iChat; and the service that now offers the Gecko browser by default on Mac.
Why wouldn't Apple jump to buy America Online, integrating it with OS X, and morphing the Mac AOL client into both a new, fully standards-compliant Galeon-style browser, and a new, fully standards-compliant MSN Explorer-style browser? They've got the money, after all, being one of two profitable computer companies. I think it'll happen.
As far as I recall, web designers/builders/maintainers/whatevers have traditionally ignored AOL, passing them off as irrelevant (for a variety of reasons from the custom browser they used to use, to the fact that AOL users are stupid by stereotype). To answer the question posted in the story, yes, I think the trends towards developing for Internet Explorer will (sadly) continue, for two reasons. First, the irrelevance AOL is considered to embody (read up), and second, because web design doesn't pay what it used to. As a result, those who want web sites built want them built as quickly as possible. Making cross-platform web sites is more expensive than IE-only.
It's still good to see yet another large company "support" open source software... Even if they do nothing other than lend credibility to a particular project.
Why bother.
AOL is the SINGLE most important demographic for anyone in the B2C space. They are followed closely by people that use MSN's search engine. People that use Yahoo's search engine are a distant third.
People that run NS6/Mozilla are meaningless. Google searchers with any browser are kinda worthless.
NS4 users are important, you get people at work at low-tech companies.
I mean, it depends what you are doing. If you are building crazy flash sites with loud annoying noises, ignore AOL. My sites try to make money, like hell I'll ignore the largest contingent of shoppers, just because people think that they are stupid.
I'll take an semi-illiterate user running AOL 5.0 on an 800x600 monitor visiting my site over a "1337 Linux Hacker" running a Mozilla beta shopping me and 12 competitors to save 50 cents...
Alex
I doubt it, as I understand it the popup killing code is part of Netscape/Mozilla not Gecko the rendering engine.
Wouldn't matter anyway, as those popups are rendered by the AOL client, not the browser. (Even if they're HTML windows now, they're still launched by the client, not other browser windows.)
However, that doesn't matter, because since 1996 you have been able to disable all popups at keyword MARKETING PREFS.