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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?
Considering that Apple market share is fairly small and then add in those using AOL on it it's even smaller this won't make much of an impact. Most sites already work completely in Mozilla, the only ones being the ones who don't care about working on every browser, and never have.
I can't remember - Is AOL the evil corporate empire today or are they the champions fighting against M$? Let me check my calendar..
But it's about protecting your userbase. No point in alienating your users too soon. It'll come but not in a rush.
DWR is Ajax for Java
The Win32 / 8.0 version of the AOL client does use Gecko as the rendering engine.
Been aol free for 3 years, and I'd never go back
Fault loves the past, worry loves the future, but content enjoys the present.
...Web Standards Project link.
I'm very glad to see this kind of progress actually taking place. Since I started not worrying about NS4 support (that is, giving NS4 dumbed-down or no styling at all), IE/win has become my arch-nemesis of web design. The broken box model alone is enough to keep a man (or woman) up nights.
I hope the introduction of AOL gecko clients, especially for windows, will put a damper on the attitude of many web authors that "IE is all that matters," and "mozilla sucks because it doesn't support industry standards."
Karma: T-rexcellent.
That's not totally far out. AOL and its child companies are starting to embrace Linux as an alternative. There was a bit of speculation for some time about them being interested in Red Hat, but I am not sure how far that went. Nullsoft, the company that makes Winamp, really likes the whole open source thing. They have developed a cros-platform coding library called Wasabi, in which Winamp 3 is built upon. They aim to have Winamp available for Windows, Linux, and Mac- thanks to Wasabi. I am not sure if this is just because they are geeks, or if there was some corporate influence behind it, to muscle AOL's software (Winamp) onto multiple platforms. Of course, Gecko (and Mozilla) is available on almost all major platforms, and is constantly improving.
Is this a sign of AOL's interest in this sort of community, or a way of cirumventing MS's power? Who knows?
It is a great deal faster than Mozilla on OSX. I tried it on a G3 iMac yesterday. AOL doesnt use the chrome interface, so that helps. Lets hope this can be done for Windows as well.
The browser wars would still be going on if this happened 3 or so years ago. Now better than never
Gecko or IE, it doesn't matter since any AOL users can still use whatever darn browser they please.
InKonu
The DOJ isn't going to do anything to MS, MS will be allowed to continue doing business how they please. Pretty soon, MS is going to start pushing MSN even harder. People will buy their PC and it will come with an MSN subscription and will come preconfigured to connect to the Internet via MSN. It will most likely use completely proprietary windows only connection and communication protocols. All software that people need will come on their PC, and they'll pay per use or rent monthly, and pay via their MSN bill.
Whether that really happens that way or not is yet to be seen, but the danger to AOL from MS/MSN is very obvious, and if AOL wants to stay in business they had better start pushing to bring MS down off it's pedestal.
AOL could start by spending less money giving me coasters, and use standard connection protocols, etc.
Most people who use AOL continue to use AOL because that's what they've been using for a long time... AOL needs to start worrying about it's future.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
Gnutella
WinAmp
IM
Mozilla
http://www.kubuntu.org/
Well...there are also blind web surfers. Both CSS and HTML explicitly support markup and styling for non-graphical browsers.
Cheers,
Ian
Is that why SP3 for W2k adds the option to set another browser as default, and to hide the fact that IE is even there?
admittedly, it's intended to be used the other way round, but the functionality is still there...
Advanced users are users too!
On the other hand, MacIE has incomplete support for certificates - try going to a site with a certificate from an unknown (to IE) provider in MacIE and it would not let you in (in version 5.1 and under at least).
Besides, they already have a browser product that uses Gecko - the one used by their subsidiary, Compuserve. It makes sense to migrate AOL on Windows last, since there is no pressing need.
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
IMO, Mozilla blows away IE 5 on the Mac (as opposed to being about even with IE5/6 on the PC). It's faster and neither are preloaded. Very smart move.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
Actually, no. But then, I don't give my patronage to that kind of sleaze...you know, the kind of sleaze who have anything to do with AOL?
This is just one more AOL groupthink idiocy from the same people who bought NS because it was not IE. Now this "We're better than good, wer're different !!!"
C'mon - the company is in deep shit financially and however they can provide a C+ average function for free is what they will do. This has nothing to do with you.
Just to be the devils advocate, I have been reading up on lots of browser stuff for the redesign of my site and from what I have learnt it appears that Internet Explorer is better on the Mac than it is on the PC. This is mainly because IE on the Mac is far more standards compliant with better CSS2 support and full support for PNG transparency.
As far as IE on the PC goes version 6 aint so bad because it is step closer to better CSS2 support, though it is still a far cry from Mozilla's CSS and PNG support.
aus.music.scrapbook
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.
the target market of AOL is people who care deeply what rendering engine their browser use.
Yet, there is one very painful area in which free software has not stepped up and provided GNU replacements. This key area is preventing the adoption of free software for the standard desktop, and it must be remedied soon, or all will be lost.
Thus, I propose that the FSF take up the following projects as soon as developers can be found:
Until this hole is plugged in the free software front, we are fighting a losing battle.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
I really doubt that, have you any statistics that shows that the latest versions of XP and IE are already more popular than older versions?
There are so many pages out there that have been developed with IE specific features, that making this switch too soon would stop people using the AOL browser all together. If they roll this out slowly, it will give developers time to switch. That's why it's more important than ever to notify sites that do not work well in Mozilla and NS6 so that the developers get the message and get their sites fixed. That being said, if AOL would make a rock solid commitment to moving to gecko, it would really light a fire under the developers and thier bosses to be proactive in finding the problems in their sites. I'm no fan of AOL, but if they can help get standard based web pages more common, then I'm all for them!
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
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
Yet another joke that stopped being funny. Yea Yea I know maybe I am old and crumegony, but I remember when slashdot was for discussions, and not rehashing jokes that were not funny nor clever the first time.
I mod down any one who says "I'm sure I will get modded down for this"
Where does it say this? The linked article just says "no major changes", but that could be taken any number of ways, like "no major user-visible changes". I'm guessing he average AOL user won't be able to tell the difference between an IE based AOL and a Gecko one.
I really don't think we'll know which way AOL is going until 8.0 is actually released.
The Free desktop that Just Works
OS X.2, will include an Apple derived IM client using AOL's network, and now AOL ditches IE on the Mac. Maybe the two are working up some larger plans in order to push on M$. They are already pushing AOL chat on OS X and now they are pushing IE off as well. If the Mac starts to make a resurgence on th e consumer's desktop, maybe this will make a people wake up and realize that there are other things other than M$ out there that deserve their attention.
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?
If the designers aren't already doing something to make sure their sites are at least palatable on browsers other than IE, its unlikely that this will make any bit of difference to them. Of course the smart ones out there are already designing for standards compliance and won't have to worry about it.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
I'm just curious: does anyone know if this embedded Gecko is taking stuff out of the Chimera tree? Or maybe a better question: where off of Mozilla did they branch?
Well...there are also blind web surfers. Both CSS and HTML explicitly support markup and styling for non-graphical browsers.
They're not ficticious... I really have had webpages I've built beta tested by a blind user to check for compliance.
Speak for yourself. You may think that doing a half-assed job is just fine until someone complains, but that's not how a professional operates. My latest web app is used nationwide by over 2000 auto dealerships and processes ~30000 apps a month, and I can assure you that going IE only was never even an option. In fact I would likely have been fired. Beyond all that, I would truly enjoy hearing you explain to a business manager that you had purposely designed a system that some (even if only a few) of your customers cannot access easily.
LEXX
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
...mozilla didn't support layers, because they are not part of the w3c standard ?
If AOL wants to remain in existence, AOL needs to help topple the MS monopoly, first in browsers and then the desktop OS would help.
AOL doesn't give a rip about toppling MS, nor should they. here's why:
1) Right now, AOL only has to deal with two OS vendors, MS and Apple. And if Apple went away, they wouldn't be too bad off. But the point is, AOL is able to cut a deal with MS to keep AOL in Windows because of the DOJ, browser marketshare, et al (I'll touch on that in a sec.). Fragment the PC market into several OS's, and AOL is going to have a harder time cutting deals with various OS vendors. Worse yet, if Linux goes mainstream, how does that help AOL? It doesn't; in fact, most people savvy enough to use Linux despise AOL. I think it's safe to say that even if AOL did offer software for Linux, most distro's would shun it, or AOL would have to pay big bucks for inclusion.
2) AOL is the largest ISP on the planet. MS is still rabid about ownership of the browser market. AOL owns the number two browser. Mix it all together, and you see that AOL has some leverage against MS. As long as they keep signing deals to keep IE as the browser of choice for AOL, then MS doesn't have to worry about losing marketshare. But, just have AOL switch over to Netscape, and MS loses control that they've spent years fighting for. I have no doubt that switching over to Gecko on the Mac is a thinly veiled threat; "Don't push us." So, AOL get a pre-install deal with Windows, and MS remains the browser of choice for the world's largest ISP.
What is so anti-mac about saying that MacOSX has minimal market share? So does vi, but I still like it. And all Linux browsers suck monkey's ass compared to Internet Explorer, Opera or Mozilla on Windows. Still I rather run the suckier ones on Linux. I have nothing against MacOSX either.
Sorry for poking your mind.
copy-paste:
What is so anti-mac about saying that MacOSX has minimal market share? So does vi, but I still like it. And all "Linux" browsers suck monkey's ass compared to Internet Explorer, Opera or Mozilla on Windows, well links and lynx might make be better. Still I rather run the suckier ones on Linux. I have nothing against MacOSX either.
Don't forget about AOLserver, AOL's GPL multithreaded, Tcl-enabled web server.
cpeterso