Slashdot Mirror
Netscape 7.0 is Out
MrJones was one of many many users to submit that Netscape has released
Navigator 7.0 unto the world. With their dwindling market share, it'll be interesting to see what affect this has on internet users. But here's hoping it makes a dent.
But where is the platform support?
...
Some of us have SPARCs on our desk. Or PA-RISC machines. Or RS6k's.
These were all supported with Communicator
NS7 is useless to me till I can run it on these platforms...
--NBVB
the difference is AOL. Netscape == mozilla + aol cruft - nifty pop-up blocking features. Plus netscape has the brand name appeal.
"Um, so what, Netscape is dead, use mozilla"
"yeah, big deal, it's based on Mozilla 1.0 when the Mozilla Organization just released 1.1, kudos to Netscape's already outdated browser".
Yes, but a lot of the time it's easier to:
1- have users download the familiar Netscape product instead of "that mozilla dinosaur thingy".
2- Introduce Netscape to organizations; at least it's a familiar name and brand for them.
I'm a rabid mozilla user, but still I'm pleased to see that Netscape is still alive, if maybe under AOL's life support infrastructure.
Think of what might happen if the gazillions of AOL users started using Netscape when they upgrade to the next version of AOL!!!!!
AOL has the power to change the browser demographics of the web.
Netscape 6 was based on mozilla 0.9.4 which is pretty old now.
"Version Inflation" -- to your average luser, "the higher the version number, the better it must be."
Forget netscape - we need to get the word out about how good Mozilla is. As a tech guy I've heard all about Mozilla and I use it all the time - but the average user thinks it is a new monster in JP4 or something! If Mozilla could get its name out (ie Super Bowl Ad), it would REALLY catch on....
smd4985
Maybe you're not a computer geek and you've never heard of Mozilla, but you know the guy down the hall who does all the website stuff is always complaining about Netscape 4 and you want to upgrade....
Karma: T-rexcellent.
I'm really amazed to see the popularity of Netscape, especially version 4.* and especially for the "newbie internet users". The fact is, ISP often offer a free CD containing MS IE5 and NN4.7. Right.
...
...
I was a NN user two years ago, when I had no alternative. Today, let's face it : NN4.* is crap. I mean IE is not the best browser for specs compliance, and crashes quite often. But NN4.* doesn't even support CSS1, which is really a shame if we plan to use HTML4.01 Strict. Opera is quite a good, rapid, nice browser, but since the free version has a banner and since it's not on the ISP CDs, it will never make it amongst beginners.
[ right, you'll have noticed that I only speak about windows, since any normal linux user will use a recent Mozilla (or galeon & co) or Konqueror. I'm talking about people who don't even know what a setup.exe is. ]
So the problem is : I've never seen any ISP shipping its CD with a NN >4 browser. Since NN6 is such a sloooow program, it's not much of a surprise, I agree. We'll see what NN7 will change in this business.
However, the fact is : many internet users are beginners, and many beginners use the browser they were given in the first place (IE5 or NN, maybe they prefer NN because of its mail client which is less effective in virus auto-install). What's wrong with that ?
NN4 *is* deprecated. I mean it doesn't support recent standards. So if you are a webmaster, and that you or your customers want the majority of the people to be able to view your website, you have no choice but make your HTML code NN4 compliant. And to some extent, recent-standards-non-compliant.
I wouldn't be whinning about that here if my customer didn't make me recode his website to make it NN4 compliant (wow, great creepy code with tables, frames, and all).
A solution would be for the ISP to *stop* distributing this old NN version with their CDs. Mozilla is mature enough to replace it, isn't it ? Or even a recent NN version
Let's hope ISP will wake up, eventually, and update their CDs so that we'll finally be able to use the new possibilities the W3C has been working on for two years
theefer
I have to wonder how they get these stats. I mean, it would lend to common sense that they are using the user agent string on server statistics. The problem is, how many people have to spoof their user agent as MSIE in order to get sites to send them the right (unbroken) html? I know I do.
You must be an Opera user. I hear in their next version, they might actually have a decent DOM! And maybe, gasp, real CSS2 support... just like Mozilla (And Netscape).
I agree that Netscape/Mozilla has reached a point where it could easily replace IE as a browser of choice. However, my guess is that AOL's reasoning is that many sites still treat *all* versions of Netscape as if they were inferior to IE. A good number of online banking and credit card websites (CapitalOne, for instance) won't even let you log into your account unless you're using IE. This would result in AOL getting tons of calls from clueless users.
If you must do it, the least you could do is email the site and let them know they are losing potential customers. At least then there is a chance that they will fix the markup and so next mozilla user to come along won't have to change their UA string.
So it is important that Netscape survives.
Microsoft's rival browser, Internet Explorer, by contrast, has an estimated 96% of the market...
because everyone sets their browser ident to IE...
because everyone thinks that IE is all anyone uses...
because everyone sets their browser ident to IE...
because everyone thinks that IE is all anyone uses...
For Gods sake, people, don't set Konq/Moz/Opera to say it's IE, or we'll never get a true picture. And, if a site doesn't let you in as your true self, don't go to the site, and send them an email telling them that you didn't.
Get your own free personal location tracker
I haven't seen an example of how it "Displays AOL ads everywhere" as mentioned in the CNET review. I wonder if CNET and I downloaded and installed the same software.
As posted here on slashdot, there is a way to disable pop-ups. Sounds like CNET had a bone to pick.
Anything you say will be held against you.
The article says that the statistics are generated using HitBox technology, which is cookie-based. If you are blocking cookies, then perhaps you do not appear on the register. Since the mozilla cookie-blocking feature began about the same time as the fall of market share from > 10% to 3.4%, perhaps this can be explained by people using mozilla's blocking features.
Opinions change daily as new information arrives. Stay tuned.
Maybe we need a website with a database devoted entirely to giving websites like CapitalOne a hard time for being IE only.
Does such a website exist? Maybe if we got together we could email these people and thier bosses to get them to support Netscape.
Does such a website exist?
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
Given the raft of security bugs surrounding IE and forged certs, isn't it kind of dangerous to do your banking on IE? Wouldn't Mozilla or Konqueror be a safer choice?
We had high hopes for Netscape 7.0, but we're sorely disappointed, especially by the missing pop-up suppressor. There's no practical reason to switch from either IE or
This is the secret key to Netscape's success, if only it could have pop-up suppression, we would also have a borwer war. I can't tell you how many times my IE using buddies see me use galeon, and when they don't see pop-ups, they say, "That is so cool, i need that." Think about it AOL replaces IE with Netscape with pop-up suppression... bingo!
Who the hell cares if it was valid HTML or not? It should just work!
The problem is that incorrect HTML results in UNDEFINED behavior, so browsers have to take a "best guess" at what the author means. IE may guess one thing, Mozilla may guess another, and Opera may guess something else. And you know what? None are more correct than the other, because there is no clear right answer. The word "dor" is spelled wrong. What word am I trying to spell? Dog? Dot? Door? For? Something else completely? That's the problem. Sure, for simple things like bold and italics tags not nested properly, you can probably figure it out, but most bad html is much much worse. People leave off closing tags, etc.
Mozilla renders 99.9% of pages I visit correctly, and that's more than enough for me. While writing HTML and CSS, I've found all sorts of IE specific quirks. I'm sure others have stumbled on them, too, but they get coded around! You don't see IE's flaws because people are dumb and write only for IE.