4 Years Later, The Mozilla Tide Has Turned

dave writes "In 1999, I editorialized that the browser was the battleground that would win or lose us the whole thing. 4 years later, in light of the excellent Firefox 0.8 release it is time to update the article with a slightly more optimistic view."

Comments

MIRROR

[Anonymous Coward]

Posted by dave on Feb 11, 2004 2:55 PM
By Dave Whitinger

In 1999, I editorialized that the browser was the battleground that would win or lose us the whole thing. 4 years later, it is time to update the article with a slightly more optimistic view.

On November 5th, 1999 I wrote an essay to the community titled The Battle That Could Lose Us The War. In that essay I described my mounting frustration over the losing battle we were fighting in the area of web browsers. My conclusion was that if Microsoft was able to dominate the web on the desktop, it would be a short matter of time before they could extend and dominate the web on the server. I knew that Mozilla was our last and only hope for winning this.

In the years since then, despite enormous and sundry pressures against them, the Mozilla project has moved forward at a remarkable pace. They somehow rebounded from each major setback even stronger. Milestones were passed, 1.0 came and went, and the layout engine Gecko started to pick up speed and became used in a variety of applications, including Galeon and Netscape 6 and 7. When AOL finally turned the developers loose, they responded by apparantly doubling their efforts and moving even faster and smarter. Whether you like Mozilla or not, their persistence is an inspiration to the entire Free Software community.

So much progress has been made, in fact, that today, more than four years since my gloomy outlook was keyed, with unspeakable pleasure I am now in a position to report that this tide has finally turned. The Gecko layout engine seems unbreakable and is reportedly more standards compliant than Internet Explorer. The Firefox browser is fast and stable, and supports the plugins out there that the users want and need, and, for the first time in several years, my wife is actually excited about her Linux desktop again. For the first time since Internet Explorer 3.0 was released, I am seeing people switching browsers in droves.

Furthermore, we now have the same browser as the Windows users. By making sure that my web pages look good in Firefox, I can be sure that it will look similarly in Firefox for Windows. Speaking of Windows, many of the Windows folks that I know, including those computer newbies that still think the "internet" is in their "Internet Explorer icon", have already made the switch to Firefox. Joe-User is excited about Firefox, and this means fast adoption of this browser in all computing circles.

Not only is Mozilla/Firefox a superior product, but it is built in the best traditions of quality software: simple, extensible and free (libre). The extensions support in Firefox is simply genius and will continue to create an entire industry of software products to enhance and customize the browser for individuals.

At the risk of fostering an attitude of complacency, I must say that the Mozilla project has breathed new life into the web, and as a side-effect, into the Linux desktop. The war is still far from over, but the tide of this crucial battle has most definitely turned. Things have never looked brighter for Linux (as a server, and a desktop), nor for the computing community as a whole, as a direct result of the tireless and outstanding work of the Mozilla developers. Well met!

Netscape is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Move on. 7.1 is the final version. Go get Mozilla or Firefox, where the updates keep coming.

Re:The tides have changed.. Positive outlook

[cyfer2000]

By I remember from mozilla 1.3, there is something like richtext edit in mozilla, lemme google it... link1 and link 2

Re:embedding into applications?

[tsarin]

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/embedding/

Re:The tides have changed.. Positive outlook

[NShade]

Try loading about:config and changing the browser.cache.check_doc_frequency setting to 1. I think that does it.

Re:The tides have changed.. Positive outlook

[thesolo]

That would be a nice feature to have...but I believe that this is a Microsoft proprietary extension to the JavaScript DOM, not a standard. Which is not to say that the Mozilla team is incapable of reproducing it, just that they may have some qualms about it.

It's already implemented. Mozilla has Rich-Text controls; They have dubbed it Midas.

It's been in Mozilla since around 1.2 or 1.3. Of course though, their implementation is standards-based, while IE's is not. Just like XML document loading, and various other features of the DOM, you have to code for standards, and then again for IE to work.

If you have a text area whose ID attribute is called "edit", you can easily start to use Midas by doing something like:

if (!document.all && document.getElementById) {
document.getElementById("edit").contentDocument .designMode="on";
}

You can also view a Midas Demo.

Re:The tides have changed.. Positive outlook

[Plac3bo]

Yes. This is correct
docs

Re:Understatement of the year?

[JimDabell]

IE6 is remarkably web-standards-compliant

Bullshit.

It manages to get CSS 1, a specification over seven years old mostly right. However, it ignores or screws up vast swathes of CSS 2, a specification that will soon be six years old. It doesn't even attempt to handle the four year-old XHTML 1.0. It doesn't understand most selectors. It doesn't understand any of the CSS table model. It violates a number of mandatory sections of the five year-old HTTP 1.1 specification. It can't render PNG images correctly, despite the fact that Microsoft promised support in Internet Explorer 4 and the fact that it's been around for over eight years. It can't even decide between "quirks mode" and "standards compliant mode" reliably, as it throws an eppy when faced with the XML prologue in XHTML documents.

Don't even try to argue that Internet Explorer is in any way a decent browser when it comes to supporting standards.

Re:Lets help

[Spotless Tiger]

What's the deal with Opera's "!" as the third character of the HTML, HEAD, and BODY tags anyway? It sounds to me like incompatability for the sake of incompatability.

Netscape patented the original HTML, HEAD, and BODY tags. While the patents were almost certainly bogus, most browsers switched to supporting a syntax with an exclamation point as the third character, and you can interchange them pretty much consistantly.

Microsoft's IE still supports the original keywords of course, but that's because Microsoft pretty much came out at the beginning and said they'd challenge the patent in court if need be, and Netscape backed down (or at least didn't sue.) Opera et al though had more to fear from a lawsuit and adopted the "!"s instead.

You're right, if it wasn't for the built in extentions to IIS and Apache to translate HEAD to HE!D, etc, on the fly for non-Netscape browsers, we'd all be stuck with Netscape and IE.

Cool stuff you can do with standard code

[InvisiBill]

css/edge

This site showcases some amazing stuff, all done with standard HTML and CSS. No Javascript, no (specific browser)-only code. That doesn't mean it works in all browsers, as the different versions of IE have varying bugs and/or missing implementations. This site is flat-out proof that the internet doesn't need the majority of proprietary code that sites use. The fact of the matter is that in most cases, the author used the easy way (auto-generated proprietary code) as opposed to the right way.

Demo and Demo-IE are a good example. IE does get it mostly right, but not quite. On the complexspiral pages, you can see again that IE doesn't do the background image the way it's supposed to.

This is a great site. It's 100% standards-compliant (i.e. it follows the rules set up to ensure proper operation of the web), does some neat visual stuff, and points out IE's flaws all at once.