AOL to Release Netscape 7.2 Based on Mozilla 1.7

securitas writes "ZDNet's Evan Hansen reports that AOL will release Netscape Navigator 7.2 based on Mozilla 1.7 code this summer. The update comes a year after version 7.1 and after Microsoft stopped standalone development in Internet Explorer. eWEEK's Matt Hicks offers analysis of the new Netscape release, citing studies that say while Microsoft has a 93.9% browser market share and 87% of business users use IE, 25% still use Netscape and 11% use Opera -- the math works because people use multiple browsers. Hicks asks the question 'Is the Netscape Browser Being Reborn or Just Stabilized?' Hicks interviews several people in the know including a former Netscape engineer, an industry analyst, and Opera Software CEO Jon von Tetzchner."

Comments

Release Cycle

[BodyCount07]

I'd rather see a year between releases than a buggy browser.

Of course

[Bill_Royle]

Competition is always good. My main issue with Netscape is simply that it's not promoted like it should be... it's the same issue I have with people buying fast cars, driving in the fast lane, and going 55.

Not that Netscape's necessarily a Ferrari, but it's no Yugo, either.

Re:Of course

[farmhick]

People around you drive 55 in the fast lane? Here it's more like 25. On the interstate. With light traffic.

Good thing I don't carry guns in the truck, or there'd be some dead slowpokes around here.

Re:Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

are you implying that netscape is fast? i must be using a different netscape (er, mozilla). of the browsers installed between my windows and linux machines, here are the browsers (in no particular order) that are faster than the firefox i have installed (text-based browsers omitted):

konquerer
opera
internet explorer (yes, i've said it).

here are the browsers i have installed that are slower than mozilla:

sprynet mosaic (yes, i actually have mosaic installed)
emacs

sounds to me like this ford taurus browser should get comfortable doing 55 in the second lane with the minivans, it's definitely no sportscar.

Re:Of course

[croddy]

mozilla's more like an armored tank than a sports car.

Re:Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

This makes this move possibly dangerous for OSS, because they could fuck up netscape, and then when people hear "mozilla is the core technology behind netscape" they will vomit.

Firefox is good for this reason to keep the "brands" disabiguated.

And hell, all we need is firefox, thunderbird, a standalone html editor (wasn't lindows working on one derrived from mozilla?.. got it http://www.nvu.com/) and xchat and you have a set of programs WAY more powerful than the mozilla suite. Put all the bookmark and settings "flat" files in the one place and have the binaries for windows and linux up front and you could run everything off a USB thumb drive.

I used to use my thumb drive for carrying firefox around, it was quite nice.

Re:Of course

[Zareste]

I'm not sure where Netscape's strong-points are, but on a Mac (though things might be entirely different on Windows or others), it's one of the slowest browsers you can get, while IE for Mac goes much faster, and of course, Safari blazes past both of them with its RAM-based architecture (it doesn't waste time caching much of the web page to disk).

Although I've found IE for Windows to be incredibly slow with Javascript. I guess it's the plug-in use that determine most of the speed.

Re:Of course

[j_yarish_kumar]

Hey I find many Windows users are lazy .If they comes through other operating system such as Linux,Solaris ,They ask user friendlyness .I tell thrm that first try something new .Find their good performness. Mozilla and Opera are my Favourite browsers. Their fast ,tabbed browsing and many features are very attractive .Netscape also better when compared to Internet Explorer.

Re:Of course

[jayminer]

I think he/she says kilometers, and you say miles :)

Re:Of course

[ZzzzSleep]

Quoth Zareste:

(Netscape is) one of the slowest browsers you can get, while IE for Mac goes much faster, and of course, Safari blazes past both of them.

What's Opera like on a Mac?

Re:Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

So, how are things in Florida, anyway?

Re:Of course

[fuzzix]

This makes this move possibly dangerous for OSS, because they could fuck up netscape, and then when people hear "mozilla is the core technology behind netscape" they will vomit.

I've had this happen a few times... I've recommended moz to everyone I know but some of them immediately say "Ugh! This looks like Netscape!" No amount of "But popup blocking! But tabbed browsing!" is going to change their view that it's the same as the last time they saw Netscape (probably v4.7)
No fault of the mozilla project, but Netscape seems to be a stigma and there's not much you can do about a stubborn individual who's unwilling to give it a shot....
...apart from demonstrating a fatal flaw in IE or showing them the contents of a local directory in an iframe. "Yeah, they can hax0r you with this" ;)

Re:Of course

[Octorian]

It sucks, believe it or not. Asthetically pleasing, but annoyingly sluggish UI. (And yes, I do use Opera as the main browser on my desktop, which is not a Mac) On my powerbook, I use Firefox most of the time, which runs pretty well. And while it occasionally gets crash-happy or quirky (like not redrawing itself when unhidden), the unconfigurability of Safari was annoying the heck out of me.

Re:Of course

[B'Trey]

The only problem I have with this is that Thunderbird doesn't support maildir format. There are a few other capabilities it lacks but maildir is the big one keeping me from using it.

Re:Of course

[magefile]

Dillo is incredibly fast. Tried it once - my reaction when the first few pages loaded was, "holy shit - how did it do that?". But the layout (tables, at least, possibly CSS; haven't done enough testing yet) is totally broken. Looks really crappy. Still, if/when they get layout right, if they can preserve the speed ... holy shit.

Re:Of course

[magefile]

Didn't mozilla change their default theme to modern fairly recently?

Either way, try firefox - it looks almost nothing like netscape. I know what you mean though ... back at 1.2 or 1.3, when I first tried Moz, the first thing I did after vomiting was look for a theme pack. I hated Netscape's icons.

Re:Of course

[Ilgaz]

Check Opera 7.5 for mac, it was excellent here... But I ended up buying Omniweb, which uses safari frameworks but not just a shell... Its from Omni you know :)

Re:Of course

[fuzzix]

Didn't mozilla change their default theme to modern fairly recently?

Not sure... I've been using the 'classic' theme because it seems to be the only one that uses the current GTK theme.
I don't mind it too much, but it is a little fugly - I don't like the look of 'Modern' at all however.

Re:Of course

[yarbo]

but dead people usually drive even slower

Re:Of course

[Fweeky]

It does that by having a feature set around the level of links. Once you start having to walk the DOM applying CSS and table layout complexity shoots up quite a bit. Try turning off JS/Plugins/CSS in Opera for a while and set the rendering speed to Immediate and see if it feels faster too :)

Re:Of course

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Although I've found IE for Windows to be incredibly slow with Javascript.

I'll back that up with a little anecdote: Just this week, I was writing a Javascript-based, object-oriented bubble sort routine to move options in a select box, and when I tested it in IE (my development browser is Moz), some slowdown was really noticable. IE definately takes a back seat in the Javascript speed department. (probably due in part to their 'everything to everybody' object model)

Re:Of course

[mzipay]

"a fatal flaw in IE or showing them the contents of a local directory in an iframe"

you can do this in firefox 0.8 as well.

<html>
<body>
<iframe src="file:///C:/Program%20Files/">
</body>
</html>

Re:Of course

[BobPaul]

Not sure a gun in your trunk will do you much good if your driving....

Re:Of course

[ThisIsFred]

I'd like to see some figures on that. What do you mean by fast? Are you comparing load times? Page rendering times? What type of content? Static HTML? XML? Javascript? Running Java applets?

Based on my experience, Netscape is slower to load (the first time). Other than that, it renders the elements in a page in a different order than does IE, but the time from DNS lookup to completely rendered page doesn't seem all that different from other browsers. I have no doubt that Netscape has the biggest memory footprint of all available browsers, but it's hard to tell what IE uses, because most of it loads when Windows boots, instead of when you use it for the first time.

Re:Of course

[Pieroxy]

it doesn't waste time caching much of the web page to disk

Well, I don't have a Mac, but if it is the HDD access that slows down your browsing experience, then you have to either:
1. Buy more RAM;
2. Buy a faster HDD;
3. As a last resort, buy a PC.

Honestly, once the browsers are started (On windows, talking about IE, Netscape, Moz and Opera), the HDD access is not an issue anymore.

What you are saying is like saying that your HDD is slower than your internet connection. Scary.

Re:Of course

[NutscrapeSucks]

Sometimes I wonder if I'm reading reports from Bizarro world....

Anyway, I actually timed a big bunch of javascript, and it ran about 5-10 times slower on Mozilla than IE (windows). It seemed like DOM lookups were really slow, especially if the page was large, and some mailing list chatters seemed to confirm that it was a known issue. (OTOH, Mozilla was more correct, of course). That was v1.4, so things might have changed.

The slowest was Camino for Mac -- you could actually watch new items being added into a SELECT.

Re:Of course

[NutscrapeSucks]

Even though Mozilla is fast/fast enough, there's a some things about it that make it "feel slow".

On OS X, the Mozilla user-interface is really clunky. That's probably factor 1.

Also, the incremental renderer tends to show you "half done" pages. Some times this is great. Other times, you get something that looks messed up, or you can watch elements jump around. A user might percieve this behavior to be "slow" even though it isn't.

Also, from what I've seen, if you have a huge page (say a couple megs of HTML), Mozilla really is slow.

Re:Of course

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Sometimes I wonder if I'm reading reports from Bizarro world....

Perhaps each browser is simply quicker at different operations. I admit, sites like suprnova.org which are almost entirely Javascript take a few seconds to render under Moz (and even longer under Konq). But I'm not lying, in my example IE showed about 500ms lag between clicking the button and the action taking place, whereas Moz had maybe 100ms lag for the same operation. Not a big deal, but I noticed it.

I'd like to see some independant testing and benchmarking done for the JS engines of the major browsers, I think the results could be quite interesting.

Re:Of course

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Not sure, but I think that's why the OP included a winky.. ";)"

Obviously, that's not an exploit because it's just loading a local file for the user viewing the page (But I wonder if the iframe content could be accessed through a little cross-frame scripting? Decent browsers should disallow that though..)

Re:Of course

[farmhick]

Just thinning the herd. After several weeks, it would be much easier to drive to town.

Of course that fleet of police cars with sirens blaring that would be following behind me might be part of the reason. Unlike TV shows, people here do pull over for vehicles with flashing lights. :)

Re:Of course

[BZ]

There are security checks in Gecko that prevent doing exactly this sort of thing from an http:// page. Did you even bother testing your HTML snippet before posting? It doesn't work in HTML that doesn't live in a file:// URL already.

Re:Of course

[SCHecklerX]

I wanted to try thunderbird, but it doesn't have (easily implemented, I guess you can try the unsupported 'movemail' and pray) support for local mbox files. So I'll stick with sylpheed claws for now.

Re:Of course

[JamieF]

I don't know why you single out Safari as being RAM-based, as though that were some revolutionary new idea in browsers. Safari does cache to disk and other browsers use RAM based caching too. Older versions of Netscape Navigator let you separately tune the memory and disk cache sizes. If you wanted a memory-only caching scheme you could just set the disk cache size to zero. You can probably do the same thing in other browsers too, if you think that forcing a network hit instead of a disk hit is somehow going to be faster.

Safari "wastes" (as you call it) plenty of time caching stuff to disk; look in your ~/Library/Caches/Safari folder (try "du -sk ~/Library/Caches/Safari" to see how much stuff is in there, in kilobytes).

For the curious, check out this guy's benchmarks: Mac Browser JavaScript Performance
Also, on Apple's main Safari page they list benchmark results in a graph, and at the bottom in small print they refer to ZD's iBench, which might be something you could use if you really wanted to verify this yourself.

Re:Of course

[Zareste]

I just downloaded it. Nice, real quick, although it seems to have one or two javascript issues, and has the same Flash movie rendering fault Mozilla has (alignment problems, as you'd see on my website, grr). Still it's nice to have another browser around to test on.

Re:Of course

[Zareste]

>>I'd like to see some figures on that

This was all a fairly simple javascript function I used on my non-flash page (which I'll probably remove for IE's sake):

function countdown(){
c++;
it=Math.random()*10;
if(it=5) {it=1.75;}
else{it=1;}
document.getElementById(' writing').innerHTML=outpu t.substring(0,c);
if (c=output.length){
Id = window.setTimeout("countdown()",it*50);
}
else{c =0;}

In short, this takes string 'output' and gives it a realistic letter-by-letter typing behavior. You'd notice countdown() calls itself within itself, which is a cheap little trick and the only way to get this to work, but the real issue IE seems to have is the use of innerHTML. Its update rate with this, and most other innerHTML alterations, seems to go quite a bit slower than other browsers. (I was using a reasonably fast 2GHz PC to test this, by the way).

I haven't noticed any slow-down with Java applets or anything else, just real-time HTML updates from Javascript. (I could have been more specific, but didn't want to ramble for too long)

Re:Of course

[Zareste]

It's a characteristic of IE and most other browsers and hasn't much to do with how quick the hard disk is. If your computer is busy reading and writing swaps, background apps, idle processes, all the basics, downloading pages to disk means you have to wait a little longer. Of course, having a lot of RAM solves the problem.

The difference is minimal to begin with. You should know that by now.

Re:Of course

[Zareste]

I don't see anything revolutionary about using more RAM than disk memory, and of course it's going to keep a cache. It's simply minimal, discluding unnecessary elements (there's no offline surfing, but hey, whatever's quicker). Javascript for Safari goes really fast and has been more forgiving than any of the others, even though I need to use Mozilla or Netscape for Javascript debugging, and still, it doesn't do so hot with Java applets.

It all seemed pretty straightforward to me, I don't see what was so complicated about it.

Re:Of course

[Pieroxy]

Well, I agree with the fact that saving the pages to the HDD can take a little while. But:

a. If your machine is busy paging (swapping), then you owe to yourself some more memory. IE is just one of the apps that will be slow. Everything will be slow.
b. Saving of cached pages is asynchronous (at least in IE and Moz). Further more, all HDD WRITE operations are asynchronous on a decent OS (When they're small enough, which should be the case of html pages caching). That means that your browsing experience will not be slowed down by that.

Trust me, you can say IE is slow for a lot of reasons (Bad JS architecture, lots of memory used, ...) but just not for that one.

Re:Of course

[Zareste]

I'd go into the details of idle read/writes and current hard drive speeds burdening internet browsers, but I think this is getting a little too deep for a tangent (ish) subject... Even if I did bring it up.

Re:Of course

[Pieroxy]

I'd go into the details of idle read/writes and current hard drive speeds burdening internet browsers

Don't want to start a flame here, but I fail to see how a [slow|sluggish|choose yours] async operation can slow down your browsing experience.

Why?

[pracz]

Sincerely, anybody knows what's the advantage of Netscape over Mozilla?? I'm confused...

Re:Why?

[Bill_Royle]

With Netscape, you get AOL shortcuts on your desktop.

Wait, you said advantage?

Re:Why?

[byolinux]

Netscape is a name that non-geeks have heard of.

If you ask some clueless decision maker if it's okay to deploy Mozilla, you'll probably get turned down on the basis of "I've not heard of that" whereas people who've used the web for a while, will have heard of Netscape.

My mother's heard of Netscape, she thinks she uses it every day, even though she actually uses Firefox.

(Sorry mum!)

Re:Why?

[Billly Gates]

Actually most of them today would say "Netscape who"? Weren't they some sort of internet company?

The older over 30+ remember them but its like talking about WordPerfect to MS-Office users. They will just give you strange looks.

Sadly its viewed as dead which is correct. MS beat them via the distribution game. Netscape could not compete with something for free so they folded, got bought out and laid off their programmers while MS added feature after feature to IE.

Sad really.

Re:Why?

[byolinux]

I remember them as a browser company I'm 22. I just asked a 15 year old, they remember them as abrowser company.

I think you're underestimating the memories of people, perhaps. Either way, 'netscape' is a name people know; whether it's Coke or New Coke.

Boycott Coke!

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

They remember netscape. But its a negative imprint like WordPerfect is today. Those who have used it will give you funny looks or laughs if you talk about using it seriously instead of MSWord.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wordperfect 5 is still the best word processor. I'm surprised by how many people still use it (especially authors).

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

People want to use what everyone else is using and what the "winner" is.

Its in our nature. After they switch its highly unlikely they will look back.

The herd mentality is human nature.

Re:Why?

[fredrik70]

Yuo never ran Netscape 3 then? It absolutely rocked. Then version 4 came along... yuck

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the end the winner is death.

Might as well hurry it up, Billy.

Re:Why?

[DaHat]

3? 3 began the downward spiral!

I miss the days of 2.0 with it's built in dialer under Windows 3.1 and which I had purchased for 50 dollars at Best Buy *sniffle*. Even when I used it on Windows 95 I was so happy... then your cursed 3 came a long and ruined our love affair!

Re:Why?

[DaHat]

So in the end... death awaits us if we all go to FOSS and it ultimately wins?

Re:Why?

[SenseiLeNoir]

The advantage is hidden in some cases.

Take my household for example, I have banned the use of Internet Explorer on all computers. Myself and my sister use Mozilla (Myself Firefox on my computer, my sister uses the suite on her computer).

But my parents do not "understand" mozilla yet. They dont know it. But they still remember Netscape.

I installed Netscape 7.1 on their computer, and set sensible default preferneces, and to be honest, they love it. Its my way of getting them to run mozilla whilst they are "safe" in the knowledge of running a big well known browser.

Whats in a name? a lot in the case of my parents.

Re:Why?

[CommandNotFound]

Sincerely, anybody knows what's the advantage of Netscape over Mozilla?? I'm confused...

Netscape is to Mozilla as StarOffice is to OpenOffice.org. Basically, Netscape is a branch off the "development tree" with branding and plugins. It includes commercial plugins such as flash, and it used to include a Java runtime.

I just burn Java, Flash, Realplayer, Acrobat Reader, and Mozilla on a CD and install all of those on my relatives' machines when spyware kills IE for the 5th time and I'm tired of fixing it for them. Even my father-in-law has gotten hooked on tabbed browsing, which is really good when you have a dialup connection and can open pages in the background.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why people are like that. With my Parents, I just set them up with a computer, and placed Opera on there set to the default browser. I just told them, the red O is the Web, Eudora is the e-mail, Trillian is the IM. Any questions?

No problems so far. Only complaint is my mom want's me to turn off eudora's preview pane so it's more like Outlook at work where she double clicks on the message list to see the mail. No biggie.

Also I think I dislike eudora 6.1, and I want to set them back to 5.2 gahh. The stupid spam filter doesn't seem to have an off button, and it defaults to junking any confirmation e-mails from companies.

Re:Why?

[swv3752]

Two things Netscape has over Mozilla- AIM, and the ability to pull your Netscape webmail into the mail client.

One other minor feature is that some websites are brain dead and will disallow Mozilla, yet allow Netscape. For a few months my Credit card company would not allow Mozilla for the payment features. yet Netscape worked fine. They finally have it "fixed" now though.

Re:Why?

[bpowell423]

I use Netscape (currently 7.1) instead of Mozilla for one reason: the website that I use to check on my 401k will accept Netscape but not Mozilla. I'm glad they didn't limit it to just IE. For that reason alone, I'm glad Netscape is still updating their browser. On a different note, I always get a sad feeling when I'm talking to somebody at work thinks that IE _IS_ the Internet and when you mention Netscape, they say, "What's that?" Almost make you cry... :)

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

Re:Why?

[fredrik70]

yeah, that's because 3 went out with me! *grin*
it ran like the wild wind on my P-130(?) with a whopping 32MB ram....

Re:Why?

[Bulln-Bulln]

It's easier for inexperienced users to use Netscape than Mozilla, because all important plugins are bundled (Java, Flash, ...).

Netscape does also still have some commercial credibility.
A company is more likely to use Netscape than Mozilla (Firefox/Thunderbird), because they've used Netscape 4 in the past (or still use it... ugh).
As long as a standards compilant browser is used I don't care which brand it has.

Re:Why?

[pracz]

Ugh... I think a such site shouldn't be visited at all! ;-)

Anyway, with the User Agent Switcher extension for Mozilla/Firefox you are able to choose the behavior of your browser. The website will think you are IE/Opera/Netscape...

Cheers.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

You get AIM + Netscape Radio. Moreover, Netscape.net e-mail addresses are supported by NetscapeMail, but not by MozillaMail.

Re:Why?

[CmdrMooCow]

Netscape 3 on the mac (around the era of OS 7.5 to 8.1) was the best thing ever.... it did everything, particularly the HTML editor.

Over on the x86 side, I tried a later verion of Netscape.... I wanted version three back.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Netscape 7.x can import your Netscape 4.x address book, Mozilla can't.

Why?
The NN 4.x address book is stored in a proprietary database format. Netscape licensed that format from another company but is only allowed to distribute binary packages, not source. Thus it can't be distributed with Mozilla.

Is it really a big deal?
No. Mozilla users just run NN4, export their address book to a common format and import that into Mozilla.

Will it always be this way?
Probably not. There is an effort under way to reverse engineer the NN4 address book so that Mozilla can natively import it. But there's little demand because not many people are still running NN4.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some web sites (weightwatchers.com for example) have sites that exclude browsers based on browser ID string. So Netscape will work but Mozilla 1.7 won't even though they're the exact same thing.

The solution is for the user to hack their browser ID string and potentially fuck up MORE sites, for web authors to become more competent, or to use Netscape. The last one's a much easier choice.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

AOL + Mozzila = Nutscrape instigator.
Now with added spyware!

Re:Why?

[joeljkp]

In the past, Netscape releases have been a tad more polished than Mozilla releases, and they've included extra features, like Mail syncronization with Netscape Webmail and a built-in sidebar AIM/ICQ client.

But mostly it's brand name and an end-user-friendly mentality.

Re:Why?

[Shakrai]

Also I think I dislike eudora 6.1, and I want to set them back to 5.2 gahh. The stupid spam filter doesn't seem to have an off button, and it defaults to junking any confirmation e-mails from companies.

Tools -> options -> junk mail -> uncheck the "Automatically place junk mail in junk mailbox" option.

The junk filter is junk (pun intended). It qualifies e-mails from my girlfriend as 40-70 score (50 junks it with the default settings). Maybe it just hates yahoo e-mail addresses. But as e-mail clients go I love Eudora. I have all my e-mail since 1996 saved in Eudora (started with 2.0x). I even converted some of my old Pine boxes from '93 into Eudora -- though it doesn't seem to like importing the Pine sent-mail folders.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

That was exactly my experience. Netscape 3.0/Mac OS at home, followed by Netscape 3.0 and later versions on Windows at work. Ugh. But I stuck with Netscape over IE because of the deal-killing flaws with IE on both platforms (usability, security, user privacy).

Mozilla is a great vindication for the brand. As soon as the release versions became stable enough, I switched over from Netscape 4.8 (yes, I used Netscape for that long) and have never looked back. I think it's every web geek's duty to let people who switched from Netscape to IE know that Mozilla is compelling and powerful enough to warrant a consideration to switch back.

Re:Why?

[Billly Gates]

Or FreeBSD. :-)

Re:Why?

[aztracker1]

Yeah, my gf insists on IE, same with her son, since a few of the sites they need are IE only... and I admit, I've had to do IE-Only things in development... it sucks, not in that IE is a *bad* browser, maybe a little dated, but the number of exploited holes that were/are in it, and have been abused.

I have to ask

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? What will Netscape 7.2 be that Mozilla 1.7 is not?

Re:I have to ask

[Oxide]

Netscape has the commercial name and history that people and business know and trust.

Re:I have to ask

[Timesprout]

I would not be too sure about that. I was a die hard netscape fan but versions 6-7 were just so bad, slow and unstable it put me off netscape completely.

Re:I have to ask

[JamesKPolk]

Don't you mean 4-7?

Re:I have to ask

[destinedforgreatness]

duhhhh it's like 5.5 more better than Mozilla

Re:I have to ask

[Anonymous Coward]

When NS7.1 came out, it came with a Java plug-in pre-integrated. The Mozilla of the day came with no Java. The installation process was tricky (black cockerels were involved IIRC).

Last year, I used NS7.1 in preference to Mozilla because of the Java. I had to configure a rag-bag of machines for an exhibition at short notice and we needed Java. It was just easier.

I think NS7.2 may have pre-loaded plug-ins that make it seem "just easier" than Moz for non-technical users.

Re:I have to ask

[molarmass192]

... and don't forget the integrated, mostly featureless, AIM client, hurray!

Seriously, the main difference is probably the inclusion of plug-ins. I don't view NS 7.2 as a bad thing, at a minimum it provides a shred of evidence to web designers that NS / Mozilla is still a viable and actively used browser.

Re:I have to ask

[Ender Ryan]

Maybe disabled ad blocking, default bookmarks full of TimeWarner/AOL bullshit, etc.

Sounds fantastic, no?

Re:I have to ask

[swv3752]

There is also the Netscape webmail client too. With netscape you can actually pull your webmail into the email client.

Re:I have to ask

[Nailer]

Netscape has the commercial name and history that people and business know and trust.

had. knew. trusted. Before seven years of shitty products.

Re:I have to ask

[FooBarWidget]

I hope you're kidding. These days, there are very little people who still know Netscape. Those who do remember Netscape are immediately reminded of Netscape 4.7 and 6.0. Words like "slow", "bloated", "buggy" and "piece of crap" immediately jumps into their minds. I've seen more than enough people who avoid anything Netscape just because of the name. People hate Netscape that much!

Why bother?

[welshsocialist]

I'm glad AOL is doing this, but why bother? The Foundation (IMHO) is doing a great job in making Seamonkey, the Fox and the Bird, and Camino into products an end-user can appreciate and use.

Sorry AOL, you lose. For four years you had the chance to make Netscape into a valued alternative to MSIE. You failed. Now, roll over, get lost, or die.

Re:Why bother?

[ForestGrump]

But if AOL died, I would have a hard time finding qualifying wives. You see, If she is an AOL user, DUMP HER! (unless she is good looking enough to compensate)

-Grump

Re:Why bother?

[byolinux]

This is why you're single, I feel.

Would you dump a girl for having a Walkman? An iPod?

AOL is the Walkman of ISPs, sadly.

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why you're single, I feel.

or it could be that he is 5'5" 350 and smells like spoiled milk.

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

so i'm not itching to get married. not looking for a wife as much as looking for potential candidates

Then why the fuck does your sig say "Still looking for a wife."? Dumbass.

Re:Why bother?

[ForestGrump]

still looking though...still looking.

Re:Why bother?

[Minna Kirai]

I'm glad AOL is doing this, but why bother?

Uh, maybe because AOL owns ~25% of US home internet users? AOL is still a big gatekeeper for the internet. They have the power to force broad software changes, regardless of the relative quality of the particular software in question.

Few users are sufficiently motivated or knowledgable to install Firefox on their own, but they'll have no choice but to sit through a 15 minute "Updating your AOL software" progress-bar.

When AOL flips a switch to change their default browser from IE to something else, they'll suck down IE's dominance by 10% on the very first day. It won't kill IE, but it'll increase the pressure for website authors to write to W3C standards instead of Microsoft conventions. That can only be a good thing.

Re:Why bother?

[n-baxley]

Riiiight. And that AOL browser switch is going to happen any day now. Come on. We've been saying that for 6 years. It's not going to happen. AOL values having their logo on the Windows desktop too much. Especially now with broadband gaining ground and phone and cable companies actively promoting their access. It would have been great, but it's not going to happen.

Re:Why bother?

[Cereal Box]

When AOL flips a switch to change their default browser from IE to something else, they'll suck down IE's dominance by 10% on the very first day. It won't kill IE, but it'll increase the pressure for website authors to write to W3C standards instead of Microsoft conventions. That can only be a good thing.

So when Microsoft uses product integration to promote its stuff, that's bad, but when AOL does it it's good (because they'd be promoting beloved Mozilla)? I see.

Re:Why bother?

[J. T. MacLeod]

So when Microsoft uses product integration to promote its stuff, that's bad, but when AOL does it it's good (because they'd be promoting beloved Mozilla)? I see.

It has nothing to do with promoting Mozilla and everything to do with breaking the MSIE stranglehold.

Re:Why bother?

[Clansman]

but then, when Joe Bloggs tries to access his online bank account and fails, then AOL will get known as incompatible. Crazy but true. So why would they want to do that. Every commercial website is built to cope with IE regardless of whether they are standards compliant by the by.

When the next IE comes out, they will al become compliant with that.

AOL will just stick with what works the widest.

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

So when Microsoft uses product integration to promote its stuff, that's bad, but when AOL does it it's good (because they'd be promoting beloved Mozilla)? I see.

Because Microsoft is a convicted monopoly with a greater than 90% market share and AOL isn't.

Re:Why bother?

[Cereal Box]

Oh I see. So if those two conditions didn't hold you wouldn't have any problem with Microsoft integrating whatever products it wants with Windows?

Re:Why bother?

[killjoe]

Except that they have never indicated they would so such a thing.

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh I see. So if those two conditions didn't hold you wouldn't have any problem with Microsoft integrating whatever products it wants with Windows?

As a matter of fact I wouldn't.

If Microsoft were not a monopoly, that would imply that there was competition in the x86 computer operating system market. Absent a monopoly, I would expect companies to try to differentiate themselves by adding value to their product (operating systems in this case) by adding features.

Consider Linux. No Linux distro has a monopoly on the market. RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake, etc. all try to differentiate themselves in different ways; easiest installation, easiest update, most included software, best support, etc. This is a sign of a healthy market.

A monopoly in any market is easily subject to abuse (*cough* Microsoft *cough*) and deserves special scrutiny. Absent a monopoly, standard market forces work 99% of the time.

And on the flip side, if AOL had a monopoly on Internet access and mandated their brand of browser, I'd be just as concerned with them as I am with Microsoft today.

Re:Why bother?

[PostItNote]

Correct. No monopoly == competion == meaningful alternatives if people don't like the bundling

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

AOL won't replace their browser which uses IE until the replacement renders everything. Being HTML 4.0-compliant or whatever is meaningless in a world where people write broken javascript and forget to close table tags and what not. Users don't care about anything except the pages loading properly. If Netscape ever gets to the point that it does a better job displaying everything than IE then they will switch if the economics are there, and Microsoft will probably start development on IE again and try to crush Netscape.

I don't think there's a conscience decision to make software bloated - in fact, they are trying to reduce bloat and modularize everything. That's why they started supporting IMAP recently. I suspect Netscape as a browser is part of that eventual modularization.

posting anonymously 'cause I work for there.

Will real browser gain market?

[bcmm]

I have an irritating suspicion that the dummies (read unknowing spam proxy, worm infected, has a hotmail account and uses a 1GB RAM machine for emails and surfing - in short the majority of lusers) will continue to use IE until they get whatever they get in Longhorn O$, even if all new websites display funny.(They just resist change. I know people who would switch to Linux if the different window decorations didn't scare them.)

Re:Will real browser gain market?

[byolinux]

Dummies?

I don't think it's really fair to put people down for not knowing stuff they shouldn't have to know.

Computers have become a consumer product, but unlike other consumer devices (TVs, VCRs, Microwaves) they can actually fuck things up if they do something wrong, or something different...

I think the idea of using a browser that didn't come with their computer probably scares a lot of people, much in the same way my friend's father wouldn't let him use 3rd party joysticks on his Atari VCS -- truely believed that anything different from the norm would break the unit; and he'd have to explain personally to Mr Atari why he DARED to break their lovely console.

Maybe what we need is someone to write a piece of spyware for IE, that installs Firefox and Thunderbird, removes IE and Outlook Express and changes the Moz icons to keep everything familiar.

Re:Will real browser gain market?

[bcmm]

I am not really blaming people for not knowing things, but for being scared of change. If some people got their way, they would still be on windows 3.1, or something older. Also, on second thoughts there is some hope, becuase if AOL is really behind their version of Netscape, a lot of the same users will probably switch over. Not for the right reasons, but because AOL will say that the browser they pretend they make will be the only one that works with "the Internet", which they also seem to claim they make.

Re:Will real browser gain market?

[Anonymous Coward]

Computers have become a consumer product, but unlike other consumer devices (TVs, VCRs, Microwaves) they can actually fuck things up if they do something wrong, or something different...

...and that is why we need a license for Internet access, much like car licenses (or at least some form of mandatory education). If people actually learned to avoid stupid activities like giving out their passwords, replying to spam emails, or using Outlook without an up-to-date virus scanner, then the amount of spam and viruses on the Internet would dramatically drop.

Viruses can cause massive damage. They have shut down vital emergency services (like Britain's coastguard) and were even implicated in bringing Sydney's rail network to its knees a few weeks ago. Using the Internet incorrectly can cause massive damage. However, unlike public road use, there is no accountability and very little education about how to use the Internet - even though it is quickly becoming a vital public resource.

Those of us who began using the Internet ten or fifteen years ago had to learn about correct 'Net behaviour out of necessity. However, the number of clueless users these days is truly frightening.

Re:Will real browser gain market?

[MvD_Moscow]

Yeah, that would be a nice spyware app! and the users wouldn't know the difference! However, jus imagine how much bad PR Mozilla Foundation will get!

Re:Will real browser gain market?

[Anonymous Coward]

A license for Net Access...
Thanks, Stalin, but no thanks....Freedom means that idiots are allowed to be idiots.
In Soviet Russia, the Internet licenses YOU!..oh wait.. what about those mail-order brides.. DOH!

Re:Will real browser gain market?

[Troed]

Freedom means that idiots are allowed to be idiots

FINALLY I understand the part about "land of the free" ...

Re:Will real browser gain market?

[AKnightCowboy]

Computers have become a consumer product, but unlike other consumer devices (TVs, VCRs, Microwaves) they can actually fuck things up if they do something wrong, or something different...

Computers are NOT consumer products no matter how much the industry would like to pretend they are. They are complex programmable machines. If people want a consumer product then they would've bought any of the various web terminals that tried to come to market in the late 1990's like WebTV. They all failed because people want a computer, yet they also want to bitch when their complex programmable machine's complex operating system is difficult to use. It's a lose-lose situation for everyone involved. If someone is uncomfortable using a computer without being handheld through it then they should go find another line of work or hobby. The absolute minimum requirements of a computer user should be capabilities to build a system from scratch, install an operating system, and do at least some fundamental systems programming... even friggin batch scripting. SOMETHING. Ignorant people should not be using computers!

Re:Will real browser gain market?

[WARM3CH]

Personally I don't have any problem using IE and waiting for the next thing in Longhorn. In fact most websites are already optimized for IE and while most of the users are also using IE, I don't see why new websites would NOT be optimized for IE too. On my machine I have both FireFox and IE but frankly, I don't see any point using FireFox and mostly use IE. At least the sites that I usually visit render equally in both, well, asides those who only render correctly in IE. Personally, I don't care for tabbed-browsing and with google toolbar I have no problem with pop-ups. Interestingly, I like the Outlook 2003 more than others and together they work very well. For someone like me, who has no problem using what he already has, there is no motivation to switch to something else, even if the new software be free. And yes, I browse the web all the day so my experience is not limited to occasional use.

Re:Will real browser gain market?

[Trailwalker]

WebTv is still around as MSNTv. It is a profitable division of Microsoft. They are now beta testing a broadband version of MSNTv. This will eliminate one of the real problems with the appliance. The new units have many long desired feature such as USB support, etc.

MSNTv is the ideal way to access the net for the totally inept. No virus or worms to worry about. While not everything that a PC will do can be done with MSNTv, surfing and email are easily done.

Most WebTv owners believed and still do believe that development of WebTv suffered greatly after its acquisition by Microsoft. Being assigned to the MSN division was another blow.

Re:Will real browser gain market?

[byolinux]

You're very wrong, and here's why...

Computers *are* consumer devices now, or at least can be. Not all of them are, but then not all VCRs are too.

Computers can be easy to use, people should certainly never need to build a computer from scratch, or reinstall their OS beyond putting a CD in the drive and turning the machine on, and as for systems programming - you're out of your mind. Perhaps you wish computers were some elitist, holier-than-thou priesthood, but I'm afraid you're wrong, wrong, wrong. WebTV failed because people want to do more than surf the web. They might have kids who want to do homework, or they may study themselves, or they might just enjoy exploring what a computer can do for them. So what if it breaks now and then? It should be easy enough for a user to restore.. perhaps we need machines with a read-only file system and all files to be store on a USB pendrive or something to assist this.

You come across as arrogant, but not stupid, so forgive me; but when you say ignorant people shouldn't be using computers, you're right. Sadly, you're the ignorant one.

Re:Will real browser gain market?

[Anonymous Coward]

If that is your opinion, I guess you oppose licenses for driving on public roads as well, since people should be "free to be idiots" while behind the wheel.

Re:Will real browser gain market?

[MimsyBoro]

For users like the ones you mention there is XPDE (I'm not affiliated with the project and have only tried it out, but it looks promising..)
ScreenShots....

Re:Will real browser gain market?

[Anonymous Coward]

The absolute minimum requirements of a computer user should be capabilities to build a system from scratch

Okay. Here's a pile of sand. When you've built a computer from it, you can post on the Internet again. Until then you obviously aren't smart enough to use a computer.

Re:Will real browser gain market?

[Seumas]

Computers have become a consumer product, but unlike other consumer devices (TVs, VCRs, Microwaves) they can actually fuck things up if they do something wrong, or something different...

However, unlike those things the only possible way to fuck things up beyond repair is if you spill coffee on the componants inside of the case. Computers offer absolute freedom to explore and self-educate and play around. The most damaging thing you'll ever do is screw up your installation in which case you whip out the install disk.

And why do these people who are "afraid to install a browser that didn't come with their operating system" always download every fucking thing they come across on the internet, from Bonzai Buddy and WeatherBug to MySearch and a half dozen instant messaging clients?

Re:Will real browser gain market?

[byolinux]

And why do these people who are "afraid to install a browser that didn't come with their operating system" always download every fucking thing they come across on the internet, from Bonzai Buddy and WeatherBug to MySearch and a half dozen instant messaging clients?

Presumably because they feel they're cool and DON'T come with their machine.

If it was easy to install little gadget-type things that were safe, akin to Linspire Click and Run, then I believe the problem wouldn't exist, or would exist less.

Re:Will real browser gain market?

[rcamera]

you mean you're not running win3.1 anymore? i personally am scared to take the step to win95...

Re:Will real browser gain market?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's "The land of the Freak" (zoom in on picture of Bush) "and the home of the Naive" (zoom in picture of Rumsfeld)

Re:Will real browser gain market?

[YrWrstNtmr]

AOlers don't switch browsers, they switch versions of AOL. Whatever rendering engine is used is behind the scenes. You never see "IE" or "Netscape".

Re:Will real browser gain market?

[n-baxley]

Computers should be simple consumer devices, despite their complexity. Look at modern automobiles. Very complex machines, yet anyone can drive one without being overly trained. True not everyone can fix their car, but the great thing is, they don't have to. It doesn't break down that often, and if it does you take it to a specialist. The same can apply to computers.

Re:Will real browser gain market?

[GamerGeek]

I must disagree, people will change when they see a viable reason. My girlfriend lives with her sister. They both have computer running windows XP. Both are computer literate, but not 'savy'. While I was there one day my GF asked me to fix her computer. She had a virus that the virus scanner could not remove. After fixing the virus issue I installed a spyware scanner and cleaned off 15 to 20 spy-ware programs. I introduced her to Firefox and recommended to her that she try to use it whenever possible. I explained that IE has some security holes in it and that might have been contributing to her virus and spyware problems. Trusting my advice she started using Firefox.

While I was there I also installed a spyware scanner on her sisters computer and recommended to her that she start using Firefox also. To which I got a "Mozilla? Thats Netscape right. I hate Netscape. It's always soo slow". I explained that this was likely to be "a better mozilla" then her past experiences and that for security reasons maybe it was a good idea to give to a try. She refused.

About a month later my girlfriend mentioned that she was virtually spyware free, but that her sister was still getting hits on her spyware scanner every day. She informed me that her sister had said "Maybe I should try that fire thingie". She set her sister up with Firefox. Her sister now says "it's not really that different from IE".

People will change when there is an overwhelming reason to. Viruses and spyware were enough of a reason for these two. The big problems is literacy, once they knew they had a problem with their web browser they did what was necessary to fix it.

Re:Will real browser gain market?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no such thing as freedom to take away someone else's freedom. Unless you're trying to reach some meditative zen state of mind, this is a meaningless concept.

Re:Will real browser gain market?

[johnnyb]

"Computers can be easy to use, people should certainly never need to build a computer from scratch, or reinstall their OS beyond putting a CD in the drive and turning the machine on"

You miss the point. For a PC to be a consumer device, the user should NEVER have to reinstall their OS, PERIOD. In fact, the concept of installing is completely foreign to the idea of a consumer device.

For a PC to be a consumable device, they would have to build it like a game console:

1) Have a cartridge/DVD system
2) When a cartridge/DVD is not in the drive, it runs a small file manager which can't do much
3) When you put your cartridge in the drive, that program takes over the whole computer.

"So what if it breaks now and then?"

Again, we're talking about a consumer device. Breaking is not something a consumer device should do. How many times have you had to re-install the operating system in your DVD player?

I think the issue you're having with the parent poster is that you don't understand what classifies something as being a consumer device. Computers certainly aren't consumer devices.

Re:Will real browser gain market?

[Anonymous Coward]

home of the Naive" (zoom in picture of Rumsfeld)

You misspelled Knave. He's no naif.

Re:Will real browser gain market?

[corsican]

If Britain's coastguard was brought down by a virus, they need to kick their admin in the nutsack. If Sydney's rail network went down because of a virus, they need to kick their admin in the nutsack. It's the admin's job to know about these dangers and protect the network; you can't pin the blame on some poor clueless users.

I'm not just talking out of my sphincter either; we've not been affected directly by any of the uber-worms or viruses that have come out in the last 4 years; my network has never allowed a single virus in because I implemented multiple layers of protection. My nutsack is unbruised.

Re:Will real browser gain market?

[nuggetman]

The absolute minimum requirements of a computer user should be capabilities to build a system from scratch, install an operating system, and do at least some fundamental systems programming

And the absolute minimum to drive a car should be the ability to build a car from scratch and do some fundamental tweaking to the engine.

ORRRR you could just take a class on the rules of the road and have penalties for breaking them... oh, wait....

Re:Will real browser gain market?

[geoffspear]

And how do you propose people learn systems programming if they're not allowed to use a computer?

I suppose you wrote a kernel from scratch on paper before you ever touched an actual computer.

Re:Will real browser gain market?

[einhverfr]

Computers have become a consumer product, but unlike other consumer devices (TVs, VCRs, Microwaves) they can actually fuck things up if they do something wrong, or something different...

Ah... you see the problem. And you see why I think that Linux/Mozilla is *much better* for beginners than Windows/IE. As to my credentials, I am a former Microsoftie who runs a technical support and consulting business for consumers and small to midsize businesses.

Here is the problem: Computers are Big Scary Things to many people because they misbehave regularly, and so prevent people from being willing to learn anything about them. If you are able to efficiently troubleshoot when you feel out of your element, then you are probably unique here (this problem is not restricted to end users).

Why are computers Big and Scary? Well, you see, your average consumer doesn't know what spyware, malware, etc. are, so they download lots of free programs from the internet and so their computers stop working correctly. This is a problem with the way that the software economy has developed for Windows. So, they naturally think that their computers don't work because they are *dumb,* when in fact they don't work because of unsavory activities by the authors of some of their software.

Additionally, it is reasonably easy for a user to break Windows, and they need administrative rights to do anything interesting on their system (thanks in part to the Registry, and the fact that it is very difficult to have side-by-side installs of programs like you can on Linux). So an average Windows user is running Windows as Administrator (the Linux equivalent of root) and quickly realizes that he can accidently turn his computer into a giant paperweight.

Enter Linux.

Linux is not that much harder to learn than Windows, and my experience is that true beginners have very little trouble with it (intermediate Windows users, though, have a bit of a difficult adjustment). Additionally, although you can delete your documents, it is very hard for a normal user (not root) to prevent the computer from working. It is possible to break X in one's account but it is not trivial for someone to do this who has no idea what he or she is doing.

Additionally, the Linux software economy has developed a wide variety of open source software, which is free of the spyware, etc. that aflicts so much Windows gratis software. So Linux systems are far more stable than Windows systems in part because of this.

Case in point: 4 years ago, I migrated my parents (Windows novices) to Red Hat Linux 6.1 (you know, ugly interface, clunky apps, but it worked ;-)). This was at a time when most people said Linux is in no way ready for the desktop.

But then my parents stopped calling me for tech support as often, and they started using their computer more. They still have NO IDEA how to do anything more complicated than, say, using a spreadsheet to calculate a sum, but they feel far more confident than their peers, and this is a major advantage.

(BTW my parents now use Red Hat 8, and I will be upgrading to Fedora once they have a larger hard drive).

Re:Will real browser gain market?

[westlake]

there is nothing like geek-speak, being called a dummy or a luser, to keep the masses aligned with Microsoft.

Re:Will real browser gain market?

[westlake]

For a PC to be a consumer device, the user should NEVER have to reinstall their OS, PERIOD

how many XP Home or Mac OS/X users do you suppose have reinstalled their OS?

Re:Will real browser gain market?

[johnnyb]

I know of many. The whole idea of "installing" software means that you are really changing the way your OS behaves, especially with integrated tools that are all the rage today. MacOS isn't as bad with integrated things (especially with their separation of extensions and applications, and their "bundles" idea), however, the MacOS/9 and /X living together has caused many people I know to reinstall several times to get it to run right.

Call me crazy...

[T-Kir]

...but why do I get the feeling that MS might be letting IE development slide deliberately in this manner.

They might be letting Mozilla and others gain a bit more ground so that in a couple of years, if the playing field became a little more level... then MS can play the "we've not got a monopoly on browsers" as extra leverage on governments/organisations who view them with more suspicion on this very issue (as well as other matters). It could be a more long term plan with them.

Again just my 0.02 british pounds.

Re:Call me crazy...

[Anonymous Coward]

M$ have the huge market share, they have no interest in seeing better web standard adopted as they want everything to move to their proprietry richclient .net format. If the web become more advanced it would offer a tougher competitor to M$ next vision, they want to hobble that competition before the battle even begins. Basically M$ want to kill the web as we know it. By allowing 95% of the worlds web experience to rot, then when they deploy the next big thing it will be much easier to get market penetration and take real control of things - Not this sudo standard support game they currently hate, but have to play.

Re:Call me crazy...

[pubjames]

They might be letting Mozilla and others gain a bit more ground

I doubt it. I think they've just stopped work on IE because they will have a completely new version in Longhorn. This new IE will include lots of new MS "standards", and they will really promote that heavily. They'll of course be competing with themselves again, trying to get people to move from the current IE to the new version, and so the more incentive people have to do that the better. In other words, it's actually in their interest to let the current version of IE slide so people will have more incentive to upgrade to the all new version in Longhorn.

Re:Call me crazy...

[Anonymous Coward]

0.02 British Pounds are called two pence, or tuppence. Stop translating for the Americans dude. They're used to searching the web anyway.

Re:Call me crazy...

[typhoonius]

Why dump money into IE? It has a ridiculously large slice of the pie, and people will continue to use it, not because it has a superior feature-set to other browsers, but simply because it's there. It served its purpose, which was giving Microsoft control over internet "standards" and in general making it harder for people to get by without it (and therefore Windows).

Plus, any new features would have to be extensively tested; we're still seeing new IE exploits, and the thing's been stagnant for two or three years. One bug would affect millions and probably cost them an unreasonable amount to fix and support. Considering that any new features could barely extend IE's marketshare anymore at this point, it just isn't worth the trouble unless IE can give them more control somehow (see: tighter browser/OS integration in Longhorn).

Re:Call me crazy...

[rixstep]

I'm surprised how many of you haven't done your homework. TP Jackson's writings, whether they represented the study of his associates or were his own insights, are remarkable. They are the basis for the DOJ court ruling against Microsoft.

The browser was never the issue, and I am surprised there are any people who still after all these years don't get it. The materials were freely available at the DOJ website for all to read.

Microsoft were against anyone intruding on their territory. Both Netscape and Sun threatened to do so with their technologies. Microsoft deliberately sabotaged the Sun Java standard (no other company signing the agreement ever did) and they did all they could to prevent Netscape from entering the PC marketplace.

The danger with both technologies is cross-platform compatibility. Applications written for Netscape or with Java could easily be ported to other platforms. This would destroy Microsoft's dominance in the PC market.

Gates tried to reason with Netscape, but they weren't interested. Gates' message to them was simple. He invited them to Redmond, and then told them point blank they should not enter the PC market. Netscape chose to disregard Bill Gates.

The entire thing with Internet Explorer was only to destroy Netscape, but not to destroy the product - to destroy the company. They used pressure on OEMs, pressure on ISPs, pressure on everyone to not only get people to opt for the free Internet Explorer, but to make it increasingly difficult for people to even find download links for the Netscape browser. OEMs who showed too many downloads of Netscape - including IBM - risked losing their benefits contra Microsoft and had to make the download links to Netscape more obscure so as to not incur the wrath of WHG.

Microsoft lost the trial but they won the battle. Netscape is no more, and Microsoft have already paid for Sun's funeral. The Internet Explorer browser is not interesting anymore, and it doesn't matter Mozilla is out there with a good product. Microsoft invested an estimated US$5 billion in its development without a thought ever of getting any of it back - it was for defensive purposes only.

Today it's all DRM - browsers and the threats to the MS marketplace are in the rear view mirror. The browser is not essential.

Some of you ought to go back to school before you begin speculating about what's going on.

Re:Call me crazy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Call me crazy, but...

Why does Microsoft even want to continue to be in the browser business? They already wiped Netscape Communications Corporation out of business and there isn't really much leverage by having their browser be the most widely used. The browser is free. And while it may have been different five years ago, the servers companies buy aren't going to be based on the browser technology and nobody buys a Windows operating system for the browser.

So why not save the developer time, money and everything else involved and just let the Mozilla teams do the work of browser-building and bundle that with the operating system so it comes with a default browser already installed? They don't lose anything except the added expense and burden of a huge MSIE development.

Re:Call me crazy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, and probably IE for Longhorn will include tabbed navigation, extensions and themes natively, and people will say:
"Look how bright is this Bill Gates, these improvements are a great and original idea!"
Really sad :(

Re:Call me crazy...

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll of course be competing with themselves again, trying to get people to move from the current IE to the new version, and so the more incentive people have to do that the better.

Well this is where things are going to get interesting because MS has stated that IE is no longer going to be a standalone product - that is, upgradable as a component separate from the OS. Each OS version will now have it's own IE version. So now people will only get upgraded IE if they upgrade their OS as well.

The thing to note here is that Longhorn will have hefty hardware requirements - and I'm thinking this will keep many people from upgrading. Insane DRM will probably cut out more than a few from the Longhorn upgrade. And probably the last will be, will existing software run on Longhorn? Much of it will, but I'm sure more than a few apps will break which again will tie people to 2k/XP.

If MS wants to "compete" in the browserspace, they basically just tied their hands.

Re:Call me crazy...

[brap999]

The browser was never the issue, and I am surprised there are any people who still after all these years don't get it. The materials were freely available at the DOJ website for all to read.

Well apparently, unlike you, the rest of the world prefers to spend their time reading more interesting things other than the DOJ website ...

netscape is 5.5 times better than mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

Now one must look at the facts here netscape is better than mozilla -- how do you benchmark such things, well 7.2-1.7=5.5, so netscape must be 5.5 times better than mozilla

Re:netscape is 5.5 times better than mozilla

[Elendil]

Shouldn't it be 7.2/1.7=4.24 times better? See, we're already closing the gap! Go Mozilla!

Re:netscape is 5.5 times better than mozilla

[Alranor]

^
|

Are there really people stupid enough to believe this quote?

Mod it funny if you like, but informative?

What the hell are the mods on today :)

Re:netscape is 5.5 times better than mozilla

[Peter Cooper]

Actually, since there was no Netscape 5, you could say 6.2/1.7 :-)

Re:netscape is 5.5 times better than mozilla

[Rhubarb Crumble]

Shouldn't it be 7.2/1.7=4.24 times better?

No, it's a logarithmic scale... it's 2^(7.2-1.7) = 45.254834 times better!

Re:netscape is 5.5 times better than mozilla

[tokul]

get Gecko version from about: and you will see which one is better. You might need to add or subtract some value from Netscape, because they might bundle browser with additional software.

Why replace the default browser?

[anshil]

Don't take me wrong I'm a mozilla fan and linux user.

But honestly if I'm running windows, what real motiviation is there to download a replacement browser when IE is already installed, and works?

I can't be mad at any secretary 'cause she uses IE instead of Mozilla/Netscape. Of course of political reasons she shouldn't, but practically?

If you sell an operating system, you practically just have the ultimate power to drive any other software out of business by bundeling and installing it by default.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, you browse /. and you ask that question?

Does spyware and viruses up the kazoo strike you as a good enought reason? How about popups?

Here, have my share

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[barks]

Besides the fact that Mozilla was the first on the scene to include an option to block out pop-ups (I haven't bother to check has IE included that option yet?) that alone should be a reason for people to download a separate browser.

I laugh when I see a cheesy newbie ISP commercial that promotes "We have pop-up blocker technology!!!" Shit no kidding, so does my free Mozilla browser.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[TwistedSquare]

Tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking? And your last line is what is causing a lot of these anti-monopolistic lawsuits against MS.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[bcmm]

I guess thats the diffence between windows and Linux, to some extent in windows, you get a browser, a media player and various other stuff (it is actually impossible to install winXP without IE, WMP, MS instant messaging, OE, various other stuff. the IM can be turned off, but not uninstalled). In Linux, you don't get these installed automatically, but you can chose any other player/browser yourself. You can see this as freedom, or just as more hassle than accepting the bundled stuff.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[pubjames]

But honestly if I'm running windows, what real motiviation is there to download a replacement browser when IE is already installed, and works?

Security. I use Windows but I don't use IE or Outlook, because doing so considerably reduces my chances of security compromises.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[croddy]

if you've ever installed Red Hat, Mandrake, Suse, Fedora... or most desktop-oriented distributions, really... you'll know that a browser, video/audio players, IM, email, and various other useful applications are installed by default. you can use the bundled stuff, or you can (really) un-install it, or you can install something else.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[sql*kitten]

haven't bother to check has IE included that option yet

Allegedly it will be in XP SP2, released in the summer.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[silentbozo]

Every once in a while, you have to wipe a Windows machine, for whatever reason (usually, because the registry is so bloated with crap, it's easier to start over fresh.) At work we just finished doing just that - installing a fresh copy of Win2K (patches galore to get it from SP2 to SP4, joy...) The first thing I did (after installing a firewall, antivirus software, THEN jacking the machine into the network to download updates) was to install Firefox and set it as the default browser. Then, just for good measure, I hid IE (you can't remove Explorer, but there is an option to hide the toolbar icon and desktop shortcuts.)

Basically, Microsoft might have control over the machine after it ships from the factory, but only up to the point where it ends up in the local tech's hands. There, when you start customizing it for the end user, you can easily de-Microsoftize at the same time.

I can't be mad at any secretary 'cause she uses IE instead of Mozilla/Netscape. Of course of political reasons she shouldn't, but practically?

Well, if you use Firefox, you can be much more productive after customizing the browser interface, and tabs alone are a good reason to switch. There are some really nifty extensions for Firefox, like session save, where even if you have to quit the browser, upon relaunch it will re-open all of the browser windows that were up the last time you were running Firefox. Another great extension is Live HTTP Headers - I use that one quite a bit when debugging code from webservers that I administer.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[sonicattack]

Every once in a while, you have to wipe a Windows machine, for whatever reason (usually, because the registry is so bloated with crap, it's easier to start over fresh.) At work we just finished doing just that - installing a fresh copy of Win2K (patches galore to get it from SP2 to SP4, joy...) The first thing I did (after installing a firewall, antivirus software, THEN jacking the machine into the network to download updates) was to install Firefox and set it as the default browser. Then, just for good measure, I hid IE (you can't remove Explorer, but there is an option to hide the toolbar icon and desktop shortcuts.)

If this is a recurring task for you, I'd recommend using some partitioning imaging software to make a snapshot of the completed state of the installation, after service packs, extra patches, hiding the IE icons :), and other stuff. A reinstall is much simpler then, since it is just a question of restoring the partition image.

I bet there is some free Windows-equivalent of the "partimage" software out there.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Flyboy Connor]

Because IE is a big security hole, a lousy browser, and easily infected with all kinds of spyware.

A fairly computer-savvy acquaintance of mine recently called me to his computer because his homepage was constantly reset to easybiz.net. Ad-aware couldn't do anything. He started rummaging in his registry and managed to make his IE completely unusable.

So, how to solve this problem? Standard-Microsoft solution: uninstall IE? Ah, but there is the catch: you can not uninstall IE, it comes with the package. So, there is a choice: wiping the machine and start all over again, or, what I did: install Mozilla.

I was a bit relieved to see that while the IE penetration is > 90%, alternate browsers have about half the market. Now I finally know that I, too, am considered to be an IE user. There is one website I need to visit which requires IE, so I use IE solely for that purpose. I think that for all those people that use an alternate browser, that alternate browser is actually their primary browser. So IE's influence is dimishing. No wonder if you realise what a piece of %$#@ it is.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Feztaa]

I think you've got that totally backwards.

The problem is that when you buy windows and you get all that stuff bundled with it, all that stuff is made by microsoft. When you get a set of linux distro install CDs, it comes with 10 browsers, 20 mail clients, a few media players, 5 instant messaging clients, and a million other things. The problem isn't that nothing is bundled with linux, the problem is that EVERYTHING is bundled with linux. But that bundling isn't bad, because each program that gets bundled has it's own independant development community that is just a loose group of individuals, and isn't even commercial to begin with.

When you install linux, the hassle isn't because you have to go find stuff yourself, the hassle is because everything is given to you and you have to choose what you want to use.

The idea here is that when MS bundles MS's own media player into windows, you have no incentive to buy any other media players, so the media player market collapses because nobody ever uses anything but WMP anyway. When Mandrake bundles xine, that doesn't illegitimately control the market because a) you can easily remove xine, b) Mandrake doesn't get any benefit from you using xine or a competitor, and c) competing media players come with the system too, so nobody is being locked out.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Xrikcus]

I suppose there's little incentive to TRY, but once persuaded to try, most people don't seem to go back to IE.

Those that do stick with IE don't seem to do it because it's better (largely, there are exceptions) but because they think it's the internet. When I can be bothered I'll go and delete my father's IE and Outlook icons completely...

"What's a web browser?"??? God help me!!

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Tiram]

Actually, I think Opera had pop-up blocking first. That and tabbed windows, built-in search ...

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been implemented in Service Pack 2, and is ON by DEFAULT!

Check out the RC's of SP2, it works perfectly.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Ckwop]

Except that's the problem.. IE is so deeply integrated into the operating system you have to use it somewhere. Help files being one example.. Various dialogs in XP use the html rendering engine from IE..

Don't think that you can get away from having to download the IE6 security patches.. because you really do!

I don't run linux personally.. but the lack of choice is annoying. I paid for XP pro and I should be able to remove components completely.

I love Firefox, for example, but I ended up uninstalling it because IE annoyingly gets in the way.

I don't feel as if I have much choice and that's annoying.

Cheers,

Simon.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[RoLi]

But honestly if I'm running windows, what real motiviation is there to download a replacement browser when IE is already installed, and works? I can't be mad at any secretary 'cause she uses IE instead of Mozilla/Netscape. Of course of political reasons she shouldn't, but practically?

• Mozilla is using HTTP 1.1 pipelining which is faster for sites with lots of images, especially noticable over dialup
• Tabs
• No security holes
• Numerous extensions that make life easier

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[1010011010]

And for the folks not running XP...? Many businesses still use Win2k.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Mr_Silver]

Tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking? And your last line is what is causing a lot of these anti-monopolistic lawsuits against MS.

My office is full of non-techincal people. Looking around most people only have 1 (yes, one) IE window open. When I mention tabbed browsing, most people confirm my observations - that is, they only have one (and occasionally two) windows open. With cases like this, tabbed browsing could be seen as overkill to a problem that doesn't really exist (for them).

With regards to pop-up windows, the next service pack will contain a pop-up blocker for windows, but most of the clueful people have google toolbar already installed which does that for you.

Mozilla and it's tabbed browsing, mouse gestures, pop up blockers, type ahead find and the raft of other nifty features is great for the "power surfer" but I swear that based on the people in my office, it's not something they particulary need or feel the need to have enough to even go out and try.

Note that i'm not saying these features are bad, they're very good, but the problem with adoption here is that a lot of people don't realise that the average Joe doesn't surf the web in a way that Mozilla would benifit him. If he only goes to a few websites then there is a chance he'll never see unwanted pop up adverts.

I asked my mother about pop up adverts last month and she'd only ever come across one in the two years she'd been surfing the web. Granted, she wasn't surfing a very large number of sites - but it was difficult to sell a feature to her when she didn't really know why she needed it.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[rixstep]

Yeah, like it's rocket science or something. To write an add-on might be, but in the browser code it's less than a triviality.

Which makes you wonder. I suspect Bill Gates and Jack Valenti belong to the same book club.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

Avant Browser

Crazy Browser

My IE2

Those are just a few off the top of my head. IE can be hosted as a control inside any other application. You don't like IE? Fine, use the rendering engine in any application you want. Hey, make it open source if you want.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[jellomizer]

Well you are assuming that the users control the monopoly on the product. What Microsoft bundling really does is this...
When some one is developing a web page they (should at least try) to stay as platform independent as possible, but that isn't always possible. So what the developers has to figure out what can most people use. Well right now most people use windows, and everyone with Windows has IE installed. So what are they going to choose? Well they are going to make sure it loads fine in IE First then check the other guys if there is time. So now we have a slew of sites that are optimized for IE. So people just use IE because they know they are going to get what the author wanted them to see.

But now with Mozilla, Sarfari, and Opra catching up to IE in giving the same experience. People are starting to use the others again because now if it looks the same they might as well go back to what they like with the features and interface. It is real easy to get people to switch to Mozilla now when ever you see them being bombarded with popups or they got spyware installed on their system. Just give them mozilla and they will be happy.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Seumas]

But honestly if I'm running windows, what real motiviation is there to download a replacement browser when IE is already installed, and works?

* I like having a pop-up blocker.
* I like the regex-based content filtering of the adblock extension which eliminates almost all advertising, including flash animation.
* I like tabbed browsing.
* I like fast rendering.
* I like the advanced bookmark, history and cookie handling.
* I like the CTRL+K google search tab (which is also expandable to other engines) in Firefox.
* I like the livehttpheaders plugin that lets me see the http header content for debugging stuff.
* I like the web developer extension with all the useful tools.
* I like the "open this page in MSIE" extension that lets me quickly launch MS-proprietary coded crap-pages in IE that won't render right in Mozilla.
* I like not having to worry about Active-X and other security concerns.
* I like mouse gestures.
* I like the reloadevery extension that lets me set a tab's page to reload at whatever interval I want (great for slashdot and other forums as well as the drudgereports.com news site!).
* I like the better CSS support and ability to customize CSS from my end-user side.

Those are just things that came off the top of my head. Notice that almost all of them are with regard to the end-user experience and not my "I'm a web designer (because I'm not) and prefer Mozilla and wish all my visitors used it". And I won't even get into all the wonderful reasons to install Thunderbird as an email client.

I'm not sure why Microsoft would even want to stay in the browser business anymore. There was a time where the leverage was useful but it seems like it might be time to close-up shop on the MSIE development group and just start bundling Mozilla with the operating system as the default browser. This pushes the bad publicity of security issues off of them partially and gives them a world-class web browser while saving the cost of having a huge development team of their own.

I understand the point of Microsoft pushing MSIE in 1999, but I don't see those same reasons today.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Jugalator]

I know IE users who don't want popup blocking and can't see why it's better than just using the task bar (strange? yes). And they'll probably have popup blocking from SP2 when Mozilla Firefox goes out of beta.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[NumbThumb]

A while back, when i first heard about tabbed browsing, i thought "ok, but who *needs* that"? Then i installed moz and got used to it, and i really started to like it. The point is: before, i had only 1 or 2 browser windows open. Today, i have 1 or 2 browser windows open, containing 5-10 tabs each.

Whenever i have to use IE, i just feel trapped.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides the fact that Mozilla was the first on the scene to include an option to block out pop-ups

Not to mention, first on the scene with cookies. Oh, and first on the scene with web browsing clients themselves. Hm. Looks like Netscape (Mosaic) did all the innovation and MS just capitalized on it and drove the true innovators out of the business. Even to this day, the innovation comes not from MS but from the Mozilla browser developers whos ancestry hails back to Netscape and Mosaic.

Microsoft's only innovations are in the form of bugs and security holes.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't buy that.

All the non-technical people I know (family, friends, etc) who spend at least a couple hours a day online frequently complain about pop-ups and advertising and I know for a fact that many of them have many windows open at all times.

I checked out the machine I let my teenage brother use whenever he visits and noticed that there were a dozen browser windows open when he left. Even though he was using Mozilla, he had no clue what "tabbed browsing" was.

People who use auction sites or any forums while they use their computer frequently have multiple windows open. I hear people on my forums (possibly the least technical group of users anywhere as they're all 15 to 50 year old fashion concious women) comment about having several websites open 24x7 at the same time so I know this is a common practice.

When I show people what tabbed browsing is (not to mention the pop-up blocking and the adblock extension which kicks ass) they are amazed. The idea of having multiple pages open in the same browser window never occured to them and they love it from that point on.

And by the way - there is a big difference between a non-technical internet user and someone who just happens to use a computer at work.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look bud, I don't what extra patches you have to add got Windows 2K from SP2 to SP4, but in our office, it takes one file and 5 minutes. Windows patches tend to be cumulative. But then I guess you're preaching to the choir here, so nobody will contradict you, except for me.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

What total bullshit. The "security" issue is a red herring. 99.99% of web users are surfing Ebay, porn and downloading mp3's. SSL is all the security you need to buy Beanie Babies online. All commercial sites render correctly in IE. Thousands do not render correctly (as the designer intended) in other browsers.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true at all. I was an IE user who downloaded Mozilla 1.6 after listening to the amount of noise here on /. Mozilla takes 2 seconds longer to load up than IE, though it does render pages faster. However, those pages aren't rendered correctly half the time. Maybe if I constantly update my Mozilla it'll start rendering better. But I'm doing fine with IE 6 SP 1 thanks.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Minna Kirai]

if you've ever installed Red Hat, Mandrake, Suse, Fedora... or most desktop-oriented distributions, really... you'll know that a ---- video/audio players ---- and various other useful applications are installed by default.

Wrong. The lack of pre-installed video-players is getting to be one of the major complaints about new Linux installs.

And RedHat/Fedora doesn't even include an MP3 audio player! (For reasons which they think are pretty important, but that few desktop users understand)

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera had popup blocking first, you are correct. But back then Opera's blocker was "stupid" - it blocked ALL popups, whereas Mozilla had the first intelligent blocker that stopped _unrequested_ popups. And then there is Lynx

I'm not entirely sure about tabbed browsing. Opera was the first to ship it as a standard feature, but some claim Mozilla had a tabs-extension before that (multizilla). But who knows (or cares) which came first, both have it now and we love them for it.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Minna Kirai]

(you can't remove Explorer, but there is an option to hide the toolbar icon and desktop shortcuts.)

You have the Clinton Department of Justice to thank for that freedom...

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Seumas]

Huh? What do you mean "IE gets in the way"?

You uninstalled Firefox because you have to use MSIE to install patch updates for your operating system? Did you throw away your car because sometimes you ride a bike, too?

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[lone_marauder]

But honestly if I'm running windows, what real motiviation is there to download a replacement browser when IE is already installed, and works?

Well, for one thing, people generally don't hijack your home page in Firebird. Though the same could be said of the Windows operating as a whole, IE in particular is a malware portal.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[anshil]

The key issue about the negative side of bundling is finance.

If you "buy" a Linux distro, you're not passively forced to finance all side products that come with it, they are developed indepently.

I agree that there are distro's where you're financing side-product development, like redhat gcc,glibc and a lot of other stuff, SuSe money goes into ALSA, USB development and so on. This is actually good as you're financing OpenSource software when paying for RedHat/Suse many others. However again you are left the choice not to do so, but install debian for example.

In contrast to that if you buy windows XY, you are actually also financing IE, WMP and development of all the other stuff you really don't want.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Seumas]

Actually, I'd rather install things on linux than MSIE.

If I want to switch browsers on Windows, I have to:

+ Launch MSIE.
+ Go to mozilla.org
+ Go to the download page.
+ Click on the download.
+ Launch the downloaded file.
+ Walk through the installation.

If I'm using linux:

# apt-get install mozilla

I sure know what I prefer.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Octorian]

Actually, it was the perfect feature for me. Before tabbed browsing, I regularly would have a whole ton of browser windows open. This is especailly important on dial-up (didn't free myself from that until mid '99), when things take a long time to load, and you never want to hit the "back" button.

In face, the #1 reason I preferred the 'nix version of Netscape to the windows version? Middle-click opens link in new browser window.

(Though I still remember once when some family friend, with minimal computer literacy, was over at the house and browsing the web on my computer. I swear his hand couldn't tell the left and middle buttons apart. When he was done, the taskbar showed a ton of open browser windows.)

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Octorian]

That's why I prefer FreeBSD... The OS is just the OS and the base userland stuff. I specifically install what software I want to have. Of course the same could be considered true on Solaris, which I actually use more often these days. (Sun Rays rock!)

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[jmulvey]

IE has had Kerberos-based authentication that works against Apache or IIS for years. This method prevents passwords from being transmitted over the network or to web servers. Mozilla is still trying (and failing) to implement negiotiateauth.

Meanwhile in Mozillaland, users are forced to authenticate using basic authentication -- which passes their password over the network in cleartext, practically. I know they are trying to integrate in 1.7 beta, but it doesn't work.

So tell me again how IE is less secure than the alternatives?

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[SenseiLeNoir]

I used to think "Why have tabbed browsing" or "find as you type". Now once i tried those features, i simply cannot live without.

Same with my parents, they may have never had more than one browser window in the past, but now, they use the features well, and are dismayed when they have to use IE.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[garcia]

Mozilla and it's tabbed browsing, mouse gestures, pop up blockers, type ahead find and the raft of other nifty features is great for the "power surfer" but I swear that based on the people in my office, it's not something they particulary need or feel the need to have enough to even go out and try.

I guess I would fall into the "powersurfer" group. I still don't use Mozilla, I don't see a need for me to have tabbed browsing, and I really never saw a need for mouse gestures. Popups were stopped with Google's toolbar so I won't talk about that any further.

I have tried Mozilla many times (including Thunderbird/Firefox) and never saw that it did what I wanted (or felt the same) as IE. I guess it's a matter of taste and comfort but I just see no reason to switch.

Mozilla/Firefox always seemed slow, uncomfortable, and just not as smooth as IE. I know there are various reasons for this including Windows loading IE at boot or whatever.

It's just a matter of taste even for the "powersurfers".

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

I laugh when I see a cheesy newbie ISP commercial that promotes "We have pop-up blocker technology!!!" Shit no kidding, so does my free Mozilla browser.

Worst is when an ISP shows those pop-up blocker technologies when their own site is full of pop-ups.

If they show that as a bad thing to users, wtf are they thinking of when promoting pop-up blockers?

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Pedrito]

I just started using Firefox for the first time last week. I was stunned by how cool it is. I love the tabbed browsing. And the Mycroft search plugins are the coolest thing in browsing as far as I'm concerned.

In fact, yesterday, I finally took the plunge and made it my default browser and am quite happy with the switch, though it did crash on me yesterday as well. But I don't mind because unlike IE, I can submit the bug and monitor the progress in Bugzilla. That alone is worth the switch.

Now I'm pissed the MSN Messenger forces me to use IE to open my hotmail account. And then after disassembling MSN Messenger (trying to figure out how to fix this), I noticed that it does something with the mozregistry.dat file, so I'm curious if there's anything untoward going on there... Still looking...

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[MMC Monster]

The only thing you have to do is make sure IE is the default browser. Then use Firefox for everything you do on the web. On the rare occasion that another application (ie: your paint program) opens a web site, it'll use IE. Usually those aren't the sites that give problems, anyway. In addition, I keep Firefox as a desktop icon and remove the IE one.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[hendridm]

Preview available here. Popup blocking works well and the new firewall is quite nice (although I use a hardware firewall). This one was clearly designed with security as a top priority (although it remains to be seen whether it will be enough).

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[argent]

Because IE is a big security hole, a lousy browser, and easily infected with all kinds of spyware.

Remember Netscape Smart Download phoning home with all your download traffic? Don't bother with Netscape's latest version, stick with Mozilla or Firefox.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[frostman]

The lack of big, recognized, profitable companies behind a lot of the Linux apps is scary to some people.

I just tried out the new SuSE LiveCD because I was curious how PHB-friendly it would be (here in Europe it's the main "business" distro).

There were nice menu options like "Word Processor" and such - but then you launch the app and you get OpenOffice, or (uh-oh) the GIMP for image editing.

I think Novell/SuSE are in a tight spot on that one... it would be so much better for them to customize and corporate-ize some of these apps, even if it's just the chrome and the help text. But that of course would greatly anger the volunteer communities that build and support the programs.

OpenOffice, Firefox and Thunderbird (and many others) have done an admirable job "looking serious." But there are plenty of other perfectly good applications that just look so geeky, so nonserious, so obviously at odds with mainstream business culture, that they are practically begging to not be taken seriously by non-techies.

In some Kases it's beKause of Kutesy Knames, in others it goes deeper.

Honestly, if I were trying to sell a C*O on enterprise desktop Linux, I would be a lot happier talking about "Novell Enterprise Foobar." SuSE takes this pretty far in their marketing materials, but once you have the system in front of you you still have the "problem" of too many options and too many styles.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[anshil]

As anything it's hard to get real statistics, but googles Zeitgeist is a fairly good resource:

http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html

Unfortunally as you see IE 6.0 is gaining rapidly more and more market share, while mozilla 5.0+ is only veeeery slowly advancing. I know that Browsers like Opera or so announce themselves as IE by default, this is no good, so it's well their problem to be unseen.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. My office is full of non-techincal people. Looking around most people only have 1 (yes, one) IE window open. When I mention tabbed browsing, most people confirm my observations - that is, they only have one (and occasionally two) windows open. With cases like this, tabbed browsing could be seen as overkill to a problem that doesn't really exist (for them). ...

   Note that i'm not saying these features are bad, they're very good, but the problem with adoption here is that a lot of people don't realise that the average Joe doesn't surf the web in a way that Mozilla would benifit him. If he only goes to a few websites then there is a chance he'll never see unwanted pop up adverts.

Tabs are ideal for total novices. Here's how I deploy them -- pay attention, this gets tricky! :)

1. Determine the sites people go to.
2. Put them in tabs.
3. Save the tabs.
4. Click "Use current group" as the home page.
5. Push this out as part of the default install (if practical).

Now, when a novice fires up a browser, they see a web desktop. All "my stuff" is there.

Tabs -- preconfigured like this -- are the ONE thing that moved tabbed browsing from "what?" to "I want THAT" for regular users. They can't do without it anymore.

Microsoft will add this to IE even if it's a few years from now; they don't have any choice.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[mangu]

The problem isn't that nothing is bundled with linux, the problem is that EVERYTHING is bundled with linux

Interesting point, that's why I started using Linux. (Actually, my first un*x was FreeBSD, but I quickly switched to Linux because of the better hardware support). When one works in developing engineering applications like I do, it's invaluable to get all those little libraries without which one would spend most of the time solving little problems again and again. I stopped using Windows when my applications outgrew my "student edition" of Matlab.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Yenhsrav_Keviv]

Opera has had popup blocking for a long time, in the order of years (hit F12, then select refuse popups), tabbed browsing has been in it forever, as well as tons of other goodies.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

IE is so deeply integrated into the operating system you have to use it somewhere. Help files being one example.. Various dialogs in XP use the html rendering engine from IE..

Help files and dialogs in XP don't usually display untrusted documents. Internet Explorer, when surfing the web, usually does.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, the really crappy part about what happened to this guy, is that he's not going to be able to use windows update. If he thinks spyware is bad, wait until he can't(*) patch his machine and the next big worm hits. Again it's another reason that it's stupid to integrate a web browser into the OS.

(*) okay so you can manage to download hot fixes if you can dig through MS's website, but in all honesty I've never seen anyone actually do it.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing comes bundled with Linux. The bundling is done by the distributions, who pick and choose which applications is suitable for its userbase.
It's people like you who frighten people away. They hear about "Linux", goto kernel.org and feel cheated when they discover that their newly acquired "Operating System" doesn't even come with a login shell let alone a web browser, email client or even a text editor. It's then left up to people like me to pick up the pieces of these broken hearts and to point out that the nice people at Slackware have done all the hard work for us.

Please stop confusing people by referring to the kernel as the final, end-user product.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[svallarian]

and don't forget wonderful IE-only sites like
windowsupdate.microsoft.com

Steven v.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[beforewisdom]

Mozilla, particularly firefox has more end user friendly features then IE.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Nimey]

My office is full of non-techincal people. Looking around most people only have 1 (yes, one) IE window open. When I mention tabbed browsing, most people confirm my observations - that is, they only have one (and occasionally two) windows open. With cases like this, tabbed browsing could be seen as overkill to a problem that doesn't really exist (for them).

Before I had a tabbed browser, I only had one or maybe two windows open at once, because it was so inconvenient to switch between windows. After going tabbed with a late beta of Mozilla, I would sometimes have a dozen tabs open at once.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[s-meister]

IE is so deeply integrated into the operating system you have to use it somewhere.

Which is why I have been playing around with the free version of 98lite, that allows you to install Win98SE (with all its problems no less) without IE at all, and with the Win95B Explorer.exe. I have yet to get the time to install Firefox but Thunderbird worked nicely, and the HTML help support is a separate download.

I am working towards Linux as a full replacement for Windows, but until I can get a version fully functioning I need a PC I can rely on, so the 98Lite option is the one I am trying, rather than shelling out nearly 200GBP or whatever for XP Pro. XP gets for too much attention from hackers for my liking. I use XP Pro at work, but I don't have to like it, and my home hardware doesn't have that level of horsepower.

I love Firefox, for example, but I ended up uninstalling it because IE annoyingly gets in the way.

Yes, I ended up reverting to Firebird 0.7 at work because Firefox kept doing weird stuff, possibly due to the ActiveX plugin doofus. I can't quite understand how IE could get in the way. Care to clarify?

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Otto]

Tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking?

To me, personally, tabbed browsing by default is a reason not to use a browser. I find little else in a browser quite as annoying as decreasing my viewing area to do nothing more than recreate the Taskbar using Tabs instead. And a poor recreation at that.

Pop-up blocking built in is nice, but the Google toolbar takes care of that for me.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Otto]

Because IE is a big security hole, a lousy browser, and easily infected with all kinds of spyware.

The only problem with this is that it's demonstrably not true.

Admittedly, I am a clueful user of computers, but I most often use IE on the various Windows boxen around here. Why? Because it's good enough. Never had a problem with spyware, never had a browser hijack experience, and I've been surfing with IE ever since they integrated it into Windows. It's just easier than dealing with other alternative browsers. I'm not interested in surfing for it's own sake, I'm interested in gaining access to information on the internet, and IE serves that purpose as well as any other.

But the point I'm making here is that while there do exist security holes and such, if you are a clued user who installs updates regularly, doesn't say "yes" to every pop up that appears, etc, etc, then you generally don't have these sorts of problems on Win boxes with IE.

Yes, I've removed a browser hijacker from somebody's system, but no, they were not a clueful user of the system. Most people are not the kind of people who update regularly, but using different software isn't really a solution to this problem..

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do people have eye hand coordination issues? I've tried tabbed browsing, and it is fine, it is NOT a killer feature. I went back to using IE w/ Google toolbar.

Why? Google blocks the pop-ups we all hate, and gives me easy access to the search engine I use the most.

As for the tabbed browsing, I have no problem having 10-20 IE windows open (Windows does this nice grouping for me that puts them all together in this neat little list that I can use to switch between with almost zero effort (kinda like selecting a tab).

And the best part is that I don't have to install a whole new browser on every machine I use, and explain to the user why they need "yet another browser". They all understand the concept of the Google toolbar (which installs in almost no time).

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Nailer]

I use Windows but I don't use IE

How do you install OS updates?

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[hetairoi]

Allegedly it will be in XP SP2, released in the summer.

I also understand that, allegedly, XP sp2 will make your penis larger and end world hunger.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[av8tors32]

As a person who recently switched to FireFox I would like to offer my 0.02 -I knew about tab browsing but kept using IE -I knew about pop-up blocking but installed the google toolbar. -I knew Mozilla was probably better at a lot of things but kept using IE Why? It wasn't broke and I knew how to use it. This is really important for understanding why so many "Joes" are using IE. When does someone replace a Microwave Oven? When a new one with cool features comes out or when the old one breaks... Why Did I switch? IE finally broke when I got a system with 1920x1200 resolution (IE rendering at that res really sucks) Bottom Line: As more things break IE more people will look for something to switch to.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[killjoe]

Mozilla is faster, faster loading and faster rendering. It has tons more features. HOnestly I don't know how people live without search as you type and tabbed browsing. It also has cool plug ins like click to play flash. Combine that with "block images from this server" and you have hassle free browsing. Oh also it does not visit the MSN site every time I mistype a URL either.

IE is for people who like to see advertisements. That's not me.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[ImpTech]

And don't forget that Mandrake doesn't have 90% marketshare. They couldn't control the market if they wanted to.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[happylight]

Before I had a tabbed browser, I only had one or maybe two windows open at once, because it was so inconvenient to switch between windows.

I don't get what's so inconvenient about switching windows. It's just keyboard short-cuts, which I assume is the same way you switch tabs. I also don't see what's so different between using windows and using tabs. Care to explain?

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong, it's Opera that had it first.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, why use photoshop when windows comes with paint?

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Chester K]

Besides the fact that Mozilla was the first on the scene to include an option to block out pop-ups (I haven't bother to check has IE included that option yet?) that alone should be a reason for people to download a separate browser.

That's not a good reason. "Getting there first" doesn't count for beans in software. Case in point, IE was the first on the scene with dynamic reflow and any sort of CSS support, but I doubt you'd point to that as a good enough reason alone for people to use IE today.

If you want popup blocking with IE, you can easily download the Google Toolbar, which is a much smaller and easier download and install than Mozilla -- with less compatibility issues. Or you can wait a month or two until XP SP2 comes out, which builds the functionality right into IE.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Chester K]

I don't run linux personally.. but the lack of choice is annoying. I paid for XP pro and I should be able to remove components completely.

Sure you can hack up your copy of XP Pro to try to remove IE entirely. Some people do. But you mentioned yourself, IE is not just a web browser. It provides critical services to almost every application you'd want to run under Windows. Despite all the Slashbot sneering and jeering about the issue, it really is an integral part of Windows, and removing it makes the system about as useful as removing the network stack from Linux.

If your idealism is strong enough that you can't stand IE being used as a library for internet access, or as a layout engine for applications (both uses, I might add, that Mozilla can't just be plugged in as a replacement to fill due to it not being IE-compatible), then your only real solution is to throw the baby out with the bathwater and not use Windows.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[puck01]

I'm with you. I almost exclusively use firefox or mozilla, but practically speaking IE works well enough so there is little incentive to switch. Firefox/mozilla indeed has some nifty features IE sorely lacks, but most people don't know the difference because they're not aware of the other options. Again, IE works, perhaps not the best, but well enough to keep most people searching for other options.

One other reason IE necessary on windows, the last time I checked anyway, it is the only browser that works with microsoft update. Try making your default browser mozilla and then going to windows update. Last time I did, it didn't work. It is for this reason, that I will not make mozilla or firebird the default browser on any windows machine. This would end up frustating most of the people I'm try to help/convert.

puck

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have SP2 rc already and IE does have the popup blocker. I dont know how well it works because i dont use IE but it is there.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Eraser_]

There is one website I need to visit which requires IE, so I use IE solely for that purpose.

Why not show that company competition? Call them up, tell them you can't do business with them because their website is horribly broken. Have a competitors name ready. Chevron didn't listen, and I now buy gas from a cheaper local non-chain gas station. (Which is probably using Chevron gas, but who knows, could be Arco) Either way, after a year of petitioning them and being told flat out "too bad" I cancelled my credit card with them and went my merry way.

By the way, Citibank (Washington Mutuals CC provider) has a warning on their website about how IE might not render their site correctly because it (IE) is broken. *Every* problem I have emailed them about has been fixed in under a week, and this was a year ago the last time I had a problem. Most of them were funky DHTML/Javascript menus and such where a backround wasn't rendering, or a click wouldn't go through. Statefarm, Cingular, Washingtonmutual, and Citibank all work in Mozilla, so I will continue to give them my patronage.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[joeljkp]

Taskbar auto-updater, perhaps?

Just a guess.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[joeljkp]

Or Windows' built-in automatic update client.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[joeljkp]

"Citibank ... has a warning on their website about how IE might not render their site correctly because it (IE) is broken."

Where? Buried in their site, or in a popular, highly-visible location?

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Finuvir]

That site performs functions that wouldn't be possible under any other browser. Just think of IE as the Windows Update tool rather than as a browser.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[elemental23]

I like the advanced bookmark, history and cookie handling.

First, let me preface this by saying that I use Mozilla exclusivly, on Linux at work and on Mac OS X at home.

Anyway, Mozilla's cookie handling is anything but advanced. Sure, I can decide to always allow or always deny cookies from particular hosts, but where's my option to always allow session cookies regardless? IE has had this functionality for quite a while now.

I currently have to deny every cookie I'm presented with, then go back and allow them if the site I'm on requires a session ID, then check every cookie after that to see if it's session or persistent so I know which ones I should allow. Of course this also means unchecking the otherwise useful 'Remeber this choice' checkbox.

On a semi-related note, I gave up using Firefox after a couple days because I hate they way they handle the browser history, especially in the Go menu. I'm in the habit of using that menu frequently to backtrack, but they've made it totally useless by arbitrarily not including some URLs I go to, while keeping stuff in there from outside the current session. The recently typed addresses saved in the address bar drop-down list also tend to disappear or stick around seemingly at random. Annoying.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Seumas]

where's my option to always allow session cookies regardless? IE has had this functionality for quite a while now.

Do you mean this?

tools-->options-->privacy-->cookies-->enable cookies-->for the current session only

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Flyboy Connor]

Why not show that company competition? Call them up, tell them you can't do business with them because their website is horribly broken.

It actually is my bank. The website needs to interface with smartcard software that is probably written in ActiveX or something. Complaining about it won't work: I worked for that bank and wrote loads of Electronic Banking software for it, so I know a bit how things fare there. If I was a big company, they would jump through hoops for me. As a lonely customer, they couldn't care a tinker's bit about me. Of course, I could move my business to another bank, but since I was responsible for the design and development of the whole electronic banking protocol (not the ActiveX plugin, though), I know it is a pretty damn secure system and a whole lot better than other banks use. So I put up with IE for a while.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[elemental23]

No, because that looks like it enables only session cookies. I do want some persistent cookies, like from slashdot, for example.

Ideally, I could pick and choose who I want to accept persistent cookies from, the way I do now, but I could also always accept session cookies without being bothered about it, even from hosts that I do not accept persistent cookies from.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Seumas]

Well, the nice thing about mozilla is you're always encouraged to submit an RFE so the devs can add it. Or you can add it yourself and submit the change to the code. Or you could pay someone to do it. Or you could submit the RFE and then convince people to go to bugzilla and vote for the RFE so it will be included.

You can't do that with MS. You can wish for things all you want but they'll give you what they want you to have.

Cookie, bookmark and history managment could certainly be improved in Mozilla (in all browsers, really) but I can't see how that's enough to make one willing to suffer with MSIE instead.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[SCHecklerX]

boot with a knoppix CD and then dd to another hard drive, ftp server, whatever. To install, dd from the image back to the new drive. Boot, change network stuff and machine name, add the user account, done.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Nailer]

Which won't work since it'll launch internet explorer, which the parent poster apparently doesn't use.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Eraser_]

In the bill payment section it warns of complications when using IE. It's in big red print.

If you currently use Internet Explorer 6.0 and experience problems requesting a Click-to-Pay Payment, you may need to download a software update from Microsoft®.

The warning used to say that they hope there is an update soon. I never said they prefered it, but obviously they don't require it. Chevron's website worked fine in Mozilla with editing of the User-Agent header, but browser detection disabled the website.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Eraser_]

Where do you bank, out of sheer curiosity? Where do you work is a different question entirely.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Flyboy Connor]

Ah, well, it is on-topic as long as you consider that we are talking about companies who have websites that require IE. It is Fortis Bank in The Netherlands.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[bcmm]

That was sort of my point. You get no choice with Windows. Nothing is really bundled under Linux in the way it is with windows. In windows you *must* install the browser, media player, email client, IM software, text editor, etc. just to install the OS.

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[aztracker1]

I go so far as to restrict access to execute iexplore.exe .. this resolves a lot of it, same with msimn.exe (outlook express) ...

Re:Why replace the default browser?

[Xrikcus]

Not sure what sites you visited to reach that situation... certainly it's not one we've noticed though.

The Great divide.

[Willeh]

I think there is somewhat of a divide in the browsing market. On the one hand we have the swiss cheese solution, held reasonably firmly into place by a stream of FUD, corporate investments and scared PHB'S.

Next we have the webdevelopers that only care about IE compatibility. Some may care about other browsers, but usually as an afterthought.

Ofcourse this can be a right pain in the rear to fight this. The recent stream of exploits against various IE versions have started to create an anti- IE stance. What needs to be done is create the awareness that IE is unsafe, and now even abandoned by MS themselves until after their duke-nukem forever OS comes out. We(The people "in the know") must bring this our superiors attention that IE just isn't gonna cut it next year (or the year afterwards). It's not gonna be easy, but i'm sure we can have an impact.

Re:The Great divide.

[Anonymous Coward]

Something I dont understand. First MS gets roasted releasing OS's too often and charging for them (but Apple gets a free pass - more on that later). Then they take time to wait between releases, and they get roasted for that. What gives? And as for browsing...

Avant Browser

Crazy Browser

My IE2

Those are just a few off the top of my head. IE can be hosted as a control inside any other application. You don't like IE? Fine, use the rendering engine in any application you want. Hey, make it open source if you want.

Re:The Great divide.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the bloody rendering engine that is the problem. It doesn't even handle floats properly.

Re:The Great divide.

[Anonymous Coward]

They only care about IE compatibility because they don't have a clue / don't want to have to do any work to get a clue.

Why should they have to actually do some work rather than charging some poor PHB at least $150 an hour for something which doesn't even follow the standards of what they are supposed to be doing. Even then it is by the hour, even when they fuck up and spend days trying to get something working, they don't care, it's more money to them.

Market forced change?

[MrIrwin]

Frankly I like Mozilla, and as it has now been my default browser for sometime I curse when I am forced to use infamiliar IE for certain websites.

I use tab browsing a lot (the firefox style where the new tabs are opened in backround), and after a search on google or a /. header, I will launch tabs on all relevant links and then browse sideways accross them. Links that do not work (including IE only sites) get passed over.

From the comments one hears around, it seems that a lot of people use mozilla type browsers in this way, and so will often pass over IE only sites even thougth they are included in the "93.7%". Webmasters will need to wake up to this.

Less IE specific content (which is allready rare....I just checked and I have not launched IE for over a week) means more browser choice. And let's face it, why on earth should everbody like the same browser!

Re:Market forced change?

[Accipiter]

the firefox style where the new tabs are opened in backround

That's not really "firefox style" tabs; the "Load links in background" option has been in Mozilla for a long time.

Re:Market forced change?

[Deternal]

Well phoenix/firebird/firefox did introduce the feature - also last time I checked Mozilla had it turned of by default which firefox doesn't.

So it's a valid statement imho.

yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

but the whole project will tank if they decide to use that icon, because I almost had a heart attack when I saw it there. Jesus, this site needs a warning label or something, worse than the GNAA shock sites that was.

Firefow,Not Mozilla 1.7

[osewa77]

Firefox is the popular Mozilla Browser, because it follows windows and IE conventions (e.g. shortcuts) and is fast (not bloatware). It does not try to be anything except a browser. It is the best at what it does. I'd want to suggest that if Mozilla has a real future, it's with Firefox!
___________
seun osewa

Re:Firefow,Not Mozilla 1.7

[typhoonius]

I'd want to suggest that if Mozilla has a real future, it's with Firefox!

I'd want to suggest that while Mozilla has a future, Netscape doesn't. Not as anything but AOL's occasional bargaining chip, anyway. Netscape is only valuable to AOL because the brand name is well known, which can help them do things like, as the article says, maintain an internet portal. Or offer a low-price alternative to its own internet service. Or get a settlement with Microsoft. To do any of that, they need to keep the Netscape brand alive, and that's all this release is really for.

Vanilla Mozilla is more stable and polished, which is probably more important to them than fancy new features at this point. Plus, the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach lets them tie in stuff like AIM more easily, and maybe the built-in mail client makes it an easier sell.

As for Mozilla/Netscape/XPFE/SeaMonkey/whatever, it's more of a proof-of-concept for XUL, Gecko, and all those other Mozilla Project technologies than an end product. Firefox, Thunderbird, Camino, and the like are the end products. I wouldn't expect it to go away for a while, even as Firefox 1.0 looms on the horizon.

Re:Firefow,Not Mozilla 1.7

[alphan]

really?

I honestly don't care about whether "options" is under tools or edit menu, though the latter seems to make more sense.

I love firefox but not because it resembles ie but because it is extremely usable unlike ie. Furthermore it isn't trying to make every single person in the world happy, unlike mozilla suite. Hence Mozilla become something that really deserves it's monstrous name with all those options, etc.

And finally, firefox follows minimal+modular approach which is the most important thing I would like to see in an application.

Re:Firefow,Not Mozilla 1.7

[Seumas]

Firefox is the popular Mozilla Browser, because it follows windows and IE conventions (e.g. shortcuts) and is fast (not bloatware)

Riiiight. That grand Microsoft and Windows tradition of speed and non-bloatware...

Re:Firefow,Not Mozilla 1.7

[BobPaul]

Netscape is more than just a name. Netscape has integrated AIM/ICQ instead of Chatzilla, and if you do a custom install you can turn off "Add AOL on Desktop Icon" etc.

While Netscape doesn't mean much to use, users and developers who trust Open source, it means a lot to my father and many other users who still see open source as more developement-ware or beta-ware. Those users see Netscape as a browser that has a technical support team they can call and feel a little safer with since it is backed by a coorporation, and not just a bunch of geeks.

More-over, don't forget that AOL still pays for Mozilla developement and Ex-Netscape employes develope for the Mozilla project with AOL pay checks. I prefer Firefox (more so when you fix it) but AOL and Netscape still mean a lot. (At least until more people find out it's really just Mozilla with limited ActiveX)

Re:Firefow,Not Mozilla 1.7

[ImpTech]

Firefox is also quite unfinished, and makes that fact quite obvious. Admittedly AOL/Netscape is going nowhere anyway, but they'd still be fools to take a half-finished browser and commercialize it. Now, if they were to bother to clean up Firefox...

Netscape is dead - deal with it

[Zog The Undeniable]

The only thing that stops AOL dumping it altogether is the brand name and the portal, and those are fairly meaningless to people getting on the Internet within the last 5 years.

There's no reason why we should be bothered though - Mozilla is a worthy replacement, much more reliable and functional, and the lines of evolution are clear. You could go from NS 4.7 to Mozilla 1.6 and feel right at home. Even the much-derided Mail and News (which I always preferred to the OE mess) is almost the same. When IE gets pop-up blocking I'm still not going back to it.

Source Code

[etnoy]

I don't recall the MPL exactly, but isn't Netscape required to release the source code if this would become true?

Re:Source Code

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, it's dual licensed. Netscape can spin closed source versions of it.

Re:Source Code

[thumperward]

Nope. The MPL only requires source to be released if you're modifying the browser core. Chrome changes don't require source.

The NPL allowed Netscape to do whatever they wanted with the code, but hackers didn't like it. The MPL allows them to "add value" in the form of enhancements like an AOL messenger sidebar as long as these don't interfere with core functionality.

- Chris

Re:Source Code

[Anonymous Coward]

MPL is more like BSD.

AOL blew it

[agwis]

Netscape was my default browser until version 4.7 when things went horribly wrong. That version was very buggy and seemed like it was rushed out the door way too early, and I wonder if that was around the time AOL took over.

I wasn't using linux back then and so I, like many others, began using IE. It was far better than Netscape then and I stayed with it for awhile. I gave Netscape another chance when version 6 came out but it too was very buggy. The only plus I found with it was that it had excellent CSS support and I believe that was the first version to have tabbed browsing...which I've become addicted too.

That was when I discovered linux and switched to Mozilla, and Firebird (now Firefox). I've never turned back since. When Netscape 7.0 came out it didn't appear to have any new features that I remember but it did seem to clean up a lot of the bugs from version 6. At that point I realized that Netscape was a viable browser again but it was too late to win me back.

AOL should have really began pushing version 7 to the masses. For IE users not yet exposed to the greatness of Mozilla (or even Opera) Netscape should have started gaining a lot of ground back from IE. With tabbed browsing, pop up blocking, integrated email client, better CSS support, and arguably faster rendering speed it blows IE out of the water. 25% market share against Microsoft is nothing to sneeze at either and they had the pontential to gain more.

Now I don't know anyone at all that uses Netscape and whenever I'm asked to recommend a decent browser I suggest Firefox. AOL would do better to give up on Netscape and throw their support behind Mozilla instead.

It's too bad really, because Netscape played a huge part in bringing the www to the masses. I'd like to see it do well again but since AOL messed everything up with it I don't hold a lot of stock in its future.

-Pat

Re:AOL blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

As a former Netscape employee, my impression is that they simply didn't care enough about Mozilla, Gecko or anything else. The browser was just a stick to threaten MS with - AOL could make noises about switching over to it while the lawsuit was going on. But once the settlement came through they just pulled the rug on the whole thing.

After all, if you have a brand new standards compliant engine of your own, what could make better business sense than to use the stagnant browser engine produced by your main competitor? I'm sure MS has Top People working on functionality for AOL's benefit even as we speak.

They had the opportunity to flip the market on its head by turning 30 million users (in the US alone) away from IE but apparantly that makes no business sense either.

Of course Netscape made strident efforts to convince AOL to use the Gecko engine, but they were usually rebuffed. And not for technical reasons but because marketing and management got wind that it wouldn't be 100% compatible with some of the crap that users put on their homepages. Gecko fell outside the comfort zone, even if it did render content faster than IE and everything else.

Even so, there were some small successes. For example the Compuserve client runs an ancient Gecko (circa Mozilla 0.7) and the AOL Mac OS X client too. It is even used in AOL Communicator (a mail client), but despite its similarity to Thunderbird, AOL Communicator is actually written in C++ and wxWindows and Gecko just does the HTML mail preview pane.

That goes some way to tell you the mentality of AOL. Netscape had a working Thunderbird-like mail client, written in 100% chrome, and had already deployed it for use in AOL Japan (or China I forget). So logically the best solution for a standalone AOL mail client was to write yet another one from scratch in C++, wxWindows and hardcode the L&F. Is that smart or what?

Re:AOL blew it

[jesterzog]

Now I don't know anyone at all that uses Netscape and whenever I'm asked to recommend a decent browser I suggest Firefox. AOL would do better to give up on Netscape and throw their support behind Mozilla instead.

I have trouble understanding why anyone who's in the know still would use Netscape. It's now essentially the same browser as Mozilla having been forked from identical code.

The only thing that it seems to add is a combination of the brand name, more product placement and advertising in the download, and the popup-blocking option disabled from the front end. (I haven't checked that last one lately.)

Both of my parents have used Netscape since NS4 -- it came on their ISP's CD many years ago, and neither has ever been familiar with MSIE at all. Clicking the icon in Win95/98 usually resulted in complicated dialogs and wizards popping up asking about setting up an Internet connection, and there was never a need to follow all of that through. They've also always used Netscape for email because they have from the start, and I don't think have ever considered anything else.

Netscape dwindled for years, but they finally upgraded to NS6 after it was released, converting hundreds of megabytes of email and other profile bits and pieces. It was quite a transition and very buggy even compared with NS4, and it took quite a bit for them to get used to it.

A few months ago my dad bought a new PC, and he wanted me to help him move everything over to it. I took the opportunity to suggest that he switch to Mozilla for his mail and browsing, which by then was flying in it's stability and performance compared with a few years ago. The conversion was relatively easy because it's such a similar browser. As far as I can tell he's now having a much better experience with anything that would be Netscape-branded.

Re:AOL blew it

[srcosmo]

version 4.7 when things went horribly wrong.

I put the blame more at 4.0. Netscape 3 was a fairly speedy, stable product. But with 4.0, the rendering speed went to hell, CSS support was arguably worse than before (at least 3.0 didn't try), and stability -- well, most people I knew had to kill the app every 20 minutes or so.

The whole 4.x series never recovered. Like you, I finally gave in and switched to IE.

And that, I guess, was the beginning of the end...

Re:AOL blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, I don't believe AOL Communicator is even using gecko anymore. I can't definitively say for sure, but I have it on pretty good authority that they changed their mind there, too... :(

Webdevelopers

[freak_299]

The only problem i've ever had with mozilla is when ie sites load a ton of useless javascript and it freezes mozilla for a minute. i'm not too sure if this is common with other users though

Let me be the first to say...

[longbottle]

Too little, too late.

Browser stats

[eliasen]

Where do they get the stats that IE is 93% of the market? That's never what I see. Admittedly, if you have a bad site with broken HTML that only IE will display, IE will make up the majority of your browsers. Everyone else just goes away. It's a Catch-22. But if you have a site that is standards-compliant, and platform-neutral, the numbers are much, much better. Here are my stats from the past month:

MS Internet Explorer 62.1 %
Mozilla 10.9 %
FireFox 9.3 %
Opera 4.5 %
Safari 2.9 %
Netscape 2.8 %
Unknown 2.2 %
Galeon 1.6 %
Konqueror 1.0 %
Firebird (Old FireFox) 0.6 %
Others 1.7 %

Re:Browser stats

[BenjyD]

Maybe you're right. Stats from my XHTML-strict site:

MS Internet Explorer 56.4 %
Mozilla 25.6 %
Opera 5.4 %
Netscape 4 %
Safari 3.4 %
Konqueror 1.7 %

Personally, given that the site is an open-source software site, I find the greater than 50% share of IE depressing.

Re:Browser stats

[Malc]

I don't have access to them right now, but our Web Trends report looks nothing like that. IIRC, it places IE at 98-99%. Perhaps it's to do with your content more than anything, just as ours is more likely to attract Windows users.

Re:Browser stats

[Aneurysm]

Surely you get a lot of hits from people seeing your webpage address advertised here on Slashdot with every post you make. This means that you're going to get a larger amount of "geeky" people who use all manner of weird and wonderful browsers. It's a slightly biased list of stats. I think the stats posted elsewhere in this discussion are from larger sites with a less biased user base.

Re:Browser stats

[P-Nuts]

Personally, given that the site is an open-source software site, I find the greater than 50% share of IE depressing.

What about people spoofing their browser as MSIE to fool sites not quite as standards-compliant as yours?

Re:Browser stats

[WegianWarrior]

I'll hazard a guess... you're not running a mainstream website that atracts Joe Avrage *smiles*.

It's also worth noting that, as the write up states, quite a few users has more than one browser installed - myself, I got four; IE (seldom used), Netscape 6.somethng (seldom used), Opera (my prefered choice) and Lynx (just for the fun of doing the web as pure text now and then). So yes, it's possible that 93% of the users has IE installed... which isn't the same as to say that each and everyone prefers it to the other options avilable.

Re:Browser stats

[BenjyD]

Lies, damned lies and statistics and all that I guess.

I wish people wouldn't spoof their browser ID - things will never change if IE still appears to be the most common. I've written several emails to sites complaining about lack of access to non-IE browsers, with some success. www.argos.co.uk, for example, used to not allow non-IE browsers in, until they received enough complaints from people like me that they changed their site.

Re:Browser stats

[Inda]

I use Avant Browser and it reports itself as MSIE - quiet rightly so too. Avant gives me all the blocking and tabbed features that we all love.

I like to write web pages for the masses so I do need MSIE... The MSIE engine anyway.

I still like open source. My favourite apps are all open. Don't be depressed about it. Life is too short.

Today is burn Karma day. Anyone that says I'm agressive will get a smack in the mouth.

Re:Browser stats

[Jugalator]

Your site is a niche site.

Let's see what a site that's visited by a broader audience (with a site that *do* work for all modern browers) tell?

- Browsers used to visit Google, April 2004
- Operating systems used to visit Google, April 2004

Re:Browser stats

[Jugalator]

Probably an even smaller fraction than the people who let the browser identify itself properly.

Re:Browser stats

[dastrike]

For what it's worth, here are the stats for the past ~month for my site:

Mozilla Firefox 36.2%
Internet Explorer 26.4%
Mozilla 17.8%
Konqueror 7.5%
Opera 5.7%
Epiphany 1.4%
MyIE2 1.3%
Safari 1.2%
Galeon 0.9%
Netscape 0.5%
(unknown browser) 0.5%
Dillo 0.1%
Crazy Browser 0.1%
AOL Browser 0.1%
Links 0.1%
Avant Browser 0.1%
Camino 0.0%
w3m 0.0%

A considerable amount of non-IE browsers, but as I have a fair share of Debian-specific content, it is understandable.

Re:Browser stats

[Anonytroll]

Ah, but how many of those are really users and how many are viruses/worms/automatic tools/search engine spiders? I for one assume that at least 10%, maybe more, of the IE-labeled access data is in fact not from IE, but from other sources.

Re:Browser stats

[Anonymous Coward]

From my site, which is totally unrelated to computers:

MS Internet Explorer 87.6 %
Mozilla 6.7 %
Unknown 4.4 %
Netscape 0.4 %
Safari 0.2 %
Opera 0.2 %
Firebird 0.1 %

Re:Browser stats

[timmyf2371]

I think the workplace has a lot to do with this statistic.

I'm a diehard FireFox user and always use it where possible.

I am, however, in work for 8 hours a day where IE is the only browser we can use - and it's the same in a lot of offices.

Re:Browser stats

[lone_marauder]

My site's primary audience is users of Orbiter space flight simulator, which only runs on Windows. IE accounts for only about 87% of the browsers being used to reach the site. I've also noticed that IE's "market share" has been steadily declining over the past year or so. Whatever the absolute numbers, that trend is of considerable interest.

Re:Browser stats

[lone_marauder]

I think the stats posted elsewhere in this discussion are from larger sites with a less biased user base.

Interesting.
Those aware of and using other choices are biased, but those who tend toward one particular browser are not.

I don't disagree with the point you were trying to make, but the semantics are fascinating. Microsoft is so pervasive that it has even turned rational thought upside down.

Re:Browser stats

[mikeswi]

The overwhelming majority of hits for my site is MSIE.

The reason being is that most of them are infected with sort of parasite and need help getting rid of it. People running Mozilla/FF/Opera really don't have much of a need for my site. *grin*

Re:Browser stats

[eliasen]

Those are good stats to have. I know lots of people who have gone blind looking at those graphs and trying to figure what the percentages really are. (At least that's why they say they've gone blind.) Does anyone have links to real numbers and discussions of their methodology?

There are lots of ways even the world's most popular site can produce skewed statistics. It's always interesting to note that Google is far from being valid HTML. This can cause smaller, lighter browsers to choke, as anyone who has ever tried to write an HTML parser knows. The hard part is working around silly bugs in peoples' web pages. If all sites used valid HTML, the browser landscape could be far more diverse.

Re:Browser stats

[Ulven]

Grandparent: I think the stats posted elsewhere in this discussion are from larger sites with a less biased user base.

lone marauder: Microsoft is so pervasive that it has even turned rational thought upside down.

I don't agree with you there. The grandparent's quote makes sense as it's written.

I know you agree with the main point, as do I, but I'll continue anyway.

The line you quoted says that it's the site that you visit that makes you biased, not the fact that you use an alternative browser. the fact that the one follows from the other is irrelevent. In any case, using /. as an exaqmple, the last time I saw some stats IE was still in the majority. Probably from all the people browsing from work - as I am.

(The quality of my post in no way detracts from the point.)

Re:Browser stats

[An Onerous Coward]

It's not that users of any given browser are "biased" somehow. It's that the statistics he is collecting may be biased towards nerds and against the general population.

It's like doing a political survey where half your contacts are accidentally taken from the rolls of the AARP. None of them may have any exceptional biases, but the survey itself isn't going to reflect the population at large.

Re:Browser stats

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is a much more realistic view of the web right now (I have similar statistics on my website). People seem to forget that the CONTENT of your site will probably influence what sort of peope (tech savy or not) will visit your site.

Personally I find the operating systems to be more interseting. I actually get more hits from Win3.1 than WinME. Linux has been making a very slow but steady increase over the years.

Re:Browser stats

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you've completely misunderstood. If your website has a large degree of technical users, you can't use that as the basis for making inferences about the browser usage of normal people.

Not that web statistics can give accurate information about browsers anyway.

Re:Browser stats

[lone_marauder]

The line you quoted says that it's the site that you visit that makes you biased, not the fact that you use an alternative browser.

Bias has to do with preferences. The point of the discussion seems to be factors which might affect validity as a statistically representative sample. That the latter is inclusive of the former does not mean that the converse is true. It is possible for a given datum not to be a representative sample for reasons other than bias.

Re:Browser stats

[Wylfing]

Yes, Google stats are very interesting. However, I can't help but feeling this is equivalent to looking at the largest 5 business in the U.S. and saying "That's what business are like." Small businesses are very different, and it would be absurd to ignore them as a market segment (roughly 50% of the U.S. economy). Likewise, small web sites make up a gigantic portion of the Internet, and it would be foolish to ignore their browser stats, which show IE has barely 60% of the pie.

Just because titans like Google are visited primarily by IE does not mean the rest of the web is the same. If 20,000 sites getting 2,000 unique hits per day show that IE has 60% browsershare, that seems pretty meaningful to me, even though these are "niche" sites in your estimation.

Re:Browser stats

[Chemicalscum]

Printing out the Google graph and staining my eyes to measure the lat point - The google statistics come out Netscape/Mozilla/other browsers 13% and all MS IE browsers 87%

Not as overwhelming as claimed and from the chart declining.

Re:Browser stats

[killjoe]

WOW. According to this linux has 1% of the desktop market!. That's pretty significant. This is the same as windows 95. Mac has 4% and NT has 3%.

Thanks for the link. I will keep an eye out for this. It will be fun to keep watching that linux number go up.

Re:Browser stats

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Sadly, the IE skin for Mozilla isn't being very actively maintained anymore. If you could get something that looks at least passably like IE, you'd have a suprisingly large number of people now able to use Mozilla. One of the few positive uses for skinning, yet people normally just tend to make hideously multicolored stuff with bad UI design.

Re:Browser stats

[Gauchito]

Google is an excellent metric for browser usage, in my opinion. It's a very simplistic site that works on every browser, so there's no bias on the user's side in that case, and you get less of the useragent spoofing crowd. It's also where most (as evidenced by their success) of the peopel go as a starting point in their web browsing, so you get a very diverse segment of the population. And finally, it's universally appealing. People of different economic and social statuses all use it.

It's not like pointing to the top five business and deducing how all other businesses are from that small group. You're looking at the customers, not the businesses.

It's more like having, for example, a supermarket chain that appeals to all parts of society and becomes the standard supermarket everyone goes to and analyzing what kind of car people drive to get there.

Re:Browser stats

[SpaceCadetTrav]

Try reading a book on statistics before you tell us how meaningful the browser usage statistics of niche sites are.

Re:Browser stats

[stefanlasiewski]

Ug, I can barely read that teeny blury graph.

Are there any numbers or more readable graphs for Google's Zeitgeist?

Re:Browser stats

[jez9999]

Why do you want to make Mozilla/Firefox look like IE? That's stupid. The default Firefox skin looks very nice, IMHO. If you want it to look like IE, go use IE. The buttons on the default Firefox skin are really very similar to those of IE's, and can be customized to be even more so.

Re:Browser stats

[Anonymous Coward]

If after 10 years, it's only at 1%... I wouldn't check back too often...

Re:Browser stats

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's some stats from just over 6,000,000 hits
on thousands of sites:
Total: 6199304
MSIE: 5667869 (91.4%)
Firefox: 41282 (0.7%)
Netscape: 101685 (1.6%)
Opera: 20306 (0.3%)

Re:Browser stats

[timmyf2371]

I got my mother to start using FireFox due to the IE skin.

She was dead against using a different browser, even with the amount of time I tried to spend convincing her of the benefits. So I installed the IE skin for her, set it as a default browser and let her learn the joys of tabbed browsing and no pop-ups.

Re:Browser stats

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering how ubiquitous Google is for searching the Internet; I think your logic needs some tweeking. After all; how will most people get to these small sites if not via some search?

(Word or mouth and and links from other sites are posible; but I'd wager not the main way they get hit, by far.)

Re:Browser stats

[Jugalator]

Small businesses are very different

Yes, but we aren't talking small businesses here, we're talking web sites. Please stick to the topic and don't use your conclusions about businesses with web sites. They're apples and oranges.

If you continue to do, you need to at least show exactly why customers using e.g. the IE browser is "very different" from someone using Opera to a web master of a niche site like this one. It displays correctly in both, and in Mozilla too, like most sites, so why should he/she even care?

Re:Browser stats

[aztracker1]

Yeah, win2000 has about the same usership on google as win98.. I think the whole win9x line of windows was a joke, and really detracted from the line of products as a whole.. and yeah, IE security holes suck ass.. trying to get more IE friends (gf, and others) using firebird..

Re:Browser stats

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

I can think of two real simple reasons off the bat. For novice users, they already know the IE UI. Whatever the ease of use of Firefox/Firebird/Phoenix (many novice users will get confused by the name changes) it can never be simpler than something already known. Remember that the user already has IE on their system. If they bump into a problem in Firefox that they know how to deal with in IE, will they:
1) stop what they're doing, and spend time to learn a new UI for a tool that (as far as they can see) does the same as IE, but just frustrated them
or
2) switch to IE.

95% of users are likely to do #2. This is simplifying things some, but there is a class of users that are not using Firefox/Mozilla because of UI differences.

For advanced users, many environments require you to have IE. They don't do any filtering, they just have a corporate mandate. You may get hell for installing unauthorized software on your local machine. If you install the IE skin, at least when people walk past your machine, or you have to show someone something on a webpage, they aren't asking for 10 minutes "what browser is this".

One reason that MS dominates in so many fields is it provides excellent migration paths. Wordperfect used to dominate wordprocessing, havign much the same "lock-in" that MS Word now has. Desktop dominance would only go so far in beating this, they also had to deal with the massive amount of documents that already existed. They took many pains to make it easy for a WP user to use word, even details like mimicking what might be small things like white on blue text. Having these open flawlessly in Word (aided by the fact that MS gets to say what apps open what, so .doc files defaulted to Word) people saw they could use Word without any hiccups, and WP has never been the same. Sadly, many open source projects don't realize this. If you want mass use of your code, you need to make it easy to use, and easy to transition from existing similar products.

I call you crazy

[RoLi]

The only reason why Microsoft doesn't continue development is because they are happy with the status quo.

Continue developing Internet Explorer would be BAD for Microsoft

You know why?

Because any change is a threat to the status quo.

Because if IE7 can handle transparent PNGs and lots of sites start to use it, millions of IE6 users will upgrade. And when they upgrade there is the danger that they might upgrade to Mozilla and not IE7.

The same goes for CSS2/3, SVG, etc.

Developing IE is not in the interest of Microsoft, they would be stupid if they would do it at this time.

But there are a couple of reasons why IE will lose its domination in the next couple of years: Linux is making inroads, Mac-users are switching to Safari, Playstation3 will probably run Mozilla and cellphones run Opera.

Re:I call you crazy

[Jedi Alec]

Because if IE7 can handle transparent PNGs and lots of sites start to use it, millions of IE6 users will upgrade. And when they upgrade there is the danger that they might upgrade to Mozilla and not IE7.

You're kidding right? If IE7 were to be released it would be downloaded because the little popup thingy in the systray says so...and I'm pretty confident it won't inform the user of the alternative.

Re:I call you crazy

[RoLi]

Upgrading a "component so deeply entrenched into the OS" (tm) is not that simple. Actually it might break stuff, it might be a hefty download over dialup, etc.

Fact is that to view webpage X, people would have the choice of downloading IE7 or downloading Mozilla (and webpage X is likely informing them about the Mozilla option), which is what Microsoft surely doesn't want.

Re:I call you crazy

[sremick]

It might be a psychological thing too.

Remember: many people get their understanding of how computers work from what Microsoft says. By no longer offering the web-browser as a separate component, they start to chip away at the mentality that the browser CAN be one. By offering IE6 separately, they were kind of saying, "Yes, there's this thing called the 'operating system', but then there's a thing you can add on separately called a 'web browser' for viewing the 'internet'". Now they can change that to, "There IS no 'web browser', there is the 'operating system' only, and you don't mess with its deep secret parts." This would discourage people from even considering that IE could be replaced to begin with.

Word is a separate application that Microsoft can profit off from too. So no need to bundle it w/ Windows. But MS can't charge for IE anymore... they used that to kill of Netscape. But they still face technological competition which can undermine their goal of owning the internet. So why maintain the idea of it as a separate application? How many users today would consider the possibility that there could be any printing system other than the one built into Windows? Would you even think about swapping it out with one from a third-party, with its own drivers and everything, even if it was better? Probably not. That's what MS wants IE to become: a part that users don't dare touch, don't even think about touching. They want people to hear about alternate browsers and be like, "huh?". They're already making progress.

As a ruthless bunch of evil bastards, it's a move that makes a lot of sense. Hopefully we can counter it, though.

Re:I call you crazy

[killjoe]

Well when the hell is AOL going to switch to Mozilla? They fucking bought netscape for gods sake.

Mozilla is better then IE and more programable then IE. AOL could design their whole UI in mozilla if they wanted to.

Re:I call you crazy

[jonwil]

I suspect that basicly its that right now 90% of the web is on IE. Therefore all that web-content (including the internal-to-AOL content) needs to be designed for is IE.
If AOL switches to mozilla, all that content would need to be gone over with a fine tooth comb to find out if it needs to be fixed to work on "AOL x.0" (or whtever the version with mozilla would be called) and if so, fix it in some appropriate way.

That would cost $$$ and take up lots of time (and as we all know time = $$$ so that means even more $$$).

Personally, I am waiting for AOL to merge the AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ networks (they are basicly using the same protocol and such now last I heard)

Re:I call you crazy

[nuggetman]

Well when the hell is AOL going to switch to Mozilla? They fucking bought netscape for gods sake.

When they stop wanting their icon in the Online Services folder of every windows install, that's when

Re:I call you crazy

[Anonymous Coward]

Check the google graph -- you see a huge skew towards IE6 as soon as it became the default option in Windows Update (as opposed to a bunch of patches for IE5.x).

It might not be that simple, but people tend to do what Windows Update tells them.

Re:I call you crazy

[ThisIsFred]

Continue developing Internet Explorer would be BAD for Microsoft

Ah, but Microsoft has already fooled you. Microsoft is pushing IE as a development component, and believe it or not, it is actually being used by developers the same way VB is used; It's a quick-and-dirty way to get an interface on software - with built-in ability to understand some common "Internet" protocols. Here's a short list of software that requires IE6 to run: Intuit Tax software, H&R Block TaxCut, Quickbooks Pro.

It's not about general web browsing anymore, Microsoft is successfully getting software makers to use all of IE's non-standard extensions as, well, almost like an API. IE is not going away any time soon. As long as Microsoft can deliver it's own software through OEM channels (pretty much uncontested), or through its own update mechanisms, they will continue to dominate.

It's not about who supports what standards, it's about the network effects of being first to deliver, i.e. being the first option the user has. It doesn't matter if a user can remove IE, because the next run of WU is going to add IE as a "critical" update, complete with a shiny new desktop icon. Now it isn't in the user's best interest to remove IE, because that would break some popular third-party software.

Re:I call you crazy

[joeljkp]

Mod this thing up, he's dead on.

Re:I call you crazy

[joeljkp]

Do we have an embeddable Mozilla? If not, why?

Re:I call you crazy

[oddfox]

What AOL should do is release a transitional client w/the Gecko rendering engine, side-by-side with the Internet Explorer one. That way, users could decide during installation if they want to use the Gecko rendering engine (Marked as EXPERIMENTAL for the reason of some incompatible websites may refuse to load/function properly if it's designed for Internet Explorer only) or Internet Explorer.

Of course it wouldn't be some instant and insane adoption by the masses, but the few users of the then-EXPERIMENTAL Gecko enging AOL would be encouraged to send in feedback about what works and what doesn't. Basically, AOL would work towards eventually ditching the now-dead (It might as well be for AOL, Microsoft isn't going to be developing Internet Explorer any further, outside of Longhorn development. I doubt AOL is going to become a Longhorn-only outfit) IE engine and start developing their Netscape browser as if it were a serious project (I like it as it is but it needs much more active development). Add speed, add features, remove bloat, and maybe, down the line, adopt Firefox as the AOL browser. They could call it the AOL TopSpeed Browser or something equally lame like that to go along with their recent marketing campaign.

Re:I call you crazy

[Anonymous Coward]

Because if IE7 can handle transparent PNGs and lots of sites start to use it, millions of IE6 users will upgrade. And when they upgrade there is the danger that they might upgrade to Mozilla and not IE7.

who the hell gives a damn about transparent PNGs? IE7 will be all about broadband media, web apps and other marketable subscription services/features.

What is libwww-perl from /.? - Re:Browser stats

[Malc]

BTW, talking of User-Agents, why am I seeing libwww-perl/5.76 from /. in the Apache logs of my personal website? It looks like a check for an open proxy or something. I don't think I've even provided a link to anything on my domain on /.! Are they scanning IPs addresses of people using their site...

wolverine:/var/log/apache# grep slashdot access.log
slashdot.org - - [24/May/2004:08:22:34 -0400] "GET http://slashdot.org/ok.txt HTTP/1.0" 404 200 "-" "libwww-perl/5.76" 0 ????.ca -
slashdot.org - - [26/May/2004:09:26:57 -0400] "GET http://slashdot.org/ok.txt HTTP/1.0" 404 200 "-" "libwww-perl/5.76" 0 ????.ca -

Format is:

LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-agent}i\" %T %v %{X-Forwarded-For}i" malc_log_format

Re:What is libwww-perl from /.? - Re:Browser stats

[MenTaLguY]

Yes, Slashdot does a check for open HTTP proxies.

Re:What is libwww-perl from /.? - Re:Browser stats

[Malc]

Do you have any idea why?

Re:What is libwww-perl from /.? - Re:Browser stats

[Anonymous Coward]

So Chinese dissidents and those who wish to remain truly anonymous cannot post here.

Re:What is libwww-perl from /.? - Re:Browser stats

[MenTaLguY]

So users are always more or less traceable by IP, which open HTTP proxies tend to prevent. This helps e.g. when trying to enforce IP bans. Of course as the other poster noted, it creates problems for users who really need to be anonymous.

11% use Opera...

[WIAKywbfatw]

As an Opera user, I have to say I'm impressed. I know that it's the best browser out there, but I didn't know so many others did too.

Re:11% use Opera...

[Eventh]

As an Opera user, I have to say I'm impressed. I know that it's the best browser out there, but I didn't know so many others did too.

Opera is default set to Identify as IE, so those stats are probably bigger in reality!

I love opera, and most of those nice features mentioned in Mozilla, was available in Opera first!

Re:11% use Opera...

[golfsportila]

I've been using opera since version 6 something I think, and I will not use any other browser. Once and a very odd while it won't work on a site, so I will just use MIE, but otherwise its perfect. I tried firefox for a bit, but couldn't really stand it.

Re:11% use Opera...

[thumperward]

Yeah, Opera was on board the "cluttered interface full of useless geekery" bandwagon several months before Mozilla had fully embraced it.

Give it up dudes. Since O7 came out Opera have been desperately trying to jump on the whole "actually pleasant to use" thing that the Phoenix project has had going since 2002. Say all you want about Opera's features, but it's borrowed just as much as it's influenced.

- Chris

Re:11% use Opera...

[hkmwbz]

Sorry to burst your bubble, but some people actually like innovative browsers that give you a many useful feature integrated into a tiny package.

Firefox is fine as a bare-bones browser, but it doesn't have M2, Notes, and all the browser features that Opera introduced and Firefox extension makers tried to copy.

You can download extensions, but it isn't quite the same thing. A lot of people just want something which works, and which works conveniently. And extensions can be buggy, and they are created by different people with different goals, whereas Opera is developed as one solutions, where all features work seamlessly together.

So for a lot of people, Opera is "actually pleasant to use", and the default 7.50 interface is not cluttered. Naturally, you have more buttons, but the panel selector on the left is very convenient, and gives you access to power features that you would have to spend quite some time downloading extensions for in Firefox. And they often don't work quite as well, especially together.

Firefox is nice in its simplicity, and it is nice for geeks to download the extensions they need, because they already know which ones are good and which ones are crap. But for most people, Opera might be the way to go. A full Internet suite with a groundbreaking e-mail client in a 3MB package? Yes please!

And yeah, Opera is usually the program which does the groundbreaking stuff first. Only now are other e-mail clients catching up on the "virtual folders instead of normal folders" thing. Unfortunately, they can't quite manage to get it right.

Re:11% use Opera...

[golfsportila]

yeah I was kinda pissed when I noticed I couldnt access my gmail account with opera, oh well.

What us geeks should do to help promote Mozilla.

[jellomizer]

If you have one of those USB Key Chains put a copy of the latest stable version of Mozilla on it. Then when you go threw your daily travels with other people and you see a person who is having problems with Popups or Spyware on the system offer to install them Mozilla that should fix the problems. After you install it you ask them to use it by default, because if they don't then they will be getting those popup again. Show them a couple of the features such as the tabbed browsing and such so they feel like they have a better product not just a cheapo one that just block popups.

what are any design differences?

[zogger]

I haven't used netscape in quite awhile, and never on linux. What are any of the major design or function differences between current netscape (do not know version) and current stable moz (1.6)?

Re:what are any design differences?

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine Moz 1.2, but with a Netscape logo on it.

The other differences are that Chatzilla is replaced by a built in (and somewhat cool) AIM/ICQ client, and mail/news can retrieve from AOL and Netscape Webmail accounts.

IDIOT

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, your "survey" of ONE website, a linux advocacy and idiocy site, gee - it attracts more linsux users!? WHO WOULDA THUNK IT!? Wow, you are a real budding scientist. I think you have a future in making rats run around mazes looking for cheese. But one piece of advice : dont forget the control group.

AOL CD?

[Brush Master]

Hurrah! More AOL CDs in my letter box! AOL 17 is coming! B

55 km?!

[Anonymous Coward]

We in the km-part of the world tend to do 120+ in the fast lane.

beats me how ppl still use IE

[themadcaplaughs]

"Microsoft has a 93.9% browser market share and 87% of business users use IE" .. beats me how 93% ppl are still using IE and MSN explorer .. and then again .. only 11 % for opera .. guess anyone who think net has more to it then chatting and checking mail can't bear IE or MSN for long enough .. in which case this means only around 10-15 % of ppl use the net for purposes other than mailing and chatting. The geek doesn't seem to be inheriting the earth in the near future then.

Back in the saddle

[howman]

(insert grandpa simpson voice here) When the internet first started out I used Netscape, as microsoft caught up so to speek, I switched over because of the interoperability. (/Grandpa simpson) I tried Mozilla for a while way back when and found it to be much slower for some reason than Explorer. Well, after reading the headline from this story, I downloaded Mozilla and transfered everything to it. I have to say I like the layout as well as some of the features. Lately I have found the Microsoft package to be too laden with shit. There is only so much I really "want" to be able to do and all the rest is just using up resources on my old system. I guess I will have to blog about how I find Moz after a few weeks of using it. I hope that my $.02 pushes up the 10.something% Moz has of the market. I know for sure that wne I switch my sytem in a week or two to Linux I will be using it. Wish me luck with that.

What Desktop?

[Orion27]

It always amazes me to see dependent windows users are IE. The desktop metaphor seems lost on them. Coming from the Mac side, it also amazes how people are willing to give up so much control to their computers. Most people in my office rely on IT's to back up data, install software on their own mobile boxes. They have no desire to inquire and learn because they simply don't want to. FUD rules and quite frankly, it fits the corporate mold quite nicely. I have people in my office who are afraid to look out side the company for support when they need it. Now tha's control! Me, I've did allowed to develope my own OSX niche because it is a curiosity, the IT person likes me, I'm quiet ( but secretly smug) about my efficiency and they recognise I'm on commission not salary.

Re:What Desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

What a giant load of unreadable drivel.

Did you have a point? Do you have a spell chacker? Did you go to school?

I hate to say it but you communicate like a six year old. I'd love to know what country/school system you are a product of.

Even if all the poor grammer and spelling could be blamed on English being a second language. You still managed to completely miss putting a single readable point or counter-point in that message.

Please try again.

The maths DOESN'T work

[Anonymous Coward]

"Microsoft has a 93.9% browser market share and 87% of business users use IE, 25% still use Netscape and 11% use Opera -- the math works because people use multiple browsers"

That should read:

... the math doesn't work because people use multiple browswers

wonderful

[siyeclover]

I like netscape

It's a matter of how you talk to them and listen

[cascadingstylesheet]

Mozilla and it's tabbed browsing, mouse gestures, pop up blockers, type ahead find and the raft of other nifty features is great for the "power surfer" but I swear that based on the people in my office, it's not something they particulary need or feel the need to have enough to even go out and try.

Well, they don't know that it exists, or that it is even possible. They're not going to say "I want tabbed browsing", they're going to say (maybe, and only if you ask them or watch them surf) "I hate how I always lose my place, or accidentaly close my window. I hate how I can't easily check out search results without getting lost".

I asked my mother about pop up adverts last month and she'd only ever come across one in the two years she'd been surfing the web. Granted, she wasn't surfing a very large number of sites - but it was difficult to sell a feature to her when she didn't really know why she needed it.

You're mother is pretty unusual, then. Take most people on a tour of their favorite sites with popups blocked, and with the mozilla Adblock and Flashblock plugins, and watch their jaws drop.

Re:Tabbed browsing with IE

[MrIrwin]

"Those are just a few off the top of my head. "

A paranoid IE user? And I thought Linux had the monoply in the "it can do that....really" stakes.

If you had read carefully the message I posted you would see that I was pointing out that the use of tabbed browsing means I tend to skip over sites that do not get rendered properly (usually IE only sites).

"IE can be hosted as a control inside any other application."

I know all about that, in fact we do embedd it into our applications, and they are not free gimicks they are applications we sell to our customers. As such I know a lot about the shortcomings and problems of embedding IE. I use mozilla for my browsing and I am impressed by the whole platform, and I am planning to use in our apps in the future.

Fact is that Mozilla'a underlying platform, in particular the dev platform, is way ahead of IE which has not been significantly developed for years. True, MS probably have big plans for it's integration into Longhorn and .NET, but we will worry about that problem when it arrives! Right now one of our competitors is allready deploying Mozilla based solutions, and they rock. It is a bit embarresing for me, a Mozilla user myself but IE deployer when it comes to customer apps!

Frankly, saying that we should all use IE because it comes with the OS is like saying we should use 'Write' for all or documents. I am finding that being integrated into the OS is a negative feature, not a positive one.

Computers != normal consumer appliances

[SenseiLeNoir]

why?

On normal consumer appliances, its normally unlikely it woudl go wrong, unless faulty, or the person didnt read the manual.

Computers on the other hand can go very wrong, simply by using them

And before someone says that if tehy used it properly, it woudlnt go wrong, well thsi comes to another point... most consumer appliances come with decent manuals that describe ALL features of the appliance. Computers come with a quick start guide that quickly explains how to connect the thing. Probably making them seem a LOT LESS complex than they are.

I once said four years ago that there shoudl be a liscense to use computers. I was laughed at back then. Now with the proliferations of spyware, and viruses.... maybe it wasnt such a dumb idea after all.

INTERESTING!!!

[molarmass192]

AOL Communicator is actually written in C++ and

• wxWindows

That's interesting stuff! I always liked the wxWindows kit but I didn't know it was used in a "production" environment like AOL.

Re:INTERESTING!!!

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

I'll tell you what to do. Go that way. Really fast. If something gets in your way, turn!
4 weeks... twenty papers... two dollars... CASH.

Why not use Firefox and Thunderbird?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't they rebrand Firebox and Thunderbird to compete directly with IE? Must they use the seamonkey code? Seamonkey is bigger and slower than the other two options as individual downloads...

MSIE With Tabs?

[SnowCrashed]

Personally, I think that if MSIE had tabbed browsing like the Mozilla, Netscape, and Opera that many people using Mozilla/Firefox wouldn't have made the switch to begin with. While I'm sure that MS will add this feature in Longhorn, you have to wonder why they haven't just patched it into XP with some flashy description and a twenty-some meg download by now. Geeks will be geeks, and I will always use Mozilla (FireFox and Thunderbird as of now) as long as they are around to use, as I'm sure many of you will too, but for the non-geeks out there, all MS really has to do is add tabbed browsing, TRY to fix Outlook security flaws, and (maybe)optimize the rendering engine, although I've never had a problem with IE being overly slow.

Re:MSIE With Tabs?

[MtViewGuy]

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if we see a Version 6.5 of Internet Explorer that will have tabbed browsing--but with a twist: you can configure it so when you ask IE to open a new window it will open a new tabbed display instead.

This is something I wish they'll implement in Mozilla/Firefox, unless there is a way to change this in Preferences.

Re:MSIE With Tabs?

[Mark J Tilford]

Galeon has this behavior.

Re:MSIE With Tabs?

[BobPaul]

So does Opera.

Re:MSIE With Tabs?

[husker_man]

Personally, I think that if MSIE had tabbed browsing like the Mozilla, Netscape, and Opera that many people using Mozilla/Firefox wouldn't have made the switch to begin with.

I put firefox on my PC at work, but because of the firewall and the Active Directory integration of it, my password wasn't getting transmitted right to the firewall and I was getting locked out. I use Mozilla on my Unix Xterm, but I found a utility call MyIE2, which does do the pop-up blocking and gives tabbed browsing capability.

Here's the link:

http://www.myie2.com/html_en/home.htm

Re:MSIE With Tabs?

[TheAwfulTruth]

Why wait? Get "Crazy Browser" It adds a lot to IE that is "missing" such as tabbed browsing, gestures, popup blocking and all that "crap" :)

Want a URL? google for it, it's the first hit.

Re:MSIE With Tabs?

[SnowCrashed]

I was aware of this program, and several others that add these features. However, until Billy boy patches in/ships these features, a lot of the less computer litereate users will probably miss out on these features. But then again, the less savy may not really care about browsing multiple tabs, or windows for that matter.

Re:MSIE With Tabs?

[husker_man]

I was aware of this program, and several others that add these features. However, until Billy boy patches in/ships these features, a lot of the less computer litereate users will probably miss out on these features.

And I fully agree with you on that. I've gotten my wife enjoying the Firefox browser so much that she can't imagine going back to IE. However, for my mother-in-law (for whom I'm handing down one of my older PC's for her to use) I'm going to be making Firefox the default browser for her, and I know that she won't have a clue.

Unless someone like us is doing "tech support" for family and friends, the vast majority of people will rely on the spoon-fed stuff coming from Microsoft until they've gotten wind of something better. It is a vexing dilemma.

Netscape 8

[Anonymous Coward]

While Netscape 7.2 is a welcome update, I think its unlikely to have any impact in the long run, nor would a future release of Netscape 8 based on Mozilla 2.0.

What would be of interest is to base a new version of Netscape on the upcoming Firefox 1.0, which would give Netscape a serious contender for Internet Explorer's crown, if they were to give their full backing behind it.

Re:Licence to access the internet

[Anonymous Coward]

So you want to have people licenced to use the internet but not to own an gun.........

Fast lane

[jabberw0k]

There is no "fast lane." In the United States, the speed limit on all lanes is the same.

Re:Fast lane

[magefile]

By convention, one lane is slow, one is fast, and there's usually a passing lane or 1/2-lane in between. Where're you from?

Re:Fast lane

[Jim_Maryland]

I think they need to reverse these signs. Way too many slow drivers stick in the left lanes instead of just using them for passing. Seems that reverse logic might get them to use the right lanes for travel and the left for passing.

Re:Fast lane

[nuggetman]

But traffic consistantly moves quicker in the left lane than the middle or right on most major roadways (at least here on the east coast)

Re:Fast lane

[Sapwatso]

As someone who keeps as far right as possible unless passing, I find that I wind up passing more people on the right than the left now. In particular on the three lane section of the Mass. Pike I can cruise along for miles and miles in the right lane without anyone in my way. All the slow people seem stick to the middle lane. Go figure.

Re:Fast lane

[Obfiscator]

I've noticed that, too. Things get really strange with four lanes. I've noticed that people sit in the secondmost lefthand lane.

I've seen ten cars in that lane and nobody in the other three. That's nice, actually, because in the rightmost lane you have to deal with merging traffic. With four lanes, if everyone is in the secondmost lefthanded lane, you can go around either right or left and not have to deal with merging.

Just Switched to Firefox

[av8tors32]

Yes I admit it. I one of those people who has always just used IE because it was there. Not even tabbed browsing got my attention. So what made me change?

I just got a new laptop with one of those wide screens. With the resolution set to 1920x1200 (recommended) IE just does not render correctly. Websites with graphics just look like hell in IE at this resolution. I installed Firefox and the sites look great.

Do I have something set wrong in IE or is this just one of the many short comings?

Re:Just Switched to Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't browse full screen. Make the height as much as you want, but why waste all the horizontal space making the browser wider than it needs to be? With a wide screen display, it's a cinch to have two browser side by side and large enough to be perfectly usable.

Re:Just Switched to Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

please tell me you aren't so stupid as to browse with a browser window anywhere near that size.

Re:Just Switched to Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

How is that stupid? Is there a reason you shouldn't browse at that size?

Your comment is stupid. Explain yourself a bit please.

Re:Just Switched to Firefox

[anderiv]

I bet you have a Dell widescreen, right?

I had the same issue - go into Display properties, Settings tab, click Advanced. Change the DPI setting to Normal. Click OK, Restart. That should fix the problem.

Re:Just Switched to Firefox

[av8tors32]

Yep, the DPI setting was the problem. THANKS but now I am addicted to FireFOX. (goodbye IE) Just for the moron that told me not to surf at the full width... it didn't matter. Full width or not the graphics looked like hell. As soon as I set the DPI to normal the trouble went away.

Firefox 0.9

[TheVidiot]

I thought 0.9 was taking a long time, then I see Netscape 7.1 to 7.2 was over a year.... I guess I should be more patient.

Please

[Anonymous Coward]

PLEASE make the "search" feature of Mozilla as good as 4.x's. The current one is more of a filter.

Netwhat?

[Anonymous Coward]

And they make a browser? But I already have a browser.

Good News

[solarlux]

This is good news for those working certain defense contracts. The process for integrating a software product is much simplified if the product is supported by an established entity. It was frustrating to downgrade the browser capability doing Netscape 7.1 (in essence, Mozilla 1.4) when more recent versions are out at the time.

Javascript?

[xandroid]

You sure it's Javascript that's causing the freeze? Firefox is notorious for freezing some computers (and maxing out CPU usage) when trying to render a tables- and/or forms-heavy site.

(Aside: I heard a rumor that the above issues aren't going to be fixed in 1.0 because it already forked; anyone know more about this?)

Does anyone care

[beforewisdom]

Time was when a new release of Netscape was like Christmas Morning for me.

Now Netscape is just a rehash of Mozilla, often with less features and more "adware"/branding for lack of a better term.

I don't even look forward to Mozilla releases that much anymore since they have caught on the feature set I wanted.

Steve

Good point

[bogie]

I thought that was a bizarre statement as well. He got rid of Firefox because IE get in the way?? WTF does that mean? If you set Firefox as the default that's pretty much it. As you pointed out except for WU you just don't have to deal with IE anymore. Back in the Mozilla M days I could see why someone would go back to IE, but now it just makes zero sense to go back a browser that hasn't changed in years and offers no protection from the Internet.

Re:Good point

[joeljkp]

Although I did notice that when I installed Firefox 0.8 on Windows XP and set it to be the default browser, it re-associated all my image files as well. And I can't figure out how to re-associate them, save going deep into Windows' file types preferences and doing it manually.

Come on guys, this is the kind of thing everybody hates Real for.

Re:Good point

[Finuvir]

That bug has thankfully been fixed so will not be present in 0.9. This is the kind of bug to which the response is "sorry, still in beta; thanks, fixed now". It sucks that that kind of bug is there, but if they weren't it'd be called Firefox 1.0.

Re:What us geeks should do to help promote Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

And, perhaps, if you learn the difference between threw and through, people would be more likely to listen to you.

FIX THE DAMN CALENDAR

[EvilStein]

"Hey, Netscape 7.2 has this nice calendar application built in. IE doesn't. Neat!"

Want more corporate users? FIX CALENDAR!

I've said this before, and if I was a programmer, I'd be working on it.

If Mozilla/Netscape had a triumphant calendar, many more people would switch away from Outlook. Lack of a decent calendar is the main thing that's prevented us from ridding our company of Outlook.

No, the existing one just doesn't cut it. Example: Right click an event and choose "email event" - when the recipient gets it, it's an .ics file - if a Mac user gets it, iCal will open it. The big problem is that Mozilla has no idea what to do with the .ics file, rather than show you the text in a browser window.

Silly stuff like this is holding it back.

I knew people ages ago that stuck with Netscape because of Netscape Calendar & its Palm sync. Now they're all stuck with Microsoft Outlook, but would happily change...

Re:FIX THE DAMN CALENDAR

[Anonymous Coward]

Pirelli has a really nice calendar. Really, really nice. Just like their printed versions. Once you see it, you won't really care about calendar functions on Netscape/MS/etc.
(do a search on it if its not on the Pirelli website)

Re:FIX THE DAMN CALENDAR

[aztracker1]

Ironically, this has prevented a few people I know from switching, they use outlook, but don't use the exchange features to share calendars, tasks, etc.. so it is a waste, and a better(free or cheap option) really isn't there.

Re:FIX THE DAMN CALENDAR

[EvilStein]

We don't have Exchange either, so that's not what's tying us to Outlook.
What *is* tying us to Outlook is the damn built-in calendar. Users want to be able to create calendar events and mail them to other users.
Mozilla Calendar (and sunbird, whatever..) can't do that.
It's frustrating, because that is the *last thing* we need to overcome in order to get rid of Outlook.
So close, yet so far.. *sigh*

hmm, os integration....

[norsk_hedensk]

i am a mozilla user and i love it. i also use suse linux, so IE and windows are not options for me. now, i was just thinking as i read this article why do ms users use IE? probably because of how closely it is tied into windows. you can jump from your C: drive to google.com (or slashdot.com :) without opening and closing another window. now i use kde so i could use konqueror (which is great too btw) to do things like this. however i LIKE mozilla and its feel. maybe if mozilla was more integrated and was made a filesystem browser as well, custom tailored to the different OS's it supports, it would gain more users. think of it, one tab on your home directory, the other reading this article. and i dont just mean displaying your filesystem which it does already, i mean move able icons with drag and drop, file deletion, renaming..EVERYTHING konqueror (or explorer) can do. just a thought.

Re:hmm, os integration....

[BobPaul]

Browsers should never have been implimented in the first place.

but then, I'm still spiteful over IE gaining market share over Netscape.

Re:hmm, os integration....

[Tin Foil Hat]

In the early days of the web, a web browser and a file manager were two very different things. This was actually a considered design decision. They did it that way because they understood that some people will release malicious code on the interenet and if the browser could execute remote code automatically, the chances of security violations would be dramatically greater. This is why Mozilla browsers to this day will not run downloaded executables without your explicit permission. It's also why there is no official port of ActiveX-like plugins. While there are third-party plugins that do that, they are not officially sanctioned.

Internet Explorer, as a consequence of it's also being a file manager, must be able to run executables locally. While there are attractive reasons for a web browser to be able to do so (richer content), there are more important reasons not to. I think Konqueror and Galeon risk making some of the same mistakes that IE has made.

Personally, I recommend not using any file manager as a general web browser, their capability to run executables is simply too much of a danger while surfing the web. Never use one on untrusted sites.

Re:hmm, os integration....

[Anonymous Coward]

Web browsers and file managers do two different things. It was stupid to ever integrate them to begin with. IE and Konqueror both need to undo this mistake.

Re:hmm, os integration....

[Anonymous Coward]

Please elaborate...

Re:hmm, os integration....

[Anonymous Coward]

I am afraid that this is a completley archetecture ignorant post.

You obviously have no idea how explorer and internet explorer work or are related.

Please do the /. signal to noise ratio a favor and do not post on subjects that you barely understand.

Re:Tabbed browsing with IE

[BobPaul]

You can use the Mozilla Active X Control to embed Mozilla. I've actually converted a few apps that I use with embeded IE to use the embeded Mozilla instead.

Unfortunately it increases the size of your distribution a little, since you can't assume Mozilla exists on the end user machine.

those don't show shit

[Anonymous Coward]

A single datapoint in an essentially continuous data distribution means exactly jack shit. If you knew anything about statistics, you'd know that your site wouldn't even pass a two-tailed T-test at 0.05 percent.

As a challenge to your dataset, how do you like these AWstats numbers from a 30-million-hits-a-month site:

MS Internet Explorer 95.2 %
Netscape 2.5 %
Mozilla 1.3 %
Safari 0.4 %
Unknown 0.1 %
Opera 0.1 %
Firebird 0 %
WebTV browser 0 %
Galeon 0 %
Konqueror 0 %

Re:Tabbed browsing with IE

[MrIrwin]

I have just been thinking, the great thing is I don't need to 'port' applications. In our apps some windows are really an embedded browser that points at an intranet server. I can add new features includding the Mozilla as well, there is no overhead in having the legacy engine around for pages that don't move well.

I don't have the 'distribution' problem.....we install the apps on the clients, in fact we use browser based interfaces were possible (embedded into the app) to make the installation and maintenance easier.

OOPS!

[BobPaul]

Way to hit submit without previewing!

that should say "integrated", not "implimented".

Browsers should never have been implimented in the first place

Yes, I hate the internet! Damn you Al Gore! Damn you and your horrible invention!!!

who cares...

[Run4yourlives]

When firefox is out there, why would you use Netscape? Firefox is light years ahead, even with a pre 1.0 release.

Of course, I'm sure this is yet another browser that will handle things a little bit differently than all the rest... meaning I'll be installing this POS as well to preview my pages in... grr.

More than meets the eye?

[Dr. Mu]

The browser release may be only part of the story. Netscape has also started advertising their own dialup internet service. Here's the website. This may be nothing more than a clever way to rebrand AOL, a service mark that's fallen on hard times, and compete with the likes of NetZero.

What constitutes Dual-Browser use?

[BobPaul]

I use Mozilla Firefox almost exclusively, but still use IE for Windows Update (I can't think of anyother site off the top of my head that doesn't work with Mozilla).

Does that mean I'm part of both the 25% and the 93.7%? Or am I just part of the 25%?

thanks

[zogger]

guess I'll wait until they release their next version, then try it out. So far I am quite happy with mozilla suite, I actually like the all in one design over having a separate browser/email whatever. I also hope they spiffy up composer, po mans semi adequate web editor.

Netscape vs Mozilla

[Colonel Failure]

I know many people that still use Netscape at home. The main difference from Mozilla is you can check Netscape WebMail accounts straight from the mail client, you get AOL Instant Messenger built in, and the spellchecker is much better than Mozilla's.

SECURITY!

[Anonymous Coward]

How about because of the glaring security holes that get left unpatched for months or sometimes years, many of which can be used to completely take over the user's computer if they're running with an Administrator level account (which most everyone does).

Re:I am hoping..

[symbolic]

a. that they release version for the Mac OS 9 users still out there, and
b. they've done something about the INSANELY HORRIBLE memory usage- Mozilla regularly chews up 200+ MB of RAM, which I think is absurd for a browser/email client.

I use Opera all the time, but no one knows

[petree]

Opera is my primary browser, I use it for 95% of my browsing, but I fake my agent all the time. As far as anyone collecting information is concerned all they see is MSIE 6.0 in their logs. I'm forced to do this because MANY pages block access if you don't have IE or Netscape. Maybe if they are progressive, they look for Mozilla too. I'm not sure how much this affects those statistics, but I would imagine that it's not insignificant.

Agreed but...

[einhverfr]

The browser is still important. I do not think that the war is over. We have simply been set back by a few years (or even decades). BTW I did read pretty much all the DoJ documents. They are important.

Here are the points that one fails to appreciate:
1) IE recently stopped supporting Netscape-style plugins, presumably because they felt that they were now the dominant power and that this was an added defensive measure.

2) I still develop complex web apps using Javascript and HTML on the front-end and PHP or Python on the middleware in order to provide cross-platform functionality. Many other people do as well. This is still a very real threat to MS on the desktop, and something that I don';t think they really appreciate at the moment.

3) Microsoft's dominating influence on the desktop also comes from their rapid application development tools. Python and Mozilla/XUL are incredibly useful here.

You have to understand that this is a very assymetric war. What matters to MS is not what matters to us. They have to pursue new lock-in technologies because they will otherwise lose. This is why they are pushing for DRM, IMO.

The fact of the matter is, though, that DRM is NOT the lock-in factor that, say IE was. It is something which companies may choose to use internally, but that would likely be a few years off, and I would find it unlikely that they would use it in correspondences with customers, etc.

I think they have the browser in the rear-view mirror because they figure that they cannot win this one.

and AOL backs it

[Creepy]

It may be slow and buggy (actually, 7.1 isn't that bad, IMO), but it's hard to push open source to businesses because they want someone to hold accountable.

Market forces, on the other hand, have their own way of forcing good software in, regardless of origin. When you risk losing millions in contracts because you don't support Mozilla or Linux, the corporate penny pinchers start to take notice.

Re:and AOL backs it

[SCHecklerX]

And exactly how accountable is M$ for the crap that happens daily to people who use their garbage?

That's what I thought.

eweek

[ChristTrekker]

AOL's browser strategy has taken contradictory turns in recent years. AOL last year agreed to license the IE browser as part of an antirust settlement between its Netscape unit and Microsoft.

Sorry, but IE is "rusting" even worse than Netscape is. At least Mozilla is being actively developed, even if Netscape seldom gets an update.

Even if AOL simply keeps Netscape Navigator updated with its Mozilla base, new releases of it help to raise the profile of alternatives to IE, said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO of Norwegian browser maker Opera Software ASA.

Amen to that. I regularly use Opera, Firefox, Netscape 7, iCab, Links, and Safari. Camino and Mozilla sometimes too. It boggles me that many people aren't even aware that browsers other than IE exist. Choice is good.

ActiveX and other reasons

[gad_zuki!]

ActiveX: Unless you like cleaning up after your secretary's "web trail" of spyware.

Sure, you can disable it, but they can just re-enable it. Of course you can run all your users with user level permissions, but your hypothetical question assumes the ability to install stuff.

Security issues, have they fixed that URL spoof yet?

Stability. Not only do the moz-based browsers tend to crash less, they don't take the entire explorer.exe shell or desktop down with them when they do go down. That's a real downside of "IE is the OS."

The built in pop up blocker goes a long way to fighting spyware. Afterall, many of those ads look like MS Windows OS windows and contain the word "update." Why not click on them? Seems logical.

Lastly, I don't like the word "political." Is it political to do a small part to help fight for web standards? Sites following web standards helps everyone in the end. A responsible netizen should be helping standards whenever he or she can.

Signs?

[stonecypher]

You know they're the author you want discussing browser history when they call Netscape the forefather of browsers. cough.

Re:GRAMMAR NAZI - Re:Browser stats

[Anonymous Coward]

Snoop Dogg is from Arkansas?

Personally, I like the compromise of "I've got four," from which that awful "I got" colloquialism is derived.

Re:What us geeks should do to help promote Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't be bothered with going thru the trouble to differentiate homophones.

Re:What us geeks should do to help promote Mozilla

[PoprocksCk]

Honest to God... no one likes a troll. I think it's a great idea. My cousin sure could use it -- he got screwed with all kinds of pr0n ads (including all kinda of programs that installed and took over his desktop)

Where is the Mac OS version?

[pen]

The last version of Netscape for Mac OS was 7.02, with 7.1 being released only for Mac OS X. Why? Does it really take that much resources to compile an extra port?

serious question.

[mindstrm]

What value does Netscape bring over Mozilla?

I'm not arguing about open-vs-closed, or about stealing code, or anything like that....

My impression of past versions of netscape were "Hey, it's just like mozilla, except it has a bunch of annoying shit added to it."

mod up

[poofyhairguy82]

never have I wanted mod points more

New IE in WinXP SP2

[kylef]

Upgrading a "component so deeply entrenched into the OS" (tm) is not that simple. Actually it might break stuff, it might be a hefty download over dialup, etc.

SP2 includes a brand new version of IE with a pop-up blocker and more site-level security settings (among other things)... And Sp2 will almost certainly be delivered to most users as a Windows Update package...

Other users will pick up one of the massively distributed CDs that Sp2 will undoubtedly be shipped on... For reference, check out the press release for MS's $300 million campaign to "advertise and distribute" SP2. It appears that the death of IE in XP has been greatly exaggerated.

No word yet about Win2k.

Re:GRAMMAR NAZI - Re:Browser stats

[paganizer]

And it might possibly be in your interest to not get your panties in a twist over something that is incredibly unimportant.
If you can make yourself understood to the audience that you are trying to communicate with, you are doing it right, end of story.

Re:Tabbed browsing with IE

[Anonymous Coward]

Why?