Mozilla, Gecko, Netscape, And Their Future At AOL

bluephone writes "I've been lucky enough to receive some interesting information from within the Netscape/AOLTW firewall, although in light of AOL's recent massive losses, poor outlook, and high profile execs resigning their positions, I'm not sure if these battle plans are still intact. As it stands, Netscape 7.x has one major release left for the forseeable future, but Gecko will soon overshadow everything, becoming the core platform for all of AOL's Internet content distribution. For all the details and much more, read it here."

Comments

They've threatened it before

[sould]

Every now & again we get another "leaked" memo/whatever from AOL hinting that they're going to drop IE.

And every time, AOL are just about to go into negotiation with Microsoft & want a bargaining chip to reduce licensing costs.

AOL should sell utility, not ease of use

[Planesdragon]

Every time I see an AOL commercial on TV, I think "man, their advertising department needs to be shot."

If I wasn't so entrenched in my current e-mail, I'd consdier getting AOL on top of my RoadRunner account. For the same price as RR, I'd get a whole slew of content et al that isn't out on the web at large.

I remember how AOL used to be, back in the days before my parents bailed and got a local ISP. It was fast, volomious, and the "custom AOL" bits were far slicker than anything i've seen before or since.

Forget about the ISP bit--let the market have that crowd. AOL should go after folks who have an internet connection, by promoting what they can do that the rest of the 'net can't.

If their only pitch is that they're easy to use, then they're going to get taken off just like any other set of training wheels.

Re:AOL should sell utility, not ease of use

[MBCook]

AOL used to be great, back before the internet was big. But when AOL's popularity boomed, so did the number of busy signals. AOL got too big too fast. They also tried to be the internet, and all things to all people. They bought up Sierra's Imagination Network (which was awesome) and ruined it. Many of the keywords that used to lead to nice parts of AOL or a companies content on AOL started opening a web browser to a web site. And the entire time, the internet access through AOL was ssssllllllooooowwwwwwwwww.

For all the complaining about AOL I do (along with many other /.ers) it was quite nice. AOL could become very great again, and it wouldn't take too much. Here is a list of things:

• Lower the price - This is a no brainer. They charge up to $5 more than most other dialup ISPs. What does that pay for, exclusive content? What exclusive content?
• Speed it up - AOL's connection to the internet is pitifilly show compared to other ISPs. You just can't play games (quake, warcraft, etc) on AOL because of the ping times. This is definatly a deal breaker
• Exclusive content - They need to get it back. AOL used to have alot of great stuff. Also, they supervised it all so it was consistant. It wasn't confusing and impossible to navigate like many internet sites are now. You couldn't access porn without trying. Compare that to the internet at large, where one wrong keystroke gets you endless windows of "3 year old does donkey that was set on fire all on the wing of a 747 crashing into an iceburg while BSDM lesbians...." junk. AOL was actually quite safe.
• E-Mail - They got famous for this, and their little soundbite. My parrents are both addicted to AOL for their e-mail, but hate all the spam they get. They can't understand it. What would happen if AOL ran all their e-mail through SpamAssassin first? If spammers couldn't hit the 12 billion AOL users, I bet spam would drop a large amount for the 'net at large.
• Teach - They would really help themselves by not being so idiot-o-centric. If they tought people things about the 'net, or at least didn't make non-AOL things so hard to do, they wouldn't lose as many subscribers. When you want to get on the internet, you get AOL. When you realize that AOL isn't the internet, you get a real ISP. I can't stand people asking me their screen name (meaning e-mail address), or "how do I install yahoo?" because they don't know it's a website and what they want to do is set it as their homepage.

If AOL was just an ISP that had nice content like they used to ontop of everything else, I would go back to them. The monthly fee wouldn't be so outrageous if I couldn't get the same thing everywhere else for $15. If they could actually block most all of the spam I get, I'd go back. The biggest thing that they need to do, IMHO is this:

Dump the client software!

I use one program for web surfing (IE/Mozilla, etc), one for E-Mail (outlook, eudora, etc), one for newsgroups, why not one for AOL only content? You'd dial up AOl just like Earthlink or anyone else, and use that software to access their content. Don't force people to load up that memory and CPU hog just to look at Yahoo! Make it launch whenever someone access a URL like aol://whatever from a web browser, just like what happens when you click a mailto: or a nntp://alt.blah link in your web browser. A little reform would go a long way. Oh yeah, one other thing...

Stop sending me CDs. Not in the mail, not in magazines, not in other software (winamp, etc).

You don't have to blanket the world in CDs and cover TV with ads and try to install your software 20 times a week on my PC to get your message across.

Re:Only good news

[MattCohn.com]

Don't kill frontpage just yet. I disabled all it's automatic code cleaning, insearting id=autonumber shit into tables, and use it soley for three purposes.

One, to make tables quickly, I then re-enter the html and tweek it the way I want... but it's easier seeing everything in front of you then having to mentally map td to possision. I know, not much but it is.

Second, color coding. Forgot a "? Color coding makes writing my HTML so much simpler.

And the final use is writing my external style sheets. I like not having to memorize an entirly diffrent set of data-value pairs for CSS, and it produces compleatly complient and simple CSS pages.

I also enjoy having all my pages tabbed, and being able to quickly switch between HTML and preview modes on the fly.

My HTML is clean, well-formatted, tabbed (each and every thing), uses scripts to pull a header, dynamic body, and footer on the fly for requests, and uses NO formatting, absolutly EVERYTHING is done through external style sheets which can be selected by the user with ?style=cssname. Also, 100% HTML 4.01 Transitional and CSS complient.

I use FrontPage. I write good HTML. Get over yourselves.

YOU do...

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

I use FrontPage. I write good HTML. Get over yourselves.

YOU do... and that's great. Actually a very valid point you have. The problem is will little tiny companies such as, oh, CITIBANK that have a "few" customers! What is a shame is the fact that they have to use IE to bank. I've tried Citibank for Business online, and Safari fails. KDE fails. Mozilla works, but only with the prefs bar plugin to change the id string to IE on WinXP. Otherwise Citibank fails. The problem is not the sites you design, but the corporate sites that millions of people would like to use to shop, bank, etc to make their lives a little easier. And needing IE to use these sites makes life easier, but a lot less secure.

I've had e-mail exchanged with Citibank on this topic, and they only test for IE and, to quote, "most of the time Netscape too". MOST OF THE TIME? Great.

If 32,000,000+ people are using Gecho engine (assuming AOL makes the switch), this will be great because it could very well force companies to do what you do! USe their frontpage but with the propper settings so HTML is clean and pure and written as per the standards. This can only be DoublePlusGood(TM) for IE, Netscape, Gecho, Moz, KDE, Safari et. al.