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Why Browser Innovation Matters
dvanatta was one of a several people who noted a new article by Mitchell Baker on Mozilla.org about why browser innovation matters - especially Gecko, and why it will survive things like Safari Whoops - got the name wrong. Updated.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
Nothing beats the web gestures of opera. It has not only made me a faster researcher, it has improved my social life.
...I just don't quite see what he's actually getting at? Anyone know what I mean?
As an occasional website designer, I would like to avoid having to delve into the DOM to maintain a consistent appearance and functionality across platforms/browsers.
Browsers are mature. IE, Mozilla, Netscape, Konqueror, Opera, etc. are all mature pieces of software now.
What "innovations" can you put in mature software, other than small details?
If big innovations are possible in mature software, then people wouldn't stick to MS all the time. Remember that a lot of MS software won because they were "good enough", not because they were "the best".
Where the hell is phoenix (or whatever it's going to end up calling itself) 0.6? This was due, what, in Janurary?
I want my fav. browser to become even better damnit!
-Niels
Sure, mouse gestures are nice when they work as intended.
But what about an inline spell-checker?
An excellent missive on innovation. We dare not depend on the marketing flaks or minions of the corporate board-room for TNBT (The Next Big Thing). Programmers and innovaters unite! This type of article actually gives me hope when considering global warming/cooling Earth rotational wobbles, etc. We can make a difference!
'ta
But in this case, this Mitchell is a woman. Confusing, I know.
Personally, I use Chimera on OSX, Moz on faster linux and windows machines, and Phoenix on slower linux and windows machines. Konq is a good choice too.
We just had an article on tabbed browsing, and why its super-important.
And why exactly is it self^M^M^M^Msuper-important? Why is it important to have a 20MB compressed piece of software that can barely render a page w/o crashing? Browser technology was dead in like '96 - like yeah, we could write yet another browser, but why not do something else with free time?
Rant said, stuff like gestures will become useful once the technology matures. It's just that there's so little stuff like that and more matter-of-preference stuff like tabbed browsing. The way XP groups multiple app windows on the task bar is another way of accomplishing pretty much the same thing, done at the OS/wm level.
Must-not-watch TV!
The comparison here isn't really between two opposites - business plans are driven by the goal of satisfying customer demand, which is the best measure whether something "benefits human beings". All too often techies get wrapped up in what they think is a great innovation, but in reality the broader user base doesn't really care (see the dot-com bust)...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
...Because everytime it occurs, geeks everywhere complain about the new way, and how good it was in the ol' days.
(Remember Arpanet and Gopher? I remember when we used to complain about the world wide web, and how it was going to ruin the internet.)
Flash popups anyone? That's innovation for ya.
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
What about slashdot story innovation? Duplicates, stuff no one cares about, stuff we've already gone over before hundreds of times, and ask-slashdot-something-you-could-have-found-in-goo gle-by-the-time-the-story-was-submitted.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I hardly think there's any argument on this point is there? At least not among /.ers. It's not just a hatred of MSFT that keeps me using mozilla and phoenix daily builds. I refuse to use Netscape browsers for the same reasons: I will not allow ANY monster company (e.g. MSFT, IBM, AOL/TW, CNN, Apple) to dictate or control my web experience. Period.
.nosig
Safari/KHTML vs. Gecko/Mozilla is just like KDE vs. GNOME. It's a matter of personal preference based on what is important to the end user. Some will choose speed, others choose features, and still others choose standards compliance. The end result is the great thing about open-source projects: They will all eventually gain the features pioneered by the competing projects if the public shows enough of a demand to make it worth the developers time. Also, if you like feature a of x browser, but it doesn't have feature b, FIX IT!
damn i love open source
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
Will it let me find pr0n faster? No? Not interested.
the fact is, every time i turn on a regular L-user to Mozilla as an alternative to IE, they make the switch and never go back. they love the pop-up blocking, and the control they have been given back. lets face it IE allows those drive-bye shooting like viruses (spyware) to be presented for install so fast, it is the worst security risk out there today, and the biggest dump on useability (cuz spyware is obnoxious as hell) in the entire os.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
I should point out, as a shill MS advocate, that you can innovate in the browser UI space using MSHTML. This isn't a USP of Mozilla by any means.
Like having bookmark folders on the bookark toolbar in Konqueror.
I can have loads of links quickly accessible from the toolbar all classified into different sections.
News, Linux, Music, Film, TV etc.....
Love it.
No, no, not a troll. Just a subject to grab attention.
Compare IE v5, v5.5 and v6.0. Nothing much really changed between them. Sure, they cleaned up some of the CSS support (although there are still some large gaps), and added some non-browser type things, but overall, they're basically the same. Now compare that to the changes between IE 3, 4 and 5. There were HUGE changes, and they happened quickly.
What changed? Well, for one thing, the web was still fairly new, and people were still figuring out what would be possible to do with it. But, more importantly, during that time, they had heavy competition from Microsoft. IE didn't win the marketshare battle simply due to being in Windows (although it helped). It leapfrogged over Netscape in features. And as long as Netscape was stuck on the 4.x codebase, it stayed that way. That code was crap.
But, now, here were are in 2003. NS 4.x is dead, IE 4.x is dead, and the web is growing up and finally truly embracing CSS. And you know who's in the lead? Mozilla, followed by Opera and others, and in last place? IE. This, plus innovative features in non-IE browsers is beginning to show IE users what they're missing. And some are switching. For the first time since "winning" the browser war, they're facing real competition. And, the early signs of IE 7 don't make it look like anything too revolutionary. (Will they even manage to get PNG right this time?)
IE is dying, and if Microsoft doesn't act quickly, it'll be too late for CPR. Being a part of Windows gives IE a competitive advantage, but it doesn't stop people from finding something better.
The author is saying 'Mozilla is innovative, Apple is going with KHTML instead of Gecko, which is not a bad thing, but do come join us!'.
I'd have to read the article a few times more, but the subtext to me here is basically that the author finds it very disappointing that Apple is going for a KHTML based closed source solution, instead of a Gecko based open source solution.
Or am I missing something?
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
There are two great opensource browser backends out there: Konqueror and Gecko. We know that they will attempt to stay compatible with eachother and currently Konq is a bit faster. I say, let each have their own.
The killer app for the web browser is browsing.
Is it? I mean, probably a lot of us do online banking. That's not just browsing anymore, is it? Posting to slashdot is not 'just browsing' as well.
The point is, the browser is an UI for a lot of things these days. Web banks, forums, groupware or whathaveyou use the browser. Why is improvements etc. a bad thing for these?
And (unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your point of view) these web applications will get bigger and have a lot more functionality. Maybe this is not a good thing, but anyway the browser is a key point in these things.
I don't think this is just egomania on the browser peoples side, but the web browser, as simple as it seems to be, is an important app these days. Why people shell out to buy Opera, if it's 'just browsing'?
"Accuracy in the Media" at work.
Seems to me the truly innovative browser is Opera. Gecko seems to be stealing all its good ideas from Opera. From mouse gestures to good cookie management, Opera's the one that's lead the way.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
the best browser innovation already occurred did it not?
When that 3 year old (possibly 15 or something) won that contest in Europe for making the browser which sped up browsing time by 50000000% (i actually remember reading that it was 300%, but any faster and it crashed or something, but he had the ability to go infinitely faster)
What ever came of THAT!!! I assume he was bought up by microsoft, who then realized it was a farse, and kept it out of the news to maintain stock value.
Note to self:
Stage 1: Develop software that fakes being fast
Stage 2: ???
Stage 3: PROFIT!
Overused: yes. Effective: yes.
[I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
I'll tell you one thing, the world doesn't deserve a browser as good as Opera. I had the pleasure of using a computer that had Windows installed the other day, and the new Opera 7 is simply amazing. Not only can you do anything by using exclusively the mouse (or the keyboard), but the small screen rendering works perfectly. And I thought that was just going to be a crap marketing feature that mutilated the page. It's got integrated e-mail with spam filtering and PIM features, button themes for skins, and renders stuff that Internet Explorer chokes on. And that was just what I found in one night. I know I sound like a corporate shill, but it's not advertising if they didn't pay you for it. This is one thing I would GLADLY pay for if it came out on Linux (and think it was a small price to pay, too). If I browsed the web a lot, I think I might consider booting into windows just to browse, for this reason.
If browsers like Opera and IE and Safari don't innovate, Mozilla wont have anything to clone.
The way XP groups multiple app windows on the task bar is another way of accomplishing pretty much the same thing, done at the OS/wm level.
Gnome does it too. I think UNIX WMs are where MS got the idea.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
In my experience, KHTML and Gecko are both good, and ideas get passed around between both and improve both. Apple has decided to use and improve KHTML, other companies choose to use and improve Gecko. Why is this a bad thing?
As a web developer, I am more interested in seeing all browser being 100% compliant with the w3c standards than anything else.
As a surfer, though, I want my browser to be fast on loading, handle bookmarks properly, and to start quickly. That is why I almost exclusively use Phoenix, despite it being only version 0.5 (at least, that's the one I am using). It starts up on my windows machine much faster than IE, Mozilla or Opera. I don't use Netscape itself, because the difference between that and Mozilla is negligible (yep, I know it's blasphemy to say it, but there it is.)
But to me, the most important part of the whole equation is this: give me WEBSITES that comply to standards as set by w3c. No, you don't HAVE to use CSS, or even a particular scripting method (php vs asp? who cares. If you know one, design with it, but be ready to learn the other if a company wants it).
Part of the problem is that a lot of people making websites are not programmers, or even really that informed about standards. A lot of sites are done by graphic designers, who only want it to be pretty.
Thats great, but pretty doesn't mean a thing to the people surfing with an alternate browser that doesn't display pictures. People who are blind come to mind. But if you come from an art background, its hard to think about that. It's worse than you think, though. I know a man who teaches at a University here locally. He teaches graphic design, holds a Ph.D. from a presitigious university (I think Texas A&M), and regularly requires his students to create web pages as part of the course. He uses almost nothing but Adobe products (GoLive in particular), and Macs. He doesn't worry about accessibility that much though, and he is COLOR BLIND! Standards don't seem to matter, as long as it looks good.
With that kind of situation being common, it is going to take a long time to make the community aware of the need for standard compliance.
Now that I am off my soap box, any one who needs it is free to borrow it.
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
While I completely agree that mozilla is very good with standards, esp w3c standards, it still has a way to go. This might be flame bait but have you ever tried to make a website that uses pure css2 layout that looks the same in opera, mozilla and ie (latest versions). It's almost impossible. Yes a lot of that is due to the fact that IE's standards compliance in CSS2 is abismal to say the least but still Mozilla is getting stuff wrong as well. I wish the W3C would put out a reference implementation so that the browsers could hammer out these stupid little differences.
Opera ouse gestures are nice and efficient. But as you have
to learn them by heart, people use only a few of them.
An alternative is the RadialContext menu
for Mozilla and Phoenix. It has the same feel as gestures,
but adds a GUI to them. It takes some getting used to, but
you'll end up using a lot more gestures than you would with
other implementations.
1) Because in some ways, the browser is the most important piece of software we use. Modern computers are valuable not so much for computation, but for communication.
2) Because if the browser is done well (like Mozilla or Opera) it can handle other tasks as well, like email and usenet, thus improving the whole user experience (yes, I know some versions of Opera don't do email anymore, but some do, or at least did).
3) Because if the browser is done well (like Mozilla) it can become a platform for running new classes of application, which brings all sorts of interesting things to light.
4) BUT, MOST IMPORTANTLY, if the browser is done badly (IE), it becomes a ready-made backdoor into your system, a virus and worm propagator, a stumbling block in the way of people trying to innovate in other areas, and in general, a royal pain in the ass. If there weren't alternatives to IE, there would be wailing and gnashing of teeth (cats and dogs, living together, etc).
To sum up:
Browser innovation is what saves us from having to use crappy proprietary tools like the rest of the rubes, and what allows us to actually get some use out of our computers (instead of being hacked ten times a day by bored script kiddies).
Or is that too cynical a take on this?
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
I wonder when any browser will truly compete with the speed and precision of the almighty Lynx! Bring forth your pretty GUI "innovations"! The power of the lynx should not be questioned!
-ad105
seems to me to be about why Gecko/Mozilla is better than anything, namely Safari. It seems to boil down to "Mozilla is better because it is truely open-source."
Personally, I liked Mozilla (well now I use Phoenix on windows, less bloat) on windows and I used Chimera on Mac OS X. Chimera didn't crash as often as IE 5.2 did plus it had tabs and was faster. Once Safari was reveiled I jumped instantly. (The introduction of tabs has made me never look back)
The real big thing that grabbed me with Safari was the Bookmark management and the orange arrow thing (I forget what it is called) While they may be small, they feel like big end-user innovations. It just kind of irks me that the Author implies the only reason I use Safari is because it is "bundled" with Mac OS X. I use it by choice because it feels better. I could care less if my browser renders a page a half second faster.
(Plus, I had the added benefit of taking her back to her B&B that night. Ok, I was dropping her off, but still!)
We may have super-elegant-configurable browsers now. But innovation remains important: the people at w3c are working hard to set new guidelines for the future:
Trouble is, if MSIE doesn't follow, will the web evolve? I mean, why are there still GIFs all around as they were designed for 8-bit VGA (remember the pre-web times in its glorified 320x200 mode?) Why is there a problem with PNG implementation on MSIE? It's a 1996 recommendation! Will that be the same principle holding us back from browser innovation?
They are not especially receptive to patches concerning anything they're not allready looking at doing, and they have been known to ignore user input in favor of following the Netscape party line.
The most obvious and complained about example is there splash screen. It ties up memory, noticablly slows down launch times, leaks memory, and impedes usability when users are waiting for the browser to launch, There have been many complaints about it on bugzilla, and far more on various mailing lists and bulletin boards. Patches to add a prefrence to disable it have been submitted. Yet they continue to prioritize branding their browser above user needs. The splash screen is still there, and the only way to disable is if to hack arround in the application's contents, and exploit a known bug in apple's NSImage object by substituteing the wrong kind of data.
There are other examples. Key behaviors that follow Netscape precedent at the expense of usability and Apple HIG compliance, tab options and layout, etc...
The source may be open, but the project isn't especially open to outside direction. I like the browser alot, and really look forward to the
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
Specially tailored for the 1 SD of /. readers: pornzilla.
Check it out! Some really neat ideas.
heheh, stroke it... heheh
the best answer i think is through a truly new, unique web GUI. so developers can build real, feature rich apps on a browser. swing is too slow and cumbersome (at least for now). the best i have seen is sash which uses javascript.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
It's odd that neither the original piece nor the comments (so far at least) mention the importance of browsers implementing interoperable standards. Instead there's much slinging of this methodology of developing non-standard extensions vs. that methodology of developing non-standard extensions.
If the vendors were committed to implementing standards rather than inventing their own, we wouldn't have so much division over which rendering engine is the One True Path.
I think the world-wide web would be much better served by browsers and rendering engines and user agents that properly implement standards like SVG, CSS, XHTML (and the wonderful new XML application XHTML 2) and XForms, rather than technologies that are tied to particular implementations.
I just had a look at the safari screenshots on the Apple website and it struck me that they both *look* almost identical. Both have just four buttons, an address bar, a search bar and not much else... Maybe this is a new trend for lightweight browsers, but I wonder who started it?
A redheaded, german speaking woman.
Intriguingly, there appears to be a similarity in her red hair and her hair style and that of the lizard she wrangles.
Showing that as people grow older they do start looking like their pets.
I totally agree... all this newish hype about having graphics inside your browser... Why would anyone need that?!? What's wrong with ASCII art? Who would want to put GIFs on a webserver?
Now if you're looking for some innovative file brwosing, try XCruise!
There seems to be a great divide between the Microsoft World and the *nix World. The former creates easy to use software at the expense of power, and the later creates the reverse. The middle ground MUST be reached.
Perfect example: I bought a new box, installed Redhat 7.2, ran Netscape, viewed a couple web pages. Looks like absolute crap! Don't tell me about getting new fonts and blah blah blah--thats not my problem. Even if the software is free, the goal is to make me (the customer) want to use it. I don't have the time or energy to fiddle around with settings all day and night. I just want it to work. When I see a webpage in browser XYZ, I want it to look the same as it does in IE 6.0 on my windows box. You know why? Because 94.5% of visitors to my website use IE, and 97.5% use Windows. I know that IE renders things "wrong", but because of those percentages, that makes it right, and everyone else wrong. So why can't Netscape/Gecko/Mozilla/etc render things the way I want them to? And until they do, I'm using IE.
All of this talk about ECMAScript, XUL, all of these new technologies that will make my life so wonderfully easy mean nothing to me until they become adopted, and they will never become adopted until they are easy to use. That should be the focus area--not cool techno addons that 0.0001% of sites will utilize. I want my browsing experience to be simple and powerful, but simple is more important.
Mike
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
The point is, the browser is an UI for a lot of things these days.
I agree, I have a feeling that we are approaching the days when the web will be viewed as a second hard drive, and this is what the later browsers will need to be adapting for
There has been some interesting stuff done with browsers recently. However innovation seems limited to the GUI. I suggest that we should innovate to the left of the URL's ":".
When mozilla (the initial NC*SA browser) came on the scene it did something that had not been done before -- it put a common GUI in front of multiple protocols - http, ftp, and gopher.
Since that time we've added what? Well, there's https, which was a necessary addition for commerce & security. But how many new applications have appeared on the 'net since 1992? A lot - like all those P2P applications, multimedia streamiing (mp3, ogg, video), etc. We have been content to allow the number of 'net clients grow, but why? Why not incorporate these into the browser experience? Why not support new protocols s they go mainstream, or at least have a way to support plug-ins at this level?
Doing this would strike fear at the very core of proprietary browser vendors. This is what MS didn't want Netscape to become -- an OS-agnostic platform for the Internet. To MS' credit, they have limited what people think a browser should be and have made the battle about speed and content plugin support. I say we change the rules of the game - produce protocol plugin support and begin development that leaves the current concept of a browser in the dust.
Now that would be true innovation.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Safari's got that ;-).
'Sensible' is a curse word.
I know I'm off-topic for the article, but I'm on-topic for the thread. Moderate as you see fit (you would anyway).
I may be a minority in this opinion, but here goes:
I hate XP's taskbar grouping. The point of the taskbar was that you could easily see what you had open, switch between different tasks with the click of a mouse, and close uneeded programs in two steps.
Grouping defeats teh function of the taskbar. Windows has always been "instance independant" - grouping seems like some desperate attempt to be a little more like a Mac, where you run one program and had multiple windows.
I like Apple's approach, and the combination of Tabs and the "Apple-`" command fixed that for me on my Mac. The problem is the Windows interface (independant menu bars, mostly) isn't conducive to the Macintosh implementation.
Alright, I'll stop.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Quoth Mitchell Baker:
Everything we've seen suggests that KHTML has a ways to go to catch up with rendering real web pages. At the same time, Gecko should become smaller and simpler.
This statement and the fact that Apple chose KHTML over Gecko seems to resonate with a comment I saw the other day about OS X. "Apple realized that it's easier to put a good GUI on UNIX than to debug Windows."
I am all for the improvement of Gecko, whatever slimming down it needs, but I don't think Apple was so mistaken to choose KHTML. From what I can tell, it's a smaller project and I think they will undoubtedly have more of an influence on it than they would on Gecko/Mozilla. It shouldn't be anay more difficult to extend KHTML, at least not any more difficult than it would be to speed up Mozilla.
My Karma was at 49, then they switched to words. All that work for nothing!
What about lazy people?
Is the dom some big scary monster? If you cant understand it, thats why the government made.... MONEY!
You can pay those who do to do what you need.
Im personally for more vendor specific apis... Let them include all the functionality they want and leave it to developers, like me, to write the freakin if statements and browser detections to use that power.
When you stick to standards its like teaching an advanced class to ralf wiggum. You cannot and must not cater to the LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR.
This STIFLES (sp) innovation and means that when I want to write an application that makes use of the internet explorer com component (very useful for quick extension of applications) I am limited because some idiot at netscape cant compete and wants the w3c to make microsoft "play fair"..
Look at opera. Totally standards compliant (arguably more so than ie these days) but look, its got no market share fucks with the ui (cant capture events like rightclick) and just generally sucks (crashes when using javascript->flash communication aka liveconnect)
Standards are ONLY useful if they are innovative. Eg if the w3c ever published a spec that wasnt 5 years out of date maybe browsers would use them when they go to add features to their browser. Instead of microsoft makes the leap and then several years later it gets included in a standard.
Its a completely assbackwards way of developing and I totally dont support it.
It's not subtext-- the author plainly states, "We would have preferred to have Apple use Gecko or collaborate with us on the development of the Camino browser...", but goes on to say that the larger goal of providing alternative, standards-compliant browser platforms is still being met.
I read the whole thing as, "we would love to have Apple as part of our team, but are still happy that there is another team out there doing The Right Thing."
While the Aqua user interface elements necessitate a binary end product for the time being, it is reasonable to expect two-way traffic between the Apple folks and the folks responsible for the care and feeding of the KHTML widget. As I understand it, some of this has already happened. Apple's decision to base Safari on KHTML is good for both Apple and KDE, and represents a departure in the right direction from a completely closed development model.
It may even be ideal-- all the standards based parts are out in the open for access by the community, and Apple is free to add their own proprietary icing on top of that foundation.
It does take a leap of faith that Apple will release their changes to the KHTML base, but it is most likely in their best interest to do this.
I mean, has Netcraft confirmed it?
Has IE leader Theo made a statement?
Have you gauged IE usage based on Usenet posts?
Do you need to be a Kreskin to see if it is dying?
I just started reading the article to find something as childish as:
Everything we've seen suggests that KHTML has a ways to go to catch up with rendering real web pages.
Not even a little bit biased. I use konqueror for my day to day surfing - 3.0, and am yet to find a signle page it doesn't render as well as fatzilla. Moreover, at work I use Konqui 2.0 which actually does not render well a good deal of pages, but is still quite usable, and it's integration to the desktop make I prefer it as well.
-><- no
Which part of matter-of-preference did not get thru clearly? I happen to love XP's grouping, which is ironic considering I "hate" (to quote you) the company behind it and most things Windows. I used XP as an example, tabbed browsing is just one way to organize multiple windows while mouse gestures add new functionality, in a novel way.
Must-not-watch TV!
I went on Safari once...
Killed a Jaguar!
I seriously doubt that Columbus ever said anything about English ships since he was Italian and financed by the Spanish for his big voyage. Also, I'm not a naval historian, but at the time (late 15th century) England was not renowned as a great maritime nation, particularly if it's ships were in the *land*. :-)
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
"Why We Still Feel Okay About Ourselves Even Though Those Nasty Safari Developers Chose to Use Khtml instead of Gecko, Those Jerks."
by Mitchell Baker
Or you could learn to read and write the english language. I use Mozilla mail because it does not have a spell checker.
As usual, Apple releases a beta of an app and people either a) exult or b) express dismay that it didn't utterly change the world. It's a Web browser. By version 1.0 maybe they'll have a nice, stable, lean little browser that hooks into the rest of the OS without becoming cancerware like IE on a Windows box. That'd be handy.
-- fellow Chimera user.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I think that Mozilla's current feature set is good enough. It doesn't wash your dishes for you, or take out the trash, but it does browsing very very well. When I get a chance, I show it or Pheonix to folks and most decide that they do want to switch -- for reasons that they think are substantial enough. That said, here's a true story;
Like many of you, I get tapped as tech support by friends and relitives. In one case, I was attempting to figure out what was wrong when a friend of my little sister went to a web page.
When asked what browser she was using, she replied "Netscape -- I always use Netscape". Asking the version was painful, so I skipped that question (bad idea).
After going through the menus for 15 minutes over the phone, looking for an option that might enable support for what she said was "broken", I decided that she was must be lying. For one, she seemed so certian ("definately Netscape -- it's all I use"). Also, she kept telling me how "I don't know about this new version -- it's not as nice".
An old tech support method kicked in;
Her: "I dunno -- it's just not working."
"Do you see an N in the upper right hand corner?"
"No...why?"
"Do you see a little E or a globe in the right hand corner?"
"Yes! The little globe."
Five painful minutes later, and a couple misdirections, I figured out what to tell her to get her to make the repair.
Last time I asked, she still insists that she uses Netscape, only Netscape.
Point 1: Many Janes and Joes don't have a clue what software they are using -- yet they will brag or defame it at the drop of a hat.
Point 2: People won't switch but will use what they get -- and only if it's bundled. This is the core problem with adoptation of software -- from browsers to operating systems.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
You had it lucky. Why in my day, we used to get up at 2:00 am, eat a plate of hot gravel, crawl to work over broken glass and when we got there, we had to use Archie servers. And we glad for it.
http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,573 93,00.html
This is an important question... what else is there that we can do using Gecko et. al that breaks or goes beyond the HTTP/IMAP/FTP document request model?
Net whiteboards using SVG? Anyone?
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
They changed how they interact with Office apps. Every new version we have to cope with they do some other fool thing with Excel or Word: docs that pop up in IE's window, with some of the same menu items, but some of those are broken... It's not improvement, just a kind of drifting around.
To my mind IE has started on the "upgrades that just change stuff" path that Word hit sometime in 1994 or so. They're changing it, but it's change for change's sake. Word 6.0 didn't do anything much better than 5.1a, it just did it differently, to make sure we kept "upgrading." IE might momentarily seem to take over file management tasks that used to happen in Explorer, but there's no real improvement in how things happen, they're just shiffling functions around.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Impeachment is the direct constitutional means for removing a President, [...]"
and I thought it was the use of gun power
Dubya running favorite, with Tony Blair a close competitor.
How about her parents for giving her
the name?
Since NS6+ handling of the DOM is not backward compatable with NS4, a lot of existing DHTML code has to be tweaked to "standards compliance." Such is not the case with newer versions of IE, which incorporate innovations while not breaking on older pages. I think this is pretty important in terms of what browsers average folks are going to chose to use, especially when a page they frequent doesn't render otherwise.
Thanks for the link (should be http://snapshot.opera.com/unix/intel-linux/365-200 30307-7.0.0-P2/ though), I've been waiting for Opera 7 on Linux.
Suck figs.
yeah, that mouse rocks
:0.1 -e "pointer = 1 2 3 6 7 4 5" &
:0.1 &
.imwheelrc with the only the following in it
and you can use the 4th/5th buttons in linux, too
xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 2 3 6 7 4 5" &
xmodmap -display
imwheel -p -k -b "67" &
imwheel -p -k -b "67" -X
just remove the second instance of each if you don't use dualhead on an nvidia card
and have a
".*"
None, Up, Alt_L|Left
None, Down, Alt_L|Right
works great.
//FIXME: Bad
Don't just keep the focus on Web browsers, folks, ALL software needs innovation. Just last night, working on a term project, one task the project asks me to do ends up crashing Microsoft Project.
... there's something better than that folks. Sofware should work first time, almost every time, and it should never be so screwed up that it can make changes that will produce a file that it can crash itself.
Think of all the crashes, all the viruses, all the wasted trying to figure out what the plicken plick is wrong with your sound driver and why your computer isn't pumping out sound
That is the destiny of free source software - to replace all proprietary, bug-riddled software with an OS and software selection that is reviewed again and again, improved constantly, can be installed as simply as dragging a folder to a window, or with an intuitive, inexperienced end-user friendly installation method.
Diversity is great folks, but I would still not switch to Linux and never have want for something on MacOS or Windows in terms of software, not bugs and virii. I did install Linux on a PowerPC machine once - LinuxPPC. It presented me with the LinuxPPC partition option, and that didn't work. Unix SVR4 did work, to my complete incomprehension..
There shouldn't be any need to partition to install an OS, it should just work. Do that, and Linux will be miles ahead of Windows. Give me an OS that is as simple as clicking a few buttons to install, without partitioning or anything low-level, and will auto-configure all hardware drivers and work the first time, every time. That's close right now, as far as I see Linux development from my viewpoint.
But why Linux development isn't going wholesale after Microsoft's core strength of Windows, Office, and highly integrated Internet software, I don't know. That is what is giving Microsoft the monopoly, is its desktop stranglehold. That is the stranglehold that is causing people all sorts of money in virus software, lost productivity due to crashes and file corruptions, and overall misery because the OS and software are proprietary crap.
And yes, I know software can never be bug-free, but it can be way better than Microsoft-brand software that has the ability to crash itself. Losing a term project was just one problem I've had with Windows machines over the past 10 weeks. I've also got a Zip disk that will bring allmighty Windows XP to its knees, crash it every single time I put the disk in. The OS is completely incapable of saying "Ok, forget whatever the problem is, and give the user of formating the drive or recovering the files." That may not be feasible, but if it can be done it should be done for the sake of saving someone who has important work on their disks and Winblows bugs attack.
I can't imagine all the work that is being lost in the windows world because of unnecessary levels of bugs and corrupted software that Microsoft can't fix. They even testify that their software is so screwed up that it isn't fixable, and would cause massive breaches in the Internet and "national security".
That is the problem Linux must solve - getting rid of Microsoft's stranglehold with better, more reliable, faster software with all the features, the same or better ease of use, and a simple experience that avoids the need for users to ever have to see a command line. Linux can also forever rid the world of DRM and patents on software, like ridiculous patents on garbage can icons and other silly things, by eradicating the market for that software.
So yeah, browser wars are good, mmmkay? But the war should be a unified free/open front attacking the proprietary regime. And there can be no browser war without looking to the larger picture of Internet integration in the OS. That means, for free/open browsers to win the browser war, they must win the OS war, or else any hope of conflict in the browser market will be a small distraction from Microsoft holding the main field.
End of rant.
http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/clubhouse?team=col
doesn't load correctly with either mozilla or konqueror, at least. Opera did it right, but opera is b0rked on my gentoo install.
It is a slight bug in the page, yes, where it checks the browser ID to set the stylesheet.
Konqueror does the layout correctly if you have it identify as konqueror. If you have konq identify as IE it will do the link colors right and the font sizes correctly, but it won't do the layout right.
Ditto for mozilla...if you have it identify as konqueror or something it will do the layout right, but if you have it identify as mozilla or IE it does font sizes/colors correctly but b0rks the layout.
//FIXME: Bad
Oh man, you couldn't have done a better job of engulfing yourself in flames with kerosene and a match.
Consistent appearance? Across platforms/browsers?
Poor fool. As you will likely hear in SCREAMING ALL CAPS screeds, you are supposed to code for "standards." (Never mind that standards may not be perfectly implemented. It is more important to adhere to the sacred, imaginary standards than to consider the miserable "end user" who might ignorantly try to use Netscape 4.x or something.)
And as for "consistent appearance," whoa man. Hasn't it been drummed into your head yet through repetition that designing for the web is different from designing for print? That "fixed-layout" websites are in fact a SIN before the eyes of god? (After all, if it is repeated by enough people then it must be true!)
Oh well. You won't be the first person burned at the stake in web-standards witch-hunts, or the last.
(Note to editors: above text written tongue-in-cheek. That is to say I'm only taking the piss here, you know.)
Apple and Sherlock has done with the web what should be done for all applications: used http to send data but created a decent UI for online applications. (For those that don't know, Sherlock is OS X's built-in tool for searching sites like mapquest, Yahoo, Amazon, etc. It's not a browser from a UI standpoint, although it fetches the same info that a browser would, through the same protocol.)
Browsers are great for looking at electronic documents. You can leap from one document to another, go back and forth and even fill out a form like this one. However, when you are dealing with a large application with lots of search criteria, large amouts of results that need to be sorted, or any task that requires a lot of back and forth communication between server and client, browsers stink.
Moreover, while there may have once been hope that decent UIs for online applications could be built in browsers using ActiveX or DHTML, there is no hope at all now for that development. The growing number of browsers with TOTALLY different implementations of the DOM or CSS2 (hell, HTML, for that matter) make constructing a working, complex, UI in a browser almost impossible. (unless you use Flash, but I wouldn't wanna go there on Slashdot.)
I should point out that a lot of developers argue against my point on browsers. However, I often find that the mistake they make is looking at a browser from an engineering point of view (cross-platform compatible, etc.) My POV is the end user, and browsers can not be used to make good, complex UIs.
And why bother when a Java client, using http and now web services, can operate across platforms?
Regardless of everything above, if browsers want to remain relevant and want to be used as a platform for applications then they must implement W3C standards. Period. They should focus on speed, standardization, and bugs. Otherwise, building complex UIs in the browser will remain futile and the browser will remain a general document tool (which is all I think it should be anyway).
____________________________
Innovation in Mozilla need to stop for a couple of months in order to fix all the Bugs #.
This is what happends:
you have a constant number of developers but an incriesing number of inovation. Every innovation has an increising number of bugs reports. Developer have a constant capacity of fixing bugs.
So, do the Math. Mozilla can't support so many innovations in every release because the number of developers are not incriesing.
What do we need? An aplication with costant features that has no bugs, or an aplication that has many features but is buggy?
Seems to me that this innovation stuff is more like a marketing campaing. Sad to hear that the campaing is comming from the development department and not from the marketing department.
BTW, I love Mozilla and I use it every day since Netscape 2.0
Get my e-mail after a captcha test in: http://tinymailt
Safari/KHTML vs. Gecko/Mozilla is just like KDE vs. GNOME. It's a matter of personal preference based on what is important to the end user.
Safari vs Mozilla is not a simple comparison. Safari is an extremely competent web browser, with a few shortcomings in the XML department which will no doubt be tackled and fixed as developers get to it. Mozilla is really the first viable web platform to appear that has the capabilities necessary to deliver a fully integrated web UI, using all the power of XML wrapped up in the XBL integration with XSLT, XUL, SVG and other XML-based markup and integration utilities. With Mozilla, you really can build a fully operational crossplatform application to do considerably more than trivialities.
While the previous platform sounds like the worst marketing blurb, it also happens to be a crucial point for the next generation of the web. The "Web As A Platform" is where Microsoft really wants to be - to fully integrate everything you see and do through one web delivery system is an extremely attractive proposition for a number of software vendors. Being certain that the platform will remain around even if the parent company moves on to other things or goes into the financial abyss is also extremely important if vendors are going to leverage Mozilla as the next big thing.
Of course, given that all the XBL/XUL/XSLT/etc. are published specs, there is no reason why Safari won't get them in time. Vive la difference.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Browsers are mature.
Bull! One thing that is sorely missing is a good GUI-centric protocol, one that allows people to develop business forms that act like GUI's they are familiar with (VB, Powerbuilder, Delphi, etc.), but with more server control.
The current standards are geared toward e-brochures rather than biz forms. Java was supposed to give this, but it puts too much emphasis on Turing-complete execution, leading to more bugs, more version problems, exposed (reverse engineerable) business logic, and fat downloads. Plus, its conventions ticked off Windows users.
I would like to see something like XWT or SCGUI (my own pet) take off. XUL puts too much emphasis on fat clients and still lacks decent widgets such as an editable grid control. X-windows is no good because it does not use the HTTP protocol (very well). Anything besides HTTP requires too much firewall fiddling and paper-work on the client's side.
Table-ized A.I.
The Mozilla crowd needs to give up on the idea that people are going to write applications in XUL, and focus on the browser. The browser needs to be good enough that AOL uses it. That will give Netscape some market share, IE some competition, and prevent Microsoft from redefining how HTML works via bugs.
There's no real innovation happening in Mozilla at the feature level. It may have the best object oriented programming but it's slow and has no more features than Netscape did before Microsoft killed it. So few people use anything but IE and so much of the multimedia on Linux is just Windows binaries emulated in Wine, it's easier just to run a real copy of windows and IE.
The innovation we look for is the sincere kind. A discovery applied to solve a problem without adding more problems.
Unfortunately we see too much of "sales driven innovation", which follows this path:
- An idea thought up while looking for ways to make money
- Promises too much without delivering it or adding alternative purposes (spyware)
- Locking up the concept in patents and suing anyone who tries to do it right
All properly-installed Win32 versions of Unreal Tournament, including 2k3, do this to a degree(don't remember if original Unreal did):
unreal://your.server.name:port
will auto-start UT and jump immediately to that server. UT2k3 servers(probably UT as well, but don't have a copy to check) also have the option to run a mini Web server, internally controllable by UnrealScript, at the same address with a "http://".
Handy for dynamic-DNS servers, or for including in forum posts.
Don't know offhand if Mac or Linux versions can do this.
--
Seriously, though, I'm using Safari build 64, with tabs flipped on. And, IMHO, this browser trumps Chimera hands down. It is fast on my iBook where Chimera was a bit dumpy. Its implimentation of tabs not only looks better, but switches instantly whereas Chimera woulda take its sweet time in switching tabs. Its interface is damn prettier than Chimera's. Safari takes up much less CPU time. And let's not forget Safari's excellent implimentation of Bookmarks.
Safari also has some other nice things. Like, when I click "History", I get the last 10 URLs I've visited. Then if I want to wade through history, I get a context menu with the dates. This is much preffered to as opposed to Chimera's "Click history, wait 10s for history to load, search for URL" bull.
Finally, KHTML is far better than Gecko. I apologize, yes, Gecko was once king. Then it became a bloated mess. Safari, with far more features than Chimera mind you, is 2.9m. Chimera is, last time I checked, 7 or 8megs. This is not neccesary, and it is because of Gecko.
So, in conclusion, don't listen to this article. Safari is better, and if you wish to work on the part of the browser that actually does anything important, you can. I don't know about you, but I'd rather help impliment better CSS positioning in a browser than make the interface look better (Hey, I love interface programming, but let's be serious; an interface isn't worth a damn if the browser can't render properly; if it were I'd be using Omniweb over all of these browsers (If it had tabs, of course) because its rendering engine is the most beautiful thing I've seen, as is its interface. Sadly, it mangles pages too often).
Now if Safari were to impliment the "Ask if you want to accept cookies" feature, I'd be set for life. But as it is, Safari is still better than Chimera, and I don't blame Apple for choosing KHTML. Seriously, which would you want: A lean, quick, beautiful, works-but-is-slightly-unproven rendering engine (That can be quickly whipped into shape if there's an issue) or a bloated, slow beautiful, proven rendering engine? I think the choice is obvious.
There's a Quicktime movie demonstrating Safari's bookmarks on Slashdot.
I have been using Mozilla and its variants on GNU/Linux and Windows for some time.
The rendering is pretty good and of course supports standards. However, one thing that does not seem to have been changed (at least in Mozilla and Phoenix) is the startup-behaviour.
To make it clear, let me point to an example:
I open a PDF file with acroread. Then I open another file or start acroread (by clicking the configured button). In Windows the new file is opened in the same window and in GNU/Linux in a new window. The same goes with GMC etc.
Now, if I did the same with Mozilla, it would ask me to select a different profile instead of opening a new window using the currently running browser.
Starting with a new profile should be an option, say by providing a command-line argument.
Also, I am not talking about easy profile switching, for it seems to be in the next Mozilla release.
I was wondering if anyone has felt the same way.
Pardon me, for my knowldege is not perfect.
Thank you.
GrimReality
2003-03-10 18:46:29 UTC (2003-03-10 13:46:29 EST)
http://spellchecker.mozdev.org/
That makes him someone who has noticed MS software is not all that great, and has noticed nearly equal products can be had for many times less, or free products can be found that are many times better.
Mozilla did not want to install flash/shockwave That's a postive, not a negative.
No, I'm pretty sure that's a negative.
-Mozilla locks up my system while downloading emails from server -Mozilla locks up my system while uploading emails to server Now we know the truth. You're just a fucking liar And am I lying when I say WinXP would bluescreen on me (Well, it'd flash blue and restart on its own; I guess that's what Bill calls "Ending the bluescreen?") when it works fine for other people? Every machine is different, and for all you know he may be running an odd setup. You have no foundations for calling him a liar.
I apologize for feeding the troll. I just couldn't stand it.
http://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/pagedata.ht ml
and if you have many porn links on one page:
http://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/pagelinks.h tml
Happy wanking!
The only problems I've had with Mozilla have been Flash related... get three Flash instances going, the computer slows down/freezes (and we're talking COMPLETE freeze, I-have-to-reset-the-computer freeze) PLus, sometimes Flash-enabled sites don't recognize I have Flash, though I'm wondering if that has more to do with the fact they were ASP-enabled sites. *shrug*
Mozilla's slow, yes, but I like the control I have over the browser. Much better than IE. I'm sure Mozilla can be optimized, however.
I guess it's just a case of YMMV.
Just like Mozilla, only with a blue and green colour scheme and less bloat.
How about having a "forward" button that is more useful than todays.
:D
Heres what i have in mind:
Modern browsers are advanced enough to see repetitions in archives.
How about letting the browser take you to the next file in the opened archive when pressing forwards?
For example, im reading textfile1.txt, and i want to view textfile2.txt. I simply press the forwards button
and my nice little dreambrowser takes me to the next numbered file in the archive. Yes, you get the point
if you see how useful it would be for pr0nsurfing.
I have heard about the function in an old browser, but i cant see the reason NOT to put one in a modern one.
Lets demonstrate for better pr0nsurfing capabilities in our bundled browsers! Whos with me? Yea or Nay?
You cant fight in here, its a war room!
And for that, you must die. Look out for Microsoft's black helicopters filled with snipers as they may be visiting soon.
I use Camino, Explorer, and Safari on my Mac for different things.
Explorer is the slowest of the three and I have to endure pop-up adverts, but it allows me to save an entire web-page with formatting and pictures intact for off-line viewing AS A SINGLE FILE. I frequently save several dozen pages from various news-sites for offline reading in coffee-shops or while I'm flying. Safari can also save as a single file with formatting intact but without images. With Camino you get a file and a folder of images, etc. The single file format makes archiving a web-page MUCH easier.
I almost never use Explorer for general on-line web browsing due to the pop-up ads, lack of tabs, etc.
Camino is my usual on-line choice. Camino has tabs that are easy to get to, and I like the tray. Most important for me, Camino allows me to pick where I want to save files or images. Safari's tabs still have to be coaxed into appearing, and your file is downloaded to a default place. Both suppress popups. Safari may be a little faster but I hardly notice the difference.
I use Safari just because I'm curious about it, but it's all the way there yet. Yet. Of the three browsers, it renders on-screen text the best, and I like the minimalist brushed metal.
If I could find a web-browser that had tabs, killed pop-ups, looked sleek, rendered text beautifully, loaded pages quickly, could save an entire web-page intact as a single file, and allowed me to choose the location that I save a file in on the fly, I'd get rid of all the others.
"Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me."
Partial support may happen but If so much as a single tag or a single attribute is not supported then full support cannot be claimed.
2 03
In HTML 4.01, the tag as a part of the browser windows (ie. back forward, address, etc) in addition to being renderable as part of the document. (like a form)
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=106
This is of course a catch 22. If it were implemented, people might think that it is cool and might start using it.
It does take a leap of faith that Apple will release their changes to the KHTML base, but it is most likely in their best interest to do this.
It doesn't take a leap of anything. KHTML is under the GPL Apple has no choice but to release their changes back into the KHTML base. The fact is though that Apple is happy to do this and is working with the KHTML group quite well.
Not only that they also released a whole additional layer called "webcore" which is most everything that is Aqua specific into the Apple public domain.
I's gots lynks!
Apple and Sherlock has done with the web what should be done for all applications: used http to send data but created a decent UI for online applications.
You really can't give Apple credit for this innovation. Sherlock is cool but it is really only copy of Watson.
The noun "sex" is becoming almost universal. The adjective sex is similar but not close enough and so it is dieing in English. Gender which originally meant the same thing then forked is now taking over all the work.
In other news:
- Don Quixote still tilting at windmills
- Scientists expect flying pig "any day now."
- Snowballs still melting in Hell
The definition of insanity is to continue doing the same thing and expecting a different result. You want all websites to follow standards? You will have better luck herding 100 million cats.If that were the desired goal, then you are about 10 years too late. It seems to me that the only way to enforce any kind of standard would have been to force web authors to run their HTML code through some kind of compiler, and not let them publish until all errors and warnings were fixed. However, this was clearly never a goal, as evidenced by the fact that HTML was intentionally left "loose," and browsers were quick to overlook or work around broken HTML. Early on, this was seen as a "feature" and partly explains the rapid adoption of the web by techies and non-techies alike.
So in summary:
1) broken markup exists, get over it, and,
2)Wishing #1 away doesn't change #1's validity
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
Why am I having problems getting to various sites using konq 305a ?
cnn.com for example, the banner comes up but the stories on the site take at least 1 minute to appear.
Here's some much desired innovation for our type:
;)
Nerd: "I developed a program to download porn one million times faster."
Marge: "Does anyone really need that much porn?"
Homer: "(salivating noise) Mmmmmmm... one million times faster..."
--sorry, had to do it
It's part of Apple's clever niche marketing strategy. In this case they are addressing the educational sub-segment suffering from ADDS
Help fight continental drift.
But Word 97 made the big switch to unicode (16 bit chars), and that is the big reason for the incompatible file format changes. So many outside the US might say that Word 97 was the last word in useful word additions.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
XUL is a fantastic concept. It allows you to completely sepertate not only UI from business logic but also UI from the *look and feel* of the UI. Creating client specific versions of apps is a simple as applying a new CSS. You can create apps that look like native apps and which are 'write once - run anywhere'. Java hasn't been able to accomplish that with Swing yet. XUL is cool!
is done well, as well. Hints are that tabs are going to be part of it real soon.
Yes, Watson was first in that regard. Sherlock is one of the more obvious examples of this (why I used it), but really, as far as innovation is concerned, you could go much further back. We're really just talking about "web aware" software. I think Napster falls into that category as well.
_______________________
Can we get a standards-compliant browser or two that actually works first, before we worry about adding on silly, useless features?
When Mozilla or Phoenix can run without absurd memory leaks and isn't bloated beyond belief and has semi-decent startup times... then I will switch.
Until then, I will use IE 6 like the rest of the real world.
I'm sorry, but I must say that much of this article seems to be whining that Apple went with KHTML instead of Gecko.
Opera has become my browser of choice. It's interface is not weighted down by the complex XUL. It creates new windows lightning quick, and loads the content much faster. I have a native FreeBSD version that supports nice AA fonts, and looks fabulous. For some reason, it's tabbed layout seems absolutely natural, whereas all the other browsers' tabs seem forced.
Most likely your GIFs are automatically converted to 8-bit and the PNGs are not. To have a like-for-like comparison tell your software to dither the PNGs down to just as few colors as the GIFs.
Most software assumes you're interested in preserving data first, and small files later. If that's not true you may need to tweak a config, or use an external app to do the conversion.
When is JPEG 2000 going to be supported by the browers themselves?
Define something like this: javascript:(function(){ var e,s; IB=1; function isDigit(c) { return ("0" =0; --e) if (isDigit(L.charAt(e))) { for(s=e-1; s>=0; --s) if (!isDigit(L.charAt(s))) break; break; } ++s; if (e0) return; oldNum = L.substring(s,e+1); newNum = "" + (parseInt(oldNum,10) + IB); while (newNum.length oldNum.length) newNum = "0" + newNum; location.href = L.substring(0,s) + newNum + L.slice(e+1); })(); as a bookmark and put it in the personal toolbar (in Mozilla). Clicking the bookmark will auto-incrment the last number in the URL. I got this from somewhere in the net, I am sure you find more if looking for "bookmarklet"
under Windows, this should work when you have the Quickstart feature enabled (not sure though, since I only use Linux). Under Linux, use the MSS start script to start Mozilla: http://kingant.net/?p=mss It will either start a new Mozilla, or open a new window of an already running one.
David Hyatt is a major contributor to all of the concerned browser projects (Safari, Gecko, Chimera/Camino, Phoenix). It's not too surprising, therefore, that they look similar.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Mitchell talks about how Camino (aka Chimera) is a true community browser project, but what he leaves out is that Apple is exposing Safari's engine (essentially KHTML) to developers with an Objective-C interface.
What this means is that we are likely to see at least one Camino-style community roject that is based on the Safari/KHTML engine.
As he says, this is good for everyone. But it's not as if Gecko is the only way to go if you want an engine for a fully open source browser. WebCore combined with Cocoa is quite a powerful little toolbox.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
I agree with the gist of most of the comments in that browser innovation is important, however I think it pails in comparison to the innovation of good web development tools in Linux.
It saddens me that the best linux has to offer are fancy HTML editors, no serious contenders in WYSIWYG design. I've used just about all of them, Bluefish, Quanta+, Mozilla Composer, and even the commercial IBM Homepage builder and with the exception of IBM's product... none of them even come close to what I want. And as for IBM's editor, it was released three years ago and I'm not sure it's even supported anymore. As it stands, having something that rivals the abilities of tools such as DreamWeaver, Macromedia shockwave and flash are just a pipe dream for linux.
Blender And Linux Fan
Don't know why Columbus would have said that.
Columbus was an explorer and navigator (and a bad one), not a ship designer. He wouldn't have known what you could do with ship design if his life depended on it.
Secondly, at the time, English ships weren't anything special. Even at the time of the Spanish Armada being kicked by the English Navy (1588, some 96 years after Columbus sailed the ocean blue), they weren't anything special.
"Software is too expensive to build cheaply"
That article was nothing to do with browser innovation. Instead, it was yet another Mozilla enthusiast's attempt to understand Apple's decision to use KHTML rather than Gecko. It's understandable that Mozilla deveopers would be confused about this decision because Gecko is fairly obviously the better engine. However, as the writer acknowleges, KHTML has the killer advantage of easy-to-comprehend source code.
As for "Browser innovation", I consider Mozilla full-featured and standards-compliant to an exemplary degree, but I do not consider it innovative. I can only think of one feature that Mozilla has "innovated" since becoming Open Source, and that is XUL. The other things - themability, tabbed browsing, the sidebar, mouse gestures, popup blocking, etc, etc, were all copied from other browsers.
Mozilla is a worthy browser and IMO Gecko is the best rendering engine available. Nonetheless, I use Opera, and I think that's where the article writer comes unstuck. When choosing a browser, I don't think about XUL, and while I do care about standards-compliance, it has to take a back seat to usability.
I'm using the Phoenix Web Browser right now, build number 20020308 for Linux, and it's very nice. For those of you that want a browser still under active development, that has a "dial-up-friendly" download size of about 8 MB for each release, then try Phoenix. I really love the "nuke images" extension, so I can get rid of advertisements in web pages that flash at you, etc. so I can just read the text. Of course Phoenix also blocks popups by default, unlike "popup-friendly" Microsoft Internet Explorer.
But of course most of the features originated on Logitech and other manufacturers devices first.
Ah, but OmniWeb's is automatic!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Most companies use html for pretty layouts and pdf for documentation downloads.
Will we eventually just realize that plain html is better for the reader? Probably not.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
The article states...
Mozilla-based browsers aimed at specific markets and task also exist, including a new XUL application geared specifically to browsing the Amazon website.
Does anybody know what this is called, or where to find it?
But what about an inline spell-checker?
You mean for text boxes? I just gave konqueror another try after upgrading to kde 3.1 final from the rcs, and was thrilled to find konqueror had this ability added. I'd been hoping for this feature to appear in mozilla for quite some time, and while I'd rather be using it or phoenix, I'm thrilled to see this feature anywhere on an x86 platform!
Everything will be taken away from you.
your link doesn't display proper under ....I'll Check it again on mozilla when I get home....
ie 5.5
but next time you post a link about browser compatiblity....well yah....you get the point...
--meh--
Until google has a Google Bar for other browsers. Frankly, IE is fast, and no amount of gestures or tabs will replace the google bar for me as far as raw usefulness in navigating the web. And yes, I've tried the googlebar replacement from mozdev. It's useless.
SELECT wb, COUNT(DISTINCT hits) GROUP BY w.wb
wb hits
IE 6.0 39617
IE 5.5 11351
Unknown 11408
IE 5.0 3145
IE 5.01 2971
Netscape 5.0 1638
WebTV 2.6 1626
Netscape 4.0 1716
IE 4.01 522
Netscape 4.7 476
Netscape 4.79 461
Netscape 6.2 354
WebTV 1.2 327
Netscape 4.76 239
Netscape 4.75 217
Netscape 4.78 194
Netscape 4.77 184
Netscape 4.73 170
Netscape 4.5 155
Netscape 4.61 137
Netscape 4.72 139
Netscape 3.01 86
Netscape 4.8 77
Netscape 4.06 58
Netscape 4.77C 51
Netscape 4.05 52
Netscape 4.74 49
Netscape 4.51 48
IE 5.22 50
Netscape 6.1 38
IE 4.0 27
Netscape 4.04 37
IE 5.14 28
Netscape 4.6 30
Netscape 4.75C 28
Have browsers *really* been truely inovative since the days of Mosaic? Think about it. It wasn't The Web browser (even Mosaic) that was inovative (at least in the scope that most people think), it was The Web. The Web truely change things not the way we viewed it (The Web). --adam
Mozilla has a very nice feature that MS never thought of. When you rotate the mouse wheel the window that the mouse is currently hovering over scrolls. This is clearly the right way to do it. In normal Windows apps, it's the Window that has keyboard focus that scrolls.
It does, doesn't it?! I could fly my filesystem for hours. No pills needed... ;-)
And all that in 25Kb -- how's that on a bloated ratio? This Japanese dude needs some good marketing
Before he became a hermit, Zarathud was a young Priest, and
took great delight in making fools of his opponents in front of
his followers.
One day Zarathud took his students to a pleasant pasture and
there he confronted The Sacred Chao while She was contentedly grazing.
"Tell me, you dumb beast," demanded the Priest in his
commanding voice, "why don't you do something worthwhile? What is your
Purpose in Life, anyway?"
Munching the tasty grass, The Sacred Chao replied "MU". (The
Chinese ideogram for NO-THING.)
Upon hearing this, absolutely nobody was enlightened.
Primarily because nobody understood Chinese.
-- Camden Benares, "Zen Without Zen Masters"
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